What We Do For Fun

So what do we do for fun around our house?    

Here's a little glimpse:   

As a family, we love reenacting cooking shows from the Food Network.    My kids (all of them) beg for us to do these on a regular basis.  Glen and I find them a little draining, and especially dread the massive kitchen mess that always ensues, but we try to humor them about once a month or so.  Most of my kids are now better cooks than I am and it's been fun to see even Ellie and Adam stretch themselves to create really tasty (and even beautiful) food without recipes.   I like to think that their future spouses will thank me profusely someday.

Adam, Emma, and AnnaLisa were the judges this time.  Mommy was the first one out and Daddy was the winner.  

Ellie plays dress-up with her friends.  Dress-ups lately have gotten a lot more sophisticated than the fancy princess outfits of her younger days and now they usually involve some elaborate role playing in a historical time period.   This day it was a princess and Little House on the Prairie mash-up where Ellie was  "poor Rapunzel"  and Hannah the faithful servant girl who tried to help Rapunzel.  There was no electricity and they had to use candles and cook over a fire.     

Adam plays strategic board games.   Give him any strategy game and with practice, it won't take long until he will be the new family champion! This day he was playing 10 Days In Europe Game , but "7 Wonders" is his current favorite.  We play games together as a family at least a few times a week and for sure whenever we get together with the "S" family!   Adam also just started an every other week chess club with some local homeschoolers, since he can't talk any of his sisters (or mother) into playing that with him.  

Emma makes fancy breakfasts.   The breakfasts shown below are not for a special occasion of any sort. She just really seems to enjoy that quiet early morning time in the kitchen to create beautiful and delicious food.  

 I tote kids around to their doctor's visits, classes, etc., and try to take advantage of moments to spend special time with a kid whenever I can.    Yesterday Ellie had her appointment with a seizure specialist (also known as an epileptologist) downtown, so when her appointment was finished and I realized we were only about 2.5 miles from the National Zoo and still had a couple hours before the next kid had somewhere to be, it was a no-brainer.   The zoo was empty, the animals were active, and there were zoo keepers everywhere eager to share information about the animals to anyone who would listen.  We learned all about how they track pandas in the wild and best of all got to watch the very cute baby panda playing for a while!    

Cami makes cupcakes.  This clearly isn't a surprise, but perhaps the fact that after 3-years of being in business that she still regularly fills big orders for people and that she's still willing to make special orders for mom, may be a bit more of a surprise.  She recently held a big sale for her entrepreneurship class and sold 11-dozen cupcakes (on left) and  a week later was still willing to make these "brainy" cupcakes for me to share with friends celebrating another friend's anniversary of overcoming brain cancer.

Glen makes chocolate covered strawberries!    Okay, so this was just for Valentine's Day, but it was such a sweet gesture and so much more interesting than showing a picture of him watching BYU sports, that I had to throw it in.  

I had to laugh to see how many of our family's past-times involve food.   What can I say?  I think I'm raising a family of foodies!    Even Spencer sends me pictures of meals he's proudly prepared for himself….complete with the  budget friendly ingredients of beans and rice!  

One of Spence's culinary creations

So what do YOU do for fun in your house?  

For the Kids

It was my intention to do a detailed blogpost each day I was gone, so that my family could keep up with my happenings while I am in California.  Unfortunately my jet-lagged body wants to sleep far more than it wants to blog, therefore consider this a teaser post. 

My kids were jealous when they found out that I was going to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park today and really wanted me to take pictures of koala bears for them.  Alas, there was nary a koala to be found in the Safari Park, but I'm hoping that this picture of a mama gorilla and her baby might suffice instead.  We watched them for nearly 20 minutes oohing and aahing over how snuggly and sweet they were with each other. 

And it might have made me a tad bit lonely for my own "babies" too. 

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The Wild Side of Virginia

After dropping Spence, Cam, and friends off at EFY on Monday, Ellie and I were faced with a decision.  Turn right back around and go straight home.  Or find something fun to do before embarking on the nearly 3-hour drive.

And it didn't take too much persuasion on Ellie's part, for us to opt for a little fun first.... 

by going on our very first  drive through safari (this picture is of the car in front of us)....

where we got up close and personal with the animals....

We petted their soft fur....

fed them buckets of food...

or in some cases, the whole bucket...

we rolled up the window when certain scarier animals came near (anything big that had horns or antlers)....

We laughed at how they begged for food....

Or just seemed a little curious...

We got excited when our favorite animals came....

and commented to each other how cute some of them were...

 especially the babies...

We did a fair amount of screaming (like when the ostrich, instead of going after the food, started pecking at the car and then my hand, startling me into throwing the entire bucket over my shoulder, scattering little pellets of grain all over our freshly vacuumed car)....

but mostly it was a whole lot of giggling (from the young and the old in the car)...

We made the loop twice, laughing the whole way, and Ellie proclaimed it her best Mommy-daughter date ever....

And I couldn't have agreed more.  :)

Day 307--Voting Day and the National Zoo

So we have this tradition in our preschool that every year we take a field trip to the National Zoo on Voting Day and since it's always a day off of school, so the older kids can come too.

With as big of a group as we had we didn't go anywhere fast, but we did see a few cool things...

Like lots of statues and play structures to climb on...

and an orangutan who showered pee from the top of that tall tower. Of course the kids were grossed out and fascinated at the same time.

Biding our time at the zoo!

On Wednesday, it was a beautiful day--sunny and 80°. So we decided it was the perfect day to go to the National Zoo to pass the time while we anxiously awaited Glen's return that evening!

My kids run to climb into the ZOO sign as soon as they spot it. We have a gazillion pictures that look an awful lot like this one...but, hey, who am I to mess with tradition?

The addition of our little birdie friends who have taken up residence in our bush, seemed to make the kids particularly fascinated with the exotic birds of the zoo. They peppered me with questions about their diets, habitats, and location in the world and constantly compared them to what they knew of our own little birds (thank goodness for those informational signs).

And climbing on statues always seems to be an important part of any trip to the zoo. Although Spence could do without the picture taking part of the deal; the rest of the kids are eager to pose for the camera atop their lofty statuesque perches.

Now, I've got my own zoo going on here at my house today with 10 kids (a regular occurrence in the summertime)...so I will keep this short and be off to my second job as zoo keeper!

Somewhere over the rainbow...

We love the National Zoo...it's close to home, it's free, has cute panda bears...

...emus, elephants, eagle statues to climb on...

...AND water misters to cool us off after climbing all those hills!