"Weef" Art and Mini Lasagna

 As promised, here are some pictures from the leaf mural making.  The kids LOVED doing this and were so proud of the end results.  And Grant (bless him) was super patient and helped both of them while I worked on getting dinner on the table.

Which leads to the other pictures I'm posting...

Friday night Grant had requested Chinese food for dinner.  So as I have been doing lately I scoured the internet for a tasty looking recipe.  I knew I wanted to make crab rangoon as they are Grant's favorite, but I wanted to avoid the mess of frying them if possible.  I fortunately stumbled across a great recipe where you baked the rangoon and put them in muffin tins to hold their shape.  Great idea, worked like a charm and they were a huge hit.  Only one problem - the recipe made a dozen rangoons, but the wonton wrappers you use to make them come in a package of about 50.  And what was I supposed to do with almost 40 extra wonton wrappers.

Thank you God for google which led me to a fun idea for dinner tonight in which not only did I use up some of those extra wrappers, but also the end of the sausage from breakfast yesterday morning and the little bit of cheese mixture left from yesterday's ravioli - mini lasagna!  Any recipe where I clean out the leftovers and get to use a muffin tin is a hit with me ;-)  While super cute, they only got a so-so review as they didn't quite live up to my regular lasagna according to the food critics here at Casa de Gatchel.  On the other hand, both Noah and Mikayla ate all of their dinner with little to no fuss in half an hour, so I'm considering it a win.

We finished off the night with some homemade kettle corn (which was an enormous hit with Thing 1 and Thing 2) and a viewing of The Incredibles, which the kiddos hadn't seen before.  As it was ending, a giggling Kayla tells us "I don't like the bad guy, Mama, but I like Jack Jack" (the baby) which reminded Grant that the 'short' that goes with the movie was all about Jack Jack.  So of course we had to watch that, too!  The giggling fit that it sent both of them into was well worth them making into bed a few minutes late tonight.  Hopefully I'll still feel that way in the morning when I'm trying to get them out the door for school ;-)

Getting ready to craft

 Noah counting down to make sure the glue will cause the leaf to stick

 Kayla's finished project

 Noah's finished mural

 Mini lasagna!

Proof they made it out of the muffin tin in one piece