Little T Cheering Us On

16 Wednesday Oct 2013

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Last night, Little T and I were driving home late from Anaheim. I was feeling a little grumpy, not for any particular reason. I was listening to a song and Little T wanted to listen to a different one, and I was trying to explain that it isn’t safe to play with the iPhone while you’re driving. To make a long story short, I got a bit distracted and went the wrong way in the freeway. I didn’t notice it until we were all the way in Newport Beach because of my deep discussion with Little T on paying attention while you’re driving. Irony!

I told him I made a mistake and went the wrong way, and he said in his little voice, “it’s okay momma! Keep trying, NEVER give up! Never give up!” It made me chuckle. When we finally did get back on the freeway in the right direction, Little T started to cheer and shout that we did it. It made me smile. 🙂

The other day we were photographing the sweetest couple at La Quinta Resort by Palm Springs. The two T’s came along and played in the background. I was about to take some walking photos when We ran into Little T. We told him he should watch the couple walk because they are really good at walking. When I started taking photos of them walking towards me, he started shouting, “GREAT JOB, GUYS!” And was giving them a thunderous applause. We were all laughing at his enthusiasm, it was pretty cute. He can’t ever do anything halfway, can he? The next day we were looking at photos and he said, “momma, they were really good walkers!”

Anyway, there are a lot of things about the age of three that are tough. It’s definitely been the most challenging for me and Big T. At the same time though, there are so many things about 3 that I love. His enthusiasm for cheering people on is definitely one of them. 🙂

Good Eats

13 Sunday Oct 2013

Posted by Momma J in Meal Plans, The Family, vegan

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vegan family, vegan food

We’ve been eating home a lot more lately, and it’s been pretty boring. We have had a few fun splurges over the past few weeks though that I thought I’d share.

Loaded baked potato soup, with chives, daiya cheese, and tempeh bacon:

Little T had vegan chili from Native Foods:

Salad for Momma:

And a portobello and “sausage” burger for Big T:

From Linx! In honor of Octoberfest, a pretzel roll with a soy dog, beer infused mustard, and Vidalia onions:

And a plain vegan dog with ketsup for Little T:

And for A spooky Halloween night, we made pumpkins, had dairy free vanilla almond I’ve cream with sautéed apples, figs, and cranberries on top!

About Little T…..

11 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by Momma J in life, Quick Snippets, The Family

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Little T had his back to school night this week. When we were there, the teacher pulled us aside to mention how well-liked he was. We nodded and said we were glad to hear it, and she said, “No, I don’t think you understand. He knows everybody in this school. He knows the cafeteria ladies, he knows all of the teachers, he knows all of the receptionists, the office people. He says hello to everyone as he passes by, and he plays with all the kids. The cafeteria lady plays basketball with him, the kids in the other classes all know him, everyone loves him. He’s just a happy and friendly kid”. Of course, there are things for him to work on. He has zero interest in any of the projects that require him to sit down for more than a minute at a time. Big T and I laugh because we can always tell which art projects are his because they are the one with the least stuff-or maybe he’s just a minimalist. 😉 His voice is very loud, he’s one of the more…errrr, energetic kids in the class, and he doesn’t always sit patiently in circle time. I don’t think he’ll ever be one of those kids who sits quietly in the corner, but I’m glad that he’s kind and friendly. It’s a good quality to have.

This and That

06 Sunday Oct 2013

Posted by Momma J in life, Quick Snippets, The Family, this and that

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Putting up the sign!!! (!!!)

The last vegan pumpkin chocolate chip cookie:

Doggy kisses:

Sparkly nails to celebrate fall:

Stumbling upon Stonehenge:

Kiddy Rock Concerts:

Hay Rides at Riley’s Farm:

Little T’s there somewhere….

