November 1st

I can’t believe it is November 1st!  Summer has come and gone and now we are smack dab in the middle of Fall. 

Our garden grew and grew and now it’s dead. We had thousands of tomatoes.  Most of them ended up rotting on the vine.  We just couldn’t keep up.  We canned salsa, sweet pickles, dilly beans, dill pickles, tomato sauce, blackberry jam, strawberry jam, peaches, pears, and applesauce.  Only a small bit actually came from our garden.  Now we leave the garden area open and let the chickens clean up. 

We attended the CR Fair.

We went to bluegrass festivals…Thing 2 was free to run around barefoot and dirty-faced.  She played with a grasshopper (literally) to death. Thing1 got to try out a guitar for size. 

The ladies started laying eggs…and now have stopped.  It’s been 5 days without eggs.  It turns out that checking for eggs is one more thing for the girls to fight over. 

Thing 1 is now a first grader. 

There’s more…but it will have to wait until another post.

Happy 4th of July

I can’t believe it is July!  I say this every month, “I can’t believe it is (fill in the month).”  Time flies.  Happy Fourth of July!  We don’t have any big plans.  Scott has been pressure washing the house yesterday and today and also applying sealer to the porch.  The top picture shows Thing1 paining sealer around the wooden posts.   It looks great. 

Tonight we are going to park down by the Cowlitz River and walk the path and enjoy everyone else’s fireworks show. Dinner tonight is going to be taco soup with cheese and crumbled tortilla chips.  Yum.  I made up a big batch this morning and it is simmering in the crockpot as I type. 

For dessert, I am going to mix strawberries, blueberries, and service berries together with some cool whip.  Scott and I will also add raspberries, but as the girls are allergic they won’t get any.  We got the berries at the farmer’s market this morning.  The girls and I went to pick up our CSA share. 

I ended up with quite a few “interesting” photos taken by the girls of course.  Thing1 had been saving her chore money for weeks and today was the day she got to buy a little plant she had been admiring.  She was sure to pick just the right one.

 

 Thing2 took these last two pictures.  It took me a few seconds to figure out what the orange picture was…it is a photo of a traffic cone, taken with the camera lens pointing at the inside of the point.  She’s quite the photographer .

I should be going…I just heard Thing2 call Thing1 a “big naughty doo doo!”  Sounds serious.

Banana Bread and Bluegrass

Banana bread and bluegrass…two tastes that go great together.   The girls and I took time out of our day to make up a couple loaves of banana bread.  I took a recipe I had used before and modified it just a tad. Reason one…because  I only had 2 overripe bananas…and I knew that it would be more fun for EVERYONE if each daughter got to make her own loaf…so only one banana went into each loaf.  I actually prefer the bread this way because I don’t like it when the bread has slimey globules of baked bananas speckled throughout.  Gag.  And reason number 2 for the modification…I felt that the bread should have some brown sugar in it…not just white. 

 

 

The girls got to practice their egg cracking skills.  Thing1 is pretty careful; although we do have to occasionally pick out a rogue eggshell or two.  Thing2 goes for a smack and crush technique.  We still have some work to do in this area.  

The bread turned out fantastically tasty.  We ended up taking one loaf to the local Winlock Bluegrass Picker’s Fest and shared it with our very good friends. 

 The recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:

2 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 c. packed brown sugar

1/2 c. granulated white sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 c filled with one mashed banana and add applesauce until 1 c. worth

1 c. milk

1/4 c. vegetable oil

1 egg

Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray bottom only of a 9X5 loaf pan with a nonstick cooking spray.  Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.  Add remaining ingredients; stir just until dry ingredients are moistened.  Pour batter into pan.  Sprinkle with cinnamon/sugar mixture if you want.  Bake 60 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.  Cool in pan 10 min or more. Remove from pan.  Enjoy! 

So…the Winlock Picker’s Fest was held at Winolequa Park in Winlock, Wa.  It was only $5 per adult and it was well worth the money for a wonderfully relaxing evening listening to very talented and genuinely nice bluegrass musicians.  The picture to the left shows one of the bands that performed.   I can’t remember the name of their group, but they were very good.  It’s a wonderful experience for adults and kids.  The stage was close to the playground, so we could enjoy the music and company of friends while the kids enjoyed playing on the playground equipment.  We attended Friday night.  They had 4 bands play for 45 minutes each and then you could walk around the camping area and/or the parking lot and find groups of people who had gathered to play together.  Saturday, my fiddle-playing friend, Angie, and I attended an hour long workshop.  I attended the guitar workshop and she attended the fiddle workshop.  Afterward, we found a group in the camping area and played for a couple hours before heading home.  We didn’t attend the Sunday morning gospel show.  Next year, I would definitely like to schedule a camping trip around this event.  It was close to home, not too expensive, and a great experience for all ages.

Thing2 poses for a picture with her good friend.

