Lego Mania!

The Lewisville library has a special event for little builders.  It’s called Lego Mania!  We recently stopped by to check it out. We were a little late so everyone was already absorbed in their creations but Nicholas quickly found the table with the cool Star Wars Lego pieces and went to work building.

It was neat watching the boys at the table. None of the boys seem to know each other and they were each building their own ships yet for the most part they would help each other find particular pieces that each other needed. It was a great experience in teamwork.

Lego Mania! is held on the fourth Sunday of each month at 2:00.  There are tons of Legos as well as Duplo blocks from younger children.  And best of all – it’s FREE!  The Lewisville Library is located at 1197 West Main in Lewisville and their phone number is 972-219-3570.

Homemade Butter

Cold and rainy days mean staying indoors. Unfortunately, that makes some of us a little stir crazy. So I’m always on the lookout for fun activities for my little ones that might just happen to also provide a little teaching along the way. Recently we made homemade butter. Stuart looked at me funny when I told him this. “You did what?” Yep, homemade butter.

I talked to Nicholas a little bit about how butter is made. I explained that basically you start with heavy cream and mix it up until it becomes butter. The cream is full of little fat globules but they are all separate and lonely. Once the mixing starts, fat globule Bob bumps into fat globule Joe and they become friends so they stick together. As more mixing happens, they bump into fat globule Mike and fat globule Tom and they all decide to stick together. The little group of friends keep bumping into more fat globules until everyone is stuck together and they have a big party. And then you have butter. Nicholas loved the story and couldn’t wait to start mixing up some cream.

We do have this cool antique churn that we could have used.

But it just sits on top of our kitchen cabinets. It’s gotten a bit dirty and dusty over the years and I don’t really know if I could ever clean those wooden paddles enough to feel good about eating anything made with them. However, it was neat to be able to show this to Nicholas and explain how it was used in olden days.

Our project was a bit different. All we used were some clean baby food jars, a few glass marbles, heavy whipping cream, music, and manpower.

Nicholas started with filling the jars about 3/4 full of cream.

He added two marbles to help with mixing and put the lid on. I double checked to make sure that the lid was on REALLY tight. Then we put on some fun music and we danced around while we shaking the jars. It doesn’t really matter how you shake them or how hard you shake them but you need to keep them moving.

It’s best to do this with two people so you can trade off and let your arm rest. After 5 minutes, he had a nice whipped topping.

Then around 10 minutes, we could hear a more distinct “thud” sound as a ball of butter was now shaking around in the jar. There was still a lot of liquid that we drained off but in the end we had real butter. It tasted fine right out of the jar but we added a pinch of salt just to make it better.

It was yummy on crackers for an after school snack. Nicholas suggested that we should have repeated our homemade cracker project so we could have had homemade butter AND homemade crackers. Great idea but I recall that I wasn’t too impressed with our homemade crackers. I think I’ll stick with store bought crackers but the homemade butter is a winner.

Melt My Heart

Fort Worth Museum of Science and History

We spent the day at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. What a fun way to learn about science with your friends! But you can’t learn on an empty stomach, right? We headed to Fort Worth a little early so we could have breakfast at Ol’ South Pancake House which my friend Holly over at June Cleaver Nirvana recommended a while back.

Nicholas ordered from the kid’s menu…french toast with scrambled eggs and sausage. Good choice. Hmm, would you like a little french toast with that powdered sugar and syrup?

Rachel enjoyed bits and pieces of my breakfast while flirting with everyone around her. She’s quite a little social butterfly.

Finally, we were off to the museum. They have been closed for what seems like forever while doing a total $80 million redesign of the museum. Let me tell you, the wait was worth it!

We found some great activities for kids at the museum. We found a station on generating electricity. The staff person let Nicholas hook up some wires to what looks like a fishing reel and let him spin away. Look at Nicholas’ face as he realizes that he is manually generating the electricty to turn on the little light bulb that the staff person is holding.

Next we went to a station on aerodynamics. There was a table with lots of crafty-type supplies such as scissors, tape, pipe cleaners, paper cups, coffee filters, etc. The children made their own creations and then floated them in an air tube to see how well their design floated up in the air.

Nicholas loved this station and he made several different designs.

Bowling 101

Nicholas went to a friend’s birthday party at Main Event in Lewisville and he tried bowling for the first time. He got some pointers from Daddy. The lanes had the bumpers up to keep the kid’s balls from going straight into the gutter. I don’t think anyone kept score. It was just a lot of fun!

