More Olympic crafts!

We completed our "Gearing up for the Olympics" week by doing 2 more crafts.

First we made our own Olympic medals (I got the idea here). We made some salt dough, which is just 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of salt, and about 3/4 cup water.  This made more dough than we needed for our medals so I bet you could cut the recipe in half and still have plenty of dough.

Our salt dough. It has a texture very similar to play dough.

We used magnetic number to imprint our medals

There are a couple of ways to let your salt dough dry. You can let it air dry for a couple of days or you can speed up the process by baking it in a low temp oven (about 200) for a couple of hours. Since it is a million degrees in Texas right now, I just sat our medals outside for a day and that dried them right up.

Benjamin playing with some of the leftover dough.

Benjamin painting the #2 medal silver.

Caleb painting #3

Our finished medals.

Next we made our version of the Olympic torch.  I took a wrapping paper tube and cut it in half.  I creased one end of the tube to look like a triangle because that is how the London Olympic torch is shaped.  The 3 sides of the triangle represent the 3 times the Olympics have been held in London.

I sprayed the tubes with a quick drying primer to make it easier to paint.

The boys painting the torches.

We added some red tissue paper and a blinking tea light to the top of the torch. I punched some holes on the torch to mimic the circles in the London Olympics torch. The actual torch has 8000 circles...I chose not to punch 8000 holes in our torch. You can learn more about the Olympic torch by clicking here.

Benjamin likes to keep his torch on his chair at the table.

We are officially ready for the 2012 Olympics!

Bowling

I took the boys bowling this morning (thanks to Kids Bowl Free)  I just had to share a few pictures:

Benjamin was so excited about bowling.

He insisted on wearing Bubba's baseball hat, even though it was way too big.

Watching the ball head toward the pins.

Benjamin was fascinated by the ball return. He watched in expectation every single time and said "Whoa!" every time the ball appeared.

After 2 games of bowling, we headed to the arcade.

Benjamin really wanted to ride the motorcycle but he was too short. He was barely hanging on. Hysterical. 

Caleb handled the motorcycle a bit better.

(You can see Benjamin driving a car in the background)

A fun morning with my boys.

Gearing up for the Olympics

I love the Olympics. Love, LOVE, Love the Olympics! Since I love the Olympics so much, I am expecting my kids to love it too.  I have really been building it up and trying to get the boys excited about watching it because I am certain they will really enjoy it.  Since the Opening Ceremony is this Friday, all of our activities this week will have something to do with the Olympics.

Yesterday we made Olympic flags.  Super quick and easy.  You just need paint (blue, black, red, green, yellow) and toilet paper rolls or cups.  I had planned to use some toilet paper rolls I had been saving but Benjamin crushed them the other day when he was playing "Monster Truck Bowling". :)

Our finished flags.

I saw these amazing toys on another blog a couple of weeks ago and knew that I had to have them. I've never seen toys like this before. I found these Playmobil toys on Amazon and the boys LOVED them.  I bought the pommel horse, the rings, uneven bars, balance beam, and a swimmer.

I love this picture of Benjamin. He is really concentrating.

Caleb had this gymnast doing all kinds of crazy tricks.

Caleb and Benjamin played with these toys for hours this afternoon. Hours. I don't think I have ever seen Caleb so focused and imaginative. It was so fun to watch.

Of course we had to make some podiums for the winners.

DIY Moon Sand (best activity yet)

Okay, so today's activity was a big hit with the boys.  I found this the other day and had to try it.  You basically need 2 ingredients, 3 if you want to add a little sparkle:

Flour and baby oil.  That's it.

In the end I decided not to do the glitter.

5 cups of flour with 1 cup of baby oil.

We had a pretty big container so I doubled the recipe (10 cups flour with 2 cups baby oil).

You just mix it all up and the end result is a very soft but mouldable sand-like stuff.

I love this picture.  It looks like Benjamin is given Caleb an elbow to the eye!

It holds shape just like wet sand would.

The boys LOVED this. They played for a long time  It had a great texture and it made the entire house smell like a newborn baby!

It made a huge mess. Or rather, the boys made a huge mess. Luckily it was an easy-to-clean huge mess. Swept right up but I definitely wouldn't do this on carpet. I think I might lay a sheet down next time and see if that cuts down on the mess.

Benjamin was covered head to toe in the stuff.  He had so much fun.

When the boys were done I just covered the container with a lid so it will be ready for next time. I have a feeling this will be an activity that the boys ask to do again.

Semi-clinic visit

Caleb had a very quick semi-clinic visit on Friday. I hesitate to even call it a clinic visit because we only saw the doctor and PT. In and out in less than an hour. I had called at the beginning of the summer to schedule Caleb for a full clinic visit but they didn't have anything available until September. Since Caleb had TC surgery in April they wanted to squeeze him in for a short visit to look him over. I was glad to go and get their opinion on how he was doing and I was also looking forward to another opinion on his swollen right knee.

While we waited, Caleb read from his critter flashcards that he got at Target for $1. 

Benjamin chose to eat snacks while we waited.

Overall it was a good quick visit.  The doc and PT were actually pretty pleased with Caleb's leg movement and strength. They took a look at his knee as well. The doctor thinks it is most likely a small fracture that just didn't show up on the original x-ray but could possible be visible on the x-ray we are having done next week. We follow-up with ortho next Friday so we'll see if anything shows up on that x-ray.  In the meantime, we still can't let Caleb crawl around or put any real pressure on those knees.  

Since we were done with the appointment so early, I took the boys across the street to the park.

Benjamin loves the train.

Love that face.

Love that face too.

What we've been up to

Last Friday we had a playdate with Nathan and Bryce.  It's always fun getting our boys together.  I'm so thankful that Caleb has several SB buddies in our area that are close in age.  It's hard to believe that our boys starting having these playdates when they were about 18-24 months old!  Man time flies.

Bryce was playing on his Kindle and the other boys had to come and take a look.

One night last week Caleb made a random comment on how he thought it would be fun to eat breakfast in bed one day. I made a mental note and decided to make "Breakfast in Bed" our activity for yesterday. Caleb was so excited. It's the little things I guess.

Benjamin gets up quite a bit earlier than Caleb so he had already eaten breakfast. That didn't stop him from hopping into bed with bubba to enjoy another bowl of cereal. These boys can put away food. I'm a little worried about the amount of food they will be eating as teenagers.

I can't remember where I saw this next activity but I'm certain it wasn't my idea so I had to have seen it somewhere. Basically I took a bunch of small toys and random things from around the house and froze them in a plastic container filled with water.

I put everything in there from dice, rubberband, domino, firefighter, magnetic letters, pompoms, hair clip, etc..

I gave the boys some tools and a list of all the items in the ice.

The boys spent the next 30 minutes doing everything they could think of to get the items out of the ice.

Caleb marked off the items as he and Benjamin got them out of the ice.

When they finally got all the items free from the block of ice, Caleb said (while smiling): "That was fun." Who knew that freezing 2 dozen toys into a block of ice would be so entertaining?