Baby #4, Homemade yogurt and The First Day of Kindergarten

We recently found out we are expecting baby #4!!  We are thrilled and just so excited to find out what this baby is going to be.  Anjali and Jaiden both insist that this baby is a boy.  They say Rayna is already our baby girl so this one is "our boy".  Too cute!  I'm due on February 13th so we just might be having a Valentine's baby :)

I've been wanting to make homemade yogurt for quite a while now and I finally got up the nerve to try!  So glad I did because it was soooo simple to make and very good.  It's more healthy AND it is way more cost effective to make homemade than to purchase store bought.  So this is our first batch...

We all love yogurt and like to use it in smoothies too so I will probably be making this quite often now!  It's so good with fresh fruit mixed in!!  I made it last night and already used it to make some muffins for breakfast.

We are homeschooling and today was Anjali's first day of Kindergarten!!!  She was thrilled to be starting and we had a wonderful first day of school.  Jaiden was just as excited as Anjali and was very involved in her lessons.  Here is a pic we took on Sunday and I just had to post it since it turned out so cute...

 So this is her actual first day of school pic...

 Always being silly :)

 Here she is working on her math...

Anjali got to choose our menu for today and she chose banana chocolate chip muffins for breakfast, tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch and spaghetti with meatballs for dinner.  She loves to help me make the meatballs ;)  We are very excited to be homeschooling our children and thrilled about what this year holds for our family!!

Anjali's 5th Birthday

Anjali has always been fascinated with horses and her love for them just keeps growing and growing!  So for her 5th birthday Daniel planned with some amazing friends for us to camp out on their ranch!!  They have several different animals and our kids had so much fun.  Anjali is definitely a natural with animals.  They would follow her around the pasture and she just loved it! 

Making friends with the donkeys...

They loved her!!  And she adored them...

Feeding the animals their dinner...

After riding the train at a park on our trip...

Back in February we made a trip to Austin, Tx.  Here's a few pics of the kids enjoying the parks :

 

Valentine's Day

On Valentine's Day we made chocolate chip cookies and the kids had fun decorating them!

Valentine's Advent - Day #4

Day #4 we made marshmallow pops!  Similar to the cake pops I made for Anjali's 4th b'day but waaayyy easier.  Still love the cake pops but these were fun for a quick treat!  We stuck the marshmallows on lollipop sticks...

Then we dipped them in melted chocolate and decorated them with sprinkles. 

Easy, fun and yummy!!!



Valentine's Advent - Day #3

We are teaching our kids about saving/giving/spending their money.  They have certain chores they are required to do simply because they are part of our family and some chores they can choose to do to earn a small amount of money.  So on day three we took them to the bank and put the money from their piggy banks that they had saved into a coin counter.  They loved this!  They got to put all of their coins in the counter and take the receipt to the teller to get the "big" money.  Then we took them to the store and got the toy they had been saving up for.  They loved paying at the register with their own money!  Anjali has had her eye on a horse for several months and she finally got it :)

Jaiden played with a Geo Trax train at someone's house recently and loved it so he has been saving his money for one for several months.  He was thrilled to finally have one!! 

Valentine's Advent - Day #2

Day #2 we made stickers!  We printed out our heart stickers on card stock...

Painted the back of the sheets with jello (2 Tbs boiling water mixed with 1 Tbs jello - let cool down a bit and then paint)...

Jaiden always has fun making a mess ;)

Rayna stayed busy painting with water.  Anjali and Jaiden said she painted a horse!

We let the paint dry for a couple hours and then cut out the hearts...

Now you can lick 'em and stick 'em!  They had a blast sticking them to different papers that they colored!

Valentine's Advent - Day #1

This year for Valentine's I decided to do an advent for the kids.  They decorated 5 envelopes and we hung them...one for each day of 5 days leading up to Valentine's day.  Each envelope contains a love note for each child and a note explaining a fun thing we are going to do that day.

Day #1 was to make homemade Valentine's cards for daddy and Mica & Poppy.  We printed an alligator design and they colored them...



...and cut out all the pieces.

We glued them together and filled them with chocolate candy!

Cowboy Roundup

Last night we went to a Cowboy Roundup!  It was at Storybook Farms and it was so much fun for the kids!  When we arrived they had some cowboy "grub" for us to eat...grilled chicken, potatoes and salad. 

We walked around and looked at all the animals and then they had a puppet show for the kids.  That was Jaiden's favorite part!

 They got to paint a horse shoe.

 Outside they had a bonfire and a hayride...the hayride was Anjali's favorite part of the night!