semi-done

I got the tomatoes canned up today. I decided that I would can into the 1 pint jars instead of the 1 quart jars that I used last year. I usually mix my homemade sauce with storebought sauce so using the pint size makes it a little easier to do. Silly me forgot to sample the sauce before I canned it but judging by the smell, I think that I am pretty close. I may be short on salt but that can be added when I actually use the sauce - I've found that it's better to be under on a seasoning rather than over. I cooked the sauce down pretty far so the half case of tomatoes (plus a gallon bag of whole heirloom tomatoes that I had frozen up last year) only yeilded 9 pints of sauce. I'm hoping to get more seconds at the market next week so that I can can some more. I'd love to give a recipe but I didn't use one. Here's what I used though:

1/2 case of hybrid tomatoes skinned and seeded
aprox 5 lbs of heriloom tomatoes skinned and seeded
several tablespoons of minced garlic
6 bay leaves
aprox 2 tablespoons of mixed oregano, rosemary, thyme, basil and marjoram
about 1 tablespoon of sea salt
and I cooked it down for 3, maybe 4, hours.

I haven't taken the pesto out of the freezer yet but since I covered the ice cube trays with Glad Wrap there is no pesto smell permeating the refrigerator (hooray!)

I'm planning on carving the pumpkins in the am and doing the caramel apples in the early afternoon.

Oh, I didn't use a recipe for the pesto either. Again, here's a list of what I put into it:

6 large bunches of sweet italian basil
1/4 cup arugula
12 medium to large cloves of garlic
at least 8 oz of Parmesan cheese, probably more
1/2 to 3/4 cup of EVOO
1/2 to 1 cup of cold water
2 teaspoons of sea salt
1/4 cup of raw pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup of raw sunflower seeds
1/4 cup of some other seed that wasn't pine nuts
1/2 cup of fresh oregano
all wizzed together in the food processor until it was smooth and almost pourable.

not done yet

I got all the pesto made - it's now freezing in ice cube trays in the kitchen freezer - 42 cubes in all.
I got the tomatoes all cored and halved but didn't have enough time to cook and can them - I'll do that tomorrow morning/afternoon.
We still have to do the caramel apples tomorrow.
We won't carve the pumpkins until Wednesday morning but I did get the outdoor decorations up this evening while Giselle was at a friend's house. I put out the spooky ghost candy dish that Joe can't stand. It's got a light sensor in it that makes it make an electronic sound whenever you walk by and it drives Joe nuts! He'll be happier with it when it's filled with candy corn and m&m's on Wednesday.

I wonder if he ever found the mini boxes of Dots and Junior Mints that I put in his pocket a few hours ago?

Sunday event

We went to the Zilker Halloween festival this afternoon where the kids got some candy, we all got some Jim-Jim's (large pina colada for me, medium sour apple for Giselle and a small mango for Paul) and we all got to see Joe McDermott and The Biscuit Brothers perform. It was the second time in 3 days that we got to see Joe McDermott - we really like him and we missed not seeing him more often this past summer.

Farmers Market Booty II

6 quarts of raw milk for us to drink this week.





1/2 case of tomatoes for canning on Monday or Tuesday.








35 paletas for us to eat over the next several months - kept in the LOCKED freezer.





The decorated pumpkin made by Giselle.







The decorated then un-decorated pumpkin made by Paul.







We were disappointed this week as far as cucumbers were concerned - at 9 am the first customer of the day bought EVERY SINGLE cucumber that Edgar & Gayla had brought to The Market! I forgot to get eggplants even though this week might have been the end of them due to the unseasonably cold nighttime temps that we've been having. It's definitely the end of basil due to the cold but the greens are soon to come in.

Farmers Market Booty

Here are some fresh green beans, orange and red bell peppers, and okra to be used for meals this week.




Two packages of beef short ribs that I got for the lucky dog to eat this week.








6 bunches of basil and 1/4 lb of arugula for making pesto on Monday or Tuesday to freeze up for the next year and a HUGE bunch of baby bok choi for Green Juice this week.




