Bird watching and watching the weather.

Wednesday morning started out great, with a special breakfast for my little kiddos: birds nests! I had found a recipe for this in a magazine, but of course I couldn't find it that morning. So I kinda made it up and it turned out well! Here's what I did: Used a big cookie cutter to make slices of bread into circles, then flattened them out. I buttered them, then sprinkled on some cinnamon, and pressed them each into a greased muffin pan... making the shapes of nests! I baked 'em for about 8 minutes at 375 degrees until slightly hard. Finally I filled the nests with scrambled eggs and voila!


The rest of Wednesday kinda got crazy with tornadoes, meat lockers, locked keys in my car, and staying at my folks... so we just scrapped our other plans and called it a day! Hey - it happens.

Thursday was another story! We crammed in a lot and my housework kinda took a back seat, but as always it was worth it! Right off the bat we hit Leaping Lizards in Olathe with a friend (no theme... just fun!). We did two craft projects today to make up for yesterday, but I was a little bummed that Molly didn't get into either one as much as I'd hoped.

First, we made a birds nest with yarn and homemade glue. For this, I modified a project I found in Family Fun magazine in February and it's still drying so we'll see how it turns out! I heated 1/4 cup flour and 1/2 cup water until it was kinda glue like (the recipe actually called for cornstarch but you do what you can) then let it cool. We took 12" strips of yarn and dipped them in the glue; ran our fingers over it to get off the access; then dropped the yarn into a round cookie cutter to make a nest shape. Keep the whole thing on a sheet of parchment paper (or wax paper, like I had). I thought Molly would really dig this craft, but she didn't want to get messy (sooo uncharacteristic!) so I did the dirty work. (why is this picture sideways?)


Later, I pulled out a surprise project I'd found at Michael's earlier this week for $1.99: one of those melty beads craft kits to make a blue bird. You know what I mean? I know she did really well with a small peg board in preschool, so I thought this would be perfect. It was actually listed for ages 6+ but she did really well. Unfortunately, they failed to give instructions for the bird so we just had to look at the picture. I did the bulk of the body for her, though she did all of the wings herself. It was also really fun to work with patterns using the beads so it was definitely a teachable moment. She felt really cool doing a "big kid" project, too!


She brought that little bird on our outing today too: bird watching! I took the kids to Sar Ko Par park in Lenexa for a wagon ride and we spotted a few birds. Molly enjoyed using her new pink binoculars (and showing them to kids we met at the playground). We didn't see many varieties, but that didn't stop Molly from chasing them down. I was disappointed that we didn't see the crane (or whatever it is) that usually resides next to the lake but at least we got a chance to slay the dragon by the playground and watch one family catch several fish. Did I mention the weather was BEAUTIFUL!!??