garden bounty

We had our first RED tomato this Sunday. Nice fathers day present for the guy who does all the work in the garden.... had a few other things such as lettuce and basil, roses for the table and strawberries. These things melt in your mouth. We only picked about two thirds of the garden...I ran out of room in the collander. YUM!

cornflake cookies

I'm starting a list of all the things I want to do with the kids this summer. I love making cookies with them but I hate getting my kitchen hot. These are super simple no bake "cookies" that the kids can do for the most part - I let them measure the ingredients, I melt them on the stove and then let them stir in the cereal and drop them on the trays. You could probably substitute any favorite cereal or a different flavor 'chip', my husband has a similar recipe from when he was a kid that uses Frito's...


Corn Flake Krispies

1/3 C. creamy peanut butter
1 C. Butterscotch chips
3 C cornflakes

Melt peanut butter and chips in heavy sauce pan. Mix in cornflakes and stir well to coat. Drop onto wax paper. (Ice cream scoop is helpful) Chill until set. Makes about 2 dozen.

The weekend review

Extended family were in town this weekend from neighboring states...a mini family reunion. I love visiting with my aunts and my grandmother came out this time as well. I don't get to see her often. We had four generations all at once. Pretty cool. Paul was so excited during our pregnancy when he found out we were having boys, he was anticipating the day he could hand off this task. He figured when the boys were 10. I thought that was too young. This weekend he convinced the six year old to give it a try. Poor little guy, he is always so willing to help out, he could barley reach, but he gave it a good try and did quite a few paths before he wore out.

All of that was in prep for having friends over for a BBQ and water party. The kids had their pool filled, squirt guns, and water balloons. Weather was perfect and company was great as always!

Summer happenings

The kids are going to have a busy summer. I've never put them in 'organized' events, classes, etc, but they are going to be taking skateboarding, swimming (thanks Dad) and soccer. All S's...
They were super excited about skateboarding. We didn't even have boards. They picked them out last week the day before the first class that was cancelled due to our three inches of snow. BTW the garden looks like it will survive - the trees lost lots of limbs however. Here they are posing, about all they could do that day :) First lesson they learned to fall - good lesson. I think they'll actually benefit a lot from the class and it's fun to watch the more advanced guys out there. Their teacher (never saw him skate) is amazing with kids.


Believe it or not, neither had been on the bike yet. Paul took both of them for their first ride Friday, just around the block. Andrew looks so small, he reminded me of a squashed bug for some reason. Hard to believe he'll be done with kindergarten in two days.


And they both got to go to their first concert this weekend. The World Superbike races were in town and there was a huge out door concert with Kansas, Styx, and Foreigner. They both enjoyed it. They also liked the attention from Pauls friends. No shorty himself, he has two friends that tower at 6'7"... and they both got to view the concert from Adams shoulders. They thought that was pretty cool.

Yesterday we ended the weekend by heading back out to the track to view the races. Pauls friend Ryan (the other 6'7" guy) was in the races and signed photos slicks and the kids got pictures next to his race bike. Nathan also got to experience "drifting" where the sports cars basically burn off as much rubber as possible doing broadies in the parking lot with professional drivers (how do you get a job like that)? Little Andrew was a couple inches too short but we promised him next year he gets to be in the front of the line.

gardening adventures

We got the garden in this weekend.....just in time for it to SNOW! I spent Saturday weeding and planting flowers in the front flower beds and cleaning up the pine needles... Paul tilled the garden. Yesterday Andrew helped me get flowers in the back beds and a few more in the front. Paul got all but three tomatoes, the peppers and eggplants and all the squashy things in. Both days we managed to get done before it began pouring.

This morning I woke up and it was still pouring, but it looked a little thick for rain. I checked the thermometer and it read 37 degrees...it really couldn't possibly be snowing. Could it? I decided I needed to wake Paul up and he got covers draped over the vegetables. Poor flowers have to fend for themselves - hopefully they make it.

I was amazed by the size of the flakes coming down so I snapped this with the cell phone through my windshield (no, I wasn't driving, stopped at a light - see all the cars in front of me through the snow)..

All about Andrew

Andrew has lost another tooth. He was excited for this one. The tooth fairy brings a $2.00 bill for the second tooth. He wiggled it until he made it come out, I asked him to wait, I wasn't ready. I didn't have his tooth pillow ready for the first one - we were camping and I thought I had more time. I begged him to leave it alone, I think it made him work harder at it. I did manage to get the pillow done the night he lost his tooth.

And I saw this cute dirt bike cake in a magazine about a month before his birthday and knew I had to make it for him. Both the kids were excited to see it completed. It was easier than I thought it would be too.

And lastly, his kindergarten program was this last Friday. He was so excited for it, the kids must have worked so hard. He even had a speaking part: "N is for numbers, we know one, two, three". They sang close to ten songs and didn't dances. They even sang one of my favorites, "What a wonderful world", that Paul and I danced to at our wedding. When he was done he turned to me and gave me the thumbs up sign.

biking and more biking

This last week was screen free week at the school (not tv, videos, wii, etc) we managed to make it until Wed before I was asked if they could watch a movie (they asked again today) and what really surprised me, they NEVER asked for their D.S.'s once! I was sure that was going to be the hard one too. It helped a bit that my DH was out of town for four whole days and I couldn't care less about tv. In fact I really enjoyed the project and we did a lot of fun things. We took the marshmallow guns to the part via bikes for a picnic, saw the new penguin exhibit, played a bunch of board games. The kids even liked it so much they've decided we need a screen free day every week. We also found out last weekend that the skate park down the street allows bikes. We might have started a bad thing. We were there two hours last week, and two yesterday. Today I took them on a three hour ride along the Jordan River parkway (our first time and loved it) and once they got home they begged dad to take them to the skate park again (two more hours) and then they rode along the sidewalk when they got home. They have ridden for almost six straight hours today. Any bets on how long they'll sleep tonight???