{week 10}

the first full week of march brought more snow, wacky wednesday, more foodie pictures as well as a new TV show obsession for the girls - the pioneer woman, a couple more hats for cade's hat obsession, playgrounds, playdates & silly time with friends, and jewelry making with some of the craft supplies from grandma betty.

{the mitten}

Remember when I said I wasn't making any New Year's Resolutions, kinda? Well, other than this being the year I blog for real, regularly, with words and not just all pictures? So far - 22 days in - I'm having trouble finding topics that make my mind run & my fingers fly. Thus, there's been a lot of pictures. But honestly, most of the people who read this are family & they really just want to hear about the kids, see how they're growing & that's ok. They are growing, learning, playing, fighting, acting silly, dancing & doing all the things you do (& sometimes do not) want a 1, 3 & 5 year old to do. 

Last week a storyteller visited preschool & read The Mitten, by Jan Brett. It's a Ukranian folktale, rotold by the author, about a young boy who drops his snow mitten while playing &, unbeknownst to him, animals seek shelter inside. The end is funny & the story lends itself to a lot of easy little follow up projects. Kalea was sent home with "homework" of making a mitten (from paper!) and putting the animals inside in the proper sequence. Cassidy got in on the project & they had a fun time decorating & ordering the animals as we re-read the book. (It is amazing just how many children's books I just happen to have leftover from teaching. This was one of them!) 

Doing the craft reminded me how fun it is to "lesson plan" around a good children's book, to find a good project to go along with it & to throw in some math or reading objectives too. I'm thinking about trying to find a book every week or every other week to plan around & give the girls something to do in the afternoons once that "witching hour" hits. Anyone have some good, pre-made ideas, blogs or Pinterest boards devoted to this?

{count on it}

Grinning because she counted to 100 for the first time!!! So proud of her!

{bingo}

We're sending the weekend at Gran & Poppy's house celebrating Kalea's birthday, visiting Poppy - who is finally out of the hospital after complications from a planned back surgery & in rehab for a few weeks, helping out & spending good family time together.

Cassidy got to spend a few special minutes with Gran while the little ones napped & chose to play letter bingo. She knows all her letter sounds & is really starting to be interested in putting sounds together to make words. It wouldn't surprise me if she was reading some easy books by the end of 4K!

{budding artist}

Cassidy must have inherited some artistic tendencies from her Grandma Betty & Great-Grandpa because she's becoming quite the little artist. The other week she drew this picture...

by looking at the decoration on Kalea's dress. 

Pretty darn accurate, right?

{strawberry yogurt cake}

I came across this post via Pinterest last weekend after getting home from Elliot's Farm nearby Gran & Poppy's house, where we were spending Easter. 

We saw llamas, peacocks, chickens, roosters, goats & more with Saige & Poppy!

The girls were beyond thrilled when they realized that taste testing was allowed!

After all the hard work, we were rewarded with fresh strawberry ice-cream. De-li-cious!

All said, each girl picked nearly a full bucket & we ended up with close to 8 lbs of strawberries which we split between Gran, Aunt Dawn & us. And, even though we picked at them for the rest of the weekend there were still a lot left today - and they were starting to turn. It was time to make strawberry cake!

Strawberry Yogurt Cake

Ingredients

• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 3 Tb. lemon juice, divided
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour, divided
• ½ tsp. baking soda
• ½ tsp. salt
• 8 oz. plain Greek yogurt
• 12 oz. fresh strawberries, diced
• 1 cup powdered sugar

Instructions

1.  Preheat oven to 325°. Grease and flour a 10 inch Bundt pan. Sift together the 2 ¼ cups of flour, baking soda and salt. Mix in the lemon zest and set aside. Note: Do not leave bowl of flour in front of two year old & turn around. Blowing will be irresistible & the mess will be large.

2.  With an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in 1 Tb. lemon juice. Alternate beating in the flour mixture and the yogurt, mixing just until incorporated.

3.  Toss the strawberries with the remaining ¼ cup of flour. Gently mix them into the batter. Note: Turn around again & the 2 year old will start taking pictures with your camera!

4.  Pour the batter into the Bundt pan. Bake for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

5.  Allow to cool at least 20 minutes in the pan, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely. 

6.  Once cooled whisk together the remaining 2 Tb. of lemon juice and the powdered sugar. Drizzle over the top of the cake. Eat!!

 

Printable recipe can be found here!

{sisters}

reading together.

- Posted from my iPhone

{three lumps on a bl....}

...blanket. You thought I was going to say blog, didn't you? 

I cannot believe how big these three little lumps are getting. Cade is sneaking up on his sisters weight-wise - closing in on 15 pounds; Kalea is honestly the funniest little person I know; Cassidy may as well be 14 instead of 4. The big girls each act their age - both in good and not so good ways & I'm proud of them for generally making good choices, being polite, loving & empathetic toward each other and toward others. We have our days where they about end up sold to the gypsies but at the end of each day I know our little family is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I admit that the transition to being a stay-at-home-mom (hereby abbreviated SAHM) has been tough for me. You'd think that things would be all rainbows & puppies since I spent a couple years as an early elementary teacher so seemingly should have lots of tools in my arsenal for learning, behavior and everything, but with your own kids - and with them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - it's just different. Everything seems bigger - the highs of laughter, giggles, snuggles and baby kisses and the lows of tantrums, talking back, all out fits on the floor and disobedience. It's a work in progress here at our house, one that I'm guessing is going to be progressing for a long time! 

project 365 photo: 03.19.2011

hypothesis: gorillas blow in the wind.


outcome: hypothesis not true. "gorillas are heavy," says scientist cassidy.

-posted from my iPhone

flash cards.

Recently Cassidy has been really interested in letters, "writing" her name & playing "homework" with some baby sign language flash cards we have. I thought it might be fun to make a flash card book with her with letters so that she can start to learn what they look like & the sounds each letter makes. (Believe me, I'm not pushing her to be reading yet, but since she's interested I thought we should capitalize on that!)

I let her choose an image for each letter of the alphabet from Google Images. Then while she was otherwise occupied I printed & cut them out. Afterward she chose a picture to glue while I wrote the word on one side of the card & the letter on the other where she helped stick down the picture. As we put each card together she told me the name of the letter & what the picture was. To keep them all together I hole punched each card's corner, put on one of those hole-saver-sticker-thingys & used a ring to keep them together. Cassidy is so excited about her new book...she even wanted to sleep with it! I liked that she was able to help make the book & can understand better what it is. My guess is that we'll be doing more fun flashcard books in the future for numbers, site words & all types of things!