Friday Night Fun

Sometimes the simple things in life are fun; like sleeping altogether on the couch bed. Life can't get much better than that!

Chalk Paint Fun

Continuing our quest to having a fun filled summer, we adventured out to the back yard for fun with side walk chalk paint-homemade style. With 2T of cornstarch, 2T of water, a few drops of food coloring, and a cup cake pan we have paint and hours of fun and creativity. We of course had to do our activity in the evening because of the heat advisory we are under. The heat is too hard on Madeline and can make her sick. We don't get out much during the summer months, but we sure come up with lots of fun things to do inside and thankfully it stays light well into the evening.

What a Quack

It's Jam Time!

I decided one afternoon to be brave and make jam with the kids. Strawberry jam is pretty easy and there are plenty of things the kids could do to help out. They cleaned the strawberries, cut the stems, took turns mashing the strawberries, and took turns stirring the strawberry goodness in the pot. When the goodness started to boil, Mommy took over from there. With there help we were able to make lots of Strawberry Jam that will last a while not to mention be delicious on our homemade rolls. Hopefully the kids are learning lots of new things, that will help them when they leave this nest.

Making Bread

Carrying on with our tradition this summer we combined our cooking activity and learning something new by learning how to make rolls. These rolls are absolutely delicious and the kids love them. Their favorite part was being able to mix the dough with their hands. While the rolls were cooking we whipped up some homemade butter. I think next we will use the roll dough to make some yummy cinnamon rolls, they should love sprinkling cinnamon and sugar. With the kids in charge could be some sweet cinnamon rolls.

An Unbirthday Party!

The kids wanted to throw a party, so we decided to have an "Unbirthday" party. Anthony and Madeline spent all week planning all the details including activities and food. After looking over their plans I did have to scale things back or we would be celebrating for a week. They wanted to set up the food like a restraunt where we order our food from a menu, and they then prepare the food a call out a number when our food was done. I decided to just go for it and prepare everything that was on their menu since I cut a lot out of the activities. After our food we played a good round of life game followed by movie night. It was a fun way to spend time as a family and has sparked a new interest in our family...party planning. I believe Madeline is planning her next party I think she told me it would be a music party. This time there will not be an extensive food selection.

A Trip to the Store

In keeping with teaching my children new things and good life skills, I took them to the grocery store for a lesson in grocery shopping. I divided my list among each child, they had their own basket to put their items in. They learn how to locate the items on the list making sure they selected the right one, and they learned how to find the best value. The kids had fun and it sure made what could have been a stressful situation a lot easier. I just might have to do this again.

Oklahoma Fun

For Fourth of July Weekend we headed up north to the great state of Oklahoma to see Grant's cousin's family (Darrell and Staci Bartholomew). They have kids about the same age as ours and for the whole weekend we never saw the kids for they were busy off playing together. We met them up at the Oklahoma City Zoo and were able to explore for about an hour before it closed. I have lived here essentially for my whole life and I have been to the Fort Worth Zoo so many times that it has lost its excitement, so it was neat to see another zoo and to explore the fun activities that they have; it was also nice that it was a lot smaller than the Fort Worth Zoo. After the zoo we embarked on Braums for dinner and some refreshing ice cream. All that happened on Friday. Saturday started out with rain and ended with rain, but that didn't hamper a fishing trip. Staci and I were smart and stayed home while the Dads and kids went out fishing. All the kids were able to catch at least one fish. This was Spencer's first time fishing and the report I got back was that he didn't know what to think when he saw the fish hanging from his hook, but the fact that he didn't hook anyone else or get is fishing line tangled with another line was amazing. They had so much fun fishing that they brought those beastly critters home to eat. I am all about catch and release, I believe sea food stays in the water and not in my tummy; lucky for us the fish never got fried up while we were there...darn. After dinner on Saturday we actually caught a break in the rain and went for a family bike ride, which was interesting to say the least. Spencer didn't understand why he had to stay to the side of the road, Madeline didn't know how to break going down the hill nor did she understand that you cannot watch your feet while riding your bike, and Anthony didn't like riding his bike at all. Through it all we made it to the lake and back in one piece, not all people in our party were happy but we all made it back alive. After being medicated with root beer floats we were ready to shoot off fireworks, which was amazing for Anthony because we live in the city we are not able to shoot off our own fireworks. Madeline hung out inside the house where it was quiet and shortly after Spencer joined her. Madeline will at least look at fireworks from a distance, but Spencer on the other covered his eyes and kept them that way. Anthony was in his element and for a couple of hours was having fun shooting off fireworks after fireworks. It was a good thing that we did our own fireworks because it rained on the fourth of July and we were left to watching fireworks on tv all the way from Washington D.C. It was a great show and best of all Spencer and Madeline both enjoyed them, not too loud and not too scary. A win win situation for all.

Now it wouldn't be a trip to Grant's cousin's house without playing some kind of strategic game, and Gene had one that was both up Grant and Anthony's alley. I don't remember the title but it was an old Star Wars game. Now the short time that we were there the boys managed to squeeze in a couple rounds of playing and Joseph and Anthony played a couple of rounds by themself. So we are now looking on e-bay for one of our own.

Overall the trip was fun and a nice get a way from our crazy life!