Curlers

Katelyn was looking at the curlers in the drawer the other night. I asked her if she wanted me to put curlers in her hair for preschool the next day. She was so excited. I put the curlers in. The next morning I went to take them out. She got really upset. I told her that you take the curlers out to get the curls. She informed me that she didn't want curls, she just wanted to show the preschool kids all of the colors of curlers she had. So this is how she went to school. When she came home she let me take them out.

Katelyn's picture

Katelyn drew a family portrait. I love it!

Ridge's Big Birthday!

Our little baby is one? I'm not really sure how that happened but it did. The day has come and gone. We decided to go with his interests on the theme for his party and his very favorite thing are balls. I made a football and basketball cake, with baseball cupcakes. The story with the cakes is a long and sad story. We were planning on having his party on Saturday night. I woke up early on Friday to make the cakes. I baked the round cake in a glass bowl and quite a bit of batter spilled out of the bowl onto the element of the stove. I figured it would just burn off. When I increased the oven temp. for the other two cakes the batter started to burn off, with flames. I just happened to look back in the oven. I thought, "Hmmm, I don't remember turning on the oven light, and why is it yellow." Next thought, "Ohh crap!" I was thinking of baking soda when I turned to grap something to put the fire out. In my panic I grabbed flour, which did absolutely nothing. My next line of defense was the fire extinguisher. I had to spray it three times to get the fire out. Kyleigh has a clear head in emergencies. She had gathered up Katelyn and Ridge and had them outside where the smoke and fumes from the extinguisher didn't get to them. I was upset when I had to throw my cakes away, and the bread dough that was rising on the counter. I was more upset when I noticed the film from the extinguisher spray. I wiped off the countertops and cupboard door surfaces. Then I opened a cupboard that had been closed and noticed the film of white on the shelves and dishes. That's when I broke down. I ended up having to spend the next 1 1/2 days washing every dish in my house, and cleaning every cupboard. I started the whole project over on Monday morning (we moved the party). I spent a good part of the day getting those cakes ready. I planned to let Ridge dig into the round basketball cake. I just knew he was going to have so much fun digging in his cake. I was SO looking forward to it. After dinner we set Ridge on the table. He reached for the cake right away. We weren't quite ready for that. The candle was lit on top. We said, probably with a little much gusto, "wait, wait, wait!" He thought he had done something bad and started screaming his head off. He wouldn't have touched that cake with a ten foot pole after that. We tried to take him outside so he would calm down. Didn't work. I even tried giving it to him the next morning. The second I put it on his tray he started screaming again. In summary of this long story, I worked for three days on some cakes that ended up being thrown away and I didn't get my favorite pictures of all time. The first birthday cake pictures. Very sad.

Other than the screaming cake incident we had a fun party. We had a "ball" dinner. It included meatballs, potatoes shaped into balls, and corn (they are kind of like little balls). We also had a jar of maltballs and everyone guessed how many were in the jar. Katelyn guessed 182,000 and Naiya guessed 2. Holly won with her guess of 57. There were 63.

When we went to open gifts Ridge was interested for a minute. The second gift he opened was a bag of balls from my Mom and Dad. After that it was all over. The only thing he cared about was throwing those balls. The next day he did love the gift we gave him. We gave him a little radio flyer stroll and ride trike. You can steer it like a stroller when they are too little to pedal themselves and take the handle off for a trike when they are bigger. We have it in the house and the girls are always pushing him around the gauntlet (the circular path). The girls also love to ride it themselves.

I don't remember what life was like before Ridge. He is such a fun little boy. He is always smiling and laughing outloud. He melts my heart every time he toddles to me with his arms up. I love to hear him say "Mamamamama." It makes me smile when he pushes his car around and makes a car noise (new event in our house). I love to watch him dance every time we turn on his ball popper or any other music. I love his sweet morning smell. I just love him! Happy Birthday to our Ridger man.

