Tuesday 30 September 2014

Pizza Pixels and Building Mixels

Sprout started the week setting himself some goals on Far Cry 3, then progressed to aiming to complete Psychonauts.



Moppet spent some more time on Endless Alphabet...


...while Squidge perused his Horrible Histories cards, particularly the ancient Egyptians ones and the one of Queen Elizabeth I.


We went to Come Into Play for the morning to celebrate one of the children's friend's birthday, then visited the kids' grandparents' afterwards. Squidge and his grandma played a very creative game of not-quite-chess...


...then the boys went out with their grandpa to race leaves and origami boats down the waterfall.


When we got home the boys and I looked at these Mr Bean caricatures on bored panda.


The next morning we went on a search for Halloween costumes, but couldn't find what we needed and stopped for lunch instead. Sprout read out all the games and puzzles on the happy meal box so Squidge could join in...


...and Moppet amused herself :)


When we got home Squidge built the Lego he'd bought, while Sprout set up his Scalectrix set and shared out the cake that he'd chosen at the post office (it was very sweet, I'd said I had enough money on me for each of them to choose something while we were there, Sprout chose the little cake with no mention that it was for everyone, but then gave everyone a slice once we were home) :)


We had another day in the next day, where Sprout played lots of Hearthstone, Game of War: Fire Age, Attack of the B Team, watched some Fail Army videos, and browsed the Lego website in search of a boat to continue his boat experiments from the other day. He found a suitable waterproof one and wrote the details down to give to me so that we could find the best price and see if he could afford it. 


We watched some Dora, a bit of Diego, The Black Cauldron, and looked through all Squidge's Skylanders cards reading out the names. 


They played with their friends later, Moppet putting her dolls to bed while Squidge scooted, then they all went out the back to trampoline and then back inside to find videos of trampoline tricks, then once their friends went home we watched Xmen together. 


We'd planned to go conker and acorn hunting the next day, so after a morning of watching funny animal videos (the highlight of which was a very surprised cat sitting on a hedgehog), we headed for Shugborough Hall as their website promised copious amounts of conkers, but sadly there was not a single one, and Sprout started to feel under the weather so we set off home with our bag of autumn leaves.


They did all love the swans on the river though :)


We tucked up Sprout in bed at home, and while Squidge played outside with his friends and later on watched Underdog, Sprout watched Five Nights at Freddy's gameplay videos. He's fascinated with the machinations of the story, and kept pausing to tell me the various points of intrigue and what he's deduced that each means.

Sprout was sick in bed all of the next day, and spent it playing Sims and watching Strihiryu videos. Moppet played some Little Digits and Endless Alphabet, played with magnets for a while, and alternately took care of her baby dolls and Jay-as-a-dog. 



Squidge meanwhile built a Minecraft world for him and Gruff to play on, and helped me look after Sprout's guinea pigs. 


The weekend began with lots of Lego building...


..,looking up the fortuitousness of albatrosses as that is the name of Sprout's Lego boat...


...lots of fussing of the cat who has segued nicely into his snuggly inside autumn persona...


...and some sitting around and sleeping while Gruff did some loud and dusty renovation. 


We had an evening drive out to look at the moon as Squidge and Moppet like the word gibbous and wanted to sit on top of the car somewhere and take a photo, so we did. (Chaos reigns here this week however, so the photo is still on the camera!)

We happened to find ourselves with both double stuffed Oreos and pretzel sticks, and it's almost hallowe'en, so what better time to make oreo spiders??


Sprout wanted to get his anatomically correct, so used some extra oreo stuffing as glue to add on some chelicerae.


Or perhaps pedipalps. He also wanted to check which body parts they used for spinning webs, so we looked up a couple of things...


...and then found this fab slomo video (I can't do click through links at the moment but you can see the guy's YouTube username in the photo)


We had some Oreos left (what??), and Squidge decided to make some moon phases. He started with a half moon... 


...then asked me to show his friend what gibbous meant. She also found the word hilarious so they have that in common :)


Sprout had a look at our leaf haul from Shugborough, and was excited to see this leaf. He asked me if I knew what the Canadian flag looks like and told me that it looks like this leaf but in red.


We used our new Leafsnap app to identify it...



...then compared the species name to the Canadian sugar maple. We talked a bit about classification and species names like for wolves and dogs and how you could get an idea from it of how related to things are.


We also found this which he thought was interesting, and was amazed that someone could put the wrong leaf on it :)


He wanted to know why they were called sugar maples, so I explained about syrup tapping and found a picture to show him...


...and we found out that not only can you do it with UK sycamores, but birches too! So he's keen to try in the Spring :)


He spent the rest of the evening planning how to turn his basic Lego boat into a motorised paddle boat, while Moppet watched Dora the Explorer (talking to the characters in all the right places, no awkward pauses here anymore haha),  and Squidge played out with his friends.

While the boys helped with more renovation/kitchen organisation the next morning (Sprout by helping me move things around, Squidge mostly by eating ice cream I didn't have room in the freezer for ;p ), Moppet got some paints and cake cases out and got artistic :)



Sprout had seen an idea for pizza parcels on he internet, and modified it to make Pizza Pixels! 


They were a great success and enjoyed by all, and super easy too (just cut some pizza dough into squares, pop a bit of pizza sauce in the centre of each one, top that with pepperoni, mozzarella, more pepperoni, then for pixels fold the corners into the centre, or for parcels squish all the edges up over the top. Bake in a medium hot oven for a few minutes - accurate timings, I realise, but our old oven cannot have anything accurate based on its behaviour!)

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