Life According to Grey

Kenna informed me I should check the camera. Grey got it and "took tons of great pictures". Seriously, you never know what you're going to find, and I don't believe he's ever done this before. I was preparing myself for seven thousand shots, and a full memory card to sift through.

I should have known better. True to form, he's careful and deliberate. He didn't take a million pictures he took 11, and they are actually decent. I guess maybe he has an eye for beauty?

Here are his eleven pictures. Taken by Lleyton Grey, without assistance. They are captioned with his explanation as to why he took the photograph.

That was because I thought it was pretty good and I wanted to re-nember it how it looked

I wanted to take a picture of it because it was pretty and nice and there's lots of nice stuff on there, and it was the best one

Because he's furry and I like him

I took this because I loved it and Hucky and I was trying to get a picture of his whiskers cause they are super duper big 

I knowed that Kenna loves flowers and when they bloom they're so nice and good and stuff like that. And the petals are beautiful and shiny and good

I like to feel the petals, because they are soft

I like it because it's so nice and the flowers are good but I'm not sure they bloomed yet

That is a honeysuckle, but it didn't bloom yet. And I love them because they are very yummy and have honey

I tried to get them because May loves honeysuckles and I do too

I like nature because it's all very nice, and I like May's shirt because it has a skeleton

I like it because it's cute, it's funny, it's very awesome. It's icky because they're killing a bug. I love Sawyer because he's my cat. He's very cute, awesome, and furry

Thatcher

The taming of the wild-cat is coming along! Our little pretty kitty, Becky Thatcher is becoming a house cat:-) She still won't let us pick her up, but she loves to play, will eat out of our hand, lick us, and sleep with us! (Us being Brian, Darla and Kenna - the boys are too loud and hyper and generally spook her right from the get-go causing her to run and hide under a bed or couch).

All three are siblings, from the same litter, but she's so tiny by comparison. You can see in a few pics here how much smaller she is than the boys.

Huck and Sawyer in the foreground, and Thatcher in the back, she's a teeny little girl!

Huck is long haired and bushy tailed cat, and Thatch is short haired, short tailed cat. Sawyer is also short haired, but has a longer tail - perhaps to do with his height? He's a lot taller than she is

Laying in Kenna's window sill. She has such a pretty little face. She and Huck both have very similar facial expressions, and remind us often of Toothless from the How To Train Your Dragon movies.

*Kenna is upset that she "ruined" the video by calling her a boy at the end. She said she was thinking about how she wanted to show the boys this video, and 'her mind mixed up the words' :-) A cute little clip of Thatch playing with Kenna, while she was supposed to be doing homework.

Brooks Singing

Because this will make him LAUGH someday:-)

Short Story

This true story illustrated that diligence us important, especially when someone charts a path that others will follow.

On January 17, 1524, Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazano embarked on a voyage to the New World. Commissioned by the king of France to explore the coastal area between Florida and Nova Scotia, Giovanni and his brother Gerolomo were given the three-mast La Dauphine, and charged with the task of discovering a direct westward sea route to the orient. On March 1, Verrazano sighted the point of land now known as Cape Fear in North Carolina, and from that point he slowly worked his way northward, periodically landing on the east coast, and making careful notations in his log. The exploration concluded with a survey of the coasts of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. The La Dauphine returned to France on July 8, 1524, and the Verrazano brothers immediately set themselves to the task of creating a map that represented their discoveries.

The result of their labours, now known as the Verrazano World Map, was published in 1529. The map was instantly regarded as the best authority on the east coast of North America; it was copied by mapmakers and distributed to navigators for over fifty years. Only afterwards did cartographers suspect that something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

The Verrazano brothers made a critical mistake when they encountered the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Viewing a body of water on the opposite side of the banks, Giovanni and Gerolomo agreed that this was what they had been looking for - a sea lane leading directly to the Far East. As a result, their map depicted North America in two halves, with the southern half (now the southern United States) divided from the northern half (the northeastern United States) by a great sea that passed directly to the Pacific. The "Sea of Verrazano", as it turned out, was only the Pamlico Sound situated between the coast of North Carolina and the Outer Banks. The Verrazano brothers had not sufficiently explored the waters beyond the banks, and the misinformation that followed took the better half of a century to correct.

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. II Timothy 2:15

Co-op

We had our final day of Co-op last Friday - until next fall! Here is a picture of all the school aged children that participated this year. We had a great year, and can't wait to do it all again!

Brooks Turns 8!

This year Brooks chose an old fave. Look at this adorable comparison from 5 years ago, when he chose the same cereal. This is the same size bag, look at how much he's grown!

