Happy Days!  Thanks to my wonderful mom, I just picked up a new set of Pez dispensers based on one of my favorite movies:  Lord of the Rings.  Yippee!  

There are currently 2 different Lord of the Rings Pez sets- the "standard" one and the Walmart exclusive version (which is the one I just got).  Both sets were released in 2011.  The Walmart version replaces the Bilbo Baggins dispenser in the standard set with an exclusive Eye of Sauron dispenser.  All of the other dispensers are the same between the 2 sets.  

Too bad they don't sell the Bilbo Baggins dispenser individually because now I have to buy the "regular" set too in order to have all of the Lord of the Rings dispensers :-(  I guess that it is a good deal for Pez, though, because I bet that a lot of people buy both sets even though most of the dispensers are duplicates.  

The limited edition Walmart exclusive Lord of the Rings collector's set contains the following Pez dispensers:  Frodo, Sam, Eye of Sauron, Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli and Gollum. 

I LOVE this set.  It is definitely one of my favorites.  It appears to be one of Juliet's favorites, too, because she didn't want to put it down :-)  

On another Pez-related note:  I just found a fun little article in the Chicago Tribune.  The reporter interviewed Barbara Partyka, THE current designer of Pez dispensers.  I'm not sure what I expected but I would have never guessed in a million years that there is pretty much one women responsible for designing all of the current dispensers.  What an awesome job! 

My little stinker, Ellie, gave me the scare of my life a couple nights ago.  I went in to check on the girls before turning in for bed and Ellie was nowhere to be found.  Her bed was empty, she wasn't on the floor (where she sometimes sleeps after plopping out of bed in the middle of the night) and she wasn't hiding in the enormous mountain of toys in the corner of the room.  

Rationally, I knew that she had to be in the room somewhere... but thoughts of kidnapping and alien abduction were floating through my overly dramatic imagination no matter how hard I tried to keep them out :-)

After trying not to have a heart attack, I finally my stinker... sound asleep on top of her sister.  Poor Juliet.  

Happy Mother's Day!!  Last Friday, I attended my very first Mother's Day luncheon at school!  What fun!  

The kids decorated the classroom tables with flower-filled tea cups and Isabel told me all about her class as we snacked on sandwiches.  It was wonderful... and it was wonderful to spend a little rare one on on time with Isabel.

Saturday, we went to a garden show for my birthday / Mother's Day extravaganza.  It would have been really nice had the little goobers not begged to leave the second we arrived.  They were so grumpy that we didn't even make it to the children's activity area.  All was not lost, though, as we had a great little picnic with the kids and it made everything worth it!  It also gave me LOTS of ideas for gardening things I would like to try this summer.  I'm really excited!

Sunday, we continued the extravaganza with a little peace and quiet at home.  We lounged on the couch and actually managed to watch TWO movies!  That is almost unheard of in our post-kid era :-)  

Finally, the kids and Daddy made me a cake... which actually turned out really yummy despite the fact that one of the goobers turned off the oven part way through the cooking process :-)  

I'm so lucky to have such a wonderful family.  Thanks guys!

Shortly before I detailed our family's Star Wars day festivities and proclaimed my love for a Star Wars cookbook I had found online, my sister was busy shopping for my birthday present - the exact same Star Wars cookbook I had been eyeing plus an awesome Star Wars cupcake stencil.  How super cool is that?!?  She knows me too well.  

I lasted only a day before I was forced to bake one of the Star Wars treats from my new cookbook.  I told my sister that I was going to start with something healthier - Dark Side Salsa or Jedi Juice Pops - but I couldn't resist the Wookiee Cookies.  They were calling to me... must have been some sort of Jedi mind trick.  

All I can say is that Chewbacca really knows his cookies!  Even Michael liked them... and that is saying a lot because he never likes anything :-)  They were big, chewy and delicious!  I ended up substituting some white chocolate chips for the semi-sweet (because I ran out) and it made them even more amazing.  Yummy!  Now I just have to use my own Jedi mind tricks to avoid eating the entire batch.  

The cookbook itself is actually really nice too.    The recipes are simple - perfect to make with kids - and the Star Wars pictures etc. make everything so much more fun.  The pages are also laminated.... which is priceless when you have little kids.  Ellie immediately stole the cookbook from me when I opened the package and flipped through it for almost an hour.  Any other book and she would have ripped it to shreds.  I can't wait to make more Star Wars goodies!  Thanks Nat!!!!

