Wieners gone wild!!

We've had a crazy busy weekend!! I'll leave the rest of the gory details until later and get straight to the title of my post, as I'm sure I've got you wondering what in the world I'm talking about:) Today we finished off our busy weekend by attending the Wiener Dog Nationals at the Woodlands Race Track in KC. Seriously. The funniest part is the wiener dog races are all Ed has talked about for the past 2 weeks. When we moved here 2 years ago, the wiener dog race was the weekend right after we moved and we were buried in moving boxes, so we didn't make it to the race. Ed was very intrigued by the article in the paper and swore we were going to make it in 2006. Last year the race rolled around again and we had plans, so once again we were left out of the wiener dog mania. About a month ago, Ed came in and said "the wiener dog race is July 29th - put it on the calendar - we're going". I very rarely see my husband excited about anything, let alone a race with a bunch of little yippee dogs. So, today we went. It was very amusing on many levels. I won't go into all of them, but I can tell you that Abby LOVED it. She stood on her bench waving her little fan yelling "yeah dog races!!". I'm a little scared we might have created a little dog track addict today;) It was an interesting race - they ran the wiener dogs in between the greyhound races. Here's an article that explains it better than I can, but take it from me, it was very funny to watch to owners and the dogs running 100 yds down the racetrack at a top speed of 4 mph. Ed and the kids were so excited they all bought wieners gone wild T-shirts (in all honestly I would have bought one also, but they were sold out of medium T-shirts). My husband has declared the Wiener Dog Nationals a new "Harper Family Tradition". I'm not quite sure what to think about that!

I know nothing can top the Wieners Gone Wild, but the rest of our weekend was busy but fun. Friday night we went shopping and purchased all of Ethan's school supplies (have I mentioned there's only 18 days 'til school starts). Saturday we went to the Liberty Farmer's Market and bought corn on the cob, tomatoes, zucchini and watermelon. Ethan informed me that he's going to sell the watermelons he grows at the Farmer's Market next year. I told him I didn't think the 4 plants he had would produce enough watermelons to sell, but imagine his excitement (and my dismay) when we cut into our supposedly seedless watermelon to find it FULL of black seeds. He was so excited he wanted to harvest and plant them all to work on his watermelon crop. I think we've created a monster!!

Saturday evening my friend Lucy watched the kids while Ed and I went to the Jumpin' Catfish for dinner with my Mom and Step-Dad. My little brother was there entertaining diners with his guitar playing, so we had a nice dinner with some relaxing music.

Now I'm exhausted and ready for bed. Hopefully my dreams won't be filled with little wiener dogs:)

China

A recent conversation with Ethan:

E: Mom, sometime can we go to China?
Me: Well, China is very very far away - what do you want to do in China?
E: I want to go to one of those restaurants where you get Chinese food and the table spins around. Like on Calliou.

I guess he's been watching too much PBS. Maybe this weekend we'll go in search of a Chinese restaurant with a "spinning table". In Kansas City. Not China.

Farmer Ethan

A few weeks ago we went out to eat with my Dad and Step-Mom to celebrate my birthday. Ethan ordered fruit with his dinner and was very excited when his watermelon showed up with actual seeds (I always buy seedless). My Dad convinced Ethan to take the seeds home and plant them so he could grow his own watermelons. The very next day Ethan and Ed got out some plastic cups and planted the watermelon seeds - ever since they have been sitting in the bay window above the sink in the kitchen. This weekend I was getting really tired of looking at them and I told Ed "those are never going to grow, I'm going to throw them out". I never got around to it - or should I say I never had a chance when Ethan wasn't around. Today I was doing the dishes and I looked up to see a little watermelon seedling popping over the top of one of the cups! I took down the cups and indeed we have 4 little watermelon seedlings growing.

The first thing he said was "Wow - I have to call Pops". After that he looked at me and said "so when will we get watermelons?" I guess we'll be transplanting the seedlings to a pot soon to see if they keep growing!