Brooks turning 3, and Brooks turning 8

He got a new bike from Mommy and Daddy, Spiderman Walkie Talkies from Kenna and a pack of gum from Grey

We had a big backyard barbecue - sort of a combo party for Brooks, and one of our military friends who just came home that very same morning. Welcome home! The invited guests were all the "Spartan racers"/workout group. We had quite a crowd - 25 people not including ourselves!

We are so grateful for a great outdoor space with this house. We had cornhole, frisbee golf, crokinole set up on the screened in porch, and our new trampoline, and then a bonfire - fun for everyone and plenty of space!

Oh, and a little canoeing! This is what happens when grown men throw frisbee's waaaay too hard and they end up in the middle of the lake. You'd think it would be a kid to do this, but no... haha! Actually, they likely did it on purpose just to give us the fun of retrieving it!

The frisbee in the lake watchers

Frisbee golf!

We had a bunch of pallets to burn, so we had a HUGE bonfire. I think we burned through at least 10 pallets!

Our brand new summer time family gift - a trampoline! We had a very old handmedown one that couldn't survive the move to Willow house, and we've been saving ever since to get another one! Thanks to a timely online sale, we were able to get it in time for the party!

We ate burgers, hot dogs, the kids all played (and played and played!) and we had a really great time together!

Calvin & Hobbes Cake

My kids were killing me with their desired birthday cakes this year! Brooks wanted Calvin & Hobbes, and honestly, it took me awhile to think of anything I could do that would actually *look* like Calvin, or Hobbes. The idea struck me, that I could do a large, edible comic strip.

It took a long time and tons of google searches and even a facebook poll of friends, and good suggestions were made. I wanted both Calvin and Hobbes in the strip, and there are no birthday related strips containing those two, only Calvin and Susie. I finally decided on the perfect strip the old fashioned way - by reading a Calvin & Hobbes book:-) Brooks is TERRIFIED of bugs and especially bees, and this strip seemed to encapsulate his fears, over reactions, and our nonchalant "oh my, must have been terrible" responses.

My original idea was to have the strip printed on edible paper at the cake store. I enlarged the strip to my desired size, and went into the store - and found out to print this how they do, on edible paper was going to cost $52. GULP! I will forever be grateful for an employee who was more concerned with the happiness of a customer, than the bottom line - because I didn't know you could buy blank edible paper. She told me that because the design was easy to trace, and the paper is see-thru, I should just copy it myself with edible markers. I was excited, because I already own edible markers for my cookie business, and the blank edible paper...was $1.75 for FIVE sheets!!! I literally saved $50 and it only took a few minutes to trace out the cartoon on the flavourless potato starch paper!

All traced and ready to go! This is edible paper.

I made the cake "marble" with vanilla and chocolate - the vanilla dyed orange, obviously. Because tiger stripes just seemed most appropriate:-)

I made a few "critical errors" with this cake - #1 I should have just marbled it the regular way, instead of layering it in the zebra stripe method. As it turns out, the zebra stripe pattern is only visible if you are cutting a circle cake, into pie shaped pieces. Cutting a square cake into square pieces - you see orange and brown, but no defined stripe pattern. Marbling it would have been fine in this cake, and taken less time.
#2 I didn't account for the size of the cake - this cake is three 9x9's end on end, and then stacked, so a total of six 9x9 cakes were baked (this took 4 cake mixes). I had planned to fill the cake with a whipped cream/pudding type filling - but that needs to be refrigerated, and this cake was too long to fit in my fridge! So I changed up the plan and did a marshmallow creme buttercream (dyed orange) instead - which was nice, but I was really in the mood for that pudding filling!

I iced the cake in vanilla buttercream, and tried to make it as smooth as possible! The paper towel method I use couldn't be done here, since I couldn't get the cake in a fridge, so I just had to use a knife

Applying the edible paper. The lady at the cake store told me to wet the cake just a little, and stick it down, so I followed that advice, and used a off set knife and hot water to smooth and wet the icing just prior to application. Error #3 - I don't think it needed the wet, the icing would have been just fine. I'm using paper towel to smooth and press the paper onto the cake - touching it with any amount of moisture on your hands causes it to stick and pull up.

YAY!

I did this Friday night, with the party being on Saturday night. The paper went on like a dream, and it was all too easy! I looked perfect Fri night...come Sat morning though, the ink had bled, just a touch. Not enough to make anything hard to see or read, but just enough to muddy some of the lines and that was frustrating, I think that was maybe just because of the liquid, though it wasn't much at all - unsure if it would have happened with just buttercream underneath.

All done! It bled a bit, but still looked good

Birthday boy and his cake

Reading his edible comic strip

And it's a tiger cake!!

All in all, it was a pretty easy cake to make - it hardly took any time at all. And thanks to the cheap edible paper, was affordable too. A great idea to make a themed birthday cake and have it look professional! I'm tucking this idea away for the future!