A trip to the barber shop:

Telling the barber about all of his daycare woes:

Couscous, roasted green beans and mushrooms, and fresh baked olive rolls:

Take your kitty to work day:

Just another photo bomb:

Daddy hugs make everything better:

Disneyworld Days 1 and 2

20 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by Momma J in The Adventures of Little T, The Family, The Travels

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As a thank you for some of the work I’ve been partnering with Disney on, they were gracious enough to host our family on a trip to Disney World. So far it’s been unbelievable, and I can’t even begin to say what a great time we are having.

The plane trip was our biggest concern with Little T, but it was actually very smooth. To prepare him, we told him that when we get to the airport, mommy and Little T would be in charge of taking care of each other while Daddy took care of the bags. Little T kept checking up on me during the airport trip because of this and it was pretty adorable. He also started telling me good job every time I use the potty. I love how supportive that little dude is. 😉

For vegan traveling, we packed dry oatmeal for breakfast. Starbucks was kind enough to give us hot water, and all we had to do was mix the oatmeal into the hot water cup. For lunch on the plane, we packed:

Trail Mix
Kind Bars
Burritos with rice, lemon, olives, and hot sauce
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
Pears (packed in a plastic bag with a napkin to reduce mess)

We also packed tons of activities for Little T, but all he wanted to do was play with the Virgin America screen in front of the seat. So….that was easy, lol.

When we arrived in Florida, Little T could hardly contain himself. He was happy to see my mom and step dad were there, and he was so excited to be at Disney World. When we arrived at our hotel (the Animal Kingdom Lodge), it really hit home for him that this trip was going to be special.

The view from our room:

After we’d explored the resort a little bit, we ate at Boma. The chef made us an amazing vegan meal, and even brought us dessert.

We ended the night by playing in the pool and spa, it was a relaxing way to end a long journey.

The next morning, we had a surprise gift on the bed for Little T that was from Tinkerbell (teehee), saying she was so proud of him for being a good boy on the plane~an idea I found while reading about Disneyworld with toddlers. Little T loved it, and we told him if he was good for the rest of the trip, maybe Tinkerbell would bring something every day. These were gifts we purchased in the dollar bin at Target and Michaels, except for the first day because we gave him a pretty cool Star Wars book.

When we finished looking through the book, we had breakfast (soy milk and cereal), and went downstairs to meet our guide, Angel. He took us to the Magic Kingdom first. We hadn’t had any time to plan our trip, so we told him we were up for anything.

Our first stop was to see Tinkerbell. I don’t know how this happened, but when she saw Little T, she ran up to him and asked, “did you get it? Did you get it?” She knew all about the book. I’m thinking that Angel must have worked his Disney Magic. 🙂 It was pretty special.

Little T’s favorite rides were Splash Mountain and Thunder mountain. We definitely have a daredevil in the making. :p Little T was a little scared about going on pirates, but we told him Angel also fought pirates for a living. He held Angel’s hand after that, I think It was a smart move on his part. 😉

After the Magic Kingdom, we went to Epcot. Little T loved the race track ride, and designed this very sturdy pink race car. Kid has style.

For dinner, we were able to see Little T’s foster momma. She took good care of him for the first few days of his life until we were able to get to Florida. I think she loved being able to see how we’ll Little T is doing and to give him hugs again.

When dinner was over, my parents stayed at Epcot for a bit and we went back to the resort to give Little T a good bedtime. He’d had a very busy day, after all.

The next morning, Little T woke up and stumbled over to the stroller in his pajamas. I think he was ready to go back to Disney World.

We met Angel again in the morning, and he took us to the Animal Kingdom Park. Big T and I loved it there, but discovered that Little T was more of a roller coasters fan than an animal fan. At least for now, anyway.

Little T’s favorite was the dinosaur ride. We told him Angel was a dinosaur fighter, so he felt safe. We thought it would scare him, but he wanted to do it again. Go figure!

