Grilling. Buckeye Scavenger Hunt. Apple Fritters.

My husband has never been romantic (well, when we were dating but we won't go there!!) but he has been especially thoughtful in the last year or so when it comes to the kids. Yesterday evening I was delighted when he told the kids that after we prayed, I would tell what we needed to do that evening before bed and then he had something to say. After I went through the "you two need to practice your verse, practice the piano, read, blah, blah, blah" (don't you hate having to constantly tell your kids what they need to do?), then he said that we had two hours to do all of that and then at 8 o'clock we would all meet back in the kitchen and he would make us caramel lattes. AND we would go out on the deck and drink them before bed. By the way, these were DECAF caramel lattes and the kids are mainly milk/half-and-half. ;) I just thought that was sweet and thoughtful of him. It made me happy. The kids enjoyed it as well. We all named one good and bad thing that happened to us that day. These are the things that become memories.

So I have gone through another week of all the activities and we have started another week and we are doing it. We are managing it all extremely well so right now it's not too much. I'm really thinking I'll be trying to talk them out of basketball for the winter. I'm already worrying wondering how I'll be taking Andrew to cub scouts come tax season. At least soccer will be over.

My busiest day of last week was on Thursday. I took the kids to school, ate breakfast with Elizabeth's class (it's National Breakfast Month - bet ya didn't know that!), went to Daddy and Mom's and started helping her tape up the walls to paint the kitchen. We got that almost done before I had to leave to go back to school early enough to help Andrew's class with their apple flavor tasting. The parents were assigned apple flavored foods to bring. They had already had an apple tasting getting to sample around 10 varieties. The foods they tasted were apple sauce, apple butter, apple fritters, caramel apples, apple Jolly Ranchers, apple gum, apple juice, apple cider, Granny Smith apples, Fuji apples, apple cereal bar, Apple Jacks cereal and dried apple chips. They rated them as "yum!", "ehhh, it's okay" or "yuck!" That evening Andrew had soccer and then I made sure they knew their words for their spelling tests. I have to say that they have done wonderful on their last two tests. They have both been making 100s or higher with bonus words. This makes Wade breath a sigh of relief because he was never a good speller. I am a great speller (take after my dad) so hopefully they got the spelling genes. Ha!

Wade went out of town over the weekend for his annual boys' trip to Cincinnati to watch a MLB game. He's not a big Reds fan but likes the stadium and goes usually with three other guys from church that all like to have a good, crazy time. My plans for the weekend included staying up late, no work, sleeping in late, no work, oh, and some scrapbooking! I did well. ;) When I picked the kids up from school on Friday, we went to Michael's and Toys R Us to spend the chore money that was burning a hole in their pocket. We then went to Chili's for dinner. They talked me into dessert. A boy and his mom at a neighboring table had got the chocolate lava cake and well, what can I say? I'm weak when it comes to warm chocolate cake covered with warm chocolate syrup and ice cream. Mmmm!

I actually got a scrapbook page done on Friday night. That's two layouts in two weeks. I'm doing good. I also finished one on Saturday night. I hope to post them soon to share with some recent cards. On Saturday morning I heard Andrew try to quietly close my bedroom door around 7 a.m. so I wouldn't hear the TV and could sleep longer. Man, do I have that boy trained well!! LOL He will also make his own chocolate milk and Poptart now which I think I've mentioned before. Well, Wade has told him to halt that for now after he spilled chocolate powder two mornings in a roll on the floor and it does make us nervous when he uses the toaster oven while we're sleeping. He's 6.5 years. Then there's Elizabeth. Age eight and she'll come and wake you to ask if you'll get up and get her something. Such different kids. So I did get to sleep in that morning and we sort of just hung around and did nothing until Andrew's soccer game at 2.

My new grill which I have forgot to share:


Can you say FIVE BURNERS???? Plus it has a side burner. We got it Labor Day weekend. I have been grill happy ever since. I've grilled at least two meals every week since I got it. I've grilled two pizzas. I have to say that we probably won't bake another pizza in the oven. It's really that much better. We didn't plan on buying that weekend though. We had gone to Home Depot just to "look" which made us realize that the supplies were getting bare, especially for what we were wanting. At the time we were at Home Depot, we saw two grills sold. We then went to Lowe's and determined that we 1) didn't want to make two or three more trips to check out grills elsewhere and 2) we really liked the one we saw at Home Depot. We went back to get it and in that time saw another two more grills sold. They were marked down and we figured if we had waited until after the weekend that it would probably be gone. There were only two more left. Another favorite thing I've been grilling is vegetables - green bell peppers, broccoli, onion, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots. Really anything I have on hand! My friend, Celeste, shared a recipe that I love to put on them:

Grilled Veggie Seasoning

1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 minced garlic clove
1/2 teaspoon pepper

Oh, tonight Elizabeth and I were finishing up practicing the piano (yes, I sit there pretty much the whole time to make sure they are getting it right), when we heard the doorbell ring. About this time every year our good friend/neighbor, Lorrie, will drop off buckeyes at the front door and ring the doorbell. Well, Abbie, her daughter, rings the doorbell and runs. We go to look and no one is there but a handful of buckeyes. All the kids enjoy it - ours and hers. Well, tonight when we went to look there was a small plastic bag with one buckeye and a note that said, "Elizabeth, Elizabeth, you're the tops, go find a buckeye where everyone stops." We have a corner lot with a stop sign so we went there. At the base, we found another note and buckeye that said, "Wade, Wade, you can't hide, the buckeye is near the slide." We went to the slide that's sitting under our patio awaiting my dad to come attach (yep, just a side note there on the slide) and found another that said, "Andrew, Andrew, you're so grand, look for your next buckeye in the sand." So we dug around in the sandbox to find another that said, "Leslie, Leslie, your style rocks, the next buckeye is in your box." So Elizabeth and I ran to our mailbox, she opened it and out poured LOTS and LOTS of buckeyes!!! Lorrie, Abbie and her niece were hiding across the road and jumped out, laughing. I had to grab my camera and get a few photos. We relived the adventure when Andrew and Wade came back from cub scouts.


Can you even see how many were in there? We filled up a bag. I think I'm going to get a basket to put them in for fall decoration. ;)


One last thing! With Andrew finishing up his unit at school on apples, I told him I would make us some fried apple fritters over this past weekend while Wade was gone. I did. They were delicious. The kids, however, didn't appreciate them. The recipe I make entails making a batter similar to that for funnel cake, peeling and coring your apples and then cutting them in rings and then dipping in the batter and frying in hot oil. I ate most of them until I realized the fat I was probably getting from the frying. I saved the rest for Wade.