cukes

I'm sitting here in front of the computer (actually squatting since it burns more calories than just sitting) eating my first 2 cucumbers of the fall harvest season. I've got a whole lot more in the fridge and I've had them since Saturday at The Market but these are the first ones that I've actually eaten. Lebanese Munchers is the name for them and WOW are they the greatest cucumbers in the world, let me tell you! Oh, those 2 are gone. Now I'm torn between eating more of them now or saving them for Thanksgiving or freezing them up to use in my green juice during the winter and spring. But they are soooo gooooood! OK, I'll have one more now, I'll share about 10 of them with Thanksgiving guests and the rest will go into the freezer.
See, the worry of mine is that the freeze that hit The Farm last Friday night took out the cucumbers - Gayla wasn't sure when we talked about it on Saturday. If the freeze got the cucumbers then this one bag full is my only bag of the fall so I need to treat it accordingly. If the plants survived then I'll have plenty more next Saturday.
I'll definitely have lots of tomatoes for canning; good thing since I'm running low on the sauce that I made from the spring tomatoes.

Thanksgiving Dinner

We spent yesterday evening celebrating Thanksgiving early with some good friends and their Families. The 4 kids played almost accident-free the whole time and between 8 adults we only drank 3 bottles of wine. The food - turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, peas, cranberry sauce, ambrosia salad, pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, & pecan pie - was excellent, the company - our friends and both sets of their parents - was engaging, the kids delighted in roasting marshmallows in the chiminea. Joe's decongestant worked wonderfully for the 4 hours we spent there so he felt pretty-much human for the entire time! An all-around enjoyable evening was had by all.

I hope that the Thanksgiving at our house on Thursday will be just as enjoyable.

sleep

For the last 2 nights we've had the bed rails removed from the king-sized bed. No person has fallen off but both kids lost their pillows off the side and both stuffed animals fell off too. On the other hand, I've had them both glued to me most of the night. But, no one has fallen off!

still full of goo

I started the day by taking 4 capsules of NESS Formula 419 while making Joe's bacon and eggs. Hopefully the effects of that will appear later today. I just drank about 3.5 cups of green juice. I made this batch with an entire medium onion and six good shakes of the cayenne pepper for extra 'get rid of goo' power - I don't normally use that much. I'm getting a nice warmth in my chest from it right now, but not in a heartburn kind of way. Still have a head full of goo.
At first I was just going to throw my trimmings away - the tomato and pepper cores, and the stems of the giant broccoli leaves. But once I cleaned out the produce drawer, removing the old red Russian kale and the old bok-choi and some spotty peppers, I decided to make a trip down the street to feed the chickens. Good thing I did, when getting the broccoli stems out of the trash I came upon my paring knife that I had thrown in there with them. Good thing I don't have to drive anywhere today - I can't believe that I actually put my knife in the trash!

I need to get dressed and go feed those chickens so I can then read 4 chapters of Story Of The World to the kids for school today - we need to make up for not doing school for the last 3 days!

goo

My head is full of goo and I'm having a hard time holding a thought for longer than 60 seconds. I really need to make some green juice and get this out of my body NOW!

Woot-Off today

It's a woot-off day today!
www.woot.com

hi!

We've been busy around here - finally did the grocery shopping on Monday for the first time in 2 weeks, shopped for fans at Home Depot yesterday, stayed out too late on Saturday night, skipped church to sleep in on Sunday, cooked a big dinner on Monday for 6, cooked another big dinner but for only 4 yesterday, did all the laundry (2 weeks worth) on Sunday, got everyone recovered from a 2-day cold/allergy thing, spent Sunday evening at a giant birthday party and paid for it on Monday morning. And today is our weekly play day and dinner at church.
I've spent a lot of time at night on facebook, finding old friends and old music, instead of blogging; I like the interaction instead of this one-sided thing.
Oops, gotta go take care of the bacon.
see ya!

itchy - readdressed

OK, the coconut oil on the itchy wasp sting was not a good idea. YEARS ago I had a suspicion that I was allergic to coconut oil so I stayed away from all things coconut for years. The allergy seemed to go away, either that or I avoided it so well that I never had reactions. Fast forward to the other night when I put the coconut oil on the wasp sting that I'd been rubbing for the last 15 minutes. The next morning when I got up it looked like I had poison ivy where the sting had happened. My scratching that I'd done, not with my fingernails, had opened the skin enough that by putting on the oil I had performed one of those allergy scratch tests that they do at the Allergist to see if you are allergic to something. Guess that I'm still allergic to coconut oil!

Funny thing, the itching did stop after I put the oil on and it hasn't itched since. Although I did use some homeopathics that night too: Rhus Tox and Cantharis, so maybe that's what worked.

Itchy

The wasp sting that I got on Sunday while laying in the backyard reading to the kids itches more now - two days later - than it did when it first happened. I really need to take some homeopathic Apis for this before I go to bed or else I'll be scratching it in my sleep. Maybe I'll try some of that miracle coconut oil on it first.

I love this show

Top Gear
It's on BBC America here in the states. WHAT A GREAT SHOW! Joe will even sit through repeats, it's that good!

Freedom

If you're glad that you live in a country in which you're free to vote for the presidential candidate of your choice, then thank a veteran today (and everyday). Regardless of if they volunteered or were drafted, they still fought to protect YOUR right to be life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness!

