Back to Grandma and Grandpa's House

The kids and I took a spontaneous trip to Grandma and Grandpa's house the first weekend in August, since they were going to head out to Colorado, and I figured that might be the last chance we'd have to see them this summer.  We were only there Friday through Sunday, but we managed to have a lot of fun in those three days.

We were all happy to hear that blueberries were still ripe, so the girls had another chance to pick and eat blueberries.

Once again, most of the blueberries ended up in the girls' bowls, but they didn't last too long once they were brought inside.

They also picked pole beans, which were delicious.  Even Nathaniel enjoyed a pole bean.  He chewed on this one for quite some time before it got soggy.

We made s'mores after dinner, roasting marshmallows over the grill.  Amelia was too scared of the hot grill to roast marshmallows herself, and Megan kept whining about how sticky and messy they were.  So all-in-all, the s'more making experience was not a huge success.  But Dad and I enjoyed roasting marshmallows and eating s'mores.  Dad tried to show the girls that it's ok to get messy while eating them, but they weren't buying it.  And they definitely didn't want a hug from him!

I had brought along our new test tube vase that Mom found at a garage sale so we could do our flower color changing experiment with Mom and Dad.  The girls love to do science experiments, and one that involves picking flowers and using food coloring is right up their alley.  We had previously watched how Queen Anne's Lace change color (because of the plethora of Queen Anne's Lace growing around our walking path), so Mom took the girls out to her garden to pick all kinds of different white flowers to see if they picked up color also.  Most of them did - the Shasta Daisy was particularly pretty.  Mrs. Besler suggested picking other light colored flowers, and the results were very pretty.  Mom helped the girls design another experiment to do when we got home; I will have to report on that later.

We also made a few batches of ice cream - peppermint, butterfinger and passion fruit.  I think the old ice cream freezer finally died, so we used my little freezer.  Both girls helped smash up the peppermint candies, and they both decided that peppermint was their favorite flavor.

The girls were thrilled to be able to lick the beater, and they waited anxiously by the ice cream maker until it was done freezing.

They made sure the get every last drop of ice cream that they could.  Look, the Goodyear blimp!

Even Nathaniel got to taste the passion fruit sorbet.  He wasn't sure what to make of the cold temperature.

This time we made it all the way to the Johnson Creek outlet malls (about two hours) before we had to stop.  Nathaniel was a very good traveler.