Cooking with Kade

Last weekend Kade decided to cook a corn dog for himself and his friend.  He put them in the microwave and turned it on.  After awhile I could start to smell the corn dog so I asked him how long he put it in for.  I thought he said three minutes.  I told him to go check them.  He went into the kitchen but he didn't really check the corn dogs because he was engrossed in his video game.  I walk into the kitchen a few minutes later to smoke billowing out of the microwave and Kade standing in the middle of the kitchen playing his game - totally oblivious.  The whole house was smoky (none of my smoke alarms went off.  Makes you feel real safe if there ever was a real fire).  There was still twenty minutes left on the timer.  I asked him again how long he had set the timer for.  He said thirty minutes.  Thirty minutes!  Holy cow.  Those corn dogs had been cooking for ten minutes.  I opened all the windows in the house and the doors to air it out.  My house has smelled awful for a week.  I've done everything I could find online to get rid of the horrendous smell.  It is now just a faint burnt popcorn smell.  The corn dogs were petrified.  Kade tried pulling the corn dog off the plate and the stick just snapped off.  We had to wait awhile for the plates to cool down enough to remove the corn dogs.  I'm surprised these babies didn't explode in the microwave. We fed the missionaries the next day.  I'm sure they were dying.

1st Day of School

I can't believe that school has begun already.  Seems like we were just starting out our summer.  I had a long to-do list that is still almost as long.  I guess it's now my fall list.  Not sure if the kids were all that excited to be getting up early and being on a schedule again, but I'm ready for more structure.

Lots of firsts this year.  Jack is a freshman so new school.  He also started early morning seminary.  Tom drops him off and then I pick up.  All the kids have to be ready and out the door at seven a.m. to pick up Jack so it's an early morning for everyone.  Josh is going into 6th grade.  Junior high.  He got the science teacher who is a member of our ward.  He was excited about that.  Kade is in 4th grade.  He was pretty upset that none of his friends are in his class this year.  I told him that he would make new friends and he could still play with his old friends on the playground.  He didn't care for my advice.  He met his new teacher with a big old pouty face and tears just under the surface.

 After watching her brothers go to school all these years, it's now Grace's turn.  She is now officially in preschool.  She is very excited to be going to school.  It was hard to find a part-time program here but I finally found one.  She gets to go twice a week.  She asks everyday if it is her day for school.  She goes into class without a backwards glance.  When I picked her up on the first day the first comment she made to me when I asked her how it went was to tell me that they made her go to bed.  She hasn't napped in years so I think it's funny she has to nap at school.  She loves her backpack and her lunch.  She is definitely independent.  No weeping and wailing and clutching to my leg for this child.

Kade's Birthday

We had Kade's birthday party this summer.  I am now two parties for two kids.  My goal this year was to have a party for each of my kids.  Two more to go.  We'll see if I make it.  

We combined Kade's party with his friend whose birthday is just two days before Kade.  His friend, Ethan, is really into Angry Birds so they had an angry birds party.  Here are their cakes. My friend, Mary, made them.  They are so cute.  She gave them each slingshots to knock over their cakes.  It was fun for the boys.

 Ethan wanted a chocolate bar as well.  Yummy.

 They played outside on the trampoline and in the water.  They loved the water balloons.  We had a water balloon launcher.  They woould stand at one end of the yard and fling the balloons.  They would go over our fence and into the neighbor's yard.  Pretty cool.  When the balloons were all gone, they started launching watermelon slices until I noticed and made them stop.

 Here is Kade knocking down his cake.

 We also had a pinata.  I missed Kade taking a swing at here but here is Grace.

It was such a fun party.  It was also so easy when your friend plans everything.  I wish they were all so easy.

The Girls

Just some random shots of the girls.  Here we are at Jack's baseball tournament.  

 Megan and Grace both liked the sunglasses.

 Megan loves to climb into anything these days.  She even tries squeezing herself into Grace's little potty in the bathroom.  She can only ever get one foot in but that doesn't stop her from trying.  I had the laundry basket out the other day so of course she got right in.  Kade was giving her rides across the wood floors.  Not so good for floors but lots of fun for Megan.

Cub Scout Day Camp

Kade attended cub scout day camp again this year and had a blast.  They had bebe guns, archery, slingshots, fishing, wood crafts, games...  

 Here is Kade with two other boys from our ward.

 Scout Camp

This was Josh's first year at scout camp.  He loved it as well.  Jack had football that week so he didn't think he would be able to go but he ended up not having football practice on Thursday or Friday so Tom drove home and picked him up Wednesday afternoon so that Jack could go to camp for a few days.  It was several hours of driving each way.  What a good dad.

 Josh and Tom did the mile swim. A few of Josh's buddies started out the week doing the mile swim but each day the laps increase so by the last day, only Tom and Josh were swimming the mile.  There were lots of other water activities.

 Josh did water safety or survival ( I can't remember what it's called).  He got to go in the water in his clothes and use his jeans as a flotation device.  No pics of that.

 Swamping canoes is always fun.   I know he also took astronomy.

 Here is Jack climbing the rock wall.  Josh did it earlier in the week in the dark.  Tom didn't have the camera for that one.

 Here are the cute boys from our ward.  Not a huge group, but they all had fun.  The boy standing to the right of Jack while looking at the picture is Jack's friend, Ben.  They are only a month apart in age.  Jack is like a head taller than him.  Josh is on the end.  Jack and Josh used to be a lot closer in size.  I'm sure Josh's growth spurt will happen in about another year.  My guess is that he will be taller than Jack. We'll see.

Jack also went on a 50 mile canoe trip on the Buffalo River but I don't have pictures of that.  Our summer has been so busy.  We had football practice every morning, swim team practice, swim lessons for Grace at a different time, and baseball in the evenings.  I spent my whole summer in my car.  I am glad that school has started and we will have a little more relaxed schedule.

Our Garden

 Last year our garden was a complete flop.  We planted it then I had a baby.  I left the boys in charge of the garden and it didn't go so well.  We had really pretty zucchini and squash until we had a squash bug infestation.  When I finally made my way out to the garden and saw all those thousands (yes, thousands) of bugs, I asked the boys about them.  They told me they were killing them.  When asked how, they said they were drowning them.  Well, they obviously don't drown.  Nothing did well.  We didn't even get a single tomato.  We tried a garden again this year.  Here is Megan eating our first tomato.  She loved it.

Our garden is just mediocre this year.  We have tomatoes this year.  We planted watermelons that were doing great and then they just stopped.  We have a cantaloupe plant that just sprung up.  We ate a cantaloupe from our garden last night.  It was yummy.  That is about the extent of our garden.  Maybe next year will be better.