Ice Cream and Biscuits

Tonight I told the kids that if they cleaned their rooms and straightened the whole house in 10 minutes, we could make homemade ice cream. I have never seen them clean like they did tonight! Their rooms were mostly clean, so a 2-minute quick pick-up did the trick. They divided the 2 main rooms of the house between them and ran fast... they finished that in 5! Wow, I need more of that kind of motivation around here.

So here is our Homemade Ice Cream in a Bag, from Family Fun Magazine:

• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 cup half and half
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup salt (The bigger the granules, the better. Kosher or rock salt works best, but table salt is fine.)

• Ice cubes (enough to fill each gallon-size bag about half full)
• 1 pint-size ziplock bag
• 1 gallon-size ziplock bag

Instructions

1. Combine the sugar, half and half, and vanilla extract in the pint-size bag and seal it tightly. (I double bag it just to make sure no salt leaks in)
2. Place the salt and ice in the gallon-size bag, then place the sealed smaller bag inside as well. Seal the larger bag. Now shake the bags until the mixture hardens (about 5 minutes). Feel the small bag to determine when it's done.
3. Take the smaller bag out of the larger one, and eat the ice cream right out of the bag.

So here we are shaking our bags. Our hands got cold so we all put on gloves. It took way longer than 5 minutes. Maybe that's cause I was distracted by phone calls during the beginning of this part and didn't explain it well. The little ones got tired of shaking. Grandpa Slaugh told us we could use snow with our ice, or instead of ice, so we added that, too.

When the ice cream felt done enough, we took out the little bags and rinsed the salt off. Rinsing it in water may have melted the ice cream a bit, and since it was not very hard to begin with, it was more like a milk shake. We snipped the corner off the bag and sucked it right out of the bag.

Until Jonah kept tasting salt. So we poured his in a cup.

Delicious! Actually I think I accidentally doubled the sugar, as it was super sweet, and I didn't see the right size measuring cup left on the counter when I went to investigate.

Annabelle has been asking almost daily if she can make biscuits for dinner. It just never fits right with dinner. Who eats tacos and biscuits? So today she was very excited when I asked her if she would like to make biscuits to go with our chicken-a-la-king. She invited Grace and Olivia to help her. They all put on aprons. Annabelle remembered that girls should have their hair pulled back when baking, so she did their hair. She decided to make it weird hair, pulled up messy on top of their heads. So here they are working together:

They taste-tested each ingredient as they put it in. Baking powder tasted the worst. Salt, shortening.... they all made sour faces. Annabelle likes to eat plain flour, though. They all did a great job taking turns and then licking the bowl and spoons when done.

Art

This is Jonah's. He drew it and colored it himself. Even put the corners on himself.

In preschool, Grace's teacher read the kids a story about 3 snowmen with black hats who go sledding in the sun. They realize the sun is hot and they start to melt into puddles. Then the teachers sent the kids to the art table and told them to paint a picture that follows the details of the story. Grace jumped right in and knew what she was doing. Got all the detail right, even the light blue puddles forming. This shows she listens well and pays attention to content of an oral story. And it is a darn cute painting!

Grace and Olivia and a friend did this one, a ship made of shapes. We saw one in Sandra Boynton's "The Going-To-Bed Book." We decided we could make one too! We cut the shapes out of paper and glued them on, then added stickers. Here, Olivia colored an orange sun above the ship, and drew a few clouds to the left.
This morning our school was delayed for 2 hours because of ice on the roads. So we needed something fun to do. Grace has been asking to paint, so I told them if they cleaned their rooms in 10-minutes they could paint together. They got the job done! I've been using this technique more and more. So hard to find motivation to clean sometimes, isn't it? A fun project is a good motivator for my kids. Here is Annabelle's painting. She experimented with drawing with colorful crayons, then painting over with other bright water colors.
I drew this tree for Grace. She colored it in and added the apples herself:
Olivia spent the most time on her picture. She had a hard time getting the water to mix with the paint correctly. But she kept working until she was satisfied with her results:

Art

Jonah's missionary:

Olivia's stick people:

Disastrous Sunday

Sunday was a bit of a disaster. First of all the thunder and rain woke up Finn and Olivia in the middle of the night, twice. Thank goodness we all slept in in the morning. Finn was still snoring at 8:30am, which is unheard of. Olivia and I thought maybe it was a snoring bear. We giggled.

