Easter Egg School Lunch

I love holidays and I love family traditions.  I think having traditions to go along with holidays helps build nice memories for children.

Easter is such a sad yet joyful holiday.  Sad because Jesus died but joyful because he died and rose from the dead for mankind!  We try and emphasize the Christian reason for holidays but we also let Blue Rock enjoy some of our culture's traditions such as going on an Easter hunt and finding an Easter basket with some goodies on Easter morning.

I read somewhere about surprising your child with a candy filled plastic Easter egg in their lunch box.  I thought, what a wonderful and genius idea!  However, why only put candy when you can put their whole lunch in the eggs?  Blue Rock LOVES plastic and pretend eggs.  So I knew he'd love this!  I washed the Easter eggs, cut up some ham, cheese, carrots, washed grapes, and added cheddar bunnies, and some dark chocolate almonds (for his candy).  You can add anything your child likes that can fit in an egg.  I wrapped them in surround wrap (you could just put them in a clean egg) and placed the little baggies in different Easter eggs for Blue Rock's lunch.  To make it extra fun I added a little green grass.  He was very excited watching me make his lunch.  I think he's going to love it!

Trip to the Cheese Farm, Soda Factory, and Chocolate Factory

Last Saturday we decided to take a day trip to the country.  I have really missed seeing farms in Germany and the cheese from Europe, especially The Netherlands.  Europeans usually make their cheese fresh, using only the freshest ingredients, including raw milk from grass fed cows and goats.  So I was looking online to see if I could order some delicious cheese from somewhere and I found a farm about 2 hours away, that makes and sells cheese, organic raw milk, organic eggs, and local organic meat, beef and sausage.  I was excited to learn that we could visit the farm, take a tour, and see how they make their cheese.  Very cool!

DH had a men's Bible study Saturday morning so we missed the tour.  However, we were still able to explore the farm, see the cows and baby calves, which Blue Rock loved.  We saw the outside of the cheese cave, hopefully next time we'll get there in time to go inside.  There was also a large white dog who lived on the farm that was very friendly.  Caden tried feeding the calves grass, so sweet.  We also tried between 12-15 cheeses.  It was the BEST cheese I've had since living in Germany.  We saw the machines they used and the owner/cheese expert, said the equipment is from The Netherlands and he follows those methods in cheese making.  We filled our ice chest with lots of local fresh cheeses, milk, and meats. 

Next we ate at a local restaurant.  It was home cooking at its best.  DH and I each ordered a meat plate with 3 veggies.  The meal came with a drink and dessert all for $8!  What a deal!  We shared our food with Blue Rock and still had leftovers.  For a couple bucks more you could order the all you can eat buffet.  Everything is made fresh there and it was packed with locals. 

After a delicious lunch we headed to Dublin Bottling Works, where Dr. Pepper used to be made.  Now they make sodas with pure cane sugar, yummy!  I ordered a dark soda from the soda jerk and Blue Rock had his first taste of soda.  I loved the look on his face!  I asked him if he liked it and he said yes.  He tried a few more small sips then gave it back to me.  We're not big soda drinkers but we bought a big case of a variety of pure cane sugar sodas anyway.  DH said we might as well buy 24 since they'd only be $1 each instead of $1.50.

Next we headed to the small town of Hico to a chocolate factory called Wiseman House Chocolates.  Did I ever mention that Europeans also have better chocolate than Americans?  Especially the Belgians and Swiss.  At this factory, all of the chocolate is made by hand from the same chocolate from Belgium and Venezuela,  They only use fresh ingredients and leave out added sugars, glutens, sodium nitrates, and trans fats.  If you like chocolate you'd love their chocolate.  They offer tours and classes as well.  Think of episode of I Love Lucy when Lucy and Ethel made chocolate.  If you visit, make sure you bring some money because this is the not the cheap chocolate you buy at Target or Walmart.  We tasted some delicious chocolates, then loaded up our small ice chest with chocolate gifts for Christmas.

We enjoyed our day trip a lot.  I am so glad there are so many wonderful places to visit around us that are only a day trip away.

Pre-Writing Activities that do not involve Crayons

It's been a while since I've posted some activities I do with my 3-year old.  Blue Rock is not really into coloring with crayons like some kids are.  This wouldn't matter too much except that I like him to practice holding a pencil the correct way and build his fingers for future writing.  Thankfully, there are a number of activities that don't involve crayons to achieve this. Blue Rock already has great hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills.  There are several other mediums he enjoys such as painting and drawing with sidewalk chalk which strengthen his hands and fingers. He also has always loved molding things with play-doh which is another great pre-writing skill.

Here are a few activities we've been doing lately.  The first activity includes a colander and pipe cleaners.  I had him put the pipe cleaners in different holes of the colander.  He did great and sort of liked this activity especially after he decided he could make a hat with it.  We've done this several days this week.  I wish I would have thought of this a year ago because I think very young children would enjoy this as well.

