Fruit Pizza Flopp!!!

OK so I said before that I was not really creatively inclined! Here is the evidence.

I tried to make a fruit pizza on Sunday and I failed miserably. I make the cookie dough from scratch and rolled it out onto the pizza stone leaving a bit of an edge so it would expand. Well I guess I didn't expect it to spread so much. I went to check on it and it was dripping over the edge and onto the bottom of the oven. Soooo I put a cookie sheet under it to see if I could still cook it enough to use it.
SO the cookie sheet caught a lot of it but the stuff on the bottom was still cooking/burning and every time I checked on it smoke filled the house. I should have taken a picture of the bottom of the oven after I took the cookie sheet off. It was horrible. And I don't have a self cleaning oven!!!! So needless to say I did not make a fruit pizza! Alas I will try again!

Progress in the Back Yard!!!

For those of you that saw our backyard as a barren wasteland you may be surprised to see all the green. Yes we have grass now! I know we are crazy for wanting to grow grass in Arizona in the summer but it worked and has not been too bad either! We are making progress on the master plan for the back yard so I thought I would fill you all in as we go along.

The pile of block in the back corner will someday be gone but for now ... well there it is! But look at the grass! Yes this is in Tucson folks! Isn't my husband amazing!!!!

We had our first casualty of the project...a broken rake. It was on its way out anyway but we helped it along. oh well I am sure there will be more.

SO this is that start of the path that will go from the porch all around the grass area. Jason worked on it on Thursday night for a few hours and got about 10 feet done. He is amazing and I am sure it will soooo awesome when it is all done.

On Saturday we were doing a little work out there mowing and picking weeds and cleaning out the sand box and we needed to trim the edges of the grass. We don't have a weed wacker so I used the scissors and trimmed it all by hand. Now you may laugh but I was glad I could do something to help. The backyard is Jason's domain (as is the garage) but I want to help so I don't feel so useless. So I got the scissors and went all around the edge and trimmed. It wasn't too bad but we went to Home Depot (Tolson's favorite store) and looked at edgers/trimmers that afternoon. It seems we will have to add to our tool collection as we continue on this project, which I am sure Jason wont mind at all. WE are excited about what it will look like when it is all done but it will be a lot of work until then. We have been waiting for the weather to cool off a bit and then we will really get going! I will keep you all posted.

Childrens Museum

Family Home Evening this week was going to the Children's Museum down town. We met the Grays there and Tolson and Brady had a great time. Tolson wasn't a big fan of the dinosaur room but liked everything else. It was a great time.

Tolson and Brady Had a blast playing in the Fire truck!

They loved being together! I swear these two were best friends in the pre-existence!

They played in the submarine for like 20 minutes. They pretended they were driving it and loved pushing all the buttons and spinning the dials.

Tolson loved the Train room! He is a big fan of trains and thought it was so cool to ring the bell. This is looking down through a tunnel that was the front engine of the train.

We had a great time and love watching tolson play and explore! Its especially fun when he has a great buddy to go with. Thanks Brady for being such a good friend!!!

Cool Jon Schmidt Video

I love this video. He talks at the end about arranging it for his 7 year old daughter! anyway I hope you like it as much as I did!

Creative attempts

Ok so I was teasing on facebook the other day about starting a blog called creatively declined. I try lot of new things all the time and I am sure when Jason is gone for 5 months I will have lots of evening time to fill with things. I think instead of starting a new blog I might just post these attempts on here. I have been trying my hand at different kinds of cooking, sewing, jewelry making, I struggle with decorating but would like to get better and many other things. I figure my blog is called Kemptons kingdom and should share things that go on here in the castle so I will be posting all these things on here. Now I just need to get better at taking pictures of these happenings and document the fun. So there you go! Here is a forewarning that there will be some random posts about the little things I am trying! Hope you all enjoy the ride!

Camping on Mt Graham

Ok so some days I feel like my life is in limbo. I don't have a whole lot going on or a lot to report so I feel like my blog is kinda boring. But at the same time its really just for me and whoever want to know whats going on with my life. So really It doesn't matter right?

Well this weekend we went camping (pictures to come later) It wasn't real camping as we were staying in a cabin with running water and a kitchen etc. but it was still in the mountains and still fun. We went to Mt Graham (over by Safford) with Jason two cousins and their families. there were 6 adults and 7 children in a little one bedroom cabin. it was very fun but a bit noisy at times. Tolson had a very rough night the first night (which means of course that I did too) He fell asleep on the bed I was going to sleep on so when we got ready for bed we moved him to the floor. well about 12:30 he woke up and freaked out cuz he didn't know where he was and where mom was. SO I tried to settle him down and had him come onto my bed with me. Well Tolson has NEVER slept in my bed or with anyone else before so he would not fall asleep. I tried everything I could think of until about 3:00am he fell asleep laying on my chest/tummy. well then I had to figure out how to move him off me and next to me without waking him up and find a way to still sleep on this twin bed. So needless to say I didn't get much sleep the first night. Poor Jason was awake the whole time I was trying to get Tolson to sleep so he was tired too. WE survived and then the second night we gave him benadryl. Now I am not a drug parent but sometimes you need your child to get a good nights sleep and this was one of those times. I think Jason cousins thought I was terrible but I don't really care. He slept well and so did I . That night two of the little girls that were with us took turns screaming and crying throughout the night. I felt so bad for their parents cuz we were all in the little cabin and they were doing their best to get them to be quiet but you can only do so much with a two and three year old in the middle of the night. SOOOO minus the sleep factor we had a great time. We just relaxed and played cards and eat really yummy food. I love being in the mountains and not having a lot of distractions. We went to go visit my sister who was camping up there too and just walked around and looked at the creek and the flowers and trees and it was so fun. We really want to get a little travel trailer some day so that we can go camp in the woods and still have some of the great comforts of home.

So we had a fabulous weekend and love spending time with family. Jason and his two cousins spent a lot of time together growing up so they are really close. Their wives are great and we all get along which I love. I hope that when we move we can still try to keep in touch and spend dome time together every once in a while.

Well I hope that you all had a great weekend and are loving life. I look around each day and am so grateful for all that I have been blessed with in my life. we may not have the nicest house or all the "things" that we want but we are happy and healthy and we have wonderful friends and family around us!

Hope you all take a moments to look around and see the small stuff in life that really is the big stuff!

Secret hiding place!

Ok so Tolson and Emma (one of the kids I watch) have discovered the coat closet. I know its an odd picture and don't judge me for the mess but they love it under there. We cut out the back of the closet to get some extra storage under the stairs. We also put a little light in there. Tolson thinks its the coolest place in the whole house. I can hear them under there playing house (well sort of) and singing songs and laughing soooo hard. I am glad that I can witness all these cute things that they do. Today they found my baby doll and fed her and put her to bed. They were reading stories to her and then telling each other to be quiet. It was very cute!