It’s getting late and I need to go to bed so I can get up early and make aebleskiver and bacon for breakfast, but I know if I don’t throw a quick post up now I will have new things to blog about and this fun day will get overlooked. And I don’t want to overlook our first visit from Maryland friends!

My good friend Deborah was one of the moms in our playgroup back in Maryland. She and her family moved to California six months before we did. They live a few hours’ drive away from us now, which is fantastic.

They invited us to go to Sea World with them for an early celebration of Christian’s 4th birthday today. It was an extra-warm day and we were all hot and sweaty running around the park and sitting in the sun for the shows…but it was completely worth it! The kids LOVED the Shamu Show and the dolphins, they got to feed sea lions and touch starfish, and they got to eat Shamu-shaped ice cream bars. What more could a kid want?

Annalie was extremely excited for her friends to get here. She asked me about 87 times over the last two days, “WHEN will Christian and Anna get here? Why is it taking SO LONG?” She really misses her Maryland friends, which isn’t surprising considering how much time we spent with them all.

It’s been wonderful to see our dear, familiar friends again. You know the kind of friends who are so comfortable and close that even when you have not seen them for six months, it feels like it’s only been two days? That’s what kind of friends Deborah and her family are. I love friends like that.

I came across a really simple recipe for homemade puffy paint recently and thought it would be fun to give it a try. Annalie loves making anything in the kitchen that has to be stirred, and this was no exception. So we mixed equal parts flour, salt, and water in a bowl and added glitter because I couldn’t find the food coloring. Then I scraped it into one of my Pampered Chef icing bottles so we could use it.

Annalie had a bit of trouble with the accordion-style bottle, and I think the opening of the icing tip I used was a bit too small. So we resorted to the good old ziploc-with-the-corner-snipped-off trick, and that worked pretty well. Annalie squirted the paint onto the paper in globs, as is her usual style, and I was afraid it the paper wouldn’t hold up but it did.

The paint was quick to dry, probably because of the salt, and the thin lines I used were dry in a half-hour or so. Annalie’s paintings took longer because of the aforementioned globs, probably a couple of hours before we could hang them on the fridge.

Annalie really enjoyed the process of stirring the ingredients together. She loves squeezy paint, and I think she especially liked that I told her we had to use up all the paint. She has always used art supplies extravagantly, which I love about her. I was the kid who saved all her stickers for a mythical special occasion that usually never arose, while Annalie will use an entire sheet of stickers to decorate one homemade card. So using up the whole batch was no problem for her.

This was such a quick and easy craft that I am sure we will do it again, especially once we have food coloring on hand. However, I wasn’t blown away by it. It was just okay. And once the paint dries it is fragile and peels off the paper very easily, so you shouldn’t plan on saving these masterpieces forever. It’s just a fun, inexpensive way to occupy your kids for an hour or two when it’s too hot to play outside.

Annalie was in her pool yesterday and started telling me a story about the toy turtle she was playing with. She was telling it in a very animated fashion with lots of gesturing and pantomiming and splashing, so I starting taking photos. I took a shot every couple of seconds for a minute or two.

How Annalie tells a story: a slideshow from bethany actually on Vimeo.

The song is “Louis Loon” from Barenaked Ladies Snacktime. I love the whole album and plan to get Annalie hooked on it as soon as possible so we can listen to it over and over on our road trip next week.