Showing posts with label Random Holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Random Holidays. Show all posts

Thursday, April 2, 2020

April Fools

 This year I started out small with Crazy Pancakes for breakfast.  These were regular pancakes, but made with Dr. Pepper instead of water. 

They were really good, but a bit delicate since the extra fizz from the soda made them very light.

Lunch was probably the best, although I actually had two people that didn't like it.

These grilled cheese sandwiches are actually grilled...

But the "bread" is vanilla cake and the "cheese" is orange creamsicle frosting.

The people that liked them really REALLY liked them.

The two people who didn't eat at the exact same time as the rest of us, however, bit in thinking they were real cheese, and didn't like them.
 I forgot to take a picture of dinner, but it was spaghetti pie.


And we had ice cubes for dessert.

You can probably guess that they were gelatin!


Monday, April 3, 2017

Gospel Dessert: Raising of Lazarus (Plus our April Fools)



For the Gospel Dessert, we made Lazarus's tomb out of brownies.  Easy peasy and very chocolatey - thank you, Klenda!







I'm getting behind on my blogging, so I'll put our April Fools silliness here, too:

For breakfast, we had a dessert disguised as breakfast.  Our "eggs and bacon" are really vanilla pudding with apricot halves as yolks.  The bacon is apple butter, put on the plate with a fork.  The picture is from a previous year since I forgot to get a photo this year.



For lunch, we had dinner disguised as dessert.  The "cupcakes" were meatloaf with mashed potato frosting.  We got miixed reactions to that one, as you can see.


For dinner we had breakfast: actual bacon and eggs!

Monday, March 13, 2017

Happy Zombie Day!

As I'm sure you've noticed, the Monday after the time change that robs helpfully removes an hour of sleep is Zombie Day!

And how are we feeling this morning?

The usual celebration of Zombie Day involves walking around in a cranky stupor. Fortunately, there are three additional ways to enjoy this day, which comes but once a year!

First, watch this:



Second, watch this:



Or play it here.

Lastly, remember to cut your fellow zombies some slack.  If you should happen to meet anyone shambling around in a cranky stupor, resist the urge to eat their brains bite their head off. Get to bed early tonight, and tomorrow won't be quite as bad... Hopefully!

Monday, March 14, 2016

Happy Holiday Smash Up

It's Pi day!  It's Zombie Day!  It's Zombie Pi Day!

I have to say, I'm feeling the zombie more than the pi. Also, I have pneumonia and I may be a little loopy!

For Pi Day:


For Zombie Day:


For Zombie Pi Day: There's a zombie on your lawn! It has a 1 foot radius, calculate it's surface area (in true physicist fashion, presume it's a spherical zombie in a vacuum). Leave your answer in the comments,  All correct answers will win one extra hour of sleep (fine print: extra hour of sleep to be delivered in November).

PS: If you are missing Grey's anti time change rant, here it is!



Monday, February 29, 2016

Happy Leap Day!

Boing!

Boing!

 Choclo and Oob leaping from one lily pad to another, reinforcing the 6 and 7 times tables!

Other Leap Day fun:  I woke the kids up with the 80s big hair rock song "Jump," a song which, like so many from that era,  can no  longer be watched with a straight face.


And, of course, we'll watch  Pirates of Penzance!



 Hope you have a great extra day!

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Groundhog Day

This is not an actual picture of the soup I made on Groundhog Day, but it's close.

It was supposed to be alphabet soup with chicken... but then I realized I was out of chicken... but then I realized I had an odd number of leftover meatballs (not enough for a meal, too many to toss). 

So I dumped the meatballs into the soup and called it a day. But it looked odd.

Then I remembered that particular day was Groundhog Day!  It immediately occurred to me to tell the kids the odd meat in their soup was groundhog! I restrained myself.

And then, after they had eaten the soup,  it hit me!  The meatballs had pork!  They really were ground hog!

And now my kids are telling me I ruined their lives.


Thursday, September 18, 2014

It Be Talk Like a Pirate Day Tomorrow, Matey!

Ye've been warned!

We've been making maps and playing around with pirate stickers, mad libs, and  doodles all week.

The maps are drawn on regular paper, soaked in tea, then (when dry) singed with fire.
The doodles are half drawn pictures where you need to draw the other part.

In this case, you had to draw the sea monster that is attacking the pirate ship.

I love doing this with all six Zoomlians because they come up with hilarious variety!

Here, Klenda draws an unfortunate giant merman, and Oob draws a sniffy fish that also kisses (run away!).


