my sister and nephew

My sister and nephew came for a visit last month and it was so fun see them! 

 He found a fun little creek that the town turned into a wadding spot under a bridge and had a blast. 

 Snack time!

 Play dough

 We made a train cake

 This kid climbs all over his mom!

 My sister taught Yoda to knit!

I asked my sister what food she didn't want to miss while she was here.  Besides candy Buckeyes, there really isn't much that's totally local to Ohio, but she remembered that Cincinnati Chili is pretty unique so we got some of that.

 And they dressed up like robots :)

 Duck Doughnuts

 He ran some errands with me.

 And we checked out some outdoor art

 I couldn't believe the fine-motor skills on this kid! 

Painting nails and carefully breaking eggs, so talented!  

We also launched some rockets, I'll post those soon.

One weird quote per kiddo

All quotes are said in a super, dry-humor voice...

Mimi, after I asked her if she wanted to do something, "Can the answer be 'shrug'?"


Yoda, "A shadow is a mirror without color"

Parker, "Oh No!"
Me, "Is it really that big a deal?" (it wasn't)
Parker, "I react the same no matter the size of the deal"

All the Ttrivial Pursuit

 Dragonball (Parker = Winner)

 Star Wars (Greg & Yoda = Winners)

 1990's (Valerie = Winner)

Harry Potter (Yoda & Mimi = Winners).  Later Greg texted me, "Parker and I got skunked!" 

Birthday inside

Last month I celebrated my birthday, and we made the most of what we could do...

 a brand new puzzle,

  hike on a beautiful day,

 yummy cake,

 more goodies, and another puzzle,

 diner food!

Hike Break

So much to post

But summer has zapped my energy, so I'll just give you a thumbs up from my clever nephew for now...

Realizations

Yoda woke up in a thoughtful mood, "I just realized, some of my teeth are as big as yours. But some of my teeth are as small as a baby's."

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Greg sitting by a man with a hat that read, "K-9 dog training" or something like that.  He looked at me and said, "I just realized that K-9 is for canine."

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A friend telling us the story of how things are called "Ye" as in "Ye Old Mill".
Here's the Wikipedia page on it: 
'"Ye" is also sometimes used to represent an Early Modern English form of the definite article "the" (pronounced /ðiː/), such as in "Ye Olde Shoppe".'

So Mimi exclaims, "So when a cowboy says 'Ye Haw', he's saying 'The Haw'?!"

Mimi's Masterpiece Re-creatinon

For a young woman's-zoom activity, someone came up with this fun idea.  Mimi has seen a painted re-creation of Picasso's Ironing Woman every day of her life, so it came to her mind when the assignment was given. 

The drive in

Since nearly everything is closed, we decided we better hit the drive-in when there was a good movie to see !

Here are the kiddos afterwards, very sleepy and ready to go home

Last? Day

On the day that was supposed to be the last day of school I suddenly realized that we should take some photos.  Here's the link to just a few short months ago, but it feels like years. 

Mimi at the end of 8th grade.

Parker at the end of 11th grade. 

Yoda at the end of 4th grade.  

They even put on backpacks for me :)

Art at home

Yoda has been given assignments by his gym, art and music teachers to do some learning at home.  We've enjoyed the art the most, of course!  I pull out paints, cray-pas, clay and they are shocked that I have all these goodies hidden away.  We will definitely be doing much more this summer

All the bread

French bread 

 With the help of my sister-in-law, I made a sour dough starter and made sour dough. 

I used part of the starter for crumpets! 

 This was my most successful whole wheat bread ever.

Cinnamon Roll Bread.  I need to try this one again to try to get it right. 

And as I blogged about before, I made English muffins and Artisan bread.  hmmm, what's next?!