Best Toy Investment Ever

We bought our first wooden trains about 11 years ago for Bryan for Christmas. Since then the train set has slowly been added to over the course of many birthdays and such. We now have enough track pieces and train parts to fill a large plastic bucket. I have to say this is one of the best toy investments we've made. Every single child has loved them. The older kids still build elaborate tracks all over the playroom. Gabe has just now started to really love the engines and drags some upstairs every morning to play with. I think if I had it to do over again, I would have spent a bit more on the trains and a lot less on most of the rest of the stuff.

Day 3

We took a day off from the Summer Faith Adventure yesterday to go to the free movies in town. Just imagine 8 quiet kids in a nice dark theater. Makes for a rather nice morning.
Today we made prayer books. We were supposed to make pretzels as well but I'm feeling a bit sick still so I took the easy way out and opened a bag of pretzels instead. The songs for this week are all songs from a tape we bought 8 years ago when Bryan and Sean were little. We've been enjoying singing them again since it's been a while since I've dug the tapes out for the kids.
All of the prayer books came out very nice. The kids used the pictures provided with the program as well as some small holy cards we had in the art box. And copious amounts of glue. Apparently there is no such thing as too much glue. I can't wait to see what they make tomorrow.

Day 2-Stained Glass

We completed day 2 of our Summer Faith Adventure. Today we learned about the importance of stained glass windows in the early Church. They served to teach those who could not read about the Bible and the Saints.
The kids made these stained glass window pictures.
Robert even cooperated today and snoozed for a good part of the morning. I was attempting to get a picture of a sleeping child but he woke up the instant the camera turned towards him.
I made these stained glass cookies for snack time. If you try to make them, I suggest not using Jolly Ranchers. Those suckers are a bit hard to smash to pieces. I've made these before with various other hard candies and never had the issue I had with the Jolly Ranchers.
They ended up being a bit of a sticky mess. But very pretty colors and tasted yummy.
We are looking forward to day 3 and I am thankful to find other people who take the time to put these ideas together in one place so I don't have to do all of the legwork myself.

Summer Faith Adventure

We had the first day of our Summer Faith Adventure today. I'm hoping the kids actually remembered something or had fun because it felt rather chaotic to me. Every time we would start to do something, the baby would get upset or someone would get upset over where they were sitting or something along those lines.
But we learned a new song, prayed a decade of the rosary and the Angelus at noon.
The kids made miters for their craft.
We had coloring sheets and a word search for the older kids, watched a few videos, made key shaped sugar cookies.
They seemed to have fun I guess but I am hoping day 2 goes a tad smoother.

Nesting Boxes

We put a couple of nesting boxes up in the yard. This weekend we checked out the nest that had been built inside one of them. We used to have a couple of birds nesting here obviously but when the wasps moved in, the birds moved out. I'm hoping that since we have killed the wasps in the nesting box, just maybe we can get some birds to come back.

Painting with Marbles

Today we finally got around to doing a project I have wanted to do with the kids since we went to an Easter party, um, about 5 kids ago. First thing holding me back was not having marbles. Just can't justify buying the little choking hazards just for one art project. Then we found a bag of them in Alan's office that belonged to one of us in high school. Yes, we have a few boxes of junk that really need to be tossed. So marbles in hand I came upstairs and set them on a top shelf in the library and promptly forgot where they were for another couple months. Found them today and decided to seize the moment.
I had Bryan pick out 3 different colors of finger paint. Poured some paint into a muffin tin and added 2 marbles to each color. I printed out a heart template for each of the kids.
Then you put the heart shape (or anything the right size) into a container with sides. We used these pie pans I bought to make quiche for the freezer for the midwives. Yes, on the birth list was vegetarian meals for the midwives. But since Robert came early, they sat unused in our cupboard. You can also use shirt boxes or baking sheets or whatever you have laying around.
Put one marble at a time into the pan and roll it around. The intent was to make patterns on the hearts and see how the colors mixed together but several of the children decided the intent was to cover the paper completely leaving no white showing. And since red and blue make purple and we were also using purple, there wasn't too much noticeable color mixing going on.
But everyone enjoyed the project anyway. The finished projects will be hung up once they finally dry. You'd be amazed at how much paint you can get onto such a small surface when you are determined.
Since there is no way in heck I would trust Gabe with marbles yet, he got to finger paint which he loved. Sadly, I think I have avoided finger painting in recent years. I really need to let the little ones do this some more. Look at that happy face.
This is just one of those reminders to myself that the kids really do enjoy this type of stuff and a couple of 15 minutes snatches of time every day truly goes a long way to keeping them entertained, not fighting and happy. I suppose we should try making these messes a tad more often.

We Have a Two-Year-Old

We celebrated Gabe's birthday today. I took him out shopping this morning with just Robert and was suddenly struck by how big he is getting. I don't often get to spend time with just the younger two. I was reminded why kids are so much fun at this point. Simple things are everything to them.
Gabe loves cars and trucks and playing in the sandbox which is what inspired this cake. Nope, the armored truck was not actually supposed to be on the cake but Gabe insisted.
He finally got a hold of one of the trucks. This apparently trumps cake and ice cream.
Finally he has all of them. He would have been thrilled if all he got today was a few trucks.
He also ended up with sand toys and 600 lbs of new sand for the sandbox. Amazingly enough, that is not enough sand to fill the sandbox so we may be heading back for more.
Happy Birthday little dude. Thanks for giving us another "Oh, wow!" kind of day.