A year ago, Gabrielle and her family moved to Oakland from France and we’ve been in cousin heaven ever since. We’ve always loved living close to Jordan and her family here in the city, but with the Blairs moving here too it’s more than tripled the cousins in town. Our family get togethers are so much fun.  Even little things, like games of Twister are more exciting because there are so. many.cousins! We’ve loved getting together for holidays and birthday parties with everyone. It’s so nice. We often gather at Gabrielle’s home in Oakland which is the perfect place to run around and explore with Henry’s bazillion cousins. It’s set against this private hill with a stream, tons of trees to climb and swing from. And decks for days. They call it The Treehouse. It’s just magical.

A couple weeks ago we got together for a Welcome to Summer Party with all the cousins at The Treehouse.  It stays pretty cool in SF during the summer but in Oakland it’s a good 5-10 degrees warmer. Warm enough for all kinds of hot weather, active, summer backyard activities that we don’t get to do in the city. Jordan, Gabby and I each picked a couple things to be in charge of, I’m excited to share with you the details of the first today, these fruit kabob sundaes! Check out Jordan’s giant color fight and Gabby’s toast to summer too.

One of the best parts of summer for me is the fresh and colorful fruit in great abundance, especially here in CA.  For all the running around that day, we needed some good fueling food so we teamed up with Quaker Chewy Granola Bars. We have a few boxes of them that disappear way too quickly at our home.  I thought to compliment the granola bars, we could dress up the regular fruit bowl by making fruit kabob sundaes, here are all the details…

Thanks to Quaker Chewy for sponsoring our Welcome to Summer Party and fueling backyard fun! Quaker Chewy gives kids the energy they need to play. That’s why Quaker and NERF are teaming up to fuel backyard fun, helping families get active together, right in their own backyard. When you buy three specially-marked boxes of Quaker Chewy, you can enter the codes online at http://fuelfun.quakeroats.com to get a free Nerf sports item.

Photography by Liz Stanley

I set out a big platter of cut fruit in rainbow colors. Each kid could pick a skewer and select the fruit they wanted on their sundae. There were also mini marshmallows they could skewer on alongside the fruit as well. Kids are picky of course, so they loved being able to put together their own kabob.

Next I had a few toppings they could dress their kabob with: drizzles of chocolate syrup, caramel syrup, and vanilla yogurt in condiment bottles. They could also sprinkle on some chopped nuts or rainbow sprinkles. Cause EVERYTHING tastes better with rainbow sprinkles. I had some hot dog paper liners so they could pile up their kabobs if they needed to or set them down during a water balloon toss.

Yum! It was the perfect treat to accompany the huge bin of Quaker Chewy Granola Bars we had for everyone to enjoy. Stay tuned for more details from the Welcome to Summer Party next week!