a big job

I spent the last 3 hours pulling up a huge cactus. It's a Spineless Prickly Pear Cactus and it engulfed the mailbox and the surrounding 6 feet on either side and behind. I filled up 5 large trashcans with the sections and the bottoms of the cactus (actually more like tree trunks) are now in a pile about 5 feet long and 3 feet high. Wow those things sure weigh A LOT! I'm actually glad that it hasn't rained in several months otherwise they would have weighed a whole lot more. I've got some more to pull out but I ran out of trashcan space and it just turned noon and was getting hot for that kind of work. The kids did a great job in helping out - for the first hour they picked up all the pieces that I cut off and put them in the bins. For the second hour they helped to cut down the Evergreen Sumac and set it out for pickup. I'm really hoping that the yard waste pickup takes all the full bins, otherwise I'm going to be filling the trash can weekly to get it all out until large-sized brushy pickup comes through in another 2 weeks.
I forgot to take 'before' pictures so an 'after' one wouldn't do much good. Oh, I could draw them back in to make my own 'before' picture!

Ooops, I did it again!

Don't worry, this is NOT a post about Britney! Although, did you see? She's just announced that she's going back on tour for the first time since 2004. I wonder if her kids will even notice that she's gone.


We went grocery shopping today for the first time in about 11 days or so. I managed to purchase ANOTHER 10 pounds of grapes in addition to the 8 that I bought on Saturday!

But let me explain my actions. See, for most of the year, and actually year-round for the past several years, organic grapes are a bit pricey. Certainly priced higher than I'm willing to pay. For the last month, organic grapes have been on sale for $2.49 a pound and I'm unable to resist the pull of those sweet, juicy, bite-sized pieces of heaven. And they're on my diet!
Although the frozen raw almonds that I'm eating right now aren't.
Thanks, I just switched to eating a jar of salsa.

I love grapes! So do the kids, and since I buy so many I don't have a problem sharing them.


In finding the 'Stop The Insanity' link I read the 'update' on Susan Powter. Ummm, the diet works for me but that lady is a bit 'off' in my book. I just wanted to put that out there.

Amazing

Can you believe it? Don went an entire episode of Mad Men without cheating on his wife!

time update #2

Done:
Watered some plants.
Fed the kids dinner.
Fed Joe dinner.
Vacuumed the entire house.
Processed all the grapes and peppers.
Boiled down the chicken carcass for broth.
Washed 5 and dried 4 of the 6 loads of laundry (I miscounted before).

Still to do:
Wash the final load of laundry and dry the last 2 loads - working on that right now.
Eat the okra - that'll be lunch tomorrow.

time update #1

Done –
The kids have been fed
I spent 2 hours and 22 minutes talking on the phone to one of my sisters
All of Joe's old laundry is hung up.
The first load of 5 is in the washing machine (2 more than usual)

About to do –
Vacuuming

time

It's time to do the laundry for the week, including all the new clothes we got at the 3rd annual homeschool clothes swap.
It's time to make lunch for the kids - roasted chicken and pb&j.
It's time to take care of the mending pile.
It's time to wash all of the grapes (all 10 lbs that I bought yesterday).
It's time to cut and freeze all the peppers since I don't want to can any more of them.
It's time to eat some more okra for lunch.
It's time to vacuum the living room.
It's time to water the plants outside.

Time is on my side, yes it is! That's why this'll all be done today.

NOW I can talk about it

Closing is over and done with for rental house (ie; future retirement income) number 5. Unfortunately this may be our last rental house/future retirement income for a while since the mortgage market has tightened up so much.


CAUTION: THE FOLLOWING PERSONAL COMMENTS MAY ANGER SOME PEOPLE. THEY ARE MY OPINIONS ONLY AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE OPINIONS OF EVERYONE IN CASA DE GALLETTI.

