Another Climber

He's 1 and decided that he can climb things.

Camp Osborn

We had our second camp out with the cub scouts this weekend.  We went to Camp Osborn  The theme for the weekend was pirates.  Pack 210 won for the best camp decorations.  Thanks to the great pirate ship that the leader's made.

 Paige quickly made friends with the moms and grandmas that were there and I was happy to let them do her hair on Saturday morning.  

 French braid to keep the sticks and leaves out!

 Logan got to shoot the bow and arrow.

 There was even time for the siblings to shoot them!

 Logan thought the BB guns were awesome and shot one in the black.

 Rowing was a good time.  Although I think mom would have been a bit worried about her 6 year old alone in a boat with no adults.  There were quite a few lifeguards floating around the pond though.

 Paige found a nice squishy matress to rest on while we were waiting for Logan in line at the rock wall. 

Logan made it about 10ft up the wall before he jumped off.

Pineapple Planting

One of Logan's requirements for Cub Scouts is to plant something.  With as much gardening as we do I thought it would be more interesting to plant something odd.  We decided on a pineapple.  

 We had planted a pineapple a month ago but we had another one to try.

Right now they are sitting on the front porch but are going to be moved into the garage with the citrus trees for the winter.  Supposedly in 2 years we'll have a pineapple to eat..... We'll see if it makes it.

Snake Skin

As if we could forget, we were reminded that there are snakes in the area when we found this skin next to the front porch.

Chewy Chicken War and Peace Soup

 The problem with old laying hens is that they are like rubber and pretty much impossible to chew.  That's why people call them "stew hens"  Danielle roasted them and we ran them through the food processor.

 Then added them to 12 quarts of home made chicken stock.

 A couple of onions

 and celery

 and carrots from the summer garden

Results in a great chicken soup.  We also added alphabet noodles.  Actually we added WAY too many noodles. Hence the name of "Chewy Chicken War and Peace Soup" After dinner we still had 7 quarts to pressure can and add to the pantry.  It simmered all day so it's actually condensed and needs water added, so it really yields about a quart and a half per jar.

James is 1!

 Danielle made James a cute little monkey cake for his birthday, along with a matching smash cake.  She makes great cakes for the kids birthdays.

 Messy James

Messy House

Tent money

After our first camp out with the Cub Scouts it had become quite evident that we needed a bigger tent.  The old 2 man Coleman tent that Danielle and I used when we were in Japan really was too small for Logan Paige and I.  The only problem was I didn't have any money.  Then I remembered that I had a $50 gift card on Amazon from John and Jeanice for birthday and about 6 years worth of crushed cans under the house.  

I took the cans in to the recycling center and got $74 dollars.  This gave us a total of $124 for the new tent fund.  I found a Coleman 8 person Montana tent on Amazon for 121.  After tax it was 129.94 so I had to come up with a grand total of $5.94  

Here's the tent.  It has a door!

Para-Cord Lanyards

I bought a compass for Logan and was trying to figure out how to keep him from losing it and decided to make a lanyard out of para-cord (550 cord).  It was late but I figured it would only take an hour.  What I didn't plan on is Paige and Lillie getting out of bed and seeing me working on it.  It turned into a 3 hour paracording marathon.  Blue for Logan, pink for Paige, and pink/orange for Lillie.  Lillie has since decided she likes purple better, so there's some re-work to do some day.  

 To hang the compass from the lanyard I was trying to find a big key ring to put on the lanyard but found a pull ring from a grenade I had thrown years ago.  When I told Logan it was a ring from a grenade I thought he would be impressed, but he looked at me and said "What's a grenade".  So I told him it was part of a bomb and he was sufficiently impressed.

 We have since added a mini-mag light to the lanyard but I'll have to get a picture later.

Winterize the garden

One bad thing about the warm weather here in Georgia is that the weeds grow all winter.  Having killed the winter garden before it got out of the seed tray meant that I had to do something to keep the weeds at bay until spring.  I've been saving chicken feed bags thinking I would sew them together to cover the hoop houses next year instead of buying more tarps.  We figured this would be a good use for them also.

I had a bunch of hangers from the cleaners that I usually would take back to them hanging in the closet.

I cut them up and made staples to hold the bags down.

And repeated about 50 times

Then I pulled the string off the bottom of the feed bag.

And Danielle found the seam in the bags and pulled them apart

One flat bag,  A lot more to go.

It took 6 bags per bed, but we had enough bags to cover 2/3 of the beds.

We started with the staples holding down the bags, but remembered all the cattle panel trellises we had.  I think they'll actually hold down the bags better.  This also solves the question of where to store the trellises.