Culinary Adventures with the Kings

In today's installment we have two options for your culinary excitement.
1. If your resident cook is feeling a bit lazy you may choose to eat out on a Holiday weekend. This can be an exciting and comical event if you follow these instructions. Take your four small children who rarely go out to eat and do not know how to act at a restaurant. {We chose a small chinese restaurant.} If you are lucky you will start out as the only customers in the place and will be able to let your two year old run over to watch the fish while waiting. Place your order while your kids continuosly ask "do i like that?" Once your food arrives at the table put some on your two-year-old's plate. He should exclaim loudly "I don't want this! It's yucky!!!" for the restaurant staff and newly arrived guests to hear. Let him eat the plain rice instead. It will get everywhere - on the floor, the table, his chair, and even smashed into the knees of his pants when he kneels in it to reach the table. If all goes according to plan your baby will now be climbing out of his highchair and onto the table while your two-year old hides in the window curtains and your 5 and 7 year old beg for more fortune cookies. While this is happening try to be charming as you meet husbands co-workers at the next table. Now, two-year-old should catch the bottom of the 12 foot store front curtains under his feet and pull the whole thing down. Rod and all. With flair. As you turn red {because now there are several others families in the restaurant} and try to gather everyone nicely husband will try to pick up the rice on the floor. He won't have to get it all though because the manager lady will come over and tell him {in a quaint chinese accent} "No, no don't do that. . . That is your wife's job!" Pay a generous tip and leave as quickly as you can.

2. If the cook is feeling more ambitious attempt an Easter feast complete with Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, and some vegetable that that healthy easter bunny left for your kids to find. Except forget to put out the frozen roll dough before church so no rolls. Over boil the potatoes so they are lumpy and starchy. Burn the boiling turkey giblets {because you are getting everyone dressed} so your house will have a lovely burnt smell all day. Now for the gravy. Painstakingly extract the juice from the hot, heavy roasting pan. Remember everything your dad taught you about thickening gravy . . . it still won't work. Now season gently. Shake in some salt then take your newly refilled pepper shaker and start shaking. Make sure the lid is not screwed on correctly. Dump the entire contents into the pot. {Next exclaim "Blast! Blast!" and two-year-old will come running to see "what blasted off!?!"} Strain out as much pepper as you can. Find the lid in the bottom. When you eat it your sinuses will be thoroughly cleared out.

Bon Apetit!

The Boys

At our house we have "the parents" (affectionately or unaffectionately known as Mom and Dad), "the kids" (Morgan and Emma), and "the boys" (Talmage and Peter). It has been so fun lately to see these two boys having fun together. Peter is starting to really have fun playing with Talmage. One of his favorite games is actually to try to steal Talmage's binky when he is going to bed or has just woken up. Peter will crawl over to Talmage, pluck his binky out of his mouth and then look at it and smack his lips while Talmage laughs! Talmage enjoys giving Peter hugs and saying "Petey" with a wry smile, or "Sorry-I-yuv-you" if he has made Peter cry.

Recently Peter has developed a really good smile. He kind of throws his head back, closes his eyes most of the way, and gives a wide, toothy grin. Then he will throw his head forward again and his somewhat long hair will swing wildly around his head.

This morning we caught Peter learning how to climb up onto Talmage's bed. Here's the video we took of them having fun together. Enjoy! (Warning: this movie has a sad ending.)

Rappelling Adventure

Several weeks ago I got to help out with the Scouts by taking them rappelling at the nearby state park which has a cliff that's about 35-40 feet high. It was pretty fun for me and made me remember being the Scoutmaster when we were still in Provo. However, even more fun was that Leslie and the kids met me afterwards and we had a family rappelling activity!

When we first moved here we went rappelling with some friends and I managed to convince Morgan to try it. This time we got everybody down except for Peter (he'll have to wait until he's a little older). And no, I'm not forgetting about Talmage - he went down too! Of course everybody had a belay rope that I worked from the top, and I rigged up a chest harness for the kids, just in case they decided to get a little crazy and tip upside down.

This time I let Morgan control his descent. He used a rack and did quite well. Emma was a little scared since she had never done it before, but she also did great! She was so brave and once she was over the edge she got the hang of it pretty quickly. When it came to Talmage's turn, he just wriggled right over the edge of the cliff like there was no 40 foot drop below him. He kept asking Leslie if she was seeing him coming down. He looks pretty cute in a harness!

Here's a video of Morgan, Emma, and Talmage going down. It's not great quality (it's just from our phone), and some of it reminds me of when my dad tried to film my wrestling matches in high school (you could never see much of the match because he was mostly busy cheering me on - although in Leslie's defense, she was holding a baby while filming):

Sadly, I couldn't take a video while belaying and we didn't want to have one of the kids try doing it, so we only have a picture of the most beautiful person to jump off the cliff :)

You may wonder how we accomplished this amazing feet with four kids and no other adults. At the top of the cliff is a little picnic area. Before Leslie went down we got out the food and helped the kids to start eating lunch. We put Peter in his car seat and asked Emma to feed him an oyster cracker every few seconds. We were most worried about Talmage, so we got a little creative (you have to click on this picture to see it bigger):

But, it didn't work out so well. Even the extra small harness was still easy for him to slip out of. I didn't know what he was doing until Leslie was halfway down the cliff and Talmage showed up next to me to see how she was doing! I quickly yelled for Morgan to help keep him by the picnic table. Luckily, that worked.

Well, our blog post wouldn't be complete without a picture of the rigging master. He may be too small to go down the cliff, but's he's a master of knots (usually tying us into knots, but hey).