Thanks to all the irresponsible people living beyond their means and purchasing WAY more house than they can actually afford.
Thanks to the house-flippers that don't know what they are doing and didn't account for the fact that the house may not resell for up to 6 months.
Thanks to so many people defaulting on their mortgages because they didn't pay attention to their actual bills and finances before they purchased a house that cost WAY too much.
Thanks to all those people who didn't realize that your mortgage payment is NOT just principle and interest but it includes a payment into an account that the bank has for you (called an escrow account) that is used to pay the taxes and insurance on your house.
Thanks to all those people who didn't factor in the cost of utilities for that 3,000 square foot house when they were working on their budget.
Thanks to all those people who took horrible care of their brand new cars so that once they were finished paying it off they HAD to turn around a buy another NEW one instead of using that money to save for retirement or pay extra on their mortgage.
Thanks to people not planning ahead for a 'rainy day'.

Sorry, but Charles got me fired up about this the other day so I had to finally vent.

Wednesday and a curse

Today we have:
School
Field trip to the library to learn the Dewey Decimal system
Shopping at the co-op
Dinner at church
Choir practice/playing/Coffee & Conversation

And I totally cursed closing by talking about it to y'all before it actually happened (usually I wait until afterwards for this exact reason). The 'assistant' at the broker's office has been dropping more balls than a juggler in training and consequently our close that was in the bag is being delayed by 2 to 3 days! If I had only kept my fingers still and not crowed about the paperwork being all complete 5 days in advance, I really should have known better. You would think that these folks would know how to do their job; they do it every day and get well paid for it. Unfortunately, it seems as if I know more about their job and what needs to get done than they do; and this is only the 9th time that I've done the mortgage dance. I think I see what my future part-time job will be once the kids are in public school.


Speaking of school, I've got other things to take care of before we start for the day so I'm ending this now.

PS, At least we avoided that stupid PMI this time around!

It's a Woot-off!

Today is a Woot-off day at www.woot.com . Now usually at Woot there is one thing and one thing only for sale all day long and it changes every day. But on a Woot-off day they are getting rid of all the items that didn't sell out on regular days so they sell things that they only have a quantity of 5 or 10 or 150 of an item. Because there are so few of the items, they keep selling out and posting another item of limited quantity. So instead of just one item for sale all day long, there are 10's of items for sale in a day. It's fun, kind of, if you are easily amused like I am.

proving Blue's Clues right

On Blue's Clues they always say that "You can do anything that you wanna do!" and this girl, 17 yr old Ashley Fiolek, proves them right. The link to the NY Times article is courtesy of ESPN: The Magazine

Bugs

Joe was cleaning out the shop this afternoon and came across this.



It's an Imperial Moth. Their larva feed on every kind of tree that grows in the surrounding hundreds of miles. The identification was courtesy of http://www.whatsthatbug.com/ .



Last night when we came home from Claudia's house there were these two 'hanging out' on the wall beneath the front porch light.



I'd like to think that the plural for Praying Mantis is Praying Manti. I hope that he made a good meal for her afterwards.

Sunday Seven #27

SEVEN THINGS I'M GRATEFUL FOR THIS WEEK ENDING 9/20/08

1 - The heat broke a bit this last month so our utility bill dropped $100, down to $250!
2 - We completed financing on the newest house a full 5 days (including the weekend) before the closing date!
3 - We upped the dosage on the dog's pee pills (Proin) and the leaking seems to have stopped!
4 - Austin is back to daily temperatures in the 90's! I really don't like the cold but I also don't like the A/C running all night.
5 - We're one step closer to finding a Brownie troop for Giselle.
6 - Joe got the two 1,000 lb steel support beams for the stairs to the second story deck up - ALL BY HIMSELF! No he's not superman, he built a crane just for the purpose of lifting the ends of the beams 14 feet into the air to attach them to the edge of the deck. After moving them out of the shop and 15 feet up a 45 degree slope. I'll post pictures some day of OUR deck project!
7 - Joe didn't give himself a hernia while moving the above mentioned 1,000 lb steel beams!

