Unforgettable Childhood

Well, I am getting ready to load up my 3 and 6 year old girls for a trip to Hobby Lobby. Unfortunately, the nearest Hobby Lobby is 1 1/2 hours away. (And this 1 1/2 hours is through the middle of what my girls have labeled as “nowhere land”. It isn’t just slow traffic through a big metropolis. My cell phone doesn’t have service and the towns are few.) But, this is a much needed trip. . .

I am excited to get out of my little town for the day, but shopping with my girls in tow always makes me a little nervous. Some trips are great. Everyone gets along and I don’t end up with tons of extra packages. Some trips it seems that we are all almost in tears before we head home.

I am excited to get some supplies for the Outdoor Art Party and Nature Observation Stations that I will be hosting next week for my nieces and nephews. Plus I have seen some amazing Father’s Day Ideas in blogworld that I need to get done before Sunday. (Last minute is when I seem to acomplish my best work).

Here is a shout out for some great Fathers day Ideas from Roots and Wings Co. I love this blog and they have a couple of ideas that I just have to try. Scroll down through the week, they have a lot of ideas.

I am busy trying to make my plans for the second annual Camp Thue. All of my husband’s family will be here for a weekend of entertaining. And I will be the one doing the entertaining. I am trying to figure out all of the activities, menus, etc. We have kids ages 2 weeks old to an 11 year old.

I know there are a lot of awesome bloggers that focus on kids activities and party planning. I need your help. If you have a blog or an ideas, post in the comments so I can head over to your blog and check it out.

Yesterday I asked the girls to help me decide the menu for supper. They sat and flipped through the New Junior Cookbook from Better Homes and Gardens. Their decision was Chicken Fajitas and Gimme S’more (Please) Dessert.

They really didn’t care about the entree. In fact, they let me do all of the work for the actual meal. They were only interested in dessert. It isn’t easy for me to let them help in the kitchen, but I took a deep breath and we had a lot of fun. My middle child had a blast crushing the graham crackers with a meat mallet.

My youngest wasn’t a lot of help, but she managed to sneak a few chocolate chips and marshmallows.

My oldest was the most help. She read the recipe, helped measure out ingredients and made sure everyone got an equal amount of tasks in the preparation.

The result: Thumbs up from everyone except the youngest. She just wanted more plain marshmallows and chocolate chips.

Here is the recipe for dessert, it was really easy to make and it tasted really good.

Ingredients:
1/3 cup butter
18 graham cracker squares
1/3 cup sugar
1 12 oz jar fudge ice cream topping
2 cups tiny marshmallows
1 1/2 cups cold milk
1 6 oz serving size pkg instant chocolate pudding mix
1 8 oz container frozen whipped dessert topping, thawed
1/4 cup miniature semi-sweet chocolate chip pieces
8X8X2 inch baking pan (just a note. . .we used a 9X13 pan, we missed that direction, oops)

1. Put butter in a microwave-safe bowl. Cover bowl with waxed paper. Place in microwave and cook 40 seconds or until melted. Cover with waxed paper before starting the microwave.
2. Put graham crackers in a plastic bag and crush into fine crumbs. Pour into baking pan. Add the sugar and melted butter. Stir with a wooden spoon until mixed. (Save out 1/3 of mixture to crumble on top) Put into freezer for 10 minutes.
3. Remove lid from fudge topping. Microwave 45 seconds (we found this wasn’t quite enough to have it really easy to pour. Pour over cooled crust. Sprinkle with 1 cup of marshmallows.
4. Pour milk into the large mixing bowl. Add pudding mix. Beat with an electric mixer on medium speed for 2 minutes. Use a rubber scraper to gently stir in half of the whipped topping. (save the rest for a future use). Pour onto marshmallows. Spread evenly on pan.
5. Sprinkle with remaining marshmallows, the saved cracker mixture and the chocolate chips. Cover with foil and freeze for at least 1 hour.

Yesterday my husband’s dad made a quick trip out to see the girls play softball. The weather was not the greatest, but he did get to see them play a little bit. After the games he took everybody out for ice cream. Bonus.

Today he went outside and played catch with the girls. The girls were so excited to have him here. With their grandparents in different towns 3 1/2 hours away they miss out on a lot of the day to day activities they are involved in.

I am linking to Tuesdays Unwrapped over at Chatting at the Sky. This surprise visit from Grandpa was a wonderful gift for all of us.

It amazes me that my two older girls are 8 & 6 and already I am not cool to be around. Their friends trump me every time. . . So yesterday they both had opportunities to spend the day with their friends. They took the opportunity and were gone before I could object.

I love it that they both have so many friends. . .but we always have one problem. The little sister that gets left behind. She is 3 and she does not like it when her sissies leave her. She starts to ask five minutes after they leave, “Can we go pick my sissies up now?” It breaks my heart. She was stuck with me all day so I tried to entertain her the best I could while still trying to get done a few things around the house.

I have to share a few pictures from our day.

At least she wasn’t shooting me with the water. She told me she was drawing pictures on the sidewalk.

Isn’t it amazing that you try and try to teach them how to pedal and they don’t get it. Then one day they just get on the bike and ride it????

After all of our fun she wanted a freeze pop. I wondered why she asked me for her Dora gloves. . .

I would love to blog about how organized I am as a mother. . .but I can’t. I have millions of ideas running crazy in my head, but there is not a lot of organization up there to get all of those ideas accomplished.

This summer when I was looking for idea books for our summer of fun I came across a book called, The Family Manager’s Guide to Summer Survival by Kathy Peel. I decided I needed to add it to my cart at Amazon and see how I am going to survive this summer.

I am so pleased that I got this book. There are tons of really great ideas. That is a bonus. The best part of the book for me was the section with the Summertime Development Chart. She encourages you and your spouse to come up with some goals for each child. She bases these goals on Luke 2:52. She says, “Luke 2:52 says that when Jesus was a young boy, he grew in wisdom (intellectually), stature (physically), favor with God (spiritually), and favor with man (socially). So you set four goals for each of your children based on these four concepts.

I think this is a great idea. I do not want to over organize my kids’ free time, but they do need a little guidance. For example, my middle daughter is learning how to read and we really need to keep working with her this summer. Her intellectual goal will be to improve her reading skills.

I am so excited to sit down and make some plans, but I wanted to share this awesome find. I will share more after I have some time to develop my charts.

Have a great Thursday!

I am headed with my Girl Scout Troop to Day Camp today. My troop is Daisies so we don’t go overnight, we just have a little four hour camp. Last night my 6 year old and I had to make some S.W.A.P.S. to exchange with the other girls. We had never done an event before so we did not realize that S.W.A.P.S were part of the deal until last minute.

She made bee pins out of pipe cleaners and craft foam. They really did turn out cute and they were pretty easy to make. I did all of the hot glue gun work so she couldn’t do them all by herself. Below are the instructions for the project. Now hopefully the rain will stay away today for this outside event. . .

Cut a black and yellow pipe cleaner in half.

Wrap the pipe cleaners around a pencil side by side.

Cut out wings from white craft foam paper.

Hot glue the wings and eyes to the pipe cleaners.

Hot glue the pin to the back of the wings.

Bees are ready for the SWAP.