Sunday Night Follow-up

Well, our hour outside turned into 2. We finished the book and started on the second one in the series - Surprise Island. While I read, Paul washed a tree, a couple of the fence poles, the golf cart and two of the jet skis. Quite the industrious young man, especially considering that he and Giselle together had washed the back of the house and the shop earlier in the afternoon - there was a bit of a mud and chalk issue that needed to be addressed. Giselle washed the tops of the fence posts - she's thinking of painting them and making bell wind chimes out of them since they look like bells.

The back yard looks different without the cross-fencing; it's been there since before we owned the house. The other fencing was removed 6 years ago when we took out the 25 x 45 garden but the shop went in there pretty quickly so the yard just seemed smaller not larger. With the top fencing removed it seems large again. When I feel like downloading the latest pictures I'll post some of the 'new' yard and of the progress on the stairs that Joe is building.

The dog immediately found the break in the fence to get out front but after her second attempt to explore the street unassisted I found a sheet of plywood about the right size in our scrap-wood pile (because doesn't everybody keep things like that around?) to cover the opening and now she can't sneak out. She's doing better since her bout with pancreatitis last month but I still need to closely monitor her in the backyard. There's no more throwing up now that she's back to her Innova Large Breed Senior dry food w/ Myers' venison/salmon mixed in. I'm giving her carrots at least twice a week and still giving her raw milk but no more cooked chicken skins (only raw) and no more bacon grease. I'll take her in for another blood test next week to see if her pancreas enzyme levels are back to normal or not.

That's about all for now, I've got TiVo to attend to.
Good Night!

Oh, I'm disgusted by the use of a BAD remake of the song "Saved By Zero" in the Toyota 0% financing commercial on TV. Just needed to add that.

reading is fun

We're going outside to read the last half of the first book of The Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner. To enjoy the last hour of the warm sunshine on this beautiful fall day.

Honey

Yep, that secret ingredient in the worst daiquiris in the world (obscure movie reference, there's a prize in it for you if you can identify the movie).
I had an "OH NO!" moment earlier this afternoon. See, we were supposed to go to a Bee Keeper friend's house to help/watch them extract honey from a honeycomb today. They harvested the comb yesterday. But I forgot to call yesterday to check about it and get directions and not only did I forget about it yesterday but I forgot about it today until 3 pm. Giselle called them to see if we were too late and, wonder of all wonders, they got busy today and didn't do it so they had rescheduled for Tuesday at 10 am. This is fantastic for us for since: 1 - we homeschool so Tuesday at 10 poses no conflict with school. And 2 - Giselle's participation as a Girl Scout in the Veteran's Day Parade on Tuesday at 9 am has been cancelled so we're free.

We're disappointed about the parade; It would have been Giselle's first one to actually participate in. Unfortunately, Veterans Day is not a 'real' holiday so government and public schools are still in session. Maybe if it was floating holiday instead of a specific date (November 11) it would get more respect. Well, the local parade is held on the actual Veterans Day so it's during school hours and evidently schools don't make attending the parade into a field trip. I CAN see the problems inherent in taking an entire school on a field trip to a parade, but it IS a nice thought! Since the parade is on a school day and most Scouts (Boy and Girl) are in public school, there are VERY FEW Scouts that would be able to participate in the parade. So even though both the Girl and the Boy Scouts were originally signed up to march in the parade, both groups have cancelled out due not having enough Scouts able to go. Oh well, I'm sure that they'll be other parades in the future.

coconut oil

I've been slow to jump on the coconut oil bandwagon - I'm just not that much into oil. But when a friend of mine told me a few months ago about its ability to 'cure' just about every ailment, I started trying it.
For the first few weeks Paul was happy to take it by the spoonful every night but then he reached his gross-out point and didn't want it any more. I don't blame him, I was grossed out the first time I tried it and wasn't going back for more, same with Giselle. A mouthful of oil is just about the grossest thing in the world.
So then I was stuck with the dilemma of how to get the oil into their diet without making our food taste greasy. Karma cooks her popcorn in it and her popcorn is fantastic, but we don't have a popper and I don't feel like having popcorn around all the time. I may have to go there though, eventually. The other week, Claudia suggested 'candy' balls. I said "Candy balls?" She said "Mix together 1 cup of nut butter, 1 cup of coconut oil, 1/4 cup of honey. Chill it, roll into balls, keep it cold and let the kids eat as much as they want (within reason)." So in the middle of last week I made some but I modified the recipe: I added uncooked oatmeal, about 1 cup, and half a bag of organic semi-sweet chocolate chips. The kids really like them, A LOT, and gladly eat 1 after every meal. I think that for the next batch I'll take Claudia's suggestion of adding cocoa powder to the mix, leaving out the chips.

nothing

I've got nothing to post. Not that nothing happened today, it's just that I don't feel like expounding on a normal Friday - breakfast, play, school, lunch, clean, park, dinner, Brownies, bed - nor do I feel like thinking about something else to write about. Honestly, I'm only posting this so that I'll hit my goal of 366 posts for the 2008 calendar year.
It's the simple pleasures in life that mean a lot.
Good night!

Pokemon

The new decks came out yesterday and we DIDN'T get any!
School took FOREVER yesterday and when we FINALLY finished we rushed to our friends' house to play for 2 hours before dinner and choir practice at church. Dinner at church was great for me - baked potatoes - so I had two. Which was totally undone by the 6 fudge brownies that I ate for desert. Hey, my period started yesterday so I'm allowed!