Church was an adventure. Ezra was at work so I would be substitute teaching his sunbeam class. First of all Finn did not nap all morning. I was hoping he would fall asleep in the van on the way to church but he didn’t. As we were going in I realized I forgot the diaper bag and the teacher bag with manual and props and crayons. So I decided to go ahead on in for the sacrament portion. Then we skipped out early to race home to grab the bags and be back in time to help Grace give her talk at the beginning of primary. Finn and Olivia both fell asleep on the drive. So I left Jonah to watch over the 2 sleepers in the van while I went in to help Grace. She did a great job speaking clearly, looking out into the audience, smiling. Her talk was on the plan of salvation and in it she said the words to "I am a Child of God." So now that was over, I came back to the van, woke up the sleeping children, sent Jonah off to class, and I had to go be in charge of Olivia's sunbeam class.

So, sitting in sharing time. I had to get up a few times to put little kids back in their seats or in time-out. Every time I set Finn down to take care of others, Finn cried loudly. I tried to give him food to help calm him down but he just threw it everywhere.

Once class started a member of the presidency took Finn for the first half of class while we started a quick snack and started bathroom visits. (These are new sunbeams, remember.) The kids took a long time with bathroom breaks. Another member of the presidency helped with the ones who had disappeared in the bathroom. I was about to start a lesson when Finn, sitting on my lap now, peed right through the diaper onto my lap. Lovely. Used wipes to clean that up as best as I could, then changed Finn’s diaper. One little boy pushed another out of his chair, who bumped his head and cried. The third member of the presidency took the crying one away to help him.

I realized I only had 10 minutes left so I jumped into a lesson. We drew pictures of sun, moon, and stars and then pulled objects out of a bag and decided if we used that object in the daytime or nighttime. Thank goodness I had prepared hands-on things because these kids were not sitting still today and I was too frazzled to do anything nice about it. Class over (thank goodness)!

Later at home, Olivia peed on the carpet. While I was cleaning that up, Finn pushed a chair to the counter and used a wrench to eat peanut butter out of the jar. Izzy ate the rest of our tortillas that were left out.

I decided to put a movie on and take a nap. I needed the rest.

Is it Spring? Or not?

We enjoyed our unusually warm weather last week. The kids got to play outside for long hours. They discovered the mud, of course, and washed their feet in mud a couple times. We went on a bike ride one day (Grace on a bike, Olivia on a big-wheel trike, Finn in the stroller, the others were at school). Olivia can barely reach the pedals. To push the pedals and steer at the same time apparently is too much of a challenge right now. So she uses her feet on the sidewalk to power the trike. And it is slow going! We go, stop, go, stop, go, stop. Grace was very patient most of the way. She powered on ahead at the end.

Saturday the weather was back to mostly cold. The kids are not ready to give up the feeling of spring, though. They get dressed in the morning in capris and try to go outside in just a jacket. Of course they freeze after a few minutes and have to come in and change. But then they try it again the next day.

Here we are at the pond Saturday:

We wondered if anyone knows why these trees would be placed on the pond. Five evergreen trees were place on the pond, each with a cinder block tied to the top and bottom, so that when the ice melts, the trees will sink to the bottom. Does anyone know why one might do this?

*Some of you got back to me right away and let me know the trees are placed to create habitat (hiding places) for fish. See this website if interested: http://ohioline.osu.edu/a-fact/0001.html

Annabelle and Jonah both got new bikes for Christmas. Their new bikes have pegs on the wheels, I think for doing tricks. Perfect for giving a friend (or sister) a ride standing on the back pegs: