Soccer!

Our two oldest kids are in soccer this spring. This is our first experience with organized sports. Neither of us played any as kids ourselves. So far it's been a very positive experience.


I'm really happy with their coach. He's very good about rotating the kids to different positions. By the end of the season, they will have played all the positions at least once. Last week Amberlin got to play goalie. She did pretty good. They did get one goal in, but only because she was still down from blocking a goal. They came back quick and got it in on the other side.


Marky got his turn today. Now he's not as coordinated as Amber. He looses his focus pretty easy. At least he's not having conversations with the other players during the game now lol. We don't really focus on being competitive, but rather on just having fun. They have a nice area where Abigail and David can kick some balls around while the game is going on. They enjoy going to the games too!

So Marky was goalie for the last part of the game. He blocked one ball, that kinda got close lol, but he let 3 balls go into the goal. On the way home he asked me if he did a good job as goalie. Hmm I don't want to tell him he did bad, but he didn't do to great. So what do I say??????

Well I asked him first, "did you do your best?" "YES" he says.

"Did you have fun?" "Well kind of" he says "I had fun watching when they were kicking the ball on the other end and to me"

hmm so does that mean he stopped having fun when it got to the goal? What can I say, he's still learning. But all in all, he did have fun and that really is whole point of it!

They have 2 more games to go for this season. I'm not sure if we'll be able swing it next year. We will see!!

Yummy Calzone!

I've been looking thru my cookbooks on my shelf and have come across some YUMMY recipes to add to our collection!. Here is the latest one, Calzones!

I overstuffed them a bit (OOPS!! lol), or like someone suggested, I could just make them bigger with the same amount of filling next time! I would like to try them on the grill. One of them did stay all together and I think may have worked on the grill. But I'm not sure I want to risk that mess..

I LOVE versatile recipes and this is one you can really change up pretty easy!

The dough is easy, it's bread dough.. You can use [gasp] frozen, store bought or just make some fresh!!!! Either way, all you need is bread dough.

Separate the dough into how ever many servings you need. My recipe calls for 8 per loaf of bread, but I only got 4 LOL..

The filling can be a variety of things. We made them pizza this time.
Pizza sauce
Pepperoni or chicken
Mozz cheese
Cheddar Cheese
Parm cheese
mushrooms
olive... or whatever you like on your pizza

OR

Sausage filling
cooked sausage
chopped onion
minced garlic
basil
oregano
tomato sauce
mozz cheese
parm cheese

Mix all but the cheese into the cooked sausage.

How to make the Calzones
Take your dough and roll one at a time into a circle. Be sure to get it thin, but not so thin it makes holes.
Take your filling and put it on half of the dough. Adding cheese last.
Moisten the edges of the dough with water.
Fold the dough over the filling half and press the edges to seal them.
Use a fork to crimp the edges.

I used melted butter to coat the outside, than places them on a pan.

Bake 425 for about 25 min.

Remember, the inside food is all cooked, its the dough you need to cook, and the cheese needs to be melted. Don't over cook them!

To make this dairy free, egg free, soy free and oat free for Abigail, I used goat cheese instead of regular cheese in hers. I also used her soy free pizza sauce (Dei Fratelli) and in my bread recipe I always use Canola oil instead of Vegetable oil.

ENJOY!!!

Butterfly Pretzels

On Monday April 12 we went to the Fredrick Meijer Gardens to see their Butterfly Exhibit. It was AWESOME!!! We had a great day. We went with a huge group of area homeschoolers. Final count was 24 families, 120 people total with 90 of them being kids. We had a great time. If you are in the area you should check them out. They have some great outdoor activities as well as the indoor butterfly exhibit. You can see more about the Butterfly exhibit by visiting their website here!

I'm disappointed to say, I didn't get very many good pictures. I guess keeping track of 5 kids kept me busy lol.. Some of the other friends that went did get some great pictures.

As a follow up to the butterfly field trip, we did a review of sorts at our local group meeting today (Wed.) Some of the kids told us their favorite part of the trip and than we learned about the life cycle of butterflies. We made a butterfly puppet and of course we had to have a butterfly snack. I found this idea online. I LOVE having the Internet to surf lol, I get so many great ideas from it..

My pretzels didn't turn out as nice as the picture, but I didn't hear any complaints so I guess it didn't really matter.. Here is where I got the idea.

Of course, I didn't do things exactly like the recipe, what fun is that?? lol. I used the Candiquik blocks of chocolate and vanilla instead of chips. I tried adding oil to it the first time, but it was TOOOOO thin, so the second batch I left it out and it worked better. The first batch I did I also used the bag like they said, and it melted in the microwave, so after that I melted it in a glass measure cup. I decided after a few times that the bag was pointless as well. SO what worked the best for me, was melting them in a glass dish, and using a spoon to drip it onto the pretzels. It didn't harden up too fast, so I was able to go back and push the pretzels together and fix the antennae. I than went back with a different batch and put a glob on the wings and added the M&M spots.

Of course I couldn't leave Abigail out and since she can't have chocolate or M&M's, I made some a little different for her. I used her chocolate chips (Enjoy life brand), which are dairy and soy free. I just melted it the same way as the Candiquik stuff and spooned it onto her pretzels. Instead of M&M's I used some jelly beans cut in half. It worked well, except that I didn't put them on wax paper and they stuck HARD on the pan. Eventually we got them off, but it was pretty tough lol.

So yes, it was a cute, easy and very YUMMY treat!!