Dawn got one coat of color done yesterday and the room looks FANTASTIC! Well, at least what I can see from the window. She's fully taped off the doorway from the inside since our interior doors and door frames are stained wood not painted; so she gets in and out through one of the bedroom windows and that's how we can see the room progress. It's going to be the perfect girl's room - light-bright pink 4-poster twin bed, light lilac walls, shimmery gossamer curtain for the closet, the window dressing will probably be pink sheers with a deep purple outer curtain (for better light blocking). We were going to paint big flowers on one wall but we'll wait on that until after we've decorated. We'll need to get her a dresser; it'll probably look like mine - tall and oak with 5 drawers - a bit more sturdy than an Ikea one. Or maybe an Ikea one - the kids and I have never made an excursion to the store so it will be an adventure. We'll make a day of it since it's almost an hour drive each way. It won't be up to Joe to pick out - boys know nothing about what a girl wants her room to look like! Sorry Joe but it's the truth. We still love you though!

Gotta go teach school.

Natalie is...

Natalie is...
ready for this 18-month election to be over.
drinking one of the 2 Harp Lagers that have been living in her fridge for the last 3 months.
taking a long time to sew Giselle's Brownie patches onto the vest.
ready for this 18-month election to be over.
thinking about making curtains for Giselle's room instead of buying ones.
enjoying the cool mornings and hot afternoons.
ready for this 18-month election to be over.
wishing that it wasn't so environmentally unfriendly to use paper plates.
still holding on to the overdue Pokemon book.
ready for this 18-month election to be over.
ignoring the fact that she hasn't put away Joe's laundry yet.
wondering when the new single-stream recycling is going to start since October is already past.
already drawing a blank on what she prepared for supper tonight.
probably going to bed early tonight.
ready for this 18-month election to be over.

big dinner

Big Dinner tonight - 2 pork loins, 4 tamales, spaghetti w/ red sauce, mixed veggies, and water. Chris didn't notice his text message about dinner until after he had finished his fast food dinner - next time I'll voice call. Thomas and Bobby were here though.
I'm tired - we drove to Seguin to visit one of my sisters for the afternoon - so I'm making this quick. I'm gonna watch some TiVo with The Man and head for bed.

Giselle's room is re-ceilinged, patched, and primered; all ready for color to be applied tomorrow! Dawn is awesome! And Joe is awesome for making us hire this job out instead of doing it ourselves - this way I'm not responsible for clean-up!

See you tomorrow!

Why?!

I REALLY want to go to bed right now but I can't. "Why?" you ask. I'll tell you why: for the first time in well over a month I am getting ALL of the laundry washed and dried on Sunday! Now if I had started the laundry this morning this would not be an issue, but instead I started it this afternoon. The second-to-last load is in the washer now so I'm looking at about another 40 minutes before the last load goes into the dryer.
So I'm killing time by reading other people's blogs and putting a post for the day on mine.
All the sorting, folding and putting away WILL get done tomorrow before school since after school we've got a road trip down I-35 to make.
See ya later!

Fall Back

Not only are the kids already in bed and asleep, but they get an EXTRA hour of sleep tomorrow morning thanks to 'Spring - Forward; Fall - Back'!
Or they can wake up an hour early to give me time to get them bathed before Sunday School.

Perfect Night

Oh my goodness, you couldn't have asked for better weather for Trick-or-Treating! It was about 70 degrees and clear as a bell. It's down to 66 now but it's still wonderful outside. What I love the most about this temperature and Halloween is that the kids don't have to wear clothes either on top of or underneath their costumes in order to stay warm. I distinctly remember having to wear a coat over my costume several times as a kid and I also remember wearing clothes under my costume. I remember at least one case of snow flurries while Trick-or-Treating. That's no fun!
I got our usual Halloween pictures but I forgot to get any of the 4 kids in action (remember, we went over to our friends' house to Trick-or-Treat with them). Actually I didn't forget, Paul and Markham went ahead and started without the rest of us because they were so eager to get into action and Gabriel wasn't in his costume yet, so I didn't get a chance. But when we got back to the house the kids were allowed to watch a movie while eating some of their candy. The 2 boys had picked out Spy Kids 2 which was well liked by all. There were a few tense minutes near the end and that's when I got out my camera and got pictures of their faces. It was low light and of course I didn't use the flash so I'll be interested to see what the pictures look like when I look at them on the big screen.
I'm tired, I've been walking the dog several times a day lately (you DON'T want me to blog about the details on that!!) and then tonight we walked at least a mile while Trick-or-Treating; in addition to school, pumpkin carving, park, pictures, shrimp stirfry for dinner (excellent cooking by Claudia once again!), a movie, candy and 2 glasses of wine; well, it's been a full day. But overall, it was a very good day!
Good night and see you in November - time to start planning on who'll be here for Thanksgiving and what I'll be serving.

Final Ghost

Here is one of my favorite Halloween pictures, EVER!

oh, today's Thursday!

I saw BooMama's post come up on my Blogger Dashboard about tonight's episode of The Office and that reminded me that today is Thursday and that means that there's a new episode of ER happening right now.

Seeing as how I have half of a closet to clean out before Dawn comes tomorrow and starts work on Giselle's new bedroom, I better get cracking on that and let TiVo take care of ER for me to watch later. It's not like I can leave the other half of the closet dirty, it's that I already cleaned out half of it and now I need to do the other half. We did stop by Sherwin Williams to get paint on the way to tonight's Biscuit Brothers show so that most important part is already taken care of.

Let's see if I can quickly find a copy of the paint chip to show y'all since you'll never see the room in person.
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Here we go http://www.sherwin-williams.com/search/inspired+lilac&section=homeowner
The color is inspired lilac. With the pink bed, it will bring out the purple in the color. Duration Home for the walls and Harmony for the ceiling and closet.

Gotta go clean!