Choclo drew a megalodon with stripes (as well as a another shark).

Mxyl drew a terrifyingly cute little rubber ducky.

"It can bite off an entire nail with every mouthful, " he explained, "and with enough nails gone, you'll be treading water."

So, there's that.


Hmmm.  I might have boys.
Not pictured, Leena drew Gamera, and Zorg drew Larry Boy.

And we got a little silly with stickers!

Tomorrow we'll do a treasure hunt, and probably make pirate hats.

More piratey stuff, including web resources, from our earlier adventures, here.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

April Fool!

 Oooh!  Bacon and eggs for breakfast?

Kinda...

The "eggs" are vanilla pudding and canned apricot halves.

The "bacon" is a trail of apple butter.


No complaints with this trick, it was still a yummy breakfast!

Hope you have a fun day!


Update: And cake for dinner!?


Yes, it's the good old meatloaf and mashed potatoes trick!


Also, did you hear that they found a colony of flying penguins?


Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Happy Secret Silly Day!

Yes, today is Secret Silly Day, a fact discovered by Klenda when she came to breakfast quite nattily dressed, but wearing very silly socks (invisible beneath her brown corduroy slacks).

This has led to much (secret) silliness.

I, for one, have been making very silly faces at my kids all day whenever they aren't looking at me.  Don't tell them, it's a secret.  I also served pumpkin pie for breakfast: silly breakfast or dessert at a silly time?  I'll never tell.

Other Zoomlians have been hiding secret giggle buttons under their shirts, and whispering jokes.

Hope your day is secretly silly!

Monday, October 21, 2013

Ducky Day

Last week's rainy day!

When Mxyl and Klenda were toddlers, we loved rainy days.  There was a park near our house which developed large shallow puddles, and we would suit up and go splash and dabble about like ducks.

Somehow, this turned into "Ducky Days!"

Whenever it rains enough to get really nice puddles, the kids all go out and play in the rain, quacking like ducks.

Then they come inside for popcorn and warm chocolate. Yum!

When thy were very little, they would then often watch a movie of some sort while I washed and dried their clothes, but they don't get quite so muddy nowadays!

We haven't had a good several day rain in a while.  It takes several days to really fill up the big puddles.  This Ducky Day was really one good rainy day, and they were just playing in our yard.

In the past, we have had days and puddles where the water topped the wellies and we had to dump out all the boots!

Monday, June 24, 2013

Angry Birds Day


We have a history of hacking the non educational obsession.  We've had a Transformers Day, a Pikmin Day (which I seem to have forgotten to blog about), and several Super Mario Days.

A few weeks back, I found some coloring and activity books with an angry Birds theme.  They were a buck each, and I thought, "Why not?" 

Then I ran across some Angry Birds fruit snacks.  And then some self inking Angry Birds stampers...

So, Angry Birds Day was last Friday!

The younger Zoomlians really enjoy playing the games on flat screens, but they spend far more time building "levels" with toys.

 We did a lot of building on Friday, but we also played Angry Birds, and Angry Birds Star Wars on I pods and Angry Birds Rio and Angry Birds Space online.

Everyone dressed up as their favorite bird, and they carried hollowed out eggs around to protect them from piggies. In the games, the birds are angry because green pigs have stolen their eggs.

I was the piggy.  I made a little green snout for myself, and I woke them up making piggy noises! Angry Birds, time to fly!

I also copied Angry Birds activities, and gave them packets.  There were the usual word searches and mazes, but my favorite was this "draw yourself as an Angry Bird!"

Mxyl's was immediately recognizable!

I got my activity books at a local craft store, but there are plenty of online printable activities here and a crazy amount of educational Angry Birds stuff here.


Monday, March 11, 2013

Happy Zombie Day!

Ah, yes, that special time that comes but once a year.. The Monday after we spring back into Daylight Savings Time and stumble about searching for caffeine joyfully greet the day with the cheery thought that it will be too light this evening to convince our children to go to bed at a reasonable time.

I am convinced that those who actually like DST have never had children  do not have to get up in the morning  have a sadistic streak have a weak circadian rhythm.  There are some people who can nap during the day, eat meals at wildly varying times, and sleep and rise in an irregular pattern.

I can do none of these since I personally have the Chuck Norris of circadian rhythms, and attempting to diverge from my regular pattern of eating or sleeping causes it to slap me stupid while telling me to "stop hitting myself."  For people like me, DST hurts.  And it's stupid! And I like to whine about it in italics and bold, and bold italics!

