Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie

I made my first Strawberry-Rhubarb pie!  And I got to use fresh strawberries and rhubarb from Becky and Ralph's garden... yummy!  I was too lazy to make my own pie crust and I only had 1 frozen crust so I just put a crumb topping on it.  I love crumb topping!

It boiled over in my brand new oven and I got to use the self-clean for the first time.

Doesn't it look yummy?

I thought it was so good!!!  I ate more than half of it myself!!!  The boys wouldn't eat it, so it was just Dave and I.

Tissue Paper Flower with a Sweet Twist

Jayden and I made a cute little tissue paper flower bouquet with a sweet twist for his pre-school teachers.  The 13th will be his last day of class and then on the 18th there is a picnic with all the classes.  I'm so sad preschool is over.  Jayden just loved it!!  I'm so glad we sent him!  He learned so much this year!  In the beginning of the year, and most of the year, he wouldn't say "hi" when we first got there and all of his classmates would say "hi" to him or yell it across the parking lot.  Within the last month (maybe a little longer) he started being the one to yell "hi" first from across the parking lot as we all got out of our cars.  I just think that is a huge improvement. The whole social experience has been wonderful for him!!!  And he learned to write his name, all the letters of the alphabet and the numbers too.

So to say thank you to his teachers we bought some green chocolate melts and coated some pretzel rods with them.

Then we put them in individual pretzel rod bags...

Sealed them with a rubber band and then put the pipe cleaner of the tissue paper flower through the rubber band...

Twisted the pipe cleaner around the pretzel rod and tied a pretty bow around it...

and put 4 together for each teacher...

Aren't they so cute?  After you eat the pretzel rod you will still have a cute flower made by a cute a kid!

Finishing up the Mother's Day Crafts

In the morning we decorated the bags.  Then we went to the playground for a couple of hours.

Then after lunch we finished some more.  Carolynn was down for her nap so Ben helped make her tissue paper flowers.

Here is my sweet Tanner...

Tanner, Jayden and Ben...

Here are all the things that went in the bags...

Mother's Day Crafts Day 2

I found these cute flower pin wheel things at AC Moore and thought they would be perfect for Jayden to paint for Granny and Grandma.  They would look so pretty in their flower beds (I would have loved for Jayden to paint me one, but I already had him making me a bunch of my own mother's day gifts, I didn't want to do another one.  hint, hint, Dave... wink, wink.)

He did an awesome job!!  He wanted to do a rainbow, so I put the paint in rainbow order and he did it all himself!  He opened the paint, painted each petal and closed the paint all by himself!  I was right there doing other things and I was so impressed!  Way to go Jayden!!!

I never got a picture of the finished product but you can kind of tell from the first picture.  We also turned it around a day or 2 later and so he could paint the back.  You are so awesome Jayden!!!

Mother's Day Crafts Day 1

When the Robinsons came in the morning Tanner was sitting on the chair and Trevor climbed up with him and Tanner actually didn't cry or anything!  He let Trevor sit there, such an accomplishment for Tanner!  However, Carolynn was pretty jealous that Trevor sat with Tanner and not her.  Carolynn was already sitting on the sofa by herself and she kept saying or rather whining "Trevor, I want to sit with you..."  until Trevor finally told her to climb up with him and Tanner.

I decided that I'd try to make a bunch of crafts for mother's day with the kids.  This is what we got done today...

Here is a little collage of Carolynn...

And her is Ben Robinson...

Jayden's Scarecrow

A few weeks ago Jayden had helped Granny and Pappy plant seeds in their garden.  He has been talking about planting a garden for such a long time!  Where we live we have a lot of land, but not one place that gets enough sun throughout the day to have a garden.  While he was there he had told granny that she needed a scarecrow so the birds won't eat the seeds.  So he volunteered to make one.

Below is Jayden making his scarecrow face...

On the 19th he painted the face... (it's fabric paint, so it should last)

And in my previous post you saw that Cheryl and I helped put him together on the 24th.  After dinner on Sunday we went over to put the scarecrow in the garden.  It was getting dark and it was a very cloudy day.

Below, Jayden is making his scarecrow face again...

He stands in the strawberry patch watching over the rest of Pappy and Granny's huge garden!!!!

