Shopping, Soccer and Sweet Potatoes!

After cleaning out the kiddos closets there was no doubt a hefty amount of shopping is going to have to happen before school starts.  Poor Kayla had hardly anything left in her closet by the time we finished - my tall skinny little girl is borderline between the toddler sizes and the little girls sizes.  Frustrating to the max.

So after breakfast this morning we decided to try to get a jump on it with a trip to the Tanger outlets in Howell.  I'm not a huge fan of shopping with two kiddos who would clearly rather be ANYWHERE but there.  It was a bit of a challenge but we did manage to snag Noah a new pair of shoes, pretty much all the jeans and pants that he will need for the year and a good number of mix and match bottoms and some jeans for the Bean.  Not as much as I would have liked to, but I did get some pretty sweet deals at Old Navy ($8 jeans!) and Children's Place (50% off everything!) and 'cash' to spend at both places in the next few weeks so it was worth it.

We headed out from Howell, made a quick stop to grab some lunch and then headed off to Ann Arbor where the kick off party for the Go Blue kids club was being held at the women's soccer game vs. Bowling Green.  Noah had been ADAMANT up to this point that he did NOT want to watch the soccer game, he was just going for the Kids Club party.  We said fine, it was all good.  Now, who do you think ended up getting the most into the soccer game?  Two hints - not Mikayla and the one who ended up jumping down in the stands every time the ball passed.  They had tons of fun jumping around on the inflatables, got some cool Michigan gear, scored a free hot dog and soda and have both said they want to go back for another game.  Well OK then :)

We made it home for dinner and one more culinary North Carolina treat  - Sweet Potato Pancakes!  You may remember that North Carolina leads the nation in sweet potato production so I had to do at least one recipe featuring them this week.  And as usual, breakfast for dinner is always a hit around here.  For dessert I used up the rest of our krispy kremes from the other day to make these Krispy Kreme Chocolate Chip Cookies.  Because cookies are decadent enough - let's add donuts!  

Just a note now - we're off to the Mud Hens game tomorrow night so I'll be posting the North Dakota blog early in the day and perhaps pictures late depending on when we get in.  North Dakota has officially surpassed Montana as my least favorite state, for the record.  I've had a HECK of a time with it, but check back tomorrow as I do my best with it this week.  So until then...

North Carolina Fun Fact of the Day: The first English child born in America was born in Roanoke in 1587. Her name was Virginia Dare.

Cookies!

With donuts!

Ready for some soccer

Put first some fun on the bounce houses

They got dog tags

And hot dogs

And we watched them beat BG! (Sorry Mom, Scott, Sarah and Shell...)

Cheers!

We were having some fun with the camera

Not sure he sat down the whole game

Shhh, don't tell him, caught him excited

Sweet Potato Pancakes cooking away

Looks like peanut butter, but is actually honey cinnamon butter - AWESOME

These were a huge hit here tonight - Noah finished his entire dinner, a second piece of bacon and a second pancake in 15 minutes - no joke