And it always happens during Lent!

Let's watch this short educational video vindicating my opinion, then we can move on to Zombie Day Fun!


Well, I'm feeling much better!

The traditional way to celebrate Zombie Day is by playing Plants Versus Zombies.

You can also read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or World War Z, or watch your choice of zombie themed movies.  Or just watch this:

Friday, October 12, 2012

Superhero Week

 We have been celebrating Superhero Week this week!

We've been doing lots of fun things like battling laundry monsters and answering "HERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAAAAAY!" every time we are called.

We also have been designing characters on index cards for a card game we are making up (as we go along), and, of course, making all kinds of costumes.

My favorite activity, however, has been this one: I traced each of the kids and let them color in the outline as a super hero.  Then we cut them out and taped them all over the house!

This one is Shadowman from Zorg.  He is very strong and skillful, and has the ability to become a shadow. In his shadow form he can move as quickly as a shadow, and he can also become intangible, as well as invisible among other shadows!

This one is Leena's.  She is Acitage!  She  has a gun that shoots a special acid that doesn't effect living tissue.  Thus it doesn't actually hurt evil doers, but it does dissolve non living things like fur and hair.  She also has super spiky boots which she can use to kick people and super spiky bangs which she can also use as a weapon!

 This is Crombie, as described by Choclo.  He destroys all criminals in his path! He's his favorite own self.  He wanted to eat a hundred hot potatoes, but they couldn't hurt him.(?)  His hand is metal.  He has a big dangerous whip. He can pull a spear out of his metal hand and he can scare away his enemies by making a big scary noise!



And this one by Oob does not have a name, but he does fight bad guys. Oob tells me: He's pretty short and he has gems.  The gems don't do anything, they just look nice.  He's a lot powerful.

 This one is Animalass, and she was made by Klenda: She has the power to turn into any animal, and can talk to animals while she's human. 










This hero is by Mxyl: This fellow never had any powers; he was just a relatively average guy who always wanted to be a superhero, but never had the right materials.

He once entered his room and found that one of his CDs was broken.  Out of pure curiosity, he threw the CD at his dart board as though it were a shuriken, and as almost an omen it crashed into the bull's-eye mark, shattering the CD into a thousand pieces!

That moment was an inspiration to him.  It took him years of training, collecting and more-than-slightly damaging CDs to become an entirely new superhero.  His mother fully approved and made him his own costume.  From that moment onward, he was a real-life Batman; a champion of justice; a man whose determination no villain could hope to stop: Broken CD Man!

He wears half of a CD as a mask, and has several gadgets, including grappling hooks (three CD halves make for a perfect grappling claw), and a CD-scrambling device (after he was officially recognized by the public he was given a device that can rewrite CDs to 'say' anything he wants, or just break them.  It's very useful for espionage).

Monday, March 12, 2012

Happy Zombie Day!

As I'm sure you've noticed, the Monday after the time change that robs helpfully removes an hour of sleep is Zombie Day!

And how are we feeling this morning?

The usual celebration of Zombie Day involves walking around in a cranky stupor. Fortunately, there are three additional ways to enjoy this day, which comes but once a year!

First, watch this:



Second, watch this:



Or play it here.

Lastly, remember to cut your fellow zombies some slack.  If you should happen to meet anyone shambling around in a cranky stupor, resist the urge to eat their brains bite their head off. Get to bed early tonight, and tomorrow won't be quite as bad... Hopefully!

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Pirate Update

 We had a preposterously piratical day!

Me hearties dressed for the part.  Instead of newspaper hats, I took 2 pieces of black construction paper and cut them into the pirate hat shape (rectangle with a bump) and then stapled the ends together.  It's actually open at the top, like a crown, but I thought they looked better than the newspaper hats.  The skull and crossbones were cut freehand from white paper and glue sticked on.

The pistols we just had lying around (I think from a costume party before we had kids...).

The kids did piratical paper packets (everything from alphabetizing pirate words to treasure themed mazes) adjusted to their ages. We went heavy on fmap skills

Then they made their own pirate flags (after looking up the meaning of the symbols and colors).  We also did the pirate web adventure, determined our pirate names, and listened to sea shanties.

Then it was on to the main event!

This time around, I didn't do a clue by clue hunt, but  instead did a treasure map.

They started on top of the mountain (upstairs), trekked through an alligator infested swamp (the boys bathroom), and you see them here making their way through a thick forest.



Then they went into a spooky cave with only a single torch to light their way...

The treasure was in the innermost cavern, marked with an X!

