a very good day and a recipe....

What a wonderful day we all had today.

I had my first bike ride of the season with kids in tow in the bike trailer, and it was GOOD. So good! K stayed home and built with Lego as he had a bout of the stomach flu yesterday and wasn't feeling quite back to his energetic self this morning.

H and S always run and eagerly hop in the trailer at the mere mention of a ride, they love whisking up and down the streets of our town and looking at everything (cats, dogs, people, interesting houses, trees, flowers...) we pass by. They also like it when I go fast!

Then I spent half of the day unpacking from storage, dusting off and setting up the deck furniture and sun canopy that enable us to extend our living space out onto the deck for the next several months. It really does make our small house feel much bigger when the door is always open and we eat most of our meals (and make most of our messes) outside! Ahhh, I love it!

While I worked on that, the boys built and played with Lego Bionicles (and periodically asked me to take pictures).

a Bionicle fort

These Bionicles were my oldest son A's (who collected them more than ten years ago now and brought many back from when we lived in New Zealand). He handed them down to his little brothers a couple of years ago and they've loved them since. Sometimes they will play with them and almost nothing else for days on end.

so dramatic looking, isn't it?

It was so fun watching them use the outdoor landscape as their battle terrain today. These are the same boys who, on another given day, would spend hours building fairy houses out of nature objects, or pretending to rescue and nurse baby animals, so for me it all balances out ;-)

these ones have rock powers

Even though the play is "supposed" to be all about the "battle", I'd say easily 95% of the time spent with this toy is about the building, snapping together different configurations of body parts, bartering with each other for pieces (nonviolent communication!), testing out new color schemes, naming the new characters, introducing them to the other ones, setting them up in cool poses and asking me to take pictures! I don't actually recall much battling going on come to think of it! It's definitely a creative outlet for them and a whole lot of fun.

scouting and surveying

setting up for more shots

After many, many hours of Bionicle play, running around the yard, bouncing on a new (to us) rebounder I found at the recycling exchange (for free) and much gardening, putting in our sunflower transplants and checking out their very healthy root systems,

mammoth sunflower

planting more carrots, lettuces, peas...

our first round of peas are looking good

we had our first meal on the deck and strawberry lassis for dessert to celebrate a perfect day.

cheers to our first sunny and warm evening on the deck!

Here's generally how we enjoy our lassis, which we love to make together:

1. In a blender or with a hand blender in a large container, add a handful of fresh (or we use our locally picked frozen from last summer) strawberries, mango, peach... whatever fruit you like.
2. Add to that about a cup or two of ice cubes (we have a tray that makes very little ice cubes which are much easier on the blender) and about a cup and a half of plain yogurt. I love Saugeen Country organic whole yogurt, which makes a creamy, full-flavored and super-nutritious lassi.
3. Sweeten to taste with honey, maple syrup or sugar. Add a little to start and adjust if needed. This is not supposed to be very sweet, more tangy still from the yogurt.
4. If you like, add a touch (1/4 tsp. or so) of powdered cardamom for a more authentic and delicious flavor.

Pulse and then blend until smooth. And just try not to get addicted!


Sometimes lassis are made without fruit and with a little salt for a savory experience but we're all about the fruit over here.

a sweet surprise

We received a surprise package from the postman this week. My 70-year-old Aunt, who lives in Manitoba and hasn't seen me since I was little, sent a collection of treasures that suit our home learning family so well it was just magic to see it all. I couldn't have put together a more interesting and fitting collection of items for a family that I've never met!

thank you from all of us, Aunt Irene!

There were quilting books for me, a book on how to make tabletop fountains, plus a submersible water pump (!), a book on rock painting, two on wild birds and bird-feeding, a pair of binoculars which the kids have all been wanting (we may need to pick up another pair now because they have been extremely popular since getting them), a compass/multipurpose tool, paints & crayons and a book on container gardening (which I'm always wanting to learn more about, living with no soil on our property....). Perfect!

fitting together the tubing

Kale set to figuring out how the pump works right away, using a large bowl of water on the counter-top. He perused through the fountain book and now he's letting ideas percolate in his imagination about how he'd like to design his own for out on the deck (who doesn't love the musical and soothing sound of trickling water nearby?). We've collected a great selection of large rocks recently from an abandoned lot which I'm sure will be incorporated into the plan.

Sam and Hillary don't go anywhere now without the binoculars slung around one of their necks. It's been a big lesson in taking turns. Yes, I think binoculars will be next on our list of purchases...

building building building....

More Citiblocs creativity.

"Welcome to BC Ferries". Kale's design of a BC Ferry along side one of the bridges he built. He was very inspired to try designing his own bridges after reading through "Bridges! Amazing structures to Design, Build and Test".

A random look-out tower for Lego Minifigs.

Sam's house, complete with a roof-top garden and sun.

Something akin to a wigwam. This is reminding us of the wigwam we saw a few months ago on our visit to the Royal British Columbia Museum.

Citiblocs!

We received our order of Citiblocs from BC Playthings this week. It was so fun to watch the kids crack open the boxes and dump 800 wooden blocks all over the floor and start creating! They tend to build things that they've been reading about or watching on the computer, like boats and ships, houses and bridges. Sometimes we just build random structures to see how high we can get them before toppling over. The little book that came with the sets is helpful to the extent that it displays some photos of finished Citibloc projects, but there are no assembly instructions like with Lego or Playmobil, so it's pretty much completely up to us to come up with our own designs.

Our first attempts at buildings. Pretty darn good I think!

Sam started out attempting the most challenging method of stacking them - up on their ends. This led to a lot of frustration and disappointment until he stepped back for a few minutes, gathered himself, and realized there's more than one way to stack a block. Once he started laying them on their sides, the possibilities were endless!

Sam then decided to try his hand at copying some of the simpler designs from the Citiblocs pamphlet. The airplanes were basic and quick. He ended up building a very large fleet and then the boys used more blocks as missiles and used the planes as targets. War games. Ugh. But they don't see it that way.

Airport tower. Extremely precarious. We counted to 3 and blew it over together in one breath.

A house Sam and I built based on one of the photos in the pamphlet. It was Sam's idea to incorporate Playmobil foliage and trees into the surrounding yard, and to build a fence around the lot.