The Search for Miss Direction: Slippery When Wet

Here at the Gatchel house we are big proponents of "When you are good, good things happen." Grant and I have worked really hard to reinforce that when we see the kiddos behaving or doing something positive they are praised and rewarded in a similar fashion. I don't want them to think that they get what they want just because they're good, but we do like to reward them when we see good consistent behavior out of either of them.

So I've got to take a few minutes to brag up both of my kiddos because they have both been VERY good as of late. First, as you'll see below I had quite the helper this morning. At the last minute my plans fell through for this morning so I decided to tackle some of the housework that I hadn't managed to get to yet this week. I was so fortunate to have quite the helper! Mikayla got out her vacuum this morning, we cranked up the tunes and had quite the vacuuming dance party! She also helped clean the bathrooms, fold the laundry, put it all away - I was one fortunate Mama to have her. So not only did she get to go to storytime this morning, at the library we picked up a copy of The Little Mermaid II and her reward for being good was lunch and a movie today. Proud of my Bean!

Noah has been doing AWESOME at school this week. There is a school wide reward of "Caught Being Good" cards. Any authority figure in the school can 'catch' a student doing something good, give them one of these cards and they are entered in a raffle for a prize at the end of the week and they get a certificate. Noah got one on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week! Then in his classroom for doing something well they get a 'bee in the bucket.' After they get a certain number of bees they are eligible for a prize of some sort. Yesterday Noah came home and announced he had received a bee in the bucket. Four days in a row someone at school had felt that he was behaving so well it needed to be acknowledged! I am SO proud of him. So tonight I took him to Target with me and let him pick a really cool monster truck that works with his one track as a treat. Go Noah Go!

Alright, enough kiddo bragging. How about some bragging about how awesome the smells wafting from my kitchen today were? Tonight I made Delaware Farm-Style Chicken and Slippery Dumplings. Across the country there is apparently a big debate about what is the 'correct' type of dumpling. These are the slick (more like a noodle in my opinion) version as opposed to the puffy style. I can't say which I prefer (it's a dumpling - can it really be a bad thing?) but these were pretty amazing. My family devoured the stick to your ribs meal that was perfect for the bitter temperatures we're having here. We ended dinner with a super easy peach cobbler that will defintely be sticking around my recipe book. I had really hoped to make Peach Pie Knots but I had no luck tracking down any fresh peaches. It was like shades of rhubarb all over again, I swear. OK, perhaps not that extreme...

We're heading to the Toledo Zoo tomorrow for the Spring Alive event. As a bonus, we're going to FINALLY catch up with my parents. The kids have been asking for weeks when they're going to see Grandma and Papa but with schedules and the weather it's been tough. Looking forward to hanging out with them there for the morning and then grabbing some lunch. Then it's back here for dinner and then I'm off to see Assassin's with Tess. So excited! She asked me weeks ago to go with her on closing night to support Keith and I can't wait! Do I have awesome friends to include me in things like that or what? So I will try to get a post up of our zoo adventure mid-afternoon when we get back. So until then...

Delaware Fun Fact of the Day: The Du Pont Laboratories first produced nylon at its plant in Seaford. This earned the town the distinction of being the Nylon Capital of the World.