Pizza Monday is BACK!

What a weekend!  Weekends like this make me wish that there were no Mondays so that we could keep having fun without having to go to school or work.  We had a fantastic time with great friends and family.  My brother, sister-in-law and niece (who will be one year old next month) came for a visit from New Jersey.  A bunch of us met at Soergel's Orchard for pumpkin picking and hayrides. We head to Soergel's every year as part of our fall routine and it is always a wonderful time.

Next, everyone headed back to our house for snacks and dinner so that we could all sit down and catch up while the kids played.  My husband and I really enjoy hosting gatherings and this was no exception.  Granted, we did have to clean like crazy people but the bonus is that our house is still clean.  It was so nice to learn new things about old friends and to watch my family interact with each other.  My niece is growing by leaps and bounds and it is so awesome to see the milestones that she is reaching.  She sure is a gorgeous little girl!  ♥ you, Em!

Today, we all met for brunch and said our good-byes.  It was sad but we know that we'll see them in just over a month.  We can't wait!

Now, back at it.  We are bring back pizza Mondays.  Our dinner was pizza when everyone came over and we had some left so there we have it.

Our main entree is Little Caesar's pepperoni pizza.  Cold pizza has to be one of the best lunches ever.  Molly's school always serves pizza on Mondays so we like keeping her similar with this choice.

Our vegetable side is a green salad with light ranch dressing.  Molly really likes the pizza and salad combo.  She also likes to dip her pizza in the ranch so it is a great catalyst for one of her other favorite combinations.

Our fruit side is red grapes.  These are very firm and juicy with a nice sweet taste.  Grapes are really delicious frozen for a snack if the weather happens to be on the warmer side.

Finally, our dairy/dessert is vanilla yogurt.  We haven't gotten a chance to run to Sam's club over the past week or so and that means that we don't have anymore of Molly's new favorite yogurt, the Chobani Champions.  She likes regular old vanilla yogurt though, so she'll be fine until we can get to Sam's.

Whatta Weekend

Molly had an INCREDIBLE weekend.  First, she had two birthday parties on Saturday.  The first was a bowling party for our awesome neighbor.  Molly is a great bowler...on the Wii.  The real sport is a different story.  I think that they told me her score was 13.  But, she had a ton of fun nonetheless.  The second party was a girlie makeover, movie and sleepover party with her BFFs.  This was the most amazing thing to Molly because she had never had a true sleepover before.  They stayed up way past their bed time, partied like crazy and had an absolute blast.

When we picked her up this morning, we were off to another fun day with Grammy and Papa.  We met them for brunch at the Cheesecake Factory.  We had a great meal and scrumptious Reece's Peanut Butter Cheesecake to share between the seven of us.  After we finished eating our grub, we went to our perennial favorite place for pumpkins, Soergel's Orchards.  We picked a pumpkin, took a hay ride and enjoyed the yummiest apple cider.

After a long weekend, Molly was in bed by 7:15 tonight so that she will be well rested for a new week at school. Hopefully a nice lunch will help a little too.

Our main entrée is a plain old peanut butter and strawberry jam on whole wheat sandwich.  We used a butterfly shaped cookie cutter for our large sandwich and a heart shaped micro cookie cutter for the mini sandwiches.

The vegetable side is a mix of sugar snap peas and crinkle cut carrots.  Both of these are nice and crunchy with a sweet and refreshing flavor.

For our fruit, we are serving a fresh apple straight from the orchard.  Molly helped to pick these apples.  They were in a bin as opposed to on a tree but she can still say that she picked them.  We think that she will definitely be happy with this selection.

Dessert is a small amount of Tastefully Simple Twisty Grahams.  These are a nice sweet little treat.  They taste like cinnamon graham crackers but a little bit more solid and crunchy like a bread stick.