Picnics and Gardens

Yesterday was another installment of our 'Mummy and Me' summer fun. We had a Teddy Bear Picnic! It was so fun! The kids really enjoyed it, and regaled their father with all kinds of stories when he got home from work last night! :) They got to give their bears 'tea' using a small tea set (which you were very brave to use, Leonora! :) I was so worried someone would break it!!), which Josh thought was the funniest thing! :)

The teddy bears' tea party! :) It's such a cute tea set!


The teddy bears ... well, perhaps not the teddy bears themselves... are having a snack!


We threw 'Honey Bees' into a 'Honey pot' (yellow things into a bucket decorated very nicely), colored bear pictures, sang '5 Little Teddy Bears Bouncing on the Bed', and even did an action rhyme ('Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, Turn Around'). Then, while the kids were not paying attention, the bears were all hid, and they were told to find them and they'd get a prize! Well, they all thought that that was a fabulous idea. Josh found most of them, which he boasted of quite happily to Devin over dinner (which was oatmeal, by the way. Yes, I'm a bad mom.)! :) We had a nice snack time, where my little munchkins ate pretty much everything in sight. Or at least, they piled everything in sight onto their plates. Between Josh, Claire and I, we ate an entire full bowl of microwave popcorn. I have to admit, I thoroughly enjoyed that, as it is processed and has lots of preservatives, so it sat happily with my nauseous stomach. :) We played with a parachute and sang some songs and blew some bubbles. The kids really enjoyed themselves. But I must always admit that I wonder if the kids ever enjoy themselves half as much as the moms do at these events?? How nice it is to get with other moms who are in the same situation you are--staying home all day long with little people who don't always have a lot of conversation skills yet--and TALK! Oh, it is fantastic!!!! It makes the rest of the day very bearable, to say the least! :)

On another note, I looked out the window today, and what did I see? No, not popcorn popping on the Apricot tree... But I saw that we had HUGE cucumbers on plants that I didn't even know were out there!!
The garden! You can see the cucumbers if you look really closely.

Woohoo! So I got three of them and sliced them up and we ate them for a snack today! Yea!! We also have a bunch of soy bean plants with lots of soybeans on them!! Cool, eh? It's always fun to have little surprises in the garden. Especially when you're not expecting it. :) That was a nice thing.

We also had a 'real' dinner tonight! I made up a nice big batch of black beans, then made Devin and the kids make some homemade tortillas and scrambled eggs, and we feasted on Central American fare! Yea!! Super yummy! And we had a lot of very happy kids after that! (Not that they weren't happy after eating cinnamon rolls as a snack during playgroup today, but that's a different sort of happy. Luckily, the cinnamon rolls I make are of a very different variety, and are actually GOOD for you, so I have no problem giving them to my kids...or anyone else's for that matter!)