Family Reunion Videos

Drumroll please.......

For those of you BAD Productions Fans, we finally have some new material out after a long hiatus. Sorry. Our next CD is still forthcoming, but in the meantime, here are some fun movies we made for our recent family reunion in Indianapolis. We had a family talent night and our family made 4 short commercials (all under 4 minutes long) showcasing a talent(s) or interest(s) of each of our family members.

Here is n x 1.6 km (for n>1)'s video. You might want to turn up the volume a bit:



Here is CED's video. No toddlers were unsupervised at anytime of this filming:



Here is my (Dimples') video. Yes, this did take stinking long to record:



And lastly, here is Mad Scientist's video:



Enjoy!!

System Reboot

We recently returned from a family reunion in Indianapolis for Mad Scientist's side of the family. Mad Scientist's younger sister and her husband were the hosts of the get-together. Our boys absolutely loved it and n x 1.6 km (for n>1) declared that Indiana was his favorite state EVER since the children's museum we visited had a big train exhibit. Surprise, surprise!

Anyway. CED also had lots of fun there. He especially loved all the space where he could run free and leave chaos in his wake. CED's favorite activities were:
* Climbing carpeted stairs and scooting down them on his bum.
* Pushing around the toy shopping cart
* Typing on any laptop he could get his hands on and trying to reboot the house computer.

We have our computer at home pretty well fortified. Our tower is behind a door in our desk that is hard to open for little fingers. We have a wireless mouse that we can stow out of the way and even has an ON/OFF switch. And we have Toddler Keys.

I've been meaning to blog about Toddler Keys for a while. This is an awesome program for harried parents of curious toddlers! It is also free! Basically, once you install the program, you have the ability to lock your keyboard, disable the power button, lock drive doors or lock keyboard and mouse. Prior to installing this, CED would regularly start typing stuff and open various programs and wreck general havoc. Now, he can type all he wants while the keyboard is locked and he can't wipe our hard drive. He still manages to cause trouble, though, because he stands on one of the legs of our computer chair to reach up and get the mouse. He's discovered so many things that we never knew we could do on our computer.

Anyway. We could have used Toddler Keys in Indiana because CED managed to reboot the house computer twice. The shining blue button was too big a temptation to resist.

Blueberries

At the BAMC House, we eagerly await blueberry season every year. It has become a favorite berry in our house because of two particular implementations of the fruit. The first is homemade Blueberry Ice Cream. WOW! It is so good and so full of great blueberry flavor. We use our recipe from the Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream recipe book. Then the second usage is a Blueberry Pie recipe that was given to me by my friend RJ (thanks RJ!!!). She gave me permission to share it with you here. It is delicious! (p.s. the picture is one I just found on the web, not a pie I've made myself.)

Blueberry Pie (8 Servings)

1 unbaked 9" pie shell
2 pt fresh blueberries (or canned peaches) (this is about 4 cups)
2/3 c sugar
1/4 c flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 c evaporated milk (about 2/3 of the can)

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix together sugar, flour, salt and cinnamon. Add evaporated milk to dry ingredients.

2. Put blueberries in pie shell. Pour mixture over fruit. Bake 40-45 minutes until set. You can put foil over crust to make sure it doesn’t get too brown. You will know it is getting close when the blueberries have burst and their juice is oozing a bit.

Note: To sometimes thicken the filling mixture a bit, I add about 1/2 tsp of cornstarch into the dry ingredients so it sets up easier.

Another great way to use up both zucchini and blueberries is this recipe on Allrecipies.com for Blueberry Zucchini Bread. YUM!! I would suggest that you do substitute half of the oil for apple sauce though, otherwise, it is heavy on calories.

We've decided to keep track of how many blueberries we end up buying this year on the right. It should be quite a few since we have no will power when it comes to blueberries.

Climb Every Mountain.....

Recently, we've been rearranging our living room furniture about every day. You may be asking us if we are OCD, but the answer would be No. Our problem is CED. He likes to climb, as we've indicated in the past, and he climbs often.

Lately, he likes to climb our comfy Ikea Poang chairs (pictured on the left). I will put our Poang chair in front of the printer and he'll climb up it to push the buttons. He even managed to print a 2 sided document by a magic combination of buttons that is unknown to us. Also, in one instance while the chair was next to the printer and therefore the desk, I found him on top of the desk reaching for our camera and/or camcorder.

Then, we'll move the chair to the front of the entertainment center and he tries to climb it to get his banished toys or the remote control. (We put some of his toys up there, because he can't play nicely with them.)

Then we move the chair to the side of the entertainment center and while I'm making dinner, I hear a strange thumping. I look up and see him on his tippy-toes on the arm of the Poang chair with an elephant figurine in his hand. The elephant normally also resides at the top of the entertainment center and my son decides it is a good idea to get a hold of it and thump it against the entertainment center.

So, we've decided the only thing that will probably thwart CED and his climbing tendencies is to get rid of all our furniture so there will be nothing to climb. At least it will make moving easier. So, if you come to visit, make sure to bring your own chairs.