After bowling, the kids enjoyed Spider-man cupcakes and some video games.

Remember Magic Rocks?

What a perfect find for experiment-loving little boy! I remember Magic Rocks from when I was little. Put in some little colored rocks, add some water and chemicals and voila! You’re growing crystals. It was a simple and easy.  I happened to find a kit at our favorite toy store, Constructive Playthings (www.constplay.com) in Plano and I just had to get it.

Of course, Nicholas loved wearing his “safety” goggles and some of Daddy’s disposable gloves from the garage. Now he’s a REAL scientist!

Nicholas grew crystals and we were both amazed at how quickly the reaction started taking place. The shark stickers seemed cool at the time but they really block the view of the crystals.

Spaghetti and Eyeballs…Oops, I Mean Meatballs

I made spaghetti and eyeballs for dinner. Take your basic meatball recipe and add pimento-stuffed olives for eyeballs before baking.

Arrange on a plate and add a sliver of carrot for a tongue. Shriek!!

Spaghetti and meatballs has always been one of Nicholas’ most favorite foods so he had lots of fun eating this

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town – Casa Manana Children’s Theater

We had a wonderful time at Casa Manana Children’s Theater in Fort Worth where we saw the play, “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”. Nicholas was excited to see the giant inflatable Santa outside the theater.

These pictures are all taken with my cell phone which for some reason was acting up while we were in the theater so I didn’t get any pictures of my two sweet children in their Christmas best standing in front of the Christmas tree. As always, I had brought the good camera with me but didn’t realize until I was about to take a picture that I had left the battery on the charger at home. I put it on the charger last night because I wanted to be sure I would have plenty of battery to take some really great pictures. So much for that plan!

Stuart chuckled and wished me luck when I told him that I was taking both of the children to see this show. He knows how fidgety Rachel is. She doesn’t like to sit still much anymore and is very squirmy and wiggly and wants to always be on the move. The show is about 80 minutes long and we had to arrive about 45 minutes before the show started so we could meet up with our Early Childhood PTA friends and get our group discount. I must admit that I was quite worried too. The lobby at Casa Manana can be quite crowded just before a show so I knew I wouldn’t be able to let Rachel just walk and crawl around like she would want to do. Just holding her in the lobby for 45 minutes before the show could bring her to a meltdown. Then the thought of holding her in my lap for 80 minutes of the performance didn’t seem likely at all. I had already prepped Nicholas that we might have to leave the show early if it just wasn’t working out.

Fortunately, all of our worries were completely unfounded! Rachel was mesmerized by the Christmas tree, lights, and chatter in the lobby so she did great. Some friends of mine even took our picture with their camera as the three of us stood in front of the tree. Nicholas, of course, had fun talking with his friends. Then it was time to enter the theater. How long would we make it into the show before I had to excuse myself because of Rachel’s squirming and fussing? I made sure to sit next to a friend of mine who I knew wouldn’t mind letting Nicholas stay in his seat next to them for the show if I had to step out and let Rachel get her wiggles out somewhere in the lobby. But she did fantastic! I’m sure the fact that our seats were second row, center stage helped to keep her attention focused on the action on the stage. She was quite cute because she kept waving to the actors when they looked in her direction. She had a great time – which meant that Nicholas and I were able to have a great time too. The show was great. The story was full of fun as well as a whole good-guy-bad-guy drama which Nicholas always loves. There were wonderful costumes and props, great acting, and lots of fun songs and dancing. Of course I have no pictures of it because of my whole camera fiasco! Being with friends was wonderful, and having our first taste of Christmas spririt for the season was fabulous!

I had planned to take the kids to a great little deli and pastry shop called the Swiss Pastry shop. Oh, their pastry cases have the most beautiful treats in them – you ALMOST hate to eat them. I finally found my way there (I ALWAYS get lost in Fort Worth) only to find that they are closed on Monday. This wouldn’t have been such a big deal if I hadn’t talked it up with Nicholas so he would think it was more exciting that going to the McDonald’s playground for lunch. Of course, I don’t go to Fort Worth much (probably because of my previous statement about always getting lost there) so I couldn’t think of another fun place to go to for lunch. Finally I came up with Krystal for some burgers. Not nearly as exciting as a pastry case but I thought Nicholas would get a kick out of the mini burgers. I was right.