2 ayote squash in summer form and 2 pipian squash to be chopped and frozen for winter/spring use.

A xl bag of cameo apples to make caramel apples with on Monday or Tuesday.

this time I mean it

I'm going to bed now! Really!
I'll be getting basil and arugula at the market tomorrow so that I can replenish my stash of frozen pesto. With nighttime lows like they've been lately I better get the basil while it's still alive. But with the approaching end of basil season, this means that it will soon be cilantro season.

Who?

With the windows open at night I can hear our neighborhood owl whoo whoo whooing all evening. I really like that!

followup

Donna from Quiet Life asked in reference to my post on October 11 about the dinner party menu:
What an amazing menu! It sounds wonderful. Do you always prepare that much food for a party? How is the soda with Splenda? I know nutrasweet is not good for me.

and my response is:
I am a believer in "you can't really have too much food at a gathering" so I like to keep lots of stuff on hand to quickly fill out an otherwise adequate spread. And when we go to friends' houses for food I'm always sure to bring extra food along to round things out there too - some chips & dip or some hot dogs or some vegetable side dish or dessert. Like the meal that I brought to my friend with the new baby - a bit overkill but better that than not enough food!

I don't drink any of the sodas - DH started on them back when he did Adkins - and he prefers the Splenda over any of the other sweeteners.

The bull that got Edgar

I don't remember how much detail I gave here but 2 months ago my friend Edgar got attacked by his Jersey bull. He survived with a cracked pelvis, a broken collar bone, a shoulder blade broken into 4 pieces, 2 broken ribs and a punctured lung (from the broken ribs). The bull had no horns otherwise he would have been dead. A rooster saved Edgar's life - Edgar had collapsed on the ground from the attack and just as the bull was going in for the kill a Phoenix rooster jumped on the bull's back and started attacking HIM! This distracted the bull enough for Edgar to crawl to safety. The bull has since been turned into ground meat - the meat I used for the tortellini the other night - but this is a picture of him from back in January. He was so mean even then that we dared not get any closer than 20 feet to the fence.

Edgar is almost completely healed now with the exception of his collar bone - that's healing slowly.

Just a picture

This is a shot from inside of the Texas State Capitol. It's pointing straight up from almost the center of the building. Click on it and zoom in - this is a clear shot and you can even see the shadow that the letters cast in the word TEXAS. I'm rather pleased with this shot. I took it on a cloudy day, I wonder how the light would have been different if it had been a sunny day.

ditching more emails

I WAS going to go to bed shortly after putting Giselle down at 8. OBVIOUSLY that didn't happen! I'm going soon I promise! But I did get a lot more emails read and deleted so at least I was productive.

no time

Sorry, busy getting rid of the back-log of emails while watching "Transformers", which by the way is a really good movie! No blood, no sex but lots of action!

blog, blog, blog

I thought that I had nothing to say but I just saw a commercial for the new HEB Chase Visa Rewards card. We'll have to think seriously about getting one of those - you get double rewards when you use it at HEB.
School went well today - we started the 3rd grade spelling words and instead of writing 10 words 2 or 3 times daily each week she is now writing a sentence a day for each of 5 words weekly.
Well, that's it for me. Go click on all my favorites for better reading.

sunday but no seven ... yet

We slept until 8. I showered and got dressed right away so that as soon as one of the men woke up I could leave BOTH KIDS in their care (previously an unheard of event) while I went to the thing at B&N. Unfortunately both men slept in until 9 so by the time I got to B&N at 9:10 the event was over. I still shopped SOLO for an hour and got plenty of books with the discount - I saved over 25 dollars! Then I came home to find that the menfolk had gotten the kids fed, washed and dressed. The kids were ready a half hour before we needed to leave for church - it's amazing what they will do for the opportunity to watch TV before lunchtime.
After church we went to HEB to pick up the meat and a few of the veggies that I was missing for my friend's dinner. Then I cooked and prepped all afternoon. The roast was done at 5, we were pulling out of the driveway by 5:11 and pulled up at their house at 5:34. We hung out for a half hour and I got to hold the baby for a tiny bit - she had just woken up and was hungry so she didn't like me for long. When we got home I made cheese tortellini with ground beef sauce. The ground beef had been thawing in the fridge waiting for inspiration on my part. It's from the Jersey Bull that had attacked Edgar 2 months ago - they turned him into ground meat and are selling him for $10 for 3 1 lb packages. He tasted good! The meat is some of the reddest ground meat that I have ever seen - it truly is a deep blood-red color - and not a bit of fat in it at all!

