Lily was trying really hard to follow along with the teacher.
Posing!
Lil wanted to make a road to drive her cars on. I went a little overboard. Welcome to Lilyville.
Tortilla old man pacman.
Butterfly Princess has many things to do.
Butterfly Princess needs a break.
When we lived in Montana (two years ago, I can’t believe it’s been that long) Waldo and I made pizza often. I used Alton Brown’s sauce (so friggin good) and dough (also very good) recipes. While I love both recipes the dough has to sit in the fridge overnight and always seems to make a big mess. I made it a few times while we were in California, but since we’ve moved to Idaho I haven’t bothered. As an aside, that’s a lot of moving in two years, seesh. Anyway my Mother in Law Rita has been on a pizza making kick lately so now I’ve caught the bug myself. She has to make gluten free dough and I like as much gluten in mine as possible so we can’t share. Since Alton’s recipe for dough takes to long to be usable I am now on hunt for the best quick pizza dough.
A few weeks ago I ran across a blog post about freezing foods (a whole different post I’m working on) and decided to give the pizza crust a try. I made the sauce one day, separated it and froze it. The next day I made the pizza dough, separated it and froze it all.
I didn’t manage to get any pictures of the sauce after I blended the heck out of it. Alton says this sauce can be used for pasta, meatballs, pizza and just about anything else you can think to put a tomato sauce on. I’ve never used it for anything other than pizza.
When I separated the dough I made two big balls and two small ones so that Lil could have her own pizzas. This was one of the best decisions I’ve made in a while. Lil doesn’t like anything remotely spicy and is very suspicious of red sauce so she doesn’t eat much pizza lately and if you know me even a little you will know that is just unimaginable to me. So anyway with Lil’s little pizza dough I made her a white pizza with a little ranch as a base sauce and then she cheesed it up. She loves helping me cook so the fact that she got to make her own pizza was the.best.thing.ever!
It was totally an accident that her dough was shaped like a heart, but we all thought it was great.
She also insisted on helping with our pizza, which was fine with Waldo and I.
*The cup of peas isn’t for the pizza. Lil loves to eat frozen peas so she was snacking on them while we prepped dinner.
The pizza was delicious, but it was mostly because of the sauce. I’m pretty sure you could dip cardboard in that sauce and it would be the best thing you’ve eaten in a year. You will notice in the bottom corner a small cup of sauce to dip the crust in. Yum. The dough itself we both felt was a little too bland. We are still searching for the best dough (besides Alton’s) so if you have any recipes for me to try let me know.
Last week my friend Amy mentioned Smitten Kitchen’s goldfish cracker recipe on Facebook and since I had all of the ingredients on hand I decided Lil and I would make them the next day. The next morning after I cleaned up from breakfast I gathered all of the stuff I needed, which thankfully wasn’t much. You need a food processor, a little cheese, some flour, salt and onion powder, easy peasy. We buy our cheese from Costco and because of the size we grate it right away and freeze it in usable portions so that made these crackers a snap to make.
My little chef was a big help. She poured everything into the food processor and probably ate more cheese than she put in the bowl. She tried really hard to roll some of the dough with her really cool alligator rolling pin, but just couldn’t get it to work.
Finally I rolled some out for her and gave her a knife (a really real knife! I know!) for her to cut some crackers herself. When Waldo walked away he whispered to me ‘do you know she has a real knife?’ I laughed and said that I did know and I was watching her. She’s never going to learn how to use a knife if we don’t let her. He rolled his eyes and walked away. And she did do fine and besides those knifes are almost too dull to cut a red pepper so I wasn’t too worried.
I didn’t have a small fish shaped cookie cutter or any other small cutters so I just used a knife and cut square-ish shapes.
I think they turned out pretty well. So did Lily.
When we went shopping this weekend I picked up a set of 6 small cookie cutters and made more crackers this morning. They turned out really cute.
Lily and I painted a large canvas for Waldo for Father’s day. Painting her name was her idea and I loved it.
I don’t remember how this started, but it ended with Lily snuggling with her balance bike.
I saw a a picture on Pinterest of a poofball soccer game for kids, but didn’t really take the time to read it. But it seemed like a good idea so the other day I took a small piece of posterboard, drew a line on each end and a circle in the middle and Lily and I spend a bunch of time blowing the poofball across the board with straws. She thought this was the best fun.
The weather has been beautiful so we took advantage of it and had lunch al fresco.
