Artist Ted

One of Aria's favorite picture book series is Doctor Ted, Firefighter Ted, and Artist Ted, all by Andrea Beaty.  Ted is quite the character.  In the books he becomes a doctor, a firefighter, and an artist.  He "saves" the day with his new skills, while annoying his mom, teacher, and principal.  They are quite funny!  We can hardly go to the library without checking out one of them.

Most recently we have Artist Ted.  In the book, Ted can't find a paintbrush or paint, so he makes his own.  For paint he uses ketchup, mustard, chocolate syrup, toothpaste, and jam.

One day, as we were reading, I asked Aria if she would like to paint with those things.  What four-year-old would answer "no" to that?  Certainly not my kid!  So we got out some condiments and started a masterpiece.  We didn't have jam I was willing to use for painting, so we used some vanilla pudding with pink food coloring instead.  Otherwise, we used the same things Ted did.

Aria had a great time!  It was smelly and gooey, but oh so fun!  Unfortunately, I said we could not keep the picture forever because the mustard smelled pretty bad.  But, we do have a wonderful memory and an excellent connection to one of Aria's favorite books!

The Minnie Cake

When Aria was about to turn 1 she was sensitive to cow's milk.  We experienced projectile vomit whenever she drank it or ate things with milk in them.  So, I was very cautious about finding a cake with no milk in it.  I already knew I wanted to make the cake myself, but that sealed the deal even more.  I think I ended up finding a mix that didn't have milk and use that for her basketball cake.  Little did I know, I set myself a standard on that first birthday.  For each birthday since, I really want to make a special cake for Aria.  I'm sure this won't last her entire life through, but I do have a lot of fun deciding on a design with her and baking it with her.  I know it is a tradition we will carry on for awhile.

This year I decided to go all from scratch.  Aria finally decided she wanted just a Minnie cake.  And she wanted chocolate cake and chocolate frosting.  I really didn't want to do black frosting, so I'm glad she requested chocolate.  It is almost black without the mess.

Aria helped me mix all the ingredients together for the chocolate cake and we put it into the oven in 4 different containers.

The face

The ears

The bow (eventually)

Next I cut the bow shape and carved the ears a bit to make this:

Next came the chocolate frosting.  I frosted it and then used my finger dipped in water and baking soda to smooth it out.

Finally, I frosted the bow separately and added white m&ms for the polka dots.

Aria did ask where Minnie's face was, but I just didn't think I could free hand her face.  Overall, I know she really liked it and it tasted pretty good, too!

And here is my mess.

Scrambled Eggs

For all of Aria's previous life, until a few months ago, she has very much disliked scrambled eggs.  She was cautious of all eggs for a long time, but eventually warmed up to the egg white of a hard boiled egg and then the egg white of a fried egg.  I was always a bit bummed about her not liking scrambled eggs because Justin and I both like them and they are such an easy breakfast food.  For some reason (and I think it has to do with Hy Vee Chinese fried rice) Aria decided she likes scrambled eggs a couple months ago.  Since then I think she has asked for them for breakfast at least 5 times a week.  But the really cool thing, and the point of this blog post, is that she can make them almost completely herself.  She gets out the eggs.  She gets out the milk.  She gets out a bowl and a fork.  She cracks the eggs.  She pours in the milk (unless it is a completely full gallon).  She stirs them up.  Sometimes she even pours them into the pan on the stove.  The only thing I won't let her do is flip them over on the stove.  And she doesn't want to do that anyway.  I think some of her liking of scrambled eggs is because she can do it almost completely herself.  She definitely feels empowered and independent from cooking something herself!  She also can do her own toast, but I don't think she finds that as fun.  I am thrilled to let her do things that maybe she seems to young for because I believe it builds her confidence and helps her learn how to make her own decisions and deal with natural consequences.  If the eggs spill, she has to clean them up.  If a piece of shell gets in the bowl, she has to dig it out.  It is simple lessons of cause and effect like this that are all part of growing up.  Sometimes I'm just blown away by how fast it happens!

Pegump Family Dessert (or Breakfast) Smoothie

1 banana
2 HUGE spoonfulls of peanut butter
1 child's squirt of chocolate syrup
Several ice cubes
2 scoops of vanilla ice cream (or a small container of vanilla yogurt)
Add milk to desired thickness (Are you drinking or spooning?)

Blend it all up.  Pour into special smoothie cups.  Enjoy! 

:)

Things To Do In July

Make an American flag fruit salad for the 4th of July

Have some corn on the cob!

Go to the Farmer's Market and have your face painted.

And I don't have a picture of this one, but tonight Aria rode her bike all the way to the park and all the way home for the very first time!  

