This Week's Spelling Words

Saw
Sister
Some
Stay
Still
Talk
Tell
That
Them
Thing
and left over from last week (words she got wrong on her Saturday spelling test):
Little
Made
Of

Next week we finish the 1st grade required words and the following week we start on the 2nd grade required words (as per AISD curriculum).

Blurrrrrr

Um,
Sunday: Sunday School and not much else for the day. Made black beans and brown rice for dinner.
Monday: Rainy day. We went shopping - practiced this week's spelling words in the car, renewed tags for 2 vehicles, shopped at Walmart, shopped at Wheatsville, Paul felt sick so we came home. I don't recall what we had for dinner, oh I remember, it was oatmeal - I had blueberries from last season in mine (the 2007 blueberry season should start at the end of April here in Texas). Paul fevered all night.
Tuesday: Paul was still running a fever so we sat around and watched Noggin all day. Practiced spelling words again and did addition flash cards. Made split pea soup (100% organic) for lunch - used the meaty bones left from the pork chops last month; added in lentils, collards, carrots, oregano, Spike seasoning, rice, cilantro and basil; used my Braun stick blender to puree it (I took out half of the carrots and the meat before I did that and added them back in after) - and mushroom ravioli for the kids for dinner (they didn't want a second meal in a row of the pea soup).
Wednesday: Paul all better so the kids went outside and made mud pies all morning and Giselle practiced her spelling words some more. After lunch we finished our shopping at HEB (yeah, we aren't out of sour cream any more), practiced reading, dropped off pass-along clothes at many friends' houses, went to the local park to play with friends, had leftover beans & rice for dinner, and the top tooth that's been wobbly since before December is still holding on (the new tooth is fully exposed but the gum is refusing to let go of the old tooth and I'm not getting involved with the removal of this one).
Wow!
Tomorrow it's school in the morning (quiz on the spelling words) both at home and over at Marie's, then probably a trip to the zoo. I had promised Paul the other day and Marie suggested it when we were leaving the park this evening.
It's supposed to rain on Friday so we'll probably do Park Day at Marie's house after another spelling quiz at home and math at Marie's. Maybe we'll even let the kids watch a video/dvd but NO Disney! (My issue with that will have to go in another post).

Mission Organic 2010: The Mission

I joined the mission, and so should you!
Mission Organic 2010

Sunday Seven #5

Seven things I’m thankful for this past week ended 3/24/07
1 – Paul peeing and pooping in the toilet when he’s not wearing any bottoms.
2 – The rain holding off on Friday so that I could get the whole lawn mowed.
3 – A new La Leche League Leader Applicant starting the application process.
4 – Our friend’s teacup-sized Yorkshire terrier safely birthing 4 puppies.
5 – The State of Texas for recognizing The Biscuit Brothers and the great work that they do with kids.
6 – Magnolia Café for their wonderful pancakes that my kids love.
7 – The ability to make good food that my family enjoys.
*7* - DH for knowing that he loves his wife.

leave a link to YOUR Sunday Seven

Crawfish Release

This is when we first dumped out the bag of crawfish to be released into the creek. They were so wound up from being in the bag that they just wanted to fight each other instead of making a break for freedom.








This little guy had been after Giselle since we first brought him home from HEB and he wasn't about to stop now. He kept grabbing at her everytime she even came close, he even went after her pink shoes. He was so fiesty that he was still trying to grab at her even as he backed into the water and went on to his new life.











It's funny, the really big guys like this one wouldn't really try to grab you, instead they would swim away very fast - it was rather challenging trying to catch them in the pool to bag them up for release. Maybe it's because their claws are so big and heavy that it's not worth it to them to try to fight a predator with them. But this is a final shot of one of the big guys just before he went down stream to a deeper swimming hole.

Korv Stroganoff

So, this is that super curly pasta that I wrote about impulse buying earlier in the month. It's called Armoniche and it comes from Italy so it's not enriched or anything. See, in Europe they expect you to get your nutrition from eating a wide variety of real foods so they don't enrich all of their food products with added vitamins and minerals. Actually, they do enrich some things but not to the degree that they do here in the States.



Here is a close-up of the uncooked pasta. The machine that makes this must look so cool! Now that would be a fun field trip - visit a pasta factory!


Here is the pasta cooked, I only used half of the bag. It didn't seem to grow that much from cooking, at least not as much as I expected it to.



