tawbubby

A few weeks ago, I ran across this article on BoingBoing…

DrO says: “I wanted to point out to you that some people on LiveJournal came up with an idea of inserting dry spaghetti into hot dogs, then boiling it, and coming out with amusing culinary constructs that kids seem to love.”

I found the pictures really strange and almost unsettling, but had a hunch that at least one of my girls would like this strange food.

Told Allison about it and she was skeptical, but made them last weekend. And they liked it even better than I anticipated, especially Amelia. I called them “spaghetti monsters”.

Ready to cook.

Ready to serve.

Nom nom nom.

Big hit!

Daph was more interested in sweet corn.

We camped in the backyard on Friday night, so the girls could see what it was like to sleep outside.  With all the comforts of home closeby, in case it didn’t work.  They really enjoyed themselves (and the smores) and we’re ready for a trip away from home soon.

Breakfast in bed!

Bryan Park is over near Fafa’s house.  The girls and I went there yesterday while Ethan helped Fafa plant some trees.  The park was full of soccer players who come in soccer vehicles.  We had to park very far and walk to the playground.  Lots of songs along the walk, both ways.

Amelia has mastered the sideways monkey bars this year.  You can also click here for a video: monkey bars!

Here is sweet Daphne hanging onto a gliding handlebar that slide across a frame. 

If only we still had skin this beautiful as adults.

We also visited Bryan Park’s azalea trail.  Sometime  since last summer, Amelia got a bug-phobia.  She was uncomfortable and protecting herself from a bumble bee buzzing nearby. 

Girls were wiped out by the end of it all- they took 3 and 3 1/2 hour naps yesterday!

Cousin Jackson has a new baby sister, Daisy.  We dropped off some daisies, and took Jackson to the park.  Actually, took the girls to Jackson’s park- the one in his neighborhood. Here is the crowd response to “Put your hands in the air if you love Daisy!”

Amelia and Jackson were working on their snack, and Daphne was full of love.

Jackson let Amelia read her Cinderella book to him at the top of the slide.

They have new equipment since we were last at this park, and the girls have all sorts of new climbing muscles and skills.  Have to note the leg-warmer fashion here.

Amelia and Daphne had a great Easter.  We went to the lake with Hannah and Zoe.  We’ll cut to the chase and show you the Easter basket and egg hunt loot.

Amelia had a blast decorating eggs.  She especially loved the princess stickers.  The orange dye got knocked over, onto the floor, her clothes, and into her shoe!

Daphne loved the egg hunts (yes plural).  Here she is finding an egg in the ferns at the egg hunt at the lake.  When they were done, the girls had several more egg hunts with the empty eggs.

We arrived home for naps, and a neighbor ran down to see if we could come to the street’s egg hunt at 3:30.  Perfect! We peeled the girls from their beds for the second egg hunt.  Here is Daphne showing her daddy what was inside an egg that she found in our neighbor’s cinderblock in the wall behind her.

Amelia and Catriona on the hunt for eggs:

The street egg hunt was really neat.  A mom told all the kids (13, I think!)  they were allowed to find 15 eggs.  As the big kids got to 15, they started helping the littler kids find their allotment.  Some eggs were filled with a paper with the word “Treasure” written on it, which was traded in for twenty-five cents from Grandma Jordan (a neighbor).  There were over 200 eggs and it was really fun to see all the kids running from yard to yard.

I built two boxes for square-foot gardens this weekend.  I took the girls to the store to buy some supplies this morning, including a 6′ trellis.  Amelia hung onto the trellis next to her in the truck the whole way back.  I told her I was going to use it to grow the green beans, and she said “But, mama, this won’t fit on the stove!”.  That is exactly why she needed to help me plant our garden!!

Amelia helped me plant all the seeds and started vegetables for one box this afternoon.  I forget who gave her the frog garden gloves but she got some good use out of them today.  Our garden has two squares of green beans, one each of carrots, beets, romaine lettuce, cabbage (the one thing Amelia asked to grow!), basil/mint, and cucumbers. 

Amelia enjoyed seeing the different shapes, sizes and colors of the seeds.  She opened the mint seed package and tried shaking and shaking and shaking them into her hand.  She told me there weren’t any in there, and when I came to check, the skirt of her dress was covered in tiny little black seeds.  We brushed together a few, and should get something to grow.  We bought the cabbage, lettuce and beet plants.

We will do a watermelon, broccoli and a few other things in the other box.  Both girls are really excited about corn- we are waiting a couple of weeks to start that when it is a little warmer permanently.

 We don’t get much sun, but this box is in the best place possible.   I already have a lot of wire fencing from putting in our friend’s Hops last year (maybe 14 inches tall already!- and used the trellis there), so at least we should be able to keep the critters out.  Wish us luck. 

We spent the whole weekend outside.  Back to cold and rainy tomorrow.

Grandma flew down from New York and Aunt Melissa drove from PA for a visit, and to see Amelia dance to “My Magic Tutu” in her dance class.

Amelia really was this serious the whole song.  The girls did a great job.  It was neat to see the usual giggle boxes doing some pretty good dance moves, following the hand signals of the teacher, and being so brave in front of all the families and all their cameras.

Aunt Melissa and I took the girls to an inflatable slide place on Saturday.  It was a lot of fun and very tiring!  This was after we ran Richmond’s Monument Ave 10k in the morning, too!  Here they are, about to slide.

Catriona came home with us to spend the day together after the dance show.  We got out the paints and easel in the afternoon.

At one point there was a face under all the paint.  They worked and worked until every bit of paper was covered in paint.  It was good to be outside when I glanced over and found Daphne with the jar of red paint, upside down. 

Daphne usually ends up painting her hands.  They were an explosion of color!

Caught Amelia in a yawn- this is the afternoon of the night she fell asleep on the counch, shown below in the next post! 

Guess she should have napped…

(Grannie & Grampy this is the painting we sent you- so you can see the whole story!)