Food Show

Quick update - food show went well and everyone won 1st place, yay!!!! Colten was the only one with a beef dish (frosted meatloaf) so he won the $25 beef award from the Hill Country Cattle Women. Ashlyn made risotto with mushrooms and Jayde made a tomato-basil finger snack. Everyone's food was delicious and got rave reviews. Now on to district in Abilene Nov 20th!

Camp Sol Mayer

This past weekend, we went to Camp Sol Mayer for their Cub Scout Horsemanship camp and this time we spent the night there. It was a wonderful time with perfect weather. Couldn't ask for better. Colten got to fish and ride a horse and shoot bb guns and play and was pretty much in heaven. Ashlyn got 5 hours of volunteer work in (out of the 30 she needs to graduate) by running one of the activities that they had there. She was in charge of broomstick polo and had to show the boys what to do and then have them play a game which she had to participate in if there was an uneven group. She was worn out after that, but I was super proud of her for sticking it out.

Here are some photos from the weekend.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=285571&id=755340907&l=09741f8e6a

We were fortunate enough to have our county food show moved from this past Sunday to next Saturday. I was so glad, because I was not looking forward to cooking after getting back from camping and unloading everything. Colten will be making Frosted Meatloaf (meat loaf with a layer of mashed potatoes on top) and Ashlyn will be making Risotto (Jill's recipe:) ). Wish them luck (even though they and Jayde will likely be the only ones competing and will all be in different groups, automatic 1st place for everyone! lol).

Fishing Derby

So John & I decided to try a new activity with the Cub Scouts this year. Since they always all show up for the pinewood derby, we thought a contest of some sorts might draw most of them and so we decided on a fishing derby. We were able to go to the Llano River at Camp Gene Ashby (where Operation Orphans is) and had the Game Warden come out and talk to the boys about fishing laws and help with showing the boys how to bait and fix their lines. We actually had most of the boys show up and almost all of them caught fish. Colten got the prize for catching the most :) It was exhausting, but I was happy it all seemed to work out well. We will definitely try to do this again sometime.

Here's Colten with the first catch of the day!


And here are Colten & I before the derby started (yes that's me in the unbearably hot scout uniform!)

Here are some more pictures from the day:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/album.php?aid=237394&id=321772857531

On a separate note, Friday night we met Mom & Dad at the James River Bat Cave. They were staying at Dos Rios RV park this weekend which isn't far from there. Unfortunately, most of the bats were gone already, but they said we should come back toward the end of July to see the most bats at one time. We have our calendars marked :) After the bat cave we hung out at their RV for awhile to see if the meteor shower we heard about would give us a show, but we saw about as many meteors as we did bats. Oh well, we got to roast marshmallows and hang out under a star filled sky so not all was lost!

Haven't had one of these in awhile, but here is the Colten quote of the day. We went to a wedding Saturday night and while we were in line for food, Colten decided he would only marry a girl if she would decorate the wedding with John Deere tractors, that's my boy!

Pasture Campout & Food Fun Day

It's something we've been wanting to do for awhile and we finally had an alignment of the stars such that we could take the tent out in the pasture and camp out for the night. The weather was great and we didn't have any plans that night or early the next morning. We went down to the creek below the house and set up camp, grilled some shrimp (which were supposed to have been grilled for my birthday, but John got a fire call), (on a similar note he also missed my birthday outing to El Gallo's Saturday b/c of a fire call!) the kids did some target shooting, Colten chopped away at weeds with a big knife and we roasted marshmallows for smores before sacking out for the night. We all made it through the whole night even though John & I were pretty groggy then next day from not sleeping too well on the ground. Some surprises were how loud the frogs were and how often acorns fell from the trees. The kids are ready to do it again so hopefully we'll be able to before it gets too cold :)

Here we are roasting marshmallows:


Here's Colten sticking his head out of the tent :)



Sunday was the 4-H food fun day where the kids made quesadillas, tortilla wraps, cucumbers with dilly dip (which is what I taught), cookies, and apples with a cookie filling and gummy worms. Here is the final products from all the kids:


Today, Ashlyn is off to a plant id contest for FFA. She said she was the only girl on the bus so it should be an interesting trip for her. Hope they do well!

Random Pics

So... yesterday was my birthday and John was kind enough to let me get an iPhone for my birthday present :) Thanks honey :) I've been trying to figure out how to post pictures from my phone to here, but I can only do one at a time. Still working on that. Anywho here are a few pics I've been wanting to share, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Here is the card the kids made me for my birthday. Do they know me or what? I had to laugh at all the +'s on there.



Here are the other two show pigs that we have for this year:


Here is the new tank starting to fill up:


And here is Colten with his fish tank. We bought two new fish on Sunday and one of them died yesterday. He was very upset about it, hopefully we don't have another floater anytime soon!

Piggies

We have four hogs this year for the stock show, two red ones and two white ones. No names yet. Here are the kids in the pen with the white ones.

Yea...

...I realize I've been neglecting my blog lately - I haven't been taking many pictures and we've been super busy with cub scouts starting up again. The kids are settled into the school routine again and so far getting good grades and liking school for the most part. John had some friends from the fire dept come and make the tanks below the house bigger so we can put fish in them for our little fisherman Colten to fish out. We are anxiously waiting for them to fill up. Our toad house has been turned back into an aquarium and has a few fish for Colten to take care of in the mean time.

So here is a pic I took this morning of Ashlyn ready for school on 80's day for you to enjoy until the next time I have some pics to share: