Memorial Day

Has anyone ever warned you not to try a new recipe when friends are coming over for dinner? We'll, I've heard that warning before, but I thought, "How can a recipe fail when it comes from Family Fun magazine and is designed for you to make with your young children?"

We had friends to dinner last night to celebrate Memorial Day and enjoy time together. Alisa and I sent the boys and husbands outside, so we were even cooking by ourselves (a rarity). The salads were made and all that was left was to whip up the new recipe (lace cookies) and put them in the oven. We both marveled at the easiness and simplicity of the recipe and even sampled the yummy dough (as it did not include eggs.)

Ten minutes later, I pulled them out of the oven, let them rest for the recommended two minutes and then realized there would be trouble. Nobody ever told me that you absolutely could not substitute wax paper for parchment paper in a recipe when the point of the paper was to prevent the cookies from sticking!

Alisa and I laughed as we scraped the cookie crumbs off of the paper into a bowl. We went to plan B and pulled some frozen cookie dough out of the freezer (my tried and true recipe that I always keep on hand for emergencies such as this). Derrick and the rest of the boys came in for dinner just as the Plan B cookies were coming out of the oven. He looked at me and said, "That's not what I expected the lace cookies to look like."

Here is a picture of Alisa scraping the cookies:





In the Seuser family tradition, we also made homemade icecream with the strawberries that all of us picked last week. The picture below is everyone marveling at the "ice crushing" machine that I never knew we had. It is amazing what treasures we have in our basement!

The crushed lace cookies tasted delicious as a topping on the ice cream (which turned out beautifully, as it was not a "new" recipe for Derrick.)

Australia!

As a grand finale to our "school year" at home, I decided to put together a unit on Australia. My parents are visiting there this summer and it is certainly on my top 10 list of places to visit! I thought Scott would enjoy learning about the continent and country and then hearing the stories of Nana and Pop's visit when they return. Now that we are finished with the lesson, I think I'll enjoy the pictures and stories as much as he will!

Some of the favorite things that we have learned are:

The money is so beautiful. We've requested Nana and Pop to bring back some coins for us to see. Scroll down on the linked page to see the coins.

The lyrebird has the most fantastic songs. Check out this video on YouTube.

The kangaroo can jump up to 40 feet (another book said 12 feet.)

The great barrier reef has over 100 kinds of sharks. Scott is really excited about the possiblity of Nana and Pop seeing sharks. I doubt they are as excited about that possiblity.

We spent Friday at a friend's house working on Australia crafts and made Damper bread with them - a traditional quick bread. Here are some pictures from the day:

We began the day by mixing and kneeding damper bread. I realize that I did not get any pictures of that endeavor. Too bad - it was quite an adventure trying to add and mix ingredients with four helpers. The little boys were just as interested in baking as the older boys and they all wanted space at the counter.

The boys painting cardboard boomerangs in traditional Aboriginal color (or just about as close as we could get with washable paint.)


After painting (and some much needed outdoor playtime,) we went inside to eat our damper bread. Then, we made little cardboard animals, using toilet paper rolls as our base. If the picture were bigger, you could see that the two older boys painted their faces with the markers like the Aboriginal warriors we had seen in books.


In all, it was quite a fun day. We still have a few books from the library, so we are continuning to read about the country. We'll return them tomorrow, as Tuesday is our "library day." Tomorrow starts our Summer Reading adventure!

Is it summer yet?

I considered yesterday a "preview" to summer. Derrick took the whole day off work, since it wasn't worth it for him to waste the gas to arrive at school in the afternoon, once all the academics had been covered. Somehow he could not justify driving 80 miles round trip to supervise his kids during lunch, recess and bus loading. So we spent a wonderful day as a family running errands, eating lunch together, taking naps and resting, mucking in the creek (the boys...not me) and mowing the lawn (Derrick...not me). I took an afternoon walk with Andrew and Farley and left Scott and Derrick behind. What a difference it is to push a 35 pound stroller as opposed to 80+ pounds!

When I woke this morning, my first thought was "when is summer going to be here?" Since Derrick's county started three weeks late in the fall, he has to work three weeks later than all the other school systems in the area. Thus, all of our friends who teach in other counties have their last days of school this week. Derrick still has 13 long days! All of us are eagerly anticipating spending days with Daddy at home.

It's a ...

...Girl! We were thrilled to find out today that we will be adding a girl to our family. And even more joyed that she appears to be healthy and beautiful (at least, that is what the technician kept saying.) Derrick and the boys came with me to the doctor this morning to watch. Scott thought the ultrasound was pretty cool, but Andrew didn't really know what was happening. He just sat with a zoned out look, exactly like watching a movie.
Here are some pictures.



You may not be able to see this picture very well. She was "hiding" behind the placenta (which is on the left.) Her face is just behind it, with her nose just next to the butterfly looking thing. The blob on the bottom right is her knee. Her face is upright, with her mouth slightly open at the bottom.

"average" family

I remember when I was in college, I took a family economics class where we learned that the average American family has 2.2 kids. How do you have 2/10ths of a kid? Well, as I was walking today, I realized that we are just about as close to being "average" as we will ever be. Actually, we've already surpassed average. As of this week, Derrick and I have 2.5 kids - I'm half way through the pregnancy.

We have our big mid-point ultrasound on Wednesday where the Doctor is most interested to make sure all the organs are functioning and the pregnancy is progressing, but we are most interested in seeing whether it is a boy or girl.

Stay tuned...

Strawberries

The boys and I had a wonderful day yesterday at a local strawberry farm. We went with some friends, which was the best part about it. The two older boys did a great job of picking red strawberries and some actually landed in their buckets and not their mouths. The little boys did not do as good of a job, but they still had fun. Once I caught Andrew eating a green strawberry - yuck!