Sabado Gigante

I kept waking up all morning long and finally at 7 am (6:50 actually) the kids woke up and asked if they could get up. I said sure as long at they went to the playroom and didn't wake up Joe. Instead Giselle came into the bedroom twice in 20 minutes to ask me questions so I got up around 7:20. The kids ate breakfast (Giselle had Organic O's with milk, Paul had fresh raspberries and granola mixed with vanilla yogurt and milk), I drank two glasses of milk and got all of our stuff together for the farmers market. The kids had all of their toys and Pokemon binders packed up and ready to go to the market by 8:40 so they watched a little bit of this morning's episode of Pokemon Adventures Diamond & Pearl and we headed out to the market. We got there at an astounding 9 am! Giselle's friend was there so the kids played and worked all day. My friend didn't show up until 12:30 but she took my kids home with her when she left. After putting away all my produce and milk and eggs, I headed over to her house just before 3.
The kids played the whole day except when they were eating - 9 hours of nonstop action. Giselle worked hard on clearing one of the gardens of all weeds so that we all can plant a winter vegetable garden in it next week. Don't tell anyone but after they were done I weeded the other half without them knowing. We adults ate, we played, we had 2 drinks, we played, we ate again, we drank a bottle of wine and at 10 pm we (my kids and I) left. Claudia's mom is visiting so I was challenged to work on my Espanol all afternoon.

I've invented a new drink and we are calling it a Natalie. 1 oz Mexican Tequila, 6 oz Central Market Organic's Prickly Pear Italian Soda, served over ice. It was REALLY GOOD!

I've eaten more rotisserie chicken in the last week than I've previously eaten in the past year.

Buenos Noches, Amigos!

yesterday

I finally got our grocery shopping done yesterday - in a mad rush just before Claudia and the boys came over to play. Giselle got tired of boy games an hour into playing so she called over her friend Jessi to join in. Jessi stayed through dinner - hot dogs in buns.
Organic grapes were on sale so I bought close to 10 lbs of them; green, red and black.
I really dislike having to make a special trip to Randall's to get the Oscar Mayer Natural Hot Dogs so I'm happy to report that another brand is making natural hot dogs and HEB is carrying them. In these 2 cases, natural has no bearing on how the cows/pigs were raised; it just means that the hot dogs contain no added nitrites or nitrates. This brand I'm now buying, John Morrell Bistro Naturals, has no MSG, they're gluten free, they are fully cooked but uncured, no nitrites or nitrates were added except for natural occurring nitrates in sea salt and celery juice. Although they do have a whopping 15 grams of fat in each dog! That's 23% of the total maximum amount of fat a grown adult should eat in one day all in just one plain hot dog!

Gotta get back to work so we can make it to the park before 3 today!

V8 Spicy Hot

In desperation for something to drink or eat around here late in the evening I grabbed one of Joe's cans of Spicy Hot V8. I'm almost out of my Knudsen's Organic Vegetable Juice and I need that for making green juice in the morning. So I'm drinking this 11.5 oz of pureed vegetables in a can trying not to choke on the Tabasco-type vapors. It did hit the spot. But after finishing it I decided to read the ingredients list to see what it was that created the 'Spicy Hot'.

Here is the ingredient list of this can of supposedly 100% vegetable juice : Tomato juice from concentrate (water, tomato paste), reconstituted vegetable juice blend (water and concentrated juices of carrots, celery, beets, parsley, lettuce, watercress, spinach), salt, vitamin C (ascorbic acid), flavoring, citric acid.