Blue's Clues is The BEST!

Look, it's Steve!

too slow, he's gone

Another Ghost of Halloweens Past - 2005

no tea for me

Actually, I had a 16 oz cup full of water and I topped it off with a splash of that tea at church tonight. That one ounce of tea was enough to darken that whole cup of water to look like most people's regular iced tea. No wonder that stuff was keeping me wide awake past 2 am!
So compared to previous weeks I had no tea tonight. We'll not talk about the candy corn that I ate instead. Hey, it's fat free!

I'm thinking of going to bed in the next 30 min, provided I don't get sucked into the Facebook vortex.

More Ghosts from Halloweens Past

Same kid, same dog, same costumes, same front yard just 365 days later. Oh, different pumpkin!

And just like a ghost, the pictures have vanished.

congratulations and keep up the good work!

It took me 12 months to gain it and one month to lose it. I'm down 10 pounds from 5 weeks ago - back to where I was last November! Which is actually about 15 pounds more that I would like to end up, but hey 10 out of 25 is nothing to sneeze at!

Congratulations and keep up the good work!



The funny thing is that last November I started working on portion control and that's how I gained this last 10 - eating only 4 slices of cheese instead of 8 IS eating less but it's still EATING 4 SLICES OF CHEESE A DAY! Eating 1 slice of ham instead of 3 IS eating less but it's still EATING 1 SLICE OF HAM A DAY! I cut back but I didn't eliminate anything. Now that I've severely cut back my fat intake (a la the old Susan Powter diet) the weight is coming off! Once I've lost the other 15 I'll be back down to where I was when Paul was a year old, which is 5 less than I weighed when I got pregnant with him. Hmm, I started gaining all this weight when Joe started on Atkins for the first time.

Fabulous Resource for EVERYONE

This site has all the lyrics to every soundtrack, and I do mean EVERY soundtrack!

http://www.stlyrics.com

Ghost of Halloween Past

Here's a picture from Giselle's 2nd Halloween




And like a ghost, the picture is gone.

too cold!

Ahh Man! The dog has REALLY BAD gas but tonight is supposed to be as cold as last night (37) so it'll be too cold for her to stay out all night! She better stop this soon or grow a thicker coat of fur, I'm tired of the house smelling like dog farts all the time. Joe and the kids agree!
At least it's been 8 hours since she last threw up so maybe it'll be out of her system soon, we hope. Just in case she's got a vet appointment for Thursday morning. I hope she doesn't stink up the minivan.

I can't believe that tomorrow is Wednesday and Halloween will be in 2 more days! we don't have any vampire or witch makeup, We don't have any pumpkins, WE DON'T HAVE ANY CANDY!!! I think that I'm gonna be calling an emergency school vacation day for tomorrow in order to get everything taken care of that we need to do. Fortunately our Wednesday play friends are out of town so that gives us more time to get everything done before dinner and choir at church.

And we need to get Giselle's room cleaned out entirely so that the make-over can begin this week or next week. Oh, that means that we have to go pick out paint at Sherwin-Williams too!

Chicken

Yesterday during school I decided that for lunch the kids would have the roasted chicken from The Farmers Market so I took it out of the fridge and put it into the toaster oven for 30 min on 225. The kids were happy to have the juicy thigh and leg meat. That is until Giselle noticed a vein in her piece and then convinced Paul that they weren't going to eat any more of it. So, I sent them outside to play and I stripped the chicken and cubed it up for later use. The kids ended up having pepperoni, salami and cheese with ketchup for lunch. I had scrambled eggs with mustard.

I put the cleaned carcass into my 3 quart pot, covered it with water and set it on the stove on medium heat to become broth over the next several hours.

Come dinner time Giselle was over at a friend's house so it was up to Paul and me to figure out what to have for dinner. Paul said "enchiladas de fruita fresca". I told him that no, I was not going to make fruit enchiladas for dinner, nor was I going to make just fruit salad for dinner. So he said "How about chicken enchiladas? Do you know how to make them?" "Do I know how to make enchiladas?!! Oh do I EVER know how to make enchiladas!"

Paul and I went inside to start dinner.

Paul poured 1.5 cups of old chicken broth, .5 cups of water, and 1.5 cups of brown rice into a 2-quart pot. I dumped in some oregano and some salt and some crushed garlic, stirred it up, set the stove to 3 and let it cook for 45 minutes while we made the enchiladas.
I took the raw flour tortillas out of the fridge and heated up 5 of them, 4 for the enchiladas and one for Paul to snack on. On each tortilla I put one slice of colby/jack cheese, about 1/4 cup of diced chicken, a light sprinkle of garlic powder and a thin stripe of mild salsa. Then I rolled them up and put them in an 8x8 pyrex baking pan. On top of each enchilada I applied a thick stripe of Daisy full-fat sour cream and a thick stripe of mild salsa. Paul covered the whole enchilada (hee hee) with shredded colby/jack cheese, and I put it in the oven at 300 for 30 minutes.
I turned off heat under the rice, added in 8 oz of frozen corn, stirred and left it covered until the the enchiladas had cooled to eating temperature.

The kids loved the enchiladas, eating two each and asked if I could make them again soon.
Success again!

