I got a laminating machine for $20 last time I was at Costco.  I had wanted one for a while, but Todd was against the extra plastic it would use.  I convinced him it was for the greater good of the children and their activities.

Today I needed a quick activity after rest time and before dinner.  As I was walking down the stairs with the girls I saw the laminator in the office and the idea was formed.  We will make placemats for dinner!  

Maisy coloring side A of her placemat. It's Frankenstein.

Maisy coloring the B side.  It's a dinner scene complete with a poppy from the garden.

Clearly amazed at the power the laminator holds!

Proud Maisy setting her placemat.

I love the fun and creative things we'll do and make with this fancy new machine!

With Maisy in school some mornings and Maren's morning nap now a distant memory, I needed to start giving Maren, now a year and a half, some activities of her own.

So rice play it was.  I just spread out a big sheet, gave her spoons, different sized bowls a strainer and some treasures to find in the rice.

She had a great time scooping, pouring and dumping.

She eventually poured out all the rice and just have herself a little foot bath.

This kept her quite occupied for at least 30 minutes while I was able to get a free half hour! Yippee.  After about a half hour she started flinging the rice around and I decided that the activity was over.  Clean up was pretty easy, all the rice/beans left on the sheet went back into our rice container, all the stuff on the floor got swiffered and dust busted up!  

At Costco today, we met 3 SF Firefighters.  Maisy became very intersted in their profession, so I decided today would be the day I'd teach her about fire safety.  I'd seen this post (where pretty much all these ideas came from on a blog I follow called Confessions of a Home Schooler) a while ago and today was the day to use it!

First I demonstrated different ways to put out a fire.  

1. Water (take away the heat and oxygen)

Maisy put out the fire herself.

She was pretty pleased with her abilities.

2. Lack of Oxygen 

Watching over her mad fire putting out skills.

3.  Fuel (taking away the fuel for the fire)

We let the candle burn all the way to the bottom.  Without the wax, it went out.

I then went over calling 911 with her.  I made sure she knew how to unlock the phone and find the correct screen to dial 911.  We also discussed the circumstances in which she would need to call 911 and the consequenses of calling 911 innappropriately.

As a follow up to the 911 instruction we wrote down our address to hopefully cement it in her brain.  We talked about what you would tell the person on the phone if you did have to call 911.

After that we got out on the floor and pretended we caught on fire and we learned to Stop, Drop and Roll.

We also talked about crawling on the ground underneath the smoke level, covering your mouth with a cloth and feeling doors for heat before you open them.  If none of that works, I taught her to open her window and shout, "FIRE- Call 911, I'm trapped" repeatedly.

After the excitement we settled back down to do a few fun activities.

Firefigher Matching Game

Counting fire items, circling the correct number, then putting all the items in numerical order.

Tracing the firefigthers water lines to help put out the fires.

Tracing firefighter words.

We finished up by letting her watch an episode of Firefighter Sam, while I wrote this post.

Now I want to try to get in on a little Fire House visit!  We'll see how successful I am at that.  

 

We had a ton of strawberries left over from our Coachella weekend and I couldn't think of any other way to use them than to make Strawberry Jam.  It was perfect timing and great fun for a play date!

I cored and washed the strawberries in advance.  Then separated them into two big bowls.  Put aprons on the girls and let them mash, mash and mash with all sorts of tools.  They thought it was great fun and were very happy with their mad mashing skills.

Mashing Maisy.

Jamming Juna.

Maren could not quite figure out what on earth the girls were doing, so she just looked back and forth in wonder.

Hmm...

After we had 4 Cups of mashed strawberries, we put them in a pot with 1/4 C fresh lemon juice, 4 Cups of White Sugar and a long continuous peel of an apple peel (for the natual pectin).  

The girls were very excited about the idea of so much sugar!

Then we mixed it up and put it on the stove to cook.  We stirred until the sugar disolved then turned it up to boil it for a bit.  We tested for the proper amount of jelling, then scooped off the foam.  By this time, the girls were over the jelly process and were onto playing some make believe game of Kid-Mommy.  

I ladeled the jam into sterilized and hot Kerr jars and we came up with 5 medium sized jars of jelly!

The girls tried it right off the stove on toast.  They seemed like very happy campers.  I wouldn't know, I don't eat strawberries, but it was fun to make!

Yum!

Proud of their after-school accomplishments.

Tonight we are going to tackle apple butter.  (We have a lot of left over apples too!)

 

 

 

Masiy came down stairs dressed like this:

She announced that she was going on an "espadishion" and needed protection.  She was going to dig up dinosaur bones like a paleontologist.  I gave her a bowl for her findings.  

She filled it with smallish rocks and some bark.  She came inside and washed and dried the rocks after her collection was complete.

We got out our dinosaur reference cards so we could do "research" to try to figure out what kind of dinosaur she had unearthed.  

She picked out the rock that was to be the dino's head, so we looked at all the cards and picked the dinosaur that had the most similar shaped head to her dino skull (rock).  Then we filled in the rest of the rocks to make the body, legs, arms and tail.

