The Twin's New Found Career

As you can probably guess the twins have discovered their artistic side. Neal and I have discovered that we need to put or throw things away quickly before a new use is found. Here comes the story...Neal and I have been trying to fix up our house a little bit as most of you know we are STILL trying to sell our town home. One of the idea's that was suggested to us was to try staining the cement in our back patio. It's pretty inexpensive and not too hard to do. Well the day after it was finished, we left the remaining stain sitting outside. You can probably figure out the rest of the story. The twins just thought we forgot to finish staining and were helping us finish by staining the fence. Thanks boys! It took us a week and a lot of steel wool and paint stripper to finally remove it all.
They also decided to knock our very "expensive" charcoal grill off our rock wall into the stain that they had also sprayed on the cement ( I guess the thought we had missed some spots.) That's what you see in the middle picture along with the fence staining.

Potatoes and Cake

Here's the story with this....   Since it was fast sunday we made potatoes and chicken in the crock pot.  I made it so you'll have to ask Rachael about the quality of the cusine.  She and I both had two helpings though, so it couldn't have been that bad.  Max, however, has never really eaten potatoes in any form.  The twins will eat them, but not today for some reason.  Well, I also made a chocolate sheet cake.  The boy's were all given the rules about eating their potatoes and chicken if they wanted cake.  Rachael and I stuck to our guns on this, (pretty much).  Josh ate the best, but none of the three ate enough to qualify for cake.  Dinner was cleaned up and the cake came out.  Rachael and I did not hide our cake, so you can probably imagine the cries and wallows that came.  The twin's fight did not last too long.  Max, however, showed more tenacity.  I spelled out the rules for him again.  He explained to me that he didn't want to eat potatoes because they "make noises".  What he meant was that he gags and chokes when he eats potatoes.  I told him that it didn't matter and that he would have to eat a helping of potatoes if he wanted cake.  Finally he asked if he could have a plate of potatoes instead of a plate of cake.  I served him a small helping.  Then of course we went through the rigamaroll of how many potatoes he actually had to put down to qualify.  Max started the negotiations at about two.  I started somewhere in the 130s.  Realistically I would have been happy if he were in the 10-12 range.  We settled on one round of 5 then 5 more. (10 was too much for him).  
I don't know how many he actually put down but every bite was quite the production.  
Rachael and I started laughing.  Then Rachael asked how many I would actually force him to eat before he would get cake.  She was thinking this was a case of the spirit being willing but the flesh being too weak to carry out the ordeal.  I have to give Max some respect for his willingness to do what needed to be done to earn the prize.  Josh and Tanner did not return for potatoes, but lest you think I have no heart, they did get a couple small bites later before they went to bed.

Football season is here!

Tanner could hardly wait for foot ball season to start as he fell asleep on his grandma's bed.  Well, it has started now!!  We even watched a few minutes of a local high school game on TV the other night.  Tanner and Josh would not let me change the channel for anything.