1. First off, they obviously rounded up since if it truly was 100% juice then how could they add in the salt, vitamin C, FLAVORING (whatever THAT is), and citric acid.
2. Secondly, shouldn't there be some bell pepper juice or jalapeno pepper juice or the juice of SOME KIND of pepper in the thing if you are going to call it Spicy Hot Vegetable Juice?
3. Third, what is this FLAVORING? Quite often that's just a code word for MSG. If it's the pepper flavoring, why not just call it that so I know what I'm really drinking?
4. Forth, the main ingredient is WATER since all the juices are actually concentrates.
5. Fifth, let's face it, the main vegetable is tomatoes followed by carrots. Real celery is too strong of a flavor for most so there's probably not much of that in it. Based on the order of the ingredients, there are even less beets than celery, less parsley than beets, less lettuce than parsley, less watercress than lettuce and that leaves just the tiniest pinch of spinach. The percentage of any vegetable other than the tomatoes and carrots is pretty much negligible.

Now that I've totally ragged on V8, let's check out the ingredient list on the Knudsen Organic Very Veggie Juice. Supposedly 100% juice also: Filtered water (sufficient to reconstitute), organic tomato paste, organic vegetable juice blend (organic carrot, celery, beet, parsley, lettuce, watercress, spinach), organic grain vinegar, organic lemon juice concentrate, sea salt, dehydrated organic green bell peppers.

These two labels weren't really that different but I feel that the Knudsen one was more honest in that there were no mystery ingredients. I'm guessing that the certain mix of juices has been shown to be the perfect blend since it's in the same proportions in both brands.

I'm sticking with the Knudsens!

pesto

Carla asked how I freeze pesto.

I make my pesto - basil, oregano, olive oil, GARLIC, nuts, salt & pepper, Parm cheese (or other similar hard, aged cheese from Italy) - then I pour it into the openings in an ice cube tray. I don't EVER use them for anything other than freezing pesto. I cover each tray with either some regular plastic wrap or some of that Press'nSeal kind, stack them, then stick them into the freezer. In about a day I pop all the cubes of pesto out of the trays and put them in a gallon-sized freezer bag and stick that into the big freezer. Each cube makes a serving's worth of pesto. And pesto isn't just for serving on top of pasta - I pop a few of them into the broth whenever I make Minestrone Soup in the wintertime.

this morning

Paul left his big Pokemon binder at a friend's house on Saturday! I hadn't given the kids any action figures in a while so this morning I gave them 2 each - one that I randomly picked for them and one that they picked themselves. The tiny-sized ones. Giselle got a tiny Croagunk and a tiny Dialga .
Paul got a tiny Chicorita and a tiny Treecko .

Gotta run, Marie and the kids are calling on Skype so that we can talk some more. Well, the girls talk but Sam and Paul just make silly faces and noises at each other.

A funny one, no matter what your party affiliation

If you haven't already seen the skit from this past week's Saturday Night Live with 'Sarah Palin' and 'Hillary Clinton' you HAVE to watch this! It's not from YouTube, it's from NBC so it's a crystal clear version.

late night

I stayed up until 4:44 AM canning roasted peppers! More and more, I really feel that canning is a community effort. The group doesn't really make it go that much quicker (although some help peeling the 60 peppers would have been appreciated) but the group helps to pass the time so it doesn't seem so time consuming. Fortunately, I was videoing with Marie on Skype for the last hour and a half of the process.
The funny thing is that I had talked to her earlier in the day at 1 pm my time and 8 pm her time. Now, here I was talking to her again after she had gotten up the next day and had sent the kids off to school (3 am my time and 10 am her time), yet I was still up since the previous call.

I'll post pictures later.

skype

Last night I finally put Skype on my computer so that I can talk to Marie in Sweden for free. I was up late on a Friday and they were up early on a Saturday so we talked for an hour. We don't have our video feed set up yet but theirs was on (it's built-in on their Mac) so I at least got to see them and get a mini tour of the house. I felt so Space Ghost doing the whole tele-conferencing. If you've never seen Space Ghost then you need to; Brak is my favorite!
Go here for a sample of what you've been missing:

http://www.adultswim.com/shows/spaceghostcoasttocoast/indexpage.html#video

sorry but the embedding didn't work this time - it took forever to NOT load.