Maisy LOVES tape.  So she decided the best way to keep these dino bones in place was to tape them down with translucent tape.  

And that's how you go on an "espadishion" in your own front yard!

 

We were invited to a natural Easter egg dyeing party with friends and kiddos.  The kids all loved it and made some very pretty eggs.  

We were lucky enough to be invited to use the brand new Mothership HackerMom's space on Adeline in Berkeley right next door to Addie's Pizza Pie.  It's a very cool space set up with room for Mom's to get crafty while kids play in the next room!  They are still getting off the ground and are working on getting it all set up, but you should at least check out their webpage. The moms are great and the idea is fantastic!  You can follow them on Facebook to keep up to date!  

We sat the kids at a long table and helped them set their eggs in jars of dye made from plant products.

Maisy checking out her egg's progress.  

Maren checking on her egg.

It was great to have so many parents around to help out and so many very patient and interested children!  Super fun.

Making egg magic happen.

Afterward we went next door with the Stewart family for some dinner.  It was definitely one of the best Tuesdays we've had in a while!

 

 

I saw the idea for this on Pinterest.  We had paint and we had TP rolls, so we went to town.  It took two days to do because we had to let the bunnies dry before we decorated.

Maisy painting away.

Drawing the bunny faces.

After the faces were completed, we glued on ears and tails and then decorated the bunny bodies with some fashion!

Our finished bunnies.

Even though Maren didn't help make the bunnies, she sure appreciates playing with them.

Happy Easter!

Wow- that happened quickly!  February and March have really rushed by us.  For some reason, I haven't been feeling like blogging, but figured I should do a little catch up before it all gets away from me.

We took a trip to LA in February for my step brother's wedding.  Congrats, Mike and Janet! Luckily enough while we were down there, we were able to visit Disneyland again with Kim, and the boys and Sarah and Drew and their girls. (Thanks again Uncle Bob!!)  We all had a blast!

Kids saying good night to Mickey.

Maisy got to meet Snow White.  I saw her walking alone near the castle and I grabbed Maisy and we jogged very quickly to meet up with her.   We were only the second folks in line to see her. Todd and I were both thrilled since we were going to take her to stand in the crazy long line to meet the princesses, but this crossed that right off our list!  Oh, and Maisy was a bit star struck too.

From LA, we were home for a day and then headed up to Tahoe to meet up with Mimi, Papa J and Uncle Steven for some skiing.  It felt great to get out and ski again!  I hadn't skied since before I got pregnant with Maisy.  Unfortunately coming off of a week in LA, the girls' schedule was so messed up and they were so over tired and cranky almost the entire time.  Maisy refused to go and play in the snow.  We have a brand new sled that has never been used.  Hopefully next time she'll feel more adventurous and want to get out.  Maren was a happy little snow girl at least! I think we were all a bit exhausted, because we didn't take any pictures with our good camera- only tiny little shots with our phones....  next time we'll be more with it!  We are still so glad we went and look forward to the next adventure!

Steven and Todd in the snow.  Their happy place!  Photo courtesy of Steven.

Kim came up for a special sisters' weekend.  It was great.  I can't believe we've never thought to do this before!  Pedis, a movie, a couple of drinks all with no kids!  Thanks to Rigo and Todd for being the main care takers that weekend.

Lunch on St. Patrick's Day.

We've been keeping busy, doing a few activities with the girls.  I saw on Pinterest you can make sidewalk paint using equal parts cornstarch to water with a few drops of food coloring. 

Maisy painting it up!

Maren had her well baby visit last week and had her last shot before kindergarten!  She weighs 22 lbs 8 oz and is 2 feet 8.5 inches tall.  She is talking up a storm and is very determined.  She does not like being strapped in or held.  She wants to experience it all first hand!  She and Maisy are getting along very well and are becomming great friends.  Maren loves dancing and being outside. She is not a fan of being left at the YMCA daycare, though.  We need to work on that just a bit.

We celebrated Uncle Steven's birthday last week as well at a great little restaurant in SOMA called Tropisueno.  Happy Birthday, Steven!!

Maisy's card for Uncle Steven.  Photo courtesy of Steven.

Giddy Maren. Photo courtesy of Steven.

Other than that, we've been busy at home crossing things off our to-do list and planting our vegetables in the garden.  We are excited to see what we can get to grow!

Hope your spring is off to a good start.  With all this rain we've had lately, I'm ready for SUMMER! Coming up next is our Coachella trip!  Can't wait!!!

We saw on Pinterest, that you could write a letter to a Disney princess and she'd write back.  So we decided to give it a go.  

Write a letter to:  Walt Disney World Communications P.O. Box 10040 Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830-0040 (color post card) or Walt Disney Company Attn: Fan Mail Department 500 South Buena Vista Street Burbank, CA 91521 (Black and White autographed photo).

Maisy wrote a very sweet letter, complete with a picture and a picture key.

After our letter writing we all walked down to our post office to drop it in the mail.

About 2 weeks later we received a postcard back from Cinderella.  It wasn't what I was expecting, but Maisy was thrilled none the less!