Adventures

First, there was Little Passports with Daddy.

It's a monthly subscription service Little Cuter suggested as a gift a few years ago.  The kid and her father love it.  He reads and guides, she listens and plays.  This month we learned about natural wonders.  There were matching activities and coloring pages and lots of fascinating facts.  Even the grown ups learned something new.  

It was somewhat challenging with little brother cruising around the table,

but somehow the Passports and the big kid survived.

She stayed home from pre-K the next day, a steamy hot weekday we all agreed was too hot to play outside.  So, with the very very very ripe and soft bananas, Gramma and FlapJilly created banana bread.  She knew exactly where Mommy stores the whisk, and set to work combining the ingredients.

I thought I could show her something fun to do with a stick of butter and the baking pan, but the kid was way ahead of me.  You do this so the batter doesn't stick to the sides, Gramma.  Did you know that?

Yes, I did.  

I also agreed that it was absolutely delicious, if not altogether too hot to be eaten without being reduced to smaller pieces.  She found her own knife and did her own cutting.  

Sigh.... I remember when she said Thanks, Gramma when I had to do for her.  They grow up so fast.

There was lunch and there were books and there was hide and seek and there was playing The Game of Life (with rules abridged for the young).  

And there were marshmallow people, a craft we created with supplies from the grocery store.  It was fun to slide the big ones down the bamboo skewers.

It was more fun to put the chocolate chips and the small ones into the holes Gramma poked in the spots she chose.  Squeezing the icing was more than a 4 year old's hands could manage, so, with careful direction, I made a Mom and a Dad and a baby and a unicorn sister (note the point atop the 

 right facing one in the back).

We used the fruit and veggie basket normally used to harvest tomatoes to hold them up, because the Asian noodles we used for Daddy's legs were not sturdy enough to support them.  We didn't bother with appendages for the other three. 

Gramma and FlapJilly gave her parents a break and took a bath together.  We got very clean.  We giggled a lot. 

It is going to be very hard to leave this crew.