Birthday Time!

The boys were pretty excited to wake up to a bomb dropped jaguars den and quickly started playing with balloons, it bought me a few minutes of sleep.

Blake wanted to give Kohl a gift so he gave him his paint ball game that he got from the flea market last week, it was touching to see him wanting to give to his brother on his birthday.

Now we knew it would happen eventually, the first casualty of our mission. The boys were playing with the big balloons ( they were on elastic bands ) while I was tidying the kitchen. Blake got the balloon in the nose and it gave him a nose bleed...don't worry it was controled in a few minutes.




These are the offending balloons

Operation Jaguars Den Day 4 Update 1 : Operation Man Down

Here's Kohls New Hair Doo, his mission for the day was to go undercover, I'm not sure what he is undercover as but it entertained him for quite a while

After refueling the transportation vehicle, buying some back to school supplies and getting to McD's for supper...Big Mac Combo's on sale $3.99 fro 3 days it was nice enough to get the kids bikes out for a ride, after a quick tune up we went to the tennis court to give them some space to ride.

Blake did great on the Rocket Ship bike

To close for comfort means only one thing...

...Man Down...Man Down...Man Down.

Just kidding we thought we would have some fun with this pose

Operation Jaguars Den Day 2 Update 5 : Operation "Bring the Rain"

We decided to head down to Indian Beach to watch the fireworks that were taking place over in Sydney Harbor, a preview of tonights fireworks here in Sydney Mines which are being presented in 3D and yes I got confirmation from the Johnny Miles Website Representative they will be in 3d and they will be selling glasses there or you can bring your own. The recruits got to play around the park at dusk while waiting for the fireworks to start.

Here's Blake Climbing the Rock Wall

The boys working on their flexibility on the Infinity Climber.

Kohl mastering the Rockwall

Kohl made it to the top of the Infinity Climber

The ferry was loading, no this isn't the one that was out of service due to fire earlier in the week, it caused havoc with the traffic and they expect to have the back log caught by Monday or Tuesday.

The boys riding the alligator rocker

Blake had the call of nature and had to go hide behind the concrete wall

Riley passed out belly up as he so often does!

Operation Jaguars Den Day 2 Update 3 : Training the Troops

We made our way out to Quizno's for supper and armed with Blake's $10 certificate that he won at the "Kids Fest" this afternoon we had a great supper for a whooping $4.87. I had 2 "Sammie's" which are little flat breads with Chicken, Ranch, Bacon, Cheddar Cheese, Tomato and Lettuce. They are delicious and for only 1.99 each a cheap lunch. Kohl had a ham/cheese kids meal and of course Blake chickened out (no pun intended) and went with his usual chip/juice meal. Kohl decided to be adventurous and tried a bite of my "Sammie", which he loved and was still hungry after his meal so I bought him one - lettuce and tomato.
We went on an adventure to the local drug mart beside Quizno's for the Capt Crunch Cereal and eggs that were on sale that the kids wanted. When we got home we decided to take the K-9's out for a patrol of the area and stopped at the kids school for a play time. Along the way we found .50 in bottles and of course Breigh left a deposit that I had to scoop up. We did the walk without Blake's personal transportation device and each of the Privates spent time walking the new recruit"Riley" while I walked Breigh.


I knew the dogs were hungry as Riley (apparently he isn't as smart as I thought" as he was trying to eat the pebbles at the kids school which resemble his kibble. They got a drink and supper while we hit the pool.

Kohl was determined to see if his new Aircraft carrier (Foam Puzzle kit from the Dollarama) would float or not. To my surprise it actually did float and they had a blast for about 5 minutes until he decided it might be soaking up water and we took it out to let it dry. We are now drying off and cleaning up our mess from the day getting ready for night one of fireworks here. It is supposed to be a big show as they combined 2 budgets from 2 festivals going on here this weekend to make one show. (Thunder in the highlands and something else in Sydney) Tomorrow night we will experience the Johnny Miles festival fireworks here in Sydney Mines and we are very excited as the show is supposed to be in 3D.

Operation Jaguars Den Day 2 Update 2 : Bring on the Clown

This afternoon as part of the Johnny Miles Festival was "Kids Fest", I guess we normally miss this event because we are away on vacation but this year we made it, the feature entertainer was Bubbles the Clown. Blake was petrified of her and the kids wouldn't volunteer to go up that was until I got suckered on stage in the finally and she asked me which one would be most likely to come up on stage... I volunteered Blake and he marched right up to help close the show. Too bad we didn't get any shots of that one.

After the clown show we went onto enjoy the games, first up was the treasure hunt

Next up was the duck toss Kohl did great and won the "Big Prize Ticket" which meant you had to go to the secret prize vault over behind the boards and picked out a bag of Hershey Kisses


He was pretty excited to pick out these treats



Blake bowled just like he does in Amherst it took about 3 minutes for the ball to get to the pins


Blake won one of the door prizes...$10 Gift Certificate for Quizno's Subs, yummy I guess the left over taco's from last night will have to wait because he says he's going for a sub tonight.



