Monday, August 13, 2007

Visit from an old friend (also titled, "The Bird Weekend")

My old friend from college came to see me. Well, there were two reasons she came, one was to see me and the second was to retrieve a theater chair that she won on ebay and had me pick up for her. So she arrives about 12:30 and I open the front door and she steps in to give me a hug. We are in mid-hug and all of the sudden I hear a flapping of something right by my ear and brushing my hair. I exclaim, "What was that?", loudly and slightly frightened.

She says, "It hit me. I felt it on my neck."

"Do you think it was a bat? It must have been a bat." Now I am becoming concerned. "Did it come in the house?"

Shakey voice, "I think so.", she says.

"KENNETH!!!", I scream, knowing that I could possibly wake the house up but now there is a bat in my house, and I am not sure I care.
Kenneth comes down the stairs a bit groggy from being asleep for the past hour. "What, oh hi Lel" he says.

We explain the story and at first he doesn't seem ready to believe us until Lella says it might be better if she stayed in a hotel. He goes and gets a flashlight, leaving the two ladies, trembling now in the hallway where this animal could very well be. He returns a few minutes later with a large flashlight and hands it to me and he closes the kitchen doors blocking off the rest of the house from the kitchen, or was it the kitchen from the rest of the house? Anyway, he then sends ME up to check out the kids rooms and close their doors. I look at him funny, ME? I wonder, and then exclaim "why me? I don't really want to find it and what do I do if I do find it?" He doesn't answer and pushes me up the steps.

I find nothing, thankfully. And when I return to the downstairs hallway he convinces us that it must have flown out and that it realized that it wasn't flying away and we must have deflected it from coming inside. There is nothing inside the house. We reluctantly, and may I repeat, reluctantly believe him. We want to believe him. But we also don't want to wake to a bat sucking our blood or hanging upside down in the morning from a curtain. Shivers run up my back and Kenneth heads back upstairs to bed.

I look at Lella and ask, "would you like a glass of wine?" She says something like "hell yeah".

I open the kitchen door and am greeted by a little bird standing on the floor in the kitchen. I let out a shreak and when I scream I startle the bird and he starts to fly and then I start screaming again. It was all I could do to get the door shut again. Thank goodness it wasn't a bat! But there is a bird in the house.

Kenneth returns with Caroline's butterfly net and her safari hat. (see picture) He devises a plan to trap the bird in our back hallway and catch it but the plan involves me too. I have to hold up a sheet in the doorway to the family room so he doesn't go in there. I hold the sheet he scares the bird, Lella sits quietly in the living room thinking of many excuses why she should go to a hotel. The bird flies down the hallway, flaps up against the sheet, I start screaming again because the sheet is now flapping on my head and face, and then "THWAP". Nothing, no sound, no flapping, no screaming.

"Got it." Kenneth says.

"Got what?", I ask.

"The bird. I got the bird. It's okay you can come out now."
"No way. Get it out of the house now!", I say.

"Really, Whitney, I've got it. I was a tennis pro you know. Come look at it."

"Tennis pro? What does that have to do with it?", still behind the sheet.

"I caught it in the net. Get out here and look at this thing. He is little." Reluctantly I pull down the sheet ever so slowly and there it was in the net.

Next thing to do, obviously was get the camera. We call Lella in and she responded something like, "I don't need to see it. I'm okay. Don't want to see it." But with more prodding she came in and checked it out too.

What an exciting entrance!

Monday, August 6, 2007

Happy Birthday Pop-Pop!

This past weekend we celebrated my grandfather's 90th birthday. He is doing well and had a great time having his family celebrate with him. He enjoys watching my kids play in the pool and he has a running joke with Caroline my youngest. He tries to kiss her and she likes to run away. At first she was a bit frightened of him but now it is a game. I am sure he will have many more birthdays.

Thursday, August 2, 2007

More Bugs...This time not so happy ending

A few days ago my middle daughter Allie found this on our back door. Yes the door we all go in and out many times a day.

You guessed right, it is a Black Widow Spider. It had a nice web and had caught some dinner for it.

Alexandra guessed right away what it was and we were impressed that she identified it. It made for an easy learning lesson for the kids.

"Do not touch these spiders, Caroline. They will bite you and make you very, very sick. Do not squoosh these spiders, they may bite you before your squoosh them. Do not pick them up, do not catch them. Do not go near them!"




"Caroline, are you paying attention?"


This spider met his demise.

