Homemade fun

This has been the scene at our house for several hours over the past week. Nathan's playdough had all been mixed together and much of it had dried out. So ... being the lazy (didn't want to load both kids up and go out) and cheap (didn't want to spend the money) person that I am, I decided to try making them some playdough. Many of the recipes I found online required alum, which I don't have in my cupboards, so I finally settled on this recipe, from here:

Nature's Playdough

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 cup water
2 tablespoons oil
2 tablespoons cream of tartar
beet, spinach, and carrot juice

Mix flour, salt and oil, and slowly add the water. Cook over medium heat, stirring until dough becomes stiff. Turn out onto wax paper and let cool. Knead the playdough with your hands until of proper consistency. Use as is, or divide into balls and add a few drops of the vegetable juices to make green, pink, and orange.

I did not have beet, spinach, or carrot juice readily available, so I used some of my icing dyes instead. They made wonderfully vibrant shades of play dough. I was worried the colour might rub off when played with, but it doesn't!

I've played with many sticky batches of homemade play dough over the years but this dough is awesome. It feels very much like the stuff from the store, although it smells a bit worse. Oh well. The kids have had it out pretty much every day for the last week and it's still as good as new. The recipe is definitely a keeper!

Handy Oatmeal Cookies

Peter left yesterday for a week of training and should be back Friday night. Looking at the chaos around me last night and feeling quite overwhelmed I decided it might be worth getting back on the Flylady bandwagon. So far the first 24 hours have been a rousing success. Since I tire easily at the moment - using 10 or 15 minute blocks for cleaning interspersed with lots of rest has helped me make it through the day.

It rained most of the day so the kids and I spent the whole day in the house. To give Nathan something fun to do this afternoon we decided to make cookies. I looked in the fridge ... no eggs. Thankfully I remembered I had this recipe for oatmeal cookies that doesn't require eggs. The recipe is from Vicki Lansky's Kids Cooking.

Here's the recipe (it makes a lot of cookies - probably 4 dozen or so):

1 1/2 c butter
3 c oats
1 1/2 c flour (I wanted to try whole wheat but, again, we're out ... guess I'll have to get some groceries soon!)
1 1/2 c brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Put all ingredients in a big bowl and mash it all together with your hands. Keep mixing until it is a uniform consistency and everything sticks together. Drop in balls on baking sheet (I think it's best to flatten them a bit). Bake at 350 degrees F for about 10 minutes.


They're actually pretty good cookies considering how few ingredients are in them. Probably not in my top three cookie recipes or anything, but they'll do in a pinch :) At least they're nice and chewy.

4 more days until Peter comes home ... :)

Popsicles

The weather here has been so nice the past few days. It makes me believe summer is really coming!

It had been raining for so long that as soon as the sun peeked through we spent almost every spare minute outside. After a few days of that I made myself at least do my daily cleaning before we headed out yesterday ... the house was starting to look pretty neglected!

Anyway, after the bathroom was cleaned top to bottom we headed out to the little pool in the backyard. The kids had a blast playing in it until we got worried about sunburns and decided it was time to hop out and re-apply some sunscreen. At that point we gave them each a popsicle (Hannah's first time having one to hold by herself!) and they had a blast dripping all over the place. I'm so glad we were outside.

Peter took the opportunity to do an informal photo shoot. Here are a couple of my favourites ...


There are many, many more pictures on our flickr site.

Bath time fun

A few months ago I started bathing Nathan and Hannah together most of the time. I never thought I would do it but I tried it when we were staying in the hotel and they had such a good time I couldn't help it. Bath time is now in the mornings with our new schedule, and although we don't get to it every day (sometimes the kids sleep in and we skip that part to get back on track) they love having their baths together.

They don't, however, love having their hair washed. *sigh* Nathan used to be fine laying back in the water, and as you can see from the picture above, he doesn't mind laying on his tummy on his own terms, but laying on their backs causes both of them to tense up. And heaven forbid I get water in their eyes! I would like to use the handheld shower sprayer as I find trying to get the soap out with just a cup takes forever. It is a 30 second job to wash their hair with the nozzle, but both of them flip out when I turn it on. I think I'll keep working at it, though. It will be worth it in the end!

I think both kids would stay in the tub forever if I let them. I just realized the other day that it's a great source of sibling play time. At the moment if I put them in a room together to play, they end up each taking a separate toy and playing with it, but in the tub they splash and play together. It's so much fun to see them having fun together.

