Andrew was gone to the United Methodist Conference this week. He left Tuesday and returned home Saturday afternoon. I spent the week trying to survive! 🙂 It’s tough being a single mom of three! I really REALLY missed my other half!! I actually did okay though, and there were only a few rough moments through the whole week. Meal time was challenging because that seems to be when Samuel is most fussy. I gave myself permission to go get take out when I felt overwhelmed and unable to cook, but I only had to do that twice. I heated up leftovers, cooked strawberry pancakes, and tacos for dinner. The strawberry pancakes were a hit! The kids had just watched an episode of Daniel Tiger where they cook strawberry pancakes for breakfast. I decided we would have strawberry pancakes too. 🙂 I would love to tell you I made these from scratch, but I used a good ol’ box mix, and added strawberries to it. I also fried some eggs to go with the pancakes. I like something to offset the sweetness of pancakes. 

I love summer! I love having the kids home together, but I am trying to come up with activities for them to do at home!  This week we did marbling with shaving cream and paint. It was a lot of fun! The kids loved it! We just used finger paints, but I recommend using water paint as it will probably work better. The kids paint the shaving cream with different colors making whatever shapes or patterns they want. Then place a piece of card stock onto the shaving cream. Remove and scrape the shaving cream off. There will be a pattern of colors! David and Emma love playing in the shaving cream. 🙂

Also this week we read a book about clouds. We talked about how clouds are formed and the different types of clouds. We then made clouds. We used cotton balls, glue, and card stock. We went outside for inspiration, and David and Emma loved making their clouds! Emma just liked gluing the cotton balls, and David made his a cumulonimbus! He colored his cotton balls black and drew lightning bolts. 🙂

The library has a great summer program and to kick it off they had a triathlon for the kids at the park Saturday. I took the kids, and David loved it! I had a mom fail though. I forgot to take his bicycle! oops! David didn’t seem to care! He just ran. 🙂 The Memphis redbirds mascot was there! David went up to him and gave him a hug! It was so cute! Emma, however, was terrified of Rockey the Redbird! She would not even participate in the race because he was standing nearby! She did finally enjoy herself a snow cone!:)

We have been spending a lot of time outside. Emma has been learning how to ride her tricycle! She has gotten a lot better, sits on the seat properly, and can pedal pretty good! She still needs some practice on the steering part though. 🙂 Samuel loves to watch David and Emma play. He will give them the biggest smile when they interact with him too. It’s so precious!

Andrew and I celebrated our eleventh wedding anniversary this week! What?! Has it been eleven years already?!! Where has time gone?!! We celebrated Saturday evening after he returned from conference. Some friends of ours offered to babysit the kids, and we were able to go out kid free! I LOVE our kids, but I REALLY NEEDED that after this past week! 🙂 We went to the Rendevous in Memphis. This is where we ate dinner on our wedding night! So it was pretty awesome to eat there on our anniversary.

The kids and I made Andrew a red velvet cake today too! This was a multi-purpose cake. We made it in celebration of our anniversary, but also because our first year of marriage I made Andrew a red velvet cake for his birthday. It was a disaster! It tasted okay, but it looked horrific!! No Joke! So I wanted to revisit it and test my skill again! I plan on making him another one for his birthday and I wanted to practice! The cake turned out MUCH better than the one I made eleven years ago! 🙂 I used a different recipe, plus I’ve learned a few things about baking in the past eleven years! First, always line the bottom of your cake pans with parchment paper!!!! This way you don’t have to worry about weather or not your cake is going to come out of the pan in one piece or not! Second, if a recipe calls for cake flour, go buy cake flour! It just works better than trying to adjust and make your own. Three, if a recipe calls for buttermilk make sure you use buttermilk. You can make your own by adding a tablespoon of vinegar to a cup of milk if you don’t have any on hand. Four, follow directions carefully! I still need to work on this one apparently. The recipe I used today called for whipping the egg whites and folding them into the batter at the end. Well, I forgot! I made this cake recipe without egg whites!! Amazingly it still turned out really good. I’m curious to know how it will be once I use the egg whites! I’ll let you know next time! Here is the recipe for Red Velvet Cake!

Love,

PK