Another Week Update

I tried my hand at homemade bagels the other day. They were really good! They aren't fried, the left photo is a molasses/baking soda bath you give them just before baking to achieve the darker color and chewy outside texture. They took a lot of work but it was fun! 

We are back to work on the upstairs. We ordered and already hung another 8 packages of batting (48 pieces total) and we had to order batch because wow, we have a lot of ceiling! Little by little we are making progress!

By 9am it's already quite hot up there! (all the sweat on my face)

The garden has been full of fun surprises and learning. For example: on the Mammoth Sunflower. I never realized the yellow disk flowers mature and fall off and under them are the seeds- yep the ones that you eat! Thus far I've cut off one flower head, the kids helped me brush off the disk flowers. We are drying out the seeds to eat in a few weeks.

I also planted milkweed in an effort to attract monarch butterflies. I haven't seen any yet, but then again, I only have one plant. Next year I plan on doing an entire pollinator garden. But I didn't realize the seed pods from the milkweed pop open with all the fluff/seeds. Which just means I have more seeds to plant milkweed next year! Woohoo!

And it's always fun to watch pollination in action.

In cleaning out the upstairs, we found our Rock Band instruments and the kids have been having a blast. Tyler sat strumming the guitar one morning.

And at night, he dons the sunglasses and moves to the beat of the drums.

Will likes singing with the guitar.

Free Chick-Fil-A day was this week. If you dressed in cow attire, you got a free entree or kids meal. We go every summer.

The whipped cream canister had a minor explosion. Whipped cream went EVERYwhere. It went over all of us and anything near the table. This morning I noticed it on the fan an the northern part of the map.

In these intense heat days of summer it's easy to get bored so we've been trying to come up with different movies for the kids to watch. Amy and I watched Grease 1 and the next day we turned on Grease 2. The opening sequence of Grease 2 is the first day of school and kids dancing and singing. Will saw it and asked if it was the last day of school. I said, No, it was the first day. He said, "Then WHY is everyone dancing and so happy??" hahaha. We had a good laugh.

Another find from the upstairs.... full spider man gear except for the pants that are Star Wars.

The boys love it when Amy plays with them. She's really good at making up games and they will basically do anything she comes up with. They have the best fun. It will be really sad when she decides she's too old to play with them. Hopefully that won't come for awhile, but given that she's 12 1/2 that moment could be coming quickly.

They made a bunch of balloon people. They all have crazy names and they have played with them nonstop. When one person dies (aka the balloon pops) they makes another or mourn for the loss. Or they just make fun of the shriveled face. They have been so funny with these! After 12 yrs of parenting the once piece of advise I would give new parents is to skip the toys and give your kids cardboard boxes, balloons, tape and markers.

Another day they gathered all the stuffed animals and played for hours.

 I am always grateful they have such fun imaginations. Yes, they boys are a little obsessed with playing any type of screen (which we really limit!) but once something else is shown to them (usually by Amy) they jump right in and create all kinds of stories. It's fun to watch.

This Week's Photos By Amy

We recently found Amy's camera and now no one is safe. She loves bringing it to the pool or creating funny pictures of everyone. I even caught her videoing me doing laundry. (She uses a speed up tool that makes everything go really fast and then laughs hysterically at whatever you were doing.) No one is safe with her around!

Tyler is usually her willing participate.

One day they had been outside and Tyler came into my room, dripping of muddy water just staring at me. I like the kids getting dirty, but I prefer it not leaking it all over the carpet. I asked Amy why she wasn't wet and she said, "Well, it was more fun making HIM all wet!" Good grief. But these were the photos from whatever they were doing.

She caught Lee and I napping. 

And then she brought her camera to the pool. We like using it there because it's waterproof. I've decided we really need a GoPro! We have several of the cheaper versions but none of them work very well. So I'm going to have to move that up on the priority list!

Happy Fourth of July 2019

Our usual group of friends wanted to do their own thing so we did our own thing for the 4th.

Amy gave us a brief history lesson

I made red, white and blue striped jello. No one ever eats it, so I'm not sure why I make it. But I think it's fun.

Tyler got into the spirit of things.

I printed off some games (bingo, word search, American history quiz, etc) and we all competed against one another.

We've never done it before but we bought fireworks! (Yes, they are legal in Tennessee.) We had no desire to drive across town to the big show and all that goes with that so we had our own fun. We had no idea what to buy but we chose well as our own fireworks were great!

We set off all the black snakes at once. (Despite their faces, they thought they were cool)

And we have a million sparklers left over from last year. We only used half our stash, so we have 1/2 million left.

We needed glass bottles for the bottle rockets so I had the kids drinking IBC cream soda (couldn't find root bear at the store.) 

And it was finally time to light the good stuff.

 

We call this their Harry Potter shot. It looks like they are all using wands!

I obviously didn't get pictures of all the fireworks. Only so many would show up with my phone camera. But it was a lot of fun and they all declared it the best night ever. I think this will become our new tradition! It's certainly much easier than driving anywhere! I must have been in a good mood as the kids didn't go to bed until 11pm. (Which if you know us, our boys are in bed by 7pm each night!) We didn't even eat a "dinner" until 9:30! haha. I guess the 4th brings out the best in me. haha. Everyone slept in this morning though, which was nice!

It was a good day.