2008 June

The Weekend

June 6, 2008 By bigbinder 2 Comments

In the spirit of lazy lions, it’s been a very low-key week at my house. We made the lion puppets, and they were named “Trick” and “Skort” (?). We made the cookies, but they were eaten so quickly I could not even get the camera out fast enough. The cubs and I stuck close to the den, which is very uncharacteristic of us especially in the summer. I forget to slow down sometimes, but I remembered this week, and it was incredibly fun for all of us.

We went to the Zoo(Trick and Skort, too) yesterday, but the line for the Lion Exhibit was very, very long. The wait estimate was about an hour. No one my family waits in lines very well, so we decided to come back another day.

This morning we made it to Millenium Park beach for a few hours. I must say; the difference between taking a 1 and 3 year old to the beach and a taking a 2 and 4 year old to the beach is HUGE! A year has made it way easier.

This weekend, we will be around town at a few things, then headed down to Kalamazoo to visit Grandpa Binder, and Great Grandma Binder. I picked up some tickets to the Drag Races so we’ll swing by the racetrack in Martin on the way down. Why did I pick up tickets to a drag race, you ask? That is a very good question. It’s because they were free, and I thought that A.P. and Mr. Binder could go together. I am not a race fan of any sort, especially the noisy sort. Had I known I would actually have to go I would have just left those free tickets right there on the counter at Pizza Hut.

Hopefully the weekend has more in store for you than drag races (unless that is your thing, then by all means, drag away). If you are looking for something to do, head over to Big Binder’s calendar, freshly updated. Have a good weekend!

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Quirks? Me?

June 4, 2008 By bigbinder 4 Comments

Amy at Gift of Green has tagged me for a “Quirks” meme. More specifically, unspectacular quirks. At first, I couldn’t think of any. Then the first one came to me and I quickly realized that there is a fine line between having a few unspectacular quirks, and being a complete freak. Let’s see which side you think I am on after reading this meme.

My husband and I are related. I mean, duh, we’re married, but we’re also, um… related. Of course we didn’t know this until I became obsessed with finding my lineage that connected me with Maybelle Carter. I did a lot of genealogical research, and once I bumped into my husband’s great, great, great grandmother, I stopped. Ew!
I can’t keep keys in my possession. They just up and fly away from me. The only way – and this is not an exaggeration – that I know where they are in my house is by hanging them on my moose key-holder. Otherwise, it’s hopeless.
Despite being an anthropology major with a deep love of writing papers for literature classes (I’m not joking), my favorite undergrad class was Symbolic Logic. I aced it. More than aced it, I got the highest score. Ever. It’s true. It’s difficult to express how much of a surprise this was for me, and it was even more difficult to learn that there are no real opportunities to utilize Symbolic Logic outside of SL classes.
I secretly like doing laundry.
It drives me crazy to go to bed with dirty feet.
My last quirk (that I’m going to tell you about) is a very recent one. My husband is the least calendar oriented, most planning averse person I know. This drives me insane, and in turn, I drive him insane. I recently bought a chalkboard for the kitchen, and I put our weekly plans on it. And – this is the best part – I write what we are having for dinner on the bottom.

Well, that ought to do it. Time for someone else to share some unspectacular quirks; I hereby tag 3 In Under3, Bowling Alley Brunch, The Diaper Diaries, eastowners (either of you!), and Look, Mom, Look (that last one ought to be good!)

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Another Summer Book Club

June 3, 2008 By bigbinder 7 Comments

Schuler Books & Musickicks off its Summer Reading Club, “Have Book, Will Travel” this Saturday, June 7. Here’s how it works: From June 7 to August 15th, you pick up a Summer Reading Club form at a Schuler Books store. If your child is old enough to read and between Kindergarten and 8th Grade, they can earn up to three $5.00 Schuler gift certificates. For each 20 age-appropriate book they read, they will complete one form that can be exchanged for a $5.00 gift certificate. There is ‘extra credit’ for long books over 200 pages – that counts as 2 books.

If your child is unable to read, you can also participate in the “Read To Me Club”. Rather than a $5.00 gift certificate, the child can choose a book from a box stashed behind the counter in the children’s section. I don’t know how many you have to read to your child for this program.

There are recommended reading lists available at the stores, but the books can be from home, or the library as well. This is a great program! I picked up a flyer and talked with the folks in the children’s section at the 28th Street store but couldn’t find very much detail on the website. It’s the same program at all locations (Alpine Ave and Downtown locations, and also Lansing and Okemos as well). Between this and the library programs, we’ll all be very well-read by the end of the summer

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How 'bout them Lions?

June 2, 2008 By bigbinder 3 Comments

School’s out, and I am very, very excited. I love doing mini-lessons with my kids and since the lion exhibit is opening at the Zoo I want to use that as a theme. I have theme issues. I love them.

