Homemade Ice Cream

We made our first batch of homemade ice cream for the summer. Chocolate, of course! We learned how rock salt helps to lower the freezing temperature and get the ice cream even colder than ice alone. But who cares HOW it's made. All we really cared about was how it TASTED. It was GOOD!

Boomerang Express

Nicholas was invited to a week long Vacation Bible School in Grapevine which he attended this week. The program was called Boomerang Express and had an outback, Australian theme. Nicholas has had fun playing with his friend each morning but he also learned about living his life for Jesus. Tonight the church put on a Family Fun Night. There was a play and all of the kids sang the Boomerang Express theme song on stage. There were tons of carnival games and bounce houses. Nicholas' favorite was a giant alligator bounce house where you crawl through his body, up stairs, down slides, etc. He sure burned off some of that endless energy of his!



It's been hot here even at night so we were all glad to take a break and enjoy some carnival food. Nicholas liked his nachos so much that he wanted to drink the leftover cheese! Eewww!





Stuart has been working on putting bigger tires on our Jeep so it can tackle some gnarly off-road trails. I think this Jeep's tires might be big enough!

Ants In My Pants!

Nicholas made up this silly song called, "Ants In My Pants". There are several different versions of it since it changes each time he sings it. This video clip is actually the first version and shorter than the ones that followed. I love how he stops in mid-song to tell me that this is NOT something he learned at Vacation Bible School. He said he made it up all by himself. What a ham!

Underwear Man!

During the week, Stuart gets up before Nicholas. Usually Nicholas will eventually get up and find Stuart in the bathroom shaving or brushing his teeth. Nicholas loves to open the door and try to surprise him. Today he did just that.



He came into the bathroom like this and said, "I'm Underwear Man!" Stuart acted surprised but couldn't help but laugh. Then who did we find hiding behind the underwear mask?



Why look! It was Nicholas all along!! What a surprise!

Just "Plane" Fun!

Today we went with some friends to visit the Northwest Regional Airport, the largest privately owned airport in North America. We met a nice pilot who was proud to show us around his hanger and let us look at his plane. Then we even got to watch him take off and do a fly-by for us!



We watched several other planes come and go. Then we enjoyed lunch on-site at the Blue Hanger Cafe.



Next we visited the Pilot Shop. I didn't expect them to have anything that Nicholas wanted but amazingly they had plenty of cool plane toys and I think almost every child managed to talk their mom into getting something for them. Nicholas is very proud of his two planes.



We got to meet the owner of the airport, Glen Hyde. He was very friendly and took time out of his busy schedule to show us around. Nicholas' favorite part was seeing this plane that was too big to fit in the hanger!





The children also got to climb into this Marine Huey helicopter. Nicholas loved pretending to be the pilot!



We had a great day learning with our friends! It was just "plane" fun!

On the way home, we realized we were way too hot and we needed some emergency refreshment. Braum's Ice Cream to the rescue!

Rachel can't have real milk until she is one year old so the poor little girl had to just watch big brother enjoy his ice cream.

"Hmm, what is that?"



"Hey, that looks like yummy fun!"



"I think I want to try some too!"



I did feel bad for her but she really didn't seem to mind. She ate a few of her puffs and flirted with some customers and seemed quite content. Until she decided that a full day of roaming an airport and a trip to the ice cream shop was all that she could take. Nap time was calling!





Here's a picture that Nicholas took of us as we were packing up to leave. He wanted me to be sure to post it on the blog for him!