Mr. Fix Its

The collector thingy for condensation from our furnace/heat pump (whatever part is inside the basement) overflowed. A few weeks back we thought it was fixed, but it overflowed again.The Saturday guy didn't have a bigger collector thing on his truck so we had to put temporary thingy in place until Monday. We used a disposable aluminum baker pan. Gus loved this part of the job.
Reese mostly just climbed around on Daddy's back with his superhero figures.

He thought it was pretty fun too. It got all fixed on Monday with a bigger official collector thingy. No more leaks! The carpet in the man room (of course it leaked though the wall) is shampooed and the water is all sucked out! Hooray!

Quirky Sleep

Reese fell asleep on the couch while I was reading my book. I know, bad mommy, I should've made him go to his bed while he was still awake. Anyway he started shifting and mumbling and the next thing I know this is how he's sleeping:He stayed that way until I finished my chapter. Then I transferred him to bed. He seemed comfortable enough but I thought leaving him sleeping standing and bending over seems just mean.

WTC Steel Beams

On Friday the county fair offered admission for $0.25 if we arrived before noon. So the boys and I headed over. We discovered the parking lot was FULL. Ugh, so I went off in search of parking and as luck would have it I actually found a free spot. Woo hoo. As I was putting stuff in the stroller a car went by fast and startled Reese. He went flying into my arms and about strangled me to death. He flatly refused to walk. So I had to hike in with him in the ergo on my back. We dressed appropriately for the 58 degrees it was while we were getting ready. By the time my hike commenced it was a million degrees hotter. I was dying, but we made it at 11:56am. WOO HOO $0.25!
Once we got in I quickly steered us away from the rides as Reese can't ride alone and there was no one to be with the stroller and my purse and Gus. We headed off to find the 4H animals. I am so glad I wound around through the vendors en route to the animals because we found the steel beams from the collapsed World Trade Center.
The beams traveled from NY to WA with a motorcycle escort. A former co-worker took a video from the highway overpass. We actually passed her without realizing it. Her beau was one of the motorcyclists. There was a welcome ceremony, then the beams were moved over to the fair. The beams will be used in a 9/11 memorial to be unveiled on the 10 year anniversary next year. Can you believe it's almost been 10 years?! Even still it was a struggle not be obviously choked up being so close to them. It's pretty shocking how mangled they are. I suppose if I actually thought on it I would have to assume a building that collapsed would leave mangled steel beams, but you anticipate they'll be relatively indestructible. I'm so glad we got to see them.
This is a photo of Reese in front of the trailer holding the beams. I wasn't sure if I should take a photo like a tourist snapshot. It seemed kind of tacky, but other people were taking photos so I did too. Of course Reese had no idea what they were, but I figure someday he will and he'll have a photo of himself with this little piece of history.

Almost Ready for Halloween

So maybe "almost ready for Halloween" is a little ambitious. I hope I don't jinx us, but check this out:What you are looking at in the photo above is a single surviving pumpkin plant. Seriously that is just one plant! It completely jumped out of the planter and is creeping down the yard. This is the area between the sidewalk leading from the back yard to the front and the side fence. Kyle wasn't keen on having to mow this strip so we decided to just rock it in. OK so really before we had a fence at all the guy next door completely rocked his whole yard. As there was no fence it seemed dumb to make him stop at the middle and leave us a 2 foot strip of grass. He just rocked up to our sidewalk. When the fence went in we had an automatic rocked area. We have a shed thingy for yard tools...which is what the pumpkin is creeping towards and then 2 6 feet long metal horse water holders that I'm using as planters.
Here you can see 2 of my pumpkins!! We actually have 4. Unfortunately I accidentally snapped one off during my inspection. oops. But we only need 2. One for carving (Gus doesn't need his own this year) and one to put my wooden turkey stakes in.

New Glasses

Not sure if I mentioned this before, but in July Kyle put Reese's glasses on the roof of the car. Then we drove away. We went back but couldn't find them, nor were they turned into lost and found. GRRR...

There is a single pediatric ophthalmologist is Kitsap County (and he also sees adults) so of course he was booked until 3 days before Reese's regularly scheduled appointment. Reese was without glasses for about 3 weeks until his appointment and then another 5 days until he got his glasses. For a change his prescription is actually weaker than last time..woo hoo!

AND we went to Walmart to get his glasses made so they were pretty cheap this time!! The style option in his size are basically one pair. These are Diego glasses, brown wire though the picture seems silver. They actually are pretty cute...though I do like his old glasses better for cuteness. But these were $80 and the old glasses were $214....so these are cute enough. Especially since he wears them at school and rarely any other time. They'd probably look cuter in this photo if his hair wasn't all wonky from his nap.

Mutant Ninja Carrots

Back when we started our seeds, Reese went a little crazy with the carrot seeds. We planted more than I was going to but once they started growing in the ground I was glad since not too many survived and it seemed like one carrot per plant. Well not anymore! They look like a giant bush now. Reese really struggled to pull them. In the end I had to help.

After I got all the greens in a nice bunch for him he was able to pull these by himself. But the rest I had to do and I really struggled!
He toted our bucket of carrots in. He's showing off his "hulk" muscles.
These are our freaky mutant carrots.
Seriously they all look weird. We were going to have these with dinner just as a side, but since they are so freaky I decided to wait and hide them in a stew.Are these freaky mutant carrots normal in a home garden?!?!

