Halloween

Since Tracy is at a conference, it was just James and I today for Halloween. I wasn't feeling too festive and didn't plan on dressing him up. I came up with a costume a few days ago and decided to make him a dinosaur.

He made a cute dinosaur. After I took the picture, he started being a kitty the rest of the day. So, he was a dinosaur kitty. LOL! 

I didn't really want to take James Trick or Treating for his first time with out Tracy. So, I just took him to our ward Trunk or Treat. He had a melt down when we got there. Poor guy was just too overwhelmed by it all. After a moment separate from everyone, he calmed down a bit. We found some friends to walk around with and he was better, but I had to carry him and he didn't want to wear his hat. When he was done going to the cars, he started playing in the dirt and didn't want to leave. 

As I was putting him to bed tonight, I asked him if he had fun getting treats and he said, "YES!" So I would say it was a successful evening.

Hope you all had a Happy Halloween. I'll leave you all with a blast from the past:

James's First Halloween.

My Go To Recipe When Tracy's Away

Over the summer, when Tracy was away I tried to make dinner time as easy and inexpensive as possible. I'm weird that way. I don't like to spend a ton of money on a meal when I'm feeding just my picky little boy and I.  So I came across a recipe that consisted of 3 of James's favorites: black beans, rice and corn. I made it and James loved it and I liked it. This week Tracy is gone for a conference, so I revisited this recipe and now sharing with you.

Black Bean, Corn, and Yellow Rice

• 1 (8 ounce) package yellow rice mix (I use 8 oz. of whatever rice I have on hand, which is usually white rice.)
• 2 1/4 cups water (Chicken or Vegetable Broth is also good instead of plain water)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 (15 ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 (15.25 ounce) can whole kernel corn, drained
• 2 teaspoons lime juice 
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin

1. Bring the rice, water, and olive oil to a boil in a saucepan over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until the rice is tender, and the liquid has been absorbed, 20 to 25 minutes.
2. Mix together the beans, corn, lime juice, and cumin in a large bowl. Stir in the cooked rice and serve.

This recipe feeds us for like 3 days. Can't get any better than that. 

I then take the completed rice mixture and wrap it up in a tortilla with cheese, salsa, sour cream. Sometimes I cook up some chicken and add it to my burrito. Yum, Yum, Yum. Easy, Peasy Dinner.

Preschool

I this week I started a home preschool with James. I possibly had a little too much fun planning this out. We'll do a 3 day a week preschool and it will be about 2-3 hours long.

I made this sign to go on the bulletin board wall that I'm hanging James's projects up as he completes them.

I just don't have printer ink (too poor to get some right now), so I had to improvise till I can print it out. 

Because I don't have printer ink, I had to come up with something different than using the preschool curriculum I had wanted to. (How cute is that curriculum?) I bought these adorable workbooks from the dollar store, that's right the dollar store. James does a page in one of the books each day.

James working on one of the books. His cars have to join us for preschool too.

I guess it is a blessing in disguise that I couldn't do the preschool curriculum I had originally planned. After this week I realized he doesn't quite have the attention span or the pencil development to complete the worksheets. He struggles with the workbooks, but partly he because just isn't interested in doing it. So, I just have him do a page a day. He does do a pretty good job with it for where he is developmentally. At least this will help him be more prepared for school in the future. I can always do the other preschool curriculum next year.

He loved putting the airplanes on the letter A. Looking forward to each week of letter decorating.

By today our wall looked liked this, what a fun week we've had. (Do you see my improvised sign? Ransom note anyone?)

I'm looking forward to this year of my home preschool. See my other blog for more on what we did this week and what we do in the future. You can find the link on the right side of this post. 

Also, the dollar store has become my new favorite place to buy supplies. It is also next to the library. How can that get any better?