Happy Birthday Anna!

Miss Anna turned 4 today.  What a little personality she is! She loves pink.  She loves dressing herself and as, documented on this blog, continues to have her own sense of style.  She is bubbly, loving, happy, strong willed, bright and quick witted! She has a strong sense of self and does things when and how she wants too, throwing Mom and Dad an occasional curve ball here and there.  Like asking this morning when her friends were coming today for her birthday party ... the party I didn't know she wanted and didn't plan - thankfully she was fine with celebrating with all of us! 

Emily made her cake - from a little lady bug cake cookbook.  When I asked Anna what kind of birthday cake she wanted, she went straight to that cookbook and waffled between 3 different cake designs.  I was pushing for the cake shaped as a purse - cause this girl loves purses and filling them with treasures.  But this is the cake she told Emily she wanted and Emily reproduced it to a T.  Anna of course LOVEed it! 

After Anna and Alex's swimming lessons, we went to the grocery store and got all we needed for her favorite dinner - homemade mac and cheese, hot dogs, broccoli, watermelon and chocolate milk!  

After the grocery store we stopped by the flower shop.  Diane got me a bouquet of the month subscription with the local florist and last month I told Anna I'd bring her in on her birthday to get the July bouquet.  At her request he put together a pink bouquet and was quite sweet to throw in an extra rose for her birthday.  She was thrilled!  

Once we got all our goods, we met Diane at the house with her traditional donut and balloon delivery - Strawberry Shortcake!   

While I got dinner made and wrapped up gifts, GR and the kids went swimming - one of Anna's favorite activities!  Diane joined us for the evening and we even Skyped with Grandma Mutti and Grandpa Art for the opening of presents.  

We did a little shopping for her at Gap - getting her the dress she's wearing and a couple other things.  A couple of new puzzles, little princess dolls and new playdough (because she insists on mixing colors and leaving it out).  Grandma got her some new books, including one on building fairy houses - something I hope we can do when it isn't 105 outside and Ree Drummond's children's book, Charlie the Ranch Dog.  Grandma and Grandpa sent her the kitty purse next to GR.  

Garden Harvest!

We finally have green beans!!  Last years crop got severely tramitized by a hail storm in late spring and never really recovered from it.  But this year we have beautiful plants covered in blossoms and loaded with beans!  The kids spent just a few minutes this morning picking these beans, our first vegetable harvest of the summer. Can't wait to cook these up for dinner!

Late Night Science Fun!

Dry Ice continues to be the best method of keeping the ice cream cold for our fireworks floats.  Placed under a layer of brown paper, it keeps the ice cream solid without being brick hard.  

After the show Friday night, the kids all took showers and I starting cleaning up, wiping out coolers, putting soda and ice cream away, etc.  I had a few chunks of dry ice left and I put them in the sink and quite by accident showed the big kids what happens when it get's wet.  Oh did they had fun playing with the smoke!

Fireworks 2012

We made big changes again for this years fireworks show. For a couple of years now GR has been searching for a new venue ... something better able to accommodate the crowd -- parking, facilities, etc. and didn't include our home within the fall out zone.  We've tried 4-5 different locations, all would have been perfect, but all have said no because of insurance premiums. All that is, but one. The local parks department agreed to let us shoot at the kids soccer fields.  Setting the fireworks up off the soccer/football fields in a farmers field that was mowed just for us, and the crowd sitting on the football fields.

We were worried not everyone would hear the show had moved, thankfully, word spread that the location had changed, and to our knowledge only one family showed up at the house first. Phew!  And with it being in a more public place, people felt more free to invite neighbors, friends and family to attend and we had a great turn out!  GR estimated 400 people, but it's hard to tell given that we were spread out across 1.5 football fields.  It was wonderful to see so many old friends who traveled in to attend the show, and others who were able to work the show into their vacation schedules as they traveled back to KS/MO to visit family.

We had people from CA, CO, AZ, ID, and IA in the audience.  

GR did time laps photography of the set up ... one picture every minute for 7 hours or so.  It doesn't quite give the amount of work, or the extreme heat they endured enough justice when you see it sped up to less than 1 minute.  



