A first for Tab

Tab for the first time decided that he is interested in drawing his letters. I guess we just had to have the right medium. He loves to draw his letters on his chalkboard and nowhere else. The first letters he drew were of coarse his name. Sorry, I don't know what the deal is with this picture. My camera was having issues.

Then he wanted to draw more letters. I drew the ones in orange, obviously. I just love his little purple letters. He drew C,D,E,F, backwards G, H, I, upside down J. He was having a blast.

Grandpa's Wood Shop

As I mentioned in a previous post, my dad has a wood shop. Jason helped my dad prepare a little for his quilt show and in return my dad helped Jason make me a beautiful cutting board that I can hardly force myself to use. Isn't it beautiful. I have to admit that Jason is the only one who has cut anything on it and it was just bread. Anyway, from time to time Tab would wander in and want to help. Jason set him up with some "tools" and a piece of wood and let him have at it.

It was interesting to see how he thought the tools were supposed to be used.When asked what he was doing, he simply replied, "helping". Afterall, Dad and grandpa were working and they must have needed help from a 3 year old.

The OsteoStash

Every year, here at KCOM the 2nd year medical students can be found sporting an "OsteoStash". Jason's was quite attractive.

Ok, so maybe attractive isn't the right word for it. Interesting and absolutely hideous. That may be a better way of putting it.

Apparently there is quite the history behind the nasty looking stashes they all walk around with for a few days. Something about all of the OMM professors having big ole mustaches which come from a tradition of sorts from long long ago. It is a long and not really interesting story. The intersting part is the laughs you get as all of the new first years look around and think what is wrong with all of the people here.

Cherry Picking

My parents have a big sour cherry tree in their yard and it just so happened that it actually produced a pretty good crop this summer. So we went out a few times and picked cherries to make some yummy pies with. For the adults involved, we got bored pretty quick as it was about a million degrees out. This kids held out pretty good though.
Tab really wanted to the one up on the ladder.While Benton was content to sit on the blanket and eat grass and the random cherries that the kids threw at him.It was all good fun until Tab did this.
He couldn't get the bucket off of his foot and a tantrum ensued as I laughed wickedly at him.
I know, I'm such an evil mom.

Gardening with Grandma

Back to our vacation. One of the things that I was really sad to miss about being in Missouri is that I wasn't going to get a chance to have a garden. My mom let me help her plant a little bit of her garden. Tab really wanted to help too, so I let him help hoe the row.
He had pretty good form after watching grandma.
Then we planted some beans.
Of course we had to water everything.
And of course Tab had to help with that too.

Happy Birthday Boogalas

One year ago today Benton joined our little family.

I can't believe that this year has gone by so quickly. Benton has grown so much. He has enriched our lives and taught us much. He really is just what our family needed, spunky attitude and a belly laugh that can make the even gruffest of people chuckle.Benton got pretty excited when we started singing happy birthday to him.

Then we gave him the cake and he gave us this look. The, am I going to get in trouble for this look.

Oh, the cake. I guess you may want to see that in one piece. Here is Benny's dinosaur before it got all cut up. It didn't turn out quite right. I had some soft frosting issues. Also the head is obviously propped up. It was a little heavy. And, well, lets just say there are more toothpicks in that head than cake and it wasn't helping. Most importantly, if I never have to seen green frosting again...

All that matters is that Benton enjoyed it.After a little while he decided to take a little break. i think he was having a bit of a sugar buzz.But don't worry. He went back at it. He actually finished eating all of the cake.But he decided that the frosting was more fun to play with than anything else.
Of course we had a little present for the Boogs. However, he of coarse had no clue what it was.So we helped him figure it out. Look at his eyes, he was still so wired.As the boys didn't really need any more toys, we got Benny a few new books.

Now Announcing...

