"Mommy, Take my picture!"
"Smile!"
Clearly we need to look at pictures of people smiling so they know what it is supposed to look like. :)
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
The Easter Bunny Comes to Visit
As we weren't going to be home on Easter this year the Easter Bunny surprised the kiddos with an early visit before we left.
Me: "Did you hear something outside last night?"
Kev: "I thought I did. Wonder what it could have been"
Ry: [looking out the front door] "Maybe it was... I SEE EGGS!!!"
And out the door they went...
It took them all of about 2.7 seconds for them to find 90% of the eggs. Not that I remembered to take more than a cursory picture or two. :)
Though it took them a few hints to find the remaining few they missed in their whirlwind blitz attack. :)
They spent the rest of the mroning while I finished the kabobs, and packaged up the teacher treats opening all their eggs and exclaiming over their findings. Ryan in particular was hilariously funny as he shouted out what he found each time he opened one "OH.MY.GOODNESS IT'S DINOSAURS." MOMMY!!!! I GOT DINOSAURS!!! LOOK!!!!" and would run in and show me, and then find Connor to show him what he found, too. So cute. :)
Me: "Did you hear something outside last night?"
Kev: "I thought I did. Wonder what it could have been"
Ry: [looking out the front door] "Maybe it was... I SEE EGGS!!!"
And out the door they went...
It took them all of about 2.7 seconds for them to find 90% of the eggs. Not that I remembered to take more than a cursory picture or two. :)
Though it took them a few hints to find the remaining few they missed in their whirlwind blitz attack. :)
They spent the rest of the mroning while I finished the kabobs, and packaged up the teacher treats opening all their eggs and exclaiming over their findings. Ryan in particular was hilariously funny as he shouted out what he found each time he opened one "OH.MY.GOODNESS IT'S DINOSAURS." MOMMY!!!! I GOT DINOSAURS!!! LOOK!!!!" and would run in and show me, and then find Connor to show him what he found, too. So cute. :)
Monday, April 9, 2012
Teachers' Easter Treat
Any idea what this soupy mess is??
If you guessed a mess you would probably be right. :) It is theoretically the beginning of paper pulp. And why would I need paper pulp you ask? Because I didn't have enough other things I needed to be doing, so I decided to make paper pulp just for fun??
Not exactly... While I was wracking my brain for an easy/inexpensive little teacher gift that I could slide in an Easter card for the kids' teachers a light bulb went off. I had the brilliant idea to include some cutesy Easter shaped wildflower seed paper - similar to what you see at weddings or special events from time to time.
Unfortunately nothing is ever quite as simple as I imagine it will be... And this was no exception. I thought (see where this went off the rails???) that I could find a roll of the paper at Walmart or Lowes or Home Depot or you know just about anywhere that has a garden department. Cut it to shape and done. Easy peasy. Only none of those places, or any of the half dozen other places I looked carried the rolls of seed paper.
So while I was stewing on what a perfect idea it was and how disappointed I was that no one carried it I decided that it couldn't be that hard to make it right? So I turned to Professor Google. And found several tutorials on how to make your own seed paper. And what an easy project it was! The kids could even help!! Perfect!
So the kids and I plugged in the shredder and went to town shredding a nice blueish-turquoise paper which perfectly matched our Easter cards to make our own wildflower seed eggs. We took the shredded paper and covered it with water and left it to soak all day.
After dinner we poured the soggy concoction into the blender and liquefied it until it was blue soup. Then we added the wildflower seeds and a time, or two, or three of trial and error through the colander later we pressed out seeded paper pulp into future egg like shapes on a piece of felt and used towels to sop off the excess water.
So we switched to the hair dyer method which had me sweating, and wore out my forearm muscles but didn't quite produce the results I had hoped for. So in a last ditch effort I layed the paper out on a pizza stone and popped it into the oven on low heat for about 10 minutes which FINALLY did the trick. Whether the seeds will ever sprout now who knows, but I am keeping my fingers crossed and hoping the person who posted the oven idea knew what they were doing. :)
Once they were dry I free handed them into egg shapes and set them out to dry overnight just to be sure they were completely dry.
