Lemonade, Lemonade, Lemonade!

One of the sweet parents of one of my KDO kids brought me this lemonade basket as an end of the year gift.  Y'all--those parents just spoiled me rotten!  And I am so thankful for their sweetness and getting to spend the year teaching and loving on their kiddos!  I am digressing--I just LOVED this gift!

 Would you all believe that I had NEVER made homemade lemonade before??  I hadn't!  Also for this summer I want to have some little activity to do with the kids each day that is something we do together with no distractions and this was the perfect summer-kick-off activity for us!  (Oh, and just in case you are wondering, in the basket was a pitcher, lots of lemons, a juicer, a cup of sugar in a cute jar, 2 cups, 2 straws, 2 lemon coasters, and a wooden spoon, a bag of mint leaves, and a recipe.)

 Here we are all ready to make some lemonade.  Both Lilly and Reid LOVE lemonade...but we have always just bought the mix...and they were REALLY excited to make some lemonade from scratch. 

 First we mixed the hot water with the sugar until it was all dissolved. 

 Do your kids love to mix things as much as mine do??? 

 Then we got to juicing lemons.  Here are a couple of things you need to know.  It takes A LOT of lemons to get the 2 cups of juice that the recipe called for...in fact, we juiced all of the lemons we had and got 1 1/4 cups of juice.  That ended up being perfect for lemonade because we water ours down anyway so it isn't as tart for the kids. 

 The other thing is that the kids were done after about two lemons.  But they enjoyed watching me juice the lemons all the way through.  I, on the other hand, thought it was pretty fun since I'd never done it before.  Win and win.  Then we added cold water and the kids stirred until their hearts were content.

 We busted out fancy glasses.  Sometimes things just taste better in fancy glasses.  Plus it makes it special.  (:  I put the mint in mine...which, again, I hadn't ever had in my lemonade.  I liked it! 

 And then did some taste-testing! 

 Lilly kept saying, "Deeee-licious!" 

 They loved it so much that they wanted to take some to Daddy, too!

 And he liked it!  It probably took us about twenty minutes and the kids talked about it for days!  Love trying new things and making summer memories with my sweeties!

Oh, and a tip for all of those juiced lemons--put them in the garbage disposal!  I cut one up at a time and put them down.  We had just gotten back in town so our garbage disposal really needed it!  I let the last two sit down in the disposal for a few hours before I ground them up and then the disposal smelled nice and fresh!  And I felt very green for using the leftovers.  ( ;