Yummy Things

In July 2008, Aubrey came to stay with us for about a week. She had just returned from Scotland and got addicted to hot tea while overseas. When she was at our house, she quickly converted me to a hot tea drinker. This was an accomplishment since I was a self-proclaimed "Hot Beverage Hater." Now, my tea bag collection is quite embarassingly large. I have different flavors for different moods or seasons of the year. This new flavor was in my stocking this year. It is officially in the Top 3 of Kim's Fave Teas! It has a great peach flavor and is perfect with 2, yes 2, tablespoons, yes tablespoons, of sugar! I am a Southerner after all! :)
This yogurt is another of my new favorite yummies! I think it has a hint of mocha in it, but Mom thinks I am crazy about that fact. Rylan and I enjoy one for dessert every few days. For 2 points on WW, it is WELL worth it!
Ah, where have you been all my cooking life Italian Herb Grinder?!?!?!??! We are a big Italian Herb Blend family. The grocery store was out of the $2 variety, but we were out, so I splurged on this spice wonder. It. is. won.der.ful!!! I don't know what all spices get ground out, but it is perfect! It reminds me a bit of that olive oil plate at Carabba's. From now on, this is my spice treat for our recipes.

Happy eating, drinking and cooking from my kitchen to yours! :)

Valen-gifts

My sweet husband was sneaky this Val Day. He took each of the boys to go pick me out a gift from TarJay. He said he was taking them individually for father-son time and I was clueless. He pulled off a sweet surprise for me. It made me laugh.hard. to see what the boys picked out of the whole entire TarJay store for their momma.

Here is my sweet Rylan... He chose pink (my fave color) and brown (his fave color) chocolates (our fave treat to split) and an exercise band. Not quite sure about the rationale behind the exercise band, but he was thrilled for use it too. I guess maybe my sweetie will encourage me to "move more" as WW says!
And that silly Jacob...he picked pink (my fave color) and frog (one of his fave animals) houseshoes MaryJane style (my fave). He said that I have all the holiday house shoes, but not "Bal-entine" (as he says) and 2 pink pens. The pens are to help me make more lists. Do these kids know their momma or what??? (I love Rylan in the background!!!)
However, the BEST gift was the one from Jason... not only did he get Glee #2 CD, but together, we gave ourselves this...
that's right, we listened to Dave R and CUT UP ALL the credit cards! Good-bye debt!!! We are committed to becoming Debt Free and step one is having fun with the scissors and cutting these pieces of plastic to shreds. It felt great!!!

V is for...

VALENTINE!! You knew I could not resist. I mean really, how many 'V' things are there to do a craft about?!?!?! To learn the letter V and have some craft-y fun, we used stamps, fun foam and glitter. I usually have a strict "no glitter" policy due to the fact that glitter stays for a LONG time, but it's Val Day!!! :)

First, here is Jacob gluing on his big lacy heart.
Then came the learning. The boys have been able to orally spell their name for a long, long time. They can recognize the 5 letters in both of their names and frequently see them on building, billboards, grocery shelves. I totally love to hear them see a letter they know - the teacher in me is happy! At Mardel the other day, Jacob said, "I starts with M for Mommy." Then Rylan chimed in, "And it has a R for me and D for Daddy. I am sad it has no J for you brother." I love those boys!

So here was the learning part...oh, another side note to all parents for small children. When you teach your child to write his/her name use ONLY ONE CAPITAL LETTER!!! The teacher in me gets up on my huge box of Tide could go on for hours, but I will simply say this in this forum, teach them correctly, so their teacher does not have to un-do it and teach re-teach the most important word in their little worlds - their name! :)

Back to my boys... I know they say the letters and recognize the letters of both their names, but I wanted to see if they could sequence them using lower case too. So on a big foam heart I wrote the capital letter and on smaller hearts I wrote one lower case letter per heart. We "mixed and fixed" their names several times before sticking the hearts down. They did pretty good - not mastered, but still fun for them.