My cooking blog. I really should say OUR cooking blog. My sisters and I started a cooking blog to share recipes with each other and whoever else may be interested. As many of you know, I have been really into expanding my cooking repertoire lately and have been amassing some great recipes. My sister has been doing the same, (I would like to take some fault/credit for her new passion). I am really excited about this as it seems I'm spending more and more time cooking and as I'm always posting recipes, my sister and I thought we would combine our culinary efforts into one place. I hope you enjoy our new site, Recipe for Disaster? Come visit and let us know what you think. I've also created a little link love over on my side bar so that you can continue to visit if you like.

The Dogs

My Parents have two very large dogs. They are dumb. Nice, but dumb. Tab just loved it though. He loved running around after them. He really wanted them to play fetch. Afterall, when he pretends to be a dog, that's the game that he likes to play. However, these dogs don't really get it. So Jarom kindly coated the ends of a stick in catfish bate and gave it to Tab to throw. The dogs then willing chased down the sticks. Tab was thrilled. Here he was giving Annie just a little taste before throwing the stick.
He and Jarom had fun wrestling with the dogs.
However, for a little while he was convinced that they were horses.Tab was convinced that he could talk to the dogs. It was kind of funny. I came out and asked him what he was doing and he said, "Just talking to Annie". I never could get him to tell me what they were talking about.The poor kid would probably kill for a dog of his own.

York Quilt Show

My dad owns his own wood working business, Red Lion Woodcraft. While we were in PA, he was a vendor at the York Quilt Show. He put so much work into preparing for this. We spent quite a bit of time helping him put epoxy and knobs on the quilt hangers you see here.It was a late night packaging up all of the various products. As a matter of fact, I don't think that my dad slept for 2 days before the show.Phew....done packaging up the ruler racks.Their display looked great. You can tell how tired my dad is just sitting there. I'm glad that we were able to be there to help.

The Chickens...a very picture heavy post

My mom raises chicken in their not so little backyard coop. She learned all about it from her friends at BackyardChickens.com. (I had to put that in there just for Adam.) Anyway Tab has started to distinguish between his different grandmas by calling my mom his Chickens Grandma. It is pretty hilarious and I think my mom just loves it.

Tab just loved going out to Grandma's chickens. He loved collecting their eggs.

He was really fascinated by the little chicken doors.

He kept sticking his head in to check on the chickens inside.He eventually figured out that he could fit through and play/antagonize the chickens inside the coop.

At first, though he was excited about the chickens, he was a little nervous. So he started out by just throwing bread at them.He's he stinking cute?But then Jason showed him how to chase the chickens around and corner them. Jason is worse than any kid I know. Every time that Jason went in the pen he was chasing the chickens, especially the pullets because they were terrified of him. My mom could constantly be heard yelling, "so help me, if my chickens don't give me 6 eggs tomorrow, I'm going to make you lay them". Lucky for him, they always did. I actually have some great video of him chasing them around that I'll share later.His favorite thing was the babies. I have to admit that they were pretty cute.Ahh, don't they make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? Too bad that by the time we left they were about the size of the pullets and ugly.But like I said, I liked them. They were soft and snuggly.On Tab's first encounter, he examined them.After deciding that they must truly be baby chickens, grandma tried to get him to snuggle them as she does the hens. (odd, I know). He was a little apprehensive at first.And then he was happy with the idea, but still a little unsure of the chicken precariously perched so close to his face.He soon warmed up to the idea and we had a hard time getting them away from him.The babies were quite the highlight. When his cousin Miles got there they were always out trying to get into the chicken coop. After an incident where they let the babies out into the pen with the "big hens" (who would peck them to death), the pen got locked and Miles and Tab got their first "grounding".

Now, I have saved the best pictures for last. After a while Tab ended up in just skinnies every day as I got sick of changing him into clean or dry clothes. So he ended up in the chicken pen nearly naked. He didn't really seem to care. He was too busy chasing the hens around. He got quite good at catching them.And then what do you do with a chicken once you've caught it? Why you "fly" it of course.And after "flying" the chickens gets old, you corral them in the baby's pen and then take them back out again.After a while the chickens started to get sick of it, so they started perching up on top of the pen where they thought Tab couldn't get too them. Poor things underestimate a determined 3 year old.Tab sure did love those chickens. He still talks about them.