Kid Cookery

For some reason, all of the kids have taken an interest in doing more of the cooking around here. Emily and William take basic cooking classes in school. When I say basic, I mean basic. Emily said that one day the made Top Ramen. Yum!

I asked Emily if they have covered taking care of their mise en place and she said that they were no where close to such concepts. Humm...what is a dad, who is a longtime student of French cooking, to do? Looks like it is time for some home schooling. 

One dish that the kids like, looks fancy, and if pretty easy is pull off is fish in papillote. This is simply cooking fish in a parchment paper envelope. the basic principle to keep in mind here is that things need to cook quickly in a hot oven (425 degrees), so the veggies need to be cut small and and the same size. The only other tricky part of the disk is cutting the heart shaped paper big enough and in the right shape, to hold your dish. Emily did a great job and got an A+ in her home school cooking class. She even let me take a few pictures of her at work. 

Paddy got the job of putting cookie dough on the cookie sheet. He did this well and didn't eat too much of the uncooked cookies. The only problem was that we couldn't account for all the cooked cookies once he was done. Humm?

William hasn't done much cooking in the past couple of weeks because he has been busy working on another major paper house project. Last year he completed a model of the Westminster Abby. This year, he wanted to make Grandma Linda and Grandpa Gene a model of the White House for their Christmas pressent. After many, many hours of painstaking X-acto knife cutting of tiny windows, he completed it and it looks great. See photos of both of these project here. 

Happy Holidays!

Russell, Mary, Emily, William and Paddy

Le Toux on Le Blog

About a year ago The Philadelphia Union traded one of their star players, Sebastian Le Toux, to the Vancouver Whitecaps. They then held a going away party for him at Kildare’s Irish Pub in West Chester, just a few blocks from our house. Since it was walking distance, I went, had a beer, and met Seba. He spent half the season playing for Vancouver then got traded to the New York Red Bulls where he finished out the season. The last game of the year, we all got to see him play before his real home crowd at PPL Park.

When the season was over, we were all surprised the hear that he had been traded back to Philly! Again, they held his welcome home party at Kildare’s last night starting at 6:30. Which was very convenient for me, as the boys religious education classes are just a block down the street at St. Agnes. I dropped the boys off at church then, like a good Irish dad, I headed to the pub. Again, I got to shake his hand and get a photo with him. After which I headed back over to church and picked up the boys.

As you probably know from reading Le Blog, Paddy likes soccer and has gone to many games with me. I asked him when he got out of religious ed if he would like to meet a famous soccer player. “Sure! I’d love to!” He asked “When we could do that”  and I said “hummm…how about now?” He said “what? You can just do that?”

So, we walked the short walk back to he pub and went in. Any kids that came to the pub to meet Seba were ushered up to the front of the line and were given the royal treatment. Paddy, who happen to be wearing his Union hat, was over joyed. William on the other hand, could have cared less and asked if he could get something to eat.

Nonetheless, it was a big thrill for Paddy and a lesser thrill for William. Seab bent down and talked to Paddy. He asked if he liked soccer and if he could expect to see Paddy in the stands at PPL Park next season. Paddy skipped all the way home. Check out photos of the evening here along with a few other recent family photos as well. 

Bikes and School

There are many differences between the schools that we had on the north Olympic Peninsula and the ones here in West Chester. Almost all of the advantages are for the West Chester Schools. Simply put it is just a large system with loads more money and resources. The one glaring category that the Sequim schools exceeded in is bikes. Each of the schools there, had a bike rack and they were all filled with bikes. From the Elementary school to the High School. Kids were able to ride bikes to school and park them in a designated spot. None of the schools here have a bike rack. Zero. And as far as I can tell, Paddy and I are the only ones that ride a bike regularly each day. The only other bike that I have seen a any of the schools is this one at Henderson High School. It is locked up on one of the metal benches at the stadium in front of the school. It looks like some bike advocacy is in order...

Paddy 8.0

This past weekend on September 29 Paddy turned 8 yeards old! Happy Birthday Paddy! Because of our Open House event on Saturday, we didn't celebrate his birthday until Sunday. It went well. Check out photos of the Birthday Boy here. 

A Week At The Beach

Last week we finally got our act together and went on a long over due family vacation! We dusted off all the camping gear and headed to the Delaware Seashore State Park. Our activities were completely predictable. Mary and the kids swam at the beach. Russell rode on his bike. The gnats bit hard. We went to the boardwalk at Rehobeth Beach. Ate ice cream. Swam on the beach some more. See photos here. 

The Boys Go Camping

Ever since school got out, William has been asking to go camping. The only problem with this request was one of shelter. We have two tents. A giant 6 person tent that requires two adults to pitch, and a small one person tent that I use for bicycle trips. Oh, we also have two old tents (over 15 years old) that leak lots of water in the event of rain. Since Mary wouldn't be joining us on the camping trip, the 6 person tent was out. What to do?

Then I remembered that we still had about $80 on our REI rebate! So, one day William and I went to the local REI and found a two person tent for about $100, which with our rebate, only cost $20. Not a bad deal! Now we had enought water tight shelter for all the Rogers boys to go on a camping trip! 

We chose to go to Hibernia County Park, which was only about 30 minutes away and had a primitive camp ground. Perfect. We also chose to go during the week in hopes of less people to deal with. We packed up are gear and headed out. We got the campsite and set up camp. It was a very nice camp site which we had all to ourselves! Even more perfect!

We then had lunch of standard camping fair (hog dogs) and then I headed over the to park office to pay for our site. At that point I learned why we had the campsite all to ourselves as it was only open on weekends. Total bummer! 

We headed back to the camp ground and took down our tents and packed the car. A quick search on my iPhone showed that there was a commercial campsite just a few miles away. It was considerably more expensive, but it had pool which which was a big bonus for the boys. We swam at the pool, had dinner of standard camping fair (more hot dogs) and s'mores by the campfire. 

The next morning I was glad that I went and bought the new tent as it rained cats and dogs! We had hoped to spend much of the day by the pool. Instead, we packed up the car, and drove over to Lancaster and found a dinner and got hot chocolates and sticky buns. 

Check out photos of our adventure here.

The Boys Visit NC

Back in the last week of June the boys and I visited Grandma and Grandpa. I sayed a week and the boys stayed for two. On my way back I visited my dear friends Gerry and Betsy Bannan in Roanoke VA. See photos of our visit here.