Celebrating 4 with 12 kids!

Last year we went camping to celebrate Matthew's birthday with 11 kids. This year we had 12! We went to the Lazy River at Granville with the Masts, Mabrys, and Brubakers again. We love this campground since it backs up to a little creek with rocks and fish. This creek occupied the kids for hours. They ended up muddy and dirty and wet but they had a great time.

Friends

All the kids

 We camped from Thursday - Sunday and had a fun, relaxing time. We now have 12 kids with us since Duane and Joy added baby Lucas. He is 4 months old and was a sweet little baby.

Friday morning Duane cooked us all pancakes and bacon using his new chuck box he made. The Masts got a new camper which looked amazing yet I managed to forget to get a picture. It had two slide outs which really made a difference inside. It didn't seem cramped at all.

Playing in the creek

 Friday night we celebrated Matthew's birthday. His request was white cupcakes with white frosting. I asked him what flavor and he kept saying "white". Finally the girls gave him a list of flavors and he picked lemon. He got several presents like tractors, trains, and a fire truck. He loved them all!

Happy Birthday Matthew

Duane and his chuck box

 On Saturday the campground had ziplining. Jenna watched the zipliners for awhile then decided she wanted to do it. She had a blast and apparently is not afraid of heights. She also said she wanted to do it again!

Jenna gearing up to do the zip line

An action shot

When we got home, we gave Matthew the rest of his presents. He got several new train tracks and the Thomas Roundhouse. This is a little house for the trains. He also got the Henry and James trains from Thomas. He will spend hours building track across our living room.

Matthew's new train tracks

We had a wonderful time camping for Matthew's birthday and being with friends all weekend. I hope we can continue this tradition every year. Happy 4th birthday Matthew!

Erik is a skinny flash

We always love camping at Buckeye Lake. There are so many things to do there and they always have extra activities. We went camping with two families with girls in Jenna and Sarah's brownie troops. They had never been to Buckeye lake but we all had a great time.

Jumping Pillow

 The kids played in the pool, played at the playground, mined for gems, jumped on the jumping pillow, rode on top of a fire truck, played games, and ate smores. They stayed in cabins next to our camper. It's wonderful to sit by the fire and relax at night hoping the children are actually sleeping.

Gem Mining -  no Matthew is not drinking the water

Girls having fun

In other news:

• Erik reached his goal! He now weighs 199. This is the lowest he has been in probably 10-15 years. Congratulations Erik! To celebrate we are going hiking and then out to dinner. We already have a babysitter lined up.
• Since Erik has had so much success with running, he is now thinking of doing a half marathon with Tricia. He is like the flash! Only less fast and orange.
• When I reach my weight loss goal I'm going to get a pedicure. Or maybe I'll get one anyway - we will see. My nails really need some loving! 
• I finished the Divergent series. I liked the first two books. The last one was a disappointment. But that's how these series go I guess. I do want to watch the movie.
• Jenna sped through the last Harry Potter book. She really loved the series and said she wasn't scared. I guess she is all grown up. I think I'll give her the Malazan book of the fallen series next...
• Not only are we babysitting Theo, Matt and Sunshine's massively fat cat, we are also babysitting their kids for 2 days while they are in Hawaii. We are giving the Grandma a break. So now we have 5 kids here. Yikes!

Roscoe Village - back in time

Jenna, Matthew, Grace, Regan, Sarah, and John

Last week we went to the pool every day. Every day!! In the morning they do 3 chores and a page in their summer workbooks (I just read to Matthew) so they can buy something at the snack stand at the pool. This has worked well as incentive to doing chores and their workbooks.

 Then on Friday we went to Roscoe Village with Jenna's friend Grace (and her brother John and sister Regan). Roscoe village is a town preserved from the 1830s. They have a scavenger hunt where you go to different buildings and pick up a little trinket and get a signature from one of the people working there (in period costume). 

At the old school house

It's a fun place to go and since Jenna and Grace just had Pioneer day, it is something we thought they would enjoy. We had a great time there.

Another view of the schoolhouse

At home we are cat-sitting our friends' cat. We have him until June 18th. He is a pure-bred Ragamuffin cat and is beautiful. He is soft and silver colored and FAT. I love fat cats. Scruff was always a little chunky and Theo makes Scruffles look anorexic. I hope you can see from the picture - he is almost the same size as Sarah.