Kohl and Blake both did really well at the Hockey Game





Blake back looking for more gold coins, every game awarded a treat of some sort and my pockets were full by this point.



Blake went for some face painting, he wanted an army tank...go figure... but the girl talked him into a sword instead.



It was than off to the cookie decorating table, this one turned out great and as you can see they were pretty happy to eat their creations

Kohl's was determined he wanted a ring from the prize table and with the help of the lady working the table picked out this "Boy" one


Here's Blake with his Quizno's Bucks



The cost of the afternoon...$1 each Child for admission (how often is it more expensive to get a child in to an event instead of an adult) and apparently a trip to Quizno's, I'll have to make up the differance on that one.

Operation Jaguars Den Day 2 Update 1 : Regrouping

After a long night in the trenches with the troopes, the rain we have been fearing for the entire week finally let loose this morning around 5 and it poured, at least it took the humidity out of the air for the day. We took a trip to the dump and a couple of new groceries and we are regrouping the rest of the morning before we head off to the activities this afternoon.

The boys building Kohl's Air Craft Carrier from the Dollarama complete with mini planes.

Breigh trying to throw her wait around with Riley, I think she wants a bed of her own, funny the beds we bought for her before she would eat within a day or two but this one she has never even taken a nip out of it.

Operation Jaguars Den Day 1 Update 5 : Building Shelter and Bunking in

After successfully acquiring our shelter compound from the drop point it was time to put the grunts to work on construction

They were pretty excited about bunking in the Jaguars Den for the night and were now ready for some fun ...but wait those don't look like regulation uniforms.

Now that's better, the boys are now ready with their new PJ uniforms, bandanna's and camo paint...Here is Kohl ready for action.

Blake appears to be ready for some hand to hand combat he was so excited to get his new surprise PJ's

They were pretty PO'd at me for not having any fatigues so I found the closest thing I could and they were making sure I had my face painted too.

Oh yes and don't forget Kohl was bugging me to make him a tank, I thought he meant a craft kit from Michaels...NO he meant a real tank so we took some scrap wood and paint from the basement and built matching army tank chairs. I got tired of trying to paint camo blobs on them so the boys did some hand blobs instead and autographed the backs.

Here's the front look and yes the cannon's are on pivots so they can really use them to pretend they are in battle field.

Here is our completed compound, we were looking for some army type decorations today at the $ store but didn't have much luck hard to find black or brown streamers we will try again tomorrow to find something.

We are now settling in with some Wii and a movie (Spy Kids 3) before getting off to bed.

Tomorrow's mission: Operation ''Dump Day", Operation "Bottle Return", Operation "Clown Afternoon" and finally Operation "Fireworks Part1", there are fireworks twice this weekend, tomorrow night in Sydney Harbour and Sunday night there are fireworks in 3D?? in the Pit here in Sydney Mines...I'll have to let you all know what the catch is on that one.

Good night for now from the Jaguars Den.

Operation Jaguars Den Day 1 Update 4 : Afternoon R-N-R

After a busy afternoon it was time for some fun, we decided to go to the movies and watched Aliens in the Attic, it was pretty funny and we pretty much had the theatre to ourselves there might have been about 10 other people in the theatre.

We stopped at the Dollarrama for some stuff and got army paint, a new leash for Riley and some toys for the boys. It is incredible sometimes how much fun they can have with Dollar store toys, totally disposible. Here are their remote control beetles they got, they also got motorized army tanks to play with too.

For supper....Taco's and the funny thing was even though I only made a small batch we still enough left over to have lunch again tommorrow.

Operation Jaguars Den Day 1 Update 3 : Search for Shelter

It was time to get our shelter constructed for the night, we had to go for a special covert mission to the dark cavern. It is rumored that many have entered but only a few have lived to tell about the terrors that lie within.

As you can see it's a pretty tight fit to get through the rough terrain to get to our drop point that our shelter was dropped off at.

It was almost completely dark but thanks to our mini flashlight and the flash of the camera we were able to navigate through.

Unfortunetly it appears that our previous team was not so successful in navigating the drop point, here are the remains of Sergent Scarecrow and Corporal Harry they were last seen in Early November last year. The boys were a little nervous about this but we had to move the bodies to get to our shelter that they were laying on.

We also found the lost Rawhide ball that belonged to Breigh while searching through the dark

Operation Jaguars Den Day 1 Update 2 : Making Smoothie

It was time to try to make the smoothie for the boys, it was soooooo hot they needed a cool down drink. We managed to find all the ingredients we needed at the local ration base and were ready to make our smoothie.

First the Grunts had to mix the OJ

Milk, OJ, Frozen Yogurt, and then the Banana

A final touch 3 plump Strawberries (go to Super store they are on sale for 1.67 along with Blueberries and raspberries are only 1.99)

The boys were pretty impressed with Mom's free mixer that she got at the flea market last weekend, it liquified our drink in about 15 seconds with NO chunks.

The end result was a little less than the boys expected, too much juice and next time we will add some ice. I thought it was pretty good but the boys are the true critics.