Terrific Two!!

Our youngest had his second birthday today.

 He was much more interested in the bottle of balloons than the new duplo!!

 We made 'Frank' the header for the cake - he loves riding on 'Frank' with dad.

Having fun playing trains with Pa.

This kid is so special - he brings so much joy to our family.

Happy Birthday Eli!!

Easter 'Advent'

Easter is pivotal in our faith and we want help our kids understand this.  So I am aiming to do an activity with them each day and gives us an opportunity to learn more about why it is so important.  We have very active, hand-on boys so doing physical things with them helps them learn, rather than just talking about it.  Here's yesterdays activity.

Oh how I wish I could share the smell that came from my oven as these cooked with you.  It was so good.  My boys thought this was the best lunch we've had in a long time!  We are definitely going to make these again.  My husband reckons they were as good as ones from the bakery.  Yay!!!!

In my Kitchen

I have been having fun in the kitchen lately - I was given Cyndi O'Meara's Changing Habits Changing Lives Cookbook for Christmas and have eaten something out of it every day since.  There are so many habits that we have in our society (relating to what we eat) that aren't necessarily the best for our health.  This book address some of these and talks about picking one habit a week and focusing on changing just that for the week.  It breaks it all down into do-able steps.  One of the biggest concepts in the book is the quality of the food, not the quantity.  So there is no calory counting, just checking the ingredients in the foods.  It's amazing what is in the food we think is good for us!!

Anyway the habit we are focusing on at the moment is breakfast.  We aren't eating bought cereals anymore.

We are eating lots of fresh fruit, amazing rice cereals that are most like rice puddings and fresh home made bread with lots of seeds in it and fresh homemade juice.  So far the kids have enjoyed the bircher with a twist the best but my favourite was the pinacolada rice cereal.  I must say all this is made so much easier with my Thermomix.  Oh I love my Thermomix!!

In our kitchen today

Today in our kitchen we used up lots of things that were purchased cheap because they were nearly off. We had cream, strawberries, lot of carrots and sweet potatoes and many other vegies. So we made ice cream, vegie stock and roasted chips. Isaiah had great fun helping me with the ice cream. We made a double batch of strawberry and one batch of cookies and cream.

Here it is in my Thermomix (TM) about to get smashed.

Here is Isaiah smashing the cookies

(I could have done it in the TM, but where's the fun in that)

Here is Isaiah eating it for afternoon tea