Logan's First Scout Camp out!

Logan and his Dad went on Logan's first 11 yr old scout camp out.

They didn't go too far, just down to Given's Hot Springs. Logan was so very excited.

Welcome to Fall holiday decorations!

I have been inspired by other bloggers, Angie, to get my holiday decorations out.
I HAD to go buy another door mat to match the holiday too, thanks Penny!

If You Give A Baby a Tomato....

She just might eat it.....and wear it too.I had Emily sitting on the counter next to me while I was washing her bottles.
Right there next to her was a pile of tomatos from our tomato patch.
She was reaching, trying to get a tomato so I handed her one.
She couldn't have been more delighted!She proceeded to eat that tomato and enjoy every bite!
She ate about 3/4ths of the tomato before she was done.Then she was off to a bath!

Have you done a Wordle?

You have to go to this cool site called Wordle!

You enter your text, any text that you want and it will generate these cool word clouds. The more you use a particular word, the bigger it gets in your word cloud. You can string words together for phrases you want kept together by using the tilde ~ between the words. You can choose the layout, the colors, the fonts! It is too much fun!

Peaches...

A friend brought us a box of peaches from her aunt's house and so I bottled them up! I was able to get 17 quarts done this afternoon. I had estimated the number of bottles based on the box and I guessed correctly. I only had one peach left over, which I happily ate! Mmmm.....
What a beautiful site! Canning is a lot of work but it is rewarding in the end and every time you open a bottle. I have slacked off of canning since we added 3 kids to our family in 2000. I have a propane cook stove that I usually do my canning on, outside. I have all of the tools for canning; steam canner, pressure canner, waterbath pan, etc. And I have 4 large dish-pack boxes full of jars, hundreds of jars - no exaggeration! And more jars on the pantry shelves in the garage.

When Katie walked by and asked "What are you doing?" I realized we need to do more canning. Canning isn't always cheaper unless you grow your own veggies/fruit, or you get it for free! I can get a big can of peaches at Sam's Club for a little less than $4. That can will feed our family for 2 or 3 times at dinner or breakfast.

Logan receives his Arrow of Light

Logan moved from Cub Scouts to 11 yr old Boy Scouts at the beginning of this month. Before moving on he had completed his Arrow of Light, the only badge that moves with him from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts. Now I have two boys working on merit badges! Fun!

Another great give-away to enter....

Angie over at Leaping Thru Life, has a magazine give-away. There is quite a list to choose from. So I am going to enter, although I never win anything.....wait a minute....I did win something recently.

I went to the fair and ate my favorite fair food, listened to some of my favorite 80's music, and entered to win a new windshield for my van. I folded and wadded my entry and dropped it into the box thinking all it would get me was a sales call. Ok, whatever. Now, my van really needed a new windshield, badly too! It had a crack that went side to side, left to right, in the center of the windshield. Then it had another crack from the center top, down to the other crack that was left to right. Get the picture, very, very, cracked! Due to a recent downturn as a result of HP's layoffs, a new windshield has been on the bottom of the priorities. Well, one day I get a call from Cascade Auto Glass and I had WON! I won a new windshield for my van, no strings attached, no hidden fees, etc. They came to my driveway and installed the new windshield! Yeah, I am not always a loser! I am now a winner!

Cute, Cute, bags!

Just Another Hang Up
In my morning surfing session I found this great blog with really cute bags! She has a giveaway this month of a darling bag. She has a few tutorials/patterns on her sidebar too! Cute stuff!

Too cute!

I started these jammies a couple months ago. They sat on my desk for the last couple of months. I thought I still had some little thing to finish on them. I worked my way through my mending pile and came to this project. They were all done! I didn't need to finish anything! Now that summer is over she doesn't need capri jammie pants!

Emily is pulling herself up on anything she can grip on! Can you tell how happy that makes her?

Cute kids

Katie is trying to grow out her bangs and it is driving me crazy! I like it kept out of her face and so I am always bugging her to put her bangs back in someway. She does really well curling her hair and fixing it to look nice! She is so cute! And look at these two. Emily already loves the camera!

Loving the watermelon

The kids were all too excited to take the watermelon rinds and a spoon after all the watermelon had been carved out and put into a bowl to have with dinner. You would have thought we gave them all super-sized candy bars!

Hooray, I have hair...

Emily finally has enough hair that her sisters can give her a nice mowhawk! Well, Emily seemed pleased about it!

Emily goes to school

Teacher, I have a question.....
Before school had started I had to stop by school for a project I was working on and had Emily and Carson with me. Carson set Emily at a desk in the classroom and she sat up and put her hand up! It was the cutest thing!

Dear Tooth Fairy...

I found this piece of paper in my dresser drawer recently.

The date on the inside the paper is November 2004.

Discounts...

Here's a fun site I just stumbled upon,
PeachyCheap .
They offer 1 scrapbooking item daily at a discount.

Another place like this is
Woot
One Day, One Deal is their thing. Great items at great discounts.
You have to check back daily as they post a new item at 11:59pm central time each night.
The variety ranges from toys to computers (or is that the same thing for some?) and other electronics too. I have bought walkie talkies, mp3 players, etc.
They have some funny writers on their blog. The product information is never just posted. They make some entertainment out of it, depending upon your own sense of humor!

Blogging & Baking Don't Mix

I have had this photo sitting in my Blog Photos file for a little while now. A little history. Steve bought this great K-Tek mixer and the wheat grinder for me for Christmas when we had been married for about 1 or 2 years, almost 20 years ago. They both have worked very well with no issues for all of this time. My mixer can mix 4 loaves of bread at a time! It is great!

