The Green Monster

Okay, let me say up front that what I'm about to rave about sounded crazy to me a few weeks ago too.  Spinach is one of my favorite vegetables-- but in salad and omelets and stuffed in pasta shells, not blended up into drinks!  However, we've become such fans and daily consumers of this Green Monster smoothie that I wanted to share it with you too!

For our wedding anniversaries, Dave and I have always followed the traditional gift giving guidelines.  Yes, we've had to get creative some years, but this was the first year that we looked at the prescribed "lace" and decided it was time to ditch the guidelines.  They mostly turn to jewelry and kind of stop after 15 years anyway.  The new plan is to use anniversary gifts to buy something new for the house that we can enjoy together.  This year we were needing a new blender and we absolutely love the one we, after tons of research and waiting for sales, picked out!

So...back to the green smoothie.  Plus a frozen banana, these (above) are the ingredients.  And yup, this is the first time the inside of my fridge has ever seen almond milk!  Don't be offended dairy farming friends, we only use it for these smoothies and continue to drink plenty of the real stuff! Almond farming friends, you're welcome for the new business! :)

To make 2 good-sized smoothies, in a blender liquefy the following (or cut in half for just one):

1 frozen banana (I take the peel off and freeze my bananas in pieces in a zip-lock freezer bag-- great way to save super ripe bananas that are otherwise headed to the garbage.)

1 Tbs. peanut butter

1/2 cup vanilla yogurt.  Dave likes the protein-packed Greek yogurt, but I prefer the sweeter stuff.

1 cup vanilla almond (or regular) milk

6-8 ice cubes

As much fresh spinach as you can stuff into the rest of the space (about 4 cups)

Here is what is amazing about this smoothie:

1.  If it's your breakfast, it fills you up until lunch time

2.  It's loaded with the gazillion great health benefits of spinach

3.  YOU CAN'T TASTE THE SPINACH AT ALL!! Mostly it tastes like vanilla, banana and peanut butter.  If my eyes were closed, I might even think I was drinking a peanut butter ice cream milkshake!

So, are you brave enough to try it?  I'll be straight up and admit that our kids aren't yet.  They freak when we even get near them with the Green Monster, but Dave and I have become believers!

Delia Turns 5!

For the past 5 years, our lives have been filled with snuggles, laughter, joy, unexpectedness and pride, thanks to the addition of Delia Kristen to our family on Friday the 13th, 2007.  We found a few fun ways to celebrate this special milestone.

 

As always, the birthday girl woke up to find a decorated living room and present pile waiting for her.  She's been counting down to her birthday since Ella's in May, so the excitement was running high!

Thanks, Auntie Kris and family, for the July doggie purse!  And thanks, Cole, for the pirate eye patch inside! :)

And thanks, Auntie Heather!  YOU NAILED IT with this Muppet-like puppet.  Though Ella's dying to get her hands on it, Delia hasn't put it down all day!

She actually hates not knowing the details about something and doesn't tolerate surprises very well (wonder where she gets that from?), so I don't know why we decided to torture Delia with so many surprises for her 5th birthday.  After last night's concert, we had one more...a trip to a place Dave and I haven't stepped in for over 10 years and one the girls didn't even  know existed...Krispy Kreme Doughnuts!  I had read that today the doughnut shop was celebrating their 75th birthday too and we just couldn't pass up a dozen doughnuts for $.75 or the opportunity to treat Delia to one of her most favorite foods of all time.

They were completely into the doughnut making process and especially loved the "frosting waterfall".   

And, of course, the best part of Krispy Kreme is biting into those warm doughnuts that you just watched being made.  Soooo delicious, but soooo rich.  After polishing off a few, Dave and I said we could go another 10 years before indulging again!

It was a small thing, but it was just perfect for Delia, who starts almost every morning by hopping in my bed and asking if we can get doughnuts for breakfast.  And how much more perfect to come home from our doughnut shop outing to find this LOL Arnie the Doughnut book in the mail from Anna!  Thank you!

  

After lunch our good friends, Miss Amy, Jonathan, Grace and Benjamin, stopped over to give Delia her birthday present.  It was a cute new outfit which she promptly changed into.  We had a nice visit and sent them home with some doughnuts!

The rest of the day has just been spent playing with the new toys.  Delia picked grilled turkey and corn on the cob for her birthday dinner and requested a koala bear cake. 

A little thought and planning went into arranging the details of her birthday to include some of her favorite things (like Jana, doughnuts and koala bears), but I think all we surprised and delighted Delia with this year made for a memorable 5th birthday!

A Jana-Sized Surprise!

I've received much parenting advice from my dear friend Teri, but perhaps one of her greatest tips was to introduce my kids to Jana Alayra.  Jana is an amazingly gifted Christian singer and songwriter.  She performs her songs all over the place for crowds of young kids who just love praising their little hearts out with her.  Since they were small, the girls have been watching her DVDs-- standing in front of the TV singing and performing the cute song motions with Jana.  If your little kids are also constantly singing or are also prone to claiming that spot center stage to do song motions, we definitely recommend connecting them to the ministry of Jana Alayra!  We've been so blessed by her!