Vegan eats:

~Hot and Sour rice and vegetables at the Animal Kingdom

~Mickey Mouse Pretzel

~Blood Orange Margarita (party party)

~Coconut milk ice cream in Hollywood Studios

~Pizza with Daiya cheese at the Pizza Planet

~Veggie Burgers in Disneyworld at Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe

After a few bad attraction photos, we convinced Angel to tell us where all the cameras are for the attractions:

And he became very skilled at pushing strollers and carrying Mickey backpacks.

After Animal Kingdom, we went to Hollywood. Little T was laughing with pure happiness on the Tower of Terror, which boggles my mind, because you can’t pay me enough to go on that ride. Little T also loved Star Tours and was picked as the rebel spy, teehee. At the end of the day, Angel drove us home and we said goodbye. We’re going to miss him, he really made the trip special. 🙂

A few more random photos from the past few days:

And that’s our trip so far! We have a few more exciting things in store for us and we can’t wait for them to happen. 🙂

Are we there yet?

11 Sunday Aug 2013

Posted by Momma J in life, Photography, The Family, The Travels

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This was one of those unusually busy weeks, where Big T becomes Mr. Mom while I hop from one event to the next. It was a lot easier this time around, physically and mentally. I think this means it’s starting to become a normal for us to have crazy lives. 😉

Wednesday: Wedding at the Grand that had me genuinely surprised when I turned around and saw everyone had formed a giant pyramid…

Thursday, the family checked into the Grand and back I was back for another wedding. The details were gorgeous and Heather did most of them herself!

Friday: Working for the Mouse!

And taking a quick break at D23 to see my family. Little T had a lightsaber and was determined to take Darth Vader down a notch or two.

My sweet mother in law may not look so sweet in this photo, but she did spend the weekend with us at the Grand to help out. 😉

Even though I had carried two cameras and a heavy back pack all over the place, I was back at 7:00am Saturday morning. I’m not going to lie, I was super excited to be there. :p

I finished around noon and drove to Pasadena for wedding #3! They had a big Band playing and Louise and I felt like we were at a concert, it was magical!

The next day, we took Little T to Disneyland for his birthday. He has now discovered Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, and he thinks it is incredible.

I was so exhausted, that when I got home and parked in the driveway, I fell asleep in the car. Big T had to come wake me up and get me. He’s good like that.

The next day, I was back working for the mouse, and on Tuesday I was in Pasadena again for an e-shoot. Today I’m off to Newport. Tomorrow? I sleep.

Road Trips and Car Rides with Toddlers

28 Sunday Jul 2013

Posted by Momma J in life, The Adventures of Little T, The Family, The Travels

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We just arrived home from our week long vacation. We’re still settling in and getting back into our routine, but I wanted to share how Little T survived the 14+ hours we spent traveling in our car.

I’d spent a long time searching for strategies and suggestions online. I found a few good ideas, like the Car Ride Bingo, but most of them I just recycled from my days teaching kindergarten. I hope this helps for any soon to be tiny travelers~

The first thing I did, was grab a bunch of big envelopes from the garage. These are pretty cheap to purchase if you don’t have any on hand. Toddlers have short attention spans, so I made ten envelopes filled with different games, then stored them all in this Sprouts bag so I could easily grab a folder during the car ride. I know it isn’t pretty, but I’m busy and wanted them to be functional and easy, so I used a giant sharpee and wrote the names of the games in big letters on the top of the envelope. This made it easy breezy to sort through them.

Each envelope had a different activity that were a mix of things for different moods and temperaments. If he was calm, we’d read him a book, if he was hyper we’d pull out the manipulatives, etc. Here’s the game list:

1. Car Bingo
2. Doctor
3. Magazine game
4. Books
5. New Movie (5$ Elmo alphabet movie from Target)
6. Find the colors
7. Guess the letter
8. Manipulatives
9. Map

And here’s a run down of the games:

Group Games:

1. Car Bingo:make a bingo sheet and search for the cars you see on the road.

2. Guess the letter: Write the letters A, B, and C on flash cards. Fold them in half and place them in the envelope. When it’s time to play, pull a folded card out of the envelope and have everyone guess which letter it is. The person who is right, wins.

