A birthday...a birthday...

Oh, Elijah's had a birthday! He is now our precious THREE year old!

We put birthday signs around the house with birthday messages and a picture of our big boy!




When Elijah woke up this morning, there was a line of vehicles from his bed down the hall to this play mat!


Collecting all the cars


Vehicles in his favorite breakfast - gravy on toast!


I'm THREE!


We love "The Big..." Series. This morning we learned how a car is designed and made from start to finish!


This is the neatest learning toy from the grandparents. The tag reading system and the birds and sea animals activity cards.


Cheesecake pie!


He got them all in one blow!


With strawberry sauce...Yum!

Granola

We LOOOOVE granola! Here is a recipe that I made this past week.



Mix the following in a mixing bowl:
10 C rolled oats
1/2 wheat germ
1 C chopped or sliced nuts
1 C shredded coconut

Mix in a measuring cup:
1 1/4 C water
1/4 C honey
1/4 C canola oil
1/4 C maple syrup
3 T vanilla
1 tsp maple flavoring

After each is mixed thoroughly, combine and stir until oats are well coated. Spread on two cookie sheets and put in oven at 225 degrees. Stir every 30 minutes for about 3 or so hours; until dry and golden.

Brain Hat

We've been learning about internal organs and how they function in the body. We've already put our paper brain on our paper person so today we made a brain hat to go along with our learning.

Winter Beauty

In between church and vespers at a nursing home with a very dear church member we had a few minutes to stop and enjoy God's winter beauty!

Flour Tortillas

Once again my motivation was saving a couple bucks. Quite a while ago, Chaeli and I learned how to make flour tortillas. It was so easy! Today I tried it again and decided to make the big ones for a recipe I call "green burritos."







Flour Tortillas
1 C unbleached flour
dash salt
2 T warm canola oil
1/2 C water

Mix
the flour and salt, then stir in the oil. When fairly mixed but still lumpy, add the water. Knead well for about 3 minutes.

Cover
with a damp kitchen towel and let rest for 30 minutes. Don't skimp on this part. It's the key to soft, pliable tortillas. I ended up leaving my to sit for about 2 hours just because I couldn't get right back to them and they are great.

Knead
for just a moment, then divide into 6-8 (small) balls. Less if you want more tortillas. Roll out each ball into a thin circle.

Preheat
the dry frying pan (no oil or butter). Place the plate inside then plastic bag.

Cook
a tortilla on the hot pan until brown spots develop on the bottom (30-45 seconds). Flip tortilla and do the same on the other side. Then put the finished tortilla on the plate and close up the bag.

Repeat
with the rest of the dough, placing each cooked tortilla on top of the last in the bag. I did large tortillas so they didn't fit on a plate in a bag. I stacked them on a paper towel with a paper towel and dish cloth on top.

Note
It's best to let the finished tortillas rest for about 10 minutes. If you can't wait, use the tortillas in the same order that they were cooked, in order to allow the others to steam as much as possible.

Painting

Elijah named this "sun moon painting."

Making Peanut Butter

A couple months ago peanut butter was on my grocery list. When I got to the aisle where I would put some in my cart, I was shocked by the raise in price. It had gone up by $1.10. We needed it, but I couldn't bring myself to buy it right then. Later I did buy a jar or two, but in the meantime we decided that we'd try making it since buying the peanuts was cheaper. We bought 30# of them earlier this month. We roast them, salt them, and shoot them down the champion juice. This second time around we got it right. We roasted them longer, added a bit more salt, and cha-ching! We love it. And all the kids will eat it. It's a winner...and so are we!

Bread in a Bag

The kids made bread in a bag this morning. 4 kids. 4 bags. We ended up with 4 loaves of bread. They had fun and were pretty proud of THEIR loaf of bread when we finished!

Poetry

From Chaeli -

This is a haiku I wrote about my body . A haiku is a Japanese poem with 5 syllables, 7 syllables, and 5 syllables per line.



Brain, heart, lungs, and skin -

Jesus makes them work for you.

I love my body!

Water and Kidneys and Chaeli

Chaeli has had more water to drink today than any day ever, I think. We learned about our kidneys today and the job that they have as filters; then we put them up on our paper people. She keeps going to get water and I just laugh because she doesn't like water. She said she still hates water, but now she knows why she needs to drink it. Good choice. :)