Along the little path

On a mama's message board I'm on, someone asked how we can make childhood magical. I've long wanted to create a miniature garden. So, gathering twigs, I lashed them together with hemp to make a little fairy cabin last night.



This morning, I assembled a wide garden pot "little" garden. with a pebble path and multiple cuttings from my moms "steppables" plants, some lobelia and moss.



Kostya was delighted.

I'm going to add more plants as I have the time, but right now, I want to get the roots established a bit better. I'm working a roof as well as some little surprises so stay tuned.

Jen D.

PS: I have to apologize for my horrible pictures. I have our old camera at the moment and left the nice one at home.

Parking Cereal Boxes

Boys were "bored" today and I had some stuff to get done so I cut a cereal box into a parking garage for each of them to park cars in. Ivan promptly destroyed his but Kostya kept asking me to put enhancements on it (a ramp, door, window, etc).

Bread Rising

It's one of our happy moments each day to have a fresh clean loaf of bread for our sandwiches. The boys don't do much at this point, just push the "on" button on the processor and watch it fly around the processor bowl. Then they get to punch it after it's risen.

So we had a discussion about yeast/sugar and made two cups with one having cold and one having warm and rechecked 5 minutes later to see the warm water yeast/sugar mixture had risen the most.

Bread recipe?

5 cups any type flour (wheat, white, etc.)
1 TB yeast
1 TB sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 2/3 c water

Throw it all in a processor with a dough blade and let it fly around until it forms a ball. Let it go a few more minutes. Take it out, throw it in a large bowl, cover with a clean towel and let sit for an hour. Punch it down, take it out, knead it and throw it in a bread pan. Let rise for another 10-15 minutes in a warm place. Throw it in the oven (pre-heated) at 375 for 23 minutes or until nicely brown on top and hollow sounding on the bottom. Throw it on a cooling rack and try not to eat it until it's mostly cooled.

Below are the pictures of our bread adventure.

Pythons - the whole story

Each week, we pick an animal to study. Kostya has to help me research it, look at pictures, color a picture of one and then tell me some stories about it.

This week, it was pythons. Here are the most important points, as per Kostya.

Pythons come in green, black/brown/white, albino, and yellow/brown/white/gray.

They have a forked tongue, two eyes and can be up to 35 feet (longer than TWO of our Suburbans together).

They live in jungles of Asia, Africa and Australia

They eat pigs, deer and sheep.

Here's Kostya's rendition of the python's color. Below the picture are his stories about pythons. Before I sat down to write what he would say, I could hear him in the other room practicing what his story would be about.

It starts with a python snake driving a monster truck. He runs over another snake that wants to eat him. Then a superhero comes in and cuts up the python. And the snake is the superhero's pet. And the superhero unlocked the cave he was in.

And then the next story:

A big rhinoceros and the superhero shoved out his big monster gun and shot the rhinoceros's' eye, like, "BOOOSH". And then the next day, he heard a "Voom, Voom, Voosh" and it was a monster truck and another superhero shoved out his gun and shot it. A lion was driving a monster truck and the motor went driving over a big huge monster python who was THIS big and THIS high.

Out of doors

It was really hard moving here. The boys were used to being outside ALL day and moving here, we were suddenly stuck inside an apartment. We've looked and looked for a place to get outdoors and explore. SIX months of looking. And here it is!

Husband and the boys have been taking drives to give me a break with the baby. We recently moved our old horse to a new pasture. They went to check on her and took a new road to explore. Four miles into it, along a ridge, they came across miles and miles of logging roads, open to the public for foot traffic. With trees in various stages of growth, it's a perfect place to explore. It gets bonus points for being "paved" in rock so rain hikes are not out of the question, even for the littles.

I can't wait until I'm healed to go exploring with them.

Click on the picture for a full large view. All the hill in the background and the trees beyond that are ours for the exploring!

What's the weather?

Twelve branches. Twelve months. Each day, we wake up, throw open the window blinds and check the skies. Then it's to the Weather Tree we go.

Cloudy days get red leaves
Rainy days get blue leaves
Sunny days get yellow leaves
Snowy days get white leaves
Foggy days get green leaves

Whatever it is when we get up is what we put. Some days, we have three or four weather types, but still, it's what the sky is when the sun comes up.

We're in Oregon. It's January. Surprisingly, our January branch isn't covered in blue leaves. This is proof to my mom who is convinced there's nothing but rain here. See? There's FOUR yellow leaves!

Puzzled?

Puzzles. Kostya has liked puzzles since he was only 18 months old. He was a pro at the little Melissa and Doug puzzles during that age. During a Thomas the Train obsession, the puzzles were put away. They were just reintroduced when my mom was visiting and thought Ivan would like them. She then went out and bought TONS of puzzles from thrift shops for Kostya. This one was very exciting for him because it had a racecar on it. He does about 50% of the work and is SO proud when he's done.

I wish I had more hours in my day to just sit and do puzzles with him all day. I do think when we move, we're going to have a special puzzle "table" that we can put in a safe place when we're not working on it.