Easy Meatball Pizza Sandwiches

Ready for an easy dinner idea? (We're not going to call this a recipe - my husband would be embarrassed). This is such a great recipe for this time of year - simple, quick, hearty, and warm. And even though these are the easiest thing ever, for some reason this had never occurred to me as a dinner idea until my mother-in-law mentioned it. Thanks, Nancy!

These actually started out as plain meatball sandwiches, but my kids would not eat them until they were re-represented as "pizza sandwiches" with a few harmless meatballs on top. And, turns out, I loved the addition of the pepperoni!

Easy Meatball Pizza Sandwiches
Ingredients:
*Hearty dinner rolls
*Meatballs (homemade or store-bought)
*Spaghetti sauce (homemade or store-bought)
*Provolone cheese
*Italian spice blend
*Pepperoni (optional)

Directions:
Cook meatballs and spaghetti sauce in crockpot or on stovetop. Cut dinner rolls in half, and top one side with pepperoni, and meatballs. Sprinkle with Italian spice blend, and top with Provolone cheese. Broil until rolls are toasted and cheese is nice and melty. I love my bread nice and toasty, so I give it a little pre-broil before adding the ingredients, as shown below.

Yummmm....

If You Could Change One Thing....

While I'm not accepting the challenge to blog daily for NaBloPoMo, I am trying to blog more often for the month of November, and I was intrigued by their post prompt yesterday. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

The answer came easily to me. If I could change one thing about my personality, I would love to have the gift of making conversation. 

I am doubly challenged by this seemingly-perplexing concept. On one hand, getting to know new people is next to impossible for me. If I didn't have a friend to go with, I would be way more likely to stay home from an event than go and make conversation with people I don't know. It's not that I don't like making friends, it's that I literally CANNOT think of what to say to people before I know them well. I am horrible at making small talk. I can't think of a good way to open the conversation, I can't keep a conversation going, I live in fear of awkward pauses. Meeting new people is terrifying to me.

Then... it gets worse. I meet people. I get comfortable. And then I can't shut up! I tend to dominate conversations, talking loudly, telling stories, and just generally getting all wound up. I thrive on the energy and laughter of the group, and get more and more animated, and more and more talkative. When I come down from my "high," usually after I've left, I kick myself for how obnoxious I've been and how much I talked about myself. Really, the art of making conversation is not one that I've mastered.

*sigh*

I have two aunts who are beautiful and gracious conversationalists. When they meet new people, they ask all the right questions to get to know them, and to make the person feel comfortable. They always manage to strike that balance between asking and sharing, and make each person they talk to feel special and valued. It's such an amazing gift, in my opinion, and one I would love to someday cultivate.

But for now, luckily, somehow I manage to make friends, and somehow, once I have them, I manage to keep them. Despite the fact that they've heard the story three dozen times already about when I broke that one girl's nose at Color Guard practice. Heh. 

10 Gift Ideas for the Little Lego Lover

My son is OBSESSED with Legos, but sometimes it seems like you can only buy so many sets, know what I mean? On a recent trip to Costco, I wanted our trip to seem more legit than just going to eat at the food court, so we walked around browsing, and they had some great books that caught my eye. I thought I'd pass along the ideas, along with a few more, for anyone else thinking ahead to the holidays!

1. I posted last year on Facebook that we had gotten this Lego Ideas Book for our son's birthday.

This is NOT a book with instructions. Instead, it is a large, coffee table-style book filled with Lego creations organized by theme. It gives ideas on different ways to use specialty bits and bricks they may have gotten in other sets. It also has interesting interviews with people who build Legos professionally. My son still spends hours thumbing through this book, and even has us read pages for his nightly bedtime story. "Be creative with your bricks! You can use different bricks to achieve the same effects. If you don't have green cabbages for your farm truck, but you have yellow bricks, you have hay bales!" Zzzzzzz for me.... !!excitement!! for him.

Other books I saw at Costco.... We don't own these so I can't speak to how loved they might be, but all three of my kids were clamoring for these at the store!

2. Lego Minifigure Year by Year

3. Lego Play Book: Ideas to Bring Your Bricks to Life

4. The Lego Book

5. Building Brick and Minifigure Ice Cube Tray/Candy Melt
While we didn't use these for our Lego Birthday Party, lots of other parties I saw online did! How fun would these be to make ice cubes, candy, crayons, and more!? My kids would love these!

