First Day of Preschool

Camille had her first day of preschool yesterday. She wore her locket so she could remember me, and she did great. Preschool is actually shorter and less days than Little Explorers over the summer, so it really wasn't that big of a deal. I definitely didn't cry. Neither did Camille.

Owen slept in the car while we sat in the Walmart parking lot pretty much the whole time Camille was at preschool. 

She came home with this. I hope she isn't too set on being a ballerina. She hasn't even had a ballet lesson because "creative movement" costs like $180 plus the $50 costume plus shoes, pictures, etc. 

Olympic Fare: Rio Edition

In keeping with my tradition, we've been enjoying some foods from this year's Olympics host country.

Since the opening ceremonies seem to always be on a Friday night, we seem to always have Olympic ring pizza. It was kind of a flop this year. I did read that pizza in Brazil tends to be thin crust, floppy, with plain tomato sauce (no seasonings), and my pizza ended up that way somewhat by accident. I tried to stuff the crust with cheese; it was semi-successful. Also, I forgot to get olives, so we didn't have any black things for that ring.

Camille has been really into making personal pizzas, so she made hers into a kitty since the dough kind of stretched that way.

The first Brazilian meal we had was feijao, beans and rice. I just used my normal black beans and rice recipe since it seemed similar to the recipes I saw. I also noticed that a lot of the recipes included meat in the beans, so I threw in an extra brat we had in the fridge and some leftover pulled pork from a branch picnic. I think I would have liked it better without the meat, and honestly, most Brazilians probably eat their beans without the meat.

Next was pao de queijo, Brazilian cheese bread. I love these things at Tucanos, so I was excited to make it. YUM! They were so stinking good. I highly recommend, even though it's a bit of a splurge with the tapioca flour and the cheese. They didn't really make balls, more like pancakes. Next time I'll add even more tapioca flour so they can be round. Brian and I ate most of them, which means between us we had 1/2 c oil, almost 3 cups of tapioca flour, and 1-1 1/2 cups of cheese. Brian was nostalgic because they reminded him of Paraguayan chipa.

I made some fried bananas to go with the cheese breads. Brian reminded me that the fried bananas at Tucanos are breaded, but I just fried mine how I always had them on my mission. I'm a big fan of fried bananas. On my mission we had them usually cut in half lengthwise, but the Brazilian "recipes" I saw said to cut them in half widthwise, so I did that.

Yum. Best Olympic foods to date. Also, the cheese breads and the fried bananas probably made it the highest calorie foods to date, but it was worth it. I am still planning on making the roast beef, tomato and cheese sandwich because it sounds easy. We'll see about the seafood soup.

Summer is Winding Down

Due to the university beginning early, school here starts in two weeks. Camille is going to miss the beginning of preschool because we planned our trip to Utah for that week without realizing that preschool starts then too. So, our fun summer activities are winding down. 

Free lunch ended, so I'm back to making lunches for my kiddos. Owen never ate much of the school lunches, but at least I wasn't making food he then didn't eat. Along with the end of school lunch was the end of "shopping" for the kids, where they got to choose a grocery bag of food to take home on the weekends. The program actually does continue during the school year, but they put together the bags for the kids that actually don't have food at home and somehow distribute them discreetly. It was nice for them to choose some food and snacks all by themselves and it slightly lowered our food bill.

The kids often got to play on the playground at the school where free lunch was, and they both learned how to climb the rock wall. I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant for a two year old...

In an effort to be a fun mom (I got jealous of how fun Camille's pretend mom was), I made some peanut butter play dough. It was also a good activity for getting Owen some extra calories.

There are one or two Adventure Club adventures left this summer, I haven't gone to all of them, but it has been nice to do some things I wouldn't go out of my way to do. My favorite so far has been the fish hatchery. The kids got to feed the fish in the raceway (it was pretty full of fish, but hard to see in the picture), and touch some tortoises and crabs. There is also a free little aquarium there.

Camille has been really deep in her imaginative play, and it has recently included Wild Kratt-style animal play. When we were bears we got to hibernate in the "den." I was the best hibernator.