Eating Icing, or Building a Gingerbread House With 4 Children

School was out.
What to do?
Make "gingerbread" houses out of graham crackers and royal icing.
They learned what Neccos are (and they are hard to find).
They learned how to make "snow" out of white icing.
They learned that you really do get a stomach ache if you eat too much candy.
I learned that Nathan does not ascribe to the "less is more" school of thought, Adrienne REALLY likes chocolate, Kade is very creative, and Annika's fine motor delay appears to have cleared up.
I also learned that it is even more fun if I let them do it their way.

I am proud to say I was "hands-off" for most of the fun.

I think we all enjoyed it that way.

Most importantly we had fun--together.

Santa and Hammers

My kids' school has a Breakfast With Santa every December. We get to have doughnuts and juice and share our greatest wishes with Santa. The kids are always excited before we go, but then act a little shy when we get there.
This year, Nathan decided he was a little old to sit on Santa's lap. But he did it.
And there was a classmate there who took his picture when he did it. And she was a girl. She giggled. He was embarrassed.
Can you tell?


Adrienne got to see Santa too. She wasn't sure about sitting on his lap though.Do you love the body language there?

After we saw Santa we went to Home Depot to do a project. They made wagons that were just right for putting present in--at least that is what Adrienne said.
There were hammers, nails, wood, and stickers. They loved it. After the big project, we went to lunch with Grandma and Grandpa to our favorite Mexican restaurant to celebrate Kade's birthday.

He wanted to go to this particular restaurant because he wanted them to sing to him. An added bonus was getting a yummy sundae that his siblings tried to inhale before I put the brakes on.
Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa for braving the snow and heading up to see Kade.
More to come on the big birthday...
He's 8!

Carving Pumpkins

We finally got around to carving the pumpkins we got at the pumpkin patch. It was a little time consuming, but they turned out really well. It was a lot of fun.Kade was hiding his face because he was embarrassed that he was wearing his pajamas in the picture.
The final projects: After we finished, the kids had to go out to take a bow:

Saturday Is A Special Day

Mmmm.
I love Saturdays...
Sleeping in. My kids (with some help from the Disney Channel) let me do this now, for a little while.
My husband. Home from work, no meetings (usually). He makes Saturday morning breakfast. And it is always hot and always yummy.
I found some strawberries on a good deal.
We made some good stuff:
Crepes with cream.









Because it is daddy's cooking day, there are few dishes to be done. We use paper plates.

On Saturday, there is always time to play--even when there isn't.
This Saturday, it was a hayride to the pumpkin patch at a nursery. We picked out some pumpkins that were larger than the minis we grew in our garden. I got a fancy carving kit on clearance last year, so we will be giving it a whirl for FHE.

After Saturday morning breakfast, we went back to the store for more strawberries. I made this for Sunday dessert:
Maybe Sundays aren't so bad either.

What I've Been Doing Instead Of Cleaning My House

Halloween is on the way!
Gonna have a cowgirl...
Almost done: I love Halloween!

Things of Beauty

I love it when I make things with my own two hands.
And they turn out.
My parents have a mini farmer's market in their backyard and often share their abundant produce with those of us who have black thumbs. Like me.
I took the raspberries, plums, and nectarines and made jam.
It is so pretty to look at. I almost hate to open the jars, but we had peanut butter and plum jam for lunch on Sunday, and that made the work worth it.
I plan on giving away the little jars of raspberry jam away for Christmas gifts, but the rest are just for us.
There was a minor snafu: when I went to get the pectin for the nectarine jam, I mistakenly bought the kind that was sugar-free.
What is jam without sugar? Yucky.
Coming up with plan B....
I think I will use it as syrup for pancakes. Just open, dump in a saucepan, add some sugar, heat, and pour.
How about that for a recipe?

Any other ideas are welcome.