Garden Update

We are eating food from the garden!!  I am so excited that things are growing!  Well, when I say we are eating food from the garden, I should say I am.  The first things to come were radishes.  Everyone has tried them and declared them rather spicy.  Justin has eaten a few, but I think I am the only one who likes them.  Today I plucked a bright red cherry tomato from the vine, offered it out, and got to eat it myself!  Yum!!

As I look at this picture I took last week, I am amazed at how much more the garden has grown since then.  Let's start at the top:

Tomato plants are taking over the world.  They are out of control and on top of the pepper plants, but there are a lot of green tomatoes on them!!  Next year I will have to spread them out more.

Green pepper plants are trying to hang on for dear life as the tomato plants tackle them.  There are some little buds of peppers, but I don't know if they will grow under the tomatoes.

Three rows of green beans are next.  I saw some green beans on them today for the first time!  I was so giddy with excitement!  They are my favorites!  I do find it incredibly odd that the plants near the yard are doing so much better than the ones near the house.

Next are the carrots.  They seem to be doing fine.  Hard to tell with something growing under ground.  The leafy green part looks good.

Then comes one row of peas.  I've learned peas like to climb a fence, so I will only be planting them near a fence in the future.  But there are pea pods on them!  Almost as exciting as green beans.  Can't hardly wait for them to plump up so I can eat them!  Again, the ones near the yard are doing so much better.  I assume it is because of the fence.

Next are the radishes.  I planted w-aaaaaaa-yyyy too many in the little row.  They were overgrown.  Even though we have gotten several to eat, I'm sure I could have gotten a lot more had I spaced them out more.  But, what would I do with hundreds of radishes?  These are about done, I think.

Last is the row of peas next to the fence.  Wow did the fence make a difference.  There are so many pods on there.  I just want to eat them!

And yes, I need to pull some weeds.  Especially outside the box between it and the house. 

This gardening thing has been fun.  I had only one goal with this; to plant stuff and have it grow.  That has happened and we have enjoyed eating things.  Now that I have a bit of experience, I will plan better next year.  And I may only plant peas and green beans.

Strawberries for Father's Day

We celebrated Father's Day with my dad on Saturday last weekend.  We loaded up for their house right away in the morning, dropped off the dog, picked up the grandparents and headed for a pick your own strawberries patch.  My dad chooses such fun family things to do!  Wow, was it ever fun!  I've never seen such a large strawberry farm.  They went on forever.  I think it would be so awesome to own something like that!  We were led to two rows to pick from and got right to work.  All five of us picked and picked!

It was the perfect day for picking.  It was probably about 70 and overcast with a decent breeze.  There were no bugs and there were plenty of delicious, red strawberries!  Some of us had to taste them right away.

I think we were only picking for 20 or 30 minutes because there were so many ready to go.  We filled two flats and Aria's two little buckets.  Never did I imagine it would be 23 pounds of strawberries!

After a fun ride on a golf cart back up to the pay area and checking out the play area, we headed back to grandma and papa's to prepare our strawberries.  First up was strawberry shortcake!  Mmmmmmmmmm was it delicious!  We missed national Strawberry Shortcake Day by a day, but enjoyed it none the less.

Then we took a break from the strawberries for awhile to take a jeep ride on the trails around the subdivision...

And go swimming in the hot tub! 

Finally it was time to make some jam!  We made two batches because that was all the sure jell the store had and it didn't seem like there was even a dent in the strawberries.

Here is the run down of our use of 23 pounds of strawberries:

2 heaping batches of strawberry shortcake
5 batches of jam
1 strawberry pie
1-2 pounds for a fruit salad
several to just eat

Phew!  23 pounds of strawberries is a lot, but they were so good.  I mean it isn't even fair to compare them to the store bought strawberries.  So delicious!

Oh, and Aria made some awesome golf cupcakes to take for Papa for Father's Day.  She dumped in the ingredients, ran the mixer by herself, lined the cupcake pan, and spooned in the batter.  It was the first time we had ever made chocolate cake from scratch.  We also made the frosting.  Then we decorated with green sprinkles, blue sprinkles, crushed graham crackers, and little white sugar balls to make a golf course.  Here is the finished product!

It was quite the fun day! 

We Built a Garden

After plenty of hemming and hawing around about whether or not I wanted to have a garden, we finally decided to just go for it.  The recovering perfectionist part of me didn't want to go through with it if I couldn't have a lush, beautiful garden full of lovely vegetables that we eat and share in abundance.  Okay, once I got over that dream, I decided it would just be a lot of fun to plant things and watch them grow with Aria and eat the fruits of our labor, if it worked out.  After surveying our yard, I felt there was really only one perfect place for the garden.  If you've been to our house, when you walk out onto our deck, the garden is just to the left.  It is on the east side of the house, so it gets awesome morning sun and goes into the shade by about 2:00 pm these days.  I figured that was perfect to avoid the hot summer afternoons (if they ever arrive).  It is also kind of in a corner where we rarely play, so it wasn't taking up any t-ball, soccer ball, or swinging space. 

