Bubble Painting and Sandpaper Fish

We were planning to go and feed the ducks today, but the kids wanted to paint so I thought we'd try bubble painting! I mixed some tempera paint and dish soap and a little water and gave it a test, but the color was too heavy and stayed at the bottom of the bowl so we added food coloring. Didn't make dark bubbles, but you can tell they are bubbles so it was good for us. We went outside, put on Mommy's t-shirt and started to blow bubbles. We had a few (maybe more than a few) soap in the mouth incidences, but I was starting to think they were doing it on purpose so they could rinse their mouth out and spit in the grass! They didn't really care about putting the bubbles on the paper, they were having such a great time just making bubbles! Next time we'll just use soap and water. (easy cleanup!) They ended up with three prints each and were happy about it.

Next we colored sandpaper fish. I saw this on some preschool art website a while back but this was the first time we tried it. The kids colored a fish with crayons as hard as they could and we ironed it onto their bubble printed paper. Didn't turn out. I think we needed to use a finer grade sandpaper. We ended up with little dots of crayon on our paper. Good experience to color on a different texture, but the final outcome was a bummer. Oh well. Gregory had a great time rubbing the fish together making lots of racket!

They though they'd get bigger bubbles if they worked together!

VOLES!

(This is an old photo from April when I thought we were having a great big rat problem!)

We have voles! All this time I was thinking we had rats, but yesterday I was reading the Contra Costa Times website and there was an article about how San Ramon is being invaded by VOLES! I also read they like eating veggies so that answers our problem of who keeps eating our lettuce! Now we need to figure out how to keep them out of our garden!

Splishin' and a Splashin'

Grandma is out of town so we went to hang out with Grandpa and Hibachan today. The kids picked lots of tomatoes, played in the pool for almost two hours and kept Grandpa busy all day!

Bailey zipping around in the octopus

Gregory taking a break in the shade

Gregory driving around shooting water at us

Practicing kicking

Grandpa giving Bailey a ride

Daddy with Gregory

Daddy with BOTH kids!

Daddy's "action" shot

Trip to the Discovery Museum

I was feeling a bit adventurous today so I decided to take the kids to the San Jose Discovery Museum by myself. I don't mind taking the kids places alone, it's the traveling to new places alone that I'm not good at. I get lost ALL THE TIME so of course I got lost going and coming home (not to mention the homeless women who scared me half to death in the parking lot!), but the kids had a great time!

Playing with the alphabets in the under 4 section
(we should've stayed here longer!)

Giant Etch-a-Sketch

Gregory playing with the pulley

Gregory trying to float the balls on the water

This was their FAVORITE!

Eating musubis in the park -
until we got attacked by wasps!

Bubble blower - another favorite

Playing in the tree house

Can you see Gregory hiding in this tire?
It was HUGE!

Another hot spot (for Gregory).
The floor moved up and down

Bailey loved playing on this wall.
You push the pins to make an image of your hand (or whatever)

Journaling

I've been wanting the kids to start journaling and since we are going on a little trip soon, I thought that it would be the perfect opportunity for them to give it a try. We have something fun planned for each day and it'll be easy for them to think of something to write about. Today we made our journals.

Found these great journals at Walmart

Cut some craft paper to fit the front and back. Break out your jar of Mod Podge and paste it on the cover (I think next time I will spray mount it onto the journal - got a bunch of bubbles! BOO!) Decorate it and Cover with Mod Podge.

We made some for Oliver and Emma so they can journal their vacation too!

New Toothbrush = Painting with Old One!

Yesterday we went shopping for new toothbrushes. Well, that meant we needed to do something with our old ones! So after we got home we went on a pine cone hunt. There are lots of pine trees behind our house so we didn't have far to search. We came home with a bag of pine cones and decided to use our toothbrushes as paint brushes. The kids dressed in some of my old t-shirts cuz I knew this was going to be messy and away they went! After they started painting them, Bailey said it'd be great to sprinkle them with sprinkles and let them dry - so that's what we did too. We had paint all over, but it was fun. Next I want them to try spaghetti painting!










No one wants to look at the camera these days!

Girls' Day Out

Today I spent the entire afternoon with my friends from high school! We met for lunch at FAZ at noon and ended up chit chatting until 6pm! YIKES! Where did the time go? We caught up on our kids, chatted about high school days and just had a great time. It was great to see everyone again.

Homemade Apricot Pineapple Jam

The kids and I LOVE Apricot Pineapple Jam (Daddy hates anything to do with apricots) and we especially LOVE it when Grandma makes it. There's nothing like homemade jam!

Today we went to Stockton to help her make some. Bailey's job was to take all the pits out and make sure no brown spots went into the bowl. She did a great job. But once that was done, the rest was pretty much grown up stuff. So she played with Grandpa and Gregory.

We made 4 batches today and Grandma had already made 2 a couple of days ago. So I think we are all set for the year! (or two)

Grandma showing Bailey how to pit the apricots

Grandma processing the apricots in the food processor

Now, we start the cooking

Lots of stirring

Here's our cooked jam!

Pouring them into jars.
(Sure looks like Grandma is doing all the work!)

YUMOLA! Jars and jars of Apricot Pineapple Jam! I'm thinking in the fall I'm going to drag everyone out blueberry picking and make blueberry jam!

Chocolate Cake in a Mug

I saw this recipe for Chocolate Cake in a Mug the other day and thought the kids would get a kick out of making their own little cake! We gave it a try this morning and they thought it was the neatest thing.

Here's the recipe:

CHOCOLATE CAKE IN A MUG

4 Tablespoons cake flour
4 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons cocoa
1 Egg
3 Tablespoons milk
3 Tablespoons oil
3 Tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
1 Mug

Instructions:

Mix flour, sugar and cocoa
Spoon in 1 egg
Pour in milk and oil, and mix well
Add chocolate chips and mix again
Put in microwave for 3 minutes on maximum power (1000watt)
Wait until it stops rising and sets in the mug
Tip contents out of mug onto saucer.

Here they are mixing up their "egg"

Adding the wet ingredients to the dry

Mixing...

And here's what it looks like! I think you may need a real egg here. Ours looks a little flat, but it's spongy and cake-like! We're saving them for dessert after dinner tonight.