Making a shark tooth fossil

This is a fun, easy, kid-friendly activity we found in one of Oliver's books. You can make a megalodon tooth "fossil" using a simple flour-salt-water dough!

You'll need: 

1/2 cup flour

1/4 cup salt

2 tsp cooking oil

3 1/2 tsp water

Measure out your ingredients and combine them. Since the other two kiddos were napping, I was able to take the time to teach Oliver the fine art of properly measuring flour. He took his job very seriously. :-) 

Stir all of your ingredients together until the dough forms a ball. Then mold it into a triangle with a rounded top, kind of like an ice cream cone. 

Using your fingers, press down along the top and sides of the triangle to give it more of a real tooth shape. Then press a fork along the edges to give them a serrated effect.  

Finally, "bake" it in the microwave for 60 seconds at a time until it's dry and hard to the touch. (You can also let it air dry for a couple of days, or bake it in the oven, but we were impatient. :-)

Voila! A megalodon tooth fossil!

Our summer (so far) in pictures

We've been having a great summer so far! I'm definitely enjoying the more relaxed days and not rushing from one thing to the next all day.  And I'm absolutely enjoying not having to wake Theodore up from his naps every day to pick people up from school!

Buttercup has started taking a new dance class, which she LOVES. She's the youngest in her class (as opposed to the other class, where she was one of the oldest) and she's learning a lot from the older girls. The girls are working on a cute tap routine for their summer recital, and the steps are definitely a lot more intricate than in her previous dance class -- but she's doing very well!




Buttercup loves for me to turn on the Swan Lake CD, and then she'll dance and dance in the living room. Sometimes she'll drag Oliver into it, too. She'll chase him around the house begging him to be her prince until he gives in. What a sweet big brother. :-)

Theodore also likes to dance, but mostly he likes to dress up. :-)


Another exciting thing that has happened this summer is that Oliver got his own library card! We went to the library last week (it's terrible how long it had been since I took the kids to the library, because Theodore + libraries = TROUBLE) and he was so excited to get his card.

Neatly signing his name:


Holding up his own library card! The librarian said he could check out 15 books at a time, and he ran off right away and immediately came back with 10 books all about snakes and dinosaurs. :-) 


In other Oliver news, his gymnastics coach asked him last week to join the level 4 boys' team! What's funny is that, after 6 months of appearing to be tired of gymnastics, I finally pinned him down and he decided that this was going to be his last month of gymnastics. So I canceled his lessons, and then 6 days later his coach asked him to join the team. Oliver said "YES!!" Ha ha ha ha ha. So now he's going to have gymnastics 4 hours a week instead of 1! 

Here are some other random summer pictures, enjoy!

Snowcone mustache!

Playing quietly (and mostly unsupervised) with Play Doh while I fixed lunches for the water park!

One of our many visits to Bull Creek:

Going to the "far away" children's museum:

Dr. Buttercup!

How can it be summer if there aren't any sweaty kids climbing trees? :-)

Running on the trail:

Riding the train downtown to the children's museum!

Jumping off the diving board:

And part of the reason for us having a great summer is that I've been bringing the kids to the Y childwatch a few times each week so I can get a good run in. Thankfully, they don't really seem to mind, and everyone is much happier when Mommy gets some exercise! Whoo hoo! :-)

Our garden!

We have a cute little garden now! Granddaddy gave us some plants and seeds, and Dennis (and Oliver!) built some raised beds for us to plant them in. 

It was a super hot, sunny day while they were working, so I set up the water table to help my big girl and baby boy cool off. :-)

Almost finished!

Taking a swing break from working so hard at the water table. :-)

A few days later, they filled in the beds and finished up the planting.

So nice!!! The empty-looking one in front is where Oliver planted his own squash and corn seeds. :-)

So far, we're been able to keep everything alive. Probably because we've been remembering to water, ha ha. Look at the cute baby watermelon!!

 And baby tomatoes! Yay for gardens!

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to my sweet hubby! This year I printed some "All About My Dad" pages that I found online and had Oliver and Buttercup fill them out. The results are adorable and hilarious!

Oliver's answers:
My dad's name is Dennis.
He is 33 years old and 6 and 3 in tall.
He has black hair and hazel eyes.
My dad likes to wear polo shirts and his favorite color is blue.
My dad likes to go to the Lego store and his car is a race car.
My dad's favorite sport is swimming and his favorite tv show is creepy ones.
He likes to cook eggs.
His favorite food is spaghetti.
His favorite drink is Sprite and his favorite dessert is cake.
My dad is the best at swimming.
My dad tries really hard to swim good. (Ha ha ha!!)
And he is so special to me because he loves me.

Buttercup's answers:
My dad's name is Daddy.
He is 10 years old and super tall. :-)
He has black hair and blue eyes.
My dad likes to wear clothes and his favorite color is orange. 
My dad likes to go to places, like Safari Champ (HA HA HA!) and his car is a putt-putt.
My dad's favorite sport is running and his favorite tv show is a grown up show.
He likes to cook hot dogs and weenies.
His favorite food is ice cream.
His favorite drink is lemonade and his favorite dessert is cake.
My dad is the best at being a daddy.
My dad tries really hard to help us get down from super high things. (HA HA HA HA HA HA!) and he is so special to me because he's my daddy and because I love him and because he likes eating popcorn. 

I love these!!! This is definitely going to become a new tradition. :-)