I don’t eat at Krystal very often so I couldn’t really remember how big the burgers were and how many Krystal burgers might be needed to accomodate a regular-sized burger appetite. I told Nicholas that they were tiny bite-sized burgers and he might be able to eat two of them.  Nicholas informed me that he was going to eat 6 burgers. So I figured with myself and two kids (one of which was going to eat 6 burgers!) I should get the Sackful of Burgers deal which gave us 12 mini- burgers, two drinks, and two fries.  Of course, we missed out on the whole “sack” part of the deal since we weren’t getting it to go but the Trayful of Burgers that we did get was still quite impressive.

That was a bit too much. I think we ended up eating 4 burgers between the three of us!  That clearly means that Nicholas DID NOT eat the 6 burgers like he promised!

Rachel tried a cheeseburger for the first time. Even though the burgers are small, I still made them even smaller for her. She got bite-sized burgers. She still only has her four front teeth so I worry that she can’t chew her food very well so everything she gets is small and broken up. She didn’t mind.

As a matter of fact, she got quite cozy eating her Krystal bites. Here she is in her stroller, in her Christmas dress and stockings, eating her Krystal burger with one leg propped up like she’s sitting in Laz-Y-Boy chair!   Looks like I’ve got a long way to go on teaching her how to act like a lady

I highly recommended going to Casa Manana for “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”. You won’t regret it. And if you have a chance to go to lunch, and it’s not on a Monday, then make your way down to the Swiss Pastry Shop at 3936 W. Vickery Blvd which is somewhere south of Casa but don’t ask me for details because I took the really, really, long way to get there!

A Gross Science Experiment

I’ve always loved science. I even wanted to be a micro-biologist at one time in my pre-children life. Of course, science experiments are lots of fun for me, especially gross ones Check this one out…

We are always talking to Nicholas about the importance of washing his hands even if he doesn’t see that they are dirty. He usually counts to 20 as he rubs the soap on them to be sure that he is washing them long enough. However, sometimes he tries to skimp by counting really fast or not using soap. So I found a little experiment to do to show him how germs can be places even when you can’t see them.

All you need are three pieces of white bread (lighter color will show the growth better than wheat bread); three clean jars with lids numbered 1, 2, and 3; a sprinkle of water; and a magnifying glass.

We would have liked to have used three whole slices of bread but we had small jars to work with so we had to cut three smaller pieces from a single slice of bread.

Touch only a tiny corner of one of the pieces of bread and place it in jar #1 and screw on the lid.

Sprinkle a tiny bit of water on another piece of bread and leave it outside for 20 minutes. Place it in jar #2 and screw on the lid.

Sprinkle the third piece of bread then rub it between your hands and along the kitchen counter. Our piece got rubbed well with little boy hands, along all of the kitchen counter tops, dropped on the floor, then rubbed on the floor. Place piece of bread in jar #3 and screw on the lid.

Place the jars in a dark place and check on them every few days.

Out of sight, out of mind, right? I forgot about our jars and we checked on them in a few weeks! Ewww!

Jar #1 showed little activity at all. Jar #2 had some interesting white and crusty yellow growth on it. But the one we really had fun with and wiped all kinds of germs on was obviously the most fun to look at. It had significant growth of some funky green fuzzy stuff.

What does this teach us? First, it means Mommy is in desperate need of a maid because I don’t have time to cherish the days with my children AND have a clean kitchen. But it also taught us that even though something looks clean, like a piece of bread or your own hand, it may still have lots of germs and bacteria on it. Ahhh, I love a lesson that is taught in such tangible, albeit gross, ways!

Nicholas had fun using his tweezers and looking at the bread with his magnifying glass. But I had fun watching how excited he was learning the point I was trying to get through to him.

I’ve gotten in the habit of taking off my shoes when I come inside. I started doing it mostly for comfort but after having shampooed the carpet and seeing all of the gross stuff that came out of it, I’m a big believer in trying to keep the dirt and germs at the door now. But Nicholas and Stuart don’t follow my same line of thinking so I have to throw in some propaganda now and then when I get the chance. So while I was talking about the invisible germs on the bread, I also mentioned how we bring dirt and germs into the house when we walk from outside to inside with our shoes. Nicholas decided that we should repeat our bread experiment and test one piece of bread on the bottom of our shoes after walking around outside and another piece of bread on the bottom of our feet. I love how he is taking our experiment and expanding on it with our new hypothesis… My little scientist in the making

Walking With Dinosaurs

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