Cub Scouts: Derby Car Workshop

Chamberlin & Teagan attended the Derby Car Workshop for his cub scouts troop this evening. Arowyn went with them to act as camerman and to chronicle the evening for me. So all these photos were taken by her. They all had fun and Teagan is now excited and anticipating getting to paint, decorate and finish assembling his derby car for the big race next month.

Teagan cutting out the pattern he 

has selected for his car.

 Cham drawing the pattern onto the block of wood for him.

 Getting all safety goggled up.

 Teagan looking awesome in his safety goggles.

 Teagan showing off his block of wood.

Teagan hamming it up for the camera. 

Chamberlin cutting out his car on the jigsaw. 

 Cham cutting out the car while Teagan 

watches, um I not quite sure what.

 Teagan distractadly showing off 

his freshly cut out car.

Teagan sanding the body of his car.

 

Cham inspecting Teagan's work

Teagan applies a little more elbow 

grease to the sanding.

Fingernail Painting

I let Arowyn paint her own fingernails today. After she painted her own nails a light pink color she wanted to show off her newly acquired skills by having me videotape her painting Daddy's toenails. Fortunately for Chamberlin she was kind enough to just put on a clear coat with no color.

Cooking With Mema: Blackberry Cobbler

Arowyn's cooking video starring Mema.

Arowyn the Cameraman

We are down in Alton Missouri spending some quality time with my grandparents while Chamberlin is in West Plains for his yearly recurrency training with Air-Evac. Arowyn has been Grandma's little shadow ever since we showed up last night especially when she's in the kitchen so when Grandma started making a blackberry cobbler for tonight's dinner Arowyn just couldn't help herself any longer and she whipped out my iPhone's video camera on her and told her she was going to star in her own cooking show. So here's Arowyn's video of Mema making blackberry cobbler.

Mema making blackberry cobbler

Arowyn videotaping Mema 

making blackberry cobbler

Arowyn reviewing her video

Ouch!

Well it's the new year and time to learn new things. So yesterday as I was putting Arowyn to bed I found out that she was secretly teaching herself how to sew. I only found out because she was not so careful about returning two of the sewing needles back into their case and they somehow got caught up in the giant tail of her stuffed squirrel toy and when she was carrying it to bed one of the needles got her and she yelped. After tending to her she told me what she'd been doing and so Squirrely got a serious pat down which reveled another needle buried into her tail. After asking her why she decided to hide this from me she said it was because she was afraid if she asked that I would of said no. She has always been headstrong since the day she was born and after talking to her about everything we agreed that the next day I would give her sewing lessons and I would help her finish her pillow she had started. Of course first thing this morning when she woke up she went and grabbed her secret sewing project and brought it to me to hold me to my promise. What she brought to me was what to me looks like a miniature body pillow. It was a piece of yellow felt that she had found downstairs in one of the craft drawers that she had already sewn doing a whip stitch all but one side up. Which she then had proceeded to "stuff" with cotton balls all I really had to do for her was help her tie the ends of in the end and that was it. And yeah tomorrow I need to go buy more cotton balls.

Arowyn's pillow

Cooking With Arowyn: Hawaiian Pizza

Arowyn has been wanting to get her hands dirty in the kitchen with mommy so for dinner today she fixed us a Hawaiian Pizza with breadsticks. No this wasn't completely from scratch but we were to hungry to take the time to make the dough ourselves so canned dough it was. Not that it matters though because Arowyn had a great time doing it and she's already learned way more about cooking than I knew at her age.

Cooking With Teagan: Chocolate Chip Cookies

We're getting ready for Christmas today with doing a little holiday baking. Teagan made a batch of chocolate chip cookies which turned out delicious although one tray of them were slightly over done to the point where they are not burned but they were a tad crunchy. Today was one of our busy days so it took us awhile to get this all done which is the reason for the outfit changes because a couple of times we had to stop where we were to run out to ballet and then later on Cub Scouts and by the time they were all baked it was bed time.

Cooking With Teagan: Breakfast Tarts

We’ve been working on our cooking skills around here recently and by we I don’t mean just the kids but I myself am as well. I’ve always been very bad about choosing very simple and easy recipes so to push myself and teach the kids some cooking skills I’m letting them pick a recipe out of one of our cookbooks every other week and whatever they pick (as long as I understand or can easily google the cooking terms used in the recipe) we will attempt it. Teagan’s pick this week was to make some breakfast tarts. Fortunately it was slightly involved but very simple to follow and we only ran into one slight issue while making them, that of not having a small circular cookie cutter for cutting the circle in the front of the tart. After looking around the house we decided to try using the top of a Crayola marker as a cookie cutter which ended up working out perfectly. The tarts turned out great and Teagan was pretty proud of his creation. In the video Teagan walks you through his process of making the breakfast tarts. Oh and when he says Strawberry Jello he meant to say Strawberry Jam.

Arowyn's Dance Photos

Let me clarify these are not photos of Arowyn dancing but photos that Arowyn took of one of the dances we recorded. She took all of these completely on her own with no assistance at all from anyone. Her pictures came out so good that some of them were used for the labels and cover of the DVD production that we taped for them.

 The DVD cover using two of her pictures

The Disc Label with her picture