Photo credit: amazon.com

6. Lego Candy

photo credit: amazon.com

As seen in the cake we made for Parker's Lego party, these Lego brick candies actually stick together! My husband and I may or may not have stayed up playing with these little guys. Fun and tasty, they would make a great stocking stuffer!

7. Lego Advent Calendar

I have always wanted to get one of these for my kids, but I never have. I'm tempted every year, though! Maybe 2013 is the year.

8. Lego Alarm Clock

Maybe if I got this for my son, he would actually be willing to get up for school! Nah, doubt it.

9. Trio Blocks

photo credit: amazon.com

Okay, I know these look kind of "young" compared to what Lego guys might normally be into. And it's true that we started buying these for my son when he was probably 2 years old. However, these are still a building favorite with my crew and their cousins (ages 4-11). They create all sorts of buildings, vehicles, animals, and bugs. We actually keep a tub of these over at Grandma's house because it can entertain the 6 kids & cousins endlessly, and they're much easier to clean up.

10. Giant bag of Peanut Butter M&M's

These have nothing to do with Legos. But, um, hello? Who would not want to be the recipient of a giant bag of the best M&M's on the planet? Does anyone have me on their Christmas list this year?

I'd love to hear any other reader ideas on what to get for a kid who loves Legos!

Costume Run!

One thing I really love about Alaska is how active and family-oriented it is. In the fall, there is a race series held on Tuesday nights, and tonight it was a Costume Run. The run for the kids was about a mile, and they had trick-or-treat stations about every quarter mile.

Of course, I had to make things extra chaotic by not deciding that I wanted to go until like an hour before it started, then frantically trying to find warm costumes for my kids, all while my youngest was crying her eyes out from skinning her knees and our landlord was upstairs doing some repair work. Uh, don't mind your crazy, loud tenants down here, mister!

My son just chose to throw his hockey stuff on (since we were ditching practice anyway, it was already all laid out), and my daughter wore all black with these little kitty ears. Don't worry, she felt that 40 degrees was about the perfect temp to run in a long-sleeved tee shirt and yoga pants, so she ditched this perfectly reasonable jacket.

Time to head down to the start line - isn't this just the absolute most beautiful view ever? Love this park. Miles of groomed, lit trails for running, biking, and skiing.

Here's everyone all lined up and ready to go - love how many people were out there with their kids, all dressed up for a race on a random Tuesday night. Another race tonight elsewhere in Anchorage had over 300 participants, so lots of runners tonight!

I really love this city. 

Halloween Wall!

One of my favorite traditions growing up was our family Christmas wall, where my mom would hang an assortment of our artwork and pictures from years past. 

This year I decide to do something similar for Halloween. I put up a bunch of my kids' artwork, along with pictures of them in their costumes throughout the years. I love looking back on my old favorites! I also hung a few of our Ghost Family Portraits, where I'd have my kids draw our family as a family of ghosts. This wall makes me happy every time I look at it!

Learning a Lesson

My 6-year-old hesitantly teeters onto the ice, his new hockey gear nearly doubling the size of his scrawny body. Surrounded by other boys whizzing by, easily handling their hockey sticks and gear, he falls down immediately. He hasn't been on skates since spring, and I immediately curse myself for not thinking to take him skating a few times in preparation for his first day of practice. He gets up and skates a few feet, and then falls again. Again. Again.

I have to tear my eyes away and I look around the rink, everything as foreign to me as it is to him. I knew there would be other kids in his league who had played hockey before, but I did not expect that out of the 50 or so kids skating around the rink, at least 45 of them would show up with league jerseys already emblazoned with their names. How has every six year old in the city other than mine already been playing hockey? Didn't they all just barely learn to skate? To walk, really?

I check in to see how he's doing. The coaches skate indifferently around the rink, watching but not helping. As the other boys pass to each other as they easily weave back and forth, my son wobbles and falls. Again. Again. Again. He's out there all by himself, and my heart tightens in my chest. I want to skate out there and help him, or at least find a coach to help him. My mind races to predict the first thing he'll say when he finally comes off the ice, discouraged and downtrodden. Everyone is better than me. I kept falling down. I don't want to go back.

