13 Years

Yep last week we made it to 13 years.  Hard to believe 13 years has gone so quick, especially the last 7.......mmmmmmm maybe that has something to do with with little people entering our lives!

So to keep to our budget we decided to celebrate by having dinner at home..................yep we are party animals.  We always eat dinner with our kids so the whole idea was that we would cook the kids an easy meal and then we would have a celebratory dinner once they were in bed.

We made ourselves a Paella and then I created this dessert which I have to say I was pretty impressed with and was very easy.  I am call it Ice Cream ANZAC Sandwich.

Since making ANZAC biscuits on ANZAC Day, I have been stashing them in the freezer, this is one biscuit that all my kids actually eat.  So I defrosted 4 made them into an ice cream sandwhich and them I made this super quick chocolate sauce from Jamie Oliver's 30 minute meals cookbook.  If any of you have the book it is on page 270 - Fondue.  This is how I made it.

Ingredients

1 * 100g good dark chocolate (we used milk chocolate)
1 teaspoon vanilla paste or extract
100ml milk
pinch salt

• Break up bar of chocolate
• Add vanilla, milk and salt
• Microwave on high for 1 1/2 minutes
• Stir then microwave for another minute

Got to say easy and delish!

Oh and number 1 Dad did bring home these gorgeous flowers!

And this is the ANZAC recipe we are making at the moment.

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/32957/anzac+biscuits

Magic Potion Making

We have a long history of magic potion making in our house.  When I think about it we have not done any brewing in a long time but Mr 5 came to me over the holidays with one of his massive smiles and asked "can we make magic potions?"

Of course the answer was yes.  So they set up stirring benches, collected pots of the sandpit and containers and we filled a bucket of water for them all to share.  Then they raided the pantry.  The only rule I have is that when they choose what they want to add they have to ask if they can use it.  This allows me to monitor how much I have of certain ingredients left in my pantry.

The picked ingredients from the pantry
Collected ingrediants from the garden
Stirred and brewed for at least 45mins

And in case you are wondering I politely declined being the taste tester!

Outdoor Wood Chimes

I was looking for something simple to do with Miss 2 who wanted to paint.  We had a pile of sticks outside so I grabbed some sticks, some paint, some glitter and away we went.

We painted the sticks, sprinkled glitter on them while the paint was wet.  The paint acts like glue for the glitter.  Then we let them dry.

Once they were dry we hammered a nail in one end and another nail into a beam of our cubby.  We tied string on the end of the nail and then to the nails in the cubby.

Presto homemade wood chimes.

Bread Machine Donuts

Yep I am still obsessed with my bread machine.  I think this little obsession of mine may last sometime considering it has been a love of mine for at least 12 months.  Oh and have I mentioned it is actually easier to put ingredients in a bread machine and press the magic button than take three kids to the super market just for bread. Over the holidays I blurted out to the kids one day "I wonder if we could make donuts in the bread machine".  The cheer went up from the tribe so on to good old google I went and guess what donut bread machine dough is pretty easy.  Although don't expect perfectly round pretty donuts but they are yummy cinnamon coated donuts!

We used this recipe so pop on over and try them.  The only Tracey change we made was that we didn't use any cutters to make the holes we just flattened them out and stuck our finger through the middle.

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/bread-maker-doughnuts/

The hungry tribe gobbled these down.  Stay tuned for our attempt at Jam Donuts in the bread maker.  Maybe a weekend treat!

Getting a Mummy Job Done

At the start of the school holidays I explained to my kids that somedays we would be doing fun stuff they like and sometimes we would have to do some mummy jobs. So today I pulled off a mummy job. Painting part of the outside of our house extension. The kids and I rode part of the way to work with our number 1 dad. We had a great play and rode home. We chatted about what mummy would be doing, painting the outside of part of our extension and we talked about what they could do.

The criteria for what they could was:

• It had to be something they could do without mums help, Lego, sandpit, drawing etc
• There couldn't be lots of questions or interruptions
• They had to help each other
• I put cups out for them and had a plate of food ready to go

Then I sent them off, once they all seemed settled I went work. And to my surprise and delight it worked well. They wandered around every now and again to see what I was doing. I had a bucket of water and paint brush in case miss 2 wanted to copy me and paint the fence or concrete but in the whole I hardly intervened in there play.  And I have to say there were a couple of times when I was super proud of them like when they got out the dress ups and miss 2 bought the dinosaur costume out for me to put on and mr 7 followed her out and took her hand and said, " I will help you put that on".

Here's to more Mummy jobs in the future!  Warning be prepared for the mess and in all fairness my criteria didn't include keep the house tidy or tidy up once your finished.  I think this is evidence that we definitely passed the mummy job day.

Take a Moment

Today I took a moment. We rode part of the way to work with our number 1 dad and had a play in a park by a lake. Miss 2 was enjoying throwing her soft doll off the play equipment jumping off after it and running a loop to do it all over again.  I looked over and watched the boys climb a Grandpa tree (a tree that was surely the grandpa for other trees there, hanging over the water) and I took a moment.  I took a moment to watch them. I just watched. I watched them confidently climb a tree. I watched how much they enjoyed nature. I watched them make games up in the tree. I watched them climb higher and higher and watched as Mr 7 jumped of a high branch into shallow water and I gave myself and number 1 dad a pat on the back.

As parents we often wonder are we making the right choices, are we doing a good job and today I went yep we are doing OK for our kids.  In that moment I saw happy, confident kids who were enjoying exploring a great old Grandpa tree.

I could see somethings to give us ticks about

• Our kids love nature play. We think nature play is important in our house.
• Our kids can play happily together and enjoy playing together
• Our kids can get along, share and cooperate with each other
• Our kids are creative and can entertain themselves
• Our kids are confident
• Our kids are happy to problem solve and create there own solutions

Our children are still all WIPS (works in progress), the idea of ticking every box really is absurd but today I took a moment to look up from being in the middle of it all and go hey we are doing ok.

Here's to OK! 

Flubbery Blubber

"This feels so good I wish I could get inside it", said Mr 5.

There's nothing like mixing, making and then getting your hands into it.  So with it being school holidays I once again went to my go to book of the moment, 150 screen free activities and found the perfect activity that my 3 children would love.  Best of all I had all the ingredients in the cupboard. Asia calls it flubber but my kids renamed it blubber so flubbery blubber we have.

Flubbery Blubber

• 1cup of water
• 2tbsp Metamucil
• Food coloring

1. Stir to combine, it will thicken
2. Microwave for 2 minutes watching to make sure it doesn't boil over
3. Stir
4. Microwave at 30 sec intervals stirring after each one
5. Pour onto a plate and refrigerate to cool it down

Then bring it out to stretch, push and pull. Mr 5 loved using his toy car in it and wanted to climb inside. Mr 7 experimented with stretching it and pulling it apart and miss 2 rolled it around on the plate. To my surprise it was Mr 7 and Mr 5 that spent the most amount of time playing with our flubbery blubber.