Bit off a little bit more than he can chew!

William working on the first carrot from the garden.

Might be a little sporadic on posts for a bit, working on putting together my 20th high school reunion (WOW) and it's taking quite a bit of time!

Can I get a little help here?!

Off I go to get my trains...

Got em, now...can I get a little help here?!

How quickly the tide turns for this little guy. And for those of you who know William, yep he still has quite a scream!! Tried to do a little editing to the video and cut a bit of the end off, but it didn't translate over to the blog, funnier to end earlier than this clip does, ah well.

First harvest of the year!

Purple green beans (Harrison's choice this summer) and Ben's birthday cherry tomatoes 

The garden is thriving beyond anything I expected.  We did have some type of security breach recently though.  (-: I found a half eaten cherry tomato on the ledge of one of the beds.  But other than that and the slug that is eating away the award winning 3rd grade cabbage project, everything is intact.  Even the two foot long gardner snake that shed his skin through one of the chicken wire holes leaves everything alone, (he just makes my heart stop when we greet each other in the morning!).

Breakfast Music with William

More "Twinkle" (Take 2 and Take 3) 

(for "take 1" see here)

See what can happen in a month?!!

Maybe by November we'll have the whole song! (-:

Poor Elmo

Here he sits, day in day out...waiting...hoping to do his summer time duty.  But to no avail!

The kids prefer the multi-headed sprinkler system all around the yard!

(I know I sure would have too back in the day!)

Today we'll tour lilies

William and I are still sick. )-: So he and I stayed home while SP & the big three headed to G-ma and Poppies' for the afternoon. Little guy fell asleep in my arms just as we lay down to read a book so I scooted out for some fresh air and pics of the lilies.

These were from G-ma & Poppies' garden

These came with the house. (-:

This is an Easter Lily SP gave me a few years ago. I plunked it in the ground in the fall and we've enjoyed it ever since.

These came with the house! (-:

Now, off to make some tea!

Remind me again?

How was it exactly that in just a blink of an eye you went from trying to stack blocks to shooting bows & arrows, BB guns and folding American flags?

Ben had an absolute BLAST for two nights and three days w/ dad at his first cub scouts camping trip!

My Camera's Gone . . .

 . . . with this guy!

SP & Ben are gone camping for a couple nights with the cub scouts so I thought I'd dig back into the iphoto library for something to post.  Hard to pass this one up! (-:  Thanks for being such a great dad, SP!!

My Kids Are Good At Sharing

Over the past week they've shared fevers, earaches, sore throats, and coughs. Now, they've been gracious enough to share with me.

I'm Sick!! Ughh

Did I actually figure this out?????

"Twinkle, Twinkle..."
6/25/08

Now, what did I do differently? Was it because I used Firefox instead of Safari? Was it because this video was only 13 seconds long? I'd like to know (I'll experiment later I guess) because it was sooo incredibly easy to point and click my way to posting this as opposed to my few attempts in the past. I know the quality is horrible but it's pretty much the quality I've seen on other blogs when using Blogger Video to post. As far as I'm concerned this is a complete success! (-:

What fun will it be . . .

in the year 2025 when not an errant cassette will be found by an ever so curious toddler?

Recent William Quotes:

Ah, bumul bee . . . mom.

Ah, go ahside . . . mom.

Ah, e-i-e-i-o on tv . . . mom.

Ah, Uh-Oh . . . mom.

Ah, bankie . . . mom.

And on it goes all day long. He always starts with "Ah" and punctuates with . . . "mom" which I'd love to post some audio for, it's VERY cute. But I don't know how, Argghh!

We don't have a pool!

So...a boy's gotta do what a boy's gotta do!

In the midst of running around doing this chore or that (I know you're tempted to believe I was relaxing with my feet up taking in some Montel Williams), anyway...I discovered Ben refreshing himself in the courtyard.

Mornin', Glory!

Thought we'd take a little peak at a few of my favorites in the yard right now.

I especially love these Morning Glories because I had the seeds saved from 2005 when I plucked them off a vine growing around town.  Haven't been successful growing them until this year when I fenced in my raised garden beds.

Ben said he wanted to make a volcano . . .

So we did...

This was the mom version

This was the mom version after chants of

 "more baking soda!" "more baking soda!"

Then I asked myself, "how often do I really use that apple cider vinegar?" and "that baking soda's sure been in the fridge a looong time, so..."

Have at it boys...

Now there's a volcano!

Great idea, Ben.  Good fun!!

Sunday

I LOVE Grilling Pizza

It's my newest summer discovery and I even took the next step tonight of making (thank you wedding present bread machine) my own pizza dough.  I loved the dough recipe, it tasted great and was soooo much easier to work with than store bought prepared dough or store bought boxed dough that I made before.

How nice to have this old dandy around still!

When rolling/patting out the dough I added shredded Parmesan cheese.

Pre saute any assortment of veggies.  Tonight I did garlic cloves, fresh rosemary & thyme, asparagus, yellow squash and...from the garden...(-: spinach, swiss chard and basil.

IT WAS AMAZING!!!

So, put your dough on the grill and cook one side until it's crisp, then flip it and immediately start putting all your fixings on.  One place I read said go pretty light on the sauce and I find that I love to pile my veggies quite high and the cheese takes a while to melt (heat should be on low).

