Building, Playing, Creating, Learning

I've heard so much about people making their own homemade pizza that I finally gave it a try. Mostly because I'm looking for quick, cheaper meals for the weekends so I can take a break from real cooking, but also I thought the kids would really like it. I threw some dough mix in the bread machine, and when it was done, we worked together on the pizza. It turned out ok, but it needed WAY more cheese. The crust was great, but the rest of the pizza? Ehh.

Jared's been working hard on his creations this past week. Here's one where he put the play table upside down and tied his snake and ropes around the legs.

Jared has the most amazing ability to come up with new things to do all the time. My daughter is a great reader and she blows some people away on the computer even at four, but Jared is incredible in his self-direction and imagination.

We had been watching old family DVD's and saw how we had a birthday party for Curious George around this time last year. So Jared found some Christmas wrapping paper and started wrapping some of his toys. He worked so hard at cutting and taping those presents. It made me think of how I hated sitting in kindergarten class around the table where they made us do these artificial cutting and pasting exercises. I've never show my kids how to cut, paste, color, or tape, yet they do it just fine on their own because they've practiced for hours by coming up with their own projects.

Alexa's been enthralled lately with Jumpstart Grade 1. She would play for hours and hours on that computer if we allowed it. When she starts getting too cranky and impatient, we try to gently guide her into something else. Plus, I worry about her eyes.

Here's one more game Jared made up this week. He dragged all my Tupperware out to the living room. Then he took out all his animals and started placing each animal under a Tupperware and calling them the animals' cages. I just love my kids!

Thanksgiving Activities

Whenever there's a holiday, we like to do things connected to the holiday whether it's reading books, watching movies or doing some type of art or science activity. It really gets us in the mood and excited about it. Last year we watched the Disney Squanto: A Warrior's Tale for the first time. This year we watched it again, and it will probably turn into a yearly tradition.

I was looking online at some sites, tying to get some ideas of fun activities we could do together, and I ran across this site. I'm so sorry, but I forgot what the site was called, but I took a picture of one of the main pages. Alexa was sitting on my lap browsing with me, and she was absolutely glued to this site for about an hour. They had actual documents from some of the Pilgrims, had a cool section on facts and myths surrounding the Pilgrims, and a lot of info about the Wampanoag tribe.

Last year I had bought a huge bag of walnuts, wanting to do this craft/science experiment with the kids, and we never got around to it. The kids were so, so, so psyched to do this project this year.  It was all about making our own mini Mayflowers.  We cracked walnut shells in half, stuck some playdough to the bottom of the shell, and stuck in a toothpick with a bit of wax paper attached into the playdough. Then we dyed a container of water blue and tried to see which shells floated and which sunk.

I don't have pictures of this, but we also made Thanksgiving scrolls, which I'll write about more in a few days.

We also make turkey cookies by tracing our hands in paper and outlining the paper against cookie dough. It was a fun project, but it took WAY, WAY longer than I'd thought. The kids ran out of steam with it long before the cookies were done, so I did much of it by myself. But the next morning, Steve and the kids decorated the cookies with dyed icing and raisins, so they got into the spirit of it again.

We listened to some Thanksgiving songs from a kids CD and read a few picture books about the Pilgrims from the library.

What fun Thanksgiving activities have you done this year?

Some More Random Fall Fun

Alexa is back in ballet again. She took lessons for six months last year and then said, "I don't want to do this anymore," after her first recital. Then in September, she asked me why I took down a picture (that had been hanging on the fridge forever) of the different ballet positions and threw it away. She was very upset with me. I didn't even realize it meant that much to her. She said she wanted to go to dance again. I said to ask me again the next day. She did. I said to ask me again the next day. She did. Then I knew she was serious.

So, she's been very, very happily attending dance lessons once a week. She told me yesterday she wished she could go every day. It was such a cool lesson to me that even if your kids drop something and say they never want to have anything to do with it again, that's not always the case. Not that I care if she hadn't ever wanted to dance again, but if say your kid doesn't pick up a book to read in six months, it doesn't mean he won't ever want to read again.

Anyways, at the end of every class, Alexa's dance teacher gives the girls coloring pages. Jared always asks for these too. Now, I've never bought my kids coloring books. I personally feel they hinder a lot of creativity and have always preferred the kids free draw. They've also never wanted to color when grandparents or other people have given them coloring books. So, I was really, really shocked when Alexa walked in the kitchen this week holding up a picture she had colored. To my knowledge this is the first picture she has ever colored.