When the broth was cooled I strained it and put it in the fridge in a 4-cup container for future use.

not happy

I'm not happy at all about this cold front that arrived this morning. The high for the day is supposed to be 70 but it'll probably not get over 65. Well, in the sun without a wind I'm sure that it'll be well over 70 but it IS windy so it's going to feel like 65 degrees all day. And tonight it's supposed to get down into the 30's! This is NOT supposed to happen until the last week of November! I don't like this at all! Fortunately, we'll be back to the appropriate temps for this time of year by the end of the week - highs in the low 80's and lows in the mid to upper 50's.
These Arctic cold fronts always make me whine and, since the 2008 Farmers Almanac is calling for a colder winter than normal this year, I'm sure to be doing a lot of whining about the cold this winter.
Although, I'm sure that I'd be a whole lot more comfortable right now if I was wearing something warmer than shorts and a tee shirt with nothing on my feet. Giselle's in a long-sleeved dress and Paul's in shorts and a tee shirt like me.

Back to school - recess is over!

Pokemon Sunday

Yep, as usual the kids and I are spending Sunday evening catching up on a week's worth of Pokemon episodes.

They both napped in the car on the way home from the dog show and when we arrived home, I napped through the first episode of Pokemon that we watched. Last night was a little too late! I've got a feeling that we may not be doing it at all next Saturday. But only because we're going trick-or-treating with them on Friday night!

I better not forget to buy candy this week when I go grocery shopping!

Another long Saturday

Giselle got to go to a Catholic Mass for the first time this evening. She and Gabriel left about halfway through and joined Paul and me out on the playground. Paul wanted to leave the church as soon as Markham and the rest of the kid choir was done singing their opening songs. Not one to enjoy hanging out in churches, I jumped at the chance to take him outside to the playground 5 minutes into the service. Is it even called a service or are they all masses?
As a reward for the four kids, Claudia and I took them to Marble Slab for ice cream and frozen yogurt. Well, it was a treat for us too as we got some too.

I'm beat - I started the day with an uncomfortable morning of sleep, the Farmers Market for 4 hours, playing at Claudia's, going to church, going out for ice cream, playing at Claudia's some more until 11:30 (Paul had fallen asleep on their bed while the kids had a rare treat of being allowed to watch the new version of the Muppet Show on the Disney Channel). I texted Joe that it was on and when we got home we found him lying on the sofa watching TV. Giselle says to him "Daaady, we were just watching that same show at our friends' house!"

Dog show tomorrow and since we were at church this evening we don't have to feel bad about missing Sunday School to go to the show.
I'm off to bed.

making my opinion known

So, I was asked the other day to go to yesterday's City Council meeting to voice my (and my neighbors') opinion regarding the future land use of some 50 or so acres that are currently undeveloped near our neighborhood. With kids in tow I went to the City Hall to give that opinion, because in America, the home of the free and the brave, we have the liberty to do that.

The portion of the meeting where we citizens are allowed to speak on the agenda items is supposed to start at 4 or 5:30 and we got there at 5. It was 8 pm by the time that they started on the public opinion part and that's when we actually went into the Council Chambers. The rest of the time we had to keep busy by exploring the building and eating.

FORTUNATELY they were opening an architectural exhibit of the proposed new central library where you could voice your opinion on which of the 3 designs you liked best. And along with the opening was an open buffet! So I didn't have to worry about the kids subsisting on Clif bars for the night. Fruit, cheese, veggies and Mexican mineral water. For us grown-ups they had beer and wine. Two nights before we had eaten dinner at a local gourmet pizza place that had an advertisement up for a new flavor of Shiner Beer. They used the AC/DC line "Back in Black" since the beer is Shiner Black (their main beer is Shiner Bock and when I moved to Texas in the 80's you couldn't get Shiner anywhere but in Texas). Well, Shiner Black was one of those free beers so I got to try it - great opportunity since I'm not about to go out and buy a six of beer that'll take up room in my fridge for a month. It was really good - very similar to Guinness Stout but without the bitter edge to it and a little less coffee taste. It certainly made the wait a lot less annoying! Since we were making a night of it and I wanted to treat the kids for so-far being incredibly well-behaved (and since I realized that we wouldn't get out of there early enough to go out to eat) I let the kids split a Blue Bell ice cream sandwich that I got out of the vending machine. Wow those things keep ice cream frozen SOLID! Normally ice cream is so soft out of those reach-in coolers that it's melted by the time you get it all unwrapped; not so with the vending machine. The kids ate their halves without a single drip of ice cream every occurring! One of the architects was really friendly towards the kids and on their display they were asking for public input on where to put the main entrance to the building. Before Giselle gave her first answer she asked him "Where is the parking lot? The entrance should be convenient to where people park." He really valued what she had to say regarding access from the street. It killed some time, that's for sure.

The kids did FABULOUS! That reminds me, I said that they'd get a larger sized Pokemon action figure for being so wonderful. I'm back - I just gave them each a 3-inch Entai.

For the first hour in the Council Chambers they were sitting and laying on the limestone tile floor in the back of the auditorium, coloring and working on sticker books. Then they got out some stuffed animal friends and silently ran around playing with those for the next hour, taking breaks to sit in the cushy chairs. At one point a gentleman came up to me and remarked about how well mannered and well behaved the kids were. I told him that "it's because my kids are homeschooled so they get to run around and play for a good part of the day and don't feel the need to act up when they're out and about; unlike other kids that are cooped up inside of a school for 6 to 8 hours who go nuts when they're released for the day." Paul found a young college girl to play peek-a-boo with and that kept him entertained for 15 min.

