Any Excuse Not To Cook

I'm not a good cook.  I mean, I can cook.  We eat.  No one is starving.  But I'm not good at it.  I don't enjoy it.  On a normal week, I cook Monday - Friday and Jay cooks on weekends.  He is a much better cook than me and generally enjoys it, so to say we eat well on weekends would be an understatement.

My cooking could be described as fairly utilitarian.  I tend to go through the same 8-10 meals on a regular rotation because they are easy and the kids will eat them. So it is with great joy and happiness that I find reasons to not cook dinner on any given night.

This week was Summit Elementary McTeacher's Night at the Smithfield, Utah McDonalds.  The teachers at William and Tessa's school took turns hanging out at McDonald and the school gets a portion of the proceeds from the sales that evening.  We were the first ones there - just after 5 pm - but the business was fairly steady and by the time we left it was pretty busy.

We've done a few other fundraisers like this.  We ate at Chick-Fil-A for Henry's school last fall and just last month we ate at Noodle's and Co for Summit Elementary as well.  I don't know how much Henry's school made, but Summit made about $500 from the Noodle's and Co fundraiser.  It doesn't sound like a lot in the grand scheme of things but every little bit helps.

Plus I don't have to cook.  Win-win!

Photo Bomb

Here are some pictures of the Jay and the boys in Moab:

Henry at Delicate Arch:

 Apparently there was some drama getting William up for a picture at Delicate Arch.  Oh, William:

 He rallied for more fun later, however:

 This is at Dead Horse Point State Park.  Tessa thought it was the Grand Canyon at first and was mad that they went without her:

 I can't tell you how awful this sign is to me.  Charging for food by the scoop?  Really?  Thank goodness they didn't see this place until after they had already eaten or I shudder to think what dinner would have been:

William is jockeying to go back to Moab so he can get a proper picture at Delicate Arch.  We'll see what we can do.

A Good Time Was Had By All

This week was Spring Break.  Boy were we ready for the kids to have a week off school.  Poor Tessa has been sick off and on the entire month of March - I think being a first grader and all it entails has finally caught up to her.  She just seemed so tired the last little bit.  All three kids had a bout of the stomach flu before Easter so it just seemed like a good time to air everyone and everything out and have a little downtime.

The beginning of the week was pretty laid back.  The weather was pretty good - warmish with a few showers mixed in.  It was nice enough at the start of the week for the kids to spend a lot of time outside and with friends.  One afternoon I took Henry and William and a few of their friends to the baseball park and they worked each other out with hitting, pitching and fielding.  Tessa and her friend played in the playground while I sat on a park bench and read in the sun.  It was nice.

Jay wanted to introduce the kids to Aggie Marketplace, a full-service eatery up at USU.  It has about a million different options for eating and is set up like a buffet - you pay your fee (which was pretty good - we all ate for under $30) and you could eat as much as you wanted.  They had pizza, pasta, burgers, tacos, Asian, and much, much more.  William seemed quite enamored with the whole concept and we had to physically cut him off from making a trip to the nacho bar because he had already eaten so much.  The kids ended their meals with Aggie Ice Cream:

The end of the week split us up.  Jay took the boys to Moab for a camping and hiking boys weekend.  I hate camping so I stayed home with Tessa.  While the boys in our family were in Moab (hopefully Jay is taking many pictures), the girls went shopping and out to eat and watched videos and just had a quiet weekend.  Tessa's videos of choice were her LaShar's Dance Recital videos from 2011 and 2012.  She watched the videos and danced around the family room.  It was quite the performance.

Kids go back to school on Monday.  Only 8 more weeks until Summer Vacation!