I admit it - I'm completely in love with the MC Bat Commander and The Aquabats.  It's not my fault.  My kids made me watch "The Aquabats! Super Show!" and I'm afraid that now I may like it even more than they do.  

The Aquabats! Super Show! is my kids 2nd most requested show behind Yo Gabba Gabba (which just happens to be co-created by the same guy who does the Aquabats.)  I might like Yo Gabba Gabba a lot too... but that is another story :-)  

The Aquabats originally began as a punky, ska-type rock band years ago and now they can be found saving the world from evil on The Hub's "The Aquabats! Super Show!"  They are a cheesy band of superheros who fight an even cheesier supervillians.   The show also contains a hilarious handful of commercial parodies for things like Zombie Spray as well as an Aquabats cartoon.  I have to admit that I wasn't familiar with their music until the show (except for a "Super Music Friends Show" segment on Yo Gabba Gabba)  but I might have to check them out now.  I need some new music.  

My absolute favorite segment from the Aquabats so far is the "Burger Rain" song at the end of the "Man Ant" episode.  It is hilarious and completely ridiculous- with major emphasis on ridiculous.    The Aquabats had just defeated the Man Ant's evil army of giant ants.  In an emotional rage, Crash McLarson (currently in his huge superhero form) broke open their giant ant hill to discover that the ants had swiped every burger in town!   Crash lovingly rained down the stockpile of burgers to his fellow hungry Aquabats as they belted out a tune akin to an 80's hair-band rock ballad.  What fun.  It makes me happy... and I need a little more happy sometimes.  

I'm totally going to try to convince my kids to be Aquabats this year for Halloween.  It would be so much fun making their costumes!  I might even have to make one for myself :-)  

OK... one more thing.  I am writing this as I am "patiently" waiting for my kids to fall asleep for the night.  From their beds, I just heard my 2 year olds belt out BURGER RAIN! at the top of their lungs and now they are talking about the Aquabats.  Apparently, I'm not the only one with Aquabat on the brain tonight!  

Even though it was strangely cool and windy outside today, I had an overwhelming craving for a sweet, frosty treat.  I found a recipe for Watermelon Granita on Bon Appetit's website and decided that it would be perfect!  Granita is just a fancy word for fruity slushie... so I knew the kids would love it (as long as I remembered to call it a "slushie")  They aren't so good with new foods :-)  

Ellie and Juliet helped me make it.  I didn't realize it at the time but Ellie was digging her fingers into the watermelon and sneaking big chunks when I wasn't looking.  That stinker!  

Juliet was slightly happy to say the least.  I'm actually kind of surprised that we even ended up with enough watermelon to fill the blender.  It seemed like for every piece that made it in, 2 more ended up in their mouths.  

The recipe couldn't be easier - only 3 ingredients!   Just chop up 4 cups of seedless watermelon and stuff it in a blender.  Add 1 tablespoon of lime juice and 1/2 cup of sugar.  Blend it up and...

pour the watermelon goodness in a 9x9x2 metal pan.  Put the pan in the freezer for an hour.

After an hour, take the pan out of the freezer and stir it with a fork.  Smush up any frozen parts (especially the edges which will most likely be more frozen than the middle.)  Cover it and put it back in the freezer.  

After a couple more hours, scrape the frozen mixture again with a fork to form yummy little watermelon crystals. Finally, try not to eat the whole thing in one sitting :-)  Enjoy!  

The kids LOVED it.  I predict that there will be many more granita (I mean slushie) sessions in the near future :-)

I have dreaded this moment since my children were born...

The time has come when I must fight my 2 year old girls to retain control over my prized Pez collection :-)

Today was my lucky day... or so I thought!  My eye caught a glimpse of the new (to me) 2010 crystal Hello Kitty pez lunchbox tin while I was attempting to grocery shop with my strong-willed (aka pain in the butt :-)  children.  I placed the tin delicately in my cart so as not to damage the precious cargo - and it was immediately snatched up by my little Ellie who chanted "My Kitty Pez" throughout the rest of the store.  What?  HER kitty pez?  MY kitty pez!  I just don't think that I am ready to share.  I work hard all day to teach the girls to share - but I think that it is more of a "Do as I say and not as I do" thing... at least when it comes to my Pez :-)  hee hee.  