Onto to my post. I am always multi-tasking! I clean starting in one room and end up cleaning another as I put things away from the first room. Well I had just finished mixing the bread and was needing to put some things away while I just let the bread rest a minute before shaping my loaves. I had to go up to the office to put things away and there sat my computer begging for a blog. I could not disappoint and I blogged. Oh, no.....bread!

I ran downstairs to find the bread trying to make it's way out of the bowl, hoping to find the bread pans and the oven!

I have learned that Blogging and baking just don't mix for me! So to speak!

Another plug for my great K-Tek mixer: The bread kneads enough dough for 4 loaves of bread for 10 minutes after the initial mixing of ingredients and then I just shape my loaves, raise for 20 min and then bake! Voila! I have tried to do this in my KitchenAid and it just can't quite handle 4 loaves at a time for 10 minutes of kneading. This is not a paid advertisement! You will have to find your own link!

13:49.....

Logan ran in his first cross-country meet today. Logan decided he wanted to try Cross-Country this year since this is the first year, as a 6th grader, he can be on the team.



He has wanted to quit, but we have tried to encourage him to stick it out, it will get easier. It was around 80 today when they were running at 4pm. They had to run 1.5 miles and Logan's time was 13:49. Not bad for a first race! We were all excited for him!

I wore sunglasses so no one would see my ball-baby face! Although Katie seemed to catch on that I had tears, but wisely she said nothing! We were so proud of him! I could see him run a little taller when he saw us on the side-lines.

Way to go Logan! Keep on running!

Kristina's Presentation in 5th grade

Kristina's 5th grade class starts the year by doing presentations on how they are an Influential American. They then move on to study some of the influential people in American history. So this is my 3rd child with this teacher and so she always counts on one of my kids starting the year with their presentation since we have been through this before. Honestly, I am glad to get it out of the way too!

Kristina did a great job. She told about how she came from an orphanage in Kazakhstan and now she is in America with more opportunities. She talked about how church and grandparents have an influence in her life. She even said that she wants to be a mom and a teacher in the future to be able to influence others. We took one of the nesting dolls, or Matryoshka dolls that I bought in Moscow, Russia. Kristina also brought a necklace that she made with Grandma Lockhart and a wooden boat from the Tall Ships we saw with Papa Jack and MaNette.

Happy Birthday Logan!

Logan just turned 11 on Monday! Time sure seems to go by faster and faster! I remember when he started walking, and he was born talking! I remember him dressing himself before he was even two years old! He is a sweet, tender-hearted boy! We love him!
Logan wanted to a have a few friends over for a small party. He wanted to play video games and so we limitedthe number of friends to the number of controllers for the game system. We had his family party the week before when the Murphy grandparents were passing through town.

I don't usually do friend b-day parties. I have limited it to when you turn 12 and we'll go from there maybe to 16. After Logan's birthday the 1st of September, I have 4 birthdays now, all a week apart starting in October and ending on or near Thanksgiving on 11/24. Since we are not independently wealthy and Christmas follows so soon after the last birthday in November, we limit the party to family only.

Logan doesn't like most baked sweets. So the birthday cake is not really for him, it is for the rest of us! At Sam's Club I found the coolest cake, it was two huge cookies with frosting in the middle, a cookie cake. It was huge too, what you see above is 1/2 of the cookie! The chocolate chip cookies were really good too.

Summer's over ...School begins!

As the school bus pulls away with the last group of my kids I realize summer is over! It could be the colder mornings, the pool without kids in it all day, the quiet house, or the backpacks filled and ready to go, fall is coming and the kids are finally back to school! Our summer vacation came to a close a week later than the schools around us, due to construction. We have had a great summer. But the last week while everyone else in the area was going back to school, I was starting to lose my mind! And I think the kids had finally had enough of summer too. It has been a bit of a transition though.

Logan's 1st day of Middle School

No more running to a friends house for the day or playing out in the neighborhood. It is back to the books for these kids! Oh yeah, regular bedtime, EVERY night! Yeah! (did I say that out loud?) Every summer gets a little easier as the crew kids a little older. I can take everyone shopping with me and only 1 child in the cart. Now do I take everyone shopping with me? Only when it is unavoidable. This year we have two in Middle School and 3 in grade school. So the years of split schedules begins! In just two years they will all be on the same schedule again and all in Middle School or High School. This year we have 7th grade, 6th grade, 5th grade, and two in 4th grade. When Emily finally starts school, Katie and Carson will be in 10th grade! Potty training and Driver's training, Kindergarten and High School. So much fun ahead, really!

Summer's Last Adventure....

After getting the chores done around the house we packed up a picnic dinner and headed out to Eagle Island State Park. We have gone to this park for years and love it. It is close to home and is just a beautiful park.The waterslide is great fun too!You can buy 10 rides for$5 or unlimited rides for$10. The tickets don't expire and we had saved the tickets from last year so the kids got a few rides a piece, which was plenty as it wasn't all that hot! Then they were off to the lake to swim some more.After grabbing some towels we were off to do some geocaching. The kids love the treasure hunt! Eagle Island has 14 caches and we found a good one.
Every cache is different. Some just have a log book that you sign. Others have stuff to trade. This cache was full of kid-friendly stuff to trade but we didn't bring our trading stuff with us so we just signed the book and re-hid the cache.The walk around the lake was beautiful. We have been to this park for many years like I mentioned in the beginning, but we have never walked around the lake! It is a nice walk, even with a stroller on dirt paths. The scenery is just gorgeous and the surroundings quite peaceful too.