I remember going with the kids to some story times at the library when they were two, and afterwards they had pages for the kids to color. I remember most of the moms guiding their child's hand to color inside the lines. My kids just wrote on the backs of these sheets, and the mothers gave me a strange, pitying look. It was crazy to me that these women actually thought they needed to teach their children how to color correctly! I'd never, ever care if my kids colored outside the lines, but I thought it very ironic that their first attempts at coloring a picture turned out like this.

Besides our foray at bread making a few weeks ago, the kids haven't been interested in helping me bake or cook. Then yesterday Jared says, "Let's make brownies!" So that's what we did.

While the brownies were cooking, I gave the kids a bag of eight pieces of corn on the cob and asked if they wanted to shuck them. I knew Jared would love doing it, and he did. He is so like me in that he loves to do little, detailed manual things. He's good at doing hands-on, detailed things, whereas Alexa is good at mental, detailed things.

We had an awesome morning today. The kids were sitting on top of the couch in front of the living room picture window, waving goodbye to their dad, when they noticed a few squirrels and called me over. We noticed the squirrels were coming right up to the front stairs. I suddenly remembered a huge bag of walnuts I had bought almost a year ago for a project we never did, and ran downstairs to get it.

We threw one out at the squirrel and giggled with delight when he sat nibbling on it, holding it in his little paws with his tail swishing. Then he ran across the street with it. Soon another squirrel came up to him, and it really looked like they were talking to each other. So, I pretended to be the first squirrel talking to the new squirrel telling him how cool that house was across the street and how he should run across and get a nut, too. To our surprise, as soon as I said this, the second squirrel ran across the street and up to our door. The kids LOVED throwing out walnuts to him, and eventually to the other dozen or so squirrels that came out to beg over the next hour. I told the kids that maybe it was the squirrel's Halloween and they were trick-or-treating to our door. They loved that idea. I love, love, love being able to take the spontaneous things of life and run with them without having to always stress over a tightly scheduled life. Moments like this would have been lost, and that would be a huge shame.

Gingerbread House

We've made a Christmas gingerbread house before but never one for Halloween. My mother-in-law surprised the kids one afternoon while I went grocery shopping. She took several pictures, and I heard about what I fun time they had putting it together. It didn't stay put together for very long, though. I think it was halfway gone by the end of that evening!

Random Summer Fun

Here are a few random moments from the past few weeks.

Jared's been very into putting together different "mummy ghost" costumes. I think he's perfected it with this one. The pirate hat and his sister's white tights do the trick.

An impromptu science experiment. One day the food coloring was out, and Jared poured it in some water. I took out the vegetable oil to see how the coloring would dissolve in that liquid.

A fun game of Scooby-Doo Memory and Popsicles.

A request for hard-boiled eggs for lunch.

I walked in the living room one day to see Alexa stamping Jared all over. Yeah - he had taken off all his clothes, so it literally was all over.

Hula-hooping....

...and bouncing basketballs with Daddy.

Lots of bike riding.

Giving his dinosaurs a bath.

Helping me stir seasonings for the pot roast.

And snake love.

June 24th -29th

     Since cleaning up our flooded basement on Thursday after we came back from our mini vacation in Minnesota, I've not been feeling very good. I had sinus surgery about a year and a half ago, and yet I still get sinus infections and blockage. So, I haven't had my camera out that much or been very interested in writing. Still I wanted to capture some memories from this week, so here goes...

~ making fudge with Steve and Jared late one night after Alexa had gone to sleep. We used the quickie recipe off the back of a Marshmallow Fluff container. Yum!

~ going to see Shrek Forever with Steve and the kids at the cheapie show

~ going on a Home Depot run after the movie to pick up custom made storm windows for the upstairs rooms. They were already two weeks late, we had ordered them over a month ago, and found out that they had reversed the dimensions on the windows so we still had nothing to take home. Needless to say, we cancelled the order, got our money back and will be going elsewhere.

~ having Jared call me out to look at his sidewalk drawings. He made one of me, Steve, Shrek, and Rumpelstiltskin. He has really taken off with his drawings, usually wanting to draw every day, whereas before it had been months since he'd picked up a pen or crayon. He now includes lots of details in his drawing like eyebrows, bottons on clothes, and eyeballs inside of eye sockets.

~ lots of reading

~ going to church. Afterwards, I took the kids to a local indoor fruit market while Steve stayed to play electric guitar for second service. It was one of the worst times with the kids. Even though I hate to put the kids in the cart (they are four, for goodness sake!), it does help to keep Jared from dashing away from me. Jared did everything from fling fruit on the floor, knock over pails of juice, to run all around the store with me chasing him before I finally gave up. Then when I finally was able to scoop him up when he ran close to me, he yelled, kicked and screamed for awhile. UUUUUUGGGGHHHH. I love him so much, but he is a very intense, little boy, from having huge temper tantrums, to sitting up in bed at 9:30 and talking your ear off for an hour.

