The last week or two of May we had quite a bit of rainy weather. We did good to entertain ourselves though. As you can see, Caleb enjoyed himself immensely in the mud puddles.
A friend of mine posted on her blog that she had made crayons with her kids. I checked out the directions & decided it might be a fun thing to do. So, one very rainy day, we gave it a whirl. I learned a few things that I'd for sure do the next time. For example; if you soak your crayons in hot water, the wrappers slide right off.
#2 It makes it a lot easier for the kids to see how many crayons of each color they have if you sort them out after they take off the wrappers. Once we got going & the kids knew what they were doing, I started chopping up the crayons into pea sized pieces & putting them back in the correct tin.
#3 The directions I read said to bake them at 250 degrees for 10-20 minutes. Mine only took 10 minutes. However, I made sure we only put in chunks of crayon to the half way mark of the tin. I was worried they might overflow & I didn't want to clean that mess up! You could easily fill the tins up more than half way but I'd suggest keeping a baking sheet underneath it (just in case).
#4 This project kept Caleb entertained for way, way longer than I had anticipated (which was great). Little sister even liked watching them bake!
#5 The directions I read said to let the crayons cool overnight after they come out of the oven. I only let my cool about 15 minutes (long enough to harden up). The directions I read also said you could either put them in cupcake wrappers or just spray your muffin tin with cooking spray. I lined my cupcake tins with wrappers & then sprayed them with cooking spray. The wax still leaked through the wrapper though so both tins are now dedicated to crafts. However, I think that of all the crayons we did only 1 had a little paper stick to it. The rest slide right off easy as could be!
#6 By using wrappers in your tins, your crayons will look like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups or bottle caps. I was ok with that. The long pieces just brush off really easy & you can still color with them even though they have ridges.
Since I used a mini muffin tin, each kid got to do 8 (Brooke didn't do any). We still had quite a few crayon pieces left over so I just put what was left into the regular size muffin tins & got a few more.
While Travis was home he ended up changing out the sensor for his oil (or something like that). Yep. He's sitting on the engine with a flashlight & a makeup mirror to do it.
The kids got to have their cousin Clayton sleep over this weekend. They played in the water all day long on Sunday. In fact, all 4 kids got sunburned! I'm generally the sunblock queen. However, first thing that morning we went down to my parent's house to pick up a fridge & drop it off. While we did that the kids stayed with my mom & ended up getting in the pool. I didn't think they were going to be doing that so I didn't sunscreen them before we left home. They've been whining about their shoulders hurting all day (their sunburns aren't that bad, but I'm fairly certain this is the first sunburn in their life for all of them!)
Today the kids started swimming lessons at the Logan Aquatic Center. We are taking my girlfriend's boys with us as well. Turns out Sam, Nash & my friend's boys are in the same class with only one other girl (her name is Samantha too). Caleb is in the 3 year old class. Their classes are only 30 minutes for 9 days. They were so excited about going they talked non stop all the way there! Then I couldn't get them to quit all the way home either! I told Laura we might have to sign them up for another session after summer school gets out!
After we got home from swimming lessons today I made the kids help clean the basement while Brooke took a nap. After she woke up we went up to my "other mother's" house to play with her grandkids (same kiddos that went to Disney Land with Sam & I). There is a couple across the street from Cindy that owns a bunch of miniature & fainting (yep, fainting) goats. The kids love going to see them - especially when there are babies. So, we loaded up & went to Cindy's house to play with the kids & feed the goats. Cindy was awesome & prepared a bag of goat food for all of us (animal crackers - who knew?!).
This was Brooke's view.
Little sister was so good. She just sat in her stroller and watched all the goats clamor around us for their animal crackers. There were a ton of little babies that were so cute! She just sat & held onto her bag of animal crackers as tight as she could (until Sam got them away from her & shared her goat food!).
Since the big kids have dead flip flops & dead water shoes I decided we'd better make a trip to Walmart tonight to pick some up. Now Sam & Nash are ready for summer with their flip flops:
And, I was lucky enough to find some adorable sandals for Brooke that actually fit on her chubby feet!
I was even able to get Sam to do the first day of her math challenge from her new fourth grade teacher. We'll see how long that lasts! She's also trying to do the governor's summer reading challenge. Actually, we'll all try to do that. At the end of this week we'll go sign up for the city library summer reading too!
I made a Hello Kitty cake for a girlfriend last week & she showed it to all the people she works with. I now have an order for a character cake! In the words of my mom "It sounds like you might be entering the cake business!" I guess I might! Tonight I'm making Elmo! I'll take an extra $30 any time! Bring on the cake!
