More Cooking

The kids love cooking and they both did a lot of it over the Summer. However, most of the recipes she selected required a great deal of very close supervision. I didn't get a chance to step back and take photos. However as you can see, even when he is cooking she is right there learning how to make things.

Here he is chopping onions. I love this device. I can get through chopping onions so quickly there aren't any tears! He likes being encouraged to hit something.

I have no idea which recipes he is making in either of these photos. Apparently they weren't very good. I love being able to hand him a sharp knife and have him cut things though. We started with plastic knives cutting bananas and by the time we got to this, I knew he wouldn't cut himself using the sharp knife.

Wordless Wednesday

Our first dance class

Backyard Playset

We wanted some specific things in a playset so instead of just buying one, Wonderful Husband built this. He didn't have any plans, he just bought the materials and built it. I'm impressed.

Instead of a standard swing, we wanted a disc swing. The disc swing takes a lot more control and core muscles. You know we can't just have something standard around here, haha. 

The other side has the bar and rings. These can be used together or separately. These are not only a core workout, but also an arm workout. Most playground equipment only has things for the legs. This is one of the reasons in the increase in injuries on things like monkey bars which require arm strength. 

The bar and rings can also be taken down quickly and the rope ladder hung up. This particular version of the rope ladder only lasted a couple of days before Wonderful Husband improved on the design. We purposefully did not attach the rope ladder to anything at the bottom. This makes climbing it more of a challenge and a core workout.

Do you notice a theme here? One child was diagnosed with having a weak core and we needed to help build it up. Now when you see our kids you would have no idea which child was struggling. Each of these things helps both of them and they only see it as fun, not as work.

Butterflies!

You might have noticed in the background of some of our other pictures that we were raising butterflies. We started with 5 tiny caterpillars and they grew and grew. Then they each spun a chrysalis. NOTE: They did not spin a cocoon, a moth would spin a cocoon, a butterfly comes from a chrysalis. Then we waited for them to emerge.

Once the butterflies emerge, you notice two things. #1 Their wings are wet and drip red. They are not bleeding, they are just simply letting their wings dry. #2 They are hungry after not eating for many days. They love milkweed, sugar water, and oranges. Oranges are easiest for us, so that's what we used.

 

Theoretically when you open up the tent, they all fly away. However sometimes they are perfectly happy living in a confined area with food being brought to them regularly. Three of them did fly away, but there were two who just didn't want to leave.

I was able to pick up an orange slice with a butterfly on it and set it out of the tent. You can even see the butterfly eating in this photo!

Those two hung out for a long time. One eventually flew away. I think the other one had some challenges and probably couldn't fly. It was gone the next day so the kids assumed it flew away. I'm guessing it was just fulfilling it's part in the food chain.