Kale Pasta

The days are getting longer and warmer, and I find myself pushing back dinner time later everyday. The kids are outside soaking up all the vitamin D they've been deprived of all winter, and quite frankly I'm in no hurry to get inside and start dinner either. So as the dinner time has been pushed from 6 to 7-7:30, I realize that in order to maximize my time outside as well, I will need basic, healthy, no prep dinners that can be done in close to 15 minutes. We eat a lot of pasta in our household, since it's one of the only ways that I can get the kids to eat a well rounded meal. Put a vegetable on Colin's plate and he won't touch it, put it in a pasta and its eaten. Here's one of our favorites this time of year:

Kale Pasta

1 pkg of whole wheat linguine

1 bunch of kale, coarsely chopped

Olive oil

1 avocado chopped

4 eggs whisked

cilantro chopped

salt and pepper

Cook the noodles according to the package. In a large skillet heat a little olive oil to med-high and add the kale, cook till wilted and remove. Put the cooked noodles in the skillet and add the eggs stir quickly till done and add the kale back in. Stir all together and remove to a bowl and add the cilantro and avocado and toss, salt and pepper as needed.

Colin's Pokemon Party

We celebrated Colin's 6th birthday with his friends yesterday. His actual birthday was 2 weeks ago, and we did a small family party, and then an extended family party that weekend. However I planned his friend birthday party for 2 weeks later, to hopefully allow the weather to warm up a little bit to allow for some outside play time. The weather was warm, but rainy and of course muddy! His actual birthday we had sunny and 70 degree weather...go figure.

This was Colin's first "kid" party, where the parents were welcome to drop their child off. Colin planned this party for weeks, he is very into Pokemon right now, so everything needed a Pokemon theme. We scoured the web for party ideas, and Colin of course had some thoughts of his own. First and foremost there needed to be Pokemon character cupcakes, we did a poke-ball cake for his family party, and although it was the much easier option it would not suffice again. Then we found two Pokemon games, Pin the Tail on Pikachu and Pass the Poke-ball. If you know me then you know that I am not (can I underline that or put it in bold caps) an artistic person!!! I was feeling overwhelmed by the amount of pressure put on me, but thank-goodness for Google, and pictures of the cupcakes and Pikachu.

Matt created the poke-ball by getting a Styrofoam ball and painting half of it red with Crayola washable paint, let it dry, and put black electrical tape around it. Pin the Tail on Pikachu came together with a large sheet of white construction paper and some yellow ones. The character cupcakes turned out well too! I totally cheated and used box cake mix(even though I love to cook, baking cakes is not my thing), and as I'm getting ready to get the cupcakes in the pan, I get intimidated by how little the cupcakes are, and opt for my bigger muffin pan, to allow for a bigger canvas. As for Colin's instructions we made Pikachu, Piplup, Turtwig, Chimchar, Wigglytuff, and poke-ball cupcakes.

Even though the kids were trapped in side by the weather, the party was a huge success! We played a couple rounds of pass the poke-ball, you pass the ball in a circle while music is playing, when the music stops who ever is holding the ball is out. Then we played a round of Pin the Tail on Pikachu. And of course about an hour for creative play, which involved Star-Wars, with a mix of the Little Mermaid. Thankfully my friend Lynn stayed and helped with the cupcakes and entertaining of children! The cupcakes where a huge hit...they all picked the character they wanted, Pikachu was the most desirable, but I thought Piplup was the cutest.

The party was about everything Colin had ever dreamed of, his closest friends were there, and all played together amazingly, even Ainsley jumped in on the fun for a while, but mostly she stuck pretty close to Lynn and I.