Two Applegate Farms Organic Uncured Beef Hot Dogs fried, sliced and fried some more.



This is the sauce for this meal, the Findus Korv Stroganoff mix from Sweden. Fortunately Swedish is a Germanic language so I could kind of understand the instructions on the back of the package. Not that I can read German either but English is also a Germanic language so many words are very similar when seen written down. Marie had translated the instructions for me the week before but I had forgotten most of what she said. Heat together water, milk and packet of dry mix and simmer for a few minutes. Add in the hot dogs (in Sweden they use some kind of sausage that's just like a spicy hot dog which is what the Applegate Farms dogs taste like) and then pour over the pasta. Mix and here you have it:


Korv Stroganoff

Rodeo pictures

Two little girls and several baby goats, I'm not sure who was happier.

The most cases of E. Coli occur from kids not practicing good hygiene during and after visiting petting zoos. The kids all did a double round of hand sanitizer upon leaving the pen.

You can't see it but they also had a female kangaroo (maybe a large wallaby) in a pen. I know it was female because she had a joey in her pouch! I'm sorry but I find that inexcusable - we don't live in Australia so it's not like they found a sick roo by the side of the road and nursed it back to health. No, this marsupial was intentionally impregnated and is now living a life of misery (high stress situations and no access to acres of open land). I'd like to know what I can do about getting that mom & baby away from the petting zoo and into a rescue facility.

Hook Em Horns!!

The one in the back, his horns were over 4 feet WIDE, if you stretched them out straight they would be over 6 feet long. They were pretty calm when it was just me standing by them, came up to the fence and everything, but as soon as one of the kids ran over they moved to the middle of the pen. These cows, although full of horns, don't have anything on the Jersey bull at The Farm. The Jersey bull has no horns but he would have charged through the fence and stomped us to death if we had gotten too close. According to Edgar, more farmers are killed by Jersey bulls than by all other breed bulls combined. From hanging out at the farm, I now know how to make the 'angry bull' noise and can use it to wind up bulls anywhere - like at the Miniature Hereford showing area in the Agriculture Barn at the rodeo. Last year at the rodeo I was doing turkey calls to wind up the turkeys in the show barn.





Small kids and tractors, can't say much more about that! We could have spent hours in this section. Oh wait we did, or rather we would have if it hadn't started pouring down rain after an hour of playing.

I'm apalled that Exxon hasn't paid up yet!

Did you know that it's been 18 years since the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and ExxonMobil still has not paid the punitive damages it owes to the victims of the spill?
The oil spill destroyed the livelihoods of thousands of Alaskan fishermen and others, and decimated wildlife.
Instead of paying what it owes, ExxonMobil has dragged more than 30,000 people through 13 years of litigation by appealing every guilty verdict it's been given since 1994! During this time 6,000 people have died waiting for compensation.
The Exxon Valdez spill didn't just maim and kill hundreds of thousands of birds, otters, seals, and whales (many of which have yet to recover). It also wiped out an entire multi-million dollar herring fishing industry upon which so many lives - and the ecosystem - depended.
Please show your support for the Alaskan communities whose way of life and livelihoods were devastated by the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
ExxonMobil's behavior is shameful. That is why victims of the spill will gather on Saturday, March 24th in Cordova, Alaska to unveil a 7-foot tall wooden ExxonMobil Ridicule Pole. The special totem pole is a native Alaskan tradition meant to force a person of high standing to pay a debt or obligation. Even though we aren't able to attend the unveiling, we can join in solidarity by sending a message to ExxonMobil. Click below now to join me in sending a fax to ExxonMobil's CEO and Board Chair telling them to stop appealing the guilty verdicts and pay the damages they owe.
http://ga3.org/campaign/exxon_anniversary

