Ice Cream day and some progress on many fronts

In an effort to expand the kids pallets this week I made 'kid friendly' Five-Spice Pickled Carrots. I am  hoping that by the time school starts I will have landed on several new healthy veggie options to pack into Kiernan's lunches. Both kids like pickles quite a bit but only the grown ups went for these. It called for one clove of crushed garlic and I let Megan swing a hammer to squash the clove. Boy is she into cooing now.

Pax has shown some signs of territorial aggression, she growled at the neighbor and showed her teeth when the neighbor came to retrieve her lab puppy from playtime. This is not OK. She should of course guard our hose and our kids but should definitely not growl and people she has been introduced to. After looking it up we decided to try doing more walking and obedience training. For fear and territorial aggression the SPCA recommends more exercise and more commands to get your dog to look to you for reaction instead of reacting on impulse. Plus if she is more obedient when we tell her to stop she will. We have been working on this for about 2 weeks and it is working so well.

We are going for long walks in the evening to wear her out and we are trying more sit/stay commands during the day.

We took her to a populated walking area last weekend with no problem, even with a guy she didn't know and she is much more likely to react unhappily to men.

We will keep working on it but I think because she isn't even a year old yet that with attention the problem should go away.

Mom and the kids joined me for lunch at Costco this week. Mom was there to stock up for FL and to check out the Costco car rental deals.

The rest of us were there for the pizza.

Dad continued to improve. He was almost released from the hospital on Tuesday but had an A-fib episode that required him to stay for an extra 24 hours.

The kids finished their swimming classes. 

Megan is now afraid of the water which was one of my hoped for outcomes. That girl needs more caution in her life. She can put her face in the water to blow bubbles and gets the idea of holding her breath. She can kick around the pool with a flotation device.

Kiernan has learned to swim. It is ungainly and undignified but In the video above he jumps into water that is well over his head swims for a few seconds and gets out of the pool all on his own. 

I find this particularly satisfying.

Of special note he was the youngest and least experienced swimmer in his class and the only one willing to dive into the deep water.

This week marked the beginning of big changes at my work. We are getting rid of my big robots and before doing that we are cleaning out all the flotsam that has accumulated since 2006.

Next big change is one of personnel.

Dad was freed from the hospital much to everyone's relief.

I took off work a little early to go down and see him and to cook something. 

I was in time to see his sister my Aunt Sandy as well.

He has good spirits and good care.

On Friday I took the kids to Baker park.

We did a small hike before hitting the playground.

The kids made a home under a tree.

 They chased lake ducks and poked half dead fish.
They pretended to be jailed by nefarious bad guys. They spun on a spiny apparatus until Kiernan was quite sick.

We went home and took naps. Even Pax took a nap.

She really is the most elegant creature.

 Kiernan was sick for the rest of the day and finally went to bed after barfing. Too much spinning? We took him to the Dr. this week to talk about why he is getting sick so much. They gave us some Zantac to try if it gets worse. We shall see. 

On Saturday we went back to dads house for lunch and a visit. Kiernan had a headache and by the time we got home was sick again.

Megan had a ton of energy and was a bit disobedient. I wish these trips would go more smoothly but it was better than the Ledo's run last time.

On Sunday we stayed home and cooked and worked out.

Mom made peach salsa. She went over to  a near by farm stand and got a box of 2nds peaches that looked all warped and tasted like sunshine.

She also got some eggplants and tomatoes for me.

I made Eggplant Parmesan.

Then mom helped us with some of our surplus mango's and made a big batch of mango salsa too.

I will bring a jar of each to dad next week.

David and the kids and I used some of the gust passes to moms gym and went for a few hours to work out and to swim.. We had a blast and I now have the sore arms to prove it.

We rounded out the day by celebrating national ice cream day as God intended.