The tears spring to my eyes and I can't watch him struggle. He's still skating and falling, skating and falling. Again. Again. He can't stop quickly on his skates and the other boys can. Why didn't we take him to the rink this summer and teach him to stop like that? Why didn't I think of that? I lean against an outer wall and text a friend: This is one of the hardest moments of my parenting career. I can't watch this. I know that to the other moms, watching intently from the bleachers, I look uninvolved and disinterested, but if I watch him fall down one more time, I will cry. I check my watch. Ten minutes down. Fifty to go.

My daughters want to play outside, and even though I brought them to support their brother in his first practice, I jump at the chance to leave my husband in there to watch alone. I enjoy some rare fall sunshine, I take deep breaths. We can all do this. My son loves sports with every fiber of his being - this will be our life now. If not hockey, something else. There will be more (many more) moments of heartache, watching him struggle and not being able to help. It'll just be my job to encourage him, take him for some extra practice skate sessions, and cheer my heart out for him.

We head back inside. He has his feet under him a little better now, and they're in small groups of about 8 doing drills. He glides slowly but confidently between the cones. There is nothing about his body language to suggest that he is discouraged or defeated.

They end with a game of Sharks and Minnows, and even though he's been on the ice for 57 minutes now, he is still skating as fast as he can, giving it his best. Our school nurse, who is one of the coaches, is screaming his name, encouraging him along, and my younger daughter keeps giving him a beaming, proud, thumbs-up. Tears prick my eyes again. I'm a little emotional.

When he comes off the ice and takes off his gear, I hurry to meet him. What is he going to say? Everyone but me had a jersey from last season. They all know how to play and I don't. I fell down so many times. I don't want to go back. I hesitantly round the corner to where my husband is helping him change back from hulk child to regular child. He is nothing but smiles. And sweat. His hair sticks straight up, and his eyes are bright. "I love hockey!" he crows. I exhale.

Later that night he snuggled me happily. "Thank you for paying for me to do sports," he told me. "I love hockey so much." "I'm so glad. I loved watching you play," I lied told him.

That night he is an example to me. It doesn't matter to him that literally every single one of the 50 kids out there was better than him, because he was doing what he loved and wanted to learn. He wasn't discouraged that he kept falling down - he didn't even mention it. He had to have fallen over a hundred times, and it was like he didn't even notice. My son is determined. He doesn't care about what the other kids were doing. He was confident. Joyful. He knows he will improve and I know it too. And in the meantime, I'm going to try harder to be more like my kid.

Easy Minion Costume!

We had a community Halloween event in September this year, so we got a nice early start on costumes! We decided to do a group "Despicable Me" costume this year with our cousins, and I think it turned out great! Here is our group shot:

Here were the girls' costumes. We just got everything out of their closets, with a few creative additions (such as the 10-year-old wearing an old 5T green blazer I knew I had down in our crawl space). My youngest wasn't about to wear the overalls and yellow striped tee-shirt Agnes usually wears, so we went with ballerina Agnes. Let's just say it was a loose interpretation.

I thought I'd post a quick how-to on making the minion costumes. They were so cheap, and relatively easy to do!

First we ordered yellow beanies off Amazon. I think they were about $4 each. We also bought the yellow tee-shirts from Michael's for $3 each. The glasses were an AWESOME find (also at Michael's) for only $1! We were looking for "nerd glasses" because we thought that would be close enough. Not sure what these glasses were supposed to be for, but they sure worked well for minions, and you can't beat $1!

For the shirts, we took some denim fabric we had, cut a rectangle and two strips to look like overalls, and then just stitched them down with a quick zig-zag stitch. We didn't even turn the edges under, because we figured these shirts wouldn't get used more than two times. We thought we were done with the shirts, but the kids kept asking about the "G" logo, so I went ahead and cut one out on my Silhouette onto some vinyl and stuck it to the shirt. I'm not fancy enough to do iron-on yet, so I literally just slapped some vinyl on there. Again, I'm not planning on these lasting forever. Then the boys wore jeans, and a long-sleeve tee-shirt under. Black gloves optional in your neck of the woods. :)

For the hats, I took black pipe cleaners, cut them in half, and just stuck them through the beanies. I did all the hair a little bit different. My son specifically wanted his all close together, like Kevin, because I guess Kevin is the tallest minion and my son is very proud that he is the tallest cousin. LOL. Here is a pic where you can see the hair a little bit better.

Unfortunately our event had nothing but POURING rain, so I didn't get the best pics of the minion costumes, but I'll try again on Halloween. In the meantime, hopefully this at least gives you an idea of how we did ours!