Gigantic Bubbles

Amelia's preschool has activity bags that kids can take home and play with.  Last week we borrowed the Bubbles bag, which contained a large bubble wand and recipes for making your own bubbles juice.  Here's what we learned:

• You definitely need glycerin to blow the big bubbles!  I found a bottle of glycerin at Target; a 6oz bottle cost about $6.  I couldn't find a bulk bottle of glycerin at Walgreens, but you can also order it on amazon.  The more glycerin you add, the better the bubbles seem to stay together.  
• The directions that we had said to store the bubble overnight in the fridge for best results, but we found that it worked fine right after mixing.
• Make more bubble solution than you think you will need.
• Bubbles work best on cool, cloudy days without much wind, but some wind will help the bubbles form.

So, here are the two bubble recipes that we tried using glycerin:

2 8oz bottles of bubbles
1/4 cup glycerin
1/4 cup dishwashing liquid

2 cups water
1 cup dishwashing soap
3 tbsp glycerin
1/2 tsp sugar

For both recipe, just mix the ingredients in a large container (I use a large lidded yogurt container) and pour into the bubble tray.  Both recipes worked well.

Ben was the only one who could get the big bubbles to work, but Amelia had fun using the wand to blow hundreds of little bubbles.

Even Megan tried to blow bubbles, but she mostly just ended up with bubble juice in her hair.  She had fun watching them, although you can't tell from this picture.  I was having a hard time getting good pictures of bubbles, I think everyone was moving to fast for the camera to focus.  A whole bunch of the neighbor kids came over to chase the bubbles and try to pop them.  We were very popular.  :)

Pumpkin Patch, take 2

We went back to Jerry's orchard last weekend to pick out small pumpkins for the girls.  Jerry was out in the apple orchard picking the last few apples from the trees to feed to the goats, and he told us we could take a few apples for ourselves, too.  We picked a few Tolmen Sweet and they were very good, sweet with almost a pineapple note.  Jerry said that variety is over 140 years old.   Megan thinks now that she's a big girl and has 6 teeth, she can eat a whole apple herself.  

 

She did very well to start with, but then she tried to eat the core, so I had to step in and take the apple away.

The girls had fun choosing their pumpkins.  Megan, of course, wanted to carry her pumpkin around all by herself; we helped her choose a smaller pumpkin that was easier to manage.

Great teamwork by my girls!  We ended up getting an Amelia sized pumpkin, a Megan sized pumpkin, and then two of the fancy pumpkin/gourds that we are going to paint if we ever find the time.

Apple Bread

We've had to stop our food challenge blog, since Becky and David are too busy to keep up with it now that the school year has started.  But I'd like to continue it since it forces me to be more creative about finding new recipes and makes me more interested in cooking dinner.  So I decided that I would continue it on my own by giving myself little challenges occasionally.  


Maybe because the weather started getting cooler, or because I had to bring a dish to a brunch, or maybe because I have apples coming out of my ears from all the apples that we picked, but I decided to start my challenge with quick breads, specifically apple bread.  The following recipe is a modification of a highly rated  Food.com recipe.  The bread was very good; I liked the apple chunks, but it seemed to be missing something.

I baked a few small loaves in clean tomato cans to give to Amelia's preschool teachers as a little teacher appreciation present.  Amelia painted red apples on brown paper bags, and I drew stems and leaves to decorate the cans.  We put together a cute little basket with some fresh-picked apples, a few toffee apples that I made and decorated with M&Ms, and a loaf of this bread.

Apple Bread

makes two 8 x 4" loaf pans

2 cups sugar (next time try less)
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup natural applesauce
3 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
3 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
2 cups diced peeled apples (about 1 1/2 large apples)

Preheat oven to 350F.  Spray two 8 x 4" loaf pans with PAM baking spray.

Combine first 5 ingredients, stirring until well-mixed.  Add dry ingredients, mixing just until combined.  Stir in apples.  Pour into prepared loaf pans.

Bake at 350F for 40 minutes.

Door County Vacation - Saturday

We spent the morning at Whitefish Dunes State Park, where it was pretty windy and chilly.  The waves were really crashing on the beach (at least, crashing for Lake Michigan).  So, the girls stayed dry!  We played with the sand on the beach and made a sand castle and a sand turtle.  And we found part of a jawbone from some kind of animal - the ranger thought it could be either a small deer or a fish.  Wouldn't you think those animal's jawbones would look pretty dissimilar?  Megan had fun playing with Grandpa and trying to put her fingers in his nose.  She is excited that she can find noses now, and sometimes gets a little carried away.

