Slumber party

Miss M's best friend spent the night here last weekend for the first time.  Miss M watched an episode of Kids Baking Challenge on Food Network with me one day and saw kids cooking real food. She was so intrigued and wanted to know why she couldn't do it. I told her it was because the kids on the show were at least ten years old and knew the difference between a pie pan and a cake pan.  The episode we watched was dinner impostors where the food needs to look like dinner but taste like dessert...so maybe it was dessert impostors. I don't know anymore. It's late.  The kids were making chips and salsa out of sweet stuff and Miss M was hooked. She begged me every day to let her make salsas out of fruit. I kept putting her off but when A came over for a play date we made the fruit salsa.  I cut up fruit and lemons and gave them a bowl of sugar and told them to go to town but they had to eat it when it was done.  

I fried up some flour tortillas and had them coat them in cinnamon and sugar. They were so amazingly delicious. I wanted to eat them all. Oh the things you learn from working in a Mexican restaurant in high school.  The girls squeezed, mashed, sprinkled until they got the perfect combination for their salsa. After dinner we circled the salsa around the table for everyone to try and comment on what they liked about it. The salsas were very different and really delicious. I was impressed. It was a successful project/challenge for the girls.  

We let the kids watch a movie and then read stories and sent them to bed.  All in all a productive and busy night.

Sunday morning A woke up before all the others. She woke at 7am so not really that early. Willie woke at 8am, Cater at 9am, and Miss M finally got her buns out of bed a little after 10pm.  I am so happy my kids don't wake up every morning at 5:30am. I would lose my mind and I think internally the kids know their life is dependent on their ability to sleep :)

I had made donut dough the night before and so when A got up we made fruit loop donuts together. She requested purple frosting and since she was the only one up she got purple frosting. She was such a good helper and we had fun watching, what else, Ponies and chatting about life.  

After everyone was dressed and ready we headed for the gym for our routine Sunday of soccer practice, kids club and rock wall climbing.  I love Sunday.  

Busyness

Miss M received a sewing machine from Santa.  It is the greatest gift she's ever received. She is in love with crafting things.  She was hung up on making mini pillows. We currently have enough mini pillows for every stuffed animal in our house to have two.  She then got creative and moved on to making sleeping bags for really tiny stuffed animals. Great Grandma or Aunt Lynne bought sheets of felt which is the fabric she's using and it's perfect. It's 12 pieces of felt for $1.00 at the Dollar Tree.  I know b/c I just bought three more packages and they were gone in one day.  She also sewed felt together like pages of a book and got a pen and drew pictures to correspond with her story.  I am not entirely sure where her love of sewing came from but I think it has to do with My Little Ponies.  Oh those silly ponies are everywhere in our life.  

The sewing machine isn't a real sewing machine but don't tell Miss M. It has real needles.  There are three needles encased in plastic so they can't hurt her.  The needles move up and down like a real sewing machine but b/c there are three needles they essentially knit the fabric together without thread.  This is why the felt fabric works and other fabric wouldn't work as well or probably at all.

She also likes the old-school Amelia Bedelia book.  Amelia Bedelia makes a lemon meringue pie and the people she works for just love it.  Therefore Miss M has been harassing me to make a lemon meringue pie. And Miss M gets what Miss M wants.  So we made a pie.  I was quite impressed with our masterpiece.  

I was mostly impressed with my ability to create stiff peaks. 

Miss M ate the pie which was impressive. Usually she wants to start baking and then not acknowledge the project again.  It was pretty tasty.

Willie's mouse drawing from school.  The blue circle thing is his mouse.  His mouse has a really long tail and after walking in the yellow paint he had green feet. Will struggles to want to go to school every single day but he does love it and he does so well.  The teachers say he is a leader and the other students look up to him and follow his lead.

Everyone loves to play race cars!

Willie's dino-hat. I just love it. Kayleen made it for him before she went back to school.

We got a new printer. I can't go into the details of how/why we got the new printer b/c it was mentally taxing but we have a new printer. This printer is all the rage. Miss M is obsessed with wanting to print things.  They like to print My Little Pony coloring pages.  They each have their favorite pony and want to pick which page to print. And then after it's printed we have to make copies of it.  Who knew there was such excitement in a printer.

Cater found her goggles again...oh boy.

She likes to play with babies. She also likes to be the mom and have the adult be the baby. The best part is she wants you to take a nap and won't let you move or talk.  It's awesome until another kid starts demanding something from you.  Then everyone is mad.

Willie and Cater like to eat snap peas.  They don't want the shell so they snap open the peas and get the pea and eat it and leave the rest on the floor for me to pick up later.

Wednesday is Willie and Mom after-school play date.  He gets out of school at 11:15am and has gymnastics at 12:30pm.  I take him to lunch and then to gymnastics. We can't go home or he will not leave again. And he isn't thrilled with gymnastics right now b/c the first week they put him in the five year old class. The five year old class is an hour vs 45 minutes and it's harder.  We went back this week after a two week hiatus and he enjoyed himself with minimal whining.  He loves to eat at Chick-Fil-A and Potbelly's.  Isn't he such a handsome little lunch date!