watermelon

Last week, the kids were given a LARGE watermelon by one of the other vendors, Mr Mckemie. Well, we finally cut into it yesterday at the park - it was too big for home consumption - and it turned out to be an orange watermelon. I sat there on my blanket with it in my lap, scooping out the insides with my Pampered Chef medium-sized scoop. All the kids were eager to eat it all up but most moms got at least one ball to sample. It was judged to be sweeter than a usual watermelon but with less 'in your face' watermelon flavor. It was nice and dense, not mealy at all, with just the right amount of big black seeds. Due to the fact that most small children don't have the BEST judgement, we did not promote any seed spitting contests. It's not like we didn't trust the 4 yr olds, we didn't trust the 1 yr olds to not pick the dirty seeds up off the ground and stick them in THEIR mouths.
Karma brought 2 big bowls of popcorn this week because she knows that we all LOVE her popcorn - her secret is that she uses coconut oil. The combination of the salty popcorn and the sweet watermelon was fantastic!

I wonder what we'll come home with from the market today. Oh, our chance of rain is down to 30%; so much for counting on Ike to water our lawn.

Friday

It was another wonderful day at the Park; the only downside was that we didn't get there until almost 3 but still left shortly after 6. With school having started, weekly turnout just gets bigger and bigger. There seems to be a large supply of 8 and 9 year old girls for Giselle to befriend this year, YEA! Now to get Paul up to speed where he can play for longer than 1 hour at a friend's house.

A bunch of the clouds from Hurricane Ike helped shade the park this afternoon but at 11 pm we've yet to see any rain. Evidently, Ike is heading north since it made landfall so we're in the clear, although we could do with the rain.

Going to bed now.

Kids' Pictures Carnival

I'm more on the ball this week so I'm getting my third entry for the Carnival of Kids' Pictures posted early.





Paul's entries could be titled 'Ceiling Fan #1',




'Ceiling Fan #2',




and 'Ceiling Fan #3'







Giselle's could be titled 'Picture of a Picture #1',




'Picture of a Picture #2',




and 'Picture of a Picture #3'

Ike seems to be getting performance anxiety

Ike just keeps becoming less and less of a threat or even presence to Austin. By Saturday morning I'm sure that he'll just be something that we laugh at.
Two days ago they were calling for 100% chance of rain for us with winds up to 60 mph. Yesterday it was down to 80% and 45 mph winds. Now it's down to 70% with 25-30 mph winds. I hope that he's less of a threat to everyone by the weekend but it looks like Houston will get hit with Tropical Storm conditions for tomorrow and Saturday, and even the farm out in Fayetteville is going to get a lot of wind and rain on Saturday.
Keep dry and stay out of low-water crossings!

stuff

Ike is no longer going to be a threat to Austin thanks to the pressure from the storm that's pounding the Mexican west coast currently.

Who would have thought that a 4.5 year old boy would have such trouble with 5 letters of the alphabet, L M N O P.

We ate dinner at church last night and afterwards Giselle tried out for the Christmas play. No parents were present but the choir leader told me that she was impressed with Giselle's reading level. No comments were given about her singing ability; although Giselle said that she was the only one trying out that wasn't already in the choir so she didn't know the song too well that they asked her to sing.

Paul and I heard some coyotes while we walked the labyrinth at the church at dusk.

Dinoland is on tap for today after we are done at our La Leche League Meeting. Our topic for today's meeting is fitting for a blog-friend, Nutrition and Weaning.

Why can't the kids throw their used Kleenex in the trash instead of leaving them on the side table next to the Kleenex box?

I was mowing the lawn with a manual push mower in a dream that I was having this morning during my extra 20 minutes in bed after the kids got up. Note to Joe: We are NOT going that green and ditching our gas-powered mower! I LOVE to mow the lawn but not THAT much! I'd be melted into a puddle of sweat halfway through the front yard.

Gotta go round up stuff for the meeting, brush my teeth and get some makeup on. See ya!

The 80's will NEVER die!

