"Sammy" and yummy snacks

Some of you might know "Sammy" but this was new to me. First I thought J came up with this little game but then she told me this was a game she played in kindergarten and all the kids love it. I have to admit, it is pretty fun. It gets very interesting when "Sammy" is about to be erased. LOL!!


J drawing Sammy. You can draw anything you want really. But the key is for every letter that is not in your word, you will erase some part of Sammy, like the nose, the cheeks, the face, etc. And if you have not figured out the word before Sammy is completely erased, then oh, well... You can also ask for clues. The word J and Prime came up for me was "toothbrush". I was like gosh that's so many letters. Are you sure it's one word? But finally as I got to " _oo_h_rush", Prime yelled it out, tooth brush and J got annoyed. ;-)

Again on a separate note, since I'm on a roll with the food and inspired by Tammy to make something today with food, this is what I made. I usually don't like to cook but I always like to try new recipes. I think it's the new and experimenting that excites me. :)

I have fresh Italian parsley and fresh pineapple sage, so for snack today I cut up the parsley, along with the stem and few sage leaves, added a swirl of olive oil, some garlic salt, and a tiny bit of wine and viola.

It was a huge hit combined with some yummy crackers. First J and Prime was tentative, then J says, this is good, then Prime tried and approved. :) Sorry I don't have any picture of the paste, we ate it up so fast and all is left is empty bowl and I don't want to show you that. I'm sure many of you make that as well.

They also had canned lychee. Fresh lychee are not yet in season but we love the canned ones too. Sorry, Erin I noticed it has sulfites but perhaps you would enjoy fresh lychees. So for drinks, the kids had lychee juice which is really lychee, sugar and water.


No fresh lychee, but this is good substitute. I love those crackers. Italian parsley, and pineapple sage. The pineapple sage should have red leaves later so hopefully it will not die before then. Lucky for me, it is a perennial and there are many yummy looking recipes I'm looking forward to try. I'm very new to gardening so brought these from the store for us to look after.

Corner View 2 - breakfast

This is kind of complicated at my house because we eat several different kinds of breakfast on any regular morning and some of it depends on the season.

When time is short, the kids will have cereal with milk and a glass of juice or toasted bread with raw honey.

If daddy is making breakfast, then usually there will be eggs (sunny side up or scrambled) with bacon and sausage. My kids love sausage and eggs.

When I decide to eat healthy, then it will usually be fresh made smoothies or organic "green lemonade"-(organic green veggies/Fugi apple/lemon), with a piece of toast (I have to have some carb, otherwise my stomach will not feel right) and for the kids, an omelet with a lot of veggies. Or in the summer, our breakfast will pretty much be all fruit. Whereas in the winter, it will be more likely to be omelet or something hot.

If there are buns in the freezer and we haven't had them for a while and the kids are asking for them, then I steam Chinese buns. Today happens to be this kind of a day. There are many different kinds as you can see by the picture below. One of our favorite is actually not shown and that is "cha-shao" which is pork filling. Prime's favorite is the lotus seed paste buns and that is made from lotus seed, brown sugar, water, and oil.

Chocolate swirl, lotus seed paste (that's the one that got pink coloring on it), and the red bean bun (yum!) with milk for the kids and for me, coffee with a dash of milk just so it's easier on my stomach. Today for breakfast, we are also having some cantaloupe that daddy cut up last night.

Now if my parents or mother in-laws are ever over, their breakfast will be more of traditional Chinese breakfast, which would be porridge/ salted egg/lean pork congee, shredded dry pork (the kids love this too), pickled cucumber, and other savories like sweet tofu skins, spicy bamboo shoots, cured radishes (I love radishes prepared this way) etc.

dried shredded pork, pickled cucumber (super crunchy), and sweet tofu skin.

My mother in law actually likes to makes from scratch fried dumplings and buns for the kids the night before and fry them in the morning. Sometimes she will make extra and we'll get to freeze those. Now I normally get the buns from Chinese grocery stores unless I'm really inclined. I am more likely to make "tang-tuan" from scratch using sticky rice and red beans or black sesame. That's something my mom use to do so I have more first hand knowledge. But I do prefer store bought, truth be told. We actually normally have those for dessert whereas my mom gives them to me for breakfast. Either way, they are hot and yummy. :)

For other "corner view2- breakfast", check out Ian's blog. He keeps track of folks who are participating or to Jane's blog. Jane was the lady who came up with corner view idea. She is first on Ian's list of participants, I believe.

math and ice cream

Today, while doing our math, we play this little game and the kids were really excited about it. They are loving math time.

J has previously made a whole bunch of origami people along with Prime so for the game I used those, but you can use anything. The key is to have them close their eyes while I put out the the origami people. And then I say, open your eyes. Then after like 2-3 seconds, I say, "now!" and they put up their fingers to show me how many people they see.

Prime was always counting so when the # gets higher, it was challenge as I covered up the origami and he haven't finished counting. But he got better as the game went on. Even if I kept the # same but made different patterns, he would know fast it was the same #. :)

J for the most part, looked and perhaps counted silently, but she was able to tell me correctly how many people there are. But in the beginning, I think she was also counting but later, she counted by 2's.

I used the pink origami person whenever it is an odd # and J caught on that.



We also worked on # ladder. 0-9 would be first row, 10-19 would be 2nd row, going up. This was a little challenge for both kids as I give them only some #s on the bottom row and each subsequent row, I only gave them one # on the row.

For Prime, I asked him to fill the # straight up, like 10, 20, 30, etc or 6, 26, 36, etc.

For J, I asked her to do it diagonally, like 51, 42, 33, 24, 15, 6 and asked her to start at the top, getting 51 because it is next to 50 and filling the blank # I circled. She was really trying to count to come up with the #s but later, I asked her if she sees a trick, she started to see the pattern.

