The Next Michael Phelps

Just thought this was a cool shot.  Adam's new favorite thing, at 4 years old I remind you, is to dive down into the deep end and retrieve rings or other things off the bottom!!   Amazing!! 

Caleb and Mommy having some fun too!!

New Baby in the Family

Welcome baby Aviah!  Chris cousin just had this beautiful baby girl and we got to see her the day she was born!! 

Shout Out

Finally got an update from my brother Brian. He's been firefighting out west in the wilderness all summer and I don't get to hear from him often. He sent this shot to show us some of the fun stuff he's been doing! At least he's not bored!  Thought I would pass it along to all you family out there that checks my blog. 

 

Caleb's New Question

Caleb, who is now 21 months, has a new question he is asking me everywhere we go.  He is trying to categorize people into good guys and bad buys.  This makes total sense because his favorite thing to play with Daddy and Adam is "Bad Guys" with Batman and other heroes.  It began in Wal-Mart as I saw somebody I knew and Caleb asks in greeting,  "Bad Guy??"  I had to explain to the lady what he was talking about with a little embarrassment.  Would you want to be identified as a bad guy or a good guy?  It happened again as I had a visitor come to the house.  The first thing out of his mouth was, "Bad Guy?"   I stumbled over another explanation.   I'm hoping he switches and starts asking,  "Good Guy?"  The explanations will be so much easier. 

Iron Chef Dinner Party

Get ready for one of the best ideas in recent history.  Some friends of our decided to put a twist on the stand-bye get together, "The Dinner Party".  They turned it into a cut-throat competition.  We, along with most of the seven couples invited, have a fondness for food...that is, eating it, cooking it, talking about it, etc.  So, they declared this to be the Iron Chef Dinner Party.  All seven couples submitted a "secret ingredient" to the hostess by email.  Twenty-four hours before the party, the hostess chose the winning ingredient (without telling her husband who was doing the cooking) and emailed everyone the winning choice.  We, the participants, had 24 hours to scheme, decide on our dishes, grocery shop, trash talk, and cook/BBQ/bake/mix  TWO dishes to bring with us to the party.   The secret ingredient chosen was COFFEE!  Altogether we had 14 dishes to sample and vote on.  I'm telling you this food was amazing and it was like ordering 14 different things from a fancy menu.  Chris and I submitted rotisserie lamb shanks with a coffee rub and coffee stout glaze.  He also did a homemade Irish Coffee Ice Cream to accompany my 3 layer Dark Chocolate Coffee Mousse Cake.  Yeah!!  Along with our dishes, we brought a $5 gift card to a food related place to put in the pot.  The winner got to take home all the gift cards.
 As we showed up at 7:00 sharp, we all set out our dishes by a number.  Then, we were given scoring sheets with numbers 1-14 and columns to tally points.  Each dish was given 1-10 points for each of 3 categories:  taste, use of ingredient, and creativity...30 points possible.  We took a few minutes to describe our dishes and how we used the secret ingredient, coffee.  As we ate it just got better and better.  We had everything from pulled pork, coffee bean pancakes with chocolate sauce, smoked chicken marinated in coffee, coffee fudge in a demitasse cup (my favorite) , pork loin on grits cakes, coffee braised short ribs, coffee tiramisu, and of course our shanks and cake and ice cream.  Guess who's dish was rated the best of the whole night!!!????  Our cake and ice cream!  But, because you were judged on the combo of your two dishes, we did not win overall.  I have to say we had some tough competition.  Most of all, we had so much fun for a full 24 hours with planning, cooking, tasting, and ragging.  Here's a few shots of the dishes. 

Sarah putting finishing touches on the cake

Chris' lamb shanks prepped to go on the grill

Some of the entries

The dishes were spread over every surface!!  Yum!!