And we video taped the show!   For all our friends in fireworks banned states, hopefully you can view this on a large screen and not feel like you've missed out too much.



We served 256 root beer floats, same as the year before, though I was prepared to serve more than that. I kept all by two of my hardworking, trash picking-up cub scouts to the 1 per person rule which I think helped manage the quantities a bit more. HyVee put everything I needed on sale for the weekend which was hugely helpful! I was able to make it a one stop shop for all my float needs which was fabulous, and they were the cheapest in town to boot!

Our one bit of excitement for the evening was, what is now being referred to as the "crazy dog lady" by all who witnessed it. About 15 minutes into the show a dark station wagon with a woman driving, goes flying through our caution tape barricade and finally swerves to a stop. Concerned it was an emergency and someone in the crowd was needed, I went to investigate and see what was going on. By the time I got to her, she was stomping around her car trying to untangle it from the caution tape. She was furious, raging with anger. She had been at a dog park a few miles from the soccer fields and the fireworks frightened one of her dogs so badly that it ran off (the ran off part we pieced together a few hours later). She was screaming at the insensitivity of us shooting fireworks so close to a dog park. I apologized but assured her that we had worked with the city and gotten permission to do this and that rather than all the police she should call the city to complain ... it's 10pm at night, 30 minutes past when the sun was totally set, who is in an unlit dog park past dark?

Anyway, she was so angry that she pealed out of the parking lot, nearly taking out a friends toes and coming within inches of driving straight into me. She then nearly hit the neighbors car and then the icing on the cake that sent us to call the police on her, was she came within inches of nearly hit a mother and her two small boys crossing the parking lot to get to their car.

Sadly the police couldn't do anything about the "distraught dog woman" as, with any kind of driving citation, a police officer must witness it and we weren't able to get her plates.  The officer who came out to take down our concern for the distraught dog woman and any poor soul that got in her way, was extremely nice.  This was our favorite part of the conversation: 

"Driving out here I could feel the vibrations of the shells in my squad car ... that and the size of the shells, it's pretty obvious you know what you're doing and not shootin' off bottle rockets in your drive way, and that you've gotta be legit.  Next time just give us a heads up so we're in the loop." (We thought the fire chief had done that). 

To dispatch:  "All the calls from _____ about the fireworks will be ending now - the show's over."  
Then turning to the small group of people standing around him, he asks, who's in charge of the show and GR says he is. 

Officer Friendly: Who do you work for? 

GR: A hospital in Montana?
Officer: No, no I mean, who sponsored the show?

GR: I did. 

Officer: No, no, who paid for it? 

GR: I did. 

Officer: You mean, like as community service? 

GR: Aahh, kinda, something like that ... you should come out next year. 

Officer:  Ha, that's cool! 

This afternoon GR talked with someone from the local paper who called the city to find out more about the show and if it was going to be an annual thing.  We've been doing this for 5 years, and now that we moved a few miles in town, it get's noticed ... interesting.  Apparently what happens in the country, stays in the country.  Good to know!  

Branching Out

Yesterday, Emily asked if she could bake brownies.  Baking is a favorite past time and the girls are really good at it, but we end up with lots of sweets that either get eaten, or get thrown away - neither option is one I feel good about.


In an effort to find a healthier balance, (learn to make something more than sweets, make something healthier, make something we need.) I suggested she make dinner or bake bread.  Before thinking too much, she picked bread (in her mind it was too early to work on dinner), and asked to use a recipe I made twice last week.


The recipe is for basic white bread and is in the 3-ring Pillsbury cookbook. It's pretty simple in that it doesn't use milk or eggs.  I handed her the cookbook and told her to get me if she needed help.  I really want the girls to know how to read and follow a recipe - which they've shown great ability to do when making treats - to trust the words on the page, follow the instructions and be proud of the final product.  She did an awesome job.  And I only stepped in a couple of times to show her how to do something ... proper kneading technique and how to divide the dough into loaves and shape a loaf.

Making bread took a lot longer than she expected - they went in the oven at 9pm, but the end product is something she is really proud of, and it made an awesome breakfast (with some of last weeks blackberry jam - yum!) everyone enjoyed ... she's saving the second loaf for tomorrow morning!

