Memorable Day

It's been awhile since we tried to connect the activities of the day to the holiday that we are celebrating. Monday brought the opportunity to try again. We spent most of the morning looking for Power Books and their accompanying tapes (yes tapes). Then we busted out of the internet and house in time to enjoy some splashing at the YMCA pool. Fernando and I tried the slides at the pool only to find out that our bodies aren't youth size anymore.

With the fun aside, we had the chance to let our children experience basic training. After watching a clip from a military training camp, the kids began their training as shown below. Now before anyone gets too worried about the yelling and water spraying, the kids were amply warned and made aware that it was just for fun: (also. . .sorry for the crazy videoing. Fernando was really distracting with all his yelling and frankly I've never been that hot at capturing in cinematographic grandeur.)
(sorry for the repeat, I'm not quite sure what happened there. I really shouldn't blog when kids are awake. . .they are very good at distracting me)

For those of you, ok all of you, who were lost in the jumbled camera effects, the obstacle course started with 5 dips on the stairs, "rope" grid stepping, duck squat walking with a cue stick aka gun on shoulders, army crawling under taped chairs, wall climbing (thanks to our friends for letting us steal their plastic toy from their back yard and walk it a block to our house), and a rope climb. They were supposed to target practice with rubber band guns, but unfortunately the wetness factor eliminated the success of the band and clothes pin situation.

Flambe

With temperatures climbing into the mid 90's, my desire to use any cooking apparatus in my house has dwindled to non-existent. The grill has saved us from a life relegated to cold cereal for dinner. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out as many varieties of dinners and you can only grill up chicken so many ways. Friday's dinner defaulted to hamburgers. While pulling out all the toppings, my hands found some bacon. Bacon burgers are so much better than just plain burgers. To avoid heating up my house, I decided to grill the bacon.

Now many, if not all of you, have already realized what a disaster this bacon grilling idea is going to turn into. In the back of my head I realized there was bacon and open flame conundrum. This should be exhibit A on how undesirable cooking indoors has become to me. Even still, like most crazy ideas I have, I pushed onward with "backup" plans on how to resolve the guaranteed inferno. Just so you know, there really wasn't a definitive backup plan, just more of a "yeah, this isn't going to work" realization that I counted as my backup plan.

Sure enough, my first check in on the grilling resulted in flames lapping a good foot from the grill. So I did what any "smart" person would do, I moved the flaming bacon to the warming racks to prevent bigger flames. (notice the smart is in quotation) When I checked again, the grill was on fire. Bacon was ignited in flaming glory and fire was shooting out every which way. A normal person might have shut the lid and turned off the heat source. I decided to watch in funniest home video style and laugh uncontrollably at the crazy sight. Tiago was further back but equally entranced. I am surprised that I didn't get burned to be honest. I guess plain hamburgers were just going to have to do.