The Butterfly Experiment

A few weeks ago some friends told us about a place to find caterpillars. We made our way to a random spot in Waimea near the high school and boy did we find caterpillars. We watched them for awhile, observing the way they walk and how they eat. We also saw our first real life chrysalises. Kyleigh and I were both surprised to see that they were green with sparkly trim. We pictured them as being grey and bland. We captured a few caterpillars and put them and their food in a large plastic jar. We were so excited to begin a real butterfly life cycle experiment. We watched them carefully for any change. One day we noticed that a few of them had crawled to the top of the jar and after another day or so they were hanging upside down. About a day and a half after they started hanging upside down they changed to chrysalises. We caught the first one in action. It was about 1/4 green when I noticed it. I screamed so loud for the girls that Ridge cryed for the next 10 minutes. It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. The green shell just crept up over the body of the caterpillar and he did his best to wiggle his body inside of it. It took less than five minutes and it was done. The chrysalis wiggled for the next 10-20 minutes, then it was still. It looked wet for about the same amount of time, then appeared hard. We didn't touch them to check, though. We didn't want to upset the cycle. About a week later the green chrysalis turned dark black. If you looked closely you could see the white spots of the butterfly. Just a few days after that the chrysalis cracked and a butterflly was hanging upside down waiting for it's wings to dry. The chrysalis shell was clear. Once the butterflies dropped from their chrysalis we put a popsicle stick in the jar and they climbed on. We had three at the same time. We had been reading a book called "Surviving the Applewhites." In the book the characters are doing the same thing as we were doing and they got their butterflies to drink kool-aid syrup. We just happen to keep kool-aid syrup in the fridge for shaved ice. We put the butterflies close to the syrup and Rusty and the girls got to watch one of them taking a drink. We left them in the house for a night, then let them go the next day. Well, we let two of them go. The other was lost until later in the day. When we found him he wouldn't climb on the popsicle stick so I finally pulled the screen out and he flew away. We still have one black chrysalis and we are waiting for the butterfly to emerge. This has been one of the coolest things we have ever done. If you ever find a bunch of caterpillars in one area, take a few. Take lots of whatever they are feeding on because they really are incredibly hungry. We had to go back to get leaves a few times. One time we went back to get more leaves. We also got one more caterpillar to give to Naiya whose first caterpillar had died. When we got home the caterpillar was sitting on the counter on top of the pile of leaves while we cleaned out the jar (lots of leaves means lots of poop). Russ was holding Ridge and all of a sudden he started yelling. He had looked over at Ridge just in time to see a caterpillar hanging halfway out of his mouth (thankfully it had not been bitten in half). That was troubling. Then we saw that Naiya's caterpillar was still on the counter. That was even more troubling. Where did he get a caterpillar to eat and how many had he eaten? We finally figured that Rusty must have gotten one on him when he was picking leaves and Ridge had pulled it off of his shirt. We still hope that there was only one on Rusty's shirt. Anyway, everyone should go find some caterpillars because it really is an amazing feature of nature.

Katelyn looking at a chrysalis at left.

Ridge about to reach for a caterpillar.

Kyleigh chose and caught the caterpillars to take home.

About to let our a butterfly out. Chrysalis to the left of the butterfly.

Pet Shop Monster

One day Katelyn and I were playing with the littlest pet shops. We were having an LPS America competition. We were down to the final 5 when Ridge woke up and came in. He played around for awhile as Lady Ladybug won the competition. She won a new house. Ridge started playing with the pet shops and Katelyn started getting frustrated. I reminded her that we have to make his game part of our game. Just then I had to leave to help Kyleigh. When I came back Katelyn was pretend crying. She had all the pet shops huddled up around Lady Ladybug. I asked her what was going on and she said all the pet shops were sad because they knew the monster (Ridge) was going to ruin Lady Ladybug's new house. Ridge had wandered away so we decided maybe if all the pet shops lined up around the house maybe Ridge the Monster would be distracted enough to leave Lady Ladybug's house unscathed. We lined all the pet shops up. When Ridge came in he was so excited to see the destruction potential. Our plan worked.....

but only for a minute.

How old is Kyleigh?

This was the sign I found on the door of the girls' room the other day. If she had spelled disturb correctly you might think she was a teenager.

Rusty's 33rd Birthday

We all had a great day for Rusty's birthday. He wanted to go on a hike so we headed up to Kokee and hiked the berry flat loop. It's about a 3 mile loop. For awhile Kyleigh was playing Indian girl and we were the mean indians. She was running ahead of us so we wouldn't capture her. Then Katelyn wanted to lead the hike and they started fighting over the leader position. I told Russ to come up with a place where Kyleigh could take over as leader again. In staying with the indian theme he told them they would switch at "the big stump, on it's side, against the crooked sky." There is a huge stump in the trail with jagged edges on the top. Kyleigh kept asking "when" over and over again. So we made up actions to go with, "the big stump, on it's side, against the crooked sky." We thought we were hilarious. She rolled her eyes like a teenager but we kept doing it everytime she asked. It turned into a super fun game. Every stump we saw they asked if this was "the big stump, on it's side, against the crooked sky." We finally got to it and they were so excited. It was perfect climbing for our monkey kids.

After our hike we went back to the grassy field and had a bar-b-que. We ate shrimp and chicken shishkabobs, potatoe salad, grilled tandori bread and corn. We did a dutch oven apple crisp for desert. Mike and Holly had other obligations during the day but made it up in time for desert.

I gave Russ some wood chip biscuits for his smoker and a kit that makes any table into a ping pong table. The girls gave him a chalk ball that they worked on for hours. They grind chalk on the concrete, mix it with water, and reshape it into a ball.

It was a great day for the birthday boy and everyone else.