We’ve been enjoying pleasant weather, even if it has been wet. The trees have been growing their leaves for several weeks now, but last weekend was the first time we really noticed our yard having shade again.
QUITE THE COOK. Last week Jenna participated in the 4-H muffin contest. The muffins, of course, had to be made from scratch so Vicki told her to call Pauline for a recipe. Then Vicki had to stop her before she made her call because she was going to write the recipe down on a small, sticky note. That in itself left us plenty of room for teasing her. She found a larger piece of paper and Grandma dictated her Apple-Whole Wheat Muffin recipe.
The next day when Jenna was about to start cooking Vicki went over the recipe with her to make sure she had everything she needed. Vicki was reading Pauline’s original copy of the recipe she had obtained and Jenna was reading her own phone call copy. After reading over everything Jenna was confused and said, “We still need baking powder.” This, at least, is what Vicki thought Jenna said and held up the box of baking powder.
“No, baking powder!” exclaimed Jenna.
It was only after looking at Jenna’s recipe that she realized Jenna had misunderstood her grandmother on the phone and had written “bacon powder.” After a good laugh at Jenna’s expense, Vicki explained the misunderstanding. Jenna laughed too and said she had wondered why she had never heard of “bacon powder” before. By the way, she still lays all the blame for the confusion on her Grandma’s poor diction!
Well, the muffins won first place in the contest. Jenna was thrilled. And as far as I’m concerned her chocolate oatmeal cookies (aka. cow patty cookies) get a blue ribbon as well.
CHASING CARS. Now we’ve all heard of dogs that chase cars. In the Peanuts comic strip, Snoopy even took the bus downtown to chase cars. But who ever heard of ducks that chase a bus?
I’ve mentioned before that the kids ride Alice Keith’s bus. Alice’s bus route takes her by her house. They have some ducks that live in the pond next to their house and those ducks are so used to seeing Alice’s bus parked by their pond, and to Alice’s bus schedule, that they will wait beside the road and wait for her to drive by. This is especially exciting for the ducks as Alice stops to pick up her grandson who lives across the road from her house. Jenna had told me about this, but I saw it the other day when I took the kids to school and happened to get behind Alice. They were two happy ducks waddling beside the road as fast as they could until the bus picked up too much speed for them.
CAMPING. Last weekend we had a father/son camp out at church. Well, we actually camped out at Buzz Graves’ farm (a neighbor). We had about 20 people come and had a blast. Buzz has quite a setup behind his house with sand volleyball, horseshoes, a corn hole game, and plenty of room for boys to simply run and be boys. Jeff Garst had gotten an old crane cable and suspended it between two trees for a zip line which was the hit of the evening. We also had a blowgun battle with small marshmallows for ammo. (Hint: inhale BEFORE putting the blowgun to your mouth.)
I think the boys had a lot of fun. We fed them supper (hot dogs and trimmings) and s’mores and let them play until midnight. The next morning we were up a little after sunrise (it’s amazing how loud one tent zipper can be) and had pancakes before breaking camp. It was a lot of fun.
FATHER’S DAY CAME EARLY. Vicki was working at the computer the other day when Nate came in and grabbed a piece of paper out of the printer, sat on the floor with his pencil, and got to work. Jenna happened to pass through the room a moment later and Nate asked her how to spell a word. She told him, and then offered to help him. He accepted and dictated a short note. A bit later he handed me the paper with the thoughts that had been on his mind. It reads:
Dear Dad,
You are the best dad in the whole wide world. I still love you. You’re the best dad who has ever taken care of me.
Love, Nate
That made my day!
Joe
