Test Tube Results

The answer to the test tubes question is definitely not a pregnancy test...unless maybe they are fish!  Once a month Alvar checks the levels (ammonia, ph, nitrate and nitrite) of both his and Caleb's fish tanks with his "do-it-yourself" test kit. 

 I just took the picture because I thought the test tubes looked kinda cool in the sink :)

 Do you realize how hard it is to take a decent picture of a fish?!?  They are NOT into staying in one place for anymore then a 1/2 a second or so.  As soon as the camera came into view they all swam away in terror....if only they knew how harmless I really am!

A good portion of my picture taking today was just trying to figure out how to get a non-blurry picture of our these fish - I thought it was hard to take pictures of kids!!  The fish definitely take the cake!

Test Tube Duties

Monthly Saturday routines.

Any ideas what we are doing?

6 out of 6

6 out of 6 members of our family LOVE baba ghanouj!!

(Sara discovered that today)

Blanket

Esther received a "tie your own blanket" kit for Christmas this year and she fnished it off today!

Well done Esther!

Water-Painting

We hit the dollarstore today and the kids were able to pick out anything they wanted (except candy...way too much of that around here lately!!).  I gently helped point Sara in the direction of picking an aqua-doodle (dollarstore version of course) - she thinks it's great!  Except when she gets bored and faces become more fun to water-paint on (Esther's face was dripping by the time Sara was done with her)!



Chocolate Molds

The kids enjoyed having their cousin Jared over for a couple days this week.  Even though they can keep themselves quite busy, it's always nice to have something special to do.  I managed to pick up a candy mold kit quite cheap after Christmas, and they didn't even seem to mind that they were making presents, Christmas trees and ornaments after Christmas (chocolate is chocolate, right??)!

Squeezing the chocolate into the molds 

 Takes a lot of talent to get the chocolate in the mold "just-so"

 One tray finished

 And the next, 3 trays in total had to be filled

 Here are the finished products

Very cute and tasted very good!!

Sara's New Two Best Friends

 Mandy

Vla (dutch pudding in a carton!)

Cleaning

Both Caleb and Sara love to help.  Today we took down the Christmas tree and they were literally fighting with each other on who would use the little vacuum!  I seriously hope this trend continues into teenage-hood (not the fighting, only the cleaning!)!

Try, Try Again?

Just under a year ago I posted my goal HERE for our blog for 2011.  It's now the beginning of a new year and I'm not sure how ambitious I'm going to be yet.  I really did enjoy posting more often (especially looking back now through the year), making sure I took more pictures of the everyday stuff  - but it did require quite a bit more dedication.  I'm happy to say that I posted 333 of the 365 days...so basically missing a couple days per month.  Not bad for my first year!  No promises yet...but considering I've already posted twice for the first day of the year, maybe I'll try it again!

Happy 2012 Everyone!

Wishing everyone God's many blessings through 2012!