Keep those hands busy games:

1. Find the color: twist up a bunch of colored pipe cleaners. Give it to them, and ask them to give you a certain color. They will tune up their fine motor skills as the have to twist and turn the pipe cleaners to get the right color out.

Manipulatives:
We’ve been collecting cheap little things to keep his hands busy in the car. We have to supervise when he plays with these, but Little T loves it when we pull one out. In our bag we have bubble wrap for him to pop (need adult next to him for this), a twisty man, a little fan, a squishy baseball, party blowers, bird whistle, a rhino balloon, harmonica, and a few other things for him to play with.

More Mellow Activities:

1) Doctor: I grabbed some coloring pages and told Little T that we were going to play doctor. We had him clean off Belle with a dry towel or tissue, then pretend to put medicine on her with a q-tip, then put on a band aide. This was one of his favorite games.

2) Magazine: Use a kids magazine and go through it ahead of time. Make a list of things for your toddler to find as they go through the magazine. Tell them what they need to find, and once they have found it move on to the next object. To simplify this, I wrote the list on the folder with a sharpee.

Map: Print out a google road map with directions to where you are going. Circle towns that you will go through, and mark it with stickers as you pass through the town. I taped the map to the outside of the folder.

When you need a break:

1) New Movie: we have a DVD player that we use for wind down and quiet time. Purchase a 5$ movie or borrow one from a friend. We bought Elmo’s alphabet jungle. We also have a few favorites on hand, but this was a nice short movie to pull out and surprise him with.

2) A New Book: We mingled a few new 1$ books we found, along with some of his favorites. I bought some really simple books and read him the story, then I had him “read” the story back to me. We also just let him look through the books.

The other thing we did was pack a travel snack box. When he was hungry, he loved being able to choose what he wanted from this box. We threw in Kind Bars, apple sauce, oranges, instant oatmeal (we stop and get hot water from the gas station to make this when we travel) apple juice, and fruit bars.

I think the most important thing to remember is that kids have short attention spans. Little T loved all these games, but we switched around a lot. We also adapted the games a to make them a little different on the way back. Overall though, they were a really big success and didn’t take up a lot of space in the car. He started asking to play games first thing when we got in the car, so I think he really enjoyed it. We’re going to keep some in the car for good.

Happy car traveling friends. Let me know if you have any travel ideas that you think Little T would also like. We’re taking another long trip this summer and have a plane (ack) trip coming up. Definitely open to ideas. 🙂

Our day at the OC Fair

23 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by Momma J in The Family, The Travels, vegan

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

oc fair, vegan fair food, vegan lifestyle

Last week we made the drive to the OC Fair. Grandma K and I surprised Little T by picking him up from daycare early, and telling him we had someplace special to go. When we got to the fair he gave us both an enthusiastic round of applause, which always feels good…even if it is coming from a two year old. 😉

Now lets get down to business, and by that I mean-lets talk food. For lunch, we had Vegan Dogs from the Pinks food truck. Mine had all the fixings, but Little T has a delicate palette and opted for a more conservative soy dog.

Later….okay, so five minutes later-we had a glass of champagne and berries from Terries Berries.

Once we were fed, we stopped to visit the butterflies.

And then we left to try a few rides. Little T is still talking about his bravery on the dangerous motorcycle ride. Please excuse the mis-matched clothes. Little T had a wardrobe malfunction. It happens to the best of us, Little T.

