Park Day!

I am trying out a new work schedule where I work four 10 (or more) hour days, and have Fridays off.  It worked out that the first week of this schedule coincided with a park day organized by one of our homeschool friends.  We met up with friends, then Simi went home with a friend of hers, while one of Taipan's friends came home with us to play.  We all also went to Menchie's for some yummy frozen yogurt.
   


Taiko was also there, only in the sling, so he missed out on pictures. 

Another Tea Party

Taipan & Taisim wanted to make food today.  We started out making peanut butter toast and sandwiches, and then they got out some cookbooks to make recipes, which turned into wanting to make food and drinks for a tea party.


This tea party featured Danish Do's and Jawa Jive Smoothies from the Star Wars cookbook, and a princess cake, lady bug strawberries and smoothies from the princess and tea party cookbooks.


  
  
  

Star Wars Cookies & Heart Cupcakes

Taipan choose another recipe from his Star Wars cookbook for us to try. As it turned out, my mom had given us some Star Wars cookie cutters, so we put them to use.

Taisim also wanted to make chocolate cupcakes in our heart-shapped muffin pan, so we did that too (the after wasn't so pretty - I put too much batter in, and the cupcakes overflowed and lost their heart shapes for the most part):

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Swimming!

We've been swimming quite a bit the past couple of weeks, both in our neighborhood pool and a friend's backyard above ground pool. Both are a lot of fun. I like the neighborhood one because it's warmer and both kids can touch, but while our friend's pool can be quite chilly, it's nice to have a pool to ourselves and to swim with friends.

I'll edit with pics from the iphones later, but this is what I have for now:

Tea & Bead Shop

I wanted to do something special with my mom during her last weekend in Ohio before she drove back to Orlando for a few months, so we went to lunch at Miss Molly's Tea Room, a place that Simi and I really enjoy.

After lunch we walked down down the block to The Potomac Bead Company. The three of us made bracelets, and Simi also made a necklace.

Fourth of July

We had some friends over to celebrate the 4th this year - about 20 people were here (and some close friends were not able to come due to being sick, and they were missed dearly); there was some Rock Band, a little bit of Bananagrams, some video games, and a lot of running around outside and playing in the basement.


About an hour or two before dusk Muriel, Storm and Taipan helped me bring out the sparklers, smoke bombs and other goodies:


And right around dusk we decided to get things started. Yuta was again our master of ceremonies. We did a lot of smoke makers first, then some noise makers, and then sparklers:


When it got dark it was time to get down to business. My mom picked up some fireworks on her drive from Florida to Ohio. We had three boxes of them, and I wasn't quite sure what to expect, and they were pretty awesome. I took some video, but I don't have any pictures to share. They were louder than I expected, so I was a little nervous that one of our neighbors might not be too happy with us, but the only neighbors we saw were ones that wanted to come over and see them.

I do have pictures of the kids laying down while waiting to watch them:


And my main squeeze, in between lighting the fireworks: