Saturdays and S'mores

Someone get me an almanac, because I believe today was the longest Saturday on record. We crammed a lot of stuff into one day - even though we spent most of it at home. Much of it I shall not write about since it involves a mother's day surprise.

This morning we had our Wii party - a monthly ritual at our house. The highlight of my entire week came as I was tucking Maysen into the big cushy recliner with a giant pink, boofy blanket and positioning her perfectly centered in front of the giant 8 foot movie screen which glowed with Mario Kart goodness: she looked at me and said "Dad, I love you....you are so cool." It was exactly what I needed after being both mom and dad for the week.

Tonight we roasted marshmellows and made s'mores and hot chocolate out on the deck.

For those that are curious, this is what a perfectly put together s'more looks like as it's being gently squeezed so that the chocolate and marshmellow blend together in melted naughtiness.

Stockton's not much for a marshmellow roast, but he humored me with the occasional visit to the fire and a quick pose for the camera.

Marshmellow roasting is of course the highest expression of the outdoor cooking art form.

I planned to throw a steak on for dinner as well, but couldn't wait and had one for lunch with corn on the cob and a big mug of root beer.

Maysen doesn't mess around when it comes to marshmellow roasting. She is deadly serious about her craft.

Everyone knows that smoke follows beauty

Stockton and I ran down earlier in the day to Men's Wearhouse to pick up my suit and try on Stockton's Tux jacket for John and Cassie's wedding. I had taken my suit in for the "free" alterations since I have lost 30 pounds since I bought it.

Stockton wasn't very excited about going to the suit store, but he really seemed to enjoy trying on the jacket and checking himself out in front of the mirror. He could use a haircut though.

Jorja, Maysen, Preston and I spent an hour outside today hunting more worms for their garden. Those girls like it so much that I think we're going to build a worm composter and let them hunt worms for one of their chores.

And now, with the kids finally asleep, we have reached the part of the evening where Mike rushes off to embark on a cleaning marathon since his wife will be home in less than 10 hours.....

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!

AFV

Each Sunday, our kids enjoy watching America's Funniest Home Videos together as a family. Amazing that nineteen years after that show first aired it's still funny to watch a guy getting whacked in the crotch.



Stockton has been begging me to film him doing "crazy stuff" that we can upload to the AFV Web site and hopefully be picked for the show. Here are some of his attempts today...

Pinewood Derby Car Stands

Jorja was so excited about her derby car the other day and couldn't wait to make a stand for it so she could display it proudly. She helped me find plans for making a stand online.

I cut the boards but she had fun sanding, drilling and screwing it together.

Next week she wants to paint the stand a nice shiny blue.

Slot Cars

A couple of years ago, Santa Claus brought the kids a slot car set for Christmas. At the time, they were a little young to appreciate it, but they have recently rediscovered it.

Stockton, Preston and I spent some time together building some pretty cool tracks and racing slot cars. Preston was pretty cute racing, watching, and being an obstacle for the cars.

One of these days we might try to hook up some proximity sensors above the lanes and program a microcontroller to count the laps and lap times for the cars, showing them on a little LCD screen. That would be a pretty cool project, and I should have all the parts we'd need...

Super Blooper

Stockton's cub scout pack had their pinewood derby today. I was proud of Stockton, Jorja and Maysen for working hard on their cars this week!

After the derby, we raced all our family's cars on the track. Out of our group, Jorja's Super Blooper car was the fastest...



It was fun watching Stockton's races during the derby. He did pretty well and made it to the semi-finals. Here is his car racing against the Mach 4 car from Speed Racer and Sponge Bob Square Pants' boat...



Way to go Stockton!

Pretty nice looking car, Stockton... Jorja wants to make a stand like this next week for her car.

My batmobile did pretty well. It looked good, but I was too chicken to fire off the rocket motor with all the people away. We wouldn't want anyone getting hurt....

Derby Days

Each night this week the kids and I worked on our pinewood derby cars. Tomorrow is the big day!

Jorja did a great job polishing her axles today. She was so cute working the drill press.

Here are some more pictures from the week of sanding and painting...

Here are the finished cars. Maysen's is the burgundy one, mine is the batmobile, Jorja's is the white Super Blooper and Stockton's is the red one with flames.

OK, I'll admit that the batmobile does have a few tricks up it's sleeves. Besides the working headlights and tail lights, it also has a remotely controlled rocket motor hiding in the back.



I made a similar rocket car a couple of years ago. It took off like mad and smashed into the cinderblock wall of the church. I'm not sure if I'll really fire this one off or not - I'd hate to see if smashed into bits, but we'll see...