one week from today

One week from today Neil and I will be here. . .





Long Island, NY (AKA the Hamptons)attending a wedding of Neil's friend from middle school. It is kind of a 10th anniversary trip too since we spent our anniversary in a hotel room with all 3 kids on the way home from or family vacation! I am sure I will have lots of pictures to share when we return!

breakfast gone wrong

We usually cook breakfast on the rare Saturday mornings that Neil is not working. Neil just quit his weekend job this month so he was home with us. We set out to make breakfast. We tried to make it low key - biscuits with butter and jelly and bacon. I had to make the bisuits because we had no "can o' biscuits". Then Mark thought it would be fun to cut them into shapes instead of circles. Cool idea. We chose footballs and helmets to celebrate the opening of OU football and a car, dino, and duck. We decided to cook the bacon in the microwave to keep it low key clean up as well. This all sounds very fine and dandy doesn't it? Here are the things that went wrong. The first batch of dough only made 6 biscuits so we had to make a second batch. I did not follow the recipe the second time and made the dough too wet so I had to have Neil add extra flour about 3 times while I kneaded the sticky mess. I finally got the biscuits in the oven and went to get Megan out of bed who had been crying for 10 min. Neil was in charge of the bacon. About 15 minutes and 15 paper towels later, the bacon was still very pink looking. I refused to eat it raw looking, so Neil kept cooking it. The biscuits were done and came out of the oven looking about as thick and fluffy as sugar cookies-they were more like glorified crackers. Neil's family makes this yummy chocolate gravy to put over biscuits, so while he was crisping the bacon I set out to make the chocolate. It turned out bad. I guess I cooked it too long. It cooled too quickly on the biscuits and left these lumps of dark chocolate on our plates that looked like something I should not mention. We started cooking at 8:20 and at 10:00 we sat down to a breakfast of chewy bacon, cracker biscuits, and crusty chocolate gravy that dried like icing on the biscuits. We were barely able to split the biscuits open to butter them, and after the chocolate gravy congealed into an icing consistency, we were able to pick the biscuits up and eat them like cookies! Yuu-uum! Oh I almost forgot two other highlights! As soon as we sat down Mark shoved a full piece of bacon into his mouth and could not chew it up and started gagging. The chewed bacon (and other stuff) ended up back on his plate! He did this twice! Neil put a really thick layer of jelly on two halves of Mark's biscuit and Mark slammed both pieces together to make a drippy jelly biscuit sandwich mess. (Do all men put too much jelly on toast and sandwiches? Neil says to much jelly is subjective!) Here are the pics! Enjoy! We sure did!

last swim of the summer

We took our last swim at Mrs. Lisa's pool this week. We invited Michael and Conor to swim and enjoy a quick picnic lunch before heading off to PM Kindergarten. It was a busy and fun day. We had a hard time getting the boys out of the pool to go to school!

The first day of the rest of your life

Read that title with all the sarcasm and complaining tone you can! Mitchell started the big K this week! He seems to be doing fine. I don't get much info from him! Men children! He liked the story they read on the first day about Mrs. Tendergarden getting ready for Kindergarden. He sits at a desk with 3 other kids, two girls and a boy. He does not know their names. He gets to hang his bag on whatever hook he wants. They went outside and exercised, and then colored a picture of Mrs. Tendergarden. That's all the info I got! Here are the pictures! I wish I had 100 pictures, enough to match how important the event felt to me. I only have about 8.

Here is a neat little story. We went to McDonald's to eat lunch before the first day to take away some of the jitters and give us something fun to do, and because Mitchell is obsessed with Star Wars and they have Star Wars happy meals right now. Anyway! A kid and his mom arrived at the same time we did. He looked Mitchell's age and she was wearing a Chisholm shirt. Mitchell, Mark and the boy all huddled around the toy display, and I timidly asked the mom if they were starting school today. They were. Kindergarden in fact. They had the other teacher. We got our food. They sat right behind us. The kids talked during lunch. Noah ended up coming to our booth to sit and play for a while. The mom and I talked. I was so glad to have made a new friend. I felt like I was sending my kid out into this huge new place where he did not know a single person and God showed us a new friend just in the nick of time. God is so good. He knows just what we need exactly when we need it.

Here are some pictures of the last playgroup of the year at Bouncin'Craze.