Gold, silver, chocolate, and jewels for everyone!!!

At the moment, we are finishing up by watching Pirates of Penzance.

I'll leave you with a sea shanty.  As you may know, there are different kinds of shanties depending on the kind of work they were sung to.  Different jobs used different rhythms.  This is a capstan shanty, used to keep everyone together while turning the capstan (the large horizontal wheel which raises the anchor) :

Monday, September 19, 2011

Avast, Matey!

It's Talk Like a Pirate Day!

This year, I planned ahead (meaning, thought about it the day before) and so have a great list of resources for you!

This was my favorite site: Talk Like a Pirate Wiki, put together by New Zealand teachers.  Don't miss their pirate vocabulary list! Kiwis, I salute you!

This is a great math pirate adventure.

This is a fun piratey web adventure with lots of extra fun information.

And here are tons of fun lesson plans and teaching ideas - don't miss the one submitted by a home school captain (halfway down).

We will also be making our own pirate flags, going on a treasure hunt, and maybe doing a bit of orienteering or compass navigation. Oh, I suppose, we'll make pirate newspaper hats, too.

And we may yet squeeze in a viewing of Pirates of Penzance!

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Star Wars Day!

Yes, it's May the fourth, as in, "May the fourth be with you!"

The kids have worked up some costumes (that's Klenda as a padawan and Leena as Princess Leia) and I have found some great printables and activities here:

Little printable 3D models and masks

Clone Wars crosswords, codes, word searches and more

Loads of games and info on the official site

Great list of resources including an internet scavenger hunt

We also got some books from the library:

Star Wars Complete Cross Sections

Clone Wars Visual Guide

and we already had
Lego Star Wars Visual Dictionary

I'm guessing we might watch the original movie as well as some of the Lego Star Wars You Tubes.

Here's our favorite:

Monday, March 14, 2011

It's Pi Day!

It's 3/14. At 1:59 pm, it will be 3.14159. Time to eat pi!

I almost missed it! Thank you Diane over at Clickschooling!

If you don't get her stuff, you should because she sends out (by e mail) a different free educational website of note each day - and it's an absolutely free service! Plus she has an amazing archive of everything. Plus a monthly calender of interesting things. Plus, did I mention, it's free?

Anyway, we'll be ditching our afternoon plans in favor of making and eating pie and computing circumferences and areas.

I wonder how many square inches of pie I can eat? I know it's Lent, and all, but this is strictly for educational purposes. Ahem.

Monday, March 15, 2010

How to Wake the Dead

We changed to Daylight Savings Time yesterday. "Springing Forward" indeed! In my opinion, if it's that important to change the time just leave it like that, OK?!

Strangely, I never get quite so worked up about the time change in the Fall.

Anyway, after an unsuccessful attempt to wake the Zoomlians, who were busy impersonating limp and pitiful piles of sleeping goo, I went back and informed the Emperor that the Monday after the time change should be a holiday. He hastily agreed (for some reason we were running late this morning). I told him it should be Zombie Day.

Inspiration! I went back and told the Zoomlians that if they could get up and ready in 15 minutes, they could each play Plants vs. Zombies* for 15 minutes this afternoon. It will be difficult to remove the skid marks from their beds, but very worth it.

* This game has no educational or socially redeeming value, it's just very, very, very funny.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Arrrrrrrr!

Did you remember that last Saturday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day?

We did.

I was planning to be away on retreat, but Oob and Choclo were still clingy in the final phases of recovery from the swine flu, so I sent the Emperor off instead.

I wasn't sure how much to do with The Emperor being away. On the one hand, I didn't want to get in over my head with projects, on the other, busy kids are easier than bored kids. This is all so much easier now that the older Zoomlians are older!

For one thing, it's amazng to see how much the older Zoomlians do on their own initiative. I set up a treasure hunt, pirate packets (printed from around the internet), and cooked an assortment of pirate food, but they pulled together their own costumes. Zorg made a knife out of foil. Klenda made everyone eye patches.

They spent a lot of time that day drawing treasure maps.

Arrrrrr!

We had treasure cake for breakfast (banana bread with chocolate chips, the loaf looks like a treasure chest, the chocolate is the treasure).

Lunch was goldfish with hoctopuses (hot dogs with half of them sliced to make the tentacles, then microwaved so the tentacles curl up).

I don't remember dinner. Might have been tunamac made with wagon wheels (they look like coins?).

We finished up that evening with a showing of Muppet Treasure Island to all the happy crew!