We finished dinner early enough for me to finish reading White Fang to the kids tonight. Tomorrow we will pick back up with the Little House series, I think that our next one is The Long Winter. After that we'll read Charlotte's Web and then go back to Little House. Have any of y'all read the Boxcar Kids books? I saw them today at B&N and they looked interesting in a Bobbsy Twins kind of way.

I love to cook!

A friend of mine gave birth to child number 6 at the beginning of the month and tomorrow is my day to bring the family food. By the way, if you know of anyone about to need some food tending then check out this neat site http://www.CareCalendar.org . It's an online calendar that you can use to meal plan for someone.
But back to tomorrow. My friend loves collards but this baby, while still inside her, refused to let collards pass her momma's lips. So I'm doing a big batch of collards (fresh frozen from back in the early summer) with a smoked turkey leg for seasoning (they don't do pork so no bacon ends or ham will be used for seasoning). The rest of the meal entails rolls of some kind (I'm not sure if I'll buy some King Hawaiian rolls or make some biscuits), Pot Roast with carrots, potatoes, onions & garlic (I was going to do chicken but they are a bit 'done' on chicken), some fruit - either grapes or apples, and some raw veggies with dip (red bell peppers, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower & celery). I'm going to bring a whole young ayote squash, uncooked, for them to have with some lasagna later in the week. Is that enough? Should I make extra pot roast so that they have leftovers? Yea, I'd rather they have too much food than not enough.

I love cooking for other people! And I love cooking at other people's houses, but I have to bring my own seasonings since I can't depend on other folks keeping on hand my seasoning staples. Spike Seasoning, cumin, oregano, ginger, garlic, onions, Old Bay Seasoning, fresh ground pepper, pesto.

Now to plan tomorrow so that the roast is done at the right time. I think that I'll use one of those Reynolds Brown-in-Bags. Tomorrow is the Homeschool Educator Reception at Barnes & Noble at 8 AM - 25% discount for those with a educator discount card - and then there's church - Giselle wants to go to both Sunday School classes - and grocery shopping and cooking and the 30 min drive to my friend's house.

All moms HAVE to listen to this song!

Oh my! I just listened to this video/song written and sung by Rechelle at Country Doctor's Wife and it made me cry. Go listen and tell her how much you love it!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LLejY_fak8

thanks

Thanks Marie for sharing your cake with me - I ate most of it for dinner. The kids enjoyed the brownies. They each ate one before dinner, then ate a bowl of mac & cheese, then they ate the rest of the cake that I couldn't finish and Giselle ate her 2nd brownie. Paul couldn't even finish his piece of cake because he was as grossed out by all the chocolate and sugar as I was. Good boy! Our thanks to you for giving them to us and our thanks to Fran for making them. Our thanks to Costco for making the cake that grossed us all out for the rest of the night. Joe can have Paul's second brownie if he didn't already gross out on desserts when going out to lunch and dinner with his friends today.

Dogs

Is there anything that just totally freaks out your dog? Tell me about it please!!!!!

Our dog is afraid of fireworks which is a fairly common fear. She is also afraid of guns being discharged which is similar in sound to fireworks. She is also afraid of the sound of those bubble wrap bubbles being popped since they sound like fireworks. She is made a bit uneasy by thunder because it sounds like fireworks (notice a pattern here?) but that fear is 'cured' by giving her some Rescue Remedy. In the last year she has become afraid of people chewing gum because they blow bubbles that pop and that (say it with me) sounds like fireworks.
So the latest is that she runs and hides in the other room whenever I eat carrots. "Carrots?" you say "Why would a dog be afraid of carrots?". Think about it, if you don't have your lips closed when you bite a baby carrot in half it makes a loud popping noise that (yes, you know the routine now) SOUNDS LIKE FIREWORKS! I can't believe it!
She was never this bad before and I've been eating baby carrots for the entire 12 years that we've owned her. I've ALWAYS popped my gum and she didn't freak out before. I blame it entirely on Joe and his habit of letting her into his room when it storms - he's feeding her fears by telling her it's OK. He needs to stop mocking Cesar Milan and start watching The Dog Whisperer more!
Chicken Dog!

