Fossil Cookies

We studied archaeology in our homeschool last week, so I thought it would be fun to make fossil cookies with the girls.  The girls were surprised (we rarely bake cookies) and delighted!

We made super easy peanut butter cookies...we mixed together 1 cup of peanut butter, 1 cup of sugar, and 1 egg.

We rolled the dough into balls and pressed imprint "fossils" into the dough using our playdough stampers.  We baked the cookies for 8 to 10 minutes at 350.




  Fun and simple!




(please excuse E's dirty fingernails...they are not actually dirty, but are dyed with tie-dye).






The inspiration for making fossil cookies came from here.

Tie-Dyes for Baby

Our girls were SO excited to tie-dye onesies for the new baby in our family (my bff's new baby).  O(5) is worried that baby boy won't like her onesie because the red faded to pink, but I assured her that he'll love it!



Tie-dye is a great way to make older onesies seem new again!  Here are the tie dyes we made for Sweet E before her birth. 

Catching Up

Sorry about the lack of blog posts this weekend. We've been on vacation for the past 2 weeks, and I don't have any finished blog posts saved to post. The girls have been sick since we got home, and I have zero time or motivation to write new posts (although I have tons of things to write about). We didn't have a very good internet connection while on vacation, so I've been spending my minimal computer time uploading vacation pics to our private family blog.

To those of you who have emailed me within the last month, I'm sorry for my lack of response. The cultural exchange emails have gotten precedence, and I've not answered most other emails...there's just not enough time.

A lot of you have requested that I post pics of the cultural exchange box that I received, and Julie has given me permission to do so. Since, I'm not giving the girls the packages yet (it's a large part of their Christmas), I have to be sneaky about unpacking and photographing everything. I planned to do it while they napped this afternoon, but I fell asleep with them...maybe tomorrow :)

Here are some pics from our wonderful 2 weeks at the beach...

We always tie-dye while at the beach, and the girls are SO proud of their shirts!




My "old time" girl wore her mob cap on the beach. She so silly :)


2 girls and their kites. Getting both of their kites flying at the same time and running with them on the beach was one of my favorite moments.

I was very pleased with the pics from our beach photo shoot.






We went on kayaking adventures during our 1st beach week. At one point we were almost surrounded by a pod of dolphins. Lucky O(5) was even closer to them than we were, and she said that she loved seeing the calf with it's mama. She said she felt like she was in a dream. I loved hearing them blow...so cool.

All About Red

I've recently started taking down the bags (one at a time) from O's color hunt game to teach E her colors. She LOVES exploring the objects in the bags, and I think she may know the color red (although, she hasn't said the word red yet).

I love how she put the bag on her arm to wear it like a pocketbook.

She was especially enthralled with the red hairband. (I had to watch her very closely because she was very tempted to put it in her mouth). She was very persistant in trying to put it on her wrist to wear like a bracelet.

Her persistance paid off, and she eventually got the hairband on her wrist. I love to watch her when she is so focused on a task. I love that she persisted until she accomplished her goal and never became frustrated.


Btw, you may notice that E wears a lot of tie-dyed shirts...our craft activity during our beach trip was tie dying shirts. I took lots of E's stained and plain night shirts and play shirts and made them beautiful. I love tie-dye!

Fun in the Snow

It rarely snows here, so when it does we get VERY excited. We had almost 6 inches of snow on Friday night, which is more snow than we've ever had in my lifetime. I think Elliott and I were more excited than O. Here are a few highlights...

Elliott pulled O around the yard on water skis. They were perfect for snow! O was thrilled that she was snow skiing!!!


Our inner tubes were also perfect for sledding down hills!


O and I made snow paint...I filled 3 bottles with water, and O put a few drops of food coloring in each bottle. I had a lot of fun painting our snow man. O was much more interested in eating the snow. When I asked her to help me, she said "I can't. I'm eating the snow. Snow tastes gooder than food!" The snow tasted even better after Elliott insisted that we sprinkle organic sugar on it for O to enjoy (it's healthy if it's organic, right ? :)

Our snowman building skills are pretty pathetic, but he looked pretty cool once we painted him...he looked tie-dyed :)



We made snow cream. O filled a mug with snow, and I poured half and half and a couple of drops of vanilla extract in the mug and mixed it up. She said it was delicious!


Elliott collected a bowl of snow, and we poured warm maple syrup over it. It doesn't look that appetizing in the picture, but it was VERY good.


I was surprised to see this snow sculpture on our fence...a pregnant belly and boobies :)


We played in the snow for a couple of hours, and I was SO grateful for the Beco...E was nice and cozy and slept the whole time we played.

What to do with stained onesies???

Tie-dye, of course!!! I have lots of stained hand me down onesies, so we decided to tie-dye them to make them beautiful :) I found a tie-dye kit at Michael's in the clearance section (it was normally 20 dollars, and I paid 5!), and we had a tie-dye party for Little Kicker on July 4th. It was fun to have Little Kicker's grandparents, aunt, cousin, and all of us (Elliott, O, and me) involved in making something for her. We tie-dyed 14 onesies, a t-shirt, 4 shirts for the girls (O & M), and 4 adult t-shirts, and we still have 5 packets of dye left!!!



Little Kicker is going to be a hip little kiddo :) After I took this picture, O said "I don't think 15 onesies are enough."

Learning to Tie-Dye

We learned to tie-dye shirts at the birthday party of a friend on Sunday, and it was so much fun! O went a little crazy squeezing the bottles too hard, so I had to help her quite a bit. This is definitely something we'll do again. I read on a blog (can't remember where) about tie-dyeing every year on Jerry Garcia's birthday, and I think that's a great idea!