I have to preface this by saying this is a healthy pizza that preschoolers can make! I made Fruit Pizzas for a wedding once that were beautiful, full of tons of sugar and a lot more complex. THIS is definitely not that recipe but my girls thought it was pretty darn good They were also very proud of themselves for doing it all on their own.

Ingredients

• Whole Grain Pitas
• Organic Yogurt
• Fresh Cut Fruit
• Nuts

Directions

• Slather the yogurt onto the pita
• Cut up your fruit
• Arrange it to your liking
• Hmm Something Missing??
• Nuts!
• Ta! Da!
• Cut up and Serve….Yummy

My husband and I are huge “foodies” and we love to try new resturants as a family. When our friends decided to open up their own resturant a few minutes away we were estatic! Blue Lemon is our new favorite spot to go out to eat as a family and on date nights.

Other than the owners being our friends, there are many many reasons why we love it…

Healthy—My girls have special dietary needs and Blue Lemon satisfies those. They believe in healthy, clean food and serve many vegan and vegetarian options. Serving healthy dishes does NOT take away from the flavor and delish taste of their food!

Eco-Friendly—Caring for the environment is something Blue Lemon prides itself in, all of their packaging and food selections are eco-friendly. Their paper goods are made from corn and they promote healthy living.

Family Friendly—The dining room is very spacious and the seating is perfectly spaced and designed to accommodate all different ages in your family. Their children’s menu is superb; they put a great deal of thought into all of their children’s food items.

Affordable—Blue Lemon is a very high end looking restaurant; they bus the tables and bring the food to you. However, their menu prices are extremely affordable.

Fresh—Blue Lemon PRIDES themselves on serving fresh produce, seafood; everything is clean, fresh but with a fun twist!

Unique—It is a fun place to come to because it is outside the norm, it is unique! I have been many many times and every time we go it feels like a fun new experience!

Modern—The restaurant has a very modern but warm feel. From the music playing in the background to the décor everything is put together with class.

The publication Seeing the Everday had a fabulous feature on the importance of working with your children. One of my fondest memories growing is up is spending time with my father every Saturday morning working together as a family and then playing together as a family in the afternoon. He took time every single Saturday morning to help us come together as a family and teach us the joy of working together.

Here are some wonderful things I learned from the article “Families Work” by Kathleen Slaugh Bahr and Cheri A. Loveless:

~Exemplifying the Attitudes We Want Our Children to Have: They talk about the importance of honoring family work so our children will feel the same way about it.

~Refusing Technology That Interferes With Togetherness: Think about what you will lose (the joy of chopping vegetables together, talking while hand-drying dishes, etc.) with modern technology.

~Insisting Gently That Children Help: They talk about the temptation in our busy lives to do all the work ourselves and also the temptation to give children only jobs to clean up the messes they’ve made. “When you structure work this way you can shortchange yourself by minimizing the potential for growing together which comes from doing the work for and with each other.”

~Avoiding a Business Mentality at Home: We can over organize and get caught in the trap that children cannot work without motivation, supervision or receiving a payment. They say, “Rather, family work should be directed with the wisdom of a mentor who knows intimately both the task and the student, who appreciates both the limits and possibilities of any given moment.”

I have never thought of family work in this light, have you?

What have you learned from their points?

I try not to re-post too often but I wanted to feature these great tips my sister Rebecca posted a few months ago. We are going to take a trip to the art museum soon and I needed a review!

Getting the Most Out of Your Art Museum Trips

The old motto “Be Prepared” is the best advice for taking your kids to art galleries and museums. Everyone always appreciates a work of art better if they know something about it. Before you go to a museum or art gallery, get on their website and see what kind of art they have. Educate yourself about one or two pieces so that you can tell your kids something interesting about that piece when you come to it in the museum.

Toddlers, of course, won’t care about the background history of a van Gogh, but you can still certainly get them prepared to appreciate one. Before you go to a museum, research the style or subject matter of a certain artist featured in that museum. If the museum has a van Gogh, for instance, pull out some paint and let your kids practice making “swirls” like he did.

If the museum has a lot of nature paintings, take your child outside and help them draw or paint what they see. Then, when you are at the museum, remind them of their own artwork and ask them if they see the same things in the paintings they are viewing.

It can also be fun to look for a certain color, shape, or animal. “How many horses will we find in this museum?” or “Show me all the paintings in this room that have the color purple in them.” Or talk about the mood of a person in a painting. “Is this person happy or sad? Angry or scared?”

A child in grade school will appreciate a little bit of background history. When I was in 4th grade, my teacher had us learn about Vincent van Gogh, Leonardo da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, and Claude Monet. We loved it. We spent time reading about each artist, writing poetry about each artist, and making paintings similar to what the artist himself made. We loved learning the “weird” facts, like the fact that van Gogh chopped off part of his ear and sent it to a woman in the mail.

Or the fact that Monet started to go blind at the end of his life so his paintings became more and more blurry.

Or the fact that da Vinci also made many inventions. So get online and learn a fact or two about the artist you are going to go see.

Teenagers will appreciate more of the cultural and social background of art. Educate yourself a little bit about the time period in which the art you are about to see was made. Then, when you are in front of a painting, ask your teenager what the artist may have been responding to when he/she made that painting. Was there a depression going on and that’s why the people in the photograph look so sad?

Was the king incredibly powerful and that’s why his portrait shows him dressed in such finery?

What symbols can you see in each painting? Involve them in a discussion but be prepared for resistance. When I would go to museums with my teenage brother, he would sulk and roll his eyes. Finally I started asking him to just find his favorite painting in the room. Sometimes he would just point at anything to get me off his back. But then, we would go look at that painting, and I would tell him something I knew about it or about the artist. Then he was interested in discussing it and asking questions. Even if I didn’t know anything about that particular painting or artist, we would talk about the colors or the subjet matter. We would speculate on what we thought the artist was thinking.

Bottom line: Be prepared but don’t be intimidated by art. It is always open to interpretation, so let your children interpret away! Take the time to visit Thrilled By the Thought.

Sit down with your family, show them beautiful pictures of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, and give an explanation of each while pointing out where they are located on a globe or map. Help them understand THESE are seven of many beautiful reasons why we need to take care of our earth. Ask them which wonders they would love to one day see in person–you might be surprised! You can click on the name of each wonder to find out more information you can teach your children.

…
Aurora Borealis
…

…
Grand Canyon

…
Paricutin Volcano

…
Mount Everst

…
Rio de Janeiro Harbor

…
Victoria Falls

…
Great Barrier Reef

…
Here is the order in which I would most like to see these Seven Natural Wonders: Aurora Borealis in Alaska; Great Barrier Reef in Australia; Victoria Falls in Africa; Paricutin Volcano in Mexico; Mount Everest in Nepal; Rio de Janiero Harbor in Brazil; Grand Canyon in Nevada. I will consider myself lucky to see any of these in any order!

“Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”

We love that Jack Johnson song!

Abby picked out this project from a book she chose at the library. It is really quite simple:

1. Cut the egg cartoon vertically to leave two holes connected.

2. Trim so it will open and close and cut two small holes for fingers. Hopefully it is self explanatory in this picture:

3. Paint.

4. Decorate any which way you would like.

5. Have a fun puppet show!

The End.