Sarah and Theo (aka "fatso")

In other news:

1. While Amanda was brushing Sarah's hair she found a huge tick. I'm not sure how long this tick had been there but it was engorged. Yuck. Poor Sarah. She is afraid to go outside now for fear she will get another tick.
2. Erik has lost so much weight. He started at 223 and is now at 201. He is so close to his goal - I'm excited for him. He is sticking with his funky coffee breakfast now.
3. I read Divergent, Insurgent, and now am in the middle of Allegiant all by Veronica Roth. These books go fast and have a lot of action. I'd like to see the movie at some point. 
4. Jenna has begged, and begged, and begged to read the 7th Harry Potter book. So I finally relented. She is now reading it. I hope it is not too scary for her. 
5. Silk brand Dark Chocolate Almond Milk is pretty amazing. 
6. 52 points on quiddler today

Ballet recitals and camel rides - the joys of summer

Since school ended last Friday this was officially the first week of summer break. We spent the week swimming, going to the zoo, going to parks, eating ice cream, and reading at the library. Jenna has already read 6 hours of the 12 she needed to read for the summer reading program. 

Jenna and I also had our own little book club together. We read Ever by Gail Carson Levine. We enjoyed the book and had a good discussion about it. I'd really like to have more book club discussions with Jenna. She reads faster than my Coo* book club ;). We both read the book in a day.

Jenna had her ballet recital at the Capital theater downtown. It was a 3 hour show and her character was Hercules. She was happy since she knew Hercules from the Percy Jackson books. Even though she was Hercules she had a beautiful dress and her dance was graceful.

Sarah as a music box

 Sarah's ballet performance is tomorrow and she is a music box. Her costume is beautiful and the music is fun for her performance. This is her last year in the mini-show. Next year both girls will be in the big show. Hopefully they will be in the same big show - I don't want to be downtown all day!

Jenna (second from the right - wearing glasses)

Jenna at her ballet recital

 Sarah was drawing on her whiteboard when I walked by and saw this. I'm proud of her for spelling annoyed correctly, although I'm not sure why she is annoyed at Matthew.

Sarah's message to Matthew

 The Zoo opened its Africa exhibit and it is fantastic! I took Jenna, Sarah, Matthew and 3 of Jenna's friends (Abigail, Grace and Saatvika) to the zoo. We all rode the camel rides, saw the giraffes, cheetahs, and lions. Then we rode the boat ride. This is the ride in which Sarah screamed the entire ride. It is a dinosaur boat ride and the dinosaurs scared her. No more dinosaur rides!

Sarah, Grace and Abigail on the camel ride

Jenna and Saatvika on the camel ride

Matthew and Me on the camel

In other news:

• I'm reading Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson. I've read Steelheart, the Emperor's soul, Shadows for silence (short story), The Rithmatist and Warbreaker is the last book in my list to read of his novels.He has several Alcatraz novels and while I like them - they are juvenile fiction and I don't love them.
• I'm in the middle of Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. This is an interesting historical fiction book set in Scotland. I'm enjoying it. 
• Next in my list is Divergent. I *finally* got it from the library. I was on the list for months!
• Dark chocolate almond milk is delicious. It's my new favorite thing. 
• 70 points on Quiddler today

Pioneer day

Every year the entire third grade takes a field trip back in time for Pioneer Day. All the kids dress up as pioneers. Girls in bonnets and aprons and boys in suspenders and straw hats. They all look adorable. I bought Jenna's dress on etsy and Erik's mom made my dress for Pioneer day. We had a blast. 

Jenna and me

 The kids rotated to several different stations like: candle making, pioneer chores (washing clothes with a washboard/shucking corn/cleaning up fake horse doodoo....), square dancing, tin punching, grave rubbing, scavenger hunts, general store, biscuit making, butter making, making lemonade, games (tug of war, etc), watermelon spitting, and all kinds of pioneer activities.

In the morning I was doing square dancing. I danced all the way up until lunch time (and learned how to do-si-do!). Then I helped make butter in the afternoon. Jenna's favorite activity was candle making. She was so excited to burn the candle she made too!

Jenna's class

 Some of the kids were able to spit their watermelon seeds pretty far. As far back as I took this picture I was almost in the line of fire...

