Rocked these Ribs

Making Banilla Ice Cream

This is pretty self explanatory.

Clean House

Poor Mark, Fred with a dot on his head, and Simon were living in a pretty dingy pond.  I apparently do not have the right mix of plants, animals and light to keep the algae down and it was getting out of control.  I bought a small filter and pump online to try to help out with the house keeping.  I wish I could buy a filter to keep up with my house keeping.  I should look into that. 

I put the plants in one container and the fish and snail went into the white one while we cleaned things up a bit.  Baylor loved dumping the water over the railing onto the gardens below.  He liked me catching the fish in one of his nets but I hope he does not get any crazy ideas later about catching the fish.   I put in the pump and rebuilt their cave, installed the plants and filled up the pond.  I rather unceremoniously dumped the fish into the new pond freshly filled with well water.  It gets really cold fresh from the well.  They survived and are doing well. 

There are fish in there.  The water was pretty dirty.

 

My camera battery was low and I was only able to take the one photo until it quit and I had to get the old camera.  Baylor took some photos with the camera that Lori messes up when she uses it. Don't you think he does better with the camera than Momma? 

I am dreaming of shelving

and an organized craft room. 

Remember we went to IKEA a few weekends ago?  One of the reasons for the trip was to find some storage solutions for my new craft room.  I decided on a cube shelf after seeing one in a craft room on another blog.  It came in four long boxes. Normally I put together the stuff we bring home from IKEA but this time I knew I needed help.  I love Lori to death but her ability to put things like this together is about equal to her photographic ability.  I also knew I would need someone fairly strong to help me move it.  I think men have two uses and one is heavy lifting so I called Dad to see if he would come help. 

Baylor of course wanted to help and brought out his tools.  Being his mom I am much more patient with him helping that Dad is and it did cause some issues with my less than patient dad.  I hate being in the middle but I am mom first now, a daughter second and I worked around him instead of trying to get him out of the way and causing crying. 

Here is the finished unit on the floor.  I won't get into the details of all that happened in the middle but there was a lot of heavy lifting and some swearing on all sides. 

It was easier to stand up than we were expecting.  I was done with it and did not start unpacking anything yet.  Baylor was not done leveling and marking.  I put together the white chairs too that we had picked up at IKEA.  He helped me hammer and screw them together.  He is really quite interested in helping and these are memories I will treasure when I cannot get him to be in the same room with me in a few years. 

After the shelving project, Dad needed another project so he mowed the grass.  Of course it was a bit hot and he took a dip in the pool with Baylor. 

Replacement knees and all he even got down for a sit in the pool. 

They squirted each other, splashed and 'swam' until Baylor turned blue!  I have not seen my dad laugh so much in a long time either.  It was good to watch them interact and have a good time together. 

A Visit with the McGraws

And I don't mean Dr. Phil and family.  We try to get together with Julie, Amy and Cullen as often as possible.  We seem to mesh well together and it is always a great time when we are with each other.  Julie and I often text and Baylor seems to think she is the only one worth texting.  He will find my phone and when I ask him what he is doing he will answer, 'texting Julie".  He has sent out a few bizarre texts to people I know and to numbers I am not sure where they went!   I try to follow up with my friends to let them know who was saying hi.  You can see by the date stamp they were at our house on June 23.  I know the date stamps are a bit tacky but I am a bit neurotic about my photos being filed correctly by date and in albums in the correct order.  My old camera did a great job of downloading the photos in dated files but the cannon does no such thing.  All new photos are dumped into one folder and I don't know when it was taken.  So I put on the date stamp.  I am sure there is probably some setting I can change on the download program but I am not smart enough to figure it out.  In the mean time, I will have to put up with the date stamp. 

The boys play well with each other and so does Julie apparently.  I am sure the boys shut the door and needed help opening it.  The only easy way down is to slide and both Gloria and I make the exit that way several times a week.  I of course want to play with him as he usually has no other playmates, he just does not understand Momma and Mommy are not under three feet tall and 30 lbs like him.  We don't fit so well in all those places!  Julie looks fabulous with her wind blown hair affect! 

He likes to take things up the stairs with him and this week he actually walked up the slide pushing a big red ball in front of him and another time he carried a squirt gun up with him.  No bad for 2 1/2 I think. 

Baylor usually likes to ride the glider too and I am not sure what he was interested in at this moment that he did not ride with Cullen. 

Cullen is such a cutie pie!  His Mom's have a lot to be proud of in him.

Sorry Amy, I never took any photos of you!  Lori was able to take off a half a day from work and was able to join the fun.  We are very thankful to have them in our lives, as we are with all of our friends.  I am looking forward to our next get together in July.  We made sure we picked a date before she left our house. 

