Vibrant, Red, and Wet Camelia

On anotherwise dreary and wet day in North Carolina, I thought I'd share a cheery and very red camelia picture. Here's a few more.

Chicken Delicious

I make a crockpot staple at our house called Chicken Delicious. You ask, what's that? Well, it's a tasty, yummy, hearty, easy dish made mostly out of chicken breasts or tenderloins and cream soups. To get started, put some baby carrots at the bottom of the crockpot. They keep the chicken from sticking until it all gets going good. Put the chicken breasts on top. Squeeze on some lemon juice. Shake on some paprika. Dump on some bottled mushrooms. Drip on some worchestershire sauce.

You need two cans of cream soup. Cream of Mushroom, Chicken, Chicken Mushroom, Celery or some combination work good. Today was Cream of Mushroom and Cream of Chicken Mushroom. Just pour 'em on top.

4-6 hours later depending on if the chicken started out frozen and what temp you keep the crockpot on, you have a yummy soupish looking meal. I serve with mashed potatoes, and the gravy is oh so good on top of them.

Joey even got to eat off a dinosaur plate tonight. It was definitely dinosaur night at our house.

Dinosaur-Shaped Sugar Cookies

The kids are studying dinosaurs at school this week, and we had a box of sugar cookie mix in the pantry that came with some dinosaur cookie cutters, so I thought it would be nice if we finally got around to making them. The boys are always eager to help cook in the kitchen, and making cookies are one of their favorite things.

First, they mixed the dough. It's always a battle of the stirrers. And, I have to keep anxious mouths from eating the goods before we even get stuff mixed up! This dough was mixed by hand lickety split and we were on our way to the next step.

Second, it was time to roll out the dough and cut out the cookies. I prefer to roll the dough so I can keep the cookies a consistent thickness, but the kids just love that rolling pin and get in there eager as can be. Rule at our house is they press, I lift to the cookie sheet...unless the cookies are super firm and easy to move...these weren't.

Third, once we'd used up all the dough, I let the kids paint them with egg yolk mixed with food color. Besides making the cookies look pretty, it helps all sorts of sprinkles to stick to the cookies.

Fourth, sprinkles, sprinkles, and more sprinkles. Need I say more? A few cookies had heaped on sprinkles but most were reasonable. We even had dinosaur-shaped sprinkles we'd picked up at A Southern Season last year. We're now out, so next time we go Joey wants more!

Fifth, the kids love for me to turn on the oven light and watch their masterpieces bake. 10 minutes does the magic with sugar cookies. We ate dinner, chicken delicious, while they baked, and then feasted on cookies for dessert. I have an e-mail into preschool to see if we can bring the majority of the cookies in for the Bear class (Joey) snack tomorrow. No allergies in that class.

Don't you feel like you need to make some cookies now? You too can have this much fun!!!

All of the fun cookie making pics are here.

Lego 50th Anniversary

Lego® is celebrating 50 glorious years today. I was reminded when I went to do a search on Google this morning and saw that their banner was celebrating the anniversary. We absolutely love playing with Lego bricks at our house. We started out with Duplo bricks including Bob the Builder and Thomas sets and are now venturing out to the 'bigger boy' brick sets like StarWars and SpongeBob. Just yesterday, Joey and I put set 7667 Imperial Dropship together. He assmebled the minifigs (4 stormtroopers), and I assembled the ship;-) But, our favorite kit recently was the SpongeBob Rocket Ride kit 3881. Joey and Johnny continue to play with that toy a lot even after the intial thrill of the assembly.

There's a great link on the Lego site to their company history. A few bullets that I thought particularly interesting are:

• The founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen, hit upon the LEGO® name in 1934. He took the first two letters of the Danish words LEG GODT, meaning “play well”, and put them together – quite unaware that one meaning of the word in Latin is ... “I put together”.
  
  
• During the moulding process, the plastic is heated to 232° C until its consistency is about that of dough. It is then injected into the moulds at a pressure of 25‑150 tons, depending on which element is being produced. It takes seven seconds to cool and eject new elements. The moulds used in production are accurate to within two‑thousandth of a millimeter (0.002 mm), and the accuracy of the moulding process means that only 18 elements in every million produced fail to meet the company’s high quality standard. All LEGO elements are fully compatible, irrespective when they were made during the period from 1958 to the present or by which factory.
  
  
• Over the years approx. 4 billion minifigures have been produced.

In addition, we also enjoy the Ultimate Lego Book. It's just crammed with interesting facts and picturs about Lego.

In honor of Lego, go forth and build!

Icee Addiction

It all started one innocent day when the Wal-Mart (WM) in Fuquay opened and I was pregnant with Joey. I was miserable, it was hot, and the snack bar had an Icee machine with Coke Icee in it. Now, I'm not sure how many times I ever had an Icee or slushy before. I'd definitely had daiquiris, mudslides, and other frozen concoctions, but maybe not Icees. I went in and got one. It's been a complete addiction ever since.

Saying that I get a Coke Icee every time I got to WM is not an exaggeration. By the time Joey and Johnny were both 9 months old, they were sipping right along with me. To my chagrin, they sometimes now choose red or blue (cherry or blue raspberry). I'm strictly a Coca-Cola girl;-)

Christine has told me several times lately that I've passed on the Icee addiction to Madi (and her) too. Oh well... Good things are worth sharing with friends.

When I was in Wal-Mart on Friday, Mr. Henry, the Blimpie's owner, gave me Icee Bear tatoos for the boys. They were so excited when I put them on this morning.

Now, when's the next time I get to go to WM? for an Icee? you?

Icee website

New Bird Feeders

I'm excited. I have purchased 3 new bird feeders. There's a chrome one from Lowe's that Joey helped me pick out. There's a birdbath turned bird feeder from Home Depot. And, there's a cool globe-shaped feeder from Petsmart that I got on clearance and am super psyched about. I've rearranged what I had and added the new stuff and am all ready to take more bird pics! All the feeders have black oil sunflower seed in them except the suet feeder (red pepper suet) and the yellow feeder which has thistle seed (for the Gold Finches). I intend to get some of the smaller mixed seed and use it in one of the feeders...maybe the globe. I'm a little concerned that the new, chrome feeder will cause a glare in pictures...hope not. If so, I'll just rearrange. I am really getting into my birds and bird pics again:-)

Museum Trip

The boys and I made a trip to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences today in Raleigh. This museum is free and has lots of interesting exhibits, and we go there several times a year. The reason for our visit today was a special Astronomy Days event. The Raleigh Astronomy Club, NOAA weather people, 4-H, and NASA folks were all on hand to share their education and exerperiences with visitors.

We met up with the Vollmer Family including a special guest appearance by Grampy who was in town for Timmy's 3rd birthday party which was held Saturday. Grammy was also in town but didn't visit the museum.

First, Joey was able to ring the bell with his foot on the very first try. It echoed loudly in the courtyard.

Second, the kids were super happy to see each other. Lots of hugs.


Third, Joey and I got to take this really neat On the Moon picture for free. He didn't want to at first but was glad he did afterward.


Fourth, the kids had a blast with the FLIR (Forward Looking Infra-Red). The booth staff were giving the kids ice cubes to rub on their faces so they could show a cold spot in contrast to their automatically hot bodies. Neat!

I'm sure we'll be back again soon for another great trip to the museum.

If you'd enjoy browsing the rest of our museum trips, they're here.