How to Make Our Gingerbread House

Graham Crackers are easy to cut with a serrated knife. Use frosting made of powdered sugar and water (not too wet though) as glue. Decorate with lots of candy! This year I made a train instead of a house and my brothers made the houses.

Halloween 2009

Billy Hooten Owl Boy Thanks so much for you guys, and Ryder, for sharing this with me. With all the cool things out there that somebody could be for Halloween, and they chose a character that I created, it's an honor Tom Sniegoski, author
Wolverine
Supertoddler
The Dopp boys 2009!

Billy Hooten's Owl Boy

These are my favorite books. I've read all four. If you like comic books, then you'd love these chapter books. This morning I wrote an e-mail to the author. This is what he wrote back:



Hey Ryder,

Thanks for the awesome letter . . . and I'm really glad that you're enjoying the Owlboy books that I wrote. As of right now, there are only four in the series. Have you read all four?

1. Billy Hooten: Owlboy

2. Billy Hooten: Owlboy - The Girl With the Destructo Touch

3. Billy Hooten: Owlboy - Tremble At The Terror of Zis-Boom-Bah

4. Billy Hooten: Owlboy - The Flock of Fury

That's it for right now. Maybe I'll be writing some more in the future, but as of right now, there will only be four books.

Thanks for the email.

Best,
Tom Sniegoski

P.S. Just got another note from the author that he's sending me an autographed copy of his book!
Check out an interview with the author here: http://www.sniegoski.com/owlboy/owlauthor.html

D-day Fish Hatchery

Always fun. Every year is different. Coho salmon run - each one of those fish is worth about $300 at New Seasons.



Herman the Sturgeon.

Collaboration

A mother/son school bus collaboration. He drew it, I painted it.

Painting

I just painted this for our school bus.

Dragon Fruit

Looks like a flower to me.
Weird!
Yummy with a little sugar on it.

Rainy Days in a School Bus.

Bored in the School bus. This is what you do...

International Food Tour

A few weeks ago we decided to buy something different at our Food store every week. Phelan and I get to pick out the item. There are three international aisles in our grocery store. There is an Asian, Mexican and Russian aisle. My Mom said that when she was a little kid her Mom would take her to Mexican bakeries and dim sum restaurants in San Francisco. She remembers steamed bean buns, powdered wedding cookies and piroulines.

Russian cereal - we haven't tried it yet. UPDATE - NOT GOOD!

We decided this tastes like chocolate soda but Papa says it's made with chocolate malted barley. It's very popular at our store.

These cracker/cookies are good but kind of really crunchy. We bought them a second time.

Summer 2009 Creston Pool

Phelan went from not getting in the water to this in four sessions. When you're ready, you're ready!

Newest Community Member

Baby Jane was born on Monday. Her name is Jane Luella Junkert. She's in our community group. The first girl born in our community group. We have nine boys and now, one girl.

Ryder's Blackberry Crisp

Ryder made a blackberry crip from beginning to end. He picked all of them, mixed the ingredients (and I made him double the recipe to boot), baked, served and ate most of the crisp all by himself. It was a good day!

Powell Butte Tree Climbing

Earth Club 2009

This is our Earth Club Garden. We plan to give away the plants when they're big enough. Remember our motto - plant a garden, ride a bike, recycle!

Camp 2009

When I left for Camp Namanu on the bus, we got off and went down a staircase. It was super big. It had maybe a hundred steps. It felt cold, colder than home. First we went to our cabin. They were really new with nice wood. They had no paint. There were only three boys and three bunks. We all got a top bunk. At first I was a little nervous about being there for a whole entire week. By the next morning, I wasn’t nervous because I had met the kids I was going to live with for the week. They were really nice. Their names were Wyatt and Thadius. Wyatt was in the bunk right next to mine. He was really funny and liked telling jokes. Wyatt was smaller than me but says he was nine. Thadius lived on the bunk in the far corner. He had brown hair and liked playing card games like Uno and Go Fish. I liked both of them. They were my best friends there. I played with them everyday

The next place we go to is the cafeteria where CITs are singing outside. If the bell rings once, all of the counselors would go inside. If the bell rings two times, we would line up in the straightest line we could and the CITs singing would pick the best line to enter first. Once we enter, we can sit at any table we want to. The camp is so big, there is usually about twenty tables. I would usually sit with Thadius and Wyatt but sometimes I would just sit with other kids so I could meet them. My favorite meal there was pancakes and waffles for breakfast. We would also have mac and cheese & spaghett. On the first day for dinner, we had a cookout with hamburgers and hot dogs in the meadow, down the hill from the cafeteria. On the last night for dinner we had a Thanksgiving meal and a big party. Ranch, which is for older kids came for the dinner as well. The entire Camp Namanu came. For dessert we had cake with candles and they turned out all the lights. There are activities that we do all day. There is a duck pond which is where we go duck pond boating. I think that was my favorite activity we did. The duck pond is just a small pond next to Meadow. It’s really murky and there are lots of ducks in it. We would paddle around for half an hour and it was really fun to avoid the branches like an obstacle course.
I also really liked doing candles. There were ice candles, crayon candles and dip candles. I made an ice candle. What you do is you put ice in a milk carton, pour different colored wax in it. When the wax hardens, the ice melts away and leaves hollow parts in the candle. It looks really cool. Dip candles where you dip a string into different colored wax and it makes kind of like a ball. You can put different colored wax on it and I even saw someone poking crayons in it. Crayon candles were different. You put crayons in a cup and then pour wax over it. When you lit the candle, you could see the crayons inside the candle.
Leaving was really fun because my parents came and I got to show them around. I showed them the treehouses. When you get older, you get to be in Ballagan where you sleep in treehouses. I had a fun time showing my family those treehouses. I also showed them the wishing rock. Camp Namanu’s favorite rock. Nobody knows how it got there. Lots of wishes have come true from there. Here’s how you make a wish. You put your hand on the rock, close your eyes and circle the rock three times, then sit on it and make a wish. Then we hiked back up a trail to meadow, grabbed my stuff and climbed the big staircase and then left. I would love to go back to camp next year.

Camp Namanu

One week at summer camp! You will be missed little man but Mama and Papa know you are having more fun than you could have imagined.