japawo

So every year I think we get busier and busier. Now that all the kids are in school it seems like it is just one project after another. Last week we spent several nights helping Stanley with his Saltwater Biome Diorama. He put a lot of work into it and I think it turned out pretty good, but that was after a few adventures.


The first problem was when we pulled out the package of modeling clay from last years school projects and realized it had dried out. We now had a nice hard grayish white cube instead of malleable clay. We gave it to Walker to keep him entertained. It worked. He spent probably 2 hours chiseling and carving on that cube.


Here is his finished product. I'm not sure what it is.... but he's sure proud of it!


While he was busy with that we got some other clay for Stanley and he spent an hour or two making a shark, a whale, and few other things. We waited a day to let them dry, but they were still to soft so we tried putting them in the oven to dry it out faster. It didn't work. I guess there are certain kinds of clay that are oven dry and others that are not. It "melted" his animals into puddles and smoked up the kitchen.

So, on to plan C. We used some plastic bead kit things that you melt together with an iron. You use a peg board to arrange these plastic beads into a design or a picture. Then you put some special paper over it and then using an iron you heat up the plastic till it melts and the beads fuse together. You can see the end result in the picture above. The 2 sharks and the whale were made this way.

Stanley managed to finish the rest of his project without any more trouble.

That brings us to today's project. Making sugar cookies for a bake sale in Vyktoria's class. Here is a picture of everyone frosting cookies. David's friend Andy even decided to help.


Evidently it is impossible to frost sugar cookies without getting most of the frosting on your hands. Some of the kids seemed to enjoy that part, but I don't think Vyktoria feels that way.


Stanley doesn't seem to mind.


I think Walker would have bathed in the frosting if we hadn't stopped him.


Somewhere in the middle of this production -- and believe me when you try to make 2 batches of sugar cookies with the help of 5 children it becomes a production -- David and Andy decided to start singing their original parody of Roxette's "Listen to your Heart".



Sometimes I don't know what planet my children are from.

We finally finished all the cookies and that is when Vyktoria said something like "I don't think they'll all fit on my desk"


That's about the same time she realized that 2 batches of sugar cookies was way too many. You should have seen Toni. I think her head spun a full 360 just like the girl on Poltergeist. :-D

Anyway, the kids had fun and we decided to give the extra cookies to neighbors.