Food Truck Eats & A Facial

With this new way of parenting that I am trying w/ Autumn, I am having her do more jobs and help out more.  I tell her that she can earn points by doing that, and then those points can be converted into earning things like a treat or doing something fun she wants to do.  This morning I had her & Andrew help put away the clean silverware.  They did a GREAT job!  I need to not do as many things for her and teach her how and let her do them so she can feel a sense of accomplishment & responsibility & pride.

After breakfast was all cleaned up, I told Autumn she could go play w/ Andrew.  They went in the playroom and came out a while later to show us the creation they (mostly Andrew) put together.  Autumn asked if she could borrow my phone and took a picture of it.  I LOVE that she’s wanting to take pictures and document things that are important to her!

This is how we spent most of the morning…Autumn on my phone, Andrew on the Kindle Fire, Mom on the iPad, and me on my laptop.  Do you think electronics are taking over our lives?

After that, we decided it was time to put the electronics away and spend the rest of the morning playing and talking w/ each other.  We got out this big floor puzzle that the kids put together.

For lunch, Mom made meatloaf and garlic mashed potatoes.  Lexie & I went in the kitchen to watch her and learn how she makes it.  I took pics along the way and typed up the recipe as we went.  You can find her yummy meatloaf recipe here.

The kids wanted a snack before lunch, so we got out these alphabet pretzels that Lexie & Jon had brought.  Autumn spelled out her name, then my name, then Lexie’s name, and then Andrew wanted his name on there too, so he spelled out his name.  I love it how the R is backwards.  So cute!

After we had lunch, Mom was getting stir crazy and wanted to get out of the house and spend some time w/ the 2 older grandkids while Jackson was taking a nap.  We asked her what they were going to do and where they were going to go and she said it was an adventure and she didn’t even know yet.    Lexie & I had such peace & quiet while they were gone, and we just sat and talked and played Candy Crush Saga!  As you can see, they ended up going to Toys R Us.  They were so nice and brought a blue bouncy ball back for Jackson.  I tried to get a cute picture of the 3 of them w/ Mimi, but this was the best one I could get out of 5 pics I took!  Oh, well.

Mom said that when they were driving around the shopping center, she saw a bunch of food trucks set up outside the convention center.  I have always wanted to eat food from a food truck ever since we started watching The Great Food Truck Race (TGFTR) on Food Network.  Lexie & I hurried and got ready and went over there to try out the food.  We decided to try a little bit at each of them just for the experience of it all.

The first one we tried was Ssahm Korean BBQ tacos, b/c of watching Seoul Sausage Company on TGFTR.  Their tacos were good, but Lexie thought they were too spicy.  Then we tried a Cowboy Taco at the Chile Pepper Grill, and that was my favorite one of the whole experience.  We also tried 2 sliders (Southern Bell & Southern Hospitality) from The Butcher’s Son.  They were good, but not over the top incredible.  Finally, we tried the Rockin’ Rick’s Fries.  They looked fancy w/ a remoulade & cilantro and  sour cream & ranch sauce drizzled on top of them, but they were greasy and not very good.  I’m so happy we went and got to try all those fun foods just so I can check it off my list of things to try!

As soon as we were done, we headed over to get 1 hour facials w/ Melanie.  Mom had called her earlier in the day to see if she could fit us in, b/c she said she wanted to treat us to a facial!!!  Mom is SO GOOD to us and I hope she knows how much we appreciate her.  Lexie went first, and it was fun to get to see what Melanie was doing.  My favorite part was when she used this brush to put a mask on.  She also massaged my arms w/ lotion and hot rocks.  I was so relaxed that I didn’t want to stand up and leave to go home.

Here we are w/ our shiny clean faces.  It felt so nice to have super clean skin.  THANKS A MILLION, MOM!!!

Since Jon had gotten home from his chiropractic conference and could help Mom w/ the kids, Lexie & I ran over to the $1 Jewelry Store really quick b/c she wanted to get some pink necklaces.  I had to laugh when I saw all these plastic neon bracelets on the wall.  I guess the 80’s are back in style now!

It was a WONDERFUL day!!!