Go Pack Go

Although James will eagerly tell everyone that his favorite team is the Cowboys, he still loves to dress up in his Packers gear to match his daddy on Sunday.  May doesn't need an excuse, she just loves the green and gold.

Idle Hands Are . . .

 . . . unheard of around the Obermark household.  Here's what May chose to do while I washed dishes Monday morning.

And here is the Math Monday project we did after gymnastics.

 May had fun sliding beads onto the pipe cleaners.

 But it was a lot of hard work counting beads up that far.

She put her heart into it at first, but gave up before doing all 20 pipe cleaners.

Still, an incredibly productive morning, don't you think?

2012, the Year of the Pie

Thanksgiving is generally a low-key holiday for us Utah Obermarks.  No out of town guests, no turkey to cook for hours upon end.  Mostly a lot of relaxing and enjoying one another.  We watch snippets of the parade, we stroll through our neighborhood.  We also all get a say on the menu for the day.

This year James was insistent that we make a pumpkin pie.  Here he is patting down the "crust" - almond meal mixed with a little butter and sugar - and stirring the filling.

Here is James with his finished pie.  Doesn't he look so proud?  I totally adore this little boy.

Pizza Parlour

Last "Math Monday," May and I were inspired by an online post about busy bags.  One was a pizza parlour.  So we got out our felt scraps and cut up toppings.  Then we set about writing out recipe cards.  Ok, to be fair, I wrote down the recipes and May colored them in.

May had a great time thinking up recipes for each member of our family as well as our friends.  We have a friend who can't eat dairy, so May was sure to leave the cheese off of her pizza recipe.

Then May practiced reading and following the recipe cards.  Because she had chosen the shapes for the toppings as well as colored in the cards, she was able to read the recipes without any problems.

 It was quite adorable to watch her counting out all the specific toppings.

Here is a "Pickled Pepper Pizza" - complete with 6 cheeses, 10 green peppers, 6 yellow peppers, and two tomatoes.

 Recipe after recipe, May churned out the pizzas, then put all the toppings back in their proper cups.

 It was exhausting!

 We spent well over an hour making and exploring with this.

Finally we packed it all up to put in the toybox.  When James got home he had a fun time trying to actually read the recipe cards and put the pizzas together.

Snow, Glorious Snow!

Two weeks ago after several days in the 60s, we got a bunch of snow dumped on us.  The kids were very excited - me too!

 First they had to taste it.

 Then it was time to get to work.

 Except for May, she was still eating snow.

 Eventually, she buckled down and made one snowman . . .

 . . . and then another.

 James made his snowman completely independently.

 He and I together made this monster.

 On to snowballs.

 The kids found throwing snowballs at Mom downright hilarious.

 Look at those bright pink cheeks!  Time to go inside.

Dressing Up

Here's Boba Fett with LadyBug.

 Optimus Prime with Butterfly

 Forest Fairy with Doctor

 Witch Doctor (ha ha)

 World's Smallest Boba Fett

Tiny Darth Vader and Witch Doctor

So glad May and I were at Target right after Halloween for the insanely cheap costumes!

Learning to Sew

How awesome is this guy?

Art Corner!

Since putting in an art corner, we have had to come to terms with the fact that there will always be a chaotic mess in it.

It is worth it, though, to see these kids going to town morning, noon and night.  Here they are cutting out construction paper feathers to make turkeys.

Here's May at eight in the morning, having colored some pictures and cut them out all before I could get the breakfast dishes washed.  I love that having the supplies available really does encourage them to create on a whim.

Spicing Up Lunch

We've been working hard lately at making lunch tasty and interesting.

Sometimes saying I dropped a secret ingredient in the bottom of the cup makes our soup disappear.  (It was two peas, I mean, it was ogre eyes.)

 We've enjoyed some yogurt parfaits, as well.

 Cookie cutters make every lunch more interesting.  (That's a mini yellow pepper filled with cottage cheese at the top, if you're wondering.)

 Sometimes I get ambitious enough to make little pizza muffins for dipping in sauce.

Rainbow sprinkles can even spruce up a lunch of refrigerator remnants.