I made a little tag to go with them with planting instructions and then slipped the egg, tag, and Easter card into an envelope.
If you guessed a mess you would probably be right. :) It is theoretically the beginning of paper pulp. And why would I need paper pulp you ask? Because I didn't have enough other things I needed to be doing, so I decided to make paper pulp just for fun??
Not exactly... While I was wracking my brain for an easy/inexpensive little teacher gift that I could slide in an Easter card for the kids' teachers a light bulb went off. I had the brilliant idea to include some cutesy Easter shaped wildflower seed paper - similar to what you see at weddings or special events from time to time.
Unfortunately nothing is ever quite as simple as I imagine it will be... And this was no exception. I thought (see where this went off the rails???) that I could find a roll of the paper at Walmart or Lowes or Home Depot or you know just about anywhere that has a garden department. Cut it to shape and done. Easy peasy. Only none of those places, or any of the half dozen other places I looked carried the rolls of seed paper.
So while I was stewing on what a perfect idea it was and how disappointed I was that no one carried it I decided that it couldn't be that hard to make it right? So I turned to Professor Google. And found several tutorials on how to make your own seed paper. And what an easy project it was! The kids could even help!! Perfect!
So the kids and I plugged in the shredder and went to town shredding a nice blueish-turquoise paper which perfectly matched our Easter cards to make our own wildflower seed eggs. We took the shredded paper and covered it with water and left it to soak all day.
After dinner we poured the soggy concoction into the blender and liquefied it until it was blue soup. Then we added the wildflower seeds and a time, or two, or three of trial and error through the colander later we pressed out seeded paper pulp into future egg like shapes on a piece of felt and used towels to sop off the excess water.
We then started the drying process. We left part of the first batch to dry on it's own for 6 hours or so only to discover it was still as sopping wet 6 hours later as it was when we first poured it out. Gotta love humidity right?
So we switched to the hair dyer method which had me sweating, and wore out my forearm muscles but didn't quite produce the results I had hoped for. So in a last ditch effort I layed the paper out on a pizza stone and popped it into the oven on low heat for about 10 minutes which FINALLY did the trick. Whether the seeds will ever sprout now who knows, but I am keeping my fingers crossed and hoping the person who posted the oven idea knew what they were doing. :)
Once they were dry I free handed them into egg shapes and set them out to dry overnight just to be sure they were completely dry.
I made a little tag to go with them with planting instructions and then slipped the egg, tag, and Easter card into an envelope.
The kids proudly delivered them to their teachers the next morning. The teachers were duly impressed and teachers from both classes asked for instructions on how to make them for a future class project. I asked all 6 teachers to let me know when they plant them what blooms and how they turn out. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we will know... :)
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Happy Easter!
Happy Easter!!
We had gotten proofs back from the kids' spring pictures at school a while back and I loved how they turned out. We ended up ordering the CD so I thought I would put the pictures to good use and whipped up an Easter card to send out to our families and a handful of friends. Love how they turned out. :)
We had gotten proofs back from the kids' spring pictures at school a while back and I loved how they turned out. We ended up ordering the CD so I thought I would put the pictures to good use and whipped up an Easter card to send out to our families and a handful of friends. Love how they turned out. :)
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Spring Festival Luncheon - Fruit Kabobs
I wonder whose job it is to come up with creative politically correct names for all the holidays? Because apparently you can't have an Easter lunch - it's a Spring Festival Luncheon now.
So in honor of Easter AND Spring (though it certainly felt more like Summer with a high of 89 this weekend) I volunteered to bring fruit for the kids' class lunch to go with their vegetarian friendly Soy Butter Sandwiches, and other hypoallergenic, organic, politically correct choices. Where does one even buy soy butter? And what does it taste like? Though I had to laugh when I saw someone had brought in [gasp] store bought cookies. First because they were store bought, but secondly because I get the distinct impression that anything with sugar is distinctly frowned upon at the boys' new school.
Though school did have anEaster egg hunt. And despite the signs in the lobby asking parents to bring in oversized eggs and small toys vs. candy the bulk of the eggs the boys brought home at least contained chocolate candies of one variety or another.