Mystery Has Been Solved

We have one of these guest bathrooms where when you open the door it will hit the door of the linen closet behind it if someone hasn't shut the linen closet properly.  Now, guess who is the only one in our family that ever opens the linen closet to put towels and sheets away.  Yep, me.  So, I've got a pretty good idea of when that linen closet door should be open had I forgotten to close it, which I don't!!  I hate going into that bathroom and slamming the door into that open linen closet door....Hate It!!  Therefore I am very careful about making sure it's closed when I leave. 
Now, for the past few months, yes months, this linen closet door has mysteriously been open from time to time  and I've been ramming into it. Cannot express the frustration!!!  Was it a loose door connection?  Was it the wind?  What could it be?
Today, Adam yells at me that we're out of toilet paper.  I go in and slam into that door again!!  As I'm pulling the new roll from under the sink, I'm expressing my questions aloud.  " Why is that door always open???"   Adam's response, as he's sitting on the potty, "I always check for monsters in there when I go to the potty."      Months!!!

A Lot of Hot Air

Last weekend we decided to wake up a little early and go to Baton Rouge's annual Hot Air Balloon Races.  We've never been before and wanted to learn how a race really works with balloons!!  We waited around  an acre of a circle with a giant X in the middle and a flag pole.  All of a sudden, a couple miles away, balloon after balloon started rising and coming in our direction.  The objective is to lower the balloon as much as comfortable and throw their team's beanbag as close to the X as possible.  They must also try to throw a large ring over the top of the flagpole in the hopes of winning $1000.  If the basket ever touches the ground they are disqualified.  What we didn't realize is how much control the drivers have.  They have the steering down to a science.  They calculate wind speeds, wind directions, elevation, other balloons, etc. all into throwing a beanbag.  After they do the drop at our location they rise up again and start toward the next designated drop zone somewhere else in the city.  I think there were 4 drop zones total that completed the whole race and we counted somewhere between 35-40 hot air balloons.  The boys were captivated and it was really magical to see the balloons getting bigger and bigger as they got closer and were descending right over you.

Waiting for the first balloons at 6:30am!  Not all awake and cheery yet.

Here They Come!!!

Each balloon is taking a shot at coming down over the X and the flagpole and then they shoot back up quickly.  Notice the red, white, and blue balloon touching the yellow balloon. 

Mesmerizing!!

There they go!

Fun Times!!

Timmmmmber!!

We bit the bullet and had the giant tree leaning over our living room taken out last week.  We've been watching this bad boy since we moved in this house and every hurricane season we get more and more nervous.  The past year, we've had so many high wind thunderstorms, we just couldn't take the stress anymore. Plus it was becoming the new trendy neighborhood for a couple million ants...it was rotting from the inside!!   If this thing came down, there is no other way for it to fall but to split our house in half.  It took 1 day for the guys to get it down and the stump ground and all the pieces hauled away.  It took another day to pack up equipment and repair our fence that had to be removed for the heavy machinery. 

This is the tree we took out.  Notice the rotten trunk.

This is the guy in the cherry-picker getting to the top after removing all the under branches.

Equipment everywhere

The last section of tree comes down

The final product.  They did come back and work on the ruts, but we've already got our sprinkler going to get the grass growing again.  It's amazing how much bigger our yard feels after that tree is gone and how much more peaceful we will sleep.

The Circus Comes To Town

Ringling Brothers rolled into town a few weekends ago and my parents made the trip down here to go with us.  It was the boys' first circus and they were excited!  Adam was glued the entire 2.5 hours and Caleb was the first half.  His head hit my shoulder at the end of the elephant show, his favorite.  He made it through and then crashed.  The boys were spoiled rotten by their Mema and Pop with souvenirs from the show.  We had a great time watching it ourselves, but mostly watching it through the boys' eyes.

Pop and Caleb watching the show. 

Chris and Adam see something amazing!   Notice any similarities between these two???

Adam Completes Swim Lessons

Adam had 2 weeks of swim lessons this year and made huge progress.  He can do the freestyle and the backstroke now.  He's not going to win any races yet, but this is the beginning of his swimming education.  We are so proud of him!!  He comes from a long line of swimmers on both sides of the family.  We weren't allowed into the pool area until the last day of class, called Show Day.  The families were invited to come and watch the kids from the sidelines.  We took lots of video!

Adam doing the backstroke to his teacher. 

"I didn't just get 1 ring...I got all of them!!"

We Call These..."Dragon Ribs"

Chris has been working on a new, faster style of cooking ribs.  He's bends them around the rotisserie and he can have them cooked and delicious in 2 hours!!  Yum!!