On a totally separate note... since we have been eating pretty healthy, raw veggies and fruits and nuts, I said they can have some ice cream. But they scoop themselves. This also proved to be a good challenge for both of them as well as squeezing the organic chocolate syrup. :)


Scooping, licking, squeezing, mixing, eating. J says after the vigorous mixing, it was like a smoothie.

J also sewed today but she wanted to blog about that.

getting braver and observing

J and Prime caught a spider (? it sure looks likes one to me) down in our basement over the weekend. Technically, Prime caught it and put it in the observing container with magnifying glass at top to observe. J had to come up stairs for something but said, few times, they almost got it.

They even put leaves and sand in the container for the spider. So far, we haven't seen any webs or we don't have the structure needed for a web? Anyway, the kids are so proud of their little 'catch' ( I call it) and have showed it to all of our guests. J even observed the spider likes darkness and tells me excitedly, Mr. T says," Yep, I see it! And it's moving." I also have to add, not everyone has been excited as Mrs. T says, "oh, good, it is in a container." :)


Anyone know what kind of spider this is? I assume this is the safe kind as my kids are happily playing.

They have also been observing the Mexican Primrose closely with a magnifying lens. The magnifying lens actually have to 2 sides. One is to magnify and the other is to shrink it down to size which I thought was neat. J's excited that there are little flower bud, but for some reason, they are drooping while the leaves looks perky. Any one know why?

Compassion ministry

Our church is starting a group called compassion ministry. It is so that we can reach out to our community and give free food to those who needed it. Of course, we also pray that we will also be able to minister to them, if needed and lead them to our savior, Jesus Christ.

Today, after the service, we met with all interested participants and saw the place where our pastor have rented. I'm excited about this and really hope we will be able to reach out and help people who needed it. I joined because J often prays about people who don't have enough to eat/drink and she asks God to help those people. So I thought this would give her first hand experience to do her part to help give food to those people.

I always felt that my area of ministry is to the orphans and I would like to work in a Christian orphanage and minister to those children. So perhaps, God willing, I will be able to "adopt" a little girl or boy that I can help and get to know the child better on a more personal basis.

Anyway, the first thing is to get the place spruced up, build shelves, etc. Then we will hunt for food to fill our space with food and go from there. But this is the start of something good. I'm thankful our pastor came up with this great idea and that we have a place to store the food.

Vet school visit

Today was a beautiful spring day. We went to a local university for their Veterinarian Hospital day. There was so much to see, we didn't even get a chance to see it all. We are planning to go next year again and hope to catch the other 1/2 of the show.

To share a few snippets mostly of Prime as J will blog on her own little blog. She specifically asked me not to post some of her favorites photos. ;-) Okay!


Listening to a dog's heart beat. Prime says it was really fast! The Herman turtles. We really liked observing them; The blue tongued skink; I was lucky to have captured its tongue on camera.

My favorite animal there; the owl. He looks so cute when his eyes are closed!! He looks really wise with his eyes open; Prime tries out what it is like to do "minimum invasive surgery". He did great and got the candy and put it in a bowl.

Daddy was impressed with this- we all felt the cow's rumen (the largest of the 4 parts stomach) There was a big hole on the side of the cow and we all got to touch the inside stomach of the cow, with plastic gloves of course. Needless to say, it was really warm.


This is how Prime was upon entering to see the other animals, like horses, sheep, goose, cow, etc and he was really to bolt out of there. No one else seem to mind but he was not a happy camper...


We went outside and observed the birds for a long time. They love this bird feeder. There were lot of birds there, blue jay(?), cardinal(?), etc.


Is this daffodil? I'm not sure. Anyway, one of them the center flower buds part broke and we took it home and perhaps we can grow it? Observing the trees... I thought it looks like chicken feet, J says it looks 3 warms; Prime says it looks like a bird footprint.

This was what the kids did while I waited to get ice cream. It was a cool tree... lots of kids are in there. J says they are like fairies in the trees.

Books that inspire

Here is a partial listing of our reading books for the week. One particular book that especially touched me was "The Happy Hedgehog" by Marcus Pfister.

In a world that place a lot of emphasis on success and on "doing" (my grandmother have a really hard time doing nothing and and same with the children's paternal grandfather -he frowns on it when he sees people doing nothing) and on achievement (this is so emphasized when I was growing up in China as a young child that its still deeply ingrained in me that often I will fall into this trap), this book is so refreshing. I think I will buy it and keep me grounded when I am tempted to "push" my children or feel like I just haven't done enough or well enough. It's a constant struggle and that balance seem to be illusive for me. I forgot who recommended this book but thank you, what a wonderful, wonderful book.

J's book discussion of the month is "Beans on the Roof" by Besty Byars. This one J says is just okay. I also got her "The frog princess" by E.D. Baker. This was a recommendation from a 7 y.o. so I hope J likes it as well.

She also really enjoyed reading,

1. "Children just like me- a unique celebration of children around the world" by Barnabas & Anabel Kindersley
2. "A Genuine and Moste Authentic Guide: Princess: A Glittering Guide for Young Ladies " by M. Sparklington and Stella Gurney

Prime enjoyed,
1. The owl who was afraid of the dark by Jill Tomlinson
2. The tale of Jemima Puddle-duck (a pop-up book) by Beatrix Potter

We also have,
1. My first pocket guide - Backyard wilderness from National Geographic
2. Animals Raising Offspring by Wendy Perkins
3. In my garden (a children's gardening book) by Helen & Kelly Oechsli

Mostly, they have enjoyed watching "Avatar- The last air bender" this week and acting out scenes from the video. Daddy and I enjoyed watching as well.