At least the fruit kabobs were both healthy and fun. The kids were excited about taking them. Connor pronounced them beautiful and begged for a pink one of his own for breakfast. :) Ryan insisted that I tell his teacher that the yellow one with the big strawberry was his. :) Their appreciation made up for the fact that I had to get up BEFORE the CRACK OF DAWN to start cutting up fruit (or starting to cut up fruit and then delegating the remainder of the cutting to Kevin - it turns out he has a knack for it - who knew?) So while Kevin finished cutting the cantaloupe and honey dew, I finished washing and cutting the strawberries and assembled the 60 kabobs. Remind me again why I thought this was a good idea??? Especially when it took about 10 seconds to layer the left over cantaloupe and honey dew into tupperware while I was STILL working on assembling kabobs.... Not to mention the half a dozen other things I still had to before we left for school... like helping the Easter bunny hide eggs, and packing up a little something for the kids' teachers, and loading up the egging supplies... Clearly procrastination is my middle name.
So in honor of Easter AND Spring (though it certainly felt more like Summer with a high of 89 this weekend) I volunteered to bring fruit for the kids' class lunch to go with their vegetarian friendly Soy Butter Sandwiches, and other hypoallergenic, organic, politically correct choices. Where does one even buy soy butter? And what does it taste like? Though I had to laugh when I saw someone had brought in [gasp] store bought cookies. First because they were store bought, but secondly because I get the distinct impression that anything with sugar is distinctly frowned upon at the boys' new school.
Though school did have an
At least the fruit kabobs were both healthy and fun. The kids were excited about taking them. Connor pronounced them beautiful and begged for a pink one of his own for breakfast. :) Ryan insisted that I tell his teacher that the yellow one with the big strawberry was his. :) Their appreciation made up for the fact that I had to get up BEFORE the CRACK OF DAWN to start cutting up fruit (or starting to cut up fruit and then delegating the remainder of the cutting to Kevin - it turns out he has a knack for it - who knew?) So while Kevin finished cutting the cantaloupe and honey dew, I finished washing and cutting the strawberries and assembled the 60 kabobs. Remind me again why I thought this was a good idea??? Especially when it took about 10 seconds to layer the left over cantaloupe and honey dew into tupperware while I was STILL working on assembling kabobs.... Not to mention the half a dozen other things I still had to before we left for school... like helping the Easter bunny hide eggs, and packing up a little something for the kids' teachers, and loading up the egging supplies... Clearly procrastination is my middle name.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Sneaky Little People
It's no wonder people think I am crazy. I send emails telling them not so quiet sneaky little people will be visiting their houses. When they aren't at home. Shhh!! It's a surprise!
No reason to be alarmed, right? Other than the fact that the lunatic knows where we live. And she's coming to our house... With the monsters.... To do who knows what!?!?
Egging! That's what!
The boys and I hatched the plan on the way home from school one day. The boys each got to pick 2 friends' houses (nearby!) to "egg." We picked up some Easter eggs, and a variety of treats and small toys to stuff them with (a puzzle, bubbles, mini-dinosaurs, stampers, hopping bunnies, crazy face egg decorating stickers, etc.) I also whipped up a card to warn the unsuspecting that something was amiss in their yard in the event that they hadn't noticed. :)
On the night before the "mission" I stuffed the eggs and split the goodies into bags for each house so we would be ready to go. On the big day I picked the boys up earlier than normal and we reviewed the mission brief and team assignments in the car on the way to the first house. Ryan volunteered to be the lookout. Connor was in charge of delivering the payload. The mission: Get in. Egg. Get out. And most importantly - don't get caught!
Mission accomplished!
Though that last ("Don't get caught") was only by way of good reconnaissance on my part. :) Because you would have had to have been deaf not to have heard the shenanigans going on in the front yard - between the lookout yelling that someone was coming or he wanted to hide some eggs, too, and me trying to ensure that eggs didn't get buried in the dirt or under a pile of rocks, or stuffed really far up in drain pipes never to be seen again. :) They no doubt picked that up from their father who takes pride in hiding eggs in some of the hardest places to find for the bigger kids at Easter every year.