The next activity is beading.  I had him sort the beads by color and place them on the pipe cleaners.  These are just the regular Melissa and Doug beads.I've been very impressed with how well he is able to bead things.  This is something we just started doing and he seemed to naturally know what to do.

I bought this awesome Turtle when he was almost 2 to take with us to church and work on his fine motor skills.  He still likes playing with it from time to time.  He mastered matching the magnetic bead in the correct color slot when he was about 2.5.  Now he will go back and forth between putting them all in the matching slot and trying to get all the beads in one slot.

This last activity he does on his own.  He's taking a part a small flash light.  He loves taking apart things and trying to put them back together.  This is also a fun fine motor, pre-writing activity. 

Birthday Party Traditions

Blue Rock just turned 3!  These past three years have been truly life-changing and amazing.  I love being a mom and I love my son!  Now that we're back in the States and he's getting a little older, I wanted to start having birthday traditions that will make his birthday really stand out from the other days of the year.  Here is what we did.

I stole this first one from a friend.  The night before I cut out number 3s from construction paper in various "boy" colors.  My husband and I hung them from the ceiling while he was asleep.  When he woke up he saw all these 3s hanging from the ceiling and loved it.

Mom, look at all the 3s!

 

I also blew up a bunch of balloons and put them all over his floor.  He loves balloons and thought this was really cool.

Lots of balloons!  I love them!

Husband and I hung streamers from his bedroom door while he was sleeping.  Blue Rock loved running through the streamers in the morning.  Next year we'll probably make it where he has to tear through them.  I just wasn't sure if he'd like them or not and I didn't want him waking up and possibly being scared or thinking he was trapped in his room.

Tons of fun! He ran through the streamers a bunch before starting to tear them down.

I bought a helium machine ($20 at Walmart).  In the morning I blew up a few dozen balloons and let them fly to the ceiling throughout our house, including his room. We took a lot of them to his party.

Will I fly away?

More balloons

We also hung a Happy Birthday banner, I made pancakes for breakfast, and we threw him a nice party at Chuck E. Cheese's.  Overall he had a wonderful birthday and enjoyed all the extra special touches we did.

A special treat, breakfast with Daddy

Happy birthday to my amazing, handsome, and smart son!  I thank God everyday for you.  Dad and I are truly blessed to have you in our family.  We love you!

Birthday party

Mannheim Christmas Market

Christmas in Germany is really nice.  There are a lot of Christmas markets.  After the visit to the specialist in Mannheim the other day, we went to our first Christmas Market this year.  Mannheim is a large city and their Christmas market takes place downtown next to the water tower.  It was a really nice Christmas market with lots of vendors, rides for the children, and food to eat.  We're going to try and go to several Christmas markets this year and I'll post more pictures as the Christmas season continues.

Beautiful water tower in Mannheim

Daddy showing Blue Rock his hat

Lots of people and lots of vendors

One of the toy vendors

Lots of stands to look at

Look at that sad face!

Riding the ICE train ride

Candy vendor

This time our family rode the carousel together

Mannheim Christmas Market

Fun Preschool Game

I love playing games with kids.  Before we left to visit Texas last September I ordered a few items from Barnes and Noble to be delivered to my parents' house.  One of the games was a Color and Shapes Bingo.  I finally opened it.  When I bought it a few months ago, Blue Rock was too young for it.  He still is kind of young for it but we gave it a go.  He loved it!  Blue Rock really loves shapes and lately has wanted to name every shape we see.  To play you spin the spinner which stops on a shape or color.  Then you place bingo chips over the shape or color pictures that match.  We didn't play the whole way through but he enjoyed playing it "right" for about 5 minutes.  Then he wanted to play with the Bingo chips and spin the spinner and just name the pictures, shapes, and colors of the Bingo cards.  I give this game an A+ and think we'll have more fun with it as he gets older.

Bozo's Grand Prize Game

Did you ever watch "The Bozo Show" on TV as a child? Occasionally, I saw it and the most memorable thing from the show was the "Grand Prize Game."  Six buckets were lined up and the lucky kids on the show got a chance to toss the balls in the buckets for a chance to win the grand prize!  What kid didn't want to play that game?

Blue Rock brought me his bag of plastic balls today and said, "I want to play with these."  I bought him a ball pit for his first birthday party and lots of balls to put in it.  Sadly, we don't get the ball pit out that often or the balls.  When he asked today to play with them, I thought, why not?!  In fact, we could play a game like Bozo's grand prize game. Except, we would be using only 4 buckets, rather than 6, and they are different sizes.  Blue Rock had a blast!  He even created some new ways to play, such as sitting down and standing directly over the bucket, as well as tossing the balls from a distance.

After playing this a while, I found that you can actually buy the "original" game from Amazon.  It's called: Rocket USA The Original Bozo Buckets Grand Prize Game. But for $30, I think we'll pass and just play with what we already have. =)