After about 30 minutes of picking, it was obvious that the kids were done. They were more interested in running up and down the rows and destroying the plants than picking. So, I took the kids over to the petting zoo, while Alisa finished picking all of our baskets.

The petting zoo was not nearly as exciting as the "duck race" troughs. It is hard to explain, but maybe you'll be able to figure it out from the photos. There are two big troughs of water at either end and eight total pumps. You place the duck in the PVC pipe and pump water down the pipe to watch the ducks float to the other end. I think playing there was the highlight of the day for all four of them.



Finally, here is a video of them making animal noises, while posing at one of those cut out signs. I apologize for the size of the video. You only need to take the time to download it if you want to listen to four kids making animal noises.





I've taken my four gallons of strawberries and frozen most of them. It will be so yummy to have fresh strawberries in ice cream, smoothies and just to eat all summer and into the fall and winter. Of course, we would have had more if they had not been so sweet and yummy. For every five or six that I washed, one went into my mouth. I just had to make sure that they were still as tasty as before.

...the rest of the "Mother's Day" story

We concluded a fantastic Saturday afternoon with our first cookout and outside eating of the season. Derrick grilled sausage and we enjoyed eating on the patio. It is the perfect time of year to eat outside...warm but not many bugs.

The best thing about eating outside is that you don't feel an obligation to clean your child's face before dinner. Here is Andrew, complete with dirt smeared across his face, before dinner.

A family picture...

See, I told you it would have done no good to pre-clean Andrew's face. Here he is with the same dirt as above, plus a new layer of mustard on top.

So, you may ask...what was the bribe that got Scott to smile and sit still during the pictures? Besides the promises to play on the playground at the end, we also told him he could shave off all of his curls after I got my pictures. It makes me so sad to see those curls go, but he loves shaving them off. I think he loves it so much because that is what Daddy does. Here are those beautiful curls on the bathroom floor.

I haven't yet taken a picture of the new cut, but I have to admit that I kind of like it and it must feel much cooler as the days get warmer.

Mother's Day

My gift for Mother's Day this year was the beautiful faces of my husband and boys, dressed up in polo shirts, in front of a camera lens for two hours on a beautiful Saturday morning when they probably could have thought of a million other things that they would rather be doing. I was thrilled to be able to capture these momemts so that later I'll be able to remember how sweet it is to be a "young family." It is a time that goes by so quickly and I really do enjoy the joy and fun that little children provide. Our friend Cindy took the pictures on her fancy digital camera at a local park. Here are a few of the best photos of the day.

The boys sticking their tongues out...I'm surprised Derrick doesn't have his out as well!



The best pictures of the boys came after we allowed them to change into t-shirts and play on the playground for a little while. The pure joy of childhood play showed in their faces.

little miracles

For years, Derrick has talked about planting a summer vegetable garden. We tried tomatoes one year, but our dog Aggie ate the fruits just as they became ripe. She would trot in through the door, with a nose yellowed by pollen and the drippings of fresh tomatoes on her chin.

I think there is nothing better than fresh vegetables, straight from the garden, but I'm not much help when it comes to growing. My thumb is about as brown as they get. Like any good daughter, I blame that on my parents and ancestors. It's cheaper than therapy! My mom's side of the family were all seamen, working the waters off of the coast of Virginia and my dad's side were full of city folks, culminating in my Dad being raised in a suburb of NYC. As for me, the quarter acre that I was raised on could barely support the impatiens that my Mom faithfully planted each year. The trees were so thick that there was no room for the sun.

Derrick, on the other hand, spent his summers on the family farm in Kansas. He tells stories of canning cherries from the orchard, eating vegetables from the garden and bringing in the hay crop each year. His mother always has an abundant crop of tomatoes from the two pots she keeps outside. Because she is in Texas, there are often still tomatoes to harvest when we visit at Thanksgiving.

So, this is the year that we finally have a small garden outside. About two weeks ago, Derrick bought some soil, mixed it with our hard, red clay and planted some beans and squash. Healso planted five tomato plants and sprinkled herb seeds in other pots.

I decided to do a bit of "work" this morning in our garden by watering. I watered the dirt (which was all I saw.) I'm about as eager as the boys to see some results. Then, this afternoon when we went outside to play, I noticed a miracle had occurred during the five hours since I watered. Plants grew! We now have several little bean sprouts and a small squash plant. This little miracle made my day.

I'll try to remember to post updates throughout the summer. I hope we can get at least one good meal out of all this work.

Singing Sensation

Andrew's vocabulary and speaking ability has exploded in the past couple of weeks. He is speaking in full sentences and says some of the funniest things.

Last week, he began to sing for the first time. When I asked him to open his mouth to brush his teeth, he broke into song:

"Open, shut them
Open, shut them
Put your hands away"

That's the first verse of a song they sing in bible study. The second verse is:

"Open, shut them; Open, shut them; Now it's time to pray...yea God!"

He has the "yea God" down pat, complete with raising his hands in the air.

Here is a video that I took this evening. The camera (and the audience) distracted him, but you'll get the general idea.

disappearing lap

I hit a milestone in my pregnancy yesterday...one that Scott isn't too happy about. He can no longer sit on my lap while we read books. We normally read for naptime on the floor of his room, sitting against the bed. Each boy gets a turn in my lap while his book is read. Andrew is small enough that he still fits, but my arms just aren't long enough to wrap around Scott and my growing belly.

For those of you who are counting, I'm 17 weeks now (just over four full months - I'm in the fifth month). I had an appointment with the doctor this morning and heard the heartbeat again - beating strong and fast. We have our ultrasound on May 21. That is my half-way mark. The baby is kicking often and I look forward to him/her growing just a bit bigger so the boys can feel the kick.