Charles posted this link to a mother-load of 80's music videos of ALL genres on his blog and quoted The Flock of Seagulls. Of course I clicked IMMEDIATELY since I ate, drank, slept, breathed and lived music during the 80's. There are some odd videos there but there are a LOT of ones that I had forgotten about. What's odd for me is that many of these songs I only knew from the radio or the record store or the clubs and while I have been singing the song all these past 25 years, there is a good chance that I never saw the video. At home we had cable and MTV but once I graduated in 84 I didn't see many videos until after I had moved to Texas and we finally got cable/MTV in 1990.

I recall a summer that we either didn't have cable yet or it was 'out' where the only thing that Joe and I had to watch was the ENTIRE catalogue of Star Trek: The Next Generation on VHS. Not only that but the only VCR we had at the time was an old-style one that my sister in Houston had given to us - it had a CORDED remote that could fast forward while the tape was playing but the audio track was still engaged so the intro to every episode sounded like it was spoken by The Chipmunks instead of Patrick Stewart (I don't remember if Mike H had edited out all of the commercials or not). Patrick Stewart certainly was the hottest old bald guy around in those days! And speaking of Mike H brings us full circle back to the 80's videos since he is the guy who introduced Joe to 'butt-twitcher music' while they were roommates in college which is the ONLY way that Joe is familiar with one of my favorite types of music.

BUT, I didn't see many videos in the mid to late 80's so while the songs are old favorites, the videos are new to me. I don't remember the video for Belouis Some "Imagination" being so nude but I'm glad that I didn't play it in front of the kids. They only watched The Untouchables "Free Yourself", The Jam "That's Entertainment", Big Country "In a Big Country", Altered Images "I Could Be Happy" and Hazy Fantazy "Shiny, Shiny" (a single from an album that I've owned for 27 years and had never seen a video for EVER!)

Billy Idol's "Hot in the City" brings back so many memories of my summer in LA! Yeah, I know that he yells "New York" in the middle but I just ignore that part.

I can't believe that I'm seeing GUYS wear those tight black jeans again and with Converse high tops no less. Don't they realize that those pants make their calves look really skinny which is not at all flattering if they have anything but a negative-sized rear. Tight white pants on baseball players is a good look but THEY have normal-sized calves. (That whole tangent was for Holly!)

While scanning the list of videos I noticed the one for Pebbles "Girlfriend" and I remembered how there were "issues" among us at the record store regarding my hair and how every time that I changed it there would be some new album out where the singer on the cover would have that exact same hair style. Pebbles' curly look was my twin at that time.

My final comment on this era (for now) is that I LOVE how the nicely-dressed men knew how to use product on their hair.

Almost

We almost made it to Dinoland today but even though we finished school by 12 noon I felt that we didn't have enough time before ballet to fully appreciate all that Dinoland is supposed to be. I think that since we don't have any afternoon events tomorrow that we'll go after school then. I'm in a rush to go there this week since the public school field trips start next week. And I know from our experiences of going to the zoo during the daytime, that attending ANY place that you have to share with a large field trip is too scary for me!
I downloaded all of the study material that accompanies the Dinoland exhibit so we'll be sure to cover all of that in school tomorrow before we go.
I love field trips!

Thank You Joe!

After many years of forgetting about my love of potato salad, over the last 3 years Joe has consistently remembered to bring home a to-go container of potato salad for me from The County Line every time he eats there. If you've never had their potato salad let me describe it for you. Big chunks of potato, lots of celery, lots of onion, lots of pepper, lots of something creamy (mayonnaise?), lots of pickle relish and pickle relish juice, mustard (but not too much), and it almost seems like there is pureed hard boiled egg in there too. Most importantly, there is NO RED BELL PEPPER in it! Next to my mom's, this is by far the best potato salad I have ever had; and, having grown up in the South and living in BBQ country for 19 years, I've tried a LOT of potato salads!
Joe ate there for lunch today and brought me home a pint of it. Thank you Sir and I'll be sure to share some of it with the kids!

