Spring Retreat

We were at Brown County State Park this past weekend for our church's annual family retreat.  It's a fun time spent with other families.  Ryan and I took the day off work on Friday so we were able to head down early.  Brown County is known for their mountain biking (epic) and it was a beautiful day.  Ryan took the boys on a ride and after lunch he spent a couple hours on the trails.

The lodge has a small indoor waterpark that the boys love.  They have been in swim lessons for the past month or so.  When they started up lessons, Hudson would only go into the water if he had a noodle to hang onto.  On Friday he started out going down the waterslide with the noodle, then with the noodle but hands up, and then he chucked the noodle aside and went down with nothing.  Over and over and over again.  Brooks was like a fish swimming all over with his friends.  It was so nice to have them swimming on their own.

   

 Saturday ended up being a chilly dreary day.  We spent most of the day in our cabin, but we did make a trip to the nature center.  All of the kids really liked the bird watching area. 

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Tasty Tuesday

I made this when I was looking for a quick, but healthy lunch for me and the boys yesterday. I had cooked chickpeas in the freezer (I buy 4 lb bags of dry chickpeas at the Indian grocery, cook them in the crockpot and freeze) so I thought we'd give this a try. Plus, Hudson's favorite legume is chickpeas. It came together in the food processor in no time. We ate it in a wheat tortilla with lettuce and tomato.

Vegetarian Chickpea Sandwich Filling

Ingredients

• 1 (19 ounce) can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 stalk celery, chopped
• 1/2 onion, chopped **I used green onions**
  
• 1 tablespoon mayonnaise
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice **I was out, so used spicy brown mustard**
  
• 1 teaspoon dried dill weed
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Drain and rinse chickpeas. Pour chickpeas into a medium size mixing bowl and mash with a fork. Mix in celery, onion, mayonnaise (to taste), lemon juice, dill, salt and pepper to taste.

Eggs & Wolves

Saturday afternoon I took the boys to Wolf Park. In all the years (12) we've lived in Lafayette, we had yet to make a trip here. It was their annual Easter Egg Hunt (for the wolves and the kids). While the wolves were out of the main enclosure, the kids got to hide various treats for the wolves: hot dogs, pepperoni, eggs, cheese, etc. After it was all distributed, they let one of the wolf packs into the enclosure to feast on the goodies.

We took a walk around the rest of the park where we got to see more wolves, coyotes and bison. One interesting fact I learned was that anytime a deer is hit in Tippecanoe County, the meat ends up here for the wolves to eat.

The boys then did their egg hunt, as well as had fun playing several games involving eggs.




Of course, their favorite game was the raw egg toss. Hudson got nailed in the head with an egg, but didn't seem to mind.