Sun Oven

We finally used our sun oven the other day for dinner....we had a venison roast that we tried in it. Outside it was mid- 70's and mostly sunny.
Joe cut the meat up and added onions, soy sauce and he was supposed to add Worcester sauce but we were out.

He also added cream of mushroom soup.

Then he stuck it in the oven in the middle of our backyard. The internal temperature of the oven was 250 degrees.

We got ready and left for church. When we got back, the day was partly cloudy and the internal temperature of the oven was 175 degrees Fahrenheit. We let it cook another hour (total of 6) and then we brought it in.

It was cooked perfectly. It tasted great (it probably would have tasted better if I actually liked venison.)

It's pretty neat that it actually worked...the sun cooked our roast!

Apparently he does cement too

Joe decided that he needed a cement pad in front of our metal building at our property. The fact that he had never poured a slab of cement before didn't stop him, he just bought a bunch of bags of cement and started mixing it.

The boys were eager to help. Not long into the process, the cement splashed onto Michael on his favorite shirt. We were able to get it out, but we had to act quickly, so the boys took their shirts off. They got to spray the water into the cement mixer. Even Ellie got to help, she turned the mixer on and off as Joe added bags of cement. She had the option to take her shirt off, but as she considered it, she decided against it.

My Dad was there and he helped to throw the cement where it needed to be, as well as to smooth it out at the end.
By the end, everyone was really quite filthy.It turned out really nice. Sometime before it was done a cat walked across it twice and a raccoon walked across it. I thought it added a nice nature touch to the pad.
Hmmm, what new project will he think of next?

Nate Nate Nate

Just a few tidbits about Nate. He is a very intense child. Everyone else can be awake in the morning and quietly doing their thing, but as soon as he wakes up he starts talking or whining very loudly so that I think maybe the whole block can hear him. He is really starting to take off in his talking and he often has a lot to say. Having three older siblings makes the things that come out of his mouth so much more interesting. A few days ago in the car Michael was singing and Nate said...."Mom, mom... Ichael being nnoying." (Michael is being annoying.) Its hard not to laugh when he does things like that.
Overall, he is quite a funny kid. He thinks he's about 10 and that he can do anything that the other kids can do so he often tries to do it. Amazingly he often succeeds. The other day I was out front talking to the neighbors and he wanted to play with his tricycle. I was only planning to be outside for a few minutes and didn't want to lug it all the way around front from the backyard. I continued talking to the neighbor and the next thing I know he comes riding down the driveway on his tricycle. It can't have been an easy task to get it to there, but it was important enough for him that he did it.

He is always making us laugh with the funny things he does. I didn't know that being "funny" could be innate, but somehow this kid just has a funny sense of humor. People around us are always commenting on how funny he is, and honestly I think he is quite funny too.

He is potty training, and mostly doing well. He doesn't like to have wet or dirty pants and hasn't since he was little so that is helping. Potty training as far as I am concerned always takes a while, but maybe because we start earlier than most.

He had an amazing sense of direction. We will be driving around town and he will look out the window and ask if we are going somewhere that is close to where we are. He also is really good at finding his way around places like the church (many adults get lost in the church) or the library.

He sure is sweet and we are glad that we have him!

Random School Pictures

First of all, here are the boys pictures from school this year. I am not a fan of the school photographer, but I am a fan of not having to do anything but write a check and then having pictures brought home to me of the boys.

Michael got straight A's this year so he got to go to the straight A breakfast. He thought we all would like to see what his donut really looked like.

Adam got into the "Hall of Fame" for the first quarter. I am so proud of him, this is the first time he has gotten in on the first quarter.

The second grade had their school program on Veteran's Day. It was really well done, the kids all sang really well and many of them had speaking parts and they all said it really well. Adam had a couple of parts and he spoke clearly and loudly.

The kids perform two times on the performance day. Adam was a little bored during the second performance so Joe took a ton of pictures of him doing random things- winking, blowing on his flag, looking in the wrong direction...it is quite funny to look at.

Our school does an annual storybook parade instead of dressing up for Halloween. The boys made it simple this year and used costumes that we already had. Adam was a turtle and Michael was a bat. You are supposed to dress like your favorite character from a book you like, but we always find a costume and then get a book to match. From watching the parade many other parents do it our way too.

Here they are during the parade:

Good job boys, its fun to see all the things you do!

Michael's Self-Portrait

In Michael's art class they studied Picasso and then practiced drawing pictures like he would have drawn. When I look at Michael's it just makes me want to smile.

A little bit about our Ellie

Our Ellie turned 5 a couple of weeks ago, and its really hard to believe that she has already been in our family for 5 whole years. She really does round our family out. She loves bracelets and necklaces and flowers and hair bows. Her favorite toys are still her dollies.

She doesn't like to eat, but when she does she prefers noodles or candy, of course ice cream will work in a pinch. Her favorite colors are pink, purple and orange.

She still likes to be wherever I am. She likes to be as close to me when I am cooking in the kitchen and ask a ton of questions about what I am cooking.

She's learning to read, and has finished the kindergarten section on her Hooked on Phonics books, so we are moving on to the first grade part. She loves to do it and is usually the one to remind me that she wants to "do her reading."

She loves to draw pictures and write letters. She doesn't particularly care to color in the lines because that takes much too much time. She goes through tons and tons of paper every day.