Cake Baking!--updated

Reese and Miss Susie made some chocolate cakes for dessert! Okay so Miss Susie made the cakes. Reese iced one.He used all his muscle power to move that icing around!
Of course, he had to taste it to make sure it was fit for everyone to eat!
That job requires a lot of tasting!
He decided it was mm mm good!! He's licking the icing off the cake before he eats it!
Geez I forgot the best one! Here is Reese getting a dropped dollop of icing:

Go-Carts

Reese got to do go-carts for the first time!He rode in the double car with Daddy.

And they're off!!

Uncle Dylan hot on their tails.

Mimi trying overtake Amanda.

Daddy and Reese determined to hold their position.

Mimi passes on the inside.

Daddy and Reese blocking Alissa.

Gussy stuck in the stroller again.

Menu Plan Monday

Back to the regular grind after vacation at Lake Chelan. We came home from what I thought was hot as the center of the earth to our old reliable Pacific Northwest days in the 60s. WHAT A RELIEF!! I officially am acclimated to WA weather and bite my tongue the next time I long for east coast weather. While on vacation each family was in charge of one dinner. I swear we had enough food to feed double the 17 people we had to. We ate on the back patio every night except our night to cook we had a huge rain storm. We ate inside after oohing and aahing at the lightening, since we rarely see that around here.
How we worked it was:
Arrival day hamburgers and hotdogs and salads (potato, pasta and the like) provided by....not sure who brought that stuff.
Great Grandparents: pulled pork sandwiches with pasta salad and baked beans
Gutierrez (my peeps): tri tip steak on the grill, rice and potato salad
Old Benza (Kyle's peeps): pork loin on the grill (we never tried it this way, we bought some at costco this weekend and we're having it tonight!), Cesar salad, potato and pasta salad
Young Benza (us, hee hee): carne asada fajitas, spanish rice, refried beansNix (family friends that also came with us): lasagna
last night: hamburgers and hotdogs and salads (potato, pasta and the like) provided by....not sure who brought that stuff.

Worked out perfect!! Except we had to schlepp a lot of food back home.You can read more about what we did while we were there by reading last week's posts.

During our week of gloriously comfortable weather we had:
spaghetti and meatballs, fajitas (because we brought home 50 tortillas), stubbs chicken on the grill with scalloped potatoes and peas, chicken potato fajita, nachos (using up the tortilla chips we brought home from Chelan) and on Sunday that yummy pork loin on the grill--it's mushroom and pepper seasoning from costco.

This week we return to the center of the earth so I bet we end up not cooking at home everyday as planned, but our goal is:
Monday: Cheddar Chicken and Potatoes
Tuesday: Cheeseburgers on the grill, baked beans, green salad
Wednesday: Chicken Rice Skillet--this is a concoction using precooked and cubed chicken, fried rice-a-roni (i know..it's nasty processed box food, but I love it and can't figure out how to recreate it on my own), broccoli.
Thursday: stubbs pork chops on the grill, carrots (from our garden?), potato dish of some kind
Friday: Ham casserole I have a dentist appointment at 3pm..this is quick and easy, but requires the oven so...I suspect this will end up being an eat out day.
Saturday: orange sauce enchiladas, spanish rice
Sunday: spaghetti and meatballs....I need to try to make something that results in leftovers for Kyle's lunch.

Check out what other people are making for dinner at OrgJunkie's Menu Plan Monday.

Petting Zoo

We went to the petting zoo at Banjo Creek Farms. The grandpa of these quads is the owner. We saw the quads playing and learned that the smallest of them was bigger than Reese at birth! She had 4 babies all bigger than Reese in 2005 and now she's back to a size 2. Ugh, I gotta exercise.
Anyway, they had water barrel cows made into a cow train. The boys jumped in right away (okay so I helped Gus.)

He thought it was pretty cool. Standing up he could see everything.

Daddy and Reese got in "Jelly Bean" together for the ride.

Here we are coming back from our ride. Alissa and Amanda joined us so we weren't the only dorks on the ride!

Then we all headed over to the petting area.

Reese rode the tree stumpn horse first.

Then they checked out the donkeys.

Alissa made a friend!This giant Clydesdale, Bailey, ended up backing up to the fence where they are standing after they moved on to pet other stuff and then he let the hugest fart ever. It was pretty darn funny.
Reese rode the tire swing molded into the shape of a horse.
We also bought lots of stuff on sale in their gift shop!

Jet Ski

One day we all got jet skis. We dropped some people off at the jet ski rental place and the rest of us headed out to a park in Manson (next town over from Chelan also right on the lake).
Great Grandpa Bob and Great Grandma Joyce could not be talked into getting on the jet skis.We shared one with Kyle's parents. His dad picked it up so we just hung out at the park waiting for them all to show up.

Reese really ate up the attention from the girls. Here he's hanging out with Amanda.

Miss Susie entertained Gus.

He tried eating some petrified puff balls that fell from the trees. By the time they were on the ground and petrified they were hard as rocks, but the ones attached to the tree were fluffy like dandelion puff balls.

Daddy and Reese checked out the playground.

Finally the jet skis arrived. To the left is Von and Alissa, to the right is Travis, Amy and Dylan.

Kyle, Reese and I briefly tried it out. At 2 miles per hour Reese said "stop the boat! stop the boat!" over and over. When he started pushing back we decided to pack it in before he totally freaked and tipped me off. We dropped off Reese and tried again. When we hit 5 miles per hour (still in the no wake zone) I was done too. So Kyle had to go out by himself.

We just hung around at our spot, gabbing while we waited for the jet skiers. Kyle must've been out because his parents and grandparents are all in the background. Alissa is with Gus and Reese is down in front.

Kyle said he got a little nervous when he hit 61 mph. He spent the rest of the night scouring the internet for jet skis for sale.

Reese and Gus watching the folks in the water.

Reese is all done!