Watermelon seed spitting

 I loved Pioneer day. I'm so glad Jenna got to experience this and the weather was perfect.

Making lemonade

In addition to today being Pioneer day it was also Sarah's last day of school. Matthew finished school on Wed, Sarah today and Jenna will finish school tomorrow. They are bouncing off the wall with excitement for summer. I brought in the snack for Sarah's party. I made yellow cupcakes with white buttercream frosting. Then I put graham cracker crumbs on the cupcakes and a drink umbrella to look like the beach. It was so cute! I didn't get a picture though - the kids ate them up so quickly. 

Sarah and Mrs. Lukach

We are all ready for summer here!

Tough Mudder 2014: The Cold never bothered me anyway...

Nope. The cold does bother me. On Saturday our team of 5 people ran the Tough Mudder in arctic temperatures. One might assume that we looked like this:

Sarah and Matthew playing with the neighbor kids 

 or this:

More Sarah and Matthew playing with the neighbor kids

In fact, we were muddier!

Erik, me, Tricia, Nate, and Tim

 The course was 10 1/2 miles with 21 obstacles. I loved the cooperative element especially since everyone helped me :).

Everyone helping Erik up the Berlin Walls

Me leaving the barbed wire trenches

 When I think about what the hardest obstacle of the event was, it was definitely the weather. None of the obstacles were as difficult as the cold temperatures. The temperature varied from 40° - 50° and overcast (sometimes raining). The cold sapped all my strength. I'm hard core though, obstacles, hypothermia, mud in my hair....no biggie.

I skipped 3 obstacles - the arctic enema, walk the plank and funky monkey. All of these required you to swim through really cold water. I was geared up to do all of the obstacles but at the time, I was way too cold. Last year Erik said he ran a lot more. This year we sludged through the mud almost the entire 10 1/2 miles.

Today every part of my body is sore. I'm glad my parents watched the kids yesterday. Although today it was hard to take care of them when we were both sore!

Would I do this again? Yes if it is warmer and only if it is warmer!

Toothetina made a visit

Every day, to every person, in every location Sarah has been showing her wiggly tooth. To anyone who will listen Sarah has wiggled her tooth for them. She has been anxiously waiting for her bottom tooth to fall out. In fact, we could see the tooth behind it peeking through so we knew it would be soon. At school last Friday 5/2 Jenna lost her tooth. Poor Sarah - she had been so excited to lose a tooth and Jenna lost one. 

However the long awaited event occurred. Sarah lost her first tooth on Friday 5/9 and was ecstatic! The tooth fairy left her laffy taffy (her favorite candy today) and some hard earned cash.

Sarah lost her first tooth!

 Our church hosted a conference for the Evangelical Covenant churches in our region. Pastors from New York, Michigan, etc were all at our church and I was hired to make 8 dozen cupcakes for them. I made:

1. Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting - yummy, this is really the best combination
2. Lemon cupcakes with lemon frosting - Three lemons worth of zest and juice!
3. Vanilla cupcakes with cinnamon buttercream - yummy/slightly boring
4. Red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting - I always make these and the reason they asked me. They like these cupcakes so much.
5. Peppermint mocha cupcakes with peppermint buttercream - AMAZING! These were the best cupcakes I've ever made. 

Actually all my cupcakes use buttercream. I generally use the same base recipe and just add a few things to modify it. The peppermint buttercream recipe on the site linked above uses twice the amount of butter I use in my buttercream. The flavor was noticeably less sweet and richer. I think I'll have to modify my base buttercream recipe. This was delicious!

Chocolate/chocolate

Peppermint mocha and cinnamon vanilla

Lemon drop

 We like to go camping on Mothers Day weekend since it is a good weekend to kick off camping season and the kids love it. Matthew talked so much about camping that his teachers were impressed. The campground had a Mothers Day craft involving lots of messy paint and decorating a Styrofoam cup as a flower pot. Jenna was so artistic with her flower pot that the volunteers were impressed. She wouldn't let me get a picture though (I will have to sneak a pic). The kids really had fun camping. Jenna said camping is her favorite part of summer. I read Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson on the trip, since at night we just sat by the fire and read books. I loved it! Sooo relaxing.