We also got to visit some really cool displays and exhibits:

After the fair, we stopped at Native Foods and had a strawberry parfait, peanut butter parfait, and a cupcake:

And we made a final stop at Mitsuwa Market, for some grocery items that I can’t ever find at other grocery stores:

It was a great day, I love going to the fair. Little T also had a great time and there were lots of food choices for us. According to Little T, it was also a day full of thrills, bravery, and danger, seeing how he rode that scary motorcycle and all. 😉

OC Fair Discounts, Deals and Veggie Options

12 Friday Jul 2013

Posted by Momma J in The Adventures of Little T, The Family, The Travels

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

oc fair, oc fair discounts, vegan fair food, vegetarian fair food

Hello everyone, just wanted to post this info for anyone planning on attending the OC Fair. They have a lot of promotions going on that will help you have a great time and save. We’re planning on going next week.

First off, for my vegan/vegetarian readers, I wrote the OC fair to see what offerings they might have. I didn’t expect a response, but they actually sent me this info, so yay!

The Spud Shack offers baked potatoes with veggie toppings along with grilled corn, veggie kabobs and grilled peppers.

There is a Hawaiian Bowls place that offers a veggie/tofu bowl

Terries Berrie’s has really fresh fruit and berry bowls, dipped in chocolate or not

There is pizza for non vegans. A veggie dog at Pink’s Hot Dogs.

Tasti Chips is fresh made potato chips. Most of the desserts are vegetarian friendly even if not too healthy such as funnel cakes, churros, etc.

Most booths you can take a look and be surprised to find a healthier option. Vegans will have it harder than vegetarians. We do allow you to bring food into the Fair if you’re on a strict diet, however

Now for discounts:

OC Fair Super Pass: offers passholder admission all 23 days of the 2013 OC Fair plus express entry at all gates, 2-for-1 tickets for select Pacific Amphitheatre concerts, 20 percent discount on tickets to select events in The Hangar and the Action Sports Arena, and a carnival savings book. The 2013 Super Pass prices are General $35, Senior (60+) $30 and Youth (6-12) $25 and is available for purchase online at ocfair.com/superpass through July 5, from the on-site Box Office at the Pacific Amphitheatre or at any Fair gate during Fair hours.

Opening Hour: Free admission and parking for everyone during the first hour on the first day of the 2013 OC Fair (Friday, July 12, Noon-1 p.m.) Parking lots open approximately an hour before the Fair gates.

Kids Day: Every Thursday, children 12 and younger are free all day.

Seniors Day: Every Friday, guests 60 and older receive $2 off a senior admission ticket and free Ferris wheel and merry-go-round rides all day.

Every Saturday and Sunday, early birds can save with the Rise & Shine promotion, featuring $3 admission from 10-11 a.m. on weekends.

Every day, Active-Duty U.S. Military and Veterans receive free Fair admission (with ID).

Fairgoers who want to give back to the community while also saving on admission can participate in the We Care Wednesday weekly donation drives, which offer free admission and one free carnival ride with the proper donation. Donation requirements change weekly:

July 17 (Noon- 4 p.m.) – Food Drive (5 cans of food)
July 24 (Noon-4 p.m.) – Children’s Book Drive (1 new children’s book or 3 gently used children books.)
July 31 (Noon-4 p.m.) – Clothing Drive (5 clothing items)
August 7 (Noon- 4 p.m.)- School Supply Drive (1 new school supply item valued at $5 or more.)

Foodies looking to save a little dough and still fill their stomachs can take advantage of the $2 Taste of Fair Food promotion every Friday from Noon-4 p.m. when most Fair vendors offer $2 tastes of some of your favorite Fair foods.

Thrill seekers can save in both the main carnival and Kiddie Carnival with the $2 Rides & $2 Games on Fridays from Noon-4 p.m. or $30 Unlimited Ride Wristbands on Wednesdays and Thursdays (sold until 5 p.m. and valid until 8 p.m.)

Little bookworms can receive three free carnival rides though the Read and Ride program, where children ages 5-11 submit book reports for free carnival tickets. The required book report form is available online at ocfair.com.

Hope that helps! Have a great time at the fair! 🙂