Almond-Honey yum

I've stopped trying to categorize if I make a bread, a cake, a muffin, or some thing else. Since the kids call everything I put in the oven "yum" I'll go with that.

1 C Butter
1 C honey
1 C almond butter
4 eggs
2/3 C Tapioca
2/3 C millet
2/3 C brown rice
1 1/3 C oats
2 tsp baking soda
1 TBS gum

Cream butter. Add honey and cream some more. Add almond butter and cream even more. Add eggs and mix thoroughly. Slowly add the dry stuff then portion into containers to bake @ 350°F.

This is the first recipe in a while that I haven't had cinnamon or vanilla in, but Chris says they will be yummy. They went into the muffin cups well so that's always a plus. I'll update with a picture, though it won't be much different than a lot of other pictures.

Family Egg Hunt

Me + Younger Bro + Dad

Dad + Big E

Dad + M

G displaying his finds

A showing off her golden egg.

G finding eggs

A & G ready for the egg hunt

All the kids of my cousins ready to go find 200 eggs.

Yard Work (Again)

It has finally dried out enough here to finish the swing set.  We set it in place and Chris finished it over the weekend. Then amazingly both kids wanted to do nothing but play on it.  Today when A came home from school the first thing she did was put on her mud shoes to go play.  The kids and I helped some. A couple of girls who live in an adjacent back yard noticed A out (and they go to school with her) and asked her and GMan to come play.  The kids jumped the two fences between our yard and theirs and played for HOURs both Saturday and again Sunday.  It is nice to meet a few more faces in the neighborhood.  If the kids were to walk on foot it would be about a quarter mile walk.  GMan is surprisingly adept at jumping fences we found out which surprised us since A is more of the climber than he is.

Yard Work

This past week Chris+ kids have worked really hard to get a spot in our yard leveled enough for a swing set. Chris has been putting in a French drain of sorts in the middle of what we call "the river" when it rains. We had a lot of lava rock in the front that we wanted to dispose of so he's dug up the back yard to bury the rock. Now we need it to be dry enough to actually level the ground out, but today they started putting the main section together. GMan is super excited that he will get a swing set. He's been asking about it since it was delivered a few weeks ago. We now have slightly fewer rocks in the front flower beds so hopefully we can put in some new plants and things in the coming weeks.

We also started some container gardens. We put strawberries in them so hopefully they will grow. We repurposed some carboys from work into plastic containers. They should be good so hopefully the plants will grow. A says she loves strawberries so hopefully they will be eaten.

Other than that the twins are getting big. A goes back to school after spring break and has decided that being a mom is hard work. She'll just keep her baby doll for now. 😃 

MoBot + Sehorn visit

This past weekend we introduced the twins to Mimi & Paw Paw and Grandma Sehorn. They made the trip up from OK and we had a good couple of days. We managed to get to the botanical garden and see the orchid show again. Miss A remembered a shocking amount from the scavenger hunt they had to help keep purple occupied. She also did a significantly better job at writing the parts of the orchid in their scavenger hunt booklet. GMan became PawPaw's shadow and refuses to stay further than a shadow would the entire time they were around. PawPaw didn't realise that GMan light take him seriously so he told GMan that if HMan picked his nose deep enough then he could touch his brain.

Last week we had student led conferences at school. The teacher has been great and helpful all year. She's not ever quite sure what to do with Miss A, but that's normal and what I'm coming to expect. We discussed the advanced/gifted/whatever they call it these days program and her teacher thinks she is definetly a candidate. Hopefully curing her of the boredom will help her get past the learning to read hurdle she's set up for herself.

We've also really started fighting with GMan about wearing his glasses. He is slowly getting better but has had to miss out on things because of not locating his glasses.

Work continues to be good for me and Chris is doing well with 3 guys at home. They make a few jaunts a week and it is getting easier I'm told.

Sunday Afternoon Nap

The bigger kids are increasingly less likely to take a nap. After lunch the neighbor kids were out so ours wanted to play as well. After they came in they wanted to play a game. A wanted them to have their candy canes and a stuffed animal. I suggested that we make it a game to see who falls asleep first. GMan increased the game by adding a blanket to the mix of things he wanted. He even shared with Big Sister. However, I'm thinking that Big E won.

Sweet Boy

As I'm on maternity leave and unable to do "strenuous" exercise, I've been going to the Y for yoga. I take GMan with me while the twins scream at Chris for letting their food source leave. They don't understand that I'm coming back and I figure giving them a shorter duration before I go back to work is good for everyone. This morning driving home from yoga GMan told me, "Mommy, when I'm your age I'll take you to the Y so you can go to yoga class. I'm going to do yoga class too." He's really started saying things like this a lot. They are regularly highlights of the day and some of the best ones begin, "when I was a puppy..."

This week has brought lots of frustration for A as we challenge her to read. Her sight words are repetitive and easy so we found some easy readers that are at least 50% sight words so she can see them in context. She'd rather do the simple stuff but is getting better at the reading books and realizing just read for us. It normally takes her 2 or 3 times reading through the book to memorize it, so we will be visiting the library a LOT to keep her challenged I think. Maybe this summer we can start her with the library reading club.

This week A lost her 2nd tooth. We think it is because she's got the first one coming in and it made the 2nd one loose. It came out as she used her teeth to rid herself of her gloves one of the cold days here. She forgot to tell the tooth fairy about the tooth though when she put it under her pillow. Last night she very adamantly reminded me that she had lost the tooth and the tooth fairy better come to give her something, anything, just like it did for a girl in her class.  We hadn't really discussed doing anything as after the first one came out she lost it and never even thought about putting it under her pillow. She said she didn't care what the tooth fairy brought her, just anything.