Happy Father’s Day!
Holidays
Memorial Day Parade
Carolyn got to march in the Memorial Day Parade today with her Brownie troop. It looked like it was going to rain hard – and it did sprinkle for a while right before the parade – but it turned out to be perfect!
And then the sun came out, and there was a little carnival. And where there are carnivals, there are face painters…
We did lots of walking, and it was hot, but we had a great day!
And then after dinner, we went to the local ice cream parlor. (Along with most of the rest of the town!) Because, with ice cream painted on your cheek, what else would you have for dessert?!?
Happy Easter
Kool-Aid Dyed Eggs
We’re not a kool-aid drinking family, but I’ve been collecting various flavors colors to use for homemade play-doh and (someday) yarn dyeing. And then I stumbled across an idea on Pinterest to use it to dye eggs!
We mixed each packet with 2/3 cup of water. I read somewhere that lemon didn’t really make a deep enough yellow, so we added a tiny bit of a packet of orange to the lemon. I probably should have measured so we could duplicate it next year!
We had some decent results – as good as or better than the egg dyeing kits – from most of the colors/flavors:
But we couldn’t quite manage purple. When we mixed tropical punch and berry blue, we just got a weird speckly brown. It’s quite possibly the ugliest dyed egg ever, honestly.
But other than the lack of purple, it was a pretty inexpensive and vibrant way to dye eggs, and I’d definitely do it again!
Also, I tried baking the eggs instead of boiling them, which worked out better than I expected. 325°F for 30 minutes, then an ice cold bath. There were a couple of brown spots under the shells after peeling, but they peel very easily. They also crack very easily when being transferred to the ice water. But 14 of the 18 survived the process intact, and the rest were yummy. :)
Happy April Fool’s Day!
I started the day trying to convince Carolyn she was about to miss the bus, but she’s too smart for me.
And the meatloaf cupcakes with mashed (sweet+white) potato frosting? Not a hit. Neither girl even ate a single bite. (Though Anna did pick the bacon bit “sprinkles” off and eat those.) Meh.
Happy Halloween!
We had a fun and busy day today! I didn’t realize that the Primary school parade would be going on right as I arrived to deliver treats for the class party, so Anna and I wound up being able to watch all the kids in their fabulous costumes. Turns out there were two mummies in Carolyn’s class, but she was pretty easy to pick out!
Then we dashed home, went for a quick piano lesson, and dashed back home to await pizza and friends for trick-or-treating! We had a good time walking around the neighborhood with Joey & Nikki, and got much farther than we’ve ever gone by ourselves…which translated to a lot of candy!
Carving Pumpkins
My brother Michael and I took the girls to the Strong Museum today while Denis got some outdoor work done. (And thank you again, Michael – I could never have kept track of the girls in that zoo by myself!)
After that, we managed to carve out a bit of time to carve our pumpkins!
(There were lots of steps in between these photos, but I didn’t want to goop up my camera with pumpkin guts!)
Columbus Day & Cousins
We went to my great aunt & uncle’s house today for a cook-out since the kids had off from school. They live on a small, mostly retired farm, next door to another great uncle who cares for a retired race horse.
The girls had a good time playing with their little cousins and feeding Brownie!
Happy Fourth of July!
This week the theme is: Red, White & Blue. Of course!
We started out this morning picking black caps. My parents had a wild bunch start growing near their deck, and every year about this time they start getting ripe. They have to pack the most sweetness in the smallest berry space – they’re tiny, but so, so yummy. (Not quite blue. But they do stain red when squished!)
Then we spent the afternoon at my grandparents’ house. My great uncle lives next door and has a retired race horse living on his farm. Carolyn and Anna and their cousins Benny and Ryan wanted to go feed Brownie, so we walked over to the pasture and fed Brownie apples, carrots and many handfuls of tall grass. Poor Brownie probably had a stomachache after eating all that grass!
We decided Anna was not going to make it through a late night of fireworks, so Denis took Carolyn to see them while I’m at home with a sleeping kid and a neurotic dog who feels the need to growl and bark at every pop of a firecracker outside. It’s been a long evening…
Mother’s Day
We woke up to snow (!) and some minor tree damage from the wind storm last night, and decided to ignore the downed limbs and head to Ithaca as planned.
Anna is finally old enough that I don’t have to be shadowing her every second in other people’s houses, and Denis took over most of the kid duties today to give me the day off anyway. So I got some knitting done with my mom, and visited with my grandparents, and it was an all-around nice way to spend the day.
Unfortunately, the kids were kind of not-so-well-behaved at Friendly’s on the way home…I’m glad we don’t live in Geneva. Hopefully they’ll forget about us before we’re back there again…