Happy Birthday Joe

My gift to you for your birthday is to change the blog song from Juanes "Camisa Negra" to DeeLite "Groove Is In The Heart" because I remember how much you liked this song when it came out. Sorry, but you know that I will never play some of your other favorites here so your'e going to have to take what you can get. Maybe next month I'll put on FatBoy Slim or Beck or SugarRay for you.
Love you!

Marie

Happy Birthday Marie!
Be sure to bring the leftover cake to the park!

Paul and I went to Nordstrom to look for shoes this evening. They don't have any wides in store, just mediums, so the search continues. Next I'll try Dillards.

A Breast Cancer Fact

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month I will pass on some information that I learned today.
If you have had breast cancer previously, walking at a moderate pace for just 30 minutes DAILY can decrease your chance of recurrence by 25%!!
WOW!

Yuck!

I actually stayed inside ALL DAY! With the exception of 15 min that we played outside this evening - we all ran 10 laps around the front yard and I got the mail from the mailbox. It looked rainy all day even though it never really did and the temperature was rather cool. When I put the kids to bed I opened the bedroom windows up a few inches - I absolutely LOVE to smell and hear the outdoors while I sleep. I think that I'll open some windows up right now!

Ahh, I just opened one of the front windows and put the vertical fan in front of it and opened the back door up. I have to actually leave the AC on because if I turn it off and forget to turn it back on then somebody (not me) will wake up hot and cranky in the middle of the night. Hmm, maybe we'll all have open windows except for AC man - he can just use the window unit in his bedroom if he gets hot.

I ordered several more school books today since we're already halfway through Giselle's 1st grade complete curriculum book. I'll use these other books to flesh out all the stuff that they usually just breeze over in school. The second half of the school year will find us at the library a lot. Giselle's reading is getting better by the day so soon she'll be able to enjoy our trips there even more. I haven't decided what day will be 'Library Day' each week but I've got until Jan to figure that out.

I gotta go help Joe with the billing.

blog action day

Today is/was blog action day - a day on which all participating bloggers (over 15,000) posted about ecology and the environment and how important it all is.



Today in my neighborhood it was recycling day, as it is every Monday. I put out my blue bin filled with empty glass and plastic (only 1 & 2 here) bottles last night. Here's what it had in it: 1 Charles Shaw Cabernet Savingnon bottle, MANY Ozarka Spring Water bottles, 1 Zima bottle, 1 Pace Organic Picante Sauce Mild jar, Many Diet Coke w/ Splenda cans, a few root beer cans, 2 La Croix flavored water cans - one berry and one grapefruit, several baby food jars, and some assorted plastic lids. I had no yard waste to pickup, well, actually I did but I haven't put it in my reusable bin (I refuse to use those silly brown paper bags). I could have put out my brown paper bag of paper recycling but I didn't think that it was all the way full so I didn't. We had no cardboard bundled up so none of that went out either.

We did our monthly Wheatsville Co-Op shopping today and I used my own reusable canvas bags that I over stuffed to save room. At HEB I overstuffed our bags again (paper inside of plastic) so that I used fewer bags. Those bags get reused as kitchen trash bags in our house.