A bit of research led me to a free concert she was doing in a town not too far away.  It was in conjunction with a mega-church's VBS program ("Sky"-- the same one we did a few weeks ago) and it was scheduled for tonight, the night before Delia's birthday.  Dave and I started planning a secret surprise that the girls wouldn't learn about until tonight as they walked into the church and saw Jana live for the first time.  They kept trying to guess all day what the surprise was going to be and they nearly died when they realized what it was.  "Jana?  The REAL Jana?" Delia kept asking in disbelief.

The concert was SO COOL!  The girls raced into her "mosh pit" and got busy praising, dancing and doing the familiar motions.  We knew almost every song and the girls were beaming the whole time.

I thought Delia would just explode with excitement when she was one of the "4 year olds only" called up on stage to sing "Jump Into the Light" (a long-time favorite song of Delia's) with Jana!  It was totally perfect that she was able to do this on her last night of being 4!

Jana is kind of famous for hanging out after concerts to get to know her young fans and will stay as long as there's a line.  We were able to get in it quickly and if the time of praise and worship with her wasn't enough of a thrill for one night, the opportunity to hug Jana and talk to her pushed these girls right over the top!

First she signed our CD.  Then when Delia told Jana that she was there for a birthday surprise and that she'd be turning 5 tomorrow, Jana said, "Hold on, I'll be right back!" and ran to her merchandise table to grab a DVD as a gift for Delia!  As we watch this one over and over, I know we'll remember how it came personally from my girls' favorite super star and we'll relive a super special night that exceeded all our expectations and gave our whole family another little taste of heaven!

Happiness Is...

Sitting in the fort of your new swingset with the American Girl Doll catalog, dreaming about what you'll pick out when you visit the store with Grandma in a few weeks.

It's Magic!

Once again, my husband's nerdy love for magic strikes again!  Dave has introduced the girls to the show "Breaking the Magician's Code: Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed" on the Bio channel.  They quickly became obsessed and the masked magician now claims a piece of our DVR space.  Seeing all new magic tricks and how they are actually done has inspired the girls' play every day too.  Here is just one of the tricks they created.  Be prepared to be amazed...

Don't worry.  In case I couldn't figure out how this impressive trick was done, Ella did a "behind-the-scenes" repeat of it so I could know the secret too!

4th of July Snapshots

Though it's just us girls this 4th, we found no shortage of fun ways to celebrate America's birthday today. From festive treats and toes to a whole day spent swimming, cake decorating, watermelon gobbling, sparkler lighting and firework viewing with our favorite friends...it's been another happy holiday!

Interview with Delia

To celebrate Delia's birthday month, the following are her answers to my interview questions and her 5 year old portraits:

Age: (almost) 5

Favorite colors: purple and blue 

Favorite food: turkey with cheese roll-up

Favorite book: Chicken Cheeks

Favorite movie: Aladdin

Favorite song: The Butterfly Song

Favorite thing to play: in the bathtub with the Ariel mermaids

Favorite thing about school: playing outside on the playground

When I grow up I want to be: a zookeeper who takes care of the koala bears

My perfect day would be: go to Disneyland to have a treat and go on rides

My best friends are: Ella and Brittany

I hope when I'm 5...: "I'll get a present!"

Why We're a Little Zombie-Like

The motto this week has been, "Just keep moving!  If we stop to sit, we'll fall asleep!"  Having just come home from Mount Hermon sleep deprived and laundry-laden, we jumped right into our church's week of VBS.  Once again, Dave and I led rotations of students through Bible adventures.  We had the kids join the Roman Centurion's army, watch Lazarus get raised from the dead, follow in Jesus' sad footsteps from the Garden of Gethsemane to the cross, get surprised by the bright light of the angel at the empty tomb and go fishing on the Sea of Galilee.  We love how experiential the Bible lessons are and see lots of excitement from the students engaging in them, but the work of gathering props, rewriting lessons that just don't work, setting/cleaning up a classroom that's been transformed into something like the Sea of Galilee and memorizing lines is just plain exhausting.  This year we realized that only about a third of the kids we get at VBS are members of our church, so the pressure to perfectly present these important Gospel stories to kids who've maybe never heard them was especially strong. (Yay for the power of the Holy Spirit, right?)  We're more than ready to have a quiet week at home and plan to do lots of breathing and not much else.

Our VBS theme of "Sky: Anything is Possible with God" had an aviation-themed dress up day.  Here are the flying things Ella and Delia decided to dress up as: a superhero and a fairy (note the pixie dust pouch necklace Ella came up with).  It's the only VBS picture I took all week.