Now remember, my boys learn everything from Caillou and that is where the scarecrow came from too.  He is only missing to pie pans that bang together in the wind.  We now have two pie pans and need to take them over.  (this is the 30th that I'm actually posting this.)  The other day Tanner picked up one of the pie pans (just the aluminum ones) and started banging on it and said "scarecrow!"

Chocolate Covered Pretzel Rods

As a Young Women Presidency we decided to have the girls make chocolate covered pretzels for their fundraiser for girls camp this year.  We got together in the morning to do a practice run and try to figure out how much it would cost to make each bag.  We originally wanted to do little M&M's but we couldn't get them to stay on the rod.  So we decided to do peppermint at the last minute.

Don't they look yummy?!

We have milk chocolate with peanut butter cup, white drizzle and peppermint.  The girls are selling 5 in a bag for $5 a bag.

April Fools Day Dinner

This was the first day after my cleanse and I really wanted to make Chicken Pot Pie (but not the real PA-German one that is like a soup, the actual pie one.)  That is what I told Dave.  On Family Fun's website I found this chicken pot pie recipe and wanted to make it...

Can you tell from the picture, it's made out of candy?!  It took me over an hour to make all these little peas and carrots from flavored tootie rolls, and the corn from starburst...

What do you think?  Doesn't it look real?  It's all candy.

For the chicken they tell you to use dried apples, but I didn't think they were dark enough so I also used some dried bananas.

Then you use vanilla pudding for the sauce and sliced bananas for the potatoes.  Here is the filling...

You bake a real crust.  You make an aluminum foil ball and put a piece of foil over top to smooth it out.  Then you put the crust over top and bake it.  When it's cooled you put the filling in and place the crust on top.  Here is what it looked like when I served it up.  I think it looks real...

Dave touched it and said "it's cold" and I told him just to eat it.  He took one bite, spit it out and said "This is awful!!!"  and I just busted up laughing, I couldn't help myself!!  It was pretty funny!!!  Then I told him what it was and he was relieved.  He was expecting real chicken pot pie, which I did make.

Jayden didn't like it either...

But Tanner did...

Dave immediately got up and started serving the real stuff...

Here's the real chicken pot pie!!!  It was so good!!!!  Very, very yummy!!!!

And here are the two together...

The fake one was kind of like a dessert, but it was pretty gross, there was way too much candy in it.

Also on Family Fun's website they have a pie you make out of meat loaf and mashed potatoes.  Maybe next year I'll make that for dinner, so we can have dessert first and then the dinner last... at least that's what it will look like.

April Fools Day Morning

My kids are still too young to get April Fools Day, but I thought I'd do something fun anyway.  I put some blue dye in their cereal bowls underneath the cereal.  So when I poured their milk it turned blue.  Jayden liked it, but he didn't understand the "April Fools" part.

This was the first day in about a month that I could sleep in and not wake up to an alarm clock.  So I did.  I had woken up when I thought Jayden did, but it turned out he was up before me and had already been downstairs getting into things.  When I came down stairs in the morning I found the little roller (Tanner is using in the picture below) out along with the Easter Egg paints.  The paints were out of the box and so neatly laid on the table in the foyer with the q-tip things laid behind them.  I just thought Dave got them out to look at them. 

Well, since I hadn't gotten my shower before the boys woke up I left them in the family room with their favorite show on TV so I could get my shower.  I've done it so many times before and never had a problem.  Well, when I came downstairs I found Jayden in the laundry room and this is what I saw...

This is my dryer door...

There is a white plastic shelf thing in there with food on it that he also painted.  I yelled at him, put him in time out and stood there for about 5 minutes trying to figure out how to clean this up, or what to use.  Then I decided to take some pictures until I figured it out.  I first thought I would just try hot water with dish soap, and it worked.  I cleaned everything except the floor and then made Jayden scrub the floor.

There is still some blue and red in the floor but as you can tell, one day it will be replaced, it's an awful floor.  And there is still blue in the stool, oh well...

This Jayden sure gets into a lot!  Remember the baby powder all over his bedroom?  and the Vaseline all over him?  I'm actually writing this on the 5th, I just back dated it to the 1st when it happened.  This morning he spilled bubble stuff all over the laundry room.  What is next?