Ketchup.

Ballet

Under Miss Kim's gentle and graceful tutelage, Sydney was introduced to the world of ballet last school year.   Her language is now adorned with such elegant terms as "arabesque."  She was giddy about her recital costume (now crumbled in the dress-up basket) and enjoyed performing at June's end-of-class she-bang.


Next up:  Annual All-Comer's Track Meet. 

Looks like the sporty lady in white is gearing up to run the 3000m, having sufficiently carbo-loaded.
BTW: Clara only has one more week left before her followup visit with the eye guy -- we ran out of patches last week and don't want to buy another box for just 7 days worth of eye patches.  I bet there's a tutorial out there on how to sew your own eye patches, though.  Betcha.

Recovering from a run?

Talmage and his friend, James.

 Gardening.

The potato experiment.  First year growing potatoes.  Potatoes are fun.  Very fun.  When it's time to harvest (which time is a good guess as far as I could tell), it's like digging for gold.  Yukon GOLD.

 All that gold in a row.  Some potatoes were the size of ping pong balls.  And some were regular size.  Like the kind you'd see in a grocery store.  Next year we'll harvest twice as many -- maybe get TWO meals out of the potatoes.

 Assessing the tomoatoes.  Talmage goes out to the garden most mornings to see how his plants are coming along and pick what he can find.   This is the first year he's taken a long-term interest in the garden.

 In the spring, I had let him and Sydney plant all the leftover seeds willy-nilly (mostly to keep them busy, i.e. out of my hair, so I could play in the garden without interruption ... "Don't make me have a productive, educational, bonding, garden experience with you, kids!").   There were mixtures of seeds spread all over the garden path and buried haphazardly in inches of soil in different box lids and shoe boxes.  I didn't expect their unorthodox methods would produce anything -- and also thought they'd just forget about their seeds and then I'd toss the boxes/lids, etc.  But lo and behold, the seeds germinated, grew, and are now producing -- thanks to just a bit of transplanting and coaxing from grandma.  So let that be a lesson to all of you pessimistic parents.

Make-Work Projects:  or -- Teach a Kid to Dumpster Dive, you Feed him for a Lifetime

Grandma, although okay with my character going to pot, is keen on improving the character of her grandchildren.  Here you see one of her plots in action.  She gives the kids one dollar for scrubbing out the yard debris bin and garbage cans each week.   Talmage is told that he can practice on our garbage cans for a year and then when he's 7, he can charge people money to clean out their garbage cans.  We'll see what happens.  Meanwhile, our garbage cans have never been so clean.

 Sydney is also given a dollar for her work.  But after one time, she wizened up, er, the novelty wore off, and she couldn't be persuaded to add to her resume.

Father and Kid Campout

Our ward has it figured out.  Do a Father n' Sons campout and a Father n' Daughter campout.  But combine them into one campout.   So basically it's a ward campout without the moms or any babies.  They had fun.  We had fun.  Win-Win. 

 Relaxing after a bike-ride.

Pending:
This weekend Briton is running Cascade Lakes Relay and hopes he will not come home to find he has a newborn son.  We're holding out for 8-10-12.  Looking forward to meeting the little guy and getting to know and love 'im.