food

Tonight I finished off the turkey soup that I made on Monday while playing at Marie's house. I left some there for her kids to eat and took the rest home with me. We ate it Monday and Tuesday night, Wednesday we had turkey and pork chili over rice with cornbread at Marie's and today I had the rest of the soup for lunch and dinner. Giselle and Paul had tired of the soup after having it again on Tuesday so she had chili with hot dogs and he had bacon and 2 fried eggs.
This morning Giselle had scrambled eggs with cream cheese (3 Phoenix and 1 Red egg) and green juice, Joe had bacon and eggs, Paul had vanilla yogurt with an orange cut-up in it, the rest of Giselle's eggs and green juice and I had green juice and a few bites of Giselle's eggs. For lunch Giselle had what Paul had for breakfast and half of a turkey sandwich and Paul ate some hard boiled eggs, some sliced cheese and turkey and something else that I can't remember. In addition to the soup, I also had a hard boiled goose egg for lunch (I remembered to take a picture of that complete with a ruler next to it).
I forgot to do a photo shoot of the soup but it looked pretty identical to the Caldo De Pollo pictures. Ingredient-wise it was the same except I used two turkey drumsticks (leftover uncooked in the freezer from Christmas) and barley instead of chicken and rice. Gosh I love a good soup and I sure do make a good soup! Toot Toot (that's the sound of me blowing my own horn)!
I boiled up a few of the goose eggs so that I can take one to the Market on Saturday. I'm going to cut it in half and display it so that folks can really see how beautiful they are inside. The chicken eggs that we've gotten from Finca Pura Vida this month have been soooo delicious and the dozen that I boiled earlier this week are so indescribably good I want to eat them all. The cooked yolk is like a firm brie in both richness and texture; the white is as delicate in the mouth as Jello. And it's not like I baby my hard boiled eggs - I leave them out of the refrigerator for at least 24 hours (these are FRESH eggs and if you don't 'age' them at room temperature for 24 hours then they are impossible to peel without tearing up the whites), then I put the dozen into a 2 quart pan filled with cold water, put it on the stove on high and let it boil for about 30 min or until the water is almost gone. I turn off the burner and let them cool in the pan on the stove for a few hours, after which I put them in the refrigerator. We usually go through a dozen hard boiled and 3 to 4 dozen fried or scrambled eggs a week.

Reprint of a post I made to a yahoo group back in 2003

From: Natalie
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 8:16 PM
To:
Subject: RE: [] tattoos, piercings, clothing...

I'm totally for unconventionality but when it's done for the right reasons - individuality starts from within the person not from the outside. Getting a tattoo of a big Grim Reaper on your arm just because you think it's cool is not a smart thing to do. But getting the same tattoo because you almost died in a huge car wreck but they brought you back to life in the ER, thus beating the Grim Reaper, well, that's totally different.
I myself was always different on the inside, went outwardly different in my early teens (not too extreme because I knew the limits of the society that I wanted to one day live in), and at 20 went back to being different pretty much on just the inside. To this day, I am glad that at a young age I was made cognizant of what I wanted my future to be like so that the decisions that I made during my 'turbulent' years did not adversely affect my life today. My parents rarely said things like "what will the neighbors say" and "you don't know what you are doing". Instead they usually said things like "what do you think that tattoo would look like when you're 80" and "what kind of job do you see yourself having if you don't go to college". I was never bugged about hair because they knew that kind of thing can grow out/back - no long-term effect. And I always wore location-appropriate clothing and makeup (ie; I didn't wear my bondage pants to church) because I knew that there was a time and place for everything and consequently I respected the generally accepted code of conduct for wherever I was.
A girl/woman dressing like a 'tramp' needs to be aware that people (strangers) are going to treat her differently based entirely on her outward appearance. A guy with a big ring in his pierced nose needs to be aware that the HR department of the accounting firm is going to put his resume further down in the pile based entirely on his outward appearance. That's just the way that our (US) society is. If you, as the discriminated person, are ok with that then there is no problem - you realize that you have to try harder and that makes you a stronger person. But if you go around whining "why do all the guys think that I will sleep with them on the first date" and "why won't these firms hire me" then you've got some problems - you are clueless to the fact that how you look really does make more of a first impression than your personality.

We're Happy With The Ones That We've Switched

We have 3-way CFL's in our living room table lamps, non-compact FL's in our kitchen, and another CFL in our front porch light. As we use up our stock of incandescents we'll be making a whole-house switch except maybe not the ones around the bathroom mirrors and any reading lamps that have full-spectrum bulbs in them.
Compact Florescent Bulbs

A Life Lesson for Kids

The other week after a meal at Marie's the kids asked me to tell them a story. I made up a true-life story about 5 kids playing at the park. Their names were changed to make it more fun. Here's the part of the story (for the most part) about the older three kids.
The 3 friends were playing at the park and then some older kids came along and started bothering them. The were calling them names and telling them that they didn't know anything about anything. But the 3 friends knew in their hearts that the words spoken by the older kids were not true and so they said to the older kids "We know that what you are saying isn't true. You're mean and we aren't going to listen to you." Then the 3 friends went back to playing their game. But the older kids kept bothering them; calling them names and trying to make them feel bad about themselves. The 3 friends said to each other "We know in our hearts that what they are saying is not true and we don't have to listen to them!" Then the three friends said to the older kids "We aren't listening to you and we aren't going to play with you because you're mean and that's not how you're supposed to treat people." and then they walked away to play somewhere else.
It doesn't matter what words other people call you if you know in your heart that their words are wrong.

