Gingerbread Boy....or whatever kind of cookie you prefer:)

Ok, so I am back in action and trying to get caught up with things. Another Christmas sort of activity for the boys was in order a few weeks ago so we pulled out the cookie pan that Grandma Kimbrough bought for us and got to baking! About a year ago my mom found the book "Gingerbread Baby" and bought a copy for us and my brother and his wife. Along with this she got really creative and bought us each a cookie/cake pan so that after we read the book with our kids (well mine since my brother and sister-in-law are still young and traveling the world:)) we could make our own gingerbread baby, boy, man...whatever you want to call it.

Since my kids are not big gingerbread cookie lovers, I decided just to make a sugar cookie dough. When the kids got home they helped me press the cookie into the pan and then we popped it in the oven. While it was baking and cooling off they ate their dinner and then were ready to frost the guy and decorate. I had some white canned frosting left in the fridge so we pulled that out and got the frosting done quickly. I had bought the candies (which let me tell you are not the easiest thing to find in Turkey) before picking up the kids and they had a good time decorating. The boys each ate a foot off of our poor guy and Ilkan decided he wanted to take the rest to school the next day to share with his friends. This worked for me since there was no way I needed to help finish off that huge guy!! The kids and teachers at school loved the pan and cookie so it made a nice thing to share!

While at my brother and sister-in-law's house for Christmas we made a chocolate chip cookie man to nibble on for dessert on Christmas Eve and to leave out for Santa. Hope you all enjoyed your Christmas!

Foam and Glitter Ornaments

Holidays mean decorations, baking, and gift giving...well other stuff too but these 3 are on our list right now. Last week we got our tree up. Let me be clear, I got the tree up and the lights on and I waited to put the ornaments on until the boys got home from school. As I mentioned before, decorating the tree and watching Christmas movies go great!

This week we decided to decorate some ornaments of our own to hang up and to distribute as gifts. (Uncle Matt and Aunt Kathi I know I am ruining the surprise but just pretend!!) I headed out to the store to get some foam sheets and glitter glue. Yesterday was a rainy day and I didn't feel like doing much anyways, so while watching movies and drinking coffee while the boys were at school I was tracing and cutting out ornaments. I probably prepared about 20 ornaments to be decorated which proved to be more than enough. I cut out trees, bells, stars, and circles. (Trust me, the trees are fun to decorate but no fun to cut so just do a few of those and get plenty of stars and circles!!)

When the boys came home from school everything was ready and set on the table. They had a great time using the glitter glue pens to decorate the shapes. Ilkan even wanted to get more creative and drew a few pictures of trees to decorate. He declared that one will be for his Aunt and Uncle and the other we have to leave under the tree and write, "Santa take this with you!" (His words, not mine:)) This activity was so fun that we painted until we ran out of glitter glue. Looks like I will be making another trip to the store to get more so we can decorate more ornaments before the holidays!

"AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!"

To get in the holiday spirit I decided to find a good holiday film for the boys and I to watch on Monday night. Now that Ilkan is playing soccer on the weekends along with other fun activities Monday's are a night of rest in our home. As I was searching through movies on iTunes I came across "Home Alone." My brother and I used to watch it a lot as kids and I figured the boys would like it.

Once we got all settled on the couch with pillows, blankets, and lights out for a real movie theater scenario, we got the movie rolling. It's amazing how much I remembered and I wanted to quote the whole movie! The boys thought the movie was completely hilarious as well. The boys thought all of the screaming scenes (when he puts after shave on, or when he sees the neighbor with the shovel) were funny but when the actual break in started and Kevin had rigged the whole house they couldn't stop laughing. Poor Ilkan was laughing so hard he could hardly breathe and his face was turning red. I was laughing hysterically as well just watching him get such a kick out of it!

Yesterday when I picked up the boys from school Ilkan was running from the school to the car swinging his arms in the air and screaming just like Kevin does when he wakes up the first morning and realizes he is alone and can do whatever he wants! Too funny! If you haven't watched Home Alone in a while you really should!

Peanut Butter Cookies

We LOVE baking in our house! I guess it probably goes back to the way I was raised. Growing up on a farm we always had fresh baked goodies. I learned all of my baking from my mom for sure! We were constantly helping mom out in the kitchen. One of our favorite recipes was from the Bennington Lutheran Church cookbook from ages ago for Ray's Peanut Butter Cookies. Several years ago when I was at my mom's house I had to steal some recipes and this was one I took!