Back to the meeting itself. Goodness, the city manager spent almost an hour just reading the line items WHICH WERE WRITTEN DOWN ON THE AGENDA PAPERWORK THAT EVERYONE HAD A COPY OF SINCE THEY WERE HANDED OUT AT THE ENTRYWAY! Finally at 9 they started taking comments from the people who had signed up to speak (which I had done via a nifty computerized sign up system) - in the order that they signed up. At just before 10 pm they called my name, I very articulately presented my opinion to The Council, they nodded their heads in acknowledgement of my comments, the 3-minute buzzer buzzed, I finished my comments, ran up the aisle, assembled the kids and their stuff and we left. A 5 hour wait to speak for 3 minutes!

Of course we had to go down an extra flight of stairs to the 3rd floor of the parking garage so we could see the whole fountain/waterfall from the bottom - the kids thought that it's pretty neat.

Today, as part of school we're learning some interesting facts about the building that we spent 5 hours in yesterday. Gotta go do that now so we can spend the rest of the day at the park; it IS Friday after all!

That's it!

OK, next week I'm not having any iced tea at all at church on Wednesday night. This is the 2nd week in a row that I've been up past 2 after having a cup or 2 of iced tea after dinner. I'm not going to have this happen again so from now on, there will be no iced tea drinking on Wednesday nights (unless I dilute it a whole bunch)!
Be sure to hold me to this next week, please, so you don't see any more posts from me with a time stamp of 2:15 AM.

The dog's outside for the night just in case she's in the mood to leave us a little present again.

morning

I awoke to dog poop on the living room floor. I really wish that she would stop digging through the laundry and eating washcloths!
That's all cleaned up now (and yes, I did wash my hands afterwards), the kids are putting together a dinosaur puzzle on the living room floor (far from the cleaned up spots), and I'm making Joe's bacon and eggs. It's a cereal day for the kids - organic frosted flakes with milk - and homemade yogurt for me.
Then school and saying goodbye to Joe's parents then over to some friends' house for the rest of the afternoon.

change

School has started for the day and the temperature has already risen to 67 degrees. In another 2 hours school will be over and the temperature will be up around 88 degrees. I love Texas!

morning

I'm cooking bacon and eggs for Joe, checking email, and trying to convince the kids that 56 degrees doesn't mean that you need to wear pants and long sleeves outside.

Paul listened and stayed in shorts with a short-sleeved shirt. Giselle is in capris with a short-sleeved shirt and a fleece cape. Off for their morning adventures outside before breakfast and school. Have a good voyage, kids!

gotta flip the bacon.

finally

I actually made it to the grocery store on a Monday, for the first time in what seems like months. Joe's parents were over for dinner tonight. I cooked a mesquite bbq marinated pork loin and served it with pesto-covered mixed veggies and flower pasta. I don't remember if I ever posted pictures of that pasta before so here it is.



Now the picture above is from the first time that I cooked this pasta and at that time I don't think that I put a sauce on it even after I took the picture. This time I over-cooked it a tiny bit so most of the flowers broke apart when I was mixing the pesto into it. That's why I didn't take a picture this time.

I'm sure that I've got more to say but I can hear the kids talking and playing in the other room and they are SUPPOSED to be going to sleep; so I've got to go fuss at them and then maybe watch some TV or read my 2nd-to-most-recent issue of ESPN the Mag.

School went really well today and we're almost done with both year 2 of First Language Lessons and volume 1 of A History of US. Hooray!

I think that I'm making a new batch of yogurt tomorrow, maybe even 2 batches just to use up some of the milk. Paul really liked it today when I prepared his for lunch using vanilla extract, honey, a touch of cinnamon and a touch of cane sugar.

Why are organic dried cranberries so expensive? And why do they taste so good that you have to eat the overpriced 8 oz bag super fast? And why do they put sweetener on every brand of dried cranberries? Why can't I find unsweetened ones?

Will someone come over tomorrow and pull apart a cold roasted chicken for me to make chicken salad with? The kids REALLY like to have it spread on a piece of oat bread with a slice and 1/2 of colby/jack cheese on top and then toasted in the toaster oven until the cheese is bubbling on the edges. Served open-faced and cut into 4 pieces. Do you want my recipe? Here it is:

Natalie's Rotisserie Chicken Salad

leftover rotisserie chicken cut into small chunks

mayonaisa

yellow mustard

whole-grain mustard

spike seasoning

garlic powder or fresh minced garlic

ground pepper

pickle relish

combine all ingredients in a reusable container, taste, adjust seasonings to your liking (maybe even add a dash or 3 of cayenne pepper), eat.

Don't forget to simmer the skin and bones in a pot of water for a few hours to make your own awesome chicken broth.

Pokemon

It's Sunday afternoon and the kids are doing what they usually do on Sunday afternoons - sitting in front of the TV catching up on what TiVo recorded for them during the week. Friday is always an action-packed day and Saturday is even more packed, usually on into the night. Last night we got home after 10. So Sunday becomes a day of rest once we come home from church. In another 2 hours I'll kick them outside for the rest of the day but for now they'll get their brains sucked out by the monster that television is.
So their choice for this afternoon? The movie Pokemon 3: Mewtwo Strikes Back AGAIN. This is about the 5th time that I've sat through this movie. Why can't we watch episodes from season 2 on the computer instead? I want to see other ones, not this same movie again!

no wonder

I've only made 14 posts so far this month and we're on day 18. No wonder I only have 1 public follower!

absent

Sorry to have been so absent lately - over the last 2 weeks, there's been a lot going on and even this has to be a rush post.