Dr Laura has a good post on this same subject.

another reason to feed your pet real food

Not even dogs and cats are immune from food recalls. Read labels and just because it's expensive doesn't mean that it's made any better.
Mass Recall of Dog and Cat Food After Pets Die
Menu Foods Pet Food Recall

See this site for LOTS of information on healthier ways to feed your dog.
Whole Dog Journal is a wonderful publication to get for a couple of years to educate yourself about more holistic care program for your dog.
And be sure to watch The Dog Whisperer on the National Geographic Channel to learn how to treat your dog right so that they can be their best. Cesar Millan is incredible and he really knows his stuff! His ability to 'fix' problem dogs AND their owners brings me to tears on a regular basis.

Sunday Seven #4

Seven things I’m thankful for this past week ended 3/17/07
1 – The snake that Paul found at the park on Friday was already dead and it was just a baby Western Garter snake.
2 – It didn’t hail on us or our car when we got rained out at the rodeo carnival on Tuesday.
3 – The tiny carnival was still going on locally so we got to go to it after working at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday.
4 – The first shepherd’s pie that I made in over 20 years was a total success – no leftovers.
5 – No one got E. Coli from the petting zoo at the rodeo.
6 – Four moms showed up for our nighttime March La Leche League Meeting.
7 – The dog’s bad gas went away once we drained the pool of the crawfish water. Seriously, it was THAT bad!
*7* - A very tired DH putting up with the gassy dog in his bedroom during the thunderstorms. No, it REALLY was bad!

And the posting time printed below is the real time - the Saturday Night Dinner Party (formerly the Friday Night Dinner Party) went to midnight this time!

Don't forget to leave your link!

enough for tonight

I've been working on these pictures and posts since Giselle went to bed at 7:50 - Paul fell asleep in the car on the way home from the park at 7:20. Well, actually I took a short break first and started working on this at 8:30. STILL, it's now 20 till midnight and I've got the Market in the morning, making the shepherd's pie in the afternoon and the party in the evening/night so I'm quitting for the night. I guess that I might post the rest of the pictures tomorrow night.
Still to come:
Rodeo
Swedish pasta with hot dogs
crawfish release
field trip
birthday cake

Baked Chicken

Chicken pieces (from Full Quiver) dipped in several tablespoons melted butter and minced garlic. Lay on a bed of uncooked brown minute rice and a 10 to 16 oz package of frozen veggies (I used Cascadian Farms California Mix - cauliflower, zuchinni, broccoli & carrots) in a 9x9 pan. Pour the remaining butter/garlic mixture over top of the chicken and season with salt & pepper. Cover with grated Parmesan cheese and pour 1/2 cup water into the bottom of the pan. Bake in oven at 375 for 45 min (I covered it for part of the time but you don't have to). Serve and eat it up!

Here are the SPIDERS

I still have no idea what kind of spiders these are but they are not one of the deadly or rot your arm off kind, just one of the don't let it bite you because it will hurt a LOT kind. Clicking on the second picture will make them life-sized, the rollie pollie was about a half inch long in real life!!!!!!

Scrambled eggs - mom style

This is the way that my mom made scrambled eggs for me and it's the way that I make them for my kids.
1 to 2 eggs per person
salt and pepper to taste (I like to use Spike)
3 half teaspoon blobs of cream cheese per person (I like to use Garlic Basil Cream Cheese)
Scramble the eggs, add the seasoning, heat the pan with butter or bacon grease on medium heat, add cheese to eggs just before pouring the eggs into the pan. Let the eggs sit for 30 seconds then scramble them in the pan until just cooked. Eat em up!


