Big Hero 6 Family Movie night!

Pin It now! We were so excited to get Big Hero 6 on blu-ray the day that it came out that we planned a family movie night for that night! I had been thinking about it for awhile but I didn't actually start planning until that morning! Thankfully my 6 year old is great helper with fun ideas. :)

We decorated the table a bit... normally I would use the blu-ray case as a decoration, too, but it was coming from Amazon and hadn't been delivered yet. I was starting to stress a little bit. We did have an early dinner (a little after 4) because my daughter had dance that night. The plan was dinner, dance, then movie.

For the placemats I just printed a couple of pictures from HaleGrafx. I also used the same pictures (except smaller) to make a Big Hero 6 banner that I hung on the fireplace. You'll see that later. I also got the water bottle labels from HaleGrafx.

For dinner we had:

Hiro's Hero sandwiches
Baymax marshmallows
Wasabi's applesauce (it's pear applesauce so it's green like wasabi lol)
GoGo's green veggies
Fred's sweet potato fries

and for dessert...

Honey Lemon's pudding for dessert (lemon and chocolate pudding layered to look like bee stripes to tie into the honey part of her name)

You can print your own Big Hero 6 tickets or other Disney movie tickets from my blog!

About halfway through dinner our blu-ray arrived! Yay!

Here's the banner...

And earlier in the day the kids put together their own Baymax (I printed those from M. Gulin)

While Ashlynn was at dance I put together some snacks for the movie and when she got home it was movie time!

It was a really fun night and we LOVED the movie!! I'm excited to plan another fun movie night soon!

Big Hero 6 Family Movie Night Tickets!

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Big Hero 6 is coming out on blu-ray on February 24th!! We saw it in theaters a few weeks ago and absolutely loved it, so I've already pre-ordered it from Amazon and it will be delivered to my house on the day it's released! We're super excited!!! To celebrate I made some family movie night tickets to share with all of you. And if you haven't already, go pre-order Big Hero 6 here!!

**Please do not post the tickets on your blog, facebook, etc. Unless you're posting a photo that you took of your printed tickets and then please link back to me so anyone who sees them will know where to get them! :)

Feel free to print these tickets for your own personal use

If you have a Big Hero 6 family movie night and post about it in your blog please come back here and leave a link to your post, I'd love to see it!

Also, off topic, but we're raising money for March of Dimes in honor of our little preemie, Ashlynn. If you are able to donate and help us reach our goal please use this link to do so: Team Princess Ashlynn Thank you!!!

Kindergarten Reading Update! {Magic Tree House series}

Pin It now! I know that we are only two weeks into the new year but I wanted to post a quick update about Dawson's reading goal!  We've already read 40 chapters! Now, mind you, he's only in Kindergarten and I'm probably doing 75% of the reading but I am really proud of him! I decided to use my Goodreads account for his books instead of my own because I don't do a lot of reading unless it's with him. I thought it would be fun to have a place to keep track of all the books he has read. He likes it a lot, I let him rate the books after we're finished reading them. Here's a link to his Goodreads account (that still has my info on the top... I wonder if I can change that?) in case you want to follow along Dawson's Goodreads.

He has REALLY liked the Magic Tree House series. He wasn't really fond of Mummies in the Morning because he thought it was scary. So if your younger kids are reading that, I'd recommend not reading it right before bedtime!!! It has a ghost and mummies in it, so yeah...

Another thing that is awesome about the Magic Tree House series (besides my son absolutely LOVING them) is you can go to magictreehouse.com to do activities and play games. You can also take a little quiz about each book that you've read and earn stamps in your passport. I love that they have that because I know that Dawson is remembering what he's reading and learning, too!

We should be getting the Magic Tree House Boxed Set, Books 5-8 today which is perfect because we finished book 4 last night!! Dawson has been telling Ashlynn (my 4 year old) about the stories he's been reading and they like to pretend that our school room is a magic tree house. Dawson pretends he's Jack and Ashlynn pretends to be Annie. I like how Ashlynn hasn't even read the books but Dawson loves them so much that he's sharing them with her and they play and pretend together!

I definitely recommend this series for early readers!!

Kindergarten Reading Goal: 365 Chapters This Year

Pin It now! My 6 year old and I were talking earlier tonight about reading goals that he'd like to have this year. We decided together that we'd read 365 chapters this year. I searched all over online to try and find a chart or log that we could use to keep track but I wasn't able to find what I was looking for. I'm going to try to make one tomorrow, hopefully it turns out!

We've read a few chapter books together already... a couple of The Boxcar Children books, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Amelia Bedelia are the ones that I can remember off the top of my head. Oh yeah, and we read a few Spongebob chapter books awhile back, too. He enjoys chapter books and he loves reading! I have a feeling that we'll end up reading more than 365 chapters this year but I chose an average of a chapter a day so that we'd have time to talk about what we've read instead of feeling rushed to read just to meet our goal. I know that we'll miss some days here and there but I'm sure we'll make up for those chapters on days that we don't have a lot going on. Dawson usually likes to read a few chapters at once when we're getting to the end of the book because he gets excited to finish it and hear how it ends.