More Rocks

We went all over the state looking for rocks this weekend. We got some good looking specimens to finish Kade's rock collection.
By the end of the day, however, the kids' desire for collecting rocks was waning. Burke and I were still going strong and were game to look for some more goodies, but succumbed to the whining and begging to go home.
Kade's collection looks pretty darn good if you ask me, and was hard won.
Burke and I both reminded him to make sure he tells his teacher he personally picked up every rock and crystal in his collection.
He rolled his eyes, but acquiesced.

Here are some pictures of the action.
This is where we found some beautiful agate.

This is where we found some obsidian. In the book we consulted, they were called "Apache Tears". The pieces were just lying all over the hills. It was a little depressing to think of them as tears.
Next, we stopped at my personal "Moby Dick".

25 years ago, I went to find treasures with my own family. My dad took a "shortcut" and we got lost.
It wasn't a pleasant experience, especially for my mom, who ended up in the back seat with my two carsick siblings. It was a barfin' good time for her. I never wore the blue coat again--thank goodness. (Any member of my family will now be remembering looking for shepherds to help us find the road. And remembering how "hungry" Rebecca was.)

This was the first time I had been back since then. I didn't let Burke take any shortcuts, and we did find some pretty clear-colored topaz lying all over the ground. We didn't find any of the golden or sherry colored topaz or garnets that we were looking for. After doing some more checking at home, we think we may have missed the exact area we needed to look in for the good stuff. Oh well, maybe we'll go back ...in another couple of decades.

Burke and the boys had the camera and hiked all over the mountain looking for the white stone that was supposedly hiding the goods. He never found it, but took this picture of the girls and I walking around at the base of the mountain. I'm the little speck to the right of our van.The girls had both followed the boys up the mountain, but were unable to get down. This was the end of the day, and they both got very upset when they found themselves bodysurfing. Having had that unfortunate experience myself, I ended up carrying Adrienne down, and helping Annika. By the time we got to the bottom, Adrienne was calling it "Pokey Mountain" because of all the stickers she got on her hands and ankles.

By the end of the day we had found some really interesting rocks.
One of my favorites was this: Isn't it pretty? There was a huge pit of the stuff. It had lots of different colors ranging from the pinks and whites here to golds and browns. I would love to have a countertop or floor made of this. Unfortunately, it is very brittle and feels a lot like sandstone. Definitely wouldn't hold up around my house.Fool's Gold. Technically, we didn't find this one on a mountain, but in Burke's old school stuff. He dug it out while trying to find a rock hammer he made in shop class in jr high. Along with his old pinewood derby car (first place, as he proudly informed us), his scout belt loops, and his slingshot. Didn't find the rock hammer. Ended up not needing it anyway.

Here is the final product of several weeks' rockhounding:

I don't think Kade is as proud of this collection as I am.
I have to say, rockhounding turned out to be really fun. I think we will be doing some more in the future, even though the project was due today. Maybe Burke and I can convert the rest of the kids.

Only if we promise not to go back to "Pokey Mountain".

Moby Dick lives on....

RockHounds

It was a beautiful day. Kade had a science project. He needs to make a rock collection. Nathan needed some fossils for scouts.
With some help from Google, we found an area about 20 minutes from our house full of fossils.
We just needed to get there. And find them.


Before we started out, we ran into a university geologist who pointed us in the right direction. After a fairly short but uphill hike, we found the spot. Kind of. It wasn't the one we were aiming for, but we found fossils just the same. We found that all we needed to do was sit down and pick up pieces of shale. The fossils were abundant and the kids thought it was pretty cool. We spent about an hour looking aroud before we left with a backpack full of rocks. Burke carried Adrienne, I carried the rocks. I wonder if Burke got the better end of that deal.

The view was gorgeous and we were able to watch a dust storm sweep across the valley before we needed to get off the mountain due to the wind. The kids liked that part as well.
Of course, we needed to get a silly picture too.

Here are some pictures of a few of the shells and trilobite fossils we found.
It was a fun afternoon adventure, and fulfilled something I have always wanted to do, but needed a good reason for the excursion. I guess kids are always a handy excuse.