This Thursday, John Ball Park Zoo members have the opportunity to take a sneak peek at the lion exhibit. I have put together some different ways to have fun learning about lions. Even if you don’t live in Grand Rapids, or might be going to the exhibit later this summer (maybe to the Mane Event or one of the free/reduced admission days? Check the calendar for more details), if there is one thing I can do, it is exploit a theme to death. I love the website First School, because it already pulls together a lot of information and suggestions.

FIRST, the craft. It is a lion paper bag puppet. I’m going to have the kids make them, then as we do our other ‘lion’ stuff, have them hanging around with us all week. The link to the directions are here. There are printable templates, so it doesn’t take a lot of materials to create (other than the actual paper bag). You just have them color the template, stick it on the bag, and you’re done.

NEXT, and also from a First School link, is the food. What do lions eat? A National Geographic fact sheet (lots of good stuff on there) says that,

A typical meal for an adult male lion is 15 pounds of meat, though lions can consume as much as 60 pounds at a sitting.

I’m going to show my kids what a pound of meat looks like, just to give them a frame of reference. We won’t eat 15 pounds of meat for the sake of education. We will eat junk for the sake of education though. We’re going to make sugar cookies, and put two chocolate chips in for eyes. Then, when the cookies are cooled, I’m going to let the kids use that frosting in a can with the plastic tips to decorate their manes, and change the tip to make their mouths. And of course, black licorice for the whiskers. I can’t wait to see how these turn out!

THEN for the video portion of my lesson plan. National Geographic has a short, on-line video of a lion roaring. It’s a little boring, but honestly, the other options were YouTube videos of baby hippos being torn to shreds. Maybe we’ll cover that next summer but for now, we’ll stick to roaring.

Also on video will be the movie “The Lion King” because we already own it, and we haven’t watched it in a while. Naturally, we will be shoving crazily-frosted cookies in our mouths and have paper bags with lion faces on them seated beside us, so I think it will be a very educational experience.

Also, I like the show “Between the Lions” (on at 3:00PM on WGVU) so we’ll try and catch that a few times too.

And of course, the BOOKS! The paper lions will accompany us to the library, and I’m going to do something differently this time. Rather than go on-line and request books before hand like usual, I’m going to have the kids ask the librarians for books about lions. It occurred to me that they don’t know that the librarians do anything other than read at story time, because we usually use the check-out machines.

I shoud be able to squeeze these all in between now and Thursday. Any other lion suggestions out there? Leave a comment!

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Menu Plan Monday

June 1, 2008 By bigbinder 6 Comments

I am moving up the food pyramid again, this time up to milk, yogurt and cheese. I have already been dabbling in soaking my grains before cooking them. The oatmeal is awesome. The bread, not so awesome. More like trying to cook with wet sand. I think this is an easy category for my family, since we could eat cheese all day every day but we’ll see what happens. Maybe I’ll try and make yogurt again, although that was very unsuccessful last time.

MONDAY

Turkey Lentil Chili from Down Home Dieting. She is nice enough to include Weight Watchers points in her recipe which is fantastic because not only have I fallen off the wagon, it is starting to run over me at this point. We’ll also have a corn on the cob. We also have some apples and cherries that are going to get mushy soon, so I’ll use them up with this Apple Cherry Crisp.

TUESDAY

Crock Pot Chicken Teryakifrom A Year of Crock-Potting. Yes, a whole year! This is one inspired crock-potter. I will served it with Basic Brown Rice. You’ll notice it calls for soaking the rice in kefir. Everything in my house is soaked in kefir these days. I’m a woman obsessed. What is kefir? Good luck with that one. It’s a yogurt-y, buttermilk-ish substance that is good for your gut.

WEDNESDAY

Corn chowder from last week (it made a ton so I froze it) and Carrot Orzo from My Family Table, along with a mixed greens salad. I bought some “Zesty Sprout Seeds” that I started soaking on Saturday, so hopefully these will be sprouted for the salad by today.

THURSDAY

Dirty Rice from Living on Love, with the very last of the green beans in my freezer! When is bean season again? I need some more! I have some pine nuts, so I will toast them and toss them in with the beans.

FRIDAY

Lentil Casserole from Frugal Upstate with with Mediterranean Salad with Hummus Dressingfrom Kalyn’s Kitchen (but I originally found it via Mom in Mental Motion).

I’m also going to try these Honey Oat Cookies from Belinda Moore this week – I like the sound of that! I like the sound of anything that includes honey and is a cookie that can pass as healthy by cloaking itself in oats. I don’t know what spelt flour is, or how to convert it from metric, but I will find a way…

For more Menu Plan Monday, head over to Laura’s Blog.