Some busy days

Well, where to begin. First of all, on Thursday we had our neighbor friends over to play. Emily, who is 2 mo. younger than Sam came over with her mom, Heidi and the kids played in the sandbox and as you can see from the picture, pushed each other around on the tricycle in our backyard. There are always a few shouts of "mine" when the two play together, otherwise they get along really well and we have lots of fun together.

On Friday Jason's brother and his family were in town, and in the evening, Sam's cousin Conner came to play for awhile. Conner is 2 1/2, so a little older than Sam. One of the favorite activities of the evening involved Conner riding the little bulldozer around the kitchen island and Sam chasing him as he pushed the dump truck. Sam would get Conner cornered and start ramming the back of the bulldozer, all with shouts and squeals of delight. Although neither child cried or seemed overly frustrated, I think Sam was somewhat perturbed that Conner had commandeered the riding bulldozer for the evening and would not relinquish control. Thus, the ramming action going on between the two vehicles. 

For dinner we had tater tot casserole/hot dish. Actually, the kids had "tater tot" and Jason and I had "casserole/hot dish". Or just "hot dish". According to Wisconsinhistory.org, hot dish is a "casserole-like food common in the Midwest; normally consists of a starch, a meat, and a vegetable mixed together with a sauce, often canned soup." I've heard people respond to the question, "What are you bringing for the potluck?" with "Hot dish." What exactly does that mean?  "Hot dish" as a stand alone entity just doesn't mean much. We never said "hot dish" when I was growing up, it was always casserole, which is of French origin. I guess us IA folk are more cosmopolitan that those upper-Midwestern folk. Regardless, the kids picked off the tater tots and our leftovers consisted of 1/4 of a dish of casserole and maybe three tater tots. I thought about making extra tater tots, but did not. I certainly will in the future.

On Saturday a nearby suburb had a "touch a truck" day and had a parking lot full of construction, fire, police and military trucks for the kids to climb into and check out. There was also a community garage sale and I picked up a booster seat for Matthew as he will be starting solids soon. He's recently shown some interest in food as he watches us eating very closely and tries to grab our spoons, forks, or other food items directly off of our plates. In fact, tonight he was trying to grab Grandpa Kirchhoff's beer bottle. He is revealing his true Kirchhoff heritage.