Daddy Ingenuity

The boys have been wanting a punching bag.  Daddy was happy to oblige... his way.  :)

He took an old duffle bag and stuffed it with a sleeping bag.  And hung it from the ceiling in the basement playroom.

 

All four kids go at it with gusto.

Hours of entertainment... at no cost!  What's not to love? 

Other than little boy learning rough and tumble ways at a much earlier age than I would like!

Squid Dogs

Our family has been having fun trying out new recipes lately.  We made three new ones this week.  I was looking through a Family Fun magazine the other day and found a so called "kid friendly" recipe in their February magazine - "Squid Dogs".  The kids saw it and were hooked.

We opened up a bag of mini hotdogs and set to work building our creations.

First step... spear the hotdogs with uncooked spaghetti.

You can put as many pieces of spaghetti in each as you want... it's part of the fun!

Next Step... boil the hotdogs and pasta.

Serve with some of your favorite veggies.  The kids loved it!  Hutch and I... not as much.  Was definitely a fun family activity though.

Go Alex!

Today was a day for celebrating at our house.  Alex read his very first book out loud to me today.  He read Go Dog Go - all 64 pages!  :)  I was so proud of him.  Reading has not come easy to him at all.  In fact he has really struggled and has lagged behind his peers.  He reverses his letters and he tries to read right to left.  He gets easily confused.  BUT... he has persevered.  He practices and practices and practices.  We had told him that when he read his first book out loud to us at home, we would make him a cake.  Today was cake baking day!  :)

I don't have a picture of the cake because the kids made it this afternoon while I was at work... and ate most of it by the time I got home.  LOL.

Other Alex news - he has a new found love of writing stories.  This weekend he decided he wanted to create recipes and type them up on the computer.  What???  He has never shown any interest in writing.  So. Super. Exciting!

Here is Recipe #1 (left just as he typed it):

Get a gram cracr piy crust and put sum ys crem in the gram cracr piy crust and then put it in the fresr.  wuns you thingc the ys crem is dun in the fresr put sum cande on it

CAN YOU READ IT?  CAN YOU TELL WHAT HE WANTED TO MAKE?

This is recipe #2:

Get sum ys crem and sum choclitchps and sum wip crem and scop the ys crem in to a bl and put wip crem on top of the ys crem and then put sum choclitchps on top the wip crem

So, what do you do once you create a recipe?  You make it of course!  :)

What is this???!!

Can you tell?

It's something my husband made.....

Not the shape you'd usually expect!

It doesn't taste quite right either!

Yep, it's a LOAF OF BREAD made in our breadmaker!  I knew you'd recognize it.  :)

I've been on a mission of late to have our family eat more healthfully.  I'm working toward trying to rid our house of processed foods... or at least many of them.  We're expanding our taste buds.  We're eating more things from scratch.  When our pantry shelves run bare of things like crackers, fruit roll ups, and cheez-its, I'm not replacing them.  And... we've been baking bread.... from scratch... often times (but not always) with the help of our new bread maker.

Hutch has been quite supportive... and has taken over making loaves of bread in our breadmaker.  He's made a few loaves and all have turned out well.... except tonight....  Me thinks it might have something to do with the fact that he tried a recipe entitled "traditional white bread" and used whole wheat flour rather than white flour!

Send postive thoughts our way - and recipes - as we take on this new endeavor.  Neither Hutch nor I grew up eating particularly healthy foods... and, well, lets just say the non-healthy food is much more attractive at the moment than the healthy food choices.

And, that loaf of bread... it tastes much better than it looks.  I wouldn't have torn a piece off of the top of it or anything to try it....  nah...  We'll see what the kids think in the morning.

Look Who Turned Seven!

Happy Birthday Sweeetie! 2003 2004

2005 2006

2007

2008

2009

We love you!

Sunday Questions From Mannland5

Mannland5 is having a Sunday "Getting to know you" blog carnival. For everyone who joins in, she'll donate money to the Red Cross. Go check it out here.

1. Hair color..Au naturale..or not?
Not natural... Always swore I would never color my hair... then I turned gray at 38. (I'm 42 by the way) :) Still not proud of the fact that I color my hair, but whatever... :)

2. If somebody has food in their teeth or lipstick on their teeth do you tell them?
It depends upon how well I know them. If I know them fairly well... then... definitely yes... If I don't know them well, I might say something, might not. Depends on how obvious it was and whether I felt like it would embarrass them.

3. Would you rather have a million dollars or your vision of the perfect body? Definitely a million dollars - you can do a lot of good with that!

4. Favorite magazine? Hmm... not sure on that... like reading photography magazines at the moment... Or craft magazines, parenting magazines.....

5. Bra style..lacey or plain? Plain most of the time... lacey once in a very long while.

6. If you walked into Victoria's Secret..would you most likely come out with something sexy or comfy? Unfortunately for my hubby, probably comfy. :) But who needs stuff to wear anyway!

7. Do you fake and bake? Nope.

8. What's your favorite body part on a man? Eyes - windows to the soul

You know you are a photographer when...

... Your daughter is running around the house trying to take a picture of your son (who doesn't want his picture taken) and your son shouts, "You might get me, but it will be blurry!" Guess they are all ears when I am taking pictures (i.e. begging them to sit still so that the picture won't be blurry!) :)

Favorite Photos 2009

Collages of my favorite photos of our children from 2009.

Flush

Happy New Year!

We've been enjoying a relaxing holiday here at home this year. We've managed to get quite a few projects done, but have also purposed to spend more time with the kids. As a result, I've been more aware of how incredibly creative they are and have heard so many funny things.

Elizabeth, yesterday you and Alex were in the basement playing "camping with the Native Americans" (that's what you called it). You were busy roasting something over the fire and announced, "Come on, time to roast some animal FLUSH over the fire". Daddy said, "I think you mean FLESH". Without skipping a beat you said, "No, this Indian tribe doesn't have an E in their alphabet". :)