13

Happy 13th Birthday Samuel!
I'm hoping teenagers are like babies for me.  I'm not really good with babies in general, but did fine with my own.  Also not good with teenagers in general but maybe will do okay with mine?
Anyway we celebrated by going to the State Fair and then having Chinese buffet for dinner.  We'll celebrate some more this weekend.

We love you Samuel, enjoy your teenage years!  (And be easy on your parents, okay?)

Packing the Freezer

When I was younger and reading books like Little House on the Prairie, I thought I would have made a great pioneer.  Now I know I would have died.  But I've felt pioneer-y lately, and very thankful for freezers!

Yesterday I made these 

 Into this

Thanks for the tomatoes Steve and Raleen!

I dried our garden's haul of cherry tomatoes too.

There's plenty more coming, I'll have to dry more next week.

I love these for putting on lettuce salad and in homemade bread!

They'd probably be great in pasta too but I haven't tried that yet.

A few weeks ago we picked 16 dozen ears of corn from Julia's friend Maddie's grandpa's (did you follow that?) huge garden of sweet corn.  It made 40 quart bags of corn for the freezer.  We'd picked 7 dozen from him the week before too so we have a bag of corn for every week for a year!

Before school started I tried freezer breakfast sandwiches and burritos for the first time.  They've been a hit.  Three weeks into the school year they're almost gone.  I'll have to make them again!

 The lady is brilliant, she cooks a dozen eggs on a cookie sheet and then cuts them into circles with a cup.  I got 16 sandwiches out of it.  The extra pieces go into the burritos.  I did another dozen scrambled eggs with a pound of sausage so that I'd have more burritos, 40 total. After all, I'm feeding 5 kids, a dozen eggs doesn't go far....  And overall they're pretty cheap to make too!

The freezer is FULL!

State Fair

 We ventured out to the State Fair to see Samuel's and Thomas's robots and enjoy the festivities.

Thomas was thrilled with his purple.

 Samuel was happy with the blue he got on this kit label robot.  (It's the red one to his right.)

He also entered a Lego robot which got a purple!  The picture has too many last names to blot out.

 Here's more of the excitement!  

We made out like bandits this year!  All five kids got in free with tickets from the summer reading prize package.  We also used free scoops of ice cream and free 20 oz drinks coupons from the packet.  The three littles enjoyed free ride tickets and got to choose two rides because the big boys were too big to use their tickets and a random person gave us an extra ticket they didn't want.  We packed our lunch and then ate out for dinner because it was Samuel's birthday.   It was a good family adventure!

Daddy Project

Jeremy found this Power Wheels Hummer for $30 on a buy-sell-trade site.  Of course it wasn't running....I didn't ask how much money it took to get it running but the little boys are very excited Daddy fixed it!

 Uh-oh, pit stop.

 Jeremy is just as excited as Nicholas. :)

Thanks Daddy!

Honeymoon

If only homework would look like this all year!

Also I'm super excited about my new homework dresser.  Each kid has a drawer for their things and the extra has school supplies.  On top the box is for homework that has been turned in and sent home (hoping to replace that with something cuter soon...) and the file thing is for papers I need to read or sign.  It's so much better than the tiny table we were using!

No, I Don't Think So

Nicholas and I were spending some time at the park today after running errands when he started taking off his shirt.
M:  What are you doing, why are you taking off your shirt?
N:  This a Ninja Warrior park.  My need take off my shirt.
(One of the few drawbacks of American Ninja Warrior is that the male competitors often compete with no shirt so they don't slip off obstacles as easily and/or because they're showing off.)
M: No, you can't take your shirt off at the park, it's against the rules.
N:  There a sign that say that?  My don't see a sign!
M:(thinking) nope, no sign, just social norms kid.

And for the record I did convince him to leave his shirt on despite the lack of signage.

We didn't leave his hair like this.  :)

Patron Saints

I hadn't updated my collage of patron saints in a LONG time.  There were lots to add!