Unbelievable

The weather for the past week has been unbelievable! It's been in the 20s all week long so we've been taking advantage of the good weather. We've visited a playground almost every day and also spent many hours in the backyard. Nathan has a sandbox back there and we're hoping to add a few more things for the kids to do over the next several months. The yard is completely fenced in so it is a great place to play.

Hannah can definitely be considered our daredevil. I decided to try her on the slide and she loved it! She would wiggle her bum at the top until she started to slide down and then would giggle the whole way down.

Nathan has really started to enjoy the playground this year. He can use most of the equipment and is much less timid than last year. There is an elementary school just a few minutes from our house and we make use of their equipment when school is out.

Sorry to bore those of you not interested in gardening, but here's my quick stats:

April 19th:
- planted green onion bulbs outside

April 20th:
- planted spinach outside
- planted garlic outside

April 21st:
- transplanted 1 pepper seed to a jiffy pot
- transplanted 2 tomato seeds to a jiffy pot
- put out some more parsley, chives, rosemary, tomato, pepper, and lettuce seeds to sprout on paper towel

A quick trip west

Since we are living in the prairies for the time being, we've decided to take advantage of the opportunity to explore parts of Western Canada that we've never been to. Until Sunday, our current hometown was the furthest west I'd ever been. When we got Peter's newest work schedule it showed that he would have 3 days off in a row. Since Calgary is a 7 hour drive away and it's somewhere we both had at the top of our list of places to check out, we headed there early Sunday morning for a whirlwind trip.

We arrived around supper time Sunday night, checked into our hotel, and promptly headed to Olive Garden for supper. Yum!! It is definitely one of my favourite restaurants. I'm incredibly boring and always get the Chicken Scampi, but it's just so good. We headed back to the hotel and Peter and Nathan went for a swim before bed.

As you can see, Nathan had a great time. This picture was taken around 9 pm - he's usually in bed by 7! We all conked out around 10.

Monday morning we were up bright and early as we had many things to accomplish during our only full day in the city. First up was the Calgary Zoo. We arrived around 10 and it was still pretty chilly. I hadn't thought to pack hats and mittens, so we improvised until it warmed up. Here are some of my favourites from the zoo. Poor Nathan walked pretty much the whole time and was dead on his feet by the time we left around 1.

For the first half hour at the zoo, every 30 seconds Nathan would ask, "Can we see the giraffes?" After covering several exhibits and seeing no sign of giraffes we asked a zoo volunteer and thankfully found our way to the giraffes. (Despite the big bright spot in this picture I still love it.)


When Nathan was obviously too tired to walk anymore we headed for lunch. We had found out that there is a Pizza Delight restaurant in Calgary. I thought I had said good-bye to their pizza, garlic fingers, and caesar salad when we left the maritimes, but I was able to get a taste of home at their out-of-the-way franchise in a subdivision of Calgary. Yum!!

Then it was off to CrossIron Mills Mall - a very new mall (I think) just north of Calgary. It was not yet on the GPS maps we borrowed from a friend, so we had to find it the old-fashioned way with a paper map.

We walked in to the first store, Bass Pro Shops, and it was an experience. This is a picture of the sign just inside the door:
We browsed the shops of the mall until it closed at 9. Hannah enjoyed the car ride we treated she and Nathan to (Nathan was not very happy once the car started moving).

After a very long day (Hannah lost 3 soothers in the mall and Nathan lost one of the new cars we bought him. Hero daddy dashed into Toys 'R Us and bought him a replacement 5 minutes before they closed) we headed back to the hotel to turn in for the night.

Here is one last picture of Hannah and Nathan playing in bed this morning before we got going for the day.

After a final swim in the pool for Nathan and Peter, we got on the road. We arrived back home around supper time tonight. I'm sure we'll all sleep well tonight!

Springtime fun

The past few days have been absolutely beautiful, if a bit windy. Despite the wind, we've spent time outside with the kids the past few days. Peter is on his 6-shift stretch of nights. That makes for lots of family time.

Yesterday we played for a while in the backyard. Hannah sat on her mats ... until the wind picked up one side and blew it on top of her head! Then she sat in the stroller for awhile. Nathan played in his sandbox while Peter worked on organizing his workshop and I 'played' in the garden (basically just breaking up the soil - trying to get it to dry faster?). After that he and Nathan played some backyard hockey. I'm going to try putting a video in this post for the first time ... wish me luck!




Today after the kids' rest time / naps we took them to a playground nearby. I think this was one of Hannah's first times on a swing. She seemed to really enjoy it. Nathan liked the slide the best. What a difference between last summer and this spring - he is so much less timid on the equipment.

Here are a couple of my favourites from the day. Many more can be found on my flickr site.