Weekly Wrap up 9/30/16 The week family came to visit

My Dad and Mom drove up our way on their way to my Father's 50th High school reunion.  We had a great visit and I already miss them and they just left yesterday!  I so wished we lived closer to them but alas that is not going to happen anytime soon with my husband's job.  The kids are at the age when I can actually leave them at the house and (they will get most of their work done) go touring around with my parents.

I took my parents to a quaint little town not too far away called Kimmswick and we enjoyed shopping and eating lunch at the famous Blue Owl Restaurant.  My Mothered tried their famous Levee high apple pie!  She was very pleased when my husband told her theirs was good but her apple pie was still hands down the best to him:) 

My Mother and I got started on making our English Christmas cakes.  We do this every year so she can take one home with her.

We walked around the town off St Charles which is one of my favorite little historic streets:)

My parents showed my kid their high school reunion costumes.  1950's fashion, my kids thought they looked hilarious!

My parents even drove to the reunion in a 1959 Chevy:)  

Our book club at coop this week focused on chapter 11-20 on Farmer boy and we chose the following activities for the boys to do.

We had the boys make homemade butter and discussed this process in the book!

You can find simple recipes online.  Here our whipping cream is about half way to butter

butter!  We Moms did have the help with the shaking  as the boys got tired:)

Of course then you must try it on some fresh bread:)

Next we tried some tin punching activities since the books talked about the tin peddler stopping by the farm.

Each boy planted some seeds and this week they will be recording the seeds progress and see which seeds sprout the fastest.  

In order to keep the mess down I had the boys use soil pellets that had to be soaked in water.

Lastly we had the boys make homemade vanilla ice cream--luckily the coop has an ice machine so that was nice for us.

boys did all the shaking this time but we did have one bag break but luckily we quickly found another bag and kept the water mess to a minimum.

Ice cream in a bag-- again you can find simple homemade recipes on the web.

Another snack for the boys to enjoy:)

Next week we will be completing Farmer boy reading and  activities.  Once again we were able to keep the boys engaged and we had no complaints or requests for video games.