The other day Ilkan got a craving for cookies after watching "Daddy DayCare" for the 5th time in a week. In one of the scenes Eddie Murphy's character answers the door carrying a tray of fresh baked cookies. After this scene Ilkan looked at me and asked what fresh baked cookies we had. So off to work we went baking some peanut butter cookies. I mixed up the dough and the boys did a great job of rolling the dough into balls. They loved getting to press the cookies with a fork to make the pattern you see above in the picture. Have you ever thought about why we press peanut butter cookies this way? Does everyone do that?? We also got a little carried away and decided to add little chocolates to the top of some of them. We ended up with a lot so Ilkan took some to school to share with his friends.

Here's the recipe we used:

1/2 cup butter (softened but not melted)
1/3 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 3/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla

Combine butter, peanut butter and sugars. Beat egg and add to butter and sugar mixture. Sift flour, soda, and salt and add. Add vanilla and form into balls then press with a fork. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes.

"Say What!!!???"

As a mom I don't realize how much I talk to my kids. Well, I realized this week because I lost my voice on Sunday night and it came back on Wednesday. Thank goodness days were not too bad since the kids were at school, but at night it was a terrible stress. I was constantly trying to get the boys to get to the table to eat, keep them from fighting, play, get their pajamas on and do our bedtime routine, go to bed. By the end of the night I wanted to die from the pain in my throat. The boys thought it was pretty strange as well and kept looking at me like, "Say what!!???"

As a mom you also know that you don't have the luxury of being sick when you have little kids, so I was happy to find a few cheap movies on iTunes. There was a sale last week and I bought "Daddy Day Care" for like $4.99 and downloaded it. We've watched it every night this week and it's kept the kids pretty entertained for close to 2 hours each night. This at least put us close to bedtime:)) When we don't watch a movie every night, it has been a special treat for the kids this week!

What other secrets do you use to entertain your kids when your sick??

Turkey Time

Ok, so I know this could be confusing because we live in Turkey and Thanksgiving (aka Turkey Day) is coming up. I was referring to the latter:)) And, for your information we do eat turkey in Turkey, but usually the big bird is stuffed on New Year's Eve and the stuffing is a rice stuffing rather than bread stuffing.

I remember my first Thanksgiving here in Turkey back in 2004. We were working at our school at that time and had some animals in the garden for the kids. Fortunately for me we had a few turkeys and the cooks just killed one and cooked it up for us. Yes, I know, sounds a little mean and it was a little hard to explain to the kids why we only had 2 turkeys rather than 3 on Friday, but after New Year's we had to explain why there were 0 turkeys...shame...LOL!! Anyways, the cooks at school made the turkey and all I had to do was make sides. Some members of Kaan's family came over to enjoy dinner with us and a few even brought me gifts. I had to seriously think about whether or not to tell them that we don't exchange gifts on Thanksgiving, but I did end up doing the right thing...yes, I told them!! Geez, what were you thinking! Gosh, that sounds like a long time ago now.

Back to the matter at hand, with Thanksgiving coming up I decided to get the kids in the mood by creating some turkeys to decorate the house with. When we were in the US this year the boys and I made a trip to Hobby Lobby with Grandma Kimbrough. We must have wandered around the store for a good hour and I found a few neat and small (very important when you are considering luggage) packages of crafts for us to create.

I pulled out the package of foam turkeys so we would be all ready. The boys have loved to play with any form of foam stickers since they were small. These crafts had the adhesive already on them so we just pulled off the covers and started sticking feathers, eyes, and gobblers, as we called them, to the body of the turkey and voila! Atakan made 2 turkeys before getting bored, but Ilkan made 4 or 5 of them. He was so excited with his final product he had to choose the best one to take the school to show his teacher:))

Playing in the Dirt

Ok, so we didn't really play in the dirt as this title eludes, but we did make dirt cakes.

