Happy Birthday Alex!!!

Yesterday my baby boy turned 8 years old! Lucky him it was on a Sunday so he then had all day to play with his new toys!!!! 

(BTW those lollipops are the absolutely best lollipops ever Yummy Earth organic lollipops, review coming soon!!!)

First thing in the morning it was time for presents!

After presents at his request we had pancakes (chocolate chip) eggs, and bacon!

He had an absolutely wonderful day Hanging out, playing with new toys and video games!

For dinner he requested spaghetti, I've noticed all of my kids choose either spaghetti or pizza for their birthday LOL.

Then it was cake time... I'm not so pleased with the cake... But Alex loved it..

I set cookie cutters on the cake and poured colored sugar into the shapes. But he liked it! Next weekend we will be doing another cake when my parents  and mother in-law come to celebrate :)

He is the goofiest child :)

apparently I should have made him change his shirt LOL

Oh the BEST part of the cake... It wasn't just a plain old boring cake.....

 Yeah it was the most awesome cake ever!... I didn't get the stripes just right but the kids loved it anyways! Alex choose the colors blue, orange, and green!

Happy Birthday buddy!

Play dough!

Play dough... Oh how wonderful it is, I am ashamed to admit I had forgotten the wonders of such a simple thing. Yesterday for the first time in too long I made play-dough for the kids to play with and (not kidding) they spent over 3 hours playing with it. So today when the two three year olds'  requested more pink play- dough I happily obliged!

All the play-dough from yesterday is now rainbow colored LOL

Squish!

working on fine motor skills decorating pizza!

Making a play-dough bunny face :)

Of course mama had to add something educational to it !....

So how long till I get tired of cleaning it up????

Play-dough-

2 cups water

2 cups flour

1 cup salt

2 TBS oil

Mix everything in a sauce pan heat over med heat until you have a ball of dough. remove from pan and knead. 

Yesterday I split up the big ball of dough and kneaded in food coloring. Today I added food coloring while it was cooking and the pink came out much brighter and nicer!

School has begun!

And it started on Tuesday, it has been a fun/hectic/interesting week so far. The first day of school went off with out a hitch. Brianna shed a few tears walking into the school not from fear but from being overwhelmed at the amount of students :).

The second day she had me walk her to the door. Then told me "I can go by myself mom!"

The third day she left me at the corner yelling "I can go by myself! Go home!!!"

She has had an awesome week at school her favorite part is the coloring and recess!

Nathaniel is really enjoying his class, he is most excited about reading The BFG By Roald Dahl

He has spent a lot of his summer reading   His reading list has included  

The Alchemyst , The Hunger Games,

 and a brief venture intoThe Odyssey.

This boy blows me away sometimes!

Alex is LOVING his class.. He already knows all the girls LOL!

 He also spent a good portion of his summer reading His list was shorter but very impressive for a new second grader

 The Last Dragon,  The Angel Experiment (Maximum Ride, Book 1). 

Along with with several pokemon, magic tree house, Junie B Jones books and so on.

The girls have absolutely fallen in love with  The series Ivy and Bean this summer

 Ivy & Bean (Book 1) (Bk. 1)

I am loving that our Library has almost the entire series on CD and that we can put the books on their MP3 players!!!

 The first day of school went well for Caitlynn I was babysitting so she had a friend to play with. Wednesday I was babysitting again so she still had a playmate. Thursday was her first day with just mommy and daddy... I have to say she was a little lost in her own world

For a while she had no idea what to do all by herself. So we went outside found a BIG sheet of cardboard and watched it fly around

We talked about the wind and enjoyed the nice breezy morning

Then we hung out by noon she was more than ready to go get everyone from school LOL.

She was beyond happy to go get the kids from school!

Today we have had a nice quiet morning, did some cleaning up then we made a bird feeder

And for the most part Caitlynn did this all by herself

And she has spent all morning watching out the windows for birdies to come eat their snack!

Now I NEED more ideas for the weeks to come!!!

I hope everyone else is having a great start to the school year too!!!

Steel cut oats.

We love steel cut oats, But almost every time I make them I end up searching and searching for a recipe to use the left overs... and I have never found one.. So today for snack I decided to use our leftovers from breakfast and make some

Baked oatmeal... I almost want to say bread (like a pumpkin bread). It is definitely a sweet snack treat.

2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup oil
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cup steel cut oats (cooked)
1 1/3 cup flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Mix sugar, oil, eggs, vanilla. Stir in steel cut oats. Mix flour cinnamon baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Pour into a greased pan and bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 min. or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Enjoy!

Fun at the fair!

So today the fair opened! Since it was the first day it was family day which means adult tickets are $3 and kids under 12 get in free! We decided sort of spur of the moment to go ahead and go. I am so glad we did the kids had a blast!

First we saw goats... Caitlynn saw their ears and ran to them yelling "puppies!!!!!" We explained they were goats and she proceeded to tell one "Oh I love your beautiful tags!"

Then came the ponies....

Oh how they loved the ponies

Bet you couldn't tell that huh?!?

The boys rode rides over and over and over... It  is hard to get a good picture on a fair ride

The girls rode a ton of rides too

Awwwwwwww

Then the best part of the whole fair

I took my girls up in the Farris wheel :)

Awwww sisters :)

So we did tons, walked miles, ate cotton candy and funnel cake the kids rode a million rides and it was the perfect fair day!!!

A refreshing summer drink

And super easy too!
Take half a watermelon and cube it..
Toss watermelon cubes into blender and puree

at this point you can pour the watermelon juice into posicle mold and you have some awesome watermelon popsicles or....
you can pour your watermelon into an ice cream maker and let it run until it is the consistency of a slurpee Yum!