~ catching fireflies and swinging in the dark

~ watching Bedtime Stories together on movie night.

~ having Grandma watch the kids for three hours while I saw the sinus doctor and had another CAT scan done. Turns out the two upper sinuses have severe blockage and the lining has thickened. Now I'm on a steroid treatment and taking antibiotics. Monday evening I crashed at 7:00 and didn't wake until 8:00 the next day.

Yesterday, I still felt horrible, so I lazed around the couch most of the morning. Still, as I look back over the day, I'm amazed at what we still accomplished.

~ had a Joker's Birthday Party. Jared made up this game a few weeks ago. We sit around in a circle and have a birthday party for the Joker (who is really a pirate figure). Everyone brings him gifts to open up, ranging from diamonds, to poison, to knockout gas. Then sometimes we dance and then sing Happy Birthday. Then the Joker blows out his birthday candles.

~ did many mazes with the kids from a Maze book, and Alexa practiced writing her letters in a Big Kindergarten workbook I bought her a few weeks ago.

~ lots of jumping on the bed

~ watched several episodes from both Liberty's Kids series and the original Inspector Gadget series.

~ I squeezed in a shower

~ during lunch I read to the kids several Step into Reading Spiderman books, and a Graphic picture book about Patrick Henry.

~ my mom came over for a few hours to watch the kids so I could get some rest. But right before she came over, I found the kids in my room naked, rubbing my Vaseline all over themselves and the wall. They had been quiet for a few minutes, but it was so nice to eat my pizza lunch in peace, that I didn't go in there right away. That cost me twenty minutes of my resting time. What time I did have to rest after getting a bill ready to mail, washing the dishes and cancelling an appointment, my mom took the kids for a little walk, they washed the car with the hose, and read together.

~ In the afternoon, we did a project out of Mary Ann Khol's awesome book ScienceArts called Wet Paint Design. The kids dipped construction paper in water, then dropped diluted paint from a medicine dropper onto the construction paper to make designs.

Jared called his picture Volcano and Alexa labeled hers Ogre. We talked a little about the process of diffusion, too.

It still amazes me how even with such little planning on my part, and even when I feel bad, if we discuss the things going on in our lives and take advantage of everyday opportunities, the kids learn and pick up so much. Just in this week were were able to discuss everything from the American Revolution, sinuses, getting a refund, why it's not safe to run off in a store, how to make fudge, and diffusion.

Daddy's Birthday

We celebrated Steve's birthday with extended family on Saturday, March 27th. The day before both Jared and Alexa helped make the fruit salad. They pretty much did the entire thing, cutting up the strawberries and melon, and pulling the grapes from the stems.

Steve's sisters, brother-in-law, and parents were there, along with my side of the family, including cousin O. His brother's family came two and a half hours later. I had cooked up two crock-pots full of BBQ beef, so that plus store-bought potato salad, the fruit salad, and rolls, made dinner very easy.  After dinner, everyone was so helpful with cleaning up (we met at Steve's parents house since our house is tiny and wouldn't hold everyone), that I didn't even realize everything was cleared until I had finished eating.

Steve's family has a little tradition of carrying the cake out, blowing out the candles, opening up presents, and then eating cake, in that order. So, that's just what we did. Of course, the kids, including the cousins, loved blowing out the candles too and licking them afterwards.

Some people went in together and bought Steve a tiller for the garden (which I selfishly love, too!). He also received a smoker, so that will be fun to do this summer. Steve never will buy whole coffee beans for himself, he thinks it's a luxury not a neccessity, so several people bought him whole beans.

On his real birthday, the 30th, the kids and I spent the whole day getting ready for a little family party when he came home from work. Usually for our birthdays, he takes off work, but with Good Friday at the end of the week, and all the travelling he's been doing lately, he has so much to get caught up on at work.

The kids and I went to the store and bought balloons, birthday cards, small presents (Jared bought Steve a new Sudoku book, Alexa bought him more coffee beans from Starbucks, and I put some money in a card towards clothes), and wrapping paper. We headed home and spent quite a while drawing and coloring a Happy Birthday banner, wrapping presents, and cooking a birthday dinner - shepherd's pie and zucchini. Alexa was very proud to help peel the potatos. Then we played with the balloons a bit before Steve came home.

After dinner we had yet another cake, and then Steve opened his cards and presents. We wrapped up the evening with a game of balloon volleyball. Happy Birthday, Steve!

Jared picked out a Batman card that played the theme song. Definitly more for himself than for Steve!