Decorating the flower pots

Sidewalk chalk by the camper

The Tough Mudder is next weekend and hopefully we are tough enough. I had fun doing the Warrior Dash - it is not a competition but a cooperative event. The Tough Mudder should be like this as well. I enjoy triathlons but I like the cooperative aspect of these events even more. It should be fun!

Summer Bucket List 2014

We have about 3 weeks left of school. The kids are crazy with anticipation for the end of the year. I am too.



On our family summer bucket list is the following:

1. Horseback riding
2. Roscoe Village
3. Going to the pool 
4. Going to the zoo
5. Camping
6. Renfest
7. Westerville Bike trail family ride
8. Anthony Thomas Candy tour
9. Swimming lessons
10. Watching Disney movies
11. Letterbox hunt at the library
12. Summer reading program
13. Go to the Worthington farmers market
14. Canning veggies and jam
15. Lots of scavenger hunts
16. Learn Geocaching (this is something I've always wanted to try)

In other news:

• My next session starts on Sunday. The easy session was wonderful while it lasted - back to the real world with difficult classes.
• This year in our garden we are going to try and plant peanuts. I've heard they are difficult to grow but I think it will be fun!
• I went from disliking Girl Scouts to now being the troop leader for both girls. AAAH! I am not sure how I have been roped into this. The leaders for Jenna's troop are quitting an no one else wants to step up. Since I'm already doing Sarah's I might as well do the other one. I've had all the leader training. Jenna is excited! At some point it will no longer be cool to have her mom be the troop leader.
• We are going camping in a week. It's our first camping trip of the year. We love to camp over Mothers Day since campgrounds usually have crafts and free breakfast for Mom (hey, that's me!)
• Erik has lost 15lbs using his bulletproof coffee recipe for breakfast (he doesn't eat anything - just drinks coffee). He is looking svelte! I have lost 1 lb. I'm losing this race.
• I ran 6 miles once. Just once. After that I had to ice my knee for 2 days since it hurt so bad. From my research I determined that I have runner's knee. This happens often in "mature females." What do they mean "mature"?

Happy Easter

Jenna made an epic rainbow loom bracelet. It was about 10 feet long and I had to get a picture. She used it as a jumprope for awhile. She has so much fun creating these!

Jenna's long rainbow loom string?

As we were walking home from school one day Jenna asked me what house I would be in Hogwarts. I immediately said Gryffindor since I am brave and that's where all the brave people are (obviously!). She said she would be in Ravenclaw since they are the smartest (touche). Then she went on to tell me she wouldn't be in Slytherin since her parents are muggles. Umm.... you are a muggle too Jenna. Maybe she is too into Harry Potter ;). When we go to Universal this fall and see the Harry Potter world she will have a blast! 

For Easter this year we went to the Saturday night service at our church. After the Saturday night service they have Gateway Cafe. This is coffee and desserts and finger food. It was fabulous! We will have to start going to church on Saturday and Sunday!

Grandma made pink taffeta dresses for Jenna and Sarah and matching blue vest and pants for Matthew for Easter. They looked so cute and wore their outfits to church.

Easter clothes courtesy of Grandma

 We also went to an Easter Egg hunt at New Hope church by the zoo. The kids found a lot of Easter Eggs until I lost sight of Matthew for a few minutes. All of a sudden I heard someone yelling "come back!" I looked and Matthew was halfway to the zoo. He was running across a field away from me. 3 year olds can be tiring at times.

Speaking of tiring, I ran 6 miles today in one hour and one minute. This was pretty good for me since I normally run slower than a 10 minute mile. After the run my knee started bothering me. This is how I can tell I'm getting old. I never used to have joint pain!!

Cakes and Meat

Joann's has several classes for kids (8yrs old and up) and Jenna took a cake decorating class there. She had fun creating a duck cake with blue eyes and a beak. The cake really turned out great and she had fun. She didn't make a chocolate cake since she gave up chocolate for lent. She has more spiritual discipline than most adults I know!

Jenna decorating her cake

The finished product

In the spirit of April Fools pranks, I made a pan of brownies for my family for dessert. When Erik saw the pan covered in aluminum foil, his first response was "oh no." Am I that predictable? He amused me and opened the pan to reveal Brown E's. Cheesy yet fun.

Brown E's for April Fools day

This semester has been so glorious for me. I only have one class and two developments. It's been such a break from these difficult sessions with so many students. I'm redeveloping a course that I currently teach with VB to C#. This is not difficult. So basically I've had a fabulous session.

