Hurry Home Daddy!

Today the boys and I made a "Hurry Home Daddy" chart. I tried to have the boys help cut the strips of paper. Trayton did a pretty good job. Kade got a little scissor happy. But they both had fun helping. Its hard for little kids to understand time so I am hoping that this will help them look forward to Daddy's return. Jonathan graduated from his training today. (Good Job babe.) And leaves for Iraq this week. We are missing him TONS but trying to stay busy. Thanks for all the phone calls, prayers, and support. Here's a picture of the final product.

Air Show!

On Saturday the Air Force put on an air show and the kids and I decided to go check it out. I think this picture says it all. Do you think these boys were having fun??? They had several planes on static display that the boys got to go inside and they even got to climb around on top of a tank. And they had all sorts of planes doing flying stunts all afternoon. They even had some parachuters. At first the boys were pretty upset that somebody jumped out of a plane. Especially Kade. He couldn't understand why anyone would jump. But after he saw them land and knew that they were okay he asked me if he could jump out of a plane too. Obviously I told him no but he reassured himself by telling me that he would wait until he was bigger and then he would try. Oh, my little fearless Kade...what am I going to do with you.

If I'm not mistaken this is a picture of a p51 mustang and the bigger plane is the same type of plane that was used in the Doolittle raid. It was really cool watching the show that these two little planes put on. At the end of the show the US Thunderbirds arrived. This picture doesn't do them justice. They are amazing. The Thunderbird team flies all over the nation putting on air shows. Mountain Home tries to host a thunderbird show every other year. So in 2010 I hope you all will come visit and join us for the air show...

Crowded Tub

by Sheldon Allan Silverstein

There are too many kids in this tub.

There are too many elbows to scrub.

I just washed a behind that I'm sure wasn't mine.

There are too many kids in this tub.

This has always been a favorite poem of mine, but tonight it took on new meaning to me. I wonder if a scene like this was what inspired the poem...

Crazy 8's -- Tagged by Allison

8 T.V. shows I love to watch:
(we don't even have cable so this is kind of hard…)
Heroes
Bones
Law & Order
Everybody loves Raymond
Extreme Home Makeover
Any HGTV
Diego (it entertains the boys)
Super Nanny
8 Favorite Restaurants:
Olive Garden
Outback
Baja Fresh
Wendy's (just for the frosty)
Panda Express
Papa Murphy's
Subway
KFC
8 Things that happened yesterday:
(I don't remember what happened yesterday so here's what happened today…)
trip to the dentist
Trayton went to preschool
cleaned bathroom
made bread
went to the store
blogged
talked to Jonathan (the highlight of my day)
Bathed kids
8 Things I look forward to:
April
finishing this house
going back to Alaska
April
seeing family for Christmas
Jonathan's next phone call
family coming to visit me (hint--hint)
April
8 Things I love about fall
It brings me closer to April
Cooler weather
Halloween
Carving pumpkins
Kade's birthday
Jonathan's birthday
Thanksgiving
Family visiting
8 Things on My Wish list:
April
Unlimited resources to go shopping (haha)
finish my degree
potty train Kade
Summer home in Alaska
Home in AZ near family
No more deployments (a girl can wish right??)
New car
8 People I'm Tagging:
Kayleen
Kassy
Meg
Nicole
Stephanie
Becca
BethAnn
Jennifer

Military Appreciation Day

Saturday, the town of Mountain Home had a military appreciation day. The boys had lots and lots of fun. The day started off with a parade. The parade had lots of fire trucks and military vehicles (which the boys loved). But their favorite part of the parade was that EVERYONE was throwing CANDY. This was the first time Trayton caught on to the whole candy idea and had a really good time chasing every single piece that was thrown our way. Kade picked up a few pieces here and there but mostly just wanted to sit and eat what he already had. Here's the stash that we made off with: And yes they did throw notebooks and toilet paper too. After the parade there was a free lunch in the park and some fun games for the kids. The boys had fun going on the bouncy obstacle course and the giant slide. It took Kade FOREVER to get to the top of the slide.
But it was sooo worth it. He was giggling uncontrollably the whole way up and the whole way down.

FYI!

D day has come and gone. And what a sad sad day it was. Jonathan has officially deployed and now we begin the long and dreary 7ish months with out him. This is the worst part of military life. But we learn so much through our trials and we are grateful for the blessings we receive. Please keep Jonathan in your prayers. Jonathan, I love you and I miss you already.

Honey Honey

Wednesday night Jonathan decided that he wanted to harvest some honey. It was a last minute decision but I'm glad that he wanted too. We had so much fun trying to figure out what we were doing. First we had to cut the comb. This knife Jonathan is holding would get hot so that it would be easier to slice off the caps on the comb so that we could get to the honey.

Then we put the cut combs into the extractor.We could only do two frames at a time and we had to do 10 frames. There is a handle on the extractor that we had to crank for 10 minutes each time. Amazingingly according to the law of centrifugal force the honey came right out without damaging the comb.

Here is the comb after we got the honey out.Then we poured the honey out of the extractor into a cheese cloth covered bucket. The cheese cloth strained out any stray pieces of comb and left us with pure honey.We didn't think we would get that much honey since we only did one of the small supers. But WOW, I filled about 18 pint size jars with honey. Now I know how to extract honey. But I don't know what to do with all this HONEY!

KIDS

The kids have been awfully busy these days. Trayton and Kade LOVE sidewalk chalk and my sidewalk and driveway are ALWAYS covered in beautiful pictures. Kade one day got a little creative with his decorations.

Here he was afraid of showing me what he had done. (Sorry the pictures sideways.)And here is his masterpiece....

Jordynn is getting too big. She already wants to be where everyone else is and see what's going on. So I got out one of the booster seats that we had in storage and she LOVES it. She is so happy to sit and watch us from her new vantage point.