Staying out of trouble

We teach our kids to always keep their noses clean.

Long time, no post

The day before Mother's Day we went to the local Farmer's Market to pick up some veggies for dinner that night (grilled vegetables and tofu mixed with bow tie pasta-yum). We also picked up some peaches that the kids wanted to eat right away. What a mess, but they were so good. I'm not sure about that face that I'm making but Allie sure loved that peach.
Jack ate the peach so fast. We couldn't find the seed so we just thought that he had dropped it on the ground. I even stuck my finger in his mouth to check if it was in there.
After the peach was gone we saw him sucking on something. It was the seed. I guess he must have been hiding it in is cheek like a little chipmunk.
I've been taking the kids to the park pretty much every morning lately. It really helps the day to go better. Our favorite park which happens to be really close by has this dolphin that shoots water out of it. The kids love to play in the water and then go play on the play scape or in the sand.


Last summer the dolphin never worked so we figured it was just old and broken. We were really surprised earlier in the month when Allie pushed the button and water came out.
Allie threw something at her brother and this is me putting her in a time out. If you look very closely you can see that she is screaming and kicking. Gotta love toddlerhood.
This is Jack at the top of the play scape climbing out. He's learning from his sister to be very brave. I just thought this was a cute close up of Jack
Here is Daddy racing down the slide with Jack in the background.

So, my latest cooking adventure (other than experimenting with new vegetarian recipes) is bread baking. I've always been afraid of making yeast products because they take so long to make and if they don't turn out well then you've wasted a whole day in the process. We had a church activity that a friend of mine named Kristen taught. She showed us how to make a basic refrigerator roll recipe. I told her that I really wanted to learn to bake whole wheat bread so that I didn't have to buy the stuff at the store with high fructose corn syrup in it or spend a fortune buying it at Whole Foods or Central Market. She offered to come over and show me how to make bread using this recipe she has from a 1950's Betty Crocker Cook Book. It came out really great while she was there (of course). A couple of days later I tried it on my own and it didn't go so well. I tried again a couple of days after that and low and behold it turned out terrific (or at least I think so). Now I'm baking 4 loaves every week and a half and then freezing it to use throughout the coming week. It's so nice not to have to buy bread from the store with 50 ingredients in it. Plus it's always such a sense of accomplishment to make lunch every day for the kids on my own bread.

Adam's mom recently came to visit us for a couple of days. we had a really good time with her. I wish we had taken more pictures, but it's hard to get the kids to sit still. We didn't do much on this visit. It was nice and relaxing.

Grandma brought these two chairs with her for the kids. Of course they fought over them the whole time and almost killed themselves pushing each other over in them on the tile floors inside. So, now they are officially outdoor chairs. They still fight over them, but at least it's outside on the grass. Every morning when they go out into the backyard, they each pick their chair and then just sit in it for a few minutes before pulling it all around the yard and putting it on the trampoline.

These are some cute pictures with Grandma before she left to go back to Dallas.
Jack and Grandma
Allie and Grandma