Grandma’s House

In the days leading up to Memorial Day weekend, Thing1 was full of questions about the upcoming holiday.  I explained to her that Memorial Day is a day when people remember their family and friends who had died…and it is customary to visit the cemetery and place flowers at the headstones.  After this explanation, she cheerfully asked if we could go too.  She was so excited about the thought of visiting the cemetery.  It was a beautiful day Monday, so we drove to a quiet, old cemetery just down the road from our house.   Many of the headstones were hard to read having been placed in the mid to late 1800′s.   We parked the car and walked around the grounds reading names and calculating ages based on the date of birth and death.  She was FASCINATED.  She asked why there were so many graves, why no one else was visiting, who buries you when you die, what does it mean to be cremated.  I was answering all her questions as frankly as I could, but didn’t know where the line was that separated teaching from traumatizing.  The trip did spark some good conversation and I’m sure she will remember the trip as she grows up…if not…we have pictures.

 

 

Last Sunday my mom, the girls, and I took a trip to my Grandma Bev’s house. This is the same grandma who taught me how to crochet many years ago.  I owe all my yarn craftiness to her.  Thanks Grandma!  I have fond memories of visiting my grandma’s house as a child.  The first things that come to mind are the smell of freshly baked bread…grandma would let us knead out our own little loaf (yum), homemade preserves, multicolored popcorn, standing by an old woodstove (cozy), learning how to crochet, jumping off haybales in the barn and staying up late to watch Dr. Who.  Our visit was nice.  The house is surrounded by pasture with tree-filled hillsides for a view.  We walked around the property, had lunch, compared crafts.  Sometimes the simplest things are the most stress reducing… you need to get away from the TV, computer and video games and go outside and moo at cows…

 

 

dig in the dirt…

 

 

 

 

 

and take your shoes off and rub your feet on thyme.  Let your kids get some nature on them…its good for them.    I even got stung by a bee…and survived. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday, June 1 was Thing1′s school field trip to the Children’s Museum.  This is such a fun place to go. I highly recommend going if you have young children and have never been.  It costs $8 per person and is well worth the price of admission.  Thing2 and I met the class there and had lunch with them. 

The chickens will be in double digits at the end of this week.  Ten weeks old!  I’m still counting on mid- August for our first egg. 

I finished knitting up Thing1′s bolero, weaved in the ends, washed and blocked.  Thing1 and I made a trip to my mom’s house so she could pour over hundreds of buttons in order to find the one gaudy enough for a 6-year-old fashonista.  Now I need to finish up embroidering the flowers and sew on the button.  I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.  I’d like to knit another one, but with some fun-colored yarn…that Pepto Bismol pink was getting to me toward the end.

The garden looks great.  Scott did a fantastic job!  We planted a combination of plants and seeds.  Most of the seeds have sprouted.  We planted acorn squash, yellow squash, pumpkin, tomatos, lettuce, green onions, beets, peas, green beans, and carrots.

May 20, 2009

Chicken Update: They will be 8 weeks old this Friday.  Here’s a picture of the formerly fluffy yellow Chick Chick.  Sniff..they just grow so fast… Whenever we are home, we open up the coop and let the ladies explore in the yard.  They love it and head straight to the bark dust and start searching for bugs and whatnot.  Thing1 informed me that one of the chickens is named Roger.  I think Roger is a great chicken name…although a bit too masculine.   Oh well…Roger it is. 

Jester (our dog) is doing so well with the chickens.  I feel a bit guilty giving him so much temptation, but he is doing well.  He loves the fresh country scent of chickens in the morning.  He did get a little too bold one afternoon and licked one in the face, but no harm done. 

King of the Coop

 

Scott has been working on creating a new garden area.  He dug holes, poured concrete, placed fence posts and streched chain link fence.  He has also dismantled the one planting bed we already had in that area and has bought the lumber so he can build some new boxes.  He’s so handy to have around and does a great job.  I’m a lucky girl!  We are hoping to have all this done by the end up the month so we can plant some seeds. 

Our peach tree and cherry trees both have fruit on. 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is Thing2 enjoying one of her favorite outdoor activities….salting slugs. 

 

Our schedule is still filled with t-ball games and practices.  Here’s Thing2 standing proudly on third base.

Thing1 is a monkey bar enthusiast.  She is very strong and I’m tempted to sign her up for gymnastics to see how she likes it. 

 

 

 

Knitting:  I’ve been working on the bolero for Thing1, but I haven’t taken any pictures yet.  I’m almost done and only need to finish one more sleeve, weave in my ends, wash and block and add a couple buttons. 

Scott and I have a meeting set up with our insurance rep to review our policies and talk about life insurance.  Fun times.  Next week we have a meeting with a lawyer to draw up a will and other such necessary documents.  We’ve been meaning to do this for a few years now, but it is so easy to keep putting it off.  Let this be your reminder to get this done if you haven’t already.  Otherwise, you know your family will fight over all your junk.  So…do it.