Of Bugs and Butterflies

This summer I have been battling with Caroline over bringing bugs into the house and then letting them out to "play" with her. Today, Alexandra caught a Monarch Butterfly in our yard and they put it in the butterfly cage. Caroline then, apparently took the cage to her room some time today and decided to let him out to play with her. A little while ago she came to me, "Mommy, I can't find my butterfly."

"What butterfly, honey?", I ask.

"The one we caught and put in the cage.", she says in her cute little voice.

"You caught a butterfly?"
"Allie did and we put it in the cage."

"Well, where is the cage?", I ask.

"In my room.", she says.

"Isn't the butterfly in the cage?", thinking uh-oh.

"No".

"Did you let him go outside?", I ask cautiously, knowing the answer already.

"No I let him in my room. He loves my room and so do I. He was flying around my room when I lost him." That is what I thought.

So we go to her room and start looking for the butterfly. The door to her bedroom was already open when we got there and I begin thinking this butterfly could be anywhere in our house. Thankfully after only 30 seconds I found the butterfly alive and well. I called to Allie to get the net and told Caroline to watch him and not open the door. Like a good Mommy, I ran to get the camera.
When I return to her room I find her showing the butterfly her bat that she made in bug camp! (first picture)
The last picture is her catching the butterfly in the net to return him to his cage. He is currently all snuggy in his cage with plenty of fresh flowers to eat and some grass on the bottom.
While this story is cute and has a happy ending, this summer we have been graced with sharing our home with "pincher bugs", ants, worms, and snails. Some we have found, some we haven't yet. Although each bug gets to play with Caroline in her room and with her toys.

Monday, July 30, 2007

"What I did this summer"


Tomorrow is my last day of freedom before I return to ... jail. Well, not jail for me but I work there. I teach at our county juvenile detention center, aka, juvenile jail. We return to work a month earlier than "regular" teachers and we work the entire month of June whereas other schools get out the first or second week in June. So tomorrow is my last day of summer vacation.

If I were to have written an essay, entitled, "what did I do this summer". I would be hard pressed to come up with anything interesting. So let's see.

Things I did this summer:
1. Went to the pool with the kids, almost everyday.
2. Got up early and drove kids to and from various camps everyday all summer break.
3. Went to the movies and saw, Rattatouille and Over the Hedge.
4. Went to Talbots twice and bought $650 worth of clothes on huge clearance. (clothes for me and all three of my kids)
5. Went to the Smithsonian Institute Natural History Museum. Rode the Metro in to DC from Springfield. Yes, on the way out of town I stopped by the Talbots Outlet Store and bought some great buys there too!!
6. Knitted half of a sweater, crocheted 4 potholders, and a doily.
7. Made a scrapbook for my mother with all her old pictures.
8. Participated in the neighborhood 4th of July parade which ended at and involved a day at the pool.
9. Harvested copious amounts of squash, tomatoes, potatoes, etc. from our garden. Pulled weeds, planted and sprayed for pests.
10. Canned and cooked a lot!!
11. Did considerable amounts of laundry.

12. Installed a new vanity in our downstairs bathroom. (Well my husband installed it, I just stood there and looked pretty!)

13. Oh yeah, I read five books too!!


I can't think of anything else. My boss asked us to all bring pictures of what we did this summer when we return. I think I am just going to refer them to my blog.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Welcome My Friend and Country GAL


My friend and former co-worker, Sharon, has just started a blog here on Blogspot and I think we all should give her a big "Howdy!"

She is quite an entertainer with her bits of wisdom and stories about a city gal turn country wife and momma! Her stories at work used to make me laugh so hard I would cry and my sides would ache.

She has decided to share her stories and wisdom with us all on her blog.

So check her out and comment on her blog with a big "howdy"!!




Any time you want to return to her blog I have it on my list of blogs on the sidebar.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Update on the "No TV" thing...

We DID survive the no TV day yesterday... well, my husband cheated. Once the kids went to bed he turned on the TV and we started watching Glen Beck. About 20 minutes into it I realized that I was feeling guilty about watching TV, plus my bowl of ice cream was finished. So I got up and checked my email and then announced that I was heading up stairs. Kenneth barely heard me. So I said to him, "See, this thing sucks your brains out too".

He came up right after me and we ended up turning on the TV again to watch the weather report.

The kids didn't mind so much about no TV day but they did ask a couple of times. Caroline wanted to watch a video she had borrowed from the library on bugs, Nicholas wanted to watch the new SpongeBob episode, and Alexandra wanted to watch a DVD "High School Musical" which she has seen a zillion times. Each time my answer was the same, "not today."

