Reading Juice Bottle Labels

Jenna and Emily like trying to read the labels of juice bottles at mealtimes. They will often point to the label and ask things like, "which word is Juice, mum?" or "is Orange the word that starts with O?"

Yesterday, Jenna very confidently started a conversation with Emily that went like this:

Jenna: Hey Emily, do you know which word on the bottle is "Lemonade?"

Emily: Which one?

Jenna: I'll spell it for you!

Emily: OK!

Jenna: It's N-A-T-U-R-A-L...... Lemonade! See?

Emily graciously offered no rebuttal. It was left to me to gently break the truth to Jenna.

Macarons

Been wanting to make these for a very long time, and today, I finally did.

They were easier than I'd heard, and I found how to here. The egg whites have to be aged at least 24 hours, and since I never plan ahead that far in advance for anything, it's taken me this long to finally set aside some time to do it.

Foolishly, it was only when I'd sandwiched the last pair of macarons with ganache (fancy name for 'chocolate chips in cream') that I realized how good they would be with hazelnut. So I dug out my faithful nutella jar, pulled one pair apart and added a dab of that.

Mmmmmmmmmmm.


Next time - cocoa in the meringue mix, and nutella in the middle.

Visitor

A fat green caterpillar came to visit yesterday. He/She/It was, as far as larvae go, quite beautiful - bright green, tan face, silver dots and fine red hair/spikes - none of the bright-contrast black/yellow/orange stripes that my nightmares are made of. And huge - the size of an adult's index finger. The kids were entranced.

Look at me holding my shorts up as if ready to flee at any moment - or convinced that the thing would crawl up my leg and into my clothes or something.
Dave was kind enough not to take closer-ups. This is why I married him.
He (caterpillar, not Dave) is now loose in our backyard somewhere.

Update: The girls have named the caterpillar Greenybig. We haven't seen him since.

Goodbye Strollers

For the last five years, we and our strollers have been inseparable.

No longer.

We might just be putting our strollers away for good.
This is our newest Child Transportation Vehicle -

- red, shiny, heavy, emitting a weird chemical odor that
produces instant headaches, but already
much loved by the children.




Our summer is going well - the days are just packed!

Breakfast

Sometimes in the mornings we build walls around ourselves.

Jennaisms

Jenna, after dinner tonight at a restaurant: "My tummy hurts! I ate too much! I ate too much nutritious food, and..and....and too much not nutritious food. I ate too much meal!" (lots of groans)

Then, after a few seconds, "Can I have another dessert at home?"


Jenna and Emily have coined a new prefix: "start".

It began when they were riding their bicycles/tricycles/scooters and, when hampered by inertia going uphill, would ask for a start-push.

The use of this prefix extended later to other more interesting scenarios:

Example: "Thanks for the banana, Mum. Can you give me a start-peel?"
and "The zipper is stuck! I need a start-zip!"