My Mother-in-Law’s heart porch hanging thingy. It shines little bits of light all over the porch and inside the house. At first it was a little annoying seeing the little lights move around out of the corner of my eye, but now I really like it.
Yesterday I needed to clean the bathroom and decided that Lily could help. She loved the idea.
I clean the bathroom with vinegar and water so I felt she was fine helping. She did the sink while I did the bathtub.
A few months ago I bought a sand and water table for Lily and for the first time yesterday I put sand in it. I knew it would make a mess, but figured it wouldn’t be too bad. Boy was I wrong. There was mud all over the back porch within minutes of pouring the sand in the dry side. Lil didn’t’ even play with the water side except to put the water in the sand. she played for a long time and had a lot of fun, but it will be a very long time before we do this again.
Lily is a dancing queen. She dances all the time with that three year old sense that it’s the perfect thing to do and you look great doing it. I DON’T dance. I want to help Lil keep that ability to dance when the mood strikes so I’ve been keeping my eyes out for opportunities. When we first moved to Idaho, Lily and I took a Mommy and me dance class. Lily LOVED it, I tolerated it for her sake. I was going to sign us up again for another round last month, but they don’t run the program during the summer. I was disappointed, but decided to keep my eyes out for dance class groupons and was very excited when I found one a few weeks ago. Lily had her first class Tuesday before last. I didn’t find out till the day before when the class was so I didn’t have time to get her a outfit or shoes, but I figured for the first class that wouldn’t matter too much.
The class is a introduction to ballet, tap and I think jazz. The first class was mostly a gaggle of 3-5 year old girls half listening to the poor teacher and half doing their own thing. When they did listen, it was really cute. When they were dancing it was ballet. Lily was a little (maybe a lot) overwhelmed at first. They don’t want the parents in the room, but there was no way I could leave. I noticed a few of the other parents sitting in a little alcove to the side and more of them kept sneaking up the stairs to steal a look. So at least I wasn’t alone.
The first 20 minutes or so Lily was stuck to me like extra strong super glue, but then she started to get really into what the other girls were doing. I kept encouraging her to go and join, she kept trying to drag me along, but I assured her that I’d be right along the wall and not going anywhere. She very tentatively joined the line of girls, but kept looking back to make sure I was there.
They learned first and second position. Lily thought it was very cool. I don’t know a thing about ballet or dance in general so I got a bunch of books from the library and they helped us when Lily was obsessively practicing when we got home.
At one point all of the girls were suppose to get in a circle with the teacher and hold hands for some dancing. Lily preferred to dance by herself.
The teacher gave them wands at one point that I think was suppose to be part of some organized dance, but we never got to see it. I told Lil to stand on the line and not move till the teach told her to and boy oh boy did she listen. It was really cute to look back at the pictures. I hadn’t noticed how well she stayed on the line till we were driving home.
There were probably 20 more pictures of her standing like that. Once the girls all got their wands and the music started all hell broke loose. After a some attempts at wrangling I was very impressed to see the teach just went with the energy and flow of the girls and let them so some free dancing. They loved it and I think it helped to get some of their wiggles out.
The teacher got all of the girls lined up at one end of the room to do some kind of ballet kick walk (it has a name, but I don’t know it) and all of the girls did very well. Including mine, which was awesome. Lil held the teacher’s hand all the way down the line, she didn’t really do any kicks, but she participated so YAY.
They also had to jump over some bungee cords (another ballet thing I don’t know about) and again Lily sort of did it. Again participation YAY.
At one point all of the girls (with the exception of Lily and a few others) put on their tap shoes and they were told to shuffle their foot. Lily did great, in fact the teacher complimented her and that sent Lil running back to me. Lily doesn’t do well with compliments. I’m trying to figure that one out and how to help her so if you have any suggestions I’d appreciate it.
The tap shoes didn’t last very long because the girls kept slipping. I will be very interested to see how this plays out in future classes.
At the end the girls all gathered to do some bunny dance. Lil thought that was a blast, but she did it in her own way. I would send her to the group and she’d dance there for a second and then they’d do this hopping thing and she’d hop back to me with the biggest smile. Rinse, repeat again and again.
For the entire week after this first class Lily would call me Jenny (the teacher’s name) and have me give her dance instructions. She is loving it and I’m loving watching her dance and strut her stuff.
*sorry for the funny phone pictures. I’m just too lazy to bring our point and shoot with me when I know that I’m going to have my phone already and I’m still getting used to my wonderful new phone. The camera and how to take the pictures is very different from my old phone.
