One of the great things about living in the time that we do is that it’s easy to write and publish your own books. When my 6 year old came to me a few days ago with a plan to write a cookbook with her friend, I thought it would be a great use of a photobook. You can purchase a 5×7 photobook for about $10. I have started laying it out with a few recipes we have selected. It’s been a really fun project for us. Tonight we completed our first recipe complete with photos of the event for our Cookbook.

Aren’t our little chefs cute?

Here is the debut of our first recipe, Rainbow Cookies!

We are targeting kid friendly recipes.  This one has only 2 ingredients:

• Pre-made Cookie Dough
• Food Coloring

There are only 6 easy steps:

1. Divide the dough evenly into 4 sections.
2. Add a different color food coloring to each section and mix work the dough until the desired color is reached.
3. Take a small piece of dough from each section/color.
4. Gently roll the small pieces of dough into one ball.  Be careful not to mix the colors.
5. Bake as directed on the package.
6. Cool & eat!!

My niece posted this great breakfast recipe the other day, and we’ve had a lot of fun doing it.

You’ll need a package of bacon, a dozen egg, three slices of bread, and some grated cheese (optional). You’ll want a good muffin pan for the baking as well.

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 350 or 400.

Step 2: Lightly cook a pound of bacon. You should get close to 12 pieces or so. Don’t overcook, you want them good and floppy.

Step 3: Use a small cookie cutter or the edge of a glass to cut some pieces of bread. They should be small enough to fit into the bottom of your muffin pan nicely. Add the bacon around the edges.

Step 4: Add the eggs.

The kids LOVE this part and this is a good time for them to get some practice on cracking eggs.

Step 5: Cook for 10 or 15 minutes depending on how soft you like the yolks.

The bacon cooks the rest of the way and produces enough grease that they pop right out of a non-stick pan.

Step 6: Serve and brag on what a great job the kids did.

After a bit of a wait, a guy from the local dojo taught the kids some karate.

The boys ran around a bunch before and after, and Jake was begging to get back into karate by the end of the night. The demonstration portion was impressive by any standards. He did some kind of crazy sideways triple spin jump done by Darth Maul.

We get these really cool badges that the kids get to put on their aprons. I think of them as Daddy-badges.

I have a bit of a scar in this area. Dad and I only did two projects together: a pinewood derby that came in last (he did all the work – I wasn’t allowed to touch much of it) and a set of bookends that we got only through the first step on before he quit. When we cleaned out the office after he died, they were still there in basement on top of the safe.

So, I take things like this seriously. I love the fact that they are going to remember holding nails, whacking dad’s hand, and cleaning up spilled glue.

This time Tara got in the action as well.

There’s time to be silly and have fun. Nice thing is that there isn’t any clean up. I love the show-up-and-be-dad model.

This week’s project was a piggy bank that was supposed to look like a Home Depot shed – it looked more like an outhouse to Tara and I though. Note all the badges on Jake and Emma.

…and (per normal) we managed to leave something at the store (Abby’s outhouse bank) and had to come back.

True story: when Abby was younger, I used to bring her along but she was too little to do the projects. To keep her from wandering, I’d put her in one of the orange buckets.

IMG_1891, originally uploaded by larry_odebrecht.

After painfully learn that “ovest” is the Italian word for “west” and not the name of the rail platform that we were sitting on, we caught the next train from Bolognia to Modena.

Getting from Rome to Bolongia was an adventure in and of itself as I wrestled my way through the language barrier.

Rules of survival include: patience, a willingness to ask the same question of multiple people, and a positive attitude.

Modena is NOT the sleepy town that we had expected. Very busy and very full of life. We caught it at probably the craziest day of the year: Mille Miglia Vintage Car Rally – which (best we could tell) is a mix of the Daytona 500, Back to the 50s car show, and Mardi Gras. The town was packed with partying Italians.

The Mille Miglia was an open-road endurance race which took place in Italy twenty-four times from 1927 to 1957 (thirteen before the war, eleven from 1947). It was banned after two fatal crashes and now is a car parade of sorts. The close proximity ofFerrari, Maserati, and Ducati make it very interesting. Tara shot this picture from the cab.

First leg of our trip to Italy was a long, long layover in Toronto.

Canada might have benefited from the low, low exceptions of an 8 hour layover, but we had a blast.

We stayed at the Maple Leaf Lounge which supplied free drinks, a place to nap, free drinks, wi-fi, free drinks, and a shower…. an free drinks.

These pictures are from the gift shop.

It was a fun time for us to get in the mood for the trip and to connect.

Emma started soccer this fall. I had a feeling that she’d really enjoy it, but I had no idea how much she would truly love it. She prides herself on refusing to take a break during games.

It was a quiet slightly chilly fall morning. Emma and I were hanging out before it was time for the church chaos to start. Them Emma said “…hey come look at this!” When I went to look out the kitchen window, I saw a hot air balloon out our back window and flying pretty low. My first thought was that it was just taking off, but as it came closer, it continued to get lower. I was certainly surprised when it landed just a few yards down in an open field. All of the neighborhood was out in their jammies watching this very cool event. Just after the hot air balloon landed, I noticed one coming the same route as the one that just landed. I thought “They aren’t going to land 2 that close to each other are they?” Yes, they were. The second one didn’t land neatly in the field, it actually traveled down the round about and landed in the street.

What fun!! We enjoyed our fun hot air balloon fun on a crisp Sunday morning.

Well, it’s summer and the logical thing for kids to do is have a lemonade stand. Our two little entreprenuers opened a shop with 2 flavors of Kool-aid and a variety of candy. They had a pretty popular store and have opened for business several times since.