For lunch we went to PC Junction, which I would definitely recommend if you are in Door County with kids.  We had to wait for our table, so we played outside.  They had a kind of go-kart track, but Amelia wasn't quite big enough to pedal them by herself, so we grabbed a family jeep, and drove her around.  It was really fun, although hard to steer!  They also had a large wooden train, which Amelia loved.

But the best part of this restaurant was inside - we sat at a bar, and a train delivered our food!  Our stop was Fish Creek, and the cook would shout out "Next Stop, Fish Creek" and then the train would stop in front of us, and we could take our food off.  The girls thought this was so fun!  Here we are getting our food:

When the train wasn't busy delivering food, the waitresses would put silly singing stuffed animals or a bubble blower on it.  It pretty much ran around the bar all the time.  Megan was fascinated, and stood on my lap the entire time trying to touch the engine.  I don't think she ate anything.

Amelia still talks about how much fun she had at the train restaurant.

And then we drove home.  Sad day.  Megan was a better traveler; I ignored her until she fell asleep.  She only slept for 40 minutes, but then it was just about time to stop and get an ice cream treat at Culver's . So I just had to entertain her the last half of the trip, and I had plenty of toys for that.  Her favorite toy was the little Buzz Lightyear than Jane had brought.  Who would have thought?

Door County Vacation - Thursday & Friday

You're probably tired of hearing about our vacation already, but I only have a few days left!

On Thursday, the Door County state parks were finally open again after the terrible windstorm they had had the previous week that resulted in a lot of downed trees.  We drove through Peninsula State Park, saw the Eagle Bluff Lighthouse and stopped at Nicolet Bay Beach so that the girls could, once again, play in the sand and get all wet.  This time, I was smart enough to take Megan's overalls off before she waded in the water, but I didn't bring a clean shirt.  So she ate our picnic lunch wearing just her overalls.  With her four little uneven front teeth and her overalls, we called her a cute little redneck baby.

That evening we went back to Peninsula State Park to watch the sunset.  While Ben and Jeff took pictures, the girls played with the rocks.  Amelia liked to throw the rocks in the water and listen to the different sounds they made "Kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk."  It was another beautiful sunset, but my favorite photo is this one of Megan and I snuggling in the cool weather.

On Friday, we went to the playground and the beach in Sister Bay, and this time I was finally prepared!  I brought a complete change of clothes for Megan.  And as you can see, she needed it!  We built a sand castle with a moat and a rock tower, although the sand eroded pretty quickly when Amelia poured the water meant for the moat right over the castle.  Oops!  True to form, Megan liked to destroy our castles before we could get them finished.  Amelia and I had fun dropping rocks off the pier.

After talking about my girls getting soaked at the beach four days in a row, I feel like I need to point out that the weather was beautiful for October (65 - 70 most days) but it wasn't warm enough to wear bathing suits or really to get in the water at all.  But Megan  loved it anyway!

Oh, and one of our favorite things to look for was the goats on the roof of Al Johnson's Swedish restaurant  We ate at the restaurant earlier in the week, and Amelia thought it was a riot that there were goats on the roof eating the grass.  Although she was quick to point out that you couldn't hear them from inside the restaurant.  Every time we drove past, we had to look for the goats again.

Megan uses a spoon

I gave Megan a bowl of applesauce and a spoon today.  After she got over the hissy fit she threw because she had to wear a bib, she picked up the spoon and went to town.  She didn't even make much of a mess, until she started trying to eat yogurt with her fingers.

Notice anything interesting about Megan using a spoon?  Uncle Brian or Uncle Dan, especially?

I made some peanut butter apple bars this week, and let Amelia lick the peanut butter frosting bowl.  She tried to put her whole head inside.  I think she liked it.  :)

Megan and Daddy

Megan woke up two nights ago while Ben and I were still awake, so I brought her into the living room to snuggle with Ben for a little bit.  After they read her new favorite book Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes, Ben asked her to identify body parts.  She can successfully find her head, hair, ears, nose, eyes, mouth, chin, fingers, toes, and her favorite: bellybutton.  Here she is finding her ears:

Here she is finding Daddy's chin:

And here she is finding Daddy's nose:

Yes, her finger is up Daddy's nose.  :)