Turtles & Ground Hogs

So the other day we found this turtle in our yard. 

I think one of our favorite things about living in the woods is seeing all of God's creatures up close and personal.  Except maybe the ground hog.  I don't really like seeing him up close.  Nor do I like him in my garden.  But first back to the turtle.  We followed him around for awhile.  He was actually very quick.  The kids and Andy looked him up on the internet, but I forget what kind of turtle they said he was.  We let him run free into the woods. 

But as for the ground hog... He was eating down my sunflowers one by one and then we caught him in the sugar snaps. I read online that they don't like the smell of other animals urine, so I gave the boys a one time pass to pee on my sunflowers.  That got rid of the pest for about 2 weeks.  

Angry Birds Party

So all our birthdays fall in the winter-- big bummer--  because then we can't ever have a big picnic and I love a big picnic.  So we told all the family to hold off on gifts and we would have one big party in the summer.

Angry Birds Shirts

Now, we don't really play video games.  We just aren't into them.  We have a big backyard and lots of toys, so we normally don't do much gaming.  But we do have Angry Birds on our Roku.  So we play this game as a family cheering each other on and passing around the remote to play.  It's fun to watch the kids play.   So when it came time to pick our "UnBirthday" theme I suggested Angry Birds to the screaming delight of all the kiddo's.

So we planned out lots of games, bought lots of decorations, made cakes & celebrated these 4 little gifts that God gave us.  Here are some of our "Angry Birds" games:

Water Balloon Toss

Knock down the Pigs

We made the pigs from templates we found online.

My favorite bakery closed, so I had to make the cakes.  I don't mind baking.  I actually  really enjoy it, but icing is not my favorite medium.  First I had to find out what kind of cake each kids wanted.  We settled on Strawberry, Chocolate, & Yellow.  I love the Cake Doctor recipes, so we adapted them for cupcakes. We spent a morning making all the cakes.  My gift to myself was getting store bought icing and coloring it myself.  So I spent another day coloring all the icing.  The red was by far the hardest.  S was a great helper.  She kept washing the dishes so I could keep tinting.

Then to ice the cakes.  It wasn't too hard. They are basic shapes and easy enough to figure out.  The hard part was remembering which kind of cake each kid asked for.

Yellow cake with Yellow icing

chocolate cake with red icing

yellow and strawberry cake with blue icing

Strawberry Cake with Chocolate icing

We made angry bird favors to give out to all their friends.  I cut out the faces and they put them on the bags.  I got the template from online. (We also used this site for the pigs for our knock down the pigs game.) We had lots of fun filling the bags up with all our goodies- angry birds tattoo's and such.

So they all had a fun time and they enjoyed their cakes and time with friends!

Blueberry Syrup

So I have been busy canning. I got a 20lb box of blueberries and had to do something with them!  So first I did blueberry syrup.  That morning we had blueberry pancakes with blueberry syrup.  That was yummy.   My mom loves blueberries and she hasn't been eating sweets for the past year.  She always watches the kids without complaint, so I made sure to give her some.

The syrup is so easy.  Cook down the berries, add lemon zest, juice & sugar. Done.

simmer, simmer

Yum