Happy Third Birthday, Waterstraut Waterspout!

Today marks three years worth of blogs! Happy Birthday, Blog! That also means three years ago tomorrow we went to Alaska. We still talk about how awesome that vacation was. Seriously, awesome. Asa and I were talking the other day about my blog, and I said I hope someday the boys go back and click on random dates. They certainly can't say they had a boring childhood, or that we never did anything. For the most part the last three years of their lives have been chronicled here. I'll keep it up, as long as blogger exists and I can carve out the time for it. (Holy smokes, can you believe how small they all were three years ago!)

In other news, today is also my dad's birthday. He would have been 69 today. We're going to have an alcoholic beverage in his honor later, because we can't bring ourselves to eat herring out of a jar. Either way, of course we're all very sad my dad isn't with us anymore, but you know, you can be negative about things like that or dwell in your sadness, or you can celebrate all the good times you had. Like that time my dad took me to see Brett Farve play. Best. Day. Ever!  So anyway, happy birthday to my dad!

Today we kept going with Reality Show Week, and it was Master Chef day! We all watch Master Chef (the boys LOVED the Master Chef Junior), and the boys ask for this one every time I'm coming up with theme days/weeks. 

We had some food related activities this afternoon after some school work. Our first order of business: making solar ovens to heat up some hot dogs. 

We used some pringles containers, plastic wrap, and skewers. 

Then we let the sun cook our hot dogs! 

We also made our very own chef hats. First, I cut poster board into three strips, then I had the boys decorate them however they wanted. 

We topped it off with some tissue paper, and the chef hats were complete! 

We also made ice cream in a ziplock bag. We put a little bit of whole milk, sugar, and vanilla in a smaller baggie, then filled the larger bag with ice and salt. 

Then you shake and squeeze. (Using a kitchen towel is helpful or your hands end up freezing!) 

The result: perfectly edible ice cream! 

It was a hot one out today, and going along with Master Chef day we decided to tackle something off our summer bucket list: seeing if we could fry an egg on the sidewalk. 

Really, I'm not crazy- Bill Nye the Science guy says it is possible if it's hot enough (it just might take a half hour or so). Despite the 90 degree temperatures, though, ours never really cooked. 

Whether it worked or not, it was one more thing off our summer bucket list. 

Update on the hot dogs: While they totally cooked in their little solar ovens, they looked pretty questionable, so we didn't eat them (or feed them to the dogs, even). 

Then it was time for the Master Chef competition for the day. It was a mystery box challenge, Hayden was tasked with a dessert, Calib was given a side dish, and Peyton was given the main dish. 

Hayden's required ingredient was nutella. 

Calib was given potatoes. 

And Peyton had porkchops. 

Hayden gave us some bananas, chocolate and peanut butter chips, and Nutella for dipping. 

Peyton made some pretty good porkchops with a honey mustard sauce. 

Calib made mashed potatoes (which I realized I didn't take a picture of, but it took him nearly an hour to do it- so it was a little while after the other two dishes)

So we lined them all up and declared the winner: Peyton! 

Last time we played Master Chef we ended up with a bunch of totally not edible stuff, so this was a huge improvement. We then all caught up with the Master Chef on the DVR from last night. 

Next Up: Big Brother Day!