The potato salad that the food distributor Sysco sells is pretty excellent too even though there is a bit of red bell pepper in it. They get the rest of the ingredients correct, including the egg, so I'll cut them a bit of slack. I get that one at our local BBQ joint, Donn's Texas BBQ. I'm assuming that theirs is from Sysco since I see the truck delivering product to them and I see them scooping the potato salad out of a big plastic tub.

Frist Day of School

Well school started off fantastically today!
While the kids ate breakfast outside on the deck and played in the rocks on the 2nd driveway, I got all the schoolbooks pulled off the back stock shelves and stacked them on the table. I got the table cleaned and the extension pulled out for Giselle's place at the table (it gives her more work space). I got out the pencils for Giselle and the crayons for Paul and put those on the table. At 5 min before school was to begin the kids were inside, dressed and cleaning up from playing earlier. I had just finished writing Giselle's 8 spelling words (Hang, Hare, Hot, Huge, Hunt, Hurry, Hurt, If) on her page and was in the middle of looking them all up in the dictionary to be read out loud, when the phone rang - it was Marie calling from Sweden! While talking on the phone the school bell went off and with out prompting Giselle started in on her words and sentences and Paul started on his coloring book while I talked on the phone. Usually I cut people off quickly when they call during school but since this was a special call I chatted away.
20 minutes later, after Paul talked to Luke and Giselle talked to Grace, we got off the phone and got back to school.

In just 3 short hours we got A LOT accomplished, especially considering that today was day 1:
# Paul worked on coloring within the lines while I read aloud all the definitions of the spelling words.
# While I was teaching Paul in the playroom Giselle wrote 1 sentence for each of her 8 spelling words using correct spelling, grammar and punctuation.
# I was still teaching Paul in the playroom when she finished her sentences (she has 30 min to complete the sentences but she did it in only 17 min) so she moved on to practicing her cursive handwriting.
# I finished with Paul in the playroom at the same time that Giselle finished her cursive practice so we moved on to First Language Lessons, lesson 156 was the one for today, while Paul practiced writing his letters.
# Next we all moved on to geography: memorizing what each of the 50 states looks like, where they are and how to spell them.
# Paul was dismissed from school then while Giselle started on her 3rd grade math book. Since today was the first day she only had to do one page.
# While Giselle worked on her math I made quesadillas for lunch since it was noon:15.
# After lunch I quizzed Giselle on 10 pages out of the math section of What Your 1st Grader Needs To Know. Note to self: Hurry up and get the 2nd grade book.
# To finish out the school day we did 3 experiments out of the 365 Simple Science Experiments book. Done by 1:30
We didn't get to US History today but maybe I'll read that chapter aloud tonight at bedtime.

I gotta get off of here and get our grocery shopping done so that we'll be back for the kids to play with their PS friends when they get off the bus at 3:15.

Exhaustion

Paul wore himself out so much on the giant bouncy/water slide thing at a birthday party this afternoon that he fell asleep in the car on the way home (7:10) and barely woke up on the trip inside. He did get up around 8 to tell me that he needed to go pee and that there was something poking him in the shoulder. I had him drink more water, go to the bathroom and go back to bed.

He did a great job at the market today trying to sell the aloe plants. I think that he actually sold 3 of them but he was disappointed that he didn't sell more. He kept trying to sell the okra but Giselle kept running him off - she was selling the okra and peppers.

Speaking of peppers, I roasted and canned up two bag-fulls on Tuesday (I already wrote about that didn't I?) and I took pictures for part of it. I got two more bags today to do the same again with them. This time I'll take pictures of the second half of the process which is what I forgot the first time around. They end up being giant-sized pimentos and WOW are they good. My favorite way to eat them is chilled with some of Full Quiver Farms' jalapeno cheese spread on them and rolled up. Mm, mm good!

The dog seems to be feeling better, maybe.

There's a mosquito flying around the kitchen. It better stay away from me unless it wants to die.

