Smoothies, shakes and cookies you bake

My oldest daughter is an A type personality there really is no doubt. I hate how she waivers from kind to ruthless from time to time but well we all have things we need to work on. Yet when she gets in a mode she follows it through until she has figured it completely out. This time it is in the area of chef. This year alone she has made me breakfast in bed, lunch and dinner on more than one occasion. Most of the time none of these were personally cooked, more like put together. But this month all that has changed. First she got an urge to make smoothies. Like her mother she did not seek a recipe but well "winged" it. I profess no education in my guessing. I usually am educated as in I take the time to look up a legitimate recipe but well then I replace, adjust or extract. Not her, she took a stab in the dark and mostly bombed but got a few good smoothie concoctions out of it all. Then she followed a magazine idea that I have in my foods to make binder. Here you see vanilla yogurt with cereal, raisin, chocolate chips, and skittles. It was not the best on bite number one but after that it was good enough for me to finish. I after all never finish something I do not like so that is an honest compliment.

Today came the need to make milkshakes. She really loves ice cream even though she dislikes milk. Again she did not want to explore the actual plans others used in making one. Nope she simply insisted she knew, needed me to buy a specific kind of ice cream. This time little bro got involved taking orders and serving taste tests asking for more customers. When everyone had their fill and the duo requested still more people to order I asked for the steak cooked and marinating in the oven. Yay for me cause dinner it bed it was!









Lastly, the up and coming chef dreamed with me options for her next attempt. Scanning Pinterest at that time this is what I walked her through. click here to see
I have to give her kudos for knowing how to set up and operate the beater. Unrolling the crescent rolls and rolling them back up required my
assistance but overall pretty excellent job!

Flashback to the past entertainment style

Hard to believe this was 4 months away from 2 years ago! My how the kids have grown, and well then again stayed the same. For example the girls, well they still have the most fun dancing together except not so little littlest gets her turn in the routines now.
The two additional kiddos belong to my dear friend Lisa. Funny how life gets so busy you don't see people as much as you would like. Enjoy the adorable, I know it made me crack up!! None of them are long so check them out.


Fashion show fanatics

Dance off

Show me your moooves

Christmas break 2011 was so much fun don't ya think?

Olympic inspiration

While I am on a video posting mode let me show what spending zillions of hours viewing and streaming the Olympics did for the kids...

click here

There of course was plenty of racing, and shot put style throwing, long jumping and more but none of those were captured on camera. Its such a bummer it will be 2 more years before the kids can get pumped to move like this again! But Winter Olympics is a bit tougher to copy too...

How about you?

Summertime horse lessons

Last year the kids ALL took horse lessons with G-MA on a regular schedule. This year though besides it being 100 to 110 for weeks Foxy (the oldest horse) is now 28 and needs more rest than before. Yet through all that 2 kids out of the 6 were motivated enough to monitor the weather and take advantage of any available time. Here you see K riding. Take note that this video was taken after she had actually fallen off of Foxy when she got startled. It was great to see her get right back up again and trust that G-ma nor I would ask her to do so if she wasn't safe. Look for me to add a video of littlest doing this herself soon. She is really the only one who asks to ride daily throughout the year.

cousin K riding video

Calming crafts

Although I already made these for my preschool kiddos the bigger ones at home made their own request to have their turn. All you need is clear tacky glue, Walmart is the cheapest at 1.97 each with Michaels being a whole dollar more each, next water bottle. I recommend collecting or using a soda bottle instead simply because they use thicker plastic than many earth friendly water bottles. Lastly, you need glitter. The original post I got this idea from (pinterest of course) said ultra fine glitter. I didn't look too hard for mine and used what I had at home so not too sure it is actually ultra fine.

First, you turn the water on to hot then fill the bottle about 3/4th full. Next you add 3/4 of a bottle of glue to the 20oz bottle though you are welcome to play around with the amount of glue. I believe the more glue the longer it takes for the glitter to settle. I didn't spend too much time trying to add more glue and glitter to adjust.
Last after you have added the glue and swirled away from the very top of the bottle then add your glitter. We used about a 1/2 small tube, though a bit more seemed better as the kids adjusted or mixed colors too. Really the most important part is hot water with the glue.
To complete shake it all up so the glitter attaches to the glue and surprise you have one of the most fun finished products!
(Funny that the children who were in the pictures are niece and nephew as we did this during electronic time).





The other craft that was completely spur of the moment was balloon shapes. I am not quite sure where I acquired an air pump for making these balloons but K started the creativity. As you can see she made flowers, then there were Olympic colored rings next along with several random things other kids made. Well, that was before the "boys" primarily my two decided popping destroying the creations was the best fun of all.  Sigh, that pretty much ended the calming factor in this weeks fun.