I'm hoping we can do this more this summer ... help to curb boredom by learning to make food our family needs on a daily/weekly basis.  

Making Jam

Last week my friend and visiting teacher, Kathy, called to see if we could use some blackberries.  Their early variety is going gang busters, and she brought us two big ice cream buckets filled to the brims with beautiful big berries.  Alex and Anna and I ate some and I made some into jam that very afternoon.  

Aldi has had strawberries for a $1/lb and blueberries for $1.29/pint so, Saturday I bought 8 lbs of strawberries and 6 pints of blueberries thinking I'd make jam over the weekend, but it didn't happen.  I needed to get the berries used up before they spoiled and this afternoon we all got to work slicing, mashing and dicing fruit.  

We made peach, blackberry, blackberry/peach, and strawberry jam.  Then later I made peach syrup and blueberry syrup (which I processed!).  The peaches are white peaches and so delicious.  Kathy's husband brought us two large flats of very ripe peaches that make the best jam and syrup!  Oh, so good.  And the little ones have loved going into the fridge to eat a "lean" peach whenever they want.  [Stephen called them "lean-over peaches" when he brought them by, because you need to lean over when you eat them or you get juice all down the front of you.  

I used low sugar or no sugar needed pectin and had great success with it.  And I love only needing to use 1/4 the sugar traditional recipes call for and still getting a good set on the jam.  I also tested using truvia on batch of strawberry jam rather than cane sugar, it set beautifully, so I'm looking forward to tasting it too.  I think GR's count was 28 jars of jam ... most were pints for us to use, but I also used some jelly jars to give as gifts.    

This day in the kitchen with the kids has brought back sweet memories of making jam with my parents and siblings at my grandmothers home.  My parents discovered buckets and buckets of raspberries in Grandma's basement freezer and we spent the entire week we were there making jam.  


We processed the jam in QUART jars.  Yep, quart jars.  At the time I had no idea what that meant ... I didn't realize the significance of how much work that represented - even though I actively participated.  We'd never made jam before - that wasn't something we did.  Maybe we were using jars Grandma had, or maybe because we were a large family quart jars seemed more efficient?  I don't know.   But no one makes jam in quart jars ... everyone uses pints.  IF you are lucky one recipe yields a quart of jam, plus a little bit.  And we made cases and cases of raspberry jam, in quart jars.  I don't remember how many jars we made, nor do I really remember how much work it took to make that jam.  But we all remember that summer, sitting at stove in the Logan house, cooking raspberry jam.  And we all remember how amazing that raspberry jam tasted.  


As we visited family that summer, we left each family, including the newly married cousins, with a case of the jam.  I don't even remember how many cases we gave away or how many we kept ... maybe someone else remembers?  But I remember when we finally opened the last quart jar of raspberry jam a year or so later, we all savored every bite full!

5 Little Piggies

GR's working out of the office this week and was gone all weekend.  I've been talking about taking a new picture of the five of them all weekend long.  So after swimming this afternoon, when they all lined up on the deck, Rebecca suggested I get the camera and take a picture.  Sweet willing participants, I'm all game!  Except this is what I got ...

Clearly, willingness isn't everything.  

Buzz Cuts

Last week GR cut the boys hair. They have been begging for buzz cuts for a very, very long time. I'm not a huge fan, but relented when GR said it was High School before his mother finally gave up on the hair cut issue and I remember that my father got this cut every summer. It is, after all only hair.

When Bob saw Alex a few days after his hair cut, he didn't recognize him - he does look so different, more than one person has done a double take. And I'm getting use to Sam without hair on his forehead. They both look so cute.

For days after getting his buzz cut, Alex would ask you if you liked his hair, or he run past you running his hands through his hair and pausing to look at his reflection in every mirror. It was pretty sweet to watch how pleased he was.

From the time Alley was a little baby people who know my dad have said the two look a lot a like. You tell me, Daddy is pictured on the far left and they are almost the same age, both nearly six.

I think it's possible they have the same hair line ...