I condense all of my shopping and errands into one day so that I don't use the car everyday to run just one errand. Today we left the house around 11 and we: went to the post office to pick up new priority mail boxes, went to Target to get underpants and some tooth gifts, went to Sam's to get water, batteries and pretzels, went to Bark N Purr to get dog food, went to Wheatsville to get some groceries and lunch, went to Barton Creek Animal Clinic to get some Proin, went to the bank to deposit some LLL money, went to HEB to get gas, went to ballet lessons to drop Giselle off, went to HEB to do the rest of our grocery shopping and buy a grill, went back to ballet lessons to pick up Giselle, went back to HEB to get $2.88 for a coupon that the checkout guy forgot to ring up, and then came home. Tomorrow is Tuesday and we will go NO WHERE. On Wednesday we will go NO WHERE, actually this week I have a LLL Toddler Meeting so I'll do one trip that day. On Thursday this week I have a LLL PM Meeting, it's the semi-annual Couples' Meeting to go to but that's it. Friday I'll drive to the park.

Oh, my 11 year old car just turned over 100,000 miles today! In the 8 years that I've owned it I've put 64,000 miles on it with the last few years only driving about 6,000 miles a year.

I think that my carbon footprint is ok.

Sunday Seven will have to wait

I'm sitting here typing on the iMac Snowball so I don't have access to my Outlook Calendar. I can't do a proper Sunday Seven without looking at that. I'll post it tomorrow morning before our whirlwind shopping in the early part of the day, hopefully finishing it all while Giselle is at ballet.

the price of fun

We are all cleaned up with clean and conditioned hair after our bath & shower this morning. Now we are about to head to Dick Nichols Pool to get covered with public pool water that will strip all the oil from our skin and hair.
See Ya!

dirt and grime

Dirt & Grime
OK, the kids didn't get a bath before the market. Sad to say but I think that most of the dirt rubbed off in the bed during the night. And today at The Market we only got grimier so they are close to gross now and I'm not too far behind. Actually they just look like kids who have fun getting dirty. Unfortunately I took too long to get off of the sofa to make dinner so we ate at 7 and I sent them to bed without bathing AGAIN! Well, tomorrow is church and since we now go to the late service we will have plenty of time for all three of us to bathe and shower. Good thing that tomorrow is laundry day too so those sheets will get cleaned before we go to bed.
I'll have to get that done in the morning so that when we get home from church we can quickly leave for the pool - it's open from 1 to 4 on the weekends. Hopefully Roland and the kids will meet us there like last week and maybe we'll even see The J's too!

Bedtime
There's a new episode of Torchwood being recorded right now on TiVo but I can't watch it without Joe and he's out at the Georgetown Saturday Night Car Show. Maybe I'll just drink my liter of water (number 4 for the day) and my Zima (number 1 for the month), read some blogs and head to bed early tonight. These days anything earlier than midnight is early for me. Although the kids and I sleep until 7:30 and then they let me have an extra 30 alone in bed so I do get 8 hours of sleep every night, which isn't bad at all. Especially since I don't get woken up every 2 hours to nurse someone anymore - just once a night is what we are down to.

Halloween
After The Market today we went to Party City (formerly Party Pig) to get Giselle's Halloween costume, remember that we got Paul's there last Saturday. She decided to be Cinderella again this year. So so far she has been .5 - a clown, 1.5 - a flower, 2.5 - a flower, 3.5 - a fairy, 4.5 - a fairy queen, 5.5 - Cinderella and this year at 6.5 Cinderella again. So when we got home, after she did her spelling words for the day, she and Paul got to put on their costumes and play for a bit. Gosh, her costume spreads glitter EVERYWHERE! I guess that it's time for me to start buying the candy since it's only 2 weeks away. Joe, if you have any special requests you better let me know before shopping day on Monday. And yes, I'll be sure to get you some Dots! OH NO, we still haven't gotten our pumpkins! I guess that will have to be put on the master list of things to do for this coming week.

Food
Dinner last night was a horrendous hot dogs and pizza bites and tonight wasn't any better - pizza rolls, tortellini and mixed veggies. Tomorrow should be better, maybe I'll make the Beef Stroganoff then. Yeah, that's what I'll do. I'll go take the sirloin out of the freezer now so that it's thawed in time.

See you tomorrow!

October 15 - Blog For The Environment Day

It's on Monday!

