One McCoraline, hold the meatballs, please...

Jorja wanted to see Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs today, so after the kids came home from school I took the girls to the theater. I was proud of my perfect theater timing - not too early, but early enough to beat the huge line that formed after we got there.

Things were great until I got to the front of the line and asked for tickets. "Sorry, we're not showing that movie today due to technical difficulties." What? That's a new one for me. I asked when they would be showing it, and was told that they might get a digital protector tomorrow to be able to show it. Hmmm.

So, Maysen and I led a sad Jorja across the street to McDonalds to get ice cream. They decided that the trip wasn't a complete waste. Jorja got a big vanilla cone and Maysen and I split a mint Oreo McFlurry.

On the way home, we stopped at the WalMart parking lot for a visit to the RedBox. We were glad to see that they had Coraline, which we'd been wanting to see for a while.

Pretty groovy show! Freaky groovy. Plus, it was only a dollar. Too bad it wasn't Monday or we could have used a free Monday code. (Did I mention I like free stuff?) It was better watching a flick in our basement theater anyway. Where else can your two year old dump out bags of popcorn and jump on a big air mattress during a show. Guess I'll be cleaning that up tomorrow...

Raingutter Gardening

Steph is out of town in Utah this week for her brother's wedding, so it's been just me and the kids.

Today we made a raingutter garden. We had tried making a garden in the yard a couple of years ago, but as hot and miserable as it gets here, it was hard to get out and go all the way down to take a look how things were going.

So this time, I bought a $5 raingutter and some mounting brackets and screwed the gutter to the bottom of the railing on one side of the deck.


The girls took turns hauling buckets of our nice, dark dirt we had mixed up for the last garden and filled the gutter. They had an absolute blast!

We divided the garden mostly between Maysen and Jorja, though I have a small area on each of the two ends. If we get anything to grow, we may add a few more gutters along the other edges of the deck and add a second row near the tops of the railings. We decided to start with the gutter down low so that peas and things can climb up the rails. We can easily attach some kind of climbing net for them there if we need to.



This setup should work out nicely for us, since the garden will be visible from the main living area and it will be easy for the girls to go out to work without having to trudge all the way out and down into the yard.

Jorja went to the store with me to get seeds. She happily planted flowers and peas in her areas, and let me put carrots, and radishes next to her. Maysen planted flowers and strawberries. We really wanted to find some strawberry plants, but there was none to be seen. So, we bought a carton of strawberries from the grocery store and buried about 6 of those. We have no idea if those will actually grow, but it's worth a try.

(Perhaps my lovely wife could figure out a way to bring/send some strawberry starts from Utah? I bet she could weasel some from my brother's yard. Hmm.....)

Maysen let me plant tomatoes and peppers in my area next to hers.

When the seeds were planted, Maysen and Jorja went on a great worm hunt. I don't know how they found so many, but apparently they are good at finding them in the back yard under the leaves. They put 25 or 30 of them into the garden to help take care of it.

Each of them had their favorite worms...but I don't seem to recall what they named them at the moment.

It was very cute to watch them working together, sifting through the dirt to find their new worm friends and placing them carefully in their new homes.

I believe Jorja is holding "lightning" in this picture....

So one might ask what Preston was doing during all this time. I believe I'll let the pictures do the talking...

About this time we headed in for the tub.... (after getting mud out of Preston's mouth)

In case you can't read Preston's shirt, it says: "Mischief is my business, and business is GOOD!". How fitting!

Cat in the Hat Hats

Jorja told me that she wanted to make Dr. Seuss hats today. We did a quick search and found some good instructions here. They say to use construction paper, but we didn't have any that would fit around our heads, so we opted for postboard. It's stronger anyway.




One of the things I love about Jorja is that she is always thinking of other people, and about kind things she can do for others. She wanted to make hats for both her teachers, herself, and a friend. (Actually, she wanted to make them for everyone in her class, but making 20 or so of these is more than I was willing to take on).

Stockton saw the hats and wanted one, so Jorja said he could have the one she made for her friend. She is so nice!

We used the left over scraps to make some cute cat-in-the-hat bowties to go with them.

I love how Jorja comes up with these fun ideas!

It's almost Derby season...

At Stockton's pack meeting tonight they announced that Pinewood Derby season is almost upon us once more. I'm excited because Maysen, Stockton and Jorja all wanted cars. Hmmm...let's see....I have no job and have a basement full of power tools. What could be better?




The last time I made a derby car for myself was for a no-rules adult derby a couple years back. I made a rocket powered car that was pretty sweet. You can check it out here.



The kids want to go with the Mario Kart theme this year. Here are some pictures that might give us some inspiration. I like the look of Mario's car below...


Stockton might go for the cheap-cheap chaser....



And I believe Jorja wants to make a Super Blooper...






In related news, Jorja and I played Mario Kart Wii again for Time With Dad today. That's Jorja on the top half of the screen playing as Yoshi in a Super Blooper. I'm Luigi on the bottom screen. I am trying to learn how to use the manual drift/turbo controls rather than the automatic, because learning them may be my one and only chance at beating Stockton. As a result, I played worse than ever, but Jorja was especially proud of this race.



WARNING: If you play this video, turn the sound down because it recorded VERY LOUDLY.



Nice job Porge!

A Toast to Great Art

Stephanie found a recipe online for painted toast and Jorja was happy to give it a try.

Basically, you mix about 1 TBSP of milk with a few drops of few coloring and then you can paint a piece of bread with a clean paintbrush or some Q-Tips. When you're done, pop them in the toaster and out pops some edible art. Jorja made these pieces of Mario and Luigi toast.

With this project we finally found a good use for Stephanie's few remaining shot glasses. We threw most of her collection out a few months ago, and now I wish we had kept a few more.

Pretty soon Stockton and Maysen decided to give it a try...

...and eventually everybody was getting into the act.

Stockton was quite pleased with his creation.

Maysen gave a thumbs up after eating her tasty Yoshi toast.

Paper Plate Snowmen and Homemade Play-doh

Jorja and I made homemade Play-Doh today. Here is the recipie we used. It worked pretty well:

• 3cups flour
• 1/3 cup salt
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 cup water
• 7 drops food coloring

Mix dry ingredients with oil. Add food coloring to water and mix
together. Add water to flour/salt/oil mixture slowly~about 1/4 cup
at a time and mix together with a spoon. Once you've added all the water,
knead the dough with your hands.

Jorja enjoyed making big cut out necklaces for her teachers out of it. We'll see if it hardens in a few days.

Afterwards she made this paper plate snowman all by herself. The broom is a pocket and there are two candy canes in it. She wants to give this to her teacher as well.

Butterfiles from Bottles

Jorja and I made butterflies out of an old 2-liter bottle today. We found the instructions on how to do it here:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Bottle_Butterflies/

If there's one thing Jorja likes to do, it's painting!

She is quite handy with a pair of scissors!

Jorja made the big blue butterfly and I made the smaller orange and brown one. We still need to make the bodies--so far we have only made the wings. Next time I make a run by the craft store I'll need to pick up some polymer clay so we can finish these off.

Sugar Cookies with the Porge

Jorja chose to make sugar cookies today. She sure does love that new arpon and chef hat!