The set comes with 4 crystal Pez dispensers:  a full-body Hello Kitty, Hello Kitty with a red bow, Hello Kitty with a flower and My Melody.  Notice that Ellie scratched and dented my beautiful tin (on the middle left) before we even left the parking lot :-(

The back of the tin is pretty fun and colorful too.  

Oh... and what is with the stores in my area?  The "new" Pez on the shelves are always ones that came out years ago.  I don't get it.  I'm dying to find the new Muppets pez or the Catwoman pez but I'm probably going to have to wait 2 years to get them.  And yes, I could just buy them online- but I like the thrill of the hunt :-)

OK... I suppose that I could share with my girls a little.  It is actually kind of fun that they like Pez so much.  Maybe I will soon have a few collecting buddies!  We could ALL collect Pez and fill our house with them.  Pez, Pez and more Pez!  OK, I'm crazy... but it would still be fun if the kids started enjoying them as much as I do :-)  As long as we don't fill the WHOLE house with them.  We have to have a place to sleep, right?

Michael and I used to go camping all the time before the kids came along.   We loved it and always dreamed of the time when we could share our passion for camping with a family of our own.  Then... the kids came along and crushed those dreams :-)  Just kidding.  We had kids, everything changed (for the better) and our plans for camping were pushed on the back burner.  Since Isabel was born, we have only been camping a handful of times- never in a tent - mostly in our RV or a cabin at the campground.  

Recently, we have been talking a lot more about trying to get back into camping.  Dreams of pitching a tent, hiking and roasting marshmallows with the kids have just become too strong to ignore!  

The kids are getting a little older (at least old enough that they don't need to sleep in cribs anymore)... but we still weren't sure how they would handle it.  We didn't want to be sitting in a tent at a campground only to find out that the kids weren't quite ready for the experience.  

So... we decided to give it a trial run.  Last night, we pitched the tent and had a little "camping" fun with the kids under the warm glow of our living room chandelier!

The tent was a little bigger than I remembered.  Perhaps, we unconsciously knew that we would end up with 3 little goobers one day and need all the space we could get :-)  

I can not even begin to explain how much fun our kids had.  They didn't stop squealing for a second.  They ran around, jumped all over us and played peekaboo through the screen windows of the tent until I thought that they would collapse from exhaustion.   

They were even seemingly excited to go to sleep in the tent.  But... when it was finally time to settle down, they just couldn't do it.  They were so happy and having so much fun that they couldn't bear to have it end. 

By 10pm, we decided that camping was over and moved everyone into their own beds (except Isabel who we set up on the floor of our bedroom instead.)   The kids were asleep in 1/2 a second and Michael and I watched a little TV before heading off to bed ourselves.  We were a little frustrated- but then we realized that the kids weren't "misbehaving" in the traditional sense.... they were happy, cuddly and simply having too much fun :-)  

Our camping trip didn't work out the way we wanted but at least everyone had fun.  We were VERY grateful to have tested things out in our living room before heading off to a campground.  The kids aren't quite ready for camping yet... but we are going to keep trying!  Maybe next time, we will even roast marshmallows around the warm glow of the fireplace :-)  

Few things are as cute and adorable as Japanese mini Pez.  My kids are cute.  Fluffy bunnies are cute.  Japanese mini Pez are cute :-)   Unlike regular Pez dispensers, mini Pez are made by the Japanese company, Bandai, who licensed the right to make their own series of dispensers.  Their dispensers were only sold through vending machines in Japan and are considerably smaller than most of the ones manufactured by Pez - only a couple inches in height.  Fortunately, there are a lot of online vendors / auctions that let people like me get a hold of their adorable cuteness too! :-)  

There are 49 total sets of mini Pez and thanks to my recent acquisition, I now have 3 of them!  Yippee!  Only 46 more to go :-)  

The very first mini Pez set I added to my collection was the Moomins, a group of characters from the Swedish series of books by Tove Jansson.  The Moomin characters also appear in a comic strip, a television series and even an amusement park in Finland called Moomin World.  I wish I could go to Finland because Moomin World looks awesome!  It sort of reminds me of the Enchanted Forest amusement park that I used to go to as a kid.  What great memories!  

The Moomin mini Pez characters are the Hattifatteners, Little My, Snufkin, Momminpappa and The Snork Maiden.    