And this is one of the giant goose eggs in the same saute pan

fish and bugs and the moon and mud bugs

A picture of our Beta

A picture of Giselle the Butterfly and Paul the Bee












A picture of the Crawfish habitat (pool)










A picture of the eclipse as seen from the street at the top of our neighborhood











A picture of the second bag of Crawfish being released into the pool










A picture of our dog trying to eat a live crawfish










A picture of Giselle showing the proper techique for holding a live crawfish

The new see saw

Here is a picture of the first day on the new see saw. Every kid that plays on it begs their parents for one of their own.

mud at the farm

When we visited the farm back in January it was right after it had rained for like a week straight. We had the forsight to bring our boots and wear them while 'helping' out in the field. Here is a picture of Paul's boots about 5 minutes into the mud fun.

still not posting pictures (what's my deal?)

Whatever.
Yesterday we released the crawfish - wow they sure were fiesty!! All the wimpy ones had died over the past few weeks and all that were left were about 15 very fiesty crawfish that were ready to take on anyone that tried to catch them. We let them go in the run-off creek at the park and they were happy. I have pictures of the release but I don't feel like posting them right now.
Today Giselle had a homeschool field trip to a local TV station, the kids all had a lot of fun and got to play with the weather green screen. I have pictures of that too that will get sent via CD to the appropriate parties.
Afterwards we ate dinner at Taco Bell (yes, some people still eat there) and then went on to our nighttime La Leche League Meeting. We didn't take any pictures of either of those events.
Tomorrow is Park Day. It's sure to be overrun by public school kids out on parole, er I mean spring break, but us homeschoolers will get there early and stake out our usual territory (or stand around giving the evil eye until they leave to anyone that is in 'our section'). We don't really do that, but the kids do!
Saturday is Market Day for us and that evening we have a St Patty's day party to go to - I'm making shepherd's pie! I'll be sure to take pictures of that too and not post them!
Oh, the other night I prepared some of the way cool Central Market pasta and took several pictures. Nope, I don't feel like posting those either right now.
Maybe I'll do several picture posts tomorrow night after I put the kids to bed. If I feel like it.

not tarantulas

Ok, the spider that we found in our chalkbox last summer WAS a baby tarantula but the 3 spiders that we found the other day are NOT. I have still not identified them even though I have spent all of my spare time over the past 2 days looking for an answer. You would think that with the internet that there would be pictures available for all 1000 species of spiders in Texas, but NOOOOOOOOOOOO! I'm tired of looking all night - I was up this late looking last night too.
Good night

Sunday Seven #3

Seven things I’m thankful for this past week ended 3/10/07
1 – My kids knowing that it’s safe to look at spiders but not safe to touch them.
2 – Marie and her family for enjoying the company of my family so much – 4 times in one week.
3 – All the great mothers that I get to hang out with for hours every Friday.
4 – Bridget for directing expectant moms to our La Leche League Meeting every month.
5 – The kindness of a stranger for letting me win an EBay auction when I nicely asked her to.
6 – Sidewalk chalk in the BIG box.
7 – DH working so hard so that I can stay at home with the kids.

Don't forget to leave a link to your Sunday Seven with Mr Linky

more stuff with pending pictures

This morning we found 3, yes three, baby tarantulas in the bucket under our front porch light! And today on EBay I got Giselle a knock-off American Girl Doll - she is so excited!
We got a bit of yard work done today - clearing out dead foliage on my ornamental plants. Last week, before brushy pick-up, we cleared out all of last year's coral honeysuckle and foti and autumn clemitis. I moved out almost all of the plants and set up the water fountain out front. This is the first year that I have felt that the kids were old enough to not mess with the water in the fountain 24/7 so, after 5 years in storage under my indoor plant stand, it's plugged in and running again. Yeah, they messed with it all day but by next week I'm hoping that they will have backed off a bit.
No Farmers Market today - Finca Pura Vida took this weekend off so we had one last Saturday off of work.
Sunday School tomorrow.
I realized yesterday that we will be out of town for Eeyore's Birthday Party this year!

I have to have these!!

And Retta wants them too I bet!
Amazon.com: WMF Profi-Plus 14-Inch Stainless-Steel Ball Whisk: Kitchen & Housewares

pictures soon?

Last night I took pictures while I cooked the remaining giant goose egg - I'll post them later.
Earlier this week I took pictures of the dog messing with the crawfish - I'll post them later.
There are several other pictures that I'll be posting later but right now I've got to get all our food together for PARK DAY! It's Spring now and parkdays last until sunset so I've got to pack lunch, snack and dinner. I'm off to the kitchen, post later.