Despite the insanity we did manage to hit all the houses on our list and had a good time "egging" houses! :)
No reason to be alarmed, right? Other than the fact that the lunatic knows where we live. And she's coming to our house... With the monsters.... To do who knows what!?!?
Egging! That's what!
The boys and I hatched the plan on the way home from school one day. The boys each got to pick 2 friends' houses (nearby!) to "egg." We picked up some Easter eggs, and a variety of treats and small toys to stuff them with (a puzzle, bubbles, mini-dinosaurs, stampers, hopping bunnies, crazy face egg decorating stickers, etc.) I also whipped up a card to warn the unsuspecting that something was amiss in their yard in the event that they hadn't noticed. :)
On the night before the "mission" I stuffed the eggs and split the goodies into bags for each house so we would be ready to go. On the big day I picked the boys up earlier than normal and we reviewed the mission brief and team assignments in the car on the way to the first house. Ryan volunteered to be the lookout. Connor was in charge of delivering the payload. The mission: Get in. Egg. Get out. And most importantly - don't get caught!
Mission accomplished!
Though that last ("Don't get caught") was only by way of good reconnaissance on my part. :) Because you would have had to have been deaf not to have heard the shenanigans going on in the front yard - between the lookout yelling that someone was coming or he wanted to hide some eggs, too, and me trying to ensure that eggs didn't get buried in the dirt or under a pile of rocks, or stuffed really far up in drain pipes never to be seen again. :) They no doubt picked that up from their father who takes pride in hiding eggs in some of the hardest places to find for the bigger kids at Easter every year.
Despite the insanity we did manage to hit all the houses on our list and had a good time "egging" houses! :)
Thursday, April 5, 2012
What we learned at school today...
Mom: What did you guys learn at school today?
Ryan: Well, I learned the order.
R: First it starts as an egg.
R: Then it cracks, and then the tadpole comes out.
R: Then it grows one pair of legs.
R: Then it grows two pairs of legs.
R: But it's not a real frog yet because it has a ____ (nub??)
R: And when the nub is gone after that it is a REAL frog.
Connor: And I learned that frogs are effibands?
Mom: Frogs are what?
C: Frogs are EEEFFFFIIBAAANNDDSS.
M: Oooohhh.... Frogs are Amphibians. Yes, they are...
Ryan: Well, I learned the order.
R: First it starts as an egg.
R: Then it cracks, and then the tadpole comes out.
R: Then it grows one pair of legs.
R: Then it grows two pairs of legs.
R: But it's not a real frog yet because it has a ____ (nub??)
R: And when the nub is gone after that it is a REAL frog.
Connor: And I learned that frogs are effibands?
Mom: Frogs are what?
C: Frogs are EEEFFFFIIBAAANNDDSS.
M: Oooohhh.... Frogs are Amphibians. Yes, they are...
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
[Nearly] Wordless Wednesday
Ryan loves to drive.
And I have to admit he's surprisingly good at it... Minus that whole watching where you are going part from time to time... :)
And I have to admit he's surprisingly good at it... Minus that whole watching where you are going part from time to time... :)
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Eggstra-special lunch!
Friday at the boys' new school was an optional bring your own lunch day. Since Easter is just right around the corner I thought it might be nice to do a lunch with a special Easter twist. So I picked up a small egg crate (8 eggs instead of a typical 12 or 18 so that it would fit into the boys' lunch boxes) and some plastic Easter eggs. I filled 8 of the plastic eggs to the brim on both sides with various finger foods (turkey, cheese, mini ritz crackers, carrots, grapes, bunny marshmallows and even a real hard boiled egg) and packed them in the egg crate. I also threw in an extra banana for Ryan, and two mini oranges for Connor just in case they were still hungry after they devoured everything else. :)
Needless to say it was a BIG hit! The boys loved it so much they started begging the second I picked them up if they could have the same thing for dinner.
We will definitely have to remember this for next year!
Needless to say it was a BIG hit! The boys loved it so much they started begging the second I picked them up if they could have the same thing for dinner.
We will definitely have to remember this for next year!
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