Great Dalton Bake-Off

 Kelly and I both had the idea to bake bread today - he in the bread maker and me in the bosch.  He came up to do it just as I was starting.  Great minds think alike. We decided to each make a loaf and see who had the better bread.  Peter voted for Kelly because he loved lifting the lid and watching the bread maker knead the dough.  He was laughing the whole time.

In the end, though, the votes were split.  Benjamin, Christian, and I voted for mine.  Peter, Kelly, and Bella voted for Kelly's.  However, it was a miracle Kelly's got votes at all because something went wrong with the machine (toddler interference?) and it rose too much and spilled into the space between pan and heating element and filled our whole house with a terrible burning smell which lasted for hours.  I was sure the whole bread would taste like smoke, but it turned out ok.

We're trying to institute a no screens after dinner rule in our house.  Benjamin fights it every night and nearly always refuses to follow it.  The others have been more willing, though, and the other night boredom led to a night of ballroom dancing.  Kelly taught Bella the Viennese waltz and everyone wanted to try it.  Peter mostly just wanted to flop.  It was a lot of fun, but we discovered that our living room is very cramped for such a dance.

In an ultimate act of living vicariously through my kids, I signed Christian up for tennis lessons.  Then I try to watch while taking care of Peter and try to learn too.  He was excited to start and the first lesson went well so far.  

One day this week, I got out every roll of toilet paper in the house and Peter and I spent the morning doing all sorts of activities with them.  We practiced jumping over them, stacking towers and knocking them down, bear walking around them, crab walking around them, laying them in certain shapes, etc. etc.  However, his favorite thing was building a wall and then being a human wrecking ball on the scooters.  When Christian came home and saw the mess, he wanted to try too.  So much fun with just some rolls of tp.