Park Day

Charles, Sara & Saul left this morning - we had a lot of fun in a short amount of time and we will miss them. I would enjoy it if they lived closer.
Giselle got an 85% on her test.
We didn't get to the park until 2.
We left the park about 6:20.
Dinner and bed, the baths will have to wait until tomorrow before The Market.

dinner party menu

Dinner for 6 adults (4 men and 2 women) and 2 kids with additional snacking on the chips and grapes by 2 more adults and 3 more kids.

2.5 lbs Sockeye Salmon - broiled, seasoned with Old Bay Seasoning, served with melted butter
.25 lb Yellowfin Tuna - broiled, seasoned with Old Bay, served with melted butter
1.5 lbs Fresh (never frozen) Jumbo Gulf shrimp - peeled then boiled with Old Bay, served with homemade cocktail sauce
White corn tortilla chips
Jardine's smoked tomato medium salsa (thanks Chris!)
Pace Organic mild picante sauce
Tamaleo tamales - black bean, pork & chicken - steamed, served with Daisy sour cream
Some other brand hot pork tamales - steamed, served with Daisy sour cream
Central Market Organics mixed vegetables - steamed/boiled, seasoned with Spike seasoning and butter
Big round loaf of sourdough bread served with French cream butter (thanks Chris!)
Pickled okra
Pickled carrots
Pickled beets
Charles Shaw Cabernet Savingon (thanks Charles!)
Diet Coke with Splenda
Hansen's Diet Root Beer with Splenda
Frozen and refrigerated black and red organic seedless grapes

Everyone loved the food and I sent Chris home with some leftovers of the black-eyed peas and okra that I made the other night. Thomas is out of town but if he had been here there would have been enough for him too. Oh, and I forgot to put the Organic Spring Mix salad that I had in the fridge out on the table until I was getting out the grapes for dessert so that didn't get eaten at all.

Blurrrrrrry day

7:20 wake up
8 get out of bed & get dressed
8:15 eat breakfast
8:45 get everything together for LLL meeting
9 get schoolwork together for Giselle
9:20 take schoolwork to Giselle
9:30 take Paul to LLL meeting with me
9:45 to 12:45 conduct LLL meeting
12:50 pick up Giselle
1 eat lunch
2 mow lawn while kids watch TV
2:30 watch TV with kids while cooling off from mowing the lawn
3 review schoolwork for the week with Giselle to prep for her Friday test
4 write Giselle's test for tomorrow
5 start on dinner prep for 6:30 dinner party
6:15 to 11:15 guests over for dinner party
11:45 blog for the day
midnight - go to bed

a 7th and a 1st

Giselle lost her 7th tooth today. She's been working on it for a while and it was really starting to bug her - she couldn't eat her cereal this am because it kept getting in the way. This afternoon we were on our way home from the new Auditorium Shores Water Fountain Park which we were exploring with Sara & Saul when we stopped at Taco Bell for lunch (at 2:30 pm). Giselle said to only get her the cheesy fiesta potatoes, refried beans and rice but not the 7-layer burrito because of her tooth. So I place our order, drive up to the window and I'm about to pay the guy when Giselle shouts "My tooth came out, my tooth came out!". I said to her "I guess that you want that 7-layer burrito after all, huh?" and she said "Of course I do!". So we added it on and she devoured as soon as we got home.

This evening I watched Marie's kids while she went out and celebrated one of her brothers' birthday. They got home early - 8:40 - and the kids were all still up so I continued reading Farmer Boy to them. Then Grace asked her mom if Giselle could spend the night since they were already in their pajamas. Marie said yes since I was planning on bringing Giselle over in the morning to do school together. I called Joe and he said yes, so Giselle is currently at her very first sleep-over! She's spending her first night away from me EVER! We HAVE slept in separate beds before while on vacations but always in the same room, never in different rooms and never in different houses. It'll be just me and Paul in the big king bed - I might go to bed early just so that I can enjoy it for longer.

I'll miss her in the morning, breakfast won't be the same without her!

