What we do for fun Around Here

 We play with babies and dinos...but mostly dinos.

 We bother Daddy when he's trying to sleep.

We decorate Jennsen's kitchen.

 We make funny faces with peppers.

We wear diapers.

We make pillow forts.

We hide in buckets.

We make faces and laugh hysterically at ourselves.

We play with combs and brush eachother's hair...multiple times a day!

We take pictures of ourselves. 

We play with our beanie babies in the corner.

We pout. 

We take horsey rides.

We go to preschool.

We relax.

Summer 2013

Can a picture tell a thousand words?

 Dinos morning, noon, and night. 

 Brotherly love . . . sometimes.

 A discovery! Clams in the creek behind our house!

"Let's eat them Mom."

 "Nevermind mom I don't want to eat these clams."

(actually he still wanted to eat them, I strongly advised against it.)

 "Killing time" before bed.

 

The first fruits of the harvest. 

 The zoo with our cousins Zac and Lucy.

 This Polar Bear likes me!!!

 Look mom, "decoration." What kid doesn't like to play with their food?

 Lots of hot baking days! This is probably the first 100% whole WHITE loaf in 2 years, it was so hard to not add some oats or whole wheat. Brennan was begging for white bread.

 Moving the dino herds.

 Why can't they just color on the paper?

Mud! MUD! M U D! Every day mud! Why do they love it so?!?!?

Happy Summer! I am ready for the fall and 60 temps!

Jennsen, Our Sweetest Strawberry, Turns 2!!!

Things I love about Jennsen and want to remember about her at AGE 2:

• Her “guilty” conscience. She still talks about throwing a Thomas Train at Baby Elizabeth and says, “be kind baby (be kind to baby).”
• She loves to “suck my thumb” and tickle her nose with her favorite string blanket. As a side note her favorite string broke off for the second time today and she bravely threw it away, but has been looking in the garbage for it since. I told her she needs to find a new favorite string on the blanket. That old string would get so nasty and dirty, but she sure is comforted by her blankies and her thumb.
• Her sweet kisses and hugs when you are sad or hurt or when she is sorry.
• Her amazing words. She counts “one, two, three, four” and “seven, eight, nine,” and "sixteen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty." and speaks in 5 and 6 word sentences.
• Her orderliness. In like fashion to her brother she cleans up her toys well, and closes all the cupboards and doors that I leave open.
• Her independence. She loves buckling her carseat, getting dressed, and doing many other things ON HER OWN! (Of course sometimes I intervene, which always causes a severe meltdown.)
• Her strawberry red hair, which I think is swiftly fading to golden brown hair.
• She’s a GOOD eater and eats A LOT!
• Of course sweets top the list of her favorites, but she also loves oranges, bananas, cauliflower, smoothies, cheese, yogurt, chicken, rice, bread, and noodles.
• She’s very polite. She always remembers to say thank you! And she is learning “please,” instead of just whining for what she wants.
• She loves to go down slides and is VERY brave.
• She’s a fast runner.
• She’s tall and skinny.
• She loves Dora, Diego, and Sponge Bob. She’s constantly asking for “shows.”
• She likes playing games, especially hide and seek or hide sponge bob.
• She likes getting rides in her stroller to the park.
• She loves to “nuggle” (snuggle) with Mommy.
• She loves when Daddy comes home.
• She says her aunts and uncles, and Grandma and Grandpas names in her prayers.
• She has a feistiness that you just have to laugh about sometimes. I especially love when she gets mad and says “never, ever, do it again, k!?”
• She loves spotting “Gair-rield” out the window. (Garfield – the neighbor cat)
• When you ask, “how do you treat others?” She responds, “be kind.” (with a furrowed intense brow).

I never thought having a little girl would be this amazing, but I have to say I am quite smitten! Love you my sweetest strawberry!

Easter Traditions

Let's start off by saying, I SORELY dislike the commercialization of all holidays involving Christ. I can't bring myself to love Santa nor the Easter Bunny, sorry folks.  That's why I am very excited about the way our Easter week is playing out. We started off this week with Geddy saying Easter was "about eggs." Now he knows what it's actually about. :)

I have been inspired by some women in an online bible group that I joined, and I finally got into gear to establish some new Easter traditions for my little family.