Giselle got bored at the party since she was the only girl between the ages of 3 and 35 but consequently she did an incredible job of clearing all the tables and organizing the presents and throwing away the trash - all on her own. She takes great pride in helping others (except when it's her brother and he's abused her generosity) as well as not liking to sit around doing nothing when she's bored. What a wonderful little girl!

Paul actually got OUT of the pool at the end of the bouncy water slide to go pee! That deserves a trophy!

I'm sorry

I'm sorry about the worm post, but that really did happen and I honestly had nothing better to post. No sign of a UTI but some chemical levels aren't right so they're going to culture the sample; she got 4 de-worming pills this evening.
I got all of the laundry done today and I mowed the lawn again.
Edgar fussed at me last week about giving him one dirty jar for milk so I've got to give them all a second washing tonight before I turn them in tomorrow.
I made the kids tortellini & ravioli w/ homemade pesto (frozen cubes from 2 years ago); they both had seconds and Giselle wanted thirds. A home run on dinner again!
School starts on Monday.

Dog's got worms

Going to the vet this afternoon. The other week she was caught eating things that she doesn't normally eat (washcloths) and this week she's leaking a LOT more than usual. I made a call to the vet this am when I got up to get her checked for a UTI. But a half hour ago when I was walking her around the block I captured some of the gross white things when I collected her stuff for the vet. Now I've got to research what our choices are regarding treatment. FUN! Not exactly the way I was planning on spending Park Day.

withdrawls

- The house is too quiet.
- After Cartoon Network's Pokemon marathon that was on Monday we had a TiVo full of episodes. The last one is being watched right now - the 3rd Movie. Cartoon Network isn't running it daily in the fall like they did all summer so this is THE LAST episode for a while.
- Vacation from school ends in 4 days.
- I've watched all the episodes of Doctor Who that TiVo had for me.

I'm going to bed early tonight.

You know that your kids REALLY enjoy black beans & rice when they finish their bowls before you do!

rest

Everyone is gone.
I got the kids in bed with the lights out at a normal time of 7:30 and, after watching last week's episode of The Dog Whisperer, I followed them to bed at 8:30. We slept until 7:30. The kids got up to play and I WAS going to sleep some more but I was informed that the dog had thrown up on the playroom floor - the leftover Mexican food that I had given her for dinner. So I got up to take care of that and I've been up for the day since then.
Joe recharged my car a/c in the early hours of the morning - driving to ballet yesterday it never cooled down the car - and is now trying to recharge himself after the last few days of intense family interaction.
Gotta get going to take on the day - laundry, vacuuming, shopping, mowing and tending to the condo - so that we'll be ready to play when Claudia and the boys come over at 3:30.

We're going to stay on school break until next Monday - I decided that yesterday.

the exodus continues

Phuong and Melinda left this afternoon and tomorrow everyone else leaves. It's going to seem awfully quiet around here for a few days until we get used to it being just the 4 of us again. It's NOT a good time of the month for me to be saying good-byes to people.


Joe thinks that Chuy's on Barton Springs has the best tres leches cake in town. I had it there for the first time today and, while the piece was HUGE, it was not the best that I've ever had. I think it needed more flavor - more cinnamon, more vanilla. It just tasted like a dense angelfood cake soaked with sweetened condensed milk. I still think that Sol Y La Luna has the best followed closely by Whole Foods. I haven't tried HEB's yet; that's next on my list.


I think that we're starting school on Wednesday. Thursday I'll be wanting to leave.

It's crazy

Actually, it's not been crazy around here at all. It's been busy but certainly not crazy. We had a giant family meatfest at The Salt Lick yesterday afternoon so no one wanted dinner. We just sat around all evening nibbling on cheese and crackers while chatting and watching the kids bounce around from family member to family member. Giselle did 3 people's hair and Paul did one. Looked at some pictures from a trip to Vietnam and another person's trip to Costa Rica.

Gotta go, they've all arrived for the day's events!