Banana boats

This is a super simple, tasty snack that can be made on the campfire (or grill!) in a few easy steps.

1. Peel the top (front) side of the banana, but leave the peel attached. (After adding the goodies, you will need to close the banana up again.)
2. Using a spoon, scoop out about half the banana and eat it of course. The less banana, the more room for yummies! If you're on a diet, don't scoop out too much. =)
3. Sprinkle in some mini-chocolate chips and mini marshmallows. 4. Close the banana peel up, wrap the banana in foil so that so that the foil makes a "handle" in the event that you don't have long tongs handy (we didnt!).
   

5. Place the foil-wrapped bananas into the fire. Watch closely. You will have to check on them a few times. It takes about 10-15 minutes for the chocolate chips to melt, depending on the heat of the fire.

6. Unwrap your banana and enjoy! It may not look too appetizing, but trust me, everyone will love it.

Underwear and oranges

Sam started going potty at Grandma's house this past week. Even though I hadn't planned to potty train him yet, he seems ready, so we're just going for it, busy as we are! With Isaiah, we spent a solid intensive two weeks potty training, and I planned to do the same with Sam. Apparently he's decided he's ready now, so in the middle of musical season, we're doing what we can. In this picture below, he's actually wearing two pairs of underwear. I asked him if he wanted to wear the elmo pair or the cookie monster pair. He said, "Both!"

The other day we got a Sesame Street cooking with kids cookbook. Tonight we decided to try the Frosty Orange Surprise. First, we cut off the top 1/4 of four oranges. After scooping out the "guts" and putting them into the blender, we added two 6 oz. containers of lemon yogurt and blended. We scooped the orange pulp and yogurt mixture back into the orange cups and froze them for an hour and a half.

Then enjoyed! So easy and healthy.

We decided that these would make amazing snacks for a hot summer afternoon.

Baking with boys

Today was snow day #6 of the school year. I certainly didn't anticipate being home today, but it was a nice surprise. I was flipping through March's edition of FamilyFun magazine and found these St. Patrick's day rainbow cupcakes. Unfortunately, I didn't have a white cake mix, so we just made it from scratch. Isaiah loves the mixer. He said, "Your mixer is on hyper-speed!" The things boys say! Then I had to make sour milk because I didn't have any buttermilk. While I was mixing the milk and lemon juice, the boys were drinking the lemon juice, straight. They were having a contest to see who could drink more. This is how boys like to cook. =) So we divided the batter into six bowls and used the amount of food coloring the recipe said in order to make the right colors. Here's the picture from the magazine.

Mixing the green...

And the red...

All the colors finished... then we layered the batter in the muffin tins, starting with purple and working our way up. (The little one started saying "purple" while were were making these.) We were careful with the layering so the colors wouldn't mix, but...

This is is how they turned out. A little... psychedelic?

You can see the colors in the middle... a little mixed up! Both boys thought the rainbow cupcakes tasted good.