Happy 4th of July

The 4th of July festivities in Fredonia were awesome, as usual. We started the day with a fantastic small town parade complete with the Grover clan and Johna riding horses in the parade...No, we weren't the only entries, but we did win money!! The Fredonia Killer Whales swim team also made an appearance, as well as a great red tractor, and Kati in the fire truck. Kaytlyn wanted to sit the sidelines and catch candy this year so she isn't in any of the pictures, instead she gathered parade candy and put it in the bottom of my purse for a rainy day! After the parade we met Kami, Kai, and the kids at the park for a great afternoon of eating, visiting, and swimming! Bayden did the dutch oven potatoes for the big city dinner..they were yummy as usual..then we watched fireworks with the Lukus and Heaton Families. All in all it was a fantastic 4th of July...I am grateful for all our freedoms!

Popsicle sticks, wrappers, and kids...OH my!

I came to a conclusion today about my children...it doesn't matter how many times I ask them, or how many garbage cans are strategically placed in the yard, they are not going to throw away their popsicle wrappers and sticks. So every day we have the same conversation..."Mom, can we have a popsicle?" "Sure, when you pick up your trash from yesterday." "Ok"...45 minutes later, with the trash picked up, they are finally able to enjoy their frozen flavored ice, and the minute they are finished licking the sticks somewhat clean, they drop them on the ground thus continuing the crazy popsicle cycle. I'm starting to wonder if they have made a secret deal with the ants camped outside my back door. The solution to this problem seems so simple..stop buying popsicles, which I have threatened to do multiple times, but alas, what are summer days without a refreshing popsicle? And so, we will continue to do daily battle in an effort to not clutter my yard with popsicle trash, while still allowing my children to truly enjoy the small delights in life!!

Family Garden

We planted a garden about a month ago..corn, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, and beans. As of today, the beans are gone..they were overtaken by weeds, and Bayden decided to commit "beanicide" by tilling them up, saying there was nothing we could do to save them...very tragic. While assessing the damage done by the weeds, we made a startling discovery...the squash plants are apparantly having an identity crisis. We bought them from the nursery in a 6-pack plastic things with a stick that said "yellow squash"...the nursery guy also confirmed that they were indeed yellow squash plants...however they are producing zucchini. So we have no squash plants and 8 zucchini plants. For those of you who know about zucchini, one plant will produce enough to feed my whole family all summer long...what in the world am I going to do with 8? So I began browsing the internet in hopes of finding some recipes for zucchini...the Grover house will be serving the following on a daily basis for the entire summer...stop by if your hungry... zucchini bread, zucchini cookies, baked zucchini, stuffed zucchini, zucchini brownies, zucchini and rice casserole, zucchini frittata, zucchini omelets, zucchini pancakes, zucchini a'la mode...I'll stop now because I'm starting to sound like Bubba from Forest Gump.
I actually made zucchini bread and zucchini brownies and used only 2 zucchinis...the bread was good...the brownies were absolutely divine!! It is entirely too bad that the weeds can't seem to choke out a few zucchini plants. Perhaps they will meet the same tragic end as the beans...