The 2nd set of mini Pez I just recently added to my collection is the Zenmai Zamurai series.  I actually had no clue what Zenmai Zamurai was when I bought it.  I selected the set purely for it's "super cuteness factor" but the story behind it is actually really fun and quirky.  Zenmai Zamurai is a Japanese children's cartoon short created by Momoko Maruyama and Ryotaro Kuwamoto.  It is about a thief who was given a second chance at life by devoting himself to doing good deeds and ridding the world of bad guys.  He has a little toy screw on top of his head that gets wound up by a light that shoots down from the sky whenever he does something good.  The best part is that he carries a sword skewered with colorful dumplings that he shoots into the mouth of bad guys.  Whenever the bad guys taste the super delicious dumplings, they are overcome with flowery joy and instantly see the error of their ways.  It is such a fun little show and I can't wait to watch more episodes!  In the meantime, I will just enjoy my super cute mini Pez dispensers!

The Zenmai Zamurai mini Pez characters are Zuninchan, Botan, Zenmai-Zamurai, Maccha and Mememaru.

The last set of mini Pez that I just added to my collection is the Rody meets Frog series.  Talk about adorable!  This set contains a cowboy and 4 colorful horses with equally colorful frogs riding on their backs.  After a bit of research, it turns out that "Rody" is actually an Italian ride-on children's horse toy.  Super cute.  My kids would totally LOVE to have one of them. 

Anyway, I totally love all of my mini Pez and can't wait to get more!  My next mission is to find the Barbapapa, Kapybara and Frog Style 2- Love Collection mini pez!

Super fun!

I woke up this morning and found out that today is Star Wars day!  Who knew there was such a thing?  I suppose that if I was a big, super Star Wars nerd perhaps I would have been privy to that information... but alas, I'm only a smaller, fairly super Star Wars nerd.  Regardless, I couldn't let the day pass without celebrating!  The girls actually love Star Wars so it wasn't too hard to convince them to have a little fun with me.  Too bad that I didn't know about it earlier... there are so many cool things I could have done with the kids... but I needed a little more planning time to pull them off.  I marked it on my calender for next year, though, so I'm going to plan a huge Star Wars bash :-)  What fun!  

We began our festivities by making spaceships out of a few cardboard boxes.  I told you that I didn't have much time to plan :-)  They didn't quite look like the Millennium Falcon but they served their purpose.  Han Solo would not have been happy.  Sorry Han.  Isabel decided that they were actually flying space trains.  I think that they ended up being more like train sleeper cars as the kids stuffed them with blankets and laid in them for the rest of the morning while they watched Yo Gabba Gabba. 

For snack, we broke out the last bag of freeze dried ice cream from our most recent trip to the Air and Space Museum.  I'm sure that Princess Leia ate this all the time.  It does say that it is "Space Food" afterall.  

The kids loved it.  You might think that the ice cream transformed them into strange space creatures but alas, this is their favorite new happy picture pose.  I'm not sure why they decided that this is better than their previous smiles.  We are amassing quite a collection of scrunchy face pictures now.   

In the afternoon, we played with a couple crafty things.  First, we made "space scenes" with paper stars and crayon embellishments.  Isabel drew a cute spaceship on hers... Ellie and Juliet just scribbled on theirs.  I'm sure they were intentionally drawing space dust or something :-)  I tried to print out some Star Wars characters that they could glue in their scenes but my printer ran out of ink :-(  Pooey.  

After that, the kids colored a few Luke Skywalker coloring pages.  They think that Daddy is Luke Skywalker - so they were mostly excited because they thought that they were coloring pictures of Daddy.  At least Michael gets to be a cool Star Wars character.  They shout out my name whenever they see a picture of Zam, the not so attractive bounty hunter.  Surely, I can't look that bad.  Perhaps I need a new hairstyle :-)  

Finally, we hung up the kids' artsy creations in the window and that was that.  

On a related note, I found a couple fun Star Wars things that I totally want to get now.  First is the Star Wars Cookbook that I found at ThinkGeek.  Who wouldn't want to make Jedi Juice Bars or Boba Fett-Uccine?  I also got an email this morning from Threadless with this awesome shirt.  It has the typical scrolling Star Wars intro font and it says "When you think about it, all galaxies are far, far away."  Hee hee.  I love it.

Happy Star Wars day!!