Cub Scout Father and Son Baking Contest

Kira is an awesome baker. Conner and I, sadly, are not. Every year the boy scout troop puts on a cake baking contest. Dads and sons only. No help from other, more talented, members of the family.

We had a great idea. We really did! The thought was to recreate the annual pine wood derby car racing contest. Bake a cake, cut it with a downward slope, cover in icing, apply fondant, place cars and trophies on top. How hard can that be? Well, actually it can be really hard :).

The fondant was the first disaster. It seemed really hard out of the package and we couldn't roll it, so we added water to make it more malleable. Bad idea we tried to fix by adding flour. Another bad idea. We decided to scrap the fondant and just use white icing for the main cake and chocolate icing for the piping of lanes and other decorative twists.

The cakes baked up really well. I was surprised! Unfortunately, taking them out of their pans didn't go as well. Big chunks broke off. We figured we would "glue" them back on with the icing.

Stacking and shaping the cakes went fairly well. We tried to ice between the cakes, but quickly realized it was a dumb idea. The icing just broke the cake apart. Conner made some comment about my skills. I handed him the knife to spread the icing, waited 10 seconds and then we both laughed. His skills were equal to mine. Not good!

With the icing between the cake going badly, we pondered icing the outside of the cake. We decided to go big, use plenty of icing and see what may come. Well, a disaster came. The icing wouldn't stick and pulled the cake apart no matter how we tried to patch it.

2 minutes in, the end was near. Conner embedded the cars in the icing, pushed the trophies into the cake and we both agreed this was not to be our year.

Next year we will invite Kira home, ask her for some sage advice, spend a weekend practice baking, and come out stronger and wiser.

Maybe it's time to pay more attention when watching the "Ace of Cakes" on the Food Network :)

Toothless Parker

I think Parker is doomed to lose all his teeth sooner, rather than later. He lost a tooth last year and badly loosened anther one. Today the second one fell out. Parker was thrilled as the extraction was painless. Also, his desperate attempt to find a cool share today for Tuesday pre-kindergarten came to an end. This was the best! The only four year old to lose not one, but two teeth.

I see hockey in his future!

Parker Starts Reading

This weekend Parker decided it was time to read. He wanted to read all by himself. Not wanting to lose the enthusiasm, I grabbed Kira's old reading program from the Challenger School and gave Parker a few lessons. Wow! He's a fast learner. Within a couple of hours or so he had read me 10 of the basic books, gone through a bunch of flash cards for letters and their sounds, and had watched the accompanying DVDs.

At night he decided to read me a couple of stories. Here is one:

Harlem Globetrotters

We loved them so much last time they were in town we decided to invite our friends, the Starks; John and Nolan, to this year's event. As always, a great time was had by all.

Crazy Hair Day!

Conner Starts Kumon Math Program

Conner has decided to jump start his math skills and we have signed him up for extra curricular math through the Kumon Program. 5 to 10 minutes of drills per night and he is on his way. He's prepping for multiplication and division and can't wait to finish high school math by grade 5!

He had to haul his assignments on vacation. The picture shows all his work over the 17 days. 1700 questions, 9 wrong. Pretty darn good!

Conner's Sea Shell Collection

After all his hard work collecting and analyzing sea shells with Aunt Lois, it was decided that we needed a place to display them to the world (or at least to everyone who came to the house). We wandered off to our favorite Target store and came back with a bowl much like Lois has.

The collection is now available for all to peruse at their leisure. Conner's field guide to the Florida Beaches is nearby so that he can answer any and all questions you may have.

For the really observant, you may notice the large starfish missing. We also happened to note that Kailah's half brother Strike, who was visiting, seemed awfully content. We believe the best explanation to the mystery is that Strike discovered and then enjoyed his new chew toy, even if it did taste a little fishy. Weird, but we are really sure it did happen!