"D" is for Duck/foam art

With the tragedy of the earthquake, Haiti news takes first place in school. It is devastating and yes, touching to hear stories and the painstaking needs, water being the most important. It's worth more than cash.

We crafted the letter 'D' today.

Then I got this foam art idea for puffy paint cookies from No Time for Flashcards.

I guessed with the measurements.

We used about 3/4 cup shaving cream

1/4 cup glue

brown paint - we didn't have enough in the house so we used some brown cake decorating food coloring

Put in bowl and let the boys have fun!

I realize they've learned to share.They never mentioned having separate bowls.

They enjoyed the moment of the sensory gooey stuff.

We needed to change shirts.

Some children get it all over walls, chairs, you name it. But the great thing is that it washes off easily.

We constantly have to remind the little ones, especially Landon, to keep their voices quiet and the noise turned down. Landon has a loud voice. Is he an Esh?


The whole idea point of the project was to entertain and give some time to our preschoolers so their siblings can peacefully resume with school.

*cough* cough* guess again. It seemed to work the opposite, attracting Zach instead. He just HAD to get his hands in the stuff. You know, forget the school. I think he wants to re-enroll into kindergarten class.

But seriously, he loves art. We had enough for the 3rd 'chocolate chip cookie' and he was very happy to get his hands goopy.

The other day we did 'C' is for Candy. And today we finished the 'D' is for Duck. The leapfrog game is a daily thing in learning the alphabets and sounds. I know lots of people start earlier than I did.

Amber practices violin every day. She usually goes into our bedroom and shuts the door. It is the ONLY place she can go to practice that it doesn't disturb anyone.

The 2 upstairs bedrooms do not have doors. And as you can see, we use up every space we have in our cramped main floor bedroom, making the most of what we've got. I'm sorry but I am not very motivated to decorate this house, let alone sewing curtains for the windows.

Our first intent was to live here for only about 2 years. But that deadline has passed. And who knows, but only God, how much longer we'll live here. We are just thankful for a job, and a house, even if it's not our dream house.

We've got tons to be grateful for when we think of our Haitan friends. Sorry. I can't grumble about our small house when I think of the poor people in 3rd world countries.

Tonight's menu was ham and bean soup and snitz pie. We had it cooking all day. Yummo!

Recipe - I followed the menu on the package:

1 - 20 oz. package 15 bean soup - wash beans and soak overnight.
1 lb. ham, ham hocks, or smoked sausage -
             I cooked the bone with the beans. The bone was from the last night's ham.
1 cup onion, chopped
1 - 15 oz. can stewed or diced tomatoes
1 tsp. chili powder
Juice of 1 lemon
1-2 cloves garlic, chopped
Salt and pepper, to taste

Yield: approximately 3 quarts. Serves 14-16.

I forgot to add the ham packet flavoring, included with the beans. This soup was wonderful!

I made some snitz pie to go with it. It was still warm for supper, but we prefer it cold. Merv got home later so his pie was a bit cooled off.

We didn't trust leaving the pie outside uncovered as we've had a cat here lately when we had food out to cool. Thankfully, it didn't ruin or eat anything.

We had the pie outside and yes, it was covered for just a few minutes. When I went to bring it in the house, I saw something black and furry. Verdict: it's not safe to cool our food outside right now.

Red eggs also complimented the meal.