Painting

I love to see my children paint together.

Homemade Pasta

We've had homemade pasta three times now, since getting the pasta maker from my sister. First we had regular spaghetti with red sauce, next was stroganoff, and recently we had chicken noodle soup. Mmm, gotta love homemade. Plus it quickly became a daddy/son project. I don't even know the dough recipe, nor have I turned the crank. I love to see my guys cooking together.

Culinary Experiment

Inspired by friends who make vegetable pates and add them to their food for extra nutrition, we added last night's leftover yam to this morning's pancakes. We didn't get the texture just right, but the flavor was good. It's a whole new world of veggie use for us. We'll see what else we do with pates.

Playdough

Easy to make, fun to play.

Recipe from my sis:
1 cup water
1 Tbs. vegetable oil
1/2 cup salt
1 Tbs. cream of tartar
food-coloring
Heat in saucepan until warm, remove from heat, then add 1 cup flour, stir and knead

Halloween

My son came up with this costume idea for himself and his sister, luckily in time enough for Grandma to make it for him. Part of his concept was to hand out toys to children. So we bought him a bag of silly bands to put in his Santa bag. He handed them to anyone who would take one. He was more focused on that than getting candy.

"My Turn"

I heard a woman once say that she preferred to do things herself rather than try to include her children, because she could do it so much faster. Totally not my philosophy. I like that my children are interested in helping and I don't mind taking the time to teach them. I easily worked on other kitchen clean up while my daughter took her turn with the broom. I think positive experiences makes cleaning enjoyable and makes good helpers out of them later. My four-year old, for example, helped me wash the kitchen and bathroom walls last week and was, not just going through the motions, but actually very helpful.

"Moofie. I love it."

Everybody loves it when Daddy makes smoothies. He uses frozen fruit and yogurt.

Pollyanna

 

We read to the children before bed. We are about halfway through Pollyanna. It is humorous, lighthearted and so far totally recommendable for families with young children. I chose it as the inspiration for the title of my blog simply because I feel grateful for my life, and particularly this time in my life when I get to stay home with my children. 

Our list of chapter books we've read together includes:

The Little House on the Prairie (Series)

Charlotte’s Web

Beauty

Peter Pan

The Secret Garden

Winnie the Pooh

The Jungle Book (opted to stop after the Mowgli stories, heavy content for our little ones)

Pippi Longstocking 

I love this time together. I enjoy the books and the discussions about them with my son. It's been over a year and a half since we began the Prairie books and he still talks about them. During the day we read plenty of smaller children's books, but the chapter reading at night is something I love.