Bugs, Beach, Bread, and other Random Things

I was looking on our phones for some pictures of a trip we recently took to San Antonio (that post to come soon) and found all of these!  It makes me realize how blessed I am to have so many wonderful moments through out the day.  I thought I'd share some of them.

Here is Jason this summer in the Lab doing research...  Or at least He said he was doing research :)

Bugs... There are these weird looking bugs... If you know what they are please let me know.  Caleb found one in our house and Jason helped him transfer it outside.  It was cute to watch how proud he was of "his" bug.

Here is Clair thinking of how to draw her name.  She actually started writing it with Jason and I sitting next to here eating a snack.  She drew her C L and A and then went into this thinking pose.  She then asked us thoughtfully if her name has "fire" in it.  

Here was her idea of her name spelt with fire

Jason finally did it!  He made 8 loafs of bread at once.  It has taken quite a bit of experiment and so we were all pretty excited.  Usually half the batch would collapse or be uncooked on the inside.  Now we can give four away and still have enough for the week.

During our San Antonio trip Clair and Caleb were begging us to let them get some cotton candy.  I am not a fan and the thought of all that sugar in those little bodies was not something I wanted to deal with.  So we asked them to wait and instead we invited Kendal and Halie over with their cotton candy machine and made our own.  The kids LOVED it!  Well, they loved watching it.  Caleb doesn't like it at all.  The texture is too poofy and then it drove him crazy that it was instantly gone when he went to bite it.  Clair loved watching and eating. 

Jason and Kendal pulled out the drill and hooked up the cotton candy stick to it so they didn't have to work so hard twirling it around to get the candy out.  Little boy daddies :)

Caleb and his watermelon.  Jason bought a tiny little watermelon just for Caleb and he was so happy to eat it.

This is Caleb hanging out on our bed watching a movie.  Clair had a couple friends over (two other girls) and they weren't being the nicest to a little tired Caleb who kept turning into a dinosaur and a dragon and a monster to chase them...

It has been so so so hot!  It makes me very glad to be living in an apartment complex with a pool.  We bought new float devises for the kids that were a lot safer than our last floating outfits.  Clair and Caleb and I had so much fun swimming the afternoon away.  Most of the time Clair had us playing like we were alligators.

Evenings are always spent getting ready for the next day, spending time with each other, or going to bed early.  So this was a very rare scene of Jason with a bag of goodies near by and headphones on to talk with his brother as they played and won a game together on the computer.

THE BEACH!!!  

I can't believe we have gone all summer without going to the beach!  Saturdays there is always something going on.  But we finally made it.  It was such nice weather.  There were scattered rain storms in the area so every once in a while there would be a nice rain cloud that would block the sun and cool it down for us.  The wind was blowing just right so none of the rain actually hit us while we were there.

Jason and Russ headed out with their boards to ride the little waves.

I was feeling full of energy one afternoon and so I decided to take on a cooking fest with my kids.  We made cookies.  The real project wasn't them cooking with me, we do that all the time.  It was teaching them to actually clean up right afterwards.  I regret I haven't done this since but it was really fun.  Clair was in charge of the soapy water and Caleb was in charge of de-bubbling everything.  There were a couple dishes I had to hand back for an extra scrub but for the most part they did an awesome job!

We had a half loaf of bread left.  Caleb requested a piece of toast for breakfast and so we pulled it out.  He then turned to Clair and said, "I eat ALL of it!"  Clair then asked if he would share.  "yes" was his reply.  So to MY surprise Jason handed the rest of the loaf of bread to the kids.  We watched laughing as they passed the huge hunk of bread back and forth and ate it!  (well most of it they left a couple bites left)