An hour ahead of the deadline

Sleep
School
Vacuuming
More School
Post Office
Bank
Dinner at Chuy's
Bed

just in the nick of time

Ha! I did get a post in today!
the next few days will be full and it'll be a race to see if I can post in time but I'm going to do it.

Thomas and more

Did I mention that our WONDERFUL nephew Thomas is living with us currently? The kids love him, the dog loves him, we all love him. The fish don't love him since they all died the week before he moved in back at the beginning of September but he has a Betta of his own that he left in Houston with his girlfriend so if ours had stayed alive I bet that they would have loved him too. We are totally enjoying him staying with us! He is enduring Paul the Feather-Weight Kick-Boxing Champion quite well, he's only cried twice (Thomas, not Paul - Paul cries several times a day).

And this week we have new guests joining us - Charles from San Jose and his family are staying with us for a few days this week. Charles is really from Longview Texas but his blood has thinned from living in CA and he now thinks it's too hot here.

Time to buy more toilet paper, and not that cheap 2-ply double-roll Makers Mark stuff from Sam's but the Cottonelle Ultra that we fell in love with at my parent's in Florida! Wow that's some nice toilet paper!

Did I really just gush about toilet paper? If Joe hadn't reacted the same way after he tried it the first time I'd think that I needed to get out a little more. Ahh, it's the simple things that tie a couple together.

candy or at least an attempt at making candy

So, using a verbal receipe from Gayla, I attempted to make Ayote squash candy this evening. I have NEVER even tried to make any kind of candy so this was totally new to me. I guess that I didn't cook it for quite long enough because even after cooling it's still not firm. It's thicker than apple sauce but thinner than jelly in it's consistency. BUT it tastes GREAT!!! It tastes like pumpkin filling and I'm going to either get fat eating it this week or I'm going to freeze it up to make pumpkin/squash pie this winter or, oh I know, I'll put it into my next batch of ice cream! I'll make vanilla with a candied squash swirl in it! MMMMM, I can just taste it now. Seriously, after I post this I'm going to have another spoonful of the squash and then go to bed.

I used 2 or 3 lbs of ayote squash cut into large chunks, enough water to almost cover the squash. I cooked it until it was fork-tender then added in a 24 oz bag of brown sugar and stirred the whole thing until it was thick. I guess that it should have been thicker but I was tired of stirring and the kids were almost done with dinner (hot dogs with chili) by that time. I poured it into a 15 x10 baking pan lined with Glad Wrap to cool and then put it in the fridge. Oh well, at least it doesn't taste bad!

Sunday Seven #21 NOW

I'm too tired to write up a Sunday Seven right now. NOPE change that , I'm going to do one on the fly, without even opening up my Outlook Calendar to jog my memory!
Things I'm thankful for this past week ending Saturday Oct 6 2007
1 - Getting to the pool TWICE this week.
2 - Finding where the Clif bars are located at the HEB that I now shop at.
3 - Giselle getting a 97% on her Friday test.
4 - Paul learning to write the letter 'P'.
5 - My Friend Susan giving birth to child #6, another girl and big too!
6 - A wonderful birthday party for a fellow homeschool mom who ACTUALLY LIVES NEXT DOOR that I attended with the kids.
7 - A great Park Day that lasted for ever!

Bonus - Thankful for Thomas tolerating Paul accidentally racking him every other day.
Oh, and don't worry Joe, I'm always thankful for you!

Uh Oh

I just realized that it's been a month since I last posted a Sunday Seven (would that be a month of Sundays?). Don't get me wrong, there have been plenty of things to be thankful for but Sunday afternoons have been busier since we switched the time that we go to church (back at the beginning of September) and I just haven't gotten around to writing them up each week and posting them. Hopefully in this month of daily posts I will get back into the habit of posting my Sunday Sevens again, starting with tomorrow.

