Cake Pops!

Number 17 on our summer fun list was cooking projects. My favorite so far has been cake pops! They were time consuming and really messy, but they were fun to do with the kids and they were able to do almost all of it by themselves.
These are the things we needed:

Cake mix, melting chocolate, frosting, sprinkles, and lollipop sticks.
We started out by making the cake:

When it was baked and cooled completely, I divided it up into 3 bowls and each kids got to crumble up their cake.

Then we added frosting to each bowl and mixed it in:

We put all of the cake/frosting mixture into one bowl and put it in the fridge for about 20 minutes.

What did we do with the extra frosting?

Someone helped get rid of it. ;0)
When the cake was cold, they rolled it into balls.

This was a little messy. =)

We put the balls into cupcake pans lined with baking cups. (that way when we added the melting chocolate it wasn't as messy to clean up.) Then we dipped the lollipop sticks into the melting chocolate and stuck them into the balls.

We put them into the fridge to set the sticks.

When they were set, we put them into the melting chocolate and rolled them in sprinkles!

Don't they look yummy!!

Zach decided he wanted to try a different kind of chocolate:

It was yummy too!

The kids' verdict?

Delicious!

The only problem we had was that the kids made their balls too big. Some of them fell apart when we were trying to add the chocolate and sprinkles. I think they got tired of making the balls, and they just got bigger & bigger until they were out of cake. =) But they were still good and they didn't mind eating "broken" ones.
While I am blogging about things we have checked off of our list, I keep forgetting to blog about number 23: summer reading club. We finished it several weeks ago, and the kids got their prizes from the library; new books!!!

Zach read all of his books on his own (of course) and Riley read almost all of his books on his own. Yeah!! All three kids liked getting to pick out new books as their prize for being good readers!!

Summer Olympics

My sister Dianna had a great idea for the kids this summer: The 2011 Summer Olympics!! She worked really hard to get this all together & the kids had a lot of fun!! She even had medals for the kids when they finished each event:

It was held at Grammy & Granddad Ramsey's house since they have the most room outside. When we got there, Cody helped pin on every one's Olympic number.

Lindsey helped paint the kids' faces with Olympic symbols!!

There were torches, the Olympic rings, "war" paint, and USA!

Most of my parent's grandkids. (The younger ones anyway.)

Dianna was the master of ceremonies. She got things done with her mega-phone!

The first event was the 50 yard dash. (A little shorter for the smaller ones.)

Lily, Camden, Ares, and Johnny ran fast!

I love the look of fierce competitiveness on Camden's face!

After the race they got their medals from Grammy!

The second heat was Kael, Alyssa, and Riley.

Look how hard they are trying!!

Last but not least were the oldest kids; Cody, Cooper, Carson, Zach, and Taby.

Since it was super hot, it was time for a water break!

The next event was the egg race. These brave 3 & 4 year olds carried real eggs and raced to the finish line!

They all started off really slow, then decided they could walk fast/run.

It was fun watching them!
Next was the Olympic ring toss!

We took a break from the events and took pictures as Olympic medal winners!!

Thanks Amy for drawing this cool picture board!

The next event was one of my favorites to watch; potato sack races. Since you can't find potato sacks anymore, my mom sewed some up for us!

Taking a break from the heat, we went inside and played a mystery game. Each child was blind folded and they had to guess what was in the bowls in front of them!

The three-legged race was next!! This was my other favorite event. It was so funny to watch them try to run tied to another person!

Popsicle break!

The long jump was after that. The older boys did really well in this event.

The little kids didn't quite get the concept, but they tried their hardest anyway!

And were cute while doing it!

The last event was the obstacle course.

They had to run around trees, go down slides, jump over tubs, go under boards, spin around a bat, and go down a slip in slide!

Then it was time for the Grand Finale!! It was a surprise for the kids.

Silly String!!!!

After that, the adults all went inside in the air conditioning (and Grammy made lunch for all of us, THANKS!!). But the kids all stayed outside & cooled off in the slip and slide!

But the fun didn't end there. Everyone got treat bags too!!

Thank you SO much Dianna (and everyone else who made/bought things)!!!! It was such a fun day for everyone. My kids can't wait until there's a Summer Olympics 2012!!

You want to do this again....right Dianna??? =)