I wish I would have taken some before pictures, but I thought of it too late.  If I wanted to search through pictures I might be able to find something that shows the area, but I don't feel like doing that.  The first step in making a garden was to remove the day lilies and landscaping that was in the spot.  I really liked the day lilies and was struggling with just pulling them out, so I decided to transplant them to the front of our house by the sidewalk where there were some bushes I could take or leave.  I removed the bushes and transplanted the lilies, which was a success.  Next step was to prepare the ground for the new garden.  We whacked off the grass and tilled up the land.  Then with help from our parents, we built a box approximately 12' by 6'.  Then we got some free, awesome compost dirt (1800 pounds to be exact) and filled up the box.  Finally came the fun part, planting!

Aria has been really excited about the garden throughout the whole process!  We picked out some seeds of things we liked to eat and got them in the ground.  They may not have been planted at exactly the right time or in the perfect way, but it is our first experiment.  Maybe I will research and plan for it a bit better next summer.  We bought peas, radishes, carrots, and green beans.  A fun moment happened because we planted the peas first.  Aria noticed they were peas, just like we eat.  So when I opened the package for the carrot seeds, she was expecting to see tiny carrots.  She was a great digger and planter!  She also loves to water.  I also decided to get a few plants, in case the seeds don't work out.  We have two tomato plants, two pepper plants, and a cucumber plant. 

Here is a picture from the deck of our masterpiece!  Justin finished it off by putting up the chicken wire to keep the bunnies out.  I didn't want to go to all that hard work just to feed the animals!  The fence also keeps Augie out, who was rather interested in the whole process.  You can see the plants we planted at the top and if you look closely, you can see some tiny green coming up in the radish row near the bottom!  It was fun to build, fun to plant, and fun to already see some growth!  Hopefully it will continue to prosper and be enjoyment for all!

Pancake Sandwich

I love spontaneous fun activities with Aria, especially when they involve food.  This morning we made pancakes for breakfast.  Aria asked for a small one and it lead to a whole plate full of small pancakes.  She spread peanut butter on her own small pancake really well and the pancake sandwich idea popped into my head.  I'm not sure why the small size made me think of making a sandwich, but it did.  Aria's sandwich was pancake, peanut butter, pancake, peanut butter, chocolate chips, pancake, syrup.  She did it all herself, with a little help pouring the syrup so we didn't use the whole bottle.  It was a lot of fun!  And it wasn't planned at all.  I didn't even plan to make pancakes until about 2 minutes before we started.  My pancake sandwich was pancake, peanut butter, banana, pancake, peanut butter, banana, chocolate chips, syrup.  :)

Easter Tradition

Last year we started this tradition of making Resurrection Rolls for breakfast on Easter morning.  If you didn't click the link, the short version is this:

Roll a marshmallow (Jesus' body) in melted butter.
Roll buttered marshmallow in cinnamon and sugar (burial spices).
Wrap up marshmallow inside crescent roll (linen burial cloth).
Bake in oven (tomb) for about 12 minutes.

When you take them out of the oven, the marshmallow has melted, leaving an empty space inside the crescent roll.  It is a great visual to show the burial cloth and tomb could not contain Jesus.  And, they are tasty. 

Aria liked it last year and got the message just a little bit.  This year she could practically make the whole thing herself and totally got the correlation to Jesus in the tomb.  I love seeing the growth a year produces!

Backfire

Last fall we had a parenting series in our ABF where I learned, what I thought, was a fabulous discipline technique.  One guest speaker mom suggested using lemon juice/vinegar as a punishment for saying yucky things with your mouth.  I really like the concept of "you said something yucky with your mouth, so now you must have something yucky in your mouth as a punishment."  Around that time we had a problem with Aria spitting when she didn't like an instruction we gave her.  After hearing about that technique, I applied it the next time Aria spit.  I grabbed lime juice because it was the first thing I saw that I thought Aria wouldn't like.  It worked like a charm.  I think I only had to do the lime juice punishment twice to cure her spitting habit. 

Recently, Aria has developed another sassy behavior.  When she doesn't like an instruction we give, she deliberately does not obey and says, "huh" in a not very nice tone.  I decided it was time for the lime juice correction. 

Today Aria made the noise after I asked her to stop whining and ask nicely for whatever it was she wanted.  So I got out the lime juice and gave her a spoonful.  She promptly spit it out so I gave her another one.  She was trying so hard not to swallow it, yet hated having it in her mouth, and didn't want to spit it out.  The result?  She barfed.  It was so gross. 