A few years ago I was working full time, teaching online classes, and trying to be the "perfect" mother to a 1 and 3 year old and was having a little bit of a hard time balancing all of the balls I had flying in the air. A friend of mine at work had already raised 4 kids and was my saving grace and ear to cry to each day. She filled me with lots of wisdom during that time. One day she asked me, "Who told the girls from your generation that you can do it all perfectly? Whoever it was was lying to you! It doesn't matter what you choose, that choice is up to you, but you have to choose one thing and do it well and everything else will fall into place." She was so right! I for one chose my boys because it had always been my dream to be a mom. I even dressed up as a "mom" for career day during Homecoming of my senior year. I think I kind of shocked everyone as I (the salutatorian of my class) walked into school wearing a denim dress and had a sling carrying a Cabbage Patch Kid! (If only I could find a picture from that day!)

Anyways, one day when I was particularly frustrated at work my friend suggested I spend some time just having fun with the kids. That's when she told me about dirt cakes and how she used to have so much fun with her kids making them. That weekend we had our first experience creating dirt cakes and now we have to do it several times a year!

Early in the day I took a small package of cookies (Oreos work well, but we don't have them in Turkey so I just took another pack of cookies) and put them in the freezer. After about 4 hours I put the cookies in the food processor and chopped them up into crumbs to make our "dirt". After picking up the kids from school I had them help me mix up a package of instant chocolate pudding. We also had a package of gummy worms ready to go. I gave the kids each a dish and some spoons and let them have at it. We started with cookies "dirt" on the bottom, some pudding "mud", more dirt and some gummy worms mixed in for fun. We even left some worms crawling out of the dirt at the top for an extra gross factor that boys love!

The kids were crazy excited to get to work eating their dirt cake creations so it was a good incentive to finish all of their dinner that I had prepared a little earlier!

Spaghetti Art Followed by Spaghetti Dinner

Hello everyone! Well, we started out tonight with our plan to "Keep My Boys Busy" and it was a theme night. I got this idea from Education.com. Before I picked up the kids from school I prepped by cooking about 1/4 package of spaghetti, then drained and let it dry on paper towels. I also got out some colored construction paper, pens, and glue and glue sticks out ready on the table.

When we got home the fun began. I demonstrated first by drawing a large square and a smaller square inside. Then used the glue and stuck spaghetti to my picture. They thought it was pretty hilarious to be playing with their spaghetti.

The boys started by drawing pictures on their papers, well, Ilkan (my 5 year old) at least. After he drew I used the regular glue to go over his picture so he could start sticking on the spaghetti. Atakan (3 1/2) in the mean time was having some problems so I just gave him the glue stick, less messy:)), and let him have at it. I then started separating the spaghetti since it was getting sticky so the kids could work with it. They each created 2 pictures....Ilkan's snake is posted here for you to get an idea.

While we were creating our masterpieces I was boiling some fresh new spaghetti for our dinner. By the time we finished working it was all ready to eat and so were the kids. We then started having fun seeing who could slurp their spaghetti the best. Maybe not the best lesson in table manners but it was fun none the less!

In all, this activity, dinner included, probably took us 45 minutes. The good part was that the TV was off and we all had fun!

If you try this for yourself, let us know how it went for you and if you did anything different that worked:))

Getting Started...A Brief Introduction

"No Atakan, that's my toy. Give it back!" (Sounds of hitting, fighting, screaming.) "Mom....mom.....MOMMMY!"

Does this sound like a familiar night to you?

Don't get me wrong, I love my kids to death, it's just that I have two very active boys and a husband that works late pretty much every night. If I don't have a plan for the night once the kids get home from school then it turns into a night of fighting between all of us until bed time rolls around and now that winter is setting in it seems that the night never ends!!

I'm blessed to be a stay at home mom. My boys are 3 1/2 and 5 and both go to preschool full day. Let me fill you in on why...I am American and met my Turkish husband in college at Northwest Missouri State University. We lived in the US until just last year so my kids are fluent in English and that's what we speak at home, but now we live in Turkey and soon they will be going to Kindergarten and elementary school where they have to be fluent in Turkish. Preschool is where they have learned Turkish and they love playing with their friends! During the day I teach online classes for an American university and do all of the other stay at home mom duties like cooking, cleaning, and laundry.

But, back to mine and probably every other mom's dilemma....how do I keep my boys (or girls) busy???

My new plan is to have one activity for my kids each night and want to share with you all because if there is one thing I've learned about parenting it's that we have to share stories, tips, and advice to survive:)) Hope you enjoy and join us for the ride!