Good ol' summer time

I'm sitting out on the balcony right now, watching my little gal play outside with neighbor friends while my little guy is inside taking a nap. The weather is beautiful, I have my feet in our little wading pool and I am just remembering why I love summer time so much. Maybe in a few weeks when it reaches 100, I'll have a harder time reminding myself. But, today is great.

These past few days I've taken my 'stay at home mom' role back while Pat has been off at his new job. I haven't really fully experienced life as a mom of 2 until now. Don't get me wrong, I have had evenings of putting them both to bed, mornings of feeding them both breakfast and experienced the chaos of grocery shopping with 2 little helpers, but I've had a LOT of help from Pat in between all of that. So, these past few days have been a little different, but I'm loving it and trying to enjoy it as much as I can, since I know it's not going to last long.

We've been filling our dad-less days with swimming:

Going for walks:

And making this awesome kool aid play-doh:

I have tried making a few different playdohs with Zoe, but this one was by far the best. It smells ssoooo delicious, made some really bright colors (without having to use food coloring=no colored hands), and I didn't have to make it over the stove, so Zoe was able to help with the whole process. And it's the only one I've ever made that's not grainy from the salt and super sticky.

This is the original recipe:

2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup salt
2 (4g) packages Kool-Aid powder
2 cups boiling water
3 tablespoons cooking oil

But because I didn't want a lot of one color, I cut the recipe down into fourths and just used 4 different colors of kool aid powder, but only about half of each packet. I probably could have used 4 whole packets, but didn't.

So we started out by mixing the flour, salt and kool aid powder in 4 different bowls, then I had some water boiling in the kettle. Next I measured out 2 cups of water and the oil, then divided that between the 4 bowls and we mixed:

After this, Landon woke up so we took a short break while I fed him. This might be why it turned out so well, since the dough had a few minutes to dry up a little before we started handling it. I did have to add a little extra flour to each one as we kneaded to make it not the least bit sticky.

It all smelled sooo good, that Zoe just couldn't resist taking a little taste:

And that would be her spitting it out in disgust. Haha. It was pretty comical. And then... we played! This picture is for Reid--playdoh ninja bread men!

Lastly, congrats to my little brother, Cory! I wish we could be there to celebrate with him as he graduates from high school tonight.