She loves her gymnastics class, and is learning all sorts of neat tricks in gymnastics. She loves to be included in Adam and Michael's play, but when there is a fight in the house about 90% of the time Ellie is involved in it. Unlike the boys, however, the end result with her is usually a really loud high-pitched scream and then some tears, not always genuine tears.

We sure are happy to have her in our family!

My First Christmas Present

Joe was really excited to give me my first Christmas present a little early the other day. He made me put them on and model them for the kids. The kids thought they were nice and Nate ran and got his favorite footy jammies for me to put on him.

A little later he asked why I wasn't very excited about them, he really thought I would like them since I complain a lot about how cold I am. I explained that I didn't really care for the last pjs he bought me because they were pretty ugly and I didn't feel "cute" in them so what would I think of these.
On the up side though, I now have the perfect base to play the Easter bunny or to dress up like a toddler next Halloween.

Staph infection, sprained ankle, tablesaw accident

Do you think Joe has had a crazy enough couple of weeks? After Michael's campout, Joe's knee started bothering him. We had found a yellow jacket nest and Ellie had gotten bit, so Joe thought maybe he got bit too on his knee and he didn't feel it. By Sunday morning his knee hurt so badly that he couldn't walk. He went to a quick care center and they told him he had a staph infection! They gave him some IV antibiotics and sent him home with a prescription for more antibiotics. By Tuesday it was apparent that the antibiotics were not working. He went to an orthopedic doctor and an infectious disease specialist and they put him on a better antibiotic, but he had to go into the doctor's office to take in intravenously every day. The doctor also wrote a prescription for a super antibiotic that was super expensive, but told him only to get it if insurance paid for most of it. Luckily insurance did, so his doc took him off the IV antibiotics and told him to just take the prescription. He started to feel better after his doctor's visit, so he was up and about. The next day, while up and about, he tripped and fell and sprained his ankle. He also hit his infected knee, which made it hurt really badly. Upon further examination, he found that the antibiotics were no longer working. He went back to the doctor, and he was put back on the IV antibiotics. Finally, they installed a picc line and he has been giving himself antibiotics every morning since.

Here is his knee when it was really bad. It doesn't look horrible, but it got really swollen and tender and red in a couple of spots.
Here is Joe giving himself antibiotics. They have these neat packages that have the medicine in a a balloon and once he hooks the balloon up to his picc line, it slowly drains into his system. It is a lot nicer than sitting in a doctor's office.

Hopefully, in about a week, he will be done with the antibiotics and that will be it. His ankle is slowly healing.

Yesterday, he decided to work on some cutting boards he is making for a counter at our lake house. He was pushing the last piece of wood through the table saw and nicked his finger. It wasn't the finger of the hand that was pushing the wood through though, it was on the other hand. Here are some pics:

He opted to not get stitches, we'll see how that works out for him. Luckily he didn't get the bone, just the fleshy part of his finger and some of the nail.

I am currently working on designing a bubble for him to live in.

Our Michael is 7

Michael turned 7 last week. We had had a campout the week before to celebrate, so on his birthday we just did presents and sang. My kids don't like cake or cupcakes so for their birthdays we normally just have ice cream and put the candles in it. I really don't mind.

He got a camera for his birthday and his been spending a lot of time since then taking pictures and videos of everything he sees. Thank heavens for digital, I don't have to print most of the pictures.

Here are some fun things about Michael-

He loves to read, do gymnastics (he learned a front handspring and back flip the other day!), play with his brother's DS, building Legos, playing with friends, playing pretend Pokemon, and coming up with creative pretend games to play with his siblings. He loves Adam and they stay up late every night talking. If one of them is away at bedtime, the other is quite sad.

His favorite foods are tostadas, baked chicken, macaroni and cheese and hamburgers.

He loves to watch Pokemon, the last Airbender and especially Phineas and Ferb.

When he grows up he wants to be a doctor in a hospital.

He has a great sense of humor and is fun to be around and will still let you hug him and cuddle with him. We sure are lucky to have him in our family.

Halloween

For some reason, this year Halloween seemed to last for a whole week. I guess having two birthdays in the same week makes for a much more eventful week. This year Adam was Tortwig- his favorite Pokemon character, Michael was Frankenstein, Ellie was a fairy princess and Nate was Thomas the train. This is them on the way to the ward trunk-or-treat. Incidentally, I brought rabbit chili to the activity and it was almost gone by the end. I did label it, but I am not sure if anyone noticed the label.

In Ellie and Nate's preschool, they got to dress up for Halloween. Nate obliged me for a few minutes to be a monkey. After that he wanted nothing to do with the costume (hence the Thomas).

Ellie was a fairy princess every time. Her costume was really easy because we had most everything on hand.

Here is her preschool class.
On Halloween, a couple of Joe's friends came by to eat dinner with us. They then went trick-or-treating with us. Their little boy, Jack, was just a little older than Nate so they walked together and followed each other...it was very cute. (The boys didn't want green faces the second time, which was great as far as I was concerned).Since we were too busy on Sunday to get it done, we didn't carve our pumpkin until Monday night, and we only got one carved. Luckily, the kids were okay with that.

We still lit it up and put it outside, might as well.

And here is the kid's loot: Now I get the fun task of restricting consumption of it...