Moon

Kaiden loves to go outside and look at the moon. Sometimes he points to the sun during the day and says moon. A few weeks ago we were outside trying to find the moon. The moon was not visible, but he kept looking. Finally he looked across the back yard and saw the street light shining above his head and proclaimed it "MOON".

Picnic

Saturday was beautiful so we took advantage and went on a picnic. We only went into the foothills so didn't see many trees turning. The river is so low and everything is so dry.

After lunch we took a walk and Kaiden made a friend.

Come on Gram!

Time for a rest.

Kisses

Someone loves this little guy!

Beaters

It's a rite of childhood - licking the beaters.
We couldn't get him to actually lick the beater from the whip cream, but he managed to get it in his mouth in his own way.

Notice Dad in the background saying "What, he gets the beater?"

Bebe

Kaiden loves my digital picture frame. He names the people he recognizes - DaDa (his name for both his Mom and Dad), Tito, Rocco, Carrie. When his pictures come up, he says Bebe, sounding like a little French boy. It cracks us up.

Bugs

Last week we had a grasshopper in the bug catcher for Kaiden. This week he was looking for the bug to still be there. Aunt Carrie found new bugs and they studied them together.

Yeah, Aunt Carrie!

There I Fixed It

There is a website, thereifixedit.failblog.org featuring solutions to broken items. Some of them are pretty funny, most of them unsafe and as my kids would say "ghetto". I thought about that yesterday when I started vacuuming. Recently, the plastic clip which hods the canister in place broke. This old shoelace works just fine.

When I was growing up, broken items were repaired not thrown away. Sometimes you use what you have on hand either because you are out of glue or the part isn't available. We had a dryer with a knob that had to be pulled out to start the cycle. The plastic knob cracked and fell off leaving a screw that was hard to grip. We added a nut to the end of the screw - problem solved. My father was very handy with any kind of tool and kept our house, what was inside and our car in working order. The only thing I can think of that he didn't repair was our TV. Yes, TVs were repaired, not replaced (I know it is shocking). I remember going with him to the repair shop to test the tubes and buying the one that needed to be replaced. One time the TV repairman came to our house and took the entire inside of the TV with him and brought it back in a week.

It saddens me that items are just tossed aside, that they are made so cheaply it isn't practical to repair them. But we do try at our house. We are pretty frugal by nature and try to use items as long as possible - we squeeze as much of the toothpaste out as possible and then cut the tube for one last brushing - the same for lotion in a tube. We add water to the shampoo bottle to get one more use - the same for dish soap. I mend tears in clothes and sewed patches on Nathan's jeans when he was little.

We found it is cheaper to go the the thrift stores and buy nearly new crutches and use the rubber padding from them than it is to buy the replacement pads. So what do you do with the leftover crutch? You replace the broken handle on your plunger. I think this is being practical. My kids say ghetto - what do you think?

Demolition

I'm not new to little boys, after all, I raised his father, but it always amazes me the way little boys just seem to know how to make car sounds when they play with their first car or truck and how much fun it is to crash that car. Also it may be quite a bit of fun to

to stack blocks, but

it is so much more fun to knock them down!

Future Farmer?

Kaiden helped us picked tomatoes

and was so happy to give them to Tito

He noticed one he gave me was not red, so he put it back on the plant