My new favorite thing

My fantastic sister-in-law, Andrea, made this for Eliana's room. Do I not have the coolest sister-in-law ever?

Bows make the woman

I've been trying for a few weeks to get Eliana to hold still long enough to take her 10 month picture. Finally today she cooperated for a few minutes.

At first she was bow-less . . . cute, but not cute enough.

Add a bow and viola, here is our 10 month beauty! (well, as cute as she can get during the awkward new teeth phase)

Summer fun

Three posts in one day? This should take care of two months of blogging! For our enrichment this month, I did a little class on ideas for summer fun. Now, most of these are not my original ideas, and I didn't write down where I got them from (since I was just doing it for my family), so I apologize for not giving credit where credit is due. But I thought I'd share some of the fun ideas since I'm sure many of you, like myself, are already knee deep in summertime crazy.

SAY CHEESE! Purchase some disposable cameras and take your children to a scenic spot. Give them a basic tutorial in photography and then turn them loose with their cameras. Encourage them to take pictures of each other. Once the pictures have been taken and the film has been developed, help them to create a small scrapbook of their photography adventure.

Put on a Concert for Each Other - Have the children get all dressed up in their Sunday best, some costumes or a funny get-up that they come up with by going through the closets and mixing and matching some silly outfits. Have them practice a couple of their favorite songs. Then create a stage area at one end of the living room and put folding chairs at the other end. They could even make up some tickets and programs for their special concert.

Set up an Art Studio - You don't have to be fancy with art and you don't have to have everything just so, to get started. Just come up with a few ideas and go from there. You could set out some bottles of glue, old magazines and paper to make collages. Or, you could set out paper lunch bags, markers, your button jar, yarn and some glue for a puppet making station. Another idea would be to have an art contest using a particular medium. Be sure to present ribbons to
each entrant.

The "no" jar. Anytime your kids ask you to do something, and you say no, you write it on a piece of paper and put it in the jar. Then once a week, you let them pick something out of the no jar. (When we did this, our rule was that it had to cost little to no money to go in the jar).

Miss-matched meals. Everyone goes to the store and is assigned a part of the meal like main dish, side, dessert . . . Then split up and pick whatever want, and meet up at the check-out. You could have cereal with turkey and ritz crackers for dinner!

Theme meals -- Give your meals a theme -- we had a Star Wars dinner. We had a regular dinner, but the food was all named after the movie like yoda bites for green beans. We even had a picture menu to complete the meal.

Story time make and takes. Make a day around your favorite book. For example, Read books by Joost Elffers & Saxton Freyman, and try to create your own edible illustrations.

Science. Search the internet for Science Fair experiments. You’ll come up with hundreds. Easy ideas like “Do different brands of popcorn leave different amounts of un-popped kernels?” Make a baking soda volcano or make raisins dance.

Make your own file folder games. Web site “dgl.microsoft.com” has any kind of clipart imaginable. You can make games for letters, numbers, shapes colors, even reading. It’s easy and fun.

Get your kids writing! Give your kids a notebook and set aside a time each day for writing. They can talk about their day or create a story or draw a picture. It’s a great way for them to wind down.

Week of Color. Assign a color to each day of the week. Plan an activity and meal around that color. For example: On green day, you can go to the park or zoo (anything outside). Have green eggs and ham for breakfast and a salad for dinner. Decorate the table with the color and encourage the kids to wear the color of the day.

Camping. Set up your tent in the back yard. Have foil dinners and make microwave smores. Tell scary stories at bed time.

Create a summer olympics in your back yard. Set up an obstacle course. Have water balloon beach volleyball tournaments. Have a otter pop relay race.

Grocery Shopping. Get your kids involved in meal planning. Buy (or check out from the library) a kids cookbook. Have them pick one meal a week and be responsible for finding the ingredients at the store. Give the kids your coupons for the week and have them find the items. Give the little kids a picture shopping list. Have the older kids help you save money by picking out the “cheapest” products.

Tents. Never underestimate the power of a tent made from sheets draped over chairs. It will occupy children for hours!

Have a family taste test. Buy multiple brands of one item -- like chocolate, soda, chips, ice cream . . . and conduct a blind taste test to see which brand is your family favorite. (This can get pricey, so we only do it once a month). We did Orange juice last week, and it turns out that although we've been buying Tropicanna for years, we like Simply Orange the best.

Make a Time Capsule. This has to be one of the most exciting activities of all time for kids. Give them a plastic jar with a lid or a sturdy box. Have them fill it with little trinkets and notes that will remind them of the past year. Or pick a theme (like sports, books, travel, etc) and have them will the jar with treasures new and old. They can bury it somewhere in the yard and dig it up in next summer.

A List Of Kid-Friendly Websites
This site has a really fun list of kid-friendly sites. There's something for nearly every age here!
http://www.blogher.com/list-kid-friendly-websites

On a roll . . .

We had the BEST pasta for dinner last night. I found the recipe on-line, but I can't tell you where. I hesitated making it because I knew my kids would hate the zucchini, but Josh picked it for his father's day dinner. And I'm so glad he did because it was D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S! (the kids ate everything but the zucchini, so I can classify this as a success.)

Belle’s Favorite Pasta

Ingredients:
1 pound of linguine noodles
about 2/3 cup parm cheese
chicken and apple sausage cut in small pieces (I just grilled some chicken instead)
zucchini cut in small pieces
sweet baby tomatoes
7 cloves of garlic crushed (really, the more, the better)
1 and half tsp. of dried oregano
extra virgin olive oil

Put whole baby sweet tomatoes, zucchini, crushed garlic, oregano, in a baking pan and drizzle a nice coat of olive oil, add some kosher salt and pepper. Then put it into a 400 degree oven until the tomatoes are about to or have popped. This usually takes about 25-30 minutes.

Cook linguine according to package. drain.

Brown sausage pieces in olive oil until nice and colored.

Add sausage, linguine, tomatoes/zucchini mixture together into a big bowl and pop the rest of the tomatoes ready to ooze sweet fresh tomatoes juice onto them. Add parmesan cheese and mix. Add salt to taste.

Kindergarten Graduation

This is shamefully overdue -- but here are some pictures of our recent kindergarten graduate. He was so excited to be done with school . . . until he had to say good-bye to his teacher. He started to cry, it was so sweet! She reminded him that she just lives two doors down, and that seemed to help. Still, he told her that he hoped she would get a promotion so that she could be his first grade teacher. And now he tells me that it wouldn't be so bad if he went to kindergarten again (Yeah right!) Let's hope his first grade teacher is as lovable.

Benj and Mrs. Watley

Benj and his partner in crime Sayer

Decor

Here are some signs a friend and I made for
Eliana's room. I love love love them!!