Public Service Announcement - Please double check the refrigerator door

I was awakened this morning by Ed shaking me asking "when was the last time you were in the refrigerator?" This may seem like an odd question, but I have a habit of getting up in the middle of the night and getting a diet coke. However, last night was not one of those nights - I hadn't been in the fridge since about 10pm. The next question this morning "do you have the temperature display set on Fahrenheit or Celsius?" Never a good question. Apparently I didn't get the refrigerator door shut all the way last night. Ed got the milk out this morning to have his cereal and the milk was warm. Not room temp - WARM. So he checked the temperature display and it was a toasty 52 degrees Celsius (125.6 degrees Fahrenheit!). The door was cracked open last night and the light stayed on - heating eveything in the fridge - especially items on the top shelf where the light bulb is located. It was very painful for me to throw out everything perishable - including 4lbs of chicken and 2lbs of lean groun beef I was thawing to grill tonight. Abby and I had to make a trip to the store to replace everything - not a fun way to start the day. So tonight - check your refrigerator door! I know I will be.

Stinky crocodile

We originally bought this crocodile for Ethan - it's a game where you take turns pushing down the teeth and one of the teeth randomly causes the crocodile mouth to snap shut. Abby has taken over possession of the crocodile, but she has a love/hate relationship with the critter. Every afternoon after nap she drags out the crocodile and begs me to "play crocodile" with her. When I finally sit down and agree to play she looks at it and says "no, it scary - lets play a different game". Every day this is our post naptime routine. Lately she's started just playing with the crocodile. The other day I found her trying to feed her stuffed dog to the crocodile. When I asked her what she was doing she informed me the crocodile was hungry (she has a whole bin full of kitchen play food and she chose to feed him the dog - I don't even want to think about what that means). Today after nap she carried out the crocodile, a changing pad and a diaper. I once again asked what she was doing and she told me "crocodile stinky - he need a new diaper". I guess I can go along with this since changing the croc's diaper entertained her for about 20 minutes!

In other news, those of you faithful readers may have noticed my absence for a while. Our internet went out on Tuesday and it was not a good day in our house. The very helpful man from Time Warner came and replaced our motem on Wednesday, but then the wireless was having issues. Thanks to the hard work of my husband my internet is now up and running faster than ever. Lets just say it's been a tense week here at the Harper house - I didn't realize how addicted I am to the internet until I didn't have access.

We've had a quiet weekend with no plans to speak of. Ethan has been in rare form - so much that today I actually got out the calendar and counted the number of days until school starts - 25 for those of you keeping track. We put them both to bed early tonight and now I'm enjoying the peace and quiet. I may just go take a long hot bath!!

The Monster Truck Fairy

My nephew Dalton is staying with us for a few days. Ethan and Abby both love playing with him and they are all having a great time. We've been trying to get them to sleep for about half an hour now - and they are wound up despite all my efforts to wear them out tonight. Dalton is a funny little man - he reminds me of Marc (my brother) in so many ways. Ethan just came out of his room with one of his monster trucks and said "Dalton told me if I put a monster truck under my pillow the monster truck fairy will come tonight and leave me $5.00". This is something I could see my brother coming up with. Ethan idolizes Dalton - so now he honestly believes the monster truck fairy will be coming tonight. It may be a rough morning when his monster truck is still under his pillow and there is no money.......

Backyard Cobbler

I do believe our neighbors think Ed has gone crazy. For some unknown reason, tonight Ed decided to use some of the camping supplies he had left over and make a cobbler in his dutch oven. Now while most people would do this inside in the oven, my husband decided to make the cobbler outside. He made a fire with charcoal under the deck (the only place in the backyard where there isn't grass), put the cobbler together in his dutch oven and cooked it over the coals in the backyard. He went outside to start the fire and while he was inside assembling the ingredients for his creation the phone rang. Yep, you guessed it - it was the deck-sitting neighbors. I answered the phone to hear "did you know there's a fire under your deck? Karl is on his way over with the hose!!" I could almost hear the sound of disbelief when I told her it was OK - Ed was just making a cobbler. Once the cobbler was finished he did take some to the neighbors, so hopefully they'll overlook my crazy husband making a cobbler in the backyard since he brought a peace offering. And as much as I hate to admit it, the cobbler (apple-cherry) was pretty tasty! Lets just say I'll be doing a few extra minutes on the elliptical tomorrow due to the amount of cobbler I consumed.