How to keep a toddler busy for hours...

This is the kind of stuff Alan and Mason do together, whether Mom is home or not. At least Mason spends most of his time laughing, right? And he does still have all his teeth., so I can't complain.

The Unpampered Chef

I have a ridiculous number of recipes banked to post here, so I decided to start my own recipe blog. You can always find it under my profile, or go here: The Unpampered Chef. Plus, this way I can find them when I want them instead of searching endlessly through my dashboard for the ones I've tried to post. I can't guarantee I will update it more than every few days or so, but I will be posting all my recipes on there eventually.

I'm being a total copycat. Thanks for letting me rip off your idea, Joey! I still love your recipe website and I need to make that chocolate cake!

More Masonisms

I wasn't creative enough to come up with a post title the last time I ticked off the funny stuff Mason was saying. I'm still not, so I just added "more" to the last post. I expect this to happen at least a couple more times.

This week has been so creative and so funny, this Friday I'm actually posting a Friday Five and it's "My Five Favorite Masonisms of the week".

1. "I heard a crick!" (when the crickets start chirping outside).

2. "No, I at camping." (every time I asked him to do something while we were camping--is it a destination or an activity? I think it's an excuse not to listen to mom.)

3. "Daddy wants to sing it- the itsy, itsy spider." (followed by "sing it louder!" when Alan was singing as quietly as possible so he didn't sing to our whole camp)

4. "Read it, read it, read it!" (he checked his first book out of the library--it's a Clifford the Big Red Dog reading primer, and I was driving while he was begging so)

5. "I'm gonna get Grandma!" (while running around the table at camp and wiggling his fingers like he was going to tickle her--in a perfect imitation of what we do to him.)

He has also been making up random songs about his green garbage trucks that are funny but unintelligible. Anything he hears that resembles a saw, hammer, or drill is "Kinda like Bob the Builder". And he is still talking about the time, while he was at Grandma's house, some grass fell out of the neighbor's garbage can. He insisted they go sweep it up and put it back in the garbage can so it would go in the garbage truck next time. Every now and again, he will also mention the incident with the chair and the dumpster. If I hadn't blogged about it, I may not have any idea what he was talking about because his memory for these things is much, much longer than mine.

"I At Camping!"

We went back up to Whitney Reservoir this last weekend for some more family time. Alan's younger brother, Paul, was back in town and brought his girlfriend, Leah, home with him. Our idea of a good time is camping and four-wheeling, so we went back to the same little spot where we spent four days in July.

Unfortunately for Mason, the mud puddle he so loved to splash in was gone; the only rock-throwing opportunities were when we wheeled down to the "blue water". He was skeptical of doing much with the reservoir because he is worried about deer pee in the water. Instead, we spent a lot of time shuttling him back and forth to the creek for his rock throwing. The snow we found last time was also mostly gone, so his pleas to throw more snow at Grandpa went unheeded until Grandpa himself took Mason up to get some. They brought back a cooler full of snow and proceeded to throw it at all members of the camp, with Leah being Mason's favorite target. Mason's other form of entertainment for the trip were the three large holes dug by his uncles that he loved to get his dump truck stuck in and "crunching on the logs" (breaking up wood for our fire).

Sunday night we all huddled around the fire because it was so very cold. Mason's favorite story to tell that night was how the fire was going up into the sky, where it would crash into the moon and cry. It was total nonsense that we found entertaining because he was so insistent it was true. Overnight was very, very cold and although we had plenty of blankets, Mason had a hard time snuggling down into the covers. I think he was warm enough, but there wasn't much sleep to be had for mom and dad.

On Monday, Alan took me to shoot a .22 for the first time. There is a picture in the slideshow of the homemade target (paper plate with uneven circles drawn on it) with five bullet holes. Apparently, I shot quite well and Alan encouraged me to keep the paper plate for bragging rights. The 3-5 shots I took landed just shy of the center, in the middle circle. He said that would be sufficiently "center mass". After the shooting lesson, we got to take a long ATV ride that was a lot of fun. I felt it was successful because I managed to avoid rolling it when I took a turn too fast. I was not quite successful enough to avoid killing it in the creek because I was in too high of a gear; my feet and shins got relatively soaked and I quickly learned not to attempt that in fourth gear again.

Monday night and Tuesday were much warmer than the previous day. We enjoyed playing card and dice games in camp, eating way too much food, and taking turns on the ATVs. Overnight on Monday night, we got to listen to a large herd of sheep bleating nearby. The next morning, they were herded right past our camp down to the reservoir and we picked up a visitor: one of the sheepdogs was just a puppy and she apparently wanted to go home with us. She wasn't the biggest fan of Rio and Samson (I think their welcome was a little too eager for her liking), but she hung around with us all day while we packed up. When it was nearly time to go home, Paul loaded her on a 4-wheeler and took her down to the area where the sheep were staying; she reappeared shortly after he had dropped her off.

In the end, we all went home a little dirtier, a little sunburned and a little tired. Mason barely made it out of the campsite before he crashed out in his car seat. We're hoping to attempt at least one more of these outings before the summer is officially over, but we'll have to see.

Come out, come out wherever you are

Even though I haven't been hiding, I feel like I should apologize for the lack of posting this week. I know there are at least three people who check this for daily updates and I feel like I have been unusually remiss this week. But this week has been unusual. I worked last Sunday and then not again until last night. I've been focusing on spending time with Mason, both fun time and time trying to work through some issues we've been having. I've also had an unusual amount of time at home with Alan; I think we're addicted to the Olympics. So I'm sorry to disappoint with fewer updates than usual in the last week or so.

I wanted to brag about the fact that we were productive today. We did a little "spring cleaning" sort of project and tackled the wall of bookshelves in our loft. We haven't cleaned these out in the five years since we moved in. We have dusted them, sure; we have added considerably to their volume. But today, we cleaned house. We tossed old notes from college (like my Calculus notebooks--some of those symbols looked so foreign I can't believe I actually pulled a good grade in that class and knew how to do it!), are working on finding a place to recycle old textbooks, and reorganized the whole deal. Our main objective was to clear enough space to dedicate to Mason's books. We thought about doing a book shelf in his room, but he's such a little monkey I figured any height would get tipped over, probably on top of him. So we decided to pony up some valuable real estate in the family library.

I would especially like to draw attention to the organization system used: we have fiction (in alphabetical order), non-fiction (arranged by subject matter), and professional (crammed as far off to the side as possible while still having access if we need it).

Before

After

Mason's personal library

More bounce per ounce

We took Mason down to The Kid Barn for a little playtime earlier today. I have consistent proof dads are better for this sort of thing. At least, Alan is for sure. I bounced with him, I slid with him, I pretended to help him climb even though he didn't need help; however, dad was one step more exciting. Dad was willing to do flips and steamrollers. Dad dove where mom just jumped. Overall, a great time was had by all. I'm strongly considering booking Mason's birthday party there next winter.