Leaves

I opened my door this morning to let my dog out and I saw the greatest thing, leaves on my back porch, yes leaves. I have been a home owner for just over 10 years and this is my third house in those 10 years and I finally have leaves to clean up. I know, in a couple of weeks I will be cursing those leaves, but today I am celebrating them. I'm celebrating because that means I have a tree. In my past two homes I had to plant trees in the bare backyard and they never grew large enough to be considered an actual tree. To me they looked like twigs supported by ropes and steaks in the ground. But now, I have a tree, a big, climbable, leaf falling tree. I have leaves to clean up.

After thinking about cleaning those leaves I thought about all the messes the kids make throughout the day that I dread cleaning up when really I should be celebrating the messes. It's exhausting to follow the kids around all day cleaning up after all the little things they do. To be completely honest, I often avoid doing activities because I know there's going to be a mess to clean up after they're done, such as painting. My kids LOVE to paint, but there's always a mess. I need to change my outlook and celebrate the fact that I have budding artists who LOVE to paint and make messes. Now granted, their finished products are far from Monets, but it's about the process not the product. I think today is the day Hannah learns the joys of finger painting and an art smock.

Storytime

Earlier I saw Heidi reading a Nursery Rhyme book out loud so I told Hannah to go sit with her sister and she walked right over and plopped down next to her. Heidi kept reading and I thought it was super adorable. Not only are they dressed alike but big sister is reading to her baby sister, fun moments!

Rainbows Rainbows

It's no secret my daughter is obsessed with rainbows right now. Anytime she draws or paints there's a rainbow in the picture. I sometimes feel like that episode of How I Met Your Mother where one of Lily's student shows her rainbow after rainbow after rainbow... that's my daughter, she's going to make her kindergarten teacher explode one day. So today's activity was to make a rainbow. I drew a rainbow on each of their sheets of paper then tore apart all the colors of construction paper and they got to glue the pieces of paper on to the rainbow. What is it about kids love of glue? Thank goodness for glue sticks or I'm sure we'd have globs of glue all over the table and bodies and probably even hair. Thank you to the inventor of glue sticks. Heidi was super excited to do the activity and so was Noah, at first. Then his excitement faded after the color red and all he wanted to do was put glue all over the paper. Oh well, at least he did the red. On a side note, I am now completely out of construction paper, again. So please feel free to donate a package of construction paper to the Menchaca Munchkins before they decide to draw on the walls.

Cookies

Baking cookies is always a fun summer activity... both in the process of making the cookies and then getting to eat them! On Saturday I let the kids make oatmeal raisin cookies as their activity. You should have seen their faces light up at the word cookie. I happened to have all the ingredients on hand so it was very easy to do. I let them mix the ingredients and then plop the dough onto the cookie sheet. They didn't really enjoy touching the dough because it was kinda sticky so eventually I used my cookie dough scoop so nobody's hands would get "icky". After they baked came the best part, eating cookies! Heidi asked me, "is this your way of sneaking oatmeal into my body." My response, "yep, you got me!" I love my kids!

Banana Smores

Today we made banana smores as our summer activity. First I cut open the bananas for the kids and then let them pile mini marshmallows and chocolate chips all over the banana. After that I covered them in foil and popped them in the oven. It would be fun to do it on the grill, but it's just way too hot to do that outside. After they were warmed and melted a little I sprinkled some graham cracker type cereal on top for the crunch.
When it came time to eat them Heidi ate every single bit of her's and Noah ate all the marshmallows and chocolate. Funny thing is, he loves bananas and Heidi doesn't really care for bananas. Silly kids. Once again Hannah missed out because she was still napping. Oh well, maybe next time!

Target Shooting

Today's summer activity was nothing but FUN! Ok, it was a lot of work too, but the kids had so much fun doing the activity it was well worth it. Today we had a little target shooting with water balloons. I filled water balloons (about 30 - 40), drew a target on our fence with sidewalk chalk, and let the kids go to town throwing the balloons at the fence. The kids were already in their swimsuits because we went to swim lessons this morning so we just went straight to the backyard after lessons and began our target practice. The blog I read this from drew a target on their driveway, but because Hannah was awake we needed to be in the back yard where she could walk around and not risk her walking into the street.

And of course at the end Hannah wanted "more".

Color Popcorn

Today's summer activity: colorful popcorn. This was really a trial for Heidi's upcoming Aloha Rainbow Birthday Party. I am planning on making rainbow color popcorn as part of the party favors so this was a chance to try out a recipe. I chose a sugar crunch popcorn recipe and boy was it easy and super yummy! Here's the blog I found it from: http://jamiecooksitup.blogspot.com/2011/07/sugar-crunch-popcorn.html. I popped the popcorn and placed the popped popcorn in Tupperware, then made the sugar coating while the kids watched me stir it. The coating took only a couple of minutes to make on the stove. Then I poured it on top of the popcorn, put the lid on, and let the kids go to town shaking their containers. Heidi wanted blue popcorn and Noah wanted green. It was quick, easy, and super yummy. This is the recipe we'll be using for her upcoming birthday party!