I've had time to come up with my favorite meats. Seafood for the win!

1. Crab
2. Lobster
3. Steak
4. Salmon
5. Chicken
6. Tuna
7. Sausage
8. Ham
9. Scallops
10. Pepperoni

This list was difficult to compile since there is a variety of ways to cook the meat. Do I want tough, dry chicken over tuna steaks perfectly cooked? Well no, but this is the list of meats I like on average. No - bacon is not on the list. It is a good meat to add to other foods but not one I would eat by itself. Pepperoni also falls in this category but I like pepperoni better than bacon. Enough explanation. I love seafood in general.

66 points on Quiddler today

Iron Chef: Fresh Mozzarella

It's been too long since we did Iron chef. So on Saturday Erik bought me a secret ingredient: Fresh Mozzarella. At first I thought this would be an easy ingredient. But the more I thought about it and tested it with different flavors, I realized that it was a more difficult ingredient. Either that or I've lost my creativity! I didn't want to do the usual - tomato, mozzarella, basil, and garlic mixture too much. So I tried to mix it up...somewhat.

Iron Chef Fresh Mozarella

Erik's mousse

The dishes I made were:

1. Sauteed tomato with garlic, basil, and mozzarella. I wanted to stay away from the usual pairings of fresh mozzarella but couldn't stay away entirely. This was yummy but I put too much garlic on.
2. Roasted red pepper and mozzarella ravioli. This was an excellent dish. I roasted red peppers then made a butter/wine/garlic sauce and added the red peppers to it. Mozzarella was the finishing touch on this sauce that covered cheese ravioli. 
3. Mozzarella Mac and Cheese. I thought it would be a great idea to make my usual Velveeta mac and cheese but use mozzarella instead. Sounds great right? Wrong. It became a clumpy cheesy mess. So we had to research this and found that adding wine helps mozzarella melt better. This makes sense since wine is usually added to cheese fondue. So I learned something from my mistake with mozzarella mac and cheese. This dish was okay but it needed more flavor.
4. Buffalo chicken and mozzarella enchilada with corn salsa. This was amazing. Erik especially loved it. The corn salsa actually decreased the heat of the dish. Whereas in most dishes the salsa adds heat. I'll be making this again!
5. Chocolate dipped mozzarella and bacon. I wanted to try something different as dessert. I knew that plain mozzarella dipped in chocolate would not be flavorful and knew it needed some salt. So I thought the perfect thing to add salt would be bacon. I mixed mozzarella, bacon, sugar, and cream (I know - sounds weird) and dipped it in chocolate. Erik said it was strangely good. 

Erik's concoction

After learning about wine and how it helped the melting of mozzarella, Erik took the rest of my melted chocolate, added some wine, mozzarella, cocoa powder, heavy cream, cool whip, and vanilla to make chocolate mousse. This was rich and yummy. A perfect ending to our iron chef!

Bulletproof coffee

Erik and his coffee

Erik is seriously on a diet. In fact the only thing he "eats" for breakfast now is bulletproof coffee. It keeps him full all morning and gives him energy. He really likes it. Since I gave up coffee for lent, I had to wait until Sunday to try it. I drank the coffee before church and was only slightly hungry for lunch after church. It really does work. I'm not going to do it because I like eating ;). See recipe below.

 Erik's bulletproof coffee:
1 cup of hot coffee
2 tblsp coconut oil
1 tblsp butter (optional)
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp cocoa powder

dog shirt and bob pants - Matthew's favorite outfit

 I also had to include some cute pictures of Matthew. This is his favorite outfit - dog shirt with spongebob pants. He has never seen spongebob but he really likes these pants. Matthew is now going to an integrated class at preschool. Here he is riding scooters with some of the other kids. He loves it.

Scooters at preschool

 So Erik made me a beautiful spice rack several years ago and I really loved it. However I bake a lot and cook a lot. A LOT. And the spices just didn't fit. Every time we walked by the spice rack we would knock something down. We found someone on etsy to make an epic spice rack for us. This epic spice rack now has all our spices on it and even our vinegars and cooking wines. I love it!! Now Erik's spice rack has been moved to hold knick knacks and other unimportant items.

Epic spice rack

58 points on Quiddler today