hanging in there

Not me, I mean, I'm doing just fine; it's Giselle's tooth that I'm talking about here. It's tooth number 7 - her right top incisor. And while the new tooth is pushing this one out (you can actually see the new tooth) and you can even stick a fingernail into the gap between the tooth and gum in the front; the gum on the back of the tooth and quite possibly the nerve are still firmly attached. She had me trying to pry it out tonight before bed, being sure to numb it with Nighttime Baby Ora-Gel (it's cherry flavored and she likes that more than the mint flavor of the higher strength adult version). It's not coming out yet. We'll be working on it tomorrow morning before church since afterwards we are going to the pool for the afternoon and she doesn't want it falling out while she is there. You make think "That's silly" but it's not. Her friend Kayla had one of her front teeth fall out on Thursday night while we were all at the pool and it truly did fall out in the pool and it's LOST! Maybe not a big deal for those kids who surrender their teeth to the Tooth Fairy but here we keep all the old teeth in a special box so that she can look at them whenever she wants. And she gets a small gift on the kitchen table the next morning - she gets to keep the tooth AND she gets a present!

I brought my latest favorite dip to the neighbors' birthday party this evening. It's a package of Good Seasons Garlic and Herb oil and vinegar salad dressing mix mixed into 26 ounces of Daisy Sour Cream. Oooh, it's GOOOOOD! Especially when you dip fresh California Wonder Red and Orange Bell Pepper slices into it. I've not met a kid yet that can resist the combination.

Park Day

The kids did great this morning - no playroom messes and a 97% on the Friday test - so once we were done with watching all the Schoolhouse Rock DVD we headed to the park. We stayed until 7 along with 2 other homeschool families and the kids didn't want to leave. As Suzanne said earlier this evening, there was the usual 5 and 6 yr old drama going on but at least we were out of the house for the whole day and that alone is reason to celebrate.
Dinner was fairly quick chicken fajitas for the 3 kids and a tortilla and grapes for me.
Tomorrow we have The Market in the morning, costume shopping in the afternoon, pool later in the afternoon, and a neighbor's birthday party in the evening.

pool

We made it to the pool this evening for the second time this week . At least this time I got to go inside the gate but I still couldn't go in the pool since I was the Paul monitor. Maybe next time Paul won't take an hour to clean up his mess in the playroom and he'll get to actually go into the pool. I have hope!
Park day tomorrow!

dinner

I was about to post but then realized that I don't have dinner arranged yet. Giselle got involved and we are now having tater tot casserole Natalie-style for dinner. That's assuming that I've got some ancient bags of tater tots at the bottom of the freezer and we all know what happens when we assume!

Well, the freezer list shows that I've got 4 bags of tots in the freezer so tater tot casserole it is!
Tater tots
sliced smoked sausage
sour cream
cheese
seasonings
milk
and a bag of mixed veggies

Poison Oak

Suzannne, I forgot to show you my tiny patches of poison ivy this evening!

The hillside between our house and the one next-door is filled with live oaks and yucca and nandina and primrose jasmine and wild grapes and cedar and poison oak. Every several years I go on a weeding binge and pull out ALL the poison oak that I can find on that hillside. I did it 6 years ago when I was 41 weeks pregnant with Giselle, I did it 3 years ago when Paul was 4 months old and I'm doing it now over the next few weeks. I pulled out a garbage bag-full last week and that's not even half of it. And when I'm done with that I'll be pulling out TONS of English ivy that's growing there as ground cover.
Now personally, I can't stand English ivy but it makes an OK ground cover in the shade. But I make it my mission to keep it all in the neighbor's yard and out of my yard. The problems are that it's gotten overgrown on the ground surrounding the neighbor's house so all the pathways are overgrown and it's growing up the trunks of the live oaks. I got a good portion of the pathways cleared last week but getting it out of the trees is going to be tricky since it actually grows into the tree. English ivy is parasitic so I can't just cut it off at the ground like I do with the wild grapes and I can't get in there to take care of that until all the poison oak is gone.
And now I'm totally paranoid about every itch that I get, especially on my face. But today I double-washed my hands and arms so I'm pretty confident that I got it all off of my skin.

update

Still haven't bought any shoes - still looking.
Been reading parenting and teaching books in my spare time instead of blogging.
Today was shopping day so tonight was seafood night.
Working on tying up loose ends before the end of the year.
This month I'm going to make at least one post a day, even if it's tiny like this one.