And their beautiful "V is for Valentine" projects!

Valen-yummies

We are turning out to be a cut-out cookies crazy family! For Val Day, we HAD to make some heart cookies! Jason was out-of-town this week, so we had some hearts waiting for him on Friday when he got home. This is one of my new favorite photos of my darlings - Jacob's cutting eyes and dimples make me smile. And Rylan is trying not to be annoyed that Jacob is once again tackling him. Those two boys!!!
Can you tell how much they LOVE to pound and roll out the dough???
Then they cut the hearts and added red sugar to the tops. Some of the cookies for red hots, some did not. Jason, Rylan and Kim like the red hots, Jacob does not.
A few of the delicious cookies! They did not last long at this house! :)

Cut-Out Cookies

This recipe came from the first cookbook that Martha, Jason’s mom, had as a girl. The cookbook was published by Imperial Sugar. Jason, Justin and Martha made these cookies every Christmas while they were growing up. We started the tradition when Rylan and Jacob were born. Happy baking!

2 ½ C flour

1/8 tsp. salt

½ tsp. cream of tartar

½ tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. nutmeg

¼ tsp. cinnamon

½ C shortening

1 C white sugar

1 egg

1/3 C milk

1 tsp. vanilla

Sift flour, salt, cream of tartar, soda, nutmeg and cinnamon in a medium mixing bowl. In a large mixing bowl, cream shortening and sugar. Add one egg to sugar mixture. Then add milk and vanilla to the sugar mixture. Slowly add flour mixture to sugar mixture. CHILL FOR 2 HOURS.

Preheat oven to 375. Roll dough to about ¼ inch thick then cut out with favorite shapes. Add colored sugar, etc. Bake for about 10 minutes.

H is for...

HEART!!! With all the Val. candy, I could not resist a little learning too! With one bag of conversation hearts, we had 3 or 4 days of learning fun. Here is day one... capital letter H. Rylan concentrated so hard while counting to 5 before eating 1. He told me H is also horse (his fave animal) and Henry (one of his Top 3 trains) and happy.
Jacob was (once again) very methodical in each heart placement. He is SO my kid! :) He said that H is hamburger, Half-Price books and Hedgie (from Hedgie's Surprise by Jan Brett).

The finished products!!!

A little History...

It is no wonder that I LOVE this show!!! The music is so fun and well sang (is that even a word???) Holly had ooshed and gooshed for weeks and Jason and I took the plunge over Thanksgiving. My in-laws love it too and they had several on their DVR. Everyone said they just KNEW I would LOVE the show. And they were right! And people who have known me for a long time, know that I was Glee!!! Back in the 90's I was in our high school show choir! I loved the singing. I loved the dancing! I loved the friends, being on stage and entertaining people. It was a place that made many of my fondest high school memories. I loved my director and the songs she chose. We sang a fun Chicago medley, "Fire in the Furnace" (which is the story of Daniel 3), "Java Jive," "All That Jazz" and more. Here is my wonderful partner, Josh. We had SO MUCH fun together!!!
Now some of you will mock the gold sequins, but I LOVED them! It was a symbol of choral greatness at my high school. I still have my sequins! Yes, I do! Safely tucked away in the high school memory box. For some *strange* reason my senior year was the last year for the sequins. Such a shame! Below is us at the end of some song at Pop Show. I think it was "All That Jazz", but I can't remember. I'm on the far right.
Glee is much more pop than we were and has more stylish outfits, but Chamber Choir will always have a soft spot in my heart - sequins and all! :)

Cave Time

The boys love to build caves. We build them over the dinner table or between the couches, but their favorite cave is our bed! Several times a week, they will find their flashlights and un-do all the covers to make a tent out of our bed. Doesn't it look like fun? I love the mischeif in Jacob's eyes!

And Rylan is FULL of giggles!!!
(Thank you Katherine for the adorable Thing 1 and Thing 2 jammies! We love them!!!)

