Three Things Checked Off

Saturday was a really busy day!  We set out to do one thing on our list to top off Dairy Week and we ended up crossing three things off the list!

First things first.  To end our Dairy Week, we went to a Dairy Farm.  It was so much fun.  Before I get to the pictures, I'll tell you a little about where we went.  We went to Swiss Lane Dairy Farms in Alto, MI.  For the best description, you should check out their site, but I'll give a briefing here.  We got to see where the cows hang out waiting to be milked, see where they are milked, feed calves a bottle and take a hay (straw) ride to the robotic farm.  Right now this farm has 1,300 milking cows!  I knew I would have a good time, I was sure Brock would have a good time, I just didn't know I would love it so much.  It left me wanting to start a farm!  Here is a link to their future tours.

Corn Box

Straw maze (Brock didn't care too much about this, he wanted the
kittens)

Emma hanging out till the tour

It was lunch time for the cows, so Brock attempted to hand feed them some lunch.

Here's where the cows get miked.  This cow got stuck when the next group came in.

I think my husband found himself a new job.  This calf didn't want to let go.

Robot Milker.  I loved this part of the tour.  I was so amazed at how smart this machine is. 
I also learned that this is much better for the cows in many ways.

Brock milking a "cow"

This was a great experience for the whole family.  Brock got to see animals, which he loves.  I got to see animals and learn new things and Mark got to see tractors and machinery which he loves.  It was $8 a person and the upgrade to the robotic farm was $2 a person.

Thing 2 and 3: Picnic at the Park and Splash Pad (both will be done more than once this summer)

We were going to have a picnic at the farm, but we decided we would go ahead and go to a park to eat since the kids needed a little rest.  We ended up at our normal park...not too much of an adventure there, but we were all a bit tired.  Anyway, or park has a mini splash pad.  I plan to find some other ones and take Brock, but he really doesn't get into it so we might hold off for a little while.

Yum! Subway!

She was blinking, but this picture cracks me up.

Our mini splash pad

Oh, and to finish off Dairy Week, we attempted to make butter.  I'll share the recipe and how it turned out soon. 

Up Next: Mark's Graduation and Plans for Zoo Week



Airport Viewing Area

Now airplanes definitely don't fit into Dairy Week, but as I said, not everything will fit into our little themes.  Coming up with nearly 100 things to do was difficult as it was let alone putting them all into dedicated weeks.  Anyway, moving on...

If you are in the Grand Rapids area, more specifically near the Gerald R. Ford International Airport, and want something free to do, you have got to check out the viewing area (map in link).  I hadn't intended on doing this part of The List yet but a friend of mine wanted to get together for a play date and this sounded like a great place to go.  She'd been there before, so she had more info and knew good times to go.  You can check out Flight Info to see when planes are coming and going.  I think I was way more excited about going than my son was.  The viewing area is great!  There is a fairly big parking area, several picnic tables and a grassy hill to sit on and watch the planes coming and going.  You're so close, you can practically wave to the pilots...well we did wave.

Waiting for a plane to come in

Hurry Kids!  Here comes a plane!

Bye!

Emma making a friend

I think the boys think it's pretty awesome!



I think this was a great trip.  We went around lunch time, packed a lunch and it provided about 2 hours of fun for the boys.  If you're not from the Grand Rapids area, I highly suggest seeing if your local airport has something like this to do.

Up Next: Dairy Farm, Picnic at the Park and Mini Splash Pad

Pizza and Ice Cream

One of my favorite combos when I was a kid was homemade pizza and malts.  So since this week is Dairy Week and Cheese is dairy, we made pizza and homemade ice cream!

I'm sure we all know how to make a pizza, but I had to share the pictures. It was so yummy!

Now the pictures of making ice cream didn't turn out too good.  The process was a little involved when making it with a three year old.  But it was so good!  I highly recommend trying this recipe out.  I've posted the link at the bottom to see where I got this recipie from and other's like it.  I want to try more!

Supplies:

Glazed Doughnut Ice Cream

§        2 Cups Heavy Cream

§        1 (14oz) Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk

§        1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

§        5 Glazed Doughnuts

Directions:

1.     Add vanilla to heavy cream and whip to stiff peaks in a large bowl.

2.     Chop doughnuts into small pieces and stir into condensed milk.

3.     Fold doughnut/condensed milk mixture into whipped cream.

4.     Pour into a 2-quart container and cover. Freeze for 6 hours or until firm.  Store in freezer.

More Ice Cream

Up Next--Our Trip to the Airport Viewing Area

Lollipops

Today we made lollipops!  They turned out really good.