Joe's parents are in town so spare time is being spent with them. We've had ballet, a trip to the doctor because Paul's eye got poked, there was the park, 2.5 La Leche League meetings, a Brownie trip to the zoo, the farmers market, dinner and choir at church, playing at friends' houses (which I'm about to run off to as soon as I'm done with this), making yogurt, teaching school, getting more tapeworm medicine for the dog, going out to dinner, taking care of an on-line class reunion on Classmates, several birthdays, a leaky tire, decorating for Halloween, buying costumes for Halloween, not going grocery shopping, sleeping, marital relations, reconnecting with old friends on Facebook, returning books to the library, cleaning the house, laundry, dishes, feeding people.
Whew!!

Well, I'm off for some R and R at Claudia's house. The kids are already over there but Giselle just called me AGAIN to bring something else when I go over. First is was summer clothes, then it was Pokemon action figures, now it's crocs. I just better not forget the wine!

surfacing

I'm afraid to check my blog stats since I've been so irregular in posting recently.

Paul did it again - had a close encounter with a foreign object. This time it was the rusty combination wrench that he found at the lake the other month. He and Giselle had finished school and were playing out back with the other homeschool kids in the neighborhood. Paul was 'repairing' the wooden fence with the wrench when it slipped/flew out of his hand and poked him in the eye. I checked his eye out (after giving him some Rescue Remedy and aconite so that he'd stop freaking out and let me look at it) and it looked to me like he had scratched his eye. Since we haven't covered that in science yet, I was calling it his lens that got scratched but it really is his cornea. Called the pediatrician and they said to call an opthamologist. Joe has one of the top practices in the state as a client so I called Joe and he made the call for us. An hour later we were waiting in the offices for our appointment. Another hour later we walked out with our prescription for antibiotic eye ointment. Diagnosis - a scratched cornea and swelling in the area due to the impact.
When we got home, Giselle got out Paul's pirate eye patch from last Halloween's costume and he's been wearing it since. True to the Dr's words, the scratch was all healed up by this morning when he woke up.

After school today we went to Party City (formerly Party Pig) and got the kids their costumes for this year - Giselle is a vampire and Paul is a clone trooper.

I still need to read them today's history lesson from A History of US so I need to run.

some done, more to go

I got the dishes done, the sink and stove cleaned. I've washed one load out of 4 loads of laundry, I'm about to dry that and put another load in the wash; although I'm a full day and a half behind on it.
I've got to get up a little earlier in the morning (I was about to say 'tomorrow' but it's already tomorrow so I just changed it to 'in the morning') since Joe's got to be downtown at a client's office early and he'd like to eat before he goes. I've also got to get the latest batch of yogurt made so I want to start that early too. I guess I'll vacuum before school but after I go to the vet and pick up more tapeworm medicine. While there I'll go next door to the compounding pharmacy and get some herbal preventative. But we can discuss that in another post tomorrow evening.

See ya later.

It's another full week

I've got another full week ahead of me. Fortunately I already got Joe's birthday present purchased - he wanted a new mop. Yes, that's correct, a new mop for the workshop. That's what he asked for last month and that's what he's getting. Or rather, that's what he got since I already laid it out on the kitchen table for him; it's kind of hard to wrap a full-sized commercial mop. A man who knows what he wants and knows how to get it, my husband Joe.

I have no response to that

The other day while over at our friends' house, while the kids were playing in the Mt Tiki-Soki, my friend and I were discussing movies and due to the volcano erupting water in front of us we started talking about "Joe Versus the Volcano" which we decided was Terry Gilliam-lite. If you've never seen it, please do so at your earliest convenience. You will not understand the humor in the title of this post until you've seen the movie.

I'm going to bed - long day at the market topped off with a late night at Claudia's house with the kids.

no worries!

The car and house are for a bi-annual family reunion in the spring. The house that everyone usually stays in is above and beyond capacity and Joe has to have his own room so we're renting another house and we need a rental car to drive around in since we'll be flying there.

Back to school now.

in the meantime

While the yogurt was culturing the kids and I spent 3 hours clearing the new property. Scratches all around for all of us. Joe made me wear his gloves since I was too lazy to go back to the house and get my own so my hands, at least, were scratchless. We learned the difference between carrying many items one at a time and using a pallet to transport many items at one time.
At 3 we made it over to a friend's house where the 4 kids played in the Mt Tiki-Soki. All of us being homeschoolers, we turned it into a science experiment - analyzing water pressure and velocity and it's ability to propel various objects into the air, or not.
There's always something to be learned when you homeschool.

Work by Anonymous
"Work while you work,
Play while you play.
This is the way
To be happy each day.

All that you do
do with your might.
Things done by halves
are never done right."

Yogurt AGAIN

Wow, making yogurt is so easy!
I made another batch yesterday. While talking with a friend that came over, I heated up the milk and let it cool and added the culture and stuck the 2 quart jars into the cooler and put it outside in the sun on an 88 degree day. By night I had another 2 quarts of fresh plain yogurt. I didn't heat it as long as last time and I strained out the surface skim as I poured it into the jars.
The kids and I had some for breakfast - mine was with honey and ginger, Paul's was with honey and cinnamon, Giselle's was with blackberry jelly.
YUM!

it really is 1 am!

