Celebrating this week

Snowbirds- My friend Karen took this photo.

Mother Nature was quite uncooperative with us last week and many of the "outdoor" activites we had planned never quite happened.  For example, on International picnic day (which happened to be our airshow day as well) it was grey and drizzly with intermettient downpours.  We had a picnic lunch inside- at an exciting but undisclosable location for now ;) and watched the airshow from a greater than anticipated distance thanks to some spectacular windows at said undisclosable location.  There was also no kite flying and our night of vegetables for dinner didn't happen when gran-gran and grandpa brought home Mc Donalds after a very long day.

Thank goodness for the start of a new week.    On June 20th celebrate ice cream soda day!  We are either going to go with "orangeous" ice cream sodas (made with orange crush and vanilla ice cream- add an orange liqueur such as grand marnier, cointreau, curaçao or triple sec if you are wanting a more "adult" soda) or "cotton candy cream" ice cream sodas (made with Crush cream soda- I don't know what to suggest to make this more "adult" maybe vodka or champagne). 

June 21st is the first day of summer and we are off to the farm to start our CSA hours- if Mother Nature will allow.  Here are a couple of cool ideas to do to celebrate the begining of summer:  Summer Sun, make sidewalk chalk and glow bug necklace. 

Wednesday might be a library day for us or we might go to the 2nd to last cooking kitchen, plus I'm off to the hairdressers!

Thursday is National Pecan Sandies Day, National Pink Day and Soap Opera Day!  We are having our carpets steam cleaned that day, so hopefully it is a nice day and we can be out exploring some parks before our relatives arrive late Friday.  If not, we may have to hit story time at the library (if that is still happening) or go to the parent link in both the morning and the afternoon just for something fun to do out of the house. 

Friday, June 24th, is UFO day.  If we didn't have relatives arriving that day, it would be a perfect day to make a trip to St Paul, AB.  Maybe we will go while they are here. 

 On Saturday, we plan (weather permitting I think...although maybe not) to be at a local campground visiting with many different relatives.  We might make the kiddies put on a variety show to entertain us.  You could celebrate Eric Carle's birthday (he wrote many GREAT children's books) or LEON day.  LEON is Noel backwards and marks 6 months to/from Christmas. 

Sunday, June 26th is National Chocolate Pudding Day.  A super fun thing to do with chocolate pudding is to have a no heat/fire required chocolate fondue.  Use chocolate pudding and dip bite sized peices of fruit and such into the pudding- strawberries, banana's, apples, orange segments, marshmellows, pretzels, licorice, ect.  And of course, there is always finger painting with pudding.  A fun and delicious activity for the young at heart. 

Have fun this week.   It's finally summer!  Get out and enjoy.

Getting back into the swing of things

Wow!  Things got really busy for a while.  Hopefully though, now that "school" (preschool for little man) is done until the fall, we will find some time to get back into the swing of things here and at home.  Just because it is summer though, we don't stop the learning or the fun or even the busy. 

I stocked up on books through scholastic plus we have a pretty great library in our area full of books.  I am thinking of setting aside one afternoon a week as "library day" and I am going to get the two older boys their own library bag and they will be able to pick their own books this summer (5 for littler man and 7 for little man).  I am also going to start a reading log starting this week.

As part of my preparations for family that will be visiting this summer, we are going to take the next two weeks and check out every.single.park. in our area.  I am going to take pictures and notes and decided if this is a good park for visiting later and what it is good  or not so good for (ie has picnic tables , has lots of "little kid friendly" equipment, is buggy, has good sand, has bathrooms, ect).  We've also stocked up on bubbles, tattoes and glowsticks already and there are some kites calling our names.  I want to get some sparklers still for Canada Day.

We have some kid friendly cooking and recipes to test, plus I would like to get some baking (cookies, muffins, squares) done and into the freezer awaiting our holiday travelers.  I'd also like to try to get a couple of meals made and put in the freezer for that time too (maybe a baked pasta and a shepards pie).  I'm thinking we will bbq a lot of hot dogs and hamburgers at that time too and I have taco salad and some chinese chicken on my possible meal plan too for that time.  I'll also make sure to have lots of fruit and veggies ready to go daily plus hopefully I'll get a potatoe and a pasta salad ready too. 

We've planted a small garden that is about ready to transplant plus I've agreed to a working share at a CSA which should be starting anytime now. After all the rain last year during CSA (especially at the end)- I'm very glad I bought myself some rainboots this year.