You will need:
*Jolly Ranchers or any other hard candy
*Lollipop Sticks (I used bamboo forks from Dollar Tree)
*Parchment Paper
*Aluminum Foil
*Baking Pan

Step One:  Unwrap all the candies

Step Two: Line all the candies up on a aluminum foil and parchment paper lined baking/cookie sheet

Step Three:  Take a picture of a cute baby trying to escape her carseat.

Step Four:  Bake Lollipops for 6 mins at 275*.  Don't bake for too long or they will get too spread out. (I was in the middle of helping Brock on the potty and ours cooked fuzz too long).

Step Five: Immediatly after taking the Lollipops out of the oven, roll the stick in the candy to coat it and let them cool. (In last picture I had already let them cool)

Step Six: Enjoy!

Things I learned:

*Don't try to put the lollipops in the freezer afterwards.  Two of them cracked, but I had a very eager 3 year old on my hands.

Source

Stepping Stones and Butterfly Feeder

Today's activities were to do handprint stepping stones and a butterfly feeder...

We used this kit to make our stepping stones. We ran into some major issues.  First issue, there weren't any instructions.  Second issue, it does not make four different stones.  It comes with enough of the stuff to make four stones, but not four molds to make different ones.  Anyway, we made due with what we had.  Really turned out to be not a big deal.  I got a pie pan from the house so we could do his hand print. I also read the reviews and it said these don't hold up to rain very well...so much for stepping stones. 

Brock as eager as ever to get started



Capturing his hands while they are still small.





Here's Emma.  She wasn't much help :)





Rawr!

Our next activity was making a butterfly feeder which has turned into an ant feeder...oh well.  I found the idea online but now I can't find the exact place.

You will need:

• A knife
• A pie tin, plant base, etc. 
• Some juice
• Over ripe fruit
• Sponges

Cut up the fruit, throw it in the dish, put sponges in (Makes good landing spot for butterfly).  I used some foam which was a little bit less absorbant than sponges.  Poor the juice in the pain. The juice keeps the fruit moist.  Replace fruit if it dries out or becomes moldy.  And ta-da---Butterfly feeder.  I'll let you know if we see any butterflies.

Brock wouldn't let me take his picture this time.  But this is where he chose to put it in our garden.  I think it would be perfect, but we haven't seen a butterfly yet. 

Dairy Week

I'm so excited!!! 

We got everything off the shopping list except Glazed Doughnuts (I'll get those on Ice Cream Day)

The week will look something like this:
Monday: Unknown Project
Tuesday: Unknown Project
Wednesday: Make butter and have buttermilk pancakes
Thursday: Unknown Project
Friday: Make pizza and ice cream
Saturday: Go to the Dairy Farm

I'm hoping for a warm/hot day this week so we can paint with ice cubes.  The fabric I got is going to be our picnic blanket and I'd like to have it all prepared.  Looks like we might get some rain this week, so we can also knock some of our rainy day projects off the list. 

I'm hoping we'll get Flat Stanley back from North Dakota this week.  He must be having a great time there. 

Stay tuned...I promise there are better blogging days to come :)

Go!

Okay, so it's June 1st.  I don't know how it was where you live, but it was a yucky day around here!  Cold and rainy and just plain gross! And guess what I did...had a garage sale.  I actually didn't do too bad considering the weather.

Anyway, so since my goal is to try to do one thing every day from today until the end of August, I had to break out a rainy day project.  Dollar Tree has all these little things for kids to paint for $1.  A few weeks ago, Brock picked out a train piggy bank.  I thought it went well with last week's unofficial theme of trains (Brock's party and pinata was trains) made this project perfect, even though last week wasn't officially part of the list, but I checked off the things we did anyway.  On to picture!

I have a feeling that if it doesn't start getting nicer out, you will get really bored of seeing this corner of my house.

And this view too.

I have really got to teach him how to rince his brush between colors.  I kept trying to remind him but he didn't listen.

Oh well, I love his "muddy" train bank.

If you are following my page, I'd really like to hear from you occassionaly.  I know after I posted my link on grkids.com, I got a huge surge of viewers.  I hope that gained us some followers.  I'm mostly doing this for family, so they can keep up with us and how we are doing.  But I also want to post good tutorials and ideas for you to do with your kids this summer.  Too often I think we all sometimes forget to unplug and spend time with our kids.  I know I do.  I spend a lot of time at this computer.  Between my three businesses, researching ideas for this summer and trying to get a little social time that doesn't include asking a 3 year old if he has to go potty I don't get a chance to unplug often.  Though I have been getting much better at doing stuff at night.  So the goal of this blog is to help myself unplug (which seems a little ironic), help my kids unplug and hopefully to help you with ideas so you can do the same.  Good luck!  And like I said, I'd be happy to hear from you if do any of my tutorials or activities.

Happy Summer (almost)!