‘Magic’ Pancakes

On Sunday, I had the kids all to myself. For dinner, we made pancakes. But not just any pancakes. We had, as Carter now calls them, "Magic Pancakes". I had seen a video online somewhere of someone doing this, and decided to give it a try. What you do is mix up some pancake batter, pour it into several squeeze bottles, add some food coloring, and 'draw' the pancakes right on the griddle. It's easier to see than to explain, but the pictures below should give you the idea. The kids went nuts for these pancakes! They each ate at least five pancakes, which is an all-time record for them both. They stood on chairs at the counter so they could watch me make them, and request what they wanted. After dinner, they were both so full that they actually turned down dessert - another first for them.


Birdhouses – Painted

Well, the birdhouses are finally all painted, but we still have yet to hang them up. It's obviously not the right season for it anyway, but the kids can't wait until spring - and this way we'll get to see how they weather the winter, anyway.

More Weed Pots

Made a few more weed pots in the last couple of weeks. These are fun to do, and a good use of some of the smaller pieces of wood I've been cutting, when a piece is too small for a bowl blank. So far, all of these weed pots have been made from wood from trees that have fallen on our property - which makes them especially cool.

Scarecrow

After we were done jumping in the leaves, we raked them all back up and made a scarecrow out of some old clothes of mine. Later that day when I was mowing the lawn, I kept catching sight of him out of the corner of my eye, and almost every time jumped a little because I thought there was a real person sitting there. Not that he looks very realistic - but it's weird how the brain works, isn't it?

Leaf Jumping

After carving pumpkins, we raked together a pile of leaves for jumping in. I was pretty disappointed in the size of the pile, but the kids didn't seem to mind. Maybe once more leaves fall in a couple of weeks I can make a much bigger one. They definitely needed a bath that night, though - Sean kept talking how he had pieces of leaves - and I quote - "stuck in his butt".


Carving Pumpkins

We carved pumpkins last weekend. This time we played it smart, and did it outside so that we didn't get pumpkin innards all over everything. As we were scraping out all of the guts, Sean kept whispering in my ear that we should make his pumpkin so scary that Carter would scream and run away. So cute.


Chuck E Cheese

Carter's birthday party isn't for a couple of weeks yet, but on her actual birthday we took her to Chuck E Cheese to celebrate. Lori's mom and Ryan also joined us for the fun. This is the first we've all been to this particular Chuck E Cheese, and the kids seemed to really enjoy it. Plus, it's about half an hour closer to us than the one we used to go to.

Birdhouses

I have been helping the kids to build birdhouses to put out in the yard. Sean had a great time, but only hit each nail in about half-way before he'd ask me to hammer it in the rest of the way. But Carter was focused like a machine. She would hammer each nail in all the way down to the surface of the wood. When Lori asked her, several different times, to look up for a picture, Carter would just say matter-of-factly, "no". She was in the zone, I tell you! After the building, we painted them with two coats of primer. They're currently sitting in the garage, waiting for their final paint jobs. We'll probably do that tonight.