This post is mostly for my poor memory! A tradition is not a tradition if you don't do it more than once right? :)

I choose an activity to do each day of this week. These are super simple things that can be carried out without a lot of planning, supplies, or money. Awesome!

Day 1 - Monday: Resurrections Rolls . eatatallies.com/2011/04/resurrection-rolls

Day 2 - Tuesday: Easter Tree. Decorate a branch with homemade ornaments made from magazine pictures. Cut out pictures that remind you of Jesus. This looks super cute sitting on my table!!!

Day 3 - Wednesday: Easter Scavenger Hunt. Made a simple sheet that showed 5 pictures (since my kids don't read): rock (tomb/risen), two sticks (cross), color black (sin), color red (jesus' blood), color green ("growing" in Jesus). Kids had fun looking for rocks and sticks outside. We found a black rock, a red rock, and a weed for the color green.

Day 4 - Thursday: Spring Time Surprise Gift and decorating eggs. I am giving my kids a little sand bucket/shovel and bubbles, but not associating it with Easter or an Easter basket. And I am avoiding all the candy for everyone's sake! For the egg decorating we are going to try drawing on warm eggs with a crayon, and doing mosaic eggs (gluing rice, glitter, etc. on eggs).
>>>UPDATE: I really decided I hate decorating eggs. First, I under boiled my eggs, then half of them cracked because my kids dropped them. I only did this because Geddy asked for it, maybe next year he will forget. He did like drawing on the eggs with crayon!

Day 5 - Friday: "Resurrection Egg" hunt. Plastic eggs filled with objects to tell the Easter story.        (donkey, bread, 3 pieces of silver, nail, sponge, spices, linen cloth, stone, empty egg, etc.)

Day 6 - Saturday: Visit a garden/park to pray. Talk about Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Day 7 - Sunday: "Grave Clothes" toilet paper wrap. Wrap kids in toilet paper, break free from toilet paper, talk about how sad the disciples were and how happy they must have been to see Jesus alive.

I guess decorating eggs and doing a resurrection "egg hunt," is still pretty traditional! I am just happy that we are reiterating the Easter story over and over again to them this week. And of course I am more than pleased that Mr. Bunny will not be making a debut. (he he he)

Do you Pancake?

I saw an old friend at the grocery store the other day and she inspired me to write this post. She thinks I am really healthy and that I only eat fruits and veggies all day long. Ha ha ha! Boy would she be surprised to know I go through about 25 lbs of white flour and 10 lbs of white sugar every couple of months!

Generally speaking though I do like to eat healthy and try to sneak healthy items into my kids food as much as possible.

Since my favorite breakfast food of all time is pancakes, I dedicate this post to all those delicious pancakes in my life. Some of my favorites: Oatmeal Pancakes, Gingerbread Pancakes, Cornmeal Molasses Pancakes, Pancake Squares (Hubby doesn't like pancakes, but these are winner for him).

Oatmeal Pancakes - My All Time Favorite
Courtesy of Melanie Arkoudas

A good friend of mine says she does not like pancakes, but she LOVES these pancakes!

2 C Oats (I use regular, not quick cooking)
2 C Buttermilk
(Or make your own. 1 T white vinegar per cup of milk.
Add vinegar in measuring cup and top off with milk)

Let the oats soak overnight in the fridge in the buttermilk (VERY IMPORTANT!!!)
In the morning add:
2 eggs
2 T honey
1 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
2 T melted butter
1 t lemon juice
1 t vanilla
1/2 C whole wheat flour

This batter keeps very well in the fridge. I will often save some batter from the batch and make it again the next (or even the next) morning. Just stir all ingredients to reincorporate. 

Happy Birthday to my 32 YR OLD MAN!

We had a lovely January 14th. Brennan and I had a date night (courtesy of my mom) and saw the Hobbit in 3-D high frame rate.  Then we ate some yummy food at Cafe Rio.

We made Daddy a "silly faces" cake, because he's always pulling silly faces that make us all laugh so hard!

Here's a picture tribute to our silly faces cake:

And here's our silly faces cake: