S Week- Sports

We played several sports during S week, but the highlight for Trip was an envelope of sports pictures that he got in the mail from Noni. My mom had been cutting pictures out of the sports section of the newspaper for a while. Once she had a nice collection, she sent them to Trip. He had loved going through these pictures and is very serious when looking at each one. He identifies each sport and gets excited about them all.

S Week- Spaceship Lunch

Trip loves the "Space Adventures" Goldfish because they have special shapes. The stars, moon, and spaceships came in very handy for this lunch and he was excited to see them on his plate. The spaceship is just bread, hot dog, carrot, and olive. I used mini chocolate chips to make the S.

S Week- Spring Stained Glass

 This was a fun simple spring project. I cut up some tissue paper

and taped some contact paper to the table, sticky side up.

 Then, it was Trip's turn to stick tissue paper pieces to the contact paper.

It took a little work to get him to lay them flat instead of crumpling them up, but he got the idea.

He stuck on quite a few colorful pieces, then I filled in the rest and sandwiched our work with another layer of contact paper.

Next, it was time to trace some flowers.

Once I cut out the flowers, Trip had a great time taping them to the sliding glass door. He was very proud of his work and we are now enjoying some bright spring colors.

S Week- Sandcastles and Sandpaper

Trip had lots of fun helping me make part of this sandcastle lunch. He crushed the cookies for the sand using a bat,

and then a bottle.

He also helped mix the pudding.

Then, he ate all of the lunch except for the cookies and pudding! Not that I'm complaining, but it was funny!

Later, we tried to make a sandcastle out of the leftover cloud dough from our Excavating X's activity. It sort of worked, but we didn't have quite enough dough to make a good castle.

We also tried coloring on sandpaper with crayons. Trip wasn't too interested in it, however so it didn't last long.

He quickly turned over the sandpaper, colored the guys on the back, and moved on to something else.

S Week- Six Snails for Lunch

These six snails were a fun and easy lunch, of which Trip ate every bite (except for the celery leaf grass). The shells are tortilla roll-ups with cream cheese dip inside. Hot dogs, carrots, and some celery finished them off nicely. I realized afterwards that the eyes really should have been on the tentacles instead of on the heads, but oh well, that will be something to figure out next time.

S Week

With all our our craziness lately, S week got stretched out over a couple of weeks, with activities here and there whenever we had a chance to fit them in.

Since so many fun words start with S, Trip has enjoyed several special lunches, including a sandcastle,

six snails,

and a spaceship among the stars.

We did a simple spring stained glass craft.

Sports were of course a big part of S week. We played many different ones, both inside and outside. Trip also got a envelope from Noni filled with sports pictures that she had cut out of the newspaper. That was a big hit!

Thanks to Bapa and Granny, Trip now has a superhero cape and mask. He had lots of fun playing superhero, having me fly him around the house, and coming "to the rescue."

Trip also enjoyed playing a game he invented the last time Noni was here, which is coloring numbers in Mommy's sudoku book. He especially likes this game when one of us pretends to be upset that he colored the numbers.

Easter Recap

Easter was extra special this year since Trip was actually excited about it and understood more about what we were doing and celebrating. As pastors of a small church, though, Easter is also a crazy time.

We decided to remodel the foyer of our church the week before Easter, which was a crazy but worthwhile endeavor. With the help of many people, we sanded and re-stained the wainscoting, painted the walls (half of them twice because our paint had not been mixed properly at the store and was darker at the bottom of the can), and built a coffee bar/information table. The transformation was really spectacular and it's very refreshing to walk into a warm contemporary space rather than a very outdated one.

Another group of volunteers helped us stuff a thousand plastic eggs with candy and put on our second annual Easter egg hunt for the kids in our community. We had a great turnout and will probably have to double the number of eggs we do next year. Last year, Trip didn't care about finding eggs, but this year, he was much more interested.

He was also very determined to get to the picnic tables and see what was in those eggs.

With so many projects going on, I was thankful that we had done some fun Easter activities before things got crazy. Trip did enjoy a couple of Easter egg baths. One with just some plastic eggs

and the other with some glowing eggs. With a little work, a glow bracelet will fit inside a medium/large plastic egg and makes for a fun bath toy or nighttime egg hunt.

Trip also enjoyed lots of surprises from our extended family, including a large egg filled with goodies that his Aunt T sent him in the mail.

Resurrection Rolls

One evening with some other friends over, we made resurrection rolls. I found the idea here from the Happy Home Fairy (a great site!) and couldn't wait to try it. It was a good thing that we did this with some older kids because Trip wasn't too into it. His friends, on the other hand, had an amazing time and their mom told me that she had to hear the story from each of the three kids when they got home.

All you need are marshmallows, Crescent rolls, melted butter, and cinnamon sugar.

The pure white marshmallow represents Jesus. Roll the marshmallow in the butter, which can either represent Jesus taking our sins upon himself when He died on the cross, or the water that was used to wash Jesus' body during the burial process.

Then roll the marshmallow in the cinnamon sugar, reminding us of the herbs and spices that were used to anoint Jesus' body. This can also represent that Jesus' death was a sweet-smelling sacrifice to God.

 The crescent roll dough represents the linen strips that were used to wrap Jesus' body.

Make sure that you seal the dough tightly around the marshmallow, pinching all of the edges together, then place them on a baking sheet. Put them in the tomb/oven and bake according to the package directions.

Once the rolls are baked, let them cool for a few minutes and have the children think about what surprise awaits them when they get to eat their treat.

They were super surprised to open their rolls and were amazed to discover that they were empty. Jesus has risen and all that was left in the tomb were the linens!

Although Trip didn't care to help us make the rolls, he sure did enjoy eating one and still talks about how Jesus was gone.

Easter Egg Hunt Lunch

Last week was spring break, so we had the opportunity to have some of Trip's friends over when they would normally be at school. I took the chance to try a couple of fun food activities that I've seen online, knowing they would be more fun with a few friends instead of just Trip by himself.

I found this pin on Pinterest and was sold on the idea of an Easter egg hunt lunch immediately. I washed some plastic eggs, counting out four of each color since we would have four kids eating lunch. I then filled them with finger food. We had six colors of eggs, so I came up with six different fillings. I used cheese cubes, pepperoni, carrots, grapes, oyster crackers, and a mix or raisins and M&Ms.

While the kids were busy painting, I was able to sneak around the house and hide the eggs. I then gave each of them half of an egg carton and set them loose to find one of each color of egg. They were excited to fill their tray and helped each other find any missing colors.

Once the cartons were full, they headed to the table to discover what they had for lunch. They were all quite pleased with what they found and did a great job of cleaning their plates.

This lunch was such a hit that I re-created it for Trip to take to his babysitter's house and share with his friends there. I think it would be fun to do an egg hunt breakfast too. It could be a fun thing to wake up to anytime.