Joe got his big toe smashed by a printer 2 days ago, he'll lose the nail but he'll keep the toe. Speaking of losing, his phone got lost/stolen yesterday so he's got a new one now. He has finally realized that resistance is futile and has been assimilated to become Borg. Yes, Joe now has a bluetooth headset.

It's rodeo and carnival time again!!!

.::Star of Texas Rodeo and CARNIVAL::.

Intentions vs Reality

My shopping list that I made on Monday morning:

Sam's
Diapers - Huggies size 6
Water - Ozarka in the 700 ml sports top bottle
Cheese - frying cheese
Yogurt - Stonyfield Farm 12 pack
Almonds - Emerald Smoked
Cashews - Planters Fancy

HEB
Baby Carrots - organic
Bananas - organic
Avocados - Haas medium only if on sale
Rolls - Orowheat Oat Nut
Miracle Whip - small size
Clif Bars - mixed flavors
Egg Noodles - Hodgson Mill whole wheat
Raisin Bran - Hill Country Fair brand
Honey Toasted O's - Central Market organic
Granola - Cascadian Farms Oats & Honey
Nuts for Joe - if Sam's didn't have them
Mixed Veggies - Central Market organic peas/carrots/corn/green beans
Waffles - Central Market organic whole wheat with flax seed
Frozen Ravioli - Hill Country Fair w/ portebella & cheese
Diet Coke w/ Splenda - 12 pack
Yogurt - Stonyfield Farms 32 oz vanilla
Orange Juice - HEB lots a pulp
Palmolive - Ylang Ylang scent
Oxy Clean
Tide w/ Bleach - powder
Shout
Pencil Erasers

and this is what I actually bought when we went shopping on Wednesday morning (things that I bought that weren't on my list are in BOLD):

Sam's: diapers, yogurt, water, cashews and TURBO TAX 2006 FOR HOME AND BUSINESS

HEB: HEB oxy powder, tide, palmolive, shout, HILL COUNTRY FAIR DROP-IN BLEACH TABS TOILET BOWL CLEANER, 2 boxes raisin bran, diet coke, 2 boxes O's, granola, orange juice (had to get home style cause they were out of super pulpy), almonds, 2 BAGS CONFETTI FOR OUR CASCARONES, 2 BAGS MALTED MILK EGGS (FOR EASTER), erasers, YELLOW PEEPS (FOR EASTER), 2 BAGS SPECKLED JELLY EGGS (FOR EASTER), 2 BAGS SPICED JELLY EGGS (FOR EASTER), HIDING EGGS (FOR EASTER), CENTRAL MARKET SUPER COOL CURLY PASTA, 2 bags mixed veggies, ORGANIC GREEN ONIONS, miracle whip, egg noodles, 2 bags ravioli, waffles, 6 clif bars, CENTRAL MARKET ORGANIC STRAWBERRY PRESERVES, rolls (had to get whole wheat since they are still out of the oat nut), baby carrots, 4.41 lbs bananas.

Giselle said that she was tired of the frying cheese so we didn't get that and Sam's doesn't carry the smoked almonds that Joe likes. We needed the Turbo Tax and it was cheaper than online.
The avocados weren't on sale (they were .78 each) and HEB is no longer carrying ANY Stonyfield Farm yogurts, only Horizon and I curently refuse to buy anything Horizon. I 'needed' the easter candy for easter baskets. Giselle insisted that we needed more confetti (we actually still had 2 bags left from last year). I thought that we needed the toilet bowl cleaner but the old tabs are still not dissolved all the way. The pasta looked too cool to pass up, when I make it I'll be sure to take before and after pictures. I'm almost out of green onions in my potted plants - Paul went on a trimming spree - so I needed to replant for the spring. The kids like the preserves on their waffles so I figured that I'd get some for when we finish our open jar of bilberry preserves.
I personally think that I stayed pretty close to the list!