Besides catching up from Mount Hermon and being involved with VBS, we still had all the regular stuff goin' on.  I hosted Book Group at my house, we had 2 parties and all our regular lessons, meetings and obligations.  This one birthday party for Delia's preschool friends was really great.  She flew down a giant inflatable water slide about 500 times.  And it was the first party we've ever been to where we were told to bring a gender-neutral gift costing about $10.  The gifts were all swapped around in an adorable grab bag game and each child actually went home with a present!  The mom told me she way preferred this to her birthday kids getting a load of presents they didn't need.  I'm filing away this great idea!

And then there's this. When a friend recently advertised that they were ready to find their swing set a new home, we couldn't let the opportunity pass! We knew how much the girls would love it and it was a playground the perfect size for us. Our friends delivered it in big pieces this week and we've been working hard each afternoon to level ground, build a retaining wall for it, sink its posts in concrete and assemble it with fresh bolts. We still need to stain it and get some gravel for our new playground area, but the girls are absolutely thrilled. They were decorating it with VBS kites before we even had it all the way up and have spent every available hour outside swinging and sliding!  The new-to-us swing set has added a lot of work to an already busy week, but it's totally worth it to get a gently used and mostly built set brought right to our house for next to nothing.

And now I'm gonna put on some jammies and stay in them until next Friday! :)

BRAVE at Discovery Grove!

There is a whole section of Mount Hermon that is dedicated to thrill seekers.  The camp offers things like the Redwood Canopy Tour and other various ropes courses for adventurers of different ages.  Last year they built this "mini" ropes course for those more around Ella's age.  It's still about 20 feet off the ground and traversing through its 7 obstacles still requires a safety harness and two caribeaner clip-in.  Ella and I tried it last year and made it through just the first 2 obstacles before the tears and utter freak-out occurred and we had to turn around and go back.  Because of last year's experience, I was quick to tell her "NO" this year when she asked to go again.  It was the reminder from Jeff and Amy, who were also at Family Camp this year and who I've called "parenting experts" in the past, that every kid on the course is scared and making it all the way across is not a requirement, the goal is to just try.  Their excellent advice pushed me to let Ella give it another try this year, our goal being to simply make it further than last year.

Ella breezed across the first two obstacles, tackled the log balance beam with smiles...and then got super scared on the tightrope with dangling logs to climb over.  I saw the fear in her eyes and the tremble in her body.  But though she whimpered about being super scared, she never cried or asked to turn around.  With encouragement from me behind her and all our friends on the ground, Ella powered through.

The next obstacle was definitely the hardest-- swinging logs and dangling ropes.  Even I was feeling a little shaky at this point.  But, once again, Ella took it one log swing at a time and made it across, scared but strong.

The cargo net was easy enough for her to stop and give me backwards smile.  After the adrenaline of the swinging logs, an easy obstacle was needed!

The grand finale to the Discovery Grove Ropes Course is a zip line down to the ground.  This was Ella's first zip line and she said it was the best part of the course and totally worth completing the thing for.

Conquering this ropes course with Ella was a highlight of my week.  I've never seen such strength or bravery from my girl.  She convinced me she could do it, and then proved me wrong when I was afraid she couldn't.  I've written before about how awesome it is when our kids exceed our expectations.  This week I learned that we parents have to give them opportunity to actually do that!

Train and Boardwalk Day

Another Mount Hermon tradition is to spend Wednesday's whole camp train ride down the mountain to the Santa Cruz Beach and Boardwalk with our good buddies Beth, Allie, Nathan and their parents Phil and Teri.  It is when we get to spend longer stretches of time with these dear friends, seeing how much our kids have always clicked and loved each other, that we miss them the most!

The gentle rocking of the hour long train ride through the forest was as peaceful as ever.  This is pretty much the view for most of it, until you get into the bright sun, sand and surf of our destination.

The train goes through a pretty long tunnel at one point.  I don't know how long it is in terms of a mile, but we know it lasts about one whole song.  We know because in the past the girls have been terrified to just sit in total darkness for several minutes, so I'd hug and play "I Saw the Light" on my phone for them.  Being older and having some good friends and flashlights made the tunnel one of the most fun parts of the ride this time around, though!

Once at the Boardwalk, we've always opted for a shorter day and taken the early train back up to camp.  This gives us just enough time to check out a few rides and spend our food vouchers on a treat.

For her two rides, Ella chose the helicopters and this more wild, spinny ride with Beth.  Watching their screaming faces and unsuccessful attempts to keep their hands in the air was a highlight of the day!

Delia stuck to the kiddie rides, choosing the Shamu ride and the boats.  There was some drama when Ella was quick to spend her ride tickets and felt sad that she couldn't do the rides Delia picked too.  But, making thoughtful choices and being okay with your decisions is just part of this day, hard as that may be.

Can't leave the Boardwalk without enjoying a drippy ice cream cone!  And these were on Mount Hermon, thanks to their new Boardwalk food voucher program.  A quiet ride back up the mountain and some much-needed naps rounded out another great day at Family Camp!