I got the idea this summer (I think from something I got on my FB page from Target) for the boys to do a summer service project. They have plenty of time this summer to do all of the things they want to do, they should also spend part of their summer doing for others. We hatched a little plan, talked over the logistics and today we hit the streets with our little blue wagon (to put all the cans in). The boys and I went door to door asking for canned goods to donate to the hungry. We went to about 15 houses, of those 15 houses only about 4 people were home. We got 13 cans from those four houses. Not bad for our first day out. This coming week we will branch out to other parts of our subdivision.
The boys were a little hesitant at first, but once we actually got to a house where someone was home and they started getting cans, they were so excited. They would take them back to the wagon and Colm would count them each time. There is a church not too far from us that has a food bank, so I think that is where we will end up taking all of the cans the boys collect.
Archive for July 2010
So our neighbors have been gone now for over two weeks and they will be gone for at least another three or four weeks and they have this FABULOUS strawberry/blueberry patch in their backyard. So, while they are away, all of the berries are going to waste…or are they??? Did we have permission to go into their backyard? No. Would the berries have totally gone to waste if we wouldn’t have taken them? Yes. Will we be paying our neighbors back for the berries we picked from their garden while they were gone when they get back? Yes.
Look what I got in the mail today from the grandparents…
We are very excited about all of the yummy treats we will making with this thing. I had some friends suggest their tried and true recipes, so we will be starting with those first.
I used to play this game with my grandma ALL THE TIME when I was little…ALL the time. I had totally forgotten about it until we went to the toy store to check out some games the other day and there it was! I HAD to get it and teach the boys how to play. Granted, you don’t need an actual board game to play Kings’ Corners, all you need is a deck of cards, but since I hadn’t played in probably twenty-plus years, we checked out the board game version hoping there would be directions in there and there were!!!
The boys love ice cream, so we decided to make our own. You just need two Ziploc baggies, some ice and some salt. Then you need milk, some sugar and some vanilla. Colm is a chocolate boy, however, so he decided he just wanted to use his chocolate soy milk. Great! That’s even easier. So, I helped him get everything together and he went out on the back porch and shook, and shook and shook some more until he had ice cream. That’s good, right? Well, you wouldn’t have known it by his reaction. He was mad!!! I am not sure what he was expecting, but whatever it was was not in that bag when the ice cream was done. I think he was mad because it didn’t make a lot. He said he didn’t want it, so not wanting it to go to waste, I started eating it. THAT was a bad idea. That made him even madder. He ended up eating some ice cream that we had in the freezer and that seemed to smooth things over.
Happily shaking his ice cream…before things went south.
This is a nice quick non-fiction read that includes the stories and recipes of four generations and how each of those generations suffered through, survived and even enjoyed/made the most of the ups and downs of going through hard times including world wars, the Depression, being a single parent and the recession.
Me and the familia getting some birthday pie. (I’m not a cake kind of girl.)
I got this for Christmas two years ago and I decided it was time to put it together. It seems to take forever for it to get dark on the 4th of July, so I had the boys help me put it together to help pass the time. I think we did a pretty good job. Now I just need to get some wood so we can actually use it.
I took the boys to see The Karate Kid today. Liam said it was the best movie he has ever seen. It was a good movie. They took a lot of things from the original and tweaked them a bit, so the movie was familiar, but not the same. Colm learned the word “ass” from this movie. Jayden Smith says it a few times in the movie and Jackie Chan reprimands him. Colm wanted to know what it meant and I told him it’s a word we don’t use. Colm assumed I meant it’s a Chinese word since it’s a word we don’t use and the movie takes place in China. I just left it at that. 🙂
I took the boys to a part of the city today called Multnomah Village. It has a lot of locally owned shops, including a toy store, an ice cream/candy store and a book store.