For the Birds

I found this great book about birds at the church nursery. It tells all about how birds develop and how they make their nests. After we read the book we made nests in two different ways. First we made our own nest.

We gathered sticks, grass, straw, hair, yarn, newspaper, and mud and gave it our best shot.

Alice learned all about weaving and we talked about how nest building must take a lot of effort for birds.


After we were done, we put the nest in a tree in our backyard in hopes that a mama bird may decide to make it her home. Yesterday we added some bird seed to make the nest more inticing to potential ocuupants. No luck so far. I'll keep you posted!

After all that hard work we decided to make ourselves a treat-edible birdsnests.
We used milk chocolate chips and chinese noodles. Alice didn't like the noodles without the chocolate, but she sure loved the chocolate without the noodles. I couldn't get her to stop eating it!







Here's our Muffin Tin Monday entry a few days late. The theme was "the ocean". I made tuna fish, an apple and peanut butter boat, a hotdog octopus, star-shaped toast, and gave her pretzel rods to use a fishing poles.


PINK!!

I would have never given Alice a Tootsie Pop at 17 months, but that's the beauty of being the second child. You basically get to do whatever your big sister does. It was the stickest mess ever. At one point Will wiped his hands down the wall leaving sticky handprints all over it. And I thought flat paint was a good idea!



Just had to add this picture. This is Will with his little friend Hope- SO CUTE!! He is a giant beside her. I think I could clean the whole house holding her. I don't even think I could clean the counters while holding Will.

This is Brad in all his glory. Last weekend he purchased 2 inch steaks and made a very labor-intensive rub and sauce. With shopping it was basically an all day event, however it was well worth it. They were really tasty. Luckily the steaks took so long to make that the kids were already in bed when we ate them, so we got to eat them in peace!




I am crazy about making sure that the kids get enough fruit, so much so that I bought an enormous container of oranges on my last trip to COSTCO. In an effort to use them before they went bad, we made homemade orange juice. Both kids enjoyed this activity.





Just a note on all the swimsuits. Looking at these pictures you would think that they were taken in the summertime, or that Alice has been doing a lot of swimming. In reality she would like to be swimming everyday, but we only go once a week. Her friend Phoebe gave her a bag of swimsuits and that is basically her uniform when she is at home!
A typical afternoon at the Andersons...

Spring Glorious Spring!!!

Spring is finally here. We are like caged animals being released into the wild. We've tried to fit in a walk each day. Alice could live on her bike and Will tolerates the stroller as long as the park is his reward. He could live on the swings. On one of our walks we took pictures of signs of spring and made a book for Alice to take to school. Here are some of the pictures. We love spring!








I made picture cards of spring flowers that we take on our walks so we can hunt for them. This has made Alice and Will very aware of flowers along the way.


This is the robin's nest in the tree in the front of our house. You can get a really good view from our bedroom window. We are eagerly awaiting the baby robins.

In the backyard we found a patch of moss. We decided to see if we could grow some more moss. Alice mixed the moss with milk and poured it on surfaces around the yard. I found this idea at 5 Orange Potatoes, one of my favorite blogs. This sparked interesting discussions about what different plants need to grow and about roots. I will post pictures of our moss in a few days.






I also found this cute idea on the same blog. Alice made crayon shavings and then placed them in between two pieces of wax paper. And then, yes, I let my 4 year old use an iron to press the flowers.


They turned out great. Here is a picture that doesn't really do them justice.

Of course the best thing about spring is SNOOKIES! Our mom and pop's ice cream shop in our neighborhood opened this month. Alice asks to go there everyday. She loves ice cream.

Will on the otherhand was not impressed.

Easter Recap

I've fallen way behind with blogging. I have so many pictures of things we've done recently, so I'll just give a quick recap of Easter.

Here's the kids at the mall visiting the Easter Bunny.


This was Alice's favorite Easter craft. I bought a 3 dollar salad spinner from Target and we did homemade spin art. She loved it!


We took the kids to the annual Beaverdale Egg Hunt in our neighborhood. We really lucked out with the weather this year. I am remembering a hunt a few years ago when the temperature was 13 degrees. It was a perfect sunny day. As always, we were taken a little off guard when the air horn went off. Both kids stood there like a deer in headlights, but with a little prodding they had a blast.










After the hunt, Brad gave the kids their first golf lesson. I think they both got a little sunburned! OOPHS!



These are the beautiful flowers Mom sent for Easter. Thanks MOM!

On Easter morning the Easter Bunny left a trail of jelly beans to the baskets. Alice followed the trail to the baskets, Will ate his way down the trail.






Once again we hosted our annual Easter Brunch. We had a great time with good food and good friends.


Growing up, we made this bunny cake at Easter so I wanted to start the tradition with Alice and Will. They both enjoyed making it, but eating it was better!