A great series of posts

There is a woman blogging as Everyday Mommy, she's the one that started Moms For Modesty, and she writes a nice insightful blog. These last 2 weeks she has been posting a series on the estrangement of her family that is touching for everybody and inspiring for anybody in a similar situation. I'm posting the individual links because she has other posts in between and that might be confusing for some people. A heads up - she's Christian so it comes from that point of view.
http://www.everydaymommy.net/everyday-mommy/2007/02/25/to-cleave/
http://www.everydaymommy.net/everyday-mommy/2007/02/26/to-cleave-part-ii/
http://www.everydaymommy.net/everyday-mommy/2007/02/27/to-cleave-part-iii/
http://www.everydaymommy.net/everyday-mommy/2007/02/28/to-cleave-part-iv/
http://www.everydaymommy.net/everyday-mommy/2007/03/01/to-cleave-part-v-the-knight-inside-every-man/
http://www.everydaymommy.net/everyday-mommy/2007/03/04/to-cleave-part-vi-acknowledging-your-knight/

Typical - supress the symptoms instead of curing the problem

The Ethicurean: Chew the right thing. � Blog Archive � FDA’s antibiotics stance proves it’s not just asleep at wheel, but intent on driving humanity over a cliff

Sunday Seven #2

Seven things that I am thankful for this past week ended 3/3/07
1 – Motivating the kids and myself to get up at 6 am last Sunday to go watch a building get blown up LIVE AND IN PERSON. How many times do you get to see something like that? I know that it’s the first time in 41 years that I’ve ever seen it happen.
2 – Free brushy pick-up from The City. I get to do my spring trimming and they take care of the mess.
3 – My friend Marie making lunch when we come over to play. Fruit salad, yummy yummy!
4 – Fellow homeschoolers for helping us to choose a ballet school for the fall. We haven't made a final choice but it's been narrowed down.
5 – Martha Stewart and her online recipe finder. I get the greatest ideas from her magazines but it’s so much easier to reference or index the actual recipes from online instead of trying to wing it and re-find them in my back issues.
6 – Motivating the kids and myself to get our coats on and have dinner be late just so that we could go watch the lunar eclipse. Once again, we got up and experienced real life instead of just watching it on TV.
7 – Again, the trust and love of my fabulous husband. I’ve got a feeling that I just might have to add him as a #8 or a 7b since I am always thankful for him but still feel the need to publicly acknowledge it.

Be sure to add a link to your Sunday Seven on Mister Linky

Texas Independence Day

AAACK! I missed posting yesterday about Texas Independence Day! It was yesterday and I apologize to this great state's forefathers! Fifty-four delegates of the Convention of 1836 began meeting on March 1 at the village of Washington-on-the-Brazos and overnight they came up with the document known as The Texas Declaration of Independence which was signed on March 2, 1836.
Read all about it and what the actual document contains here: http://www.lsjunction.com/docs/tdoi.htm

Another recall - this time it's ground beef

And another good article about it from the Ethicurean
Here is the Government release about it: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/News_&_Events/Recall_014_2007_Release/index.asp

And in case you missed the initial recall on Oscar Mayer / Louis Rich chicken cuts and strips from last month, well, it's been expanded http://www.fsis.usda.gov/News_&_Events/Recall_012_2007_expanded/index.asp

Buy local from farmers that you know!

My Dilemma Answered

So last week I posted my dilemma. Well, an expert on the matter was open to questions so I posed it to him and I got my answer - it's about 3/4 of the way down on the page. http://www.grist.org/comments/interactivist/2007/02/26/boots/index1.html

WOW!

http://spaceweather.com/swpod2007/02mar07/Dalouzy1.jpg
SNAPSHOTS: Last night above Europe, the Moon occulted Saturn. This gave photographers an opportunity to frame the ringed planet among lunar mountains and craters. "It was a great phenomenon," says Jean-Christophe Dalouzy of Rouen, France, who took this picture:

yep, it's still winter here

Still a normal crazy winter here and while I love it, it's still wacky for my plants to have a 35 to 40 degree temperature change from night to day every day. Today it was in the high 60's and tonight it'll be down to 35. Tomorrow it'll be 75 for the high and 40 for the low. Then 61 and 33, then 66 and 33 again, then 71 and 39. And while you might say "Why that's a change of only a bit over 30 degrees." But to that I answer "My plants are in a green house on the Southwest side of our house and when the temp out at the airport is 70 on a sunny day that means that it's like 90 in the greenhouse." So, I could take the plants out of the greenhouse and let them get frosted (NOT GOING TO HAPPEN) or I can leave the door to the greenhouse open all the time to get them a little cooler in the day and sheltered from the cold at night. This is what I go through every late winter but I know in my heart that I can NOT take down the greenhouse until AFTER March 15 so I shouldn't even bother thinking about it. Oh well, in 2 weeks it will all be over and the greenhouse will be down until Thanksgiving weekend which is when we put it up each year since our first hard frost is shortly thereafter. Yep, just call me weather girl; most of my friends already do!