Happy 63rd

Back in January, my sweet mom turned 63! She wanted to have a cozy dinner at home, so that is what we did! Jason grilled her favorite Citrus grilled chicken. I made my Grandmama's Potato casserole. Dad picked up cheesecake from Salt*grass. All 8 of us crowded around our dinner table and enjoyed a delicious meal with lots of laughter and happiness!

Jacob and Rylan helped Granna blow out her candles! They really wanted her to have a Thomas the Train party...

My momma and dad! Mom was showered with lots of fun presents - a new Vera B. wallet, gift cards to favorite restaurants and a blurb book of this blog!
We all love you Mom!!! Happy late birthday!

Charoits

One of the neighborhoods near us has a really fun park. We go often and I need to take some more photos next time too! The boys absolutely love these things to ride. In fact, they call them their chariots! We will act out Elijah and the Chariot of Fire or Mean Pharoah and the Red Sea. They think it is fabulous! Seeing these ride-on toys through the eyes of a 3 year old is so refreshing to me. When I see them, I see a motorcycle and a whale, but not an imaginative child. It warms my heart to see things through my boys eyes!

Trains, trains, trains!

For Christmas this year, Santa brought a little bit of Sodor to our house! The boys were both thrilled with the train table. Santa also brought Toby's Windmill. Rylan was especially happy since Toby is one of his two favorite engines. Rylan loves, loves, loves, Toby and Percy. For Christmas 2008, all Rylan asked for was Percy. He carries both of them everywhere. He leaves them in his car seat when we go in a store. He asks almost every meal if Percy and Toby can join us for the meal. His third favorite train is the Passenger Car that we got when we rode Thomas in October. In this photo, you can see Percy, the PC and the Windmill and that is why I posted it. My sweet boy with his 3 favorite train things!

Tools, tools, tools!

My little repairman hard at work! That Jacob, he can fix anything!!!

February Tub

Ever since Heather led me to my favorite website, I have been doing these sensory tubs. Allie over at NTFFC gives a great rationale for why to do them. Here's the Kim version: Kids need to build fine motor skills. By playing with various objects they will work on their fine motor (finger control) development without even knowing it! Also, these tubs allow the exposure to various textures and allow kids to practice measurement, patterning, sorting and a whole host of other academic skills. Enough teaching, here's the fun! :)

For February, I got baby lima beans, black beans, heart confetti, and red and pink pompoms. I dumped them all into an old Tupper*ware pie plate holder and here's the tub! The boys used the measuring cups to move the beans back and forth and to see which cup held the most. We also sorted handfuls of the mixture into piles then created ABABAB patterns. Of course, they just thought they were having fun making a small mess!

Notice Rylan's tongue...That cracks me up because I do the same thing! hahaha

Sticky, Messy Fun!

The first time I did this activity was in college at HU. It was Dr. Clara Carroll's first semester at HU and she taught "Teaching Math and Science in the Elementary Grades." It was an AWESOME class! Our little posse was all together and we had MORE FUN making this than any other thing in that semester!

Since I had so much fun making it, when I got my first job teaching first grade, I decided that it would be an annual event in my classroom...and it was! I did not take time to scan photos of my students, but rest assured, they LOVED it as much as I did!

So what is this project??? Here's the book...
Here are the materials...
And here are my sweeties mixing the gooey oobleck! All you do is add a little green food-colored water at a time until you can stir it. (Probably about 1/4 C water to 1 C corn starch)


The neat thing about homemade oobleck is how it changes from solid to liquid as you open and close your hand. It oozes through your fingers and makes a super, fun mess! After reading the book several times, the boys were ripe with anticipation. But, the texture kind of freaked them out!

Jacob, who was most excited to make it, was the least impressed. :(

But Jason loved it!!!Hope you take the plunge and make some oobleck! For clean-up I used my Pampered*CHef stone cleaner scraped on the table and a wet rag - easy as pie!