Building some sesame seed cookies.

Or benne wafers as they're known worldwide.

Nothing like a 95 degree day and Mommy decided to use the oven! 😲

Wild Kratts creature power suit.

Skyler asked me to order him a "creature power suit" from Amazon this week.  He's obsessed with the PBS show "Wild Kratts" and can retain almost any fact they talk about on the show.

Now he wears his power suit every afternoon when he watches Wild Kratts.  :)

Daily reading.

Skyler has to do his daily reading as part of his summer contract.  I found him reading to Eddy cat this morning.

The cat seems to enjoy his reading.

The perfect Spring.

The wetter then usual Spring has made for some great flowers this year.

Poppies and delphiniums in the front yard.

Amtrak train!

Since the California Zephyr was running 6 hours late, we got a chance to see it in the daylight yesterday.  Skyler was beside himself excited!

Catalpa blossoms.

They're really prolific this year!

And they smell incredible!

The hunt for trains.

Skyler and I loaded up our Fat Bikes Friday morning and headed out West of here to see if we could view some mainline freight on the Union Pacific Shafter sub.  We waited, and waited, and waited!  Nothing.  On our way back to the truck, I spotted an Eastbound.  Skyler was convinced we could catch it in time and if the gravel road had been in better shape, we would have beat the locomotives to the crossing!  He rode SO fast attempting to catch it!  In the end we did catch up and got to see about half of the cars go through the crossing.

Waiting.

Checking out the crossing arm mechanism.

Dark signals.  :(

Racing back towards the train!  He was really moving!

We made it!  Look how flushed his cheeks are!

Lots of (presumably empty) high fructose corn syrup cars marked ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) headed back to the midwest.

The train was cruising along pretty quick, probably 45-50 mph.

Happy!

Headed back to the truck on the gravel.  He was pretty happy about spending the morning out there.

At the baseball game.

Mommy's work hosted us at our local baseball team last night.

We rode the train downtown much to Skyler's delight.

What a $9.00 4 piece pizza looks like.  Note the jacket, it was cold!

We had some great seats!

$8.00 of Dippin' Dots ice cream beads.

More trains!

We got to watch even more trains Wednesday afternoon after Skyer's appointment!  Frontrunner is  his favorite train to watch probably because it is predictable.

Waiting.  Note his overalls!

We crossed the tracks to see if the U.P. mainline had any approaching traffic.  Dark signals.  :(

Headlights!

Getting closer!

Southbound cab car in push mode.

There it goes!

Train day.

Skyler and I headed out to watch some freight trains first thing yesterday morning.  We got to see one train parked on the road for over an hour!  Sigh...

Locomotives were just East of 4400 W.  One would think they could have stopped 1,000 feet earlier and not blocked the crossing for everyone.

Stack train.  Think of all the places these containers have seen!

Sitting on my tailgate waiting.

If you look closely, you can see a multi-engine geneset from Los Angeles.

As we were headed home Southbound on Bangerter, we were rewarded with a local U.P. switching loads on the local.

All that rain...

Leads to a beautiful yard!

Pic taken on Father's Day.  Note the dark clouds...

Stormy skies.

It was quite the rainstorm here Thursday afternoon!

If we were in Nebraska, we would probably have been looking for a basement to find shelter in!

WANT!!!!!

Now available in "Astro Turf Green"!

Summer contract on the porch.

Mommy returned home from Detroit yesterday morning after a week away.  Skyler was unable to have 2 adults around him yet again so we made him work on his contract.  He requested that he could work on it outside so he did.

A new pair of Dickies overalls made the day even better.  :)

Finally!

Skyler got to build his Vestas wind turbine this week that he received from Grandpa for his birthday.  It's quite the kit, he took 2.5 days to finish it.

The blades are motorized and the lights come on in front of the house at the base.

WOW!

We rode along with Grandpa to "The Train Shoppe" here in town to check out the model railroads and model railroad supplies.  What a neat place!

We were greeted by a gorgeous HO scale layout.

Skyler got to run the model trains thanks to Grandpa buying him some tokens.

Running another train.

Yet another!  Note the controller that allows the kids to control the speed, lights, horn, and bell on each train.

Operation dog toy.

Monday evening we walked down to the park to retrieve Maizey's lost dog toy from the enormous rose bushes.  Success!  Skyler used his grabber tool and the dog was thrilled to have her flying disc back.

A wooden handle and his grabber did the trick.

The roses are incredible this year!

And they smell incredible!

Daily contract.

Skyler is doing a great job working on his daily summer contracts that Mommy put together.  Yesterday he self started and completed his entire contract!

We got his room cleaned out over the weekend so he could have a place to study.  I have a real chair coming for him tomorrow.

Bike Cat!

I came home the other day to Mr. Mittens sitting in my bike basket!

I briefly contemplated taking him for a ride around the block!  It would be like having a built in siren!

National Donut Day.

Friday was Skyler's first day of Summer Break and also National Donut Day!!! We celebrated both by making homemade donuts but instead of deep frying them, we used the air fryer!  Delicious!

Skyler helped me cut out each one.  He was rather thrilled about the donut "holes".

Out of the air fryer and glazed, holy cow they were good!

Black and whites on the lawn.

Both pets were enjoying the green grass and sunshine this week.

The old boy still loves to be outside.

She was hot but was too busy enjoying the sun to notice.

Rocks!

Skyler got a rock polisher from Rachael for his birthday a month ago.  He picked out the rocks he wanted to polish and they tumbled around for a month.  We finally removed them last Sunday and they are noticeably smoother.

Before.

A week in.

Time to change out to the fine grit media.

Two weeks in.

Time to add the pre-polish media.

3 weeks...

Done!  4 weeks of tumbling and they are rather smooth.  We were curious why they never "shined up" however...