Birthday cupcakes!

This weekend is Daddy's birthday! I decided to make him a treat and since he loves raspberries I found this website with some awesome cupcake recipes on it! I made Cupcake #25 - Sour Cream Raspberry Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting ...

Getting ready ...

Putting the Raspberries in ...

In the oven!

Not as pretty as the one on the website - but yummy!

Planting ...

Like I mentioned the other day we have major Spring Fever in this house! So we decided to plant watermelon and green beans! The Girl did not seem to understand that they wouldn't be available right away. She wanted to have watermelon for dessert. She also said that she would wake up and there would be a big beanstalk out side her window that she could climb up! Not sure what she was planning to do about the giant though.

My mom lives next door so she helped. Well, actually it was her green beans and we did it in her section of the yard, so maybe we should say that WE helped! We sent up a teepee with bamboo so the beans can grow up them - hopefully it will work!

Planting seeds ...

Little Man helping Grandma ...

Surveying their creation!

Messy Fun

Daddy has a job that is kind of far away this week so we miss him terribly. He's been leaving the house at 5:30am and getting home at 10pm. :( He pretty much has to go straight to bed so he can do it again. The kids have been upset that they really haven't seen him for 2 days so last night I pulled out two pans and shaving cream and they went at it!

The original plan was to try writing our letters in it, but I got the cheapest shaving cream that Walmart had which ended up being Barbarsol and it actually was TOO good a quality. It was very thick and stuck to their hands. So, for future reference you want to get the cheap dollar tree type. It was lots of fun to squish through our fingers and it culminated into a winner takes all shaving cream fight. ;) I ended up having to throw both of them in the shower to get it out of their hair and off their backs! Lots of fun!

Well, I guess that's a start ...

As most of you know I am homeschooling our children. Well, until now I just called it "being a mom". But it's time to get serious! Anyway, with our tax refund I started getting The Girl's homeschool curriculum and she was so excited when she saw it that she wanted to "do school" right away. I couldn't exactly say, "No. You can't. You have to wait 4 more months." So today we sat down after I spent last week hurriedly reading the teacher's guides and making a lesson plan. I decided to start slowly and this was my plan for today:

Bible: "God Creates Light and Land" from "Every Day with God"

Phonics: "The Vowel A" from "The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading"

Writing: Teach her the names of the fingers and teach her how to correctly hold a pencil. Demonstrate how to write her name and see if she can copy it. Page 6 from "Handwriting Without Tears"

Read Aloud: Read her the first chapter from "Matilda" by Roald Dahl

Well, we did some of that! The Bible and the Phonics went well and we ended up writing the letter A on the slates. See her good job?



But after going over the names of our fingers (she loved the song "Where is Thumpkin?") she refused to try to write her name. She just wanted to keep doing the letter A. We did do the page in "Handwriting without Tears" - actually two! And she wanted to keep going ... but I wanted to sit down and read to her and her brother who was getting a little antsy. She didn't want me to read "Matilda" at all and we ended up reading "The Pied Piper of Hamlin" from a book of fairy tales I have. Well, I guess we'll work on it. But it wasn't a bad start!

My silly daughter

So the other day my mom watched The Girl while Little Man had his speech therapy. We all have a huge case of spring fever so my mom helped her paint a pot and they put some pansies in it for The Girl to put in her room.

She was so excited. That night we heard talking in her room when she was supposed to to asleep. Daddy went in there to find her with the flowers in bed with her. She was hugging them saying, "You're so pretty. I love you!" Over and over. Silly child!