Anyways, if you'd like to join us, it's not too late! And if I do get that chart made up I'd be happy to share it. I'll keep you posted with how we're doing. We just started reading Magic Tree House #1: Dinosaurs Before Dark. He got this Magic Tree House Boxed Set Books  for Christmas and has been looking forward to starting them. :)

Happy reading!

Vtech Sound Monitor - Not Just For Babies!

Pin It now! This is totally random but you know how when you find something that you love and you just want to share it with everyone?! That's what this is for me! We recently purchased a home that is much larger than our last home. Not only is it larger but our master bedroom is on the main level and the kids' bedrooms are upstairs. AND our bedroom is on the opposite side of the house than their rooms are. I didn't really feel comfortable with sleeping on a different floor than the kids (they are 6 and almost 4) unless I had a monitor in each of their rooms in case they got sick or needed us in the middle of the night we would be able to hear them. Let me introduce you to the VTech DM221 Safe & Sound Digital Audio Baby Monitor!



We've been using these monitors for almost two months now and they are AWESOME!!! Dawson and Ashlynn each have one in their own rooms and we have two parent units in our room. I wrote on the back of each unit so we would know which one belonged to which kid's room. There is absolutely no static or white noise. If they are quiet we don't hear anything.... I have to double check that they're turned on before I fall asleep because they're so quiet.

And an AWESOME feature that they have is each of the parent units have a "talk" button that you can press so the kids can hear you. I mostly use this option when they're playing in their room and I need them to come downstairs for something (which is one of the reasons I wrote their names on the back of the parent unit... so I would know whose room I was talking into). I would 100% recommend this sound monitor. They come with rechargeable batteries and a charging dock which is where ours stay most of the time (we keep them in our room). But if they've got friends over or I just want to listen in while they're playing, I can easily take the wireless parent unit with me anywhere in the house.

While I'm at it I guess I'll share my favorite sound monitor from when they were infants. It wasn't just a sound monitor, it was also a movement monitor... so if they stopped breathing when they were sleeping the monitor would set off an alarm sound. I'd also recommend that, I used it for both of my kids and thankfully we only had a few false alarms but I can tell you that I slept so much better knowing we had it! That was an Angelcare Movement and Sound Monitor and you can find it here...




If you've got any great products that you'd recommend I'd love to hear about them!

Disney's Frozen Family Movie Night

Pin It now! Last night we had our long awaited Frozen movie night!!! In January we had a Frozen themed birthday party for my daughter and I wanted to try my best to come up with new ideas for this movie night. There were a couple of things that I just loved too much and decided to do them again. :) :)

Before Christmas I found some Frozen wrapping paper at Walmart, I used that to make our placemats for tonight's dinner and I used some of the kid's Frozen toys to decorate our table.

No movie night is complete without family movie night tickets! The kids had to pay me with a kiss to get their ticket. :)

We used our Christmas tree lights to decorate a little bit. I would have looked so much better if the strings would have been white BUT the kids loved them and that's all that really matters, right?! I love doing fun little things like this that make the kids so excited and happy!!! We also hung up some snowflakes that's I've been holding onto since two Christmases ago. (I've used them 3 times now and I don't plan on getting rid of them yet!) haha

For dinner we had:

Anna and Hans' "Finish Each Others Sandwiches"

Elsa's Snowy White Mac & Cheese

Sven's Carrot and Raisin Salad

Olaf's Snowman Pieces (powdered donut holes, pretzel sticks, raisins, and carrots)

To drink we had:

Kristoff's Iced Koolaid

And for dessert we had:

"Some People Are Worth Melting (chocolate) For" Fondue with strawberries, bananas, and marshmallows to dip

And these cake pops that are too cute for words! I watched an awesome tutorial from My Cupcake Addiction and knew I had to make them.

And I printed out these cute little pictures and taped them to long toothpicks to stick in the fruit for dipping.

Yummy dessert!!

And for during the movie I drew little snowman faces with colored sharpies onto some clear cups for the kids to eat their popcorn out of.

We put some of our Frozen wrapping paper on their table, too, and put some Frozen pillows on their chairs.

And just for fun here's a picture of Ashlynn in her Elsa dress. :) :)

We had planned to play freeze tag and color some pictures but we didn't have time. While I was making dinner the kids colored and did some activities in their Frozen coloring book . They had fun with that!

Did you have a special family movie night? I'd love to hear about it!

Free Printable Disney Frozen Family Movie Night Tickets!!

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One week from tomorrow (2/25), if you've bought the Frozen digital copy, you will be able to have a family movie night featuring Frozen!!! We've pre-ordered it on bluray so we're going to have to wait until March 18th to have our movie night. But since some of you will be watching it soon, I thought I'd whip up some movie tickets for your special night!

Free free to right click on either image and save it to your computer to print for your own personal use. If you post about them in your blog, on facebook, etc, please link back to my blog. :) Thank you!

I made two of them this time because I couldn't decide which one I liked better! Let me know which one is your favorite. 

 

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If you need some Frozen movie night ideas you can check out the post I did on my daughter's Frozen themed birthday party.

Click here to get more free printable family movie night tickets. Enjoy!