This and that

This week, much to Grant's delight, we went to his friend, Ethan's, house. Ethan's family recently got 6 chickens and built the best little chicken coop ever. It was just like Hen's house on Little Bear. I didn't get a picture of the coop but I did get Jack and Ethan and one of the chickens.


Jack seemed very comfortable with the chickens because Uncle Roger taught him all about pheasants, so to Jack, chickens and pheasants are one in the same.

I 'made' the boys go ride their bikes this week to run off some energy.










This one was taken right before Grant decided that he hated his scooter and chucked it across the grass:-(


Carrying his helmet???

We also went to our first 'hot dog night' at the pool last night. Jack has taken to dancing while swimming and diving. He draws quite a crowd and a lady from the newspaper took his picture last night for the paper!













And this is what Dylan and I and sometimes Jack have been doing today...all day minus a trip to the scouting store.


Dylan has to take a cubic foot of pipestone wood to camp next week. This is wood about a foot long no smaller than your pinky and no bigger than your thumb with no bark on it! So he soaked it for a few days.


And now we reach our hands in that lovely smelling water and pick out a few sticks and scrap off the bark. It is a lot of work. It's 4:30 and he has to finish filling this box.


I had to take a break, my back and hands are killing me. Dylan is doing pretty good, not complaining too much. Wish him luck!

Happy Monday

What a week

Below you will find a copy of an email I sent to my friend in response to her email
asking how my week was going.

Oh Jen the week I've had. Matt left early Monday morning and as I was packing the rest of us up I walked to the garage and noticed thousands of little seeds all over the carpets, wait those aren't seeds, those are MAGGOTS!!!!!!!! I couId not believe it! It was so gross. I sucked them up in the shop vac and emptied the garage and cleaned the garbage cans and washed and bleached and sprayed whatever chemical I could find and sucked up some more and dumped and gagged and yelled at the kids. Oh, and sweat! His parents came and we set off some bug bombs and left (I was so afraid they would be crawling nside when we got back.)

Onto Tecumseh...trying to chill out. We stayed at Deer Creek state park which is in the middle of nowhere, but it was very nice and we swam and ate dinner and went to see Tecumseh. About midway through the first half, some black clouds appeared, then sprinkles, then terrible thunder and lightening and then the rains, no, floods came. Everybody crammed under the shelter, the power went out and they cancelled the show. We made it back to the lodge after two hours of driving in rain and the worst fog. All we could do was laugh.

We got home Tuesday (no maggots, only a few dead ones) and saw a movie and after I fixed the kids dinner, my sinks and shower backed up, oh yes! I ran to buy draino which wouldn't even go down it just sat and practically made us pass out from the fumes. Plumber came out and snaked the drain Wednesday morning and all was well.

Matt has been gone one week this summer and that's when all the fun stuff happens :-(
He got home last night and of course nothing is crawling around or backed up or broken (except for the kitchen tv which I can't turn on).
I need a drink!

Oh one more thing, we have a party for one of Matt's friends tonight in Mansfield and the power is out in the whole area! I might burst into flames.

Hope to see you next week.

Lori (queen of bad luck)

This heat is good for one thing...

My garden.














And I learned today from a blog that you can shred your zucchini and freeze it! Now I won't waste any zucchini and we can have Dylan's favorite zucchini bread all winter.

Grant's last game (for this season)

Grant had his last game tonight, never mind the 102 degree heat, it's baseball time. Warning : this post contains lots of baseball pictures of a gorgeous young boy who just happens to belong to me :-)






















Excuse this ARM in the picture, she walked RIGHT in front of me. Grant decided to slide head first.











That smile says it all!