Grandpa Clark's Birthday!

Grandpa Clark's birthday was on Saturday -- Happy Birthday Grandpa!

To celebrate, on Sunday, we drove to Fort Dodge and met Grandma and Grandpa Clark and Carl, Hollie, Gabe and Ty for lunch. After lunch dad opened cards and gifts--he brought Em's card along to share too. This year my sister Emily gets the win for best birthday card for dad (there have been times she and I pick out the same card for dad) -- Good Job Em it was a great card!

We now have large quantities of tomatoes to use up that mom sent home with us. Looks like cucumber and tomato salad a lot this week.

While dividing tomatoes and squash Ty cleaned off the hood of our car for us! It made a great slide!

On our way home we stopped at Sonic to grab something to drink for the trip. Next time I guess we need to get Clark his own little juice cup since he did end up drinking a lot of my real fruit lime slush (and after backwash who wants the cup back). The kid likes lime what can I say.

Not much new today (Monday). Clark helped me put supper in the crock pot. This week will be a lot of crock pot cooking because I simply cannot stand the sight and smell of food come 4:00 pm. So at least if its in the crock pot I may smell it but I don't actually have to work with it at that time. We also made some banana bread to get rid of some old bananas. Clark stood on his new work platform and dug right in. He would put the chopped celery and carrots in the measuring cup as I finished chopping and moved them over for him. He also enjoyed stirring items and using the whisk along with dumping veggies and raisins into various bowls. Our supper menu included chicken and rice casserole, squash and bread pudding.

Clark is using more words but often he still will say a word once and then not use it again for a long time. But he is up to dada, mama, ditty(kitty) -- he uses this one more than mama andbath. Other words he has said but doesn't repeat often: tractor, ball, stick, apple -- I know there are others but am having a hard time coming up with them right now. He has no problems understanding though.

Clark really likes watching Handy Manny and Curious George. We watch one either right after lunch or before naptime. He claps along to the music in Handy Manny which is really cute. He also goes nuts anytime he sees a rabbit on either show. He has a thing for rabbits because he heads straight for them in Earl May too. I don't know where that comes from. He recognizes ducks and cats too on those shows (but we have those so that's understandable) but doesn't go as nuts with those as he does with bunnies. He is also a fan of Jumpy Squirrel on Curious George.

All for now -- have a great week!