This weekend

It's been a pretty lazy/fun weekend. Friday night Jamie was at Starbucks studying when we had a huge storm and the power went out briefly here and there. He said he is a math hero because he used his cell phone light to continue studying. Claudia and I watched The Soup after the littles were in bed and then Jamie came home and we gave Flight of the Conchords a whirl, but weren't too thrilled with it. We'll give it another chance, though.

Jamie spent most of Saturday studying. I think he did nine hours of practice tests. Claudia and I spent most of the day watching the DNC discussing the mess they've made of the Florida and Michigan delegate situation and making refrigerator magnets! The little girls mostly played outside but they spent a lot of time creating magnets, too.


Last night Claudia went to see a movie with a friend and I took the littles swimming.




I made a seriously unhealthy dinner last night--homemade corn dogs and french fries. We hardly ever buy hotdogs and I actually cringe when I see the children eating them because they're SO bad, but you know what? Those corn dogs were DIVINE.


Today we're skipping church because I want to watch the morning news shows. I'm hoping the McClellan thing comes up (I so think he shouldn't profit from that book) and I want to hear what's said about Florida and Michigan.

Spring Break Part III

Ok, so generally speaking, really the only reason to make your own soft pretzels is if you have a whole lot of extra hours on your hands or for some reason you can't get to the mall. However, we did have a lot of time on our hands today and I'm in the process of teaching the girls to cook so pretzels it was.

We started on the pretzels this morning and by 3pm, we had some. We made dough, the girls played outside, we did more stuff to the dough, we ate lunch, the girls went outside, we did more dough stuff, the girls went outside, more dough stuff, more dough stuff, then we boiled them, decorated them with course salt or cinnamon sugar or grated parmesan and then baked them and then I made frosting and that got drizzled on. All this work resulted in a supremely *OK* baked....thing.

Sammy and Jordan kneading the dough.


Making the dough into pretzel shapes.



Claudia decorating her pretzels.


Boiled and decorated and ready to bake.


The finished product.

Spring Break Part II

This morning we had Baked Alaska for breakfast. Hey, it's better than donuts!! Yesterday I made a pound cake (I need to find a better recipe because the texture of this one was weird) for it and then the girls made a very nice meringue this morning and we baked it. We put it on the top rack so the peaks burned but the ice cream survived and the kids all liked it. Success!!






Magic Rocks are growing like crazy.


Day one of playing with homemade gooze. This has been a big hit and played with a lot. It's also, apparently, something Bo doesn't like to eat, so that makes one thing!

Day two of playing with the gooze.


Sammy and Jordan cutting out homemade dog biscuits to bake. They mixed up the dough out of whole wheat flour, powdered milk, egg, chicken broth, and oil. Bo loves them! (The girls and the biscuits)

Spring Break Part I

Yesterday we went online, found photos of animals, printed them on transfer paper, I ironed the photos onto unbleached muslin and then we made pillows.


Sammy did the running baby elephant, Claudia did the baby tapir and Jordan did the baby ostrich.


I did emperor penguins.


Today we harvested moss out of the back yard and made terrariums. We threw some slag glass in for color. Claudia made one out of a big water bottle so she can use it for a habitat for her turtle.

The weekend

It's Saturday night and we're exhausted already!

Last night we did our usual pizza thing, except Jamie went out (to a Family Ministry meeting at church) and the girls and I did Thanksgiving crafts. When Claudia was two years old I started making turkeys every year out of construction paper--her hands were the feathers and her foot was the body. It was good way to capture how much she was growing every year, and Jordan, too, of course, when she came along. This year we took it up a notch and made the turkeys to go on banners, using duck cloth, felt, wonder under and different patterned fabrics. Oh, and Sammy and Jordan did a border around theirs with brown-paint thumbprints.








This morning Jamie and I got up at the crack of dawn--seriously!! like before 6!--to get ready to go to the pancake breaksfast fundraiser and book fair at the littles' school. Getting up early was worth it--we got a bunch of Christmas presents for the girlies and they so love doing things at their school and they had a blast seeing a lot of their friends and there was face painting and hair coloring. Claudia didn't go, instead opting to sleep in.



After that, Jamie took Sammy to her mom's and I ran into to work for a very short while. And then I spent the afternoon helping Claudia re-arrange her room, shopping and cooking dinner and Jamie spent the afternoon studying math. He's putting in a lot of time studying for the actuarial exams that he's taking in February. Jordan spent the afternoon playing her Nintendo DS and writing her nanowrimo story. She's doing really well with it this year and I think she's going to hit her goal so that will be a nice success for her.