I immediately switched to caring and concerned parent mode because it really freaked her out.  Aria hasn't thrown up much in her life that she can remember.  The only episodes we had was right around her one year birthday when we were trying to switch to regular milk.  Anyway, I got her all cleaned up and cleaned up the floor and then talked to her again about using her mouth to say nice things.

For the rest of the evening I've been evaluating whether or not the lime juice is a good discipline tool.  It certainly is effective and I like the idea of the punishment relating so closely to the poor behavior, but I don't know if I'll be dealing with vomit every time I do it.  Aria does gag easily.  One time, as an infant, she was crying so hard in the MOPS nursery she threw up on a volunteer.  Tonight I think she was trying so hard not to swallow it, it made her gag and throw up.  However, it could totally cure her sassy "huh" noise since she had such a bad experience with the lime juice this time.  Or I might have to find another yucky liquid to try. 

Parenting.  Always learning.  Always growing.

We Love Snow!

We just love snow in our house!  I had a three year old literally bounce out of her room like Tigger this morning in anticipation of playing in the new snow.  I made her eat breakfast first, so we made snowman pancakes to reduce the whines.  Can you tell which snowman belongs to which Pegump girl?

After all that, not much eating occurred and then we did this (turn the sound down or ignore my loud voice!)

Ranch

If you ask Aria her favorite food, her immediate response is mac 'n cheese.  If you are talking about any food in general, Aria will say, "I like mac 'n cheese."  There is no doubt, my daughter loves mac 'n cheese.  But I would like to challenge her claim of favorite with what I think it should be, ranch.  As in the salad dressing.  I don't know if it classifies as a food, but she eats it on anything.  Whenever we are eating something I know Aria will say she doesn't like, I put a little bit of ranch on her plate and she will use that to mask the taste of whatever it is she doesn't like.  It is pretty common on things like chicken, steak, vegetables (even if they are cooked), and potatoes.  She even has an aunt who likes to eat ranch on pizza with her.  The other night it was pineapple.  And I've seen her dip blueberries in it, too (even though she loves blueberries).  She'll often ask, "Can I dip my ________ in ranch?"  I used to hesitate when I thought it was gross, but now I say go ahead.  If it goes in her mouth, she has to chew and swallow so it is her problem if it is gross.  Never once has she complained.  Surprisingly, I don't think we've ever combined mac 'n cheese and ranch, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was requested.

P Preview

Nothing better than homemade Purple Popsicles by the Pool during P week!

Jesus is Alive!

Today we celebrated Jesus is alive!  After a lot of sad stories of Jesus' pain and death, we got to be happy!  Aria opened her egg this morning to find "nothing" and was mildly confused.  But Mommy and Daddy were so excited that Jesus wasn't there, she got excited, too.  We read the story again in the Bible and we also made these. 

The empty tomb (roll) and no marshmallow (Jesus) reinforced the empty egg and she at least got it on a basic level.  We'll work on Jesus conquering death and sin in the future.  The cutest statement came in the car on the way to church when she said, "Grandma and Papa celebrate Jesus is alive, too!"  So very thankful for our amazing Savior and the incredible blessing of our beautiful little girl!

Fareway

I've become a bit of a grocery snob.  Or maybe snob is not the right word, but I take my grocery shopping seriously.  I constantly battle between cheap and good quality; saving money and choosing the healthiest options.  We all know, by far and away, my favorite place to get groceries is Hy Vee.  But, I'm constantly feeling like I spend way too much money there.  Recently, their Health Market, their service, and the freshness of their products has been winning my internal struggle.  Today we set out to get groceries at Hy Vee.  I had a short list and was not expecting to spend much; the kind of weeks I'm really happy to go to Hy Vee.  On a whim, I saw an ad in the newspaper for $2.99 ground chuck at Fareway.  That's a pretty good price in my opinion, so I decided to go there just to get some meat.  When we went in, Aria was instantly sold on the place because of the cool, red race car cart.  That is a big plus for staving off whining and pulling things off shelves.  I was impressed with some prices that I saw, so I started shopping.  Pretty soon I was halfway down my list and I realized I was going to be getting my groceries at Fareway this week.  One of the things I really liked was their competitor pricing.  They had the same price as a lot of the Hy Vee deals I wrote down.  In fact, the little signs said, "competitor pricing."  The quality of the produce was great, which is another big thing for me.  Overall, their prices were cheaper than Hy Vee, but probably not quite as cheap as Aldi.  However, their service was great!  I did have a short list and it didn't have anything too out of the ordinary on it, so I'll have to reserve my complete judgement until I try it a few more times.  I will definitely be watching for their ads more often and may get a happy medium balance for my constant grocery budget struggle!