A Day out with Thomas

 Let me start out by saying I was not the photographer for this day and while I explained to Lori how to use the simple point and shoot camera, she still managed to mess things up.  If you ever saw any photos taken by any member of her family you would understand she gets it honestly. Every trip she takes him on and I ask for photos, she does the same thing.  Somehow she moves the dial on the camera to some setting that  makes for super blurry photos.  E.v.e.r.y.t.i.m.e. I carried that camera with me for two years, every where, and never moved the setting.  E.v.e.r. It is what it is. 

The Strasburg Railroad has Thomas for a few weeks every year a couple of times in the year.  I  have driven past it on a weekend when Thomas was there and it was a sea of little heads and craziness.  I called to see if there was any time that was less busy and the lady on the phone laughed a bit before saying No.   I was not able to go with them but I have been to Strasburg with Baylor twice this year without Lori so it was OK for them to go by themselves.  Lori had to order the special tickets to ride the Thomas train but I had a free ticket to ride the regular train also.  There is Thomas pulling into the station.  Of course his face is nearly covered by a sign but we all know he is there, right?

The entire time we were talking to him about going to Strasburg, Baylor would tell us he wanted to ride the train with the conductor.  He is young and gets hung up on one thing and that is the only thing he will focus on.  Like ladders on construction vehicles.  If we see a digger he will ask were is the ladder?  We see a truck, where is the ladder?  It can be in a book and he will ask where is the ladder.  Anyway, of course when Lori saw the conductor hat she bought it for him.  He wore it the entire day and even during his nap.  I just noticed the butt shoot in the back ground.  Nice.  Sorry lady, your rear is now on my blog too. 

Another shot of Thomas but you can see the camera setting has now been changed for the rest of the trip.  I even showed her where it needed to be set.  Breath in and let it go.   

The Thomas ride was only about 20 minutes and then they rode the regular train which is about 45 minutes.  He fell asleep on the ride back even though it was still fairly early for him.  Two train rides in one day is a lot for a little guy!  I think Lori enjoyed her day riding trains too. 

Typical Weekend's Adventures

We all know now what pudding does to one's face but what about when a toddler is eating it frozen. On a stick.  Totally hilarious facial hair preview!  He looks like a little pirate. 

Saturday morning I went to let the dog out and found about a zillion beetles in between the windows that slide.  Gross!! They were not dead which meant a lot of squirming to try to get out.  I searched to cupboards for some alcohol to try to kill them without pesticides.  It is our primary door after all and I did not want extra grossness at the door to be cleaned up. I could not find any, must have used it last year on the wasp nests.  So I made extra strong soapy hot water and poured it into the space.  It worked to a degree because first all the water white water rafted the beetles out of the space, which is good because I was wondering how to get them out of there.  Second, because if there is a first there has to be a second, they were now on my door mat and deck squirming about.  Gross again.  Thankfully the soap water did it's trick and they expired and were swept off the deck before company arrived.  I hate summer bugs, except lightening bugs of course.

We had gone shopping to a produce market and Baylor of course wanted corn on the cobbers.  I usually  grill our corn so the husks and silks come off easier but he had other ideas this morning.  He wanted to cook it in his little kitchen and took the corn outside to husk it.  For being his first time, he did a great job.  He worked on it pretty much a leaf at a time and got it down to the corn.  He managed to get the silk off too and took a few bites.  He did two ears. 

 We had our first harvest on Saturday from the cucumbers and found two more on Sunday. We made him a bowl of sliced cucumbers and salad for the rest of us.  He horked down his bowl while waiting for lunch to be ready and then ate more in the salad. 

We also had our first raspberries.  When we were looking for a new home I said I wanted a place with big enough yard for raspberries.  We found the place and the first summer I had red raspberry plants in my new garden.  I found yellow berries one year and planted them also. What I was really wanted to plant was my grandpa's black raspberry plants.  They have had a rough time at my house and unfortunately I am nursing two barely alive plants hoping they will survive and fill in their new bed.  I don't have the option of digging up more so it they don't survive I will be very sad.  The red and yellow berry beds are jam packed with plants now.  I really cut them back last year so my harvest has been delayed as I usually can start picking in early June. 

Baylor has been eating off these plants for the last two years and remembered them from last year. He likes the yellow berries better for some reason but has been eating more of the red so far this year.

Don't you just want to eat it?  I did too and I did eat it!

While hunting for fireflies I found this little toad in the yard.  Baylor was less than impressed and I was disappointed.  He was a man on a firefly catching mission and was not to be distracted by a toad.

I suggested he let the toad free in the strawberries so he could eat bad bugs.  Baylor was happy to help with that process.  He was gentle tipping out the toad and I am sure he was able to hop under a plant and take a rest from his recent adventure.  We did catch several fireflies and I am amazed how fast he sees them and trys to get them with his net. 

And introducing Fred II with a spot on his head as we call him.  Grandpa Ron has many fish and many of them are too big for our little pond.  We fianally managed to catch a smallish fish and after a half day of being shy, he is now used to his new home and we are glad to have him. 

I think Mark is happy again too.  Although he is a bit fuzzy looking.  I will have to try to get a better picture of him.