Hmm, let's see what we did today.
We got up at 7:30, well actually, I got up at 7:30 and the kids got up at 7:35.
The kids played for 2 hours while I made Joe breakfast and took care of some household paperwork.
The kids started school early so we could get a lot done before going on our field trip to the landfill.
The kids finished school early and started playing again so leaving for the field trip was delayed.
We finally left the house around 12:30.
We stopped by the condo to turn on the AC and the fans and flush all the toilets.
We got to the landfill at 1 and jumped on the tour bus pronto. Wow, it was a WHOLE LOT OF FUN! I was more excited about the whole thing than the kids were but I'm sure that next year they'll be a bit more psyched.
We got out of there about 2:45 and headed across town to ballet with a quick pit stop by HEB for some blueberry goat's milk yogurt for the kids for an afternoon snack.
While Giselle was at ballet, Paul and I went to get the car inspected. It passed just fine.
After ballet we dropped Giselle off at a friend's house to play for a few hours and Paul and I went home to play Chutes and Ladders and Uno until it was time to pick up Giselle.
We stuck around at her friend's house playing for another hour - her friend's mom is one of my friends and Paul is friends with their rat terrier.
I picked up some BBQ from Donn's for the kids' dinner and once they finished it was off to bed for them since it was an hour past their usual bedtime.
Then I went online and searched for cars and houses for the last 4 hours. I got some leads but nothing is finalized.
I still didn't do the dishes!
And technically, since I didn't do the sheets yet, I haven't finished the laundry from yesterday yet either.
I need to get the dog's prescription refilled too in addition to doing the grocery shopping.
good night!

new post

We stayed at the Texas Parks & Wildlife Expo from 10 am to 4:45 pm yesterday and still didn't see everything. By the weight of the bags we were carrying you would have thought that we saw it all but no. We did very few of the actual 'events' due to the LONG lines but we learned a lot - like that only one out of every 20 people actually catch a fish in those stocked pools. Yeah, we stood in a 20 min long line for that one. Catfish in a pool. 2 other kids caught one but no one did in the prior 2 tries. I guess it's a good warmup for actual fishing - float & fish all day and don't catch much of anything. I got TONS of literature to use for Texas state education this school year.

Tomorrow we're going on a field trip with all the other hundreds of homeschoolers in town - we're going to the dump! Texas Disposal Systems doesn't usually open up to the public but they're making an exception for us and we're all jumping on it. They also have an exotic game ranch next door to the recycling/trash area that we get to tour also. They have a rhinoceros!!!

I stocked up on school books at B&N yesterday evening so we're set for the next 12 months. Thank you book stores, for recognizing that we homeschoolers deserve a 20% educator's discount also and we are happy to give our business to you.

more yogurt

The yogurt tasted better today. I guess I shouldn't have made full-fat, whole-milk yogurt while I'm on a fat-free diet.

quick recipe for the yogurt I made:

• 1/2 gallon whole milk, preferably raw but definitely not homogenized
• 1 to 2 Tbs plain yogurt depending on the freshness, only use the kind that has no thickeners like pectin - just milk & LIVE cultures

Heat the milk for one hour at just below simmering, stirring every 5 min or so. Remove from heat and let cool until it reaches body temperature (about 15 min). Put the yogurt in a cup and pour some of the milk into the cup; stir together gently. Pour the warm milk into your glass jar and then give it a good strong stir to get it spinning. Take the spoon out and while the milk is still spinning, gently pour the yogurt/milk mixture into the milk. Don't stir any more. Wrap your jar in towels and keep warm (between 85 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit) for 3 to 12 hours using either a heating pad, a dehydrator, a gas oven, a hot kitchen or an insulated cooler. When it's thick it's ready to refrigerate. Add whatever you want to it when you eat it or just eat it plain. For the kids I added a touch of vanilla and some honey, maybe some cinnamon. I ate mine plain and with some granola.
YUMMM!

Did you know that Fahrenheit and Celsius are both named after scientists, that's why they're capitalized.

Brownies - day one

The first meeting was a success! Giselle had a whole lot of fun, so much that she was wishing that she could go to the campout tomorrow night with these 'strangers' instead of the slumber birthday party at her friend's house. While I'm VERY glad that she had fun, I'm glad that she had a prior commitment and couldn't go on the campout - they're showing a PG movie that deals with issues that have not been discussed with Giselle previously. I promised her that she'd make it to the next one.

Joe's found a new show to get sucked into - Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Giselle wasn't happy about having to leave the park early (at 6:10 pm) to get to Brownies on time at 6:30; she's really enjoying her new (best) friend and didn't want to leave her. But in Brownies is one of her friends from Sunday School so now she's got so many friends that they're coming out of her ears! Not really.

If you're family or a friend that lives nearby, prepare to be hit up by her for buying nuts or a calendar for the fall fundraiser. If you're family that doesn't live nearby, prepare to get a Girl Scout calendar for Christmas.

yogurt followup

The yogurt did great outside in the cooler and was still quite warm when I finally brought it inside at 8:30 pm. Yep, it sat out too long but it's yogurt so all it did was get more yogurty. See, I put it outside at what, noon? I figured that I'd bring it inside when we got back from playing at our friend's house, but I forgot that Wednesday night is church night. We went straight from our friend's to dinner at the church and then the kids had playtime and choir so we got home at about 8:15 and once the kids were getting ready for bed is when I remembered the yogurt out in the cooler. I had put a gallon-sized pitcher of hot water in the cooler with the warm yogurt for extra warmth. It tasted a little cheesy when I tried it last night while it was warm but this morning, when fully chilled, it tastes pretty good - like whole milk yogurt. Once I put the honey it I couldn't tell that it was my first try at yogurt making. But next time I may not heat the milk for quite as long as I did this time.

Making yogurt

I'm making yogurt for the first time right now and since I don't have a heating pad to wrap around the jar to keep it warm I've put the jar into my plastic cooler that I use for The Farmers Market. I'm considering putting the heater/cooler out on the back porch in the sun to help it stay warm since the high for the day will be in the low 90's. Yep, that's what I'm going to do!

Back to yogurt making and teaching school.

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!