Boy I wish I had a better picture because this tasted soooooo much better than it looks.  But I just wanted to show that even if you pile it high with goodies, the crust is crisp enough that you can handle it well even without silverware.

You HAVE to try grilling pizza this summer!!

Saturday

We were all EXHAUSTED from Friday!!

(-:

Friday

Camping in Canton

We've really enjoyed this family event at Canton's Heritage Park over the last three years that we've gone.  For a meager $10 you can pitch your tent, the kids have games, crafts, bouncy things to amuse them and at dusk they show a kid friendly movie on a gigantic outdoor screen.  It's a hoot because we're literally down the road from a Meijer strip mall and IKEA, camping in a suburban  park!  And, it only took until about 12:05a.m. for William to finally wind himself down from the "sleeping in a tent" excitement!!

I'm getting a little annoyed that I can't get the slide shows right on the site here anymore, might be time to start trolling the wide world of blogs for new ideas.

Ugh, the words are chopped off, no desire to redo this all or figure it out...I'm sure the gist of it all will come across fine! (-:

Waffles & Watermelon

SP's been mighty busy at the office lately (have you seen the market these days?!?!) so dinners sometime get a little lack when he's not expected.  Tonight I found a pretty tasty waffle recipe that I thought might be of some interest.  FYI, it calls for buttermilk but here's a little link to make an easy substitution.  I even doubled the buttermilk recipe (you need to for the single waffle recipe) and it worked perfectly.  This recipe made enough for 8 waffle squares.

Harrison's New Friend, Millie

Harrison is in the unfortunate position of not being able to go to the neighbor boys' house with Ben when they have a babysitter.  So, I do a little extra baseball pitching, chess playing and more during those times.  Sometimes though, I've got other things to do (you think?) and the little guy needs to entertain himself.  Yesterday, he made a new friend...Millie the Millipede!

Getting ready for one of their favorite games together...

Ready Millie?

Wheee, down the tunnel slide you go!  

Millie got to play "tunnel slide" a LOT!!

Then it was time to go race cars together.

Hold on tight, Millie!

And so it goes . . . 

METAL

Two moments from our day that lead me to believe we need a little study time on the topic of "metal."

1.  A child deciding which bat to use during a little driveway baseball today said, "I like to use the metal-wood bat instead of the wood bat." Hmmmmm

2.  While doing some gardening I felt something brushing up against my backside. I looked down to see a metal detector hovering near the area and had to say, "there is NO METAL IN MY BEHIND!!" (-:

You know you're a gardner when . . .

You get a little zing of joy from all the rainy days we've had this year!

My first year of square foot gardening is coming along really well (with the exception of a 3rd grade cabbage-growing project that is greatly exceeding it's expectations and taking up a lOT of room! (-:) and all this rain is doing nothing but helping me out.  To bad my "Before" pic doesn't have little seedlings, let's pretend that's my bed with seeds planted.  One thing I'm loving about Sq Ft Garden is that I really NEVER have to weed!  

My one possibly over ambitious planting is evident on the right side of this pic, creeping up the side of my fencing.  I planted four gigantic (over an inch long and 1/2" wide) pumpkin seeds (2 in one bed and 2 in the other) that I hope will produce at least one pumpkin but who knows where it's gonna go.

Now, head on over to the playlist for a little garden music.  First a nice long one, good for weeding, dusting (oh yeah, I don't do that much), vacuuming (hmmm, not much either), laundry folding (well...I get to eventually)...o.k., good for weeding (I do have a lot of that in the rest of my yard)... and then a golden oldie you may recognize, interpreted two different ways.  

Gardening; a way to help things grow and mature that won't whine, fight or tease!

 (-: 

Couple nice things from the day . . .

1.  Logged on to my library account to find the long missing Mutant Ninja Turtles dvd no longer listed!  Called the library, explained my story of checking it out, never seeing it at the house, renewing it for over a month...and today...it's off my account!  She said someone else must have had it and turned it in.  I'll go with that, no problem! (-:

2.  I showed the kids a newspaper article of Serena & Venus Williams playing each other for the Wimbledon Championships.  After explaining that they're sisters, how strong of players they are and that it's cool they both made it to the top two in the competition, my smart and charming boys didn't miss a beat and said, "well, you must be third mom!"  I'll go with that, no problem! (-:

Can't think of a title, so let's get to it . . .

Checked out the Howell Nature Center today for the first time.  They're listed on the Museum Adventure Pass list I've referenced before (I guess it's a "museum of nature"), though the passes only get you into the Wild Wonders Wildlife Park and that technically has a "suggested donation."  They do have the highest outdoor climbing tower in MI, a 500 ft zip line and a High Ropes Course too but they're open to the public (for a fee) on select days only (and, we discovered, today wasn't one of them!).  Check their site for dates.  We really enjoyed the wildlife park, hiking the rest of the grounds and doing a bit of a Low Ropes Course that we discovered wasn't really open.  Whoops!

Nice hiking trails

Different areas to discover MI wildlife

Good times!

Now we want to build this stuff all over our woods!

AND

Tonight I'll be taking the big two to see "The Wizard of Oz" outside for the final night of Top of the Park.  We like to make at least one of the outdoor movies each year and this was the only one that worked.  Gonna be a looooong night!