Summer List No. 1: Make Ice Cream

We knocked another "to do" off our summer list this weekend with my first experiment with homemade ice cream. It was much easier than I thought it would be, and my dear friend Lori was right: It does taste better when you make it yourself.

 Just one hiccup in the cooking: I know how to temper an egg, but got a little impatient. I ended up pulling a few pieces of scrambled egg out of the batter.

 Our cookies and cream creation. I used skim milk but stuck with the heavy whipping cream. Needless to say, it's a little rich.

John told me it was "off the chain." So I'm calling it a success.

Bedtime

We said goodbye to our nursery this weekend, a little earlier than I'd expected. Ben made it clear he was ready, even if I wasn't, after flinging himself out of the crib every couple of hours for two nights straight. On Saturday night, Ben was up from midnight to 5 a.m., and every time John and I put him back in the crib, he'd scream and then climb over.

"Why don't you just set up the bed," my mom asked. Because in my plan, Ben gets several more months in his baby bed. He's a baby for a little while longer. Never mind the plan. Ben's not having it.

Instead, we took the crib apart on Sunday afternoon and found it a good home by the time the sun went down. I was the only one who gave pause for even a moment that this crib -- the one that held both my babies -- was gone. I'm usually not very sentimental around stuff, but this "stuff," yes.

It took the boys relatively no time to take the crib apart. Ben's new bed is actually the top bunk in a set of bunk beds we bought for the boys a couple of years ago. The top bunk has a set of rails that make it a perfect toddler bed.

 Thanks to Aunt Susie for the great bedding (once Cousin Ryan's so both Jack and Ben think it's special) Ben's reaction when he saw the bed: "Mom, I WOOOVE trains." He is so proud of being a big boy.

I still need to hang some photos, but it was a relatively easy job.

Ben has slept soundly for the past three nights, and Jack has even had to go wake him up the past few mornings.  Now, if potty training were so easy, I'd go ahead and knock it out too.

A Wet One

I'm so thankful for a flexible job and a great boss who lets me move my day off around. John and I took advantage of it again this week and spent Tuesday morning at the zoo. We arrived just as the zoo was opening and left right before lunch, just when the Memphis July heat was starting to get unbearable.

The boys didn't mind the heat, though, because they spent most of the morning in the geysers on Teton Trek. For all you non-Memphians, that's where the Grizzlies and wolves live at the zoo. And for my boys, it's where you take a break when the sun is starting to beat down.



Ben wasn't real sure of the water, and spent most of his time lurking near the edges, watching his big brother.


Slip, Slide, Ride

The boys -- the little ones -- have been busy in the backyard this week. I took this video the other day and thought I'd share.

 

We also visited geese in the pond in our neighborhood this week -- something I used to do all the time with Jack but don't seem to do much at all these days. Ben walked the entire way without the stroller, and even took on Gracie walking duties on the way back. How did he get so big?

 

  

On the way back, Jack found some 10-year-olds he wanted to play with. They, on the other hand, didn't really want to play. They went inside. And Jack, well, he waited.

 And waited.

Finally, I was able to convince him to go inside. He's still asking when "his friends" are coming outside. Love that boy.

Best Buds

Jack's best buddy, Josh, is moving to Louisiana soon, and we wanted to make sure they got together for one final playdate before the move. I'm pretty sure Jack doesn't have any idea where Louisiana is, because he kept asking Josh if he'd see him again next month.

John and I took the boys to Incredible Pizza Company (think Chuck E Cheese on Crack) for the afternoon on Wednesday. They had a blast. '

John and Ben took their turn at a shooting game.

Josh and Jack's favorite game is bowling, so we did it twice.

 

On the way home, I overheard a conversation with Josh and Jack. It went something like this:

Jack: Did you see the dinosaur game?

Josh: Dinosaurs are extinct!

Jack: Cause they were hit by the meteors?

Josh: No! They were hit with the lava. From the volcanos.

Oh yeah.

Summer List No. 3: See Cars 2

Mark one more off my list. John and I surprised the boys with a trip to the movies Sunday afternoon. I was a little nervous about Jack -- something about dark theaters and loud noises don't work for him. In fact, the last time I tried to take him to the movies, we quickly got a refund after Jack assured me there were bats in there.

But this was Cars 2, a favorite of both Jack and Ben -- and I hoped the fact that baby brother was going would help. A snippet of our conversation as we left church on our way to the theater.

Jack: "Mom, God made me?"

Me: "Yep"

Jack: "But not Cars 2."

(I never really know how to respond to this.)

Jack: "I'm going to be brave, Mom. I'm going to be brave at Cars 2."

He was very brave -- even though he did ask me at one point if there were bats in their theater. Nope, I assured him. Ben was brave too, and sat pretty still for most of the movie. Now that's saying a lot.

 



Summer List No. 7 and 10: Catch Fireflies and Watch Fireworks

I knocked a couple of summer to do items off my list during our trip to East Tennessee, where fireflies -- aka, lightning bugs -- are abundant and there were plenty of fireworks. Jack and I captured five or six bugs, put them in a jar, and then poked holes that were way too big.The jar was empty by the end of the night. 

Fireworks were also abundant, though it took Jack a couple of nights to get used to the sound.

He eventually warmed up, and stayed up with me to watch the fireworks my cousins set off for us on Sunday night.





Splash Around

The boys and I managed to sneak in an hour at the Splash Park after work one day this week. The heat was getting to me, so an hour was all I could handle. Still, they had a blast.



Meet Mater

 My years in the burbs have taken me away from my farming roots, but I got a tiny taste of it this weekend when my family and I worked to nurse a young baby calf back to health.

This is Mater, named by Jack and I after his favorite Cars movie character. He was blind and nearly dead when we found him and I'll go ahead and tell you this story ends realistically. I'm telling it because it's one of the first times my boys cared for a calf, something I want them to experience in their lifetime.

I learned this past weekend that you can buy colostrum replacement for baby calves. Colostrum is the milk that mammals produce just before birth and it contains antibodies to protect newborns against disease. And so, when my uncle found Mater in a field, abandoned by his mother, we set out to find some colostrum. My brother Charlie manages the dairy herd at the University of Tennessee, so he knows a thing or two about caring for calves. He had an audience for Mater's first feeding.

Mater only lived a couple of days after we found him, but my boys kept a close watch on him while we were there. When he did die, my uncle buried him. And Jack asked where Mater was one afternoon, Papaw just told him he'd gone out to the field. That answer was sufficient for Jack.

Summer List No. 6: Head to the Lake

Adding extra time to our long weekend, I took another vacation day on Tuesday and we all joined our friends Lisa and Josh on Pickwick Lake. They are regulars on the lake and invited us out to join them. It's really rare that John and I spend a full day together and we took this one in completely, heading to the lake early and pulling in our driveway at home around 10 p.m. The sun and water were perfect, as was the company.

I'm posting pictures from this past week and the week before, thanks to Lisa for taking some last week. Love, love all my boys.



Jack and his buds Grant and Sara