We will have another no TV day and I need to work on Kenneth about not watching after the kids go to bed.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

A "NO TV" DAY...

Today is a "no TV" day in our house. The kids have recently gotten their brains sucked out by sitting in front of the TV for 3 and 4 hours at a time. I can't move them and when I ask them to do anything they literally don't move. They have become limp green beans.

So today I have declared it a "no TV" day in our house. In the three hours that my middle daughter has been awake she has asked me three times if she can watch TV. I tell her "N-O!". She isn't happy about it but hasn't whined yet either. Right now she is stringing beads on the back porch watching workmen take down part of a tree in our neighbors yard. Now isn't that better than getting your brain sucked out by SpongeBob Squarepants?

What a Beautiful Week!

This week couldn't be more perfect in any way. If I had my perfect climate, temperature, weather, this would be it. All this week it is sunny and in the low 80's for a high. The humidity is lower than normal and it doesn't really get hot until late afternoon like 3ish. There is a slight breeze blowing and these big cottonball clouds scattering the bright blue sky. If only it could be like this all summer...

Monday, July 23, 2007

New Blog and Corn Salad Recipe

I have decided to begin a new blog specifically for cooking, baking, and canning. I really enjoy them and have had several people ask for recipes or comment on my cooking. I thought it might be fun to have a blog specifically geared for that. So I am sending you to my other blog for the recipe, but first here is a little 'teaser' picture of the corn salad.




Come visit me there!!

Don't worry, I will still be writing on this site too. I have so much more to share than just cooking!

Saturday, July 21, 2007

OH My!!!

We went to dinner tonight over at my mother's house. We had tacos and fajitas. Mom made a corn salad that was to die for. It had corn (shaved off the cob), green pepper, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, and Italian salad dressing and a bit of sugar. She said she got it off www.allrecipes.com. I will get the recipe and post it.

Update on Laundry and other random thoughts today

I have diminished my pile of laundry. I did 10 loads on Wednesday evening and a bunch of loads on Thursday. The problem with us is that if we don't take the clean clothes out of the dryer and fold them immediately then they stay wherever they are put. I can't put them back in a laundry basket; I can't put them on the couch to fold later. I can't put them on the bed to fold later. If I put them anywhere other than folded and in a drawer then they are forever in their spot. The kids are good about takin the clothes up to their rooms and putting them away when I ask, and my husband is great about shlepping towels and our clothes up the steps. When the family works together then things get done. Otherwise the pile will stay on top of the dryer or in a basket or on the couch FOREVER!

Oh, we had a momentous event today too. We finally installed a new vanity and sink in our downstairs bathroom. We have had the vanity and sink for over a year now and it has been sitting in the laundry room waiting to be installed. Kenneth finally did it and he did a GREAT job! It looks awesome and gives us so much storage in the bathroom now. Yippee!!!

Tomorrow we are off to Frederick, Maryland to pick up a piece of equipment that my husband bought for his business. It is a leaf vacuum.

Recently I have been thinking about trying my hand at thread crochet. I have found a few sites on the internet that have patterns for vintage doilies. These patterns are the original patterns from the 1940's through 1960's. They are pretty cool and I want to start out just making a doily that I can use on the wingback chairs in my living room. I want to put them on the arms which are gettin a little threadbare. Does anyone know of a good pattern that would be fun to start with?

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Procrastination...

My kids are gone this afternoon roller skating with grandparents and I had hoped to get some laundry done.


That is the heap that has gotten down to the laundry room. Yes, that is a 55 gallon trashcan full of laundry too. There are overflowing baskets in each of the kids' rooms and a big heaping mound in my bathroom that has yet to come down. We got lucky about a year ago and got a second dryer which helps tremendously with the speed of doing the laundry. But to just make myself start... A friend of mine once asked me if we were the cleanest family or the dirtiest family. Right now, we are the dirtiest!

So what do I do as soon as the kids leave? I start canning! Good girls can when the kids are away!! Or, at least I want to think. So the laundry sits but look what I made...



Squash relish! YUM!! This is the same recipe that 2 Lambs Farm posted about a week ago. She didn't chop up her squash and she made hers with yellow squash. I made mine the same way as she did with her recipe, except I substituted zucchini squash for the yellow squash and I chopped mine up in the food processor just before putting them in the jars. WOW! It tastes soooo good. Just like pickle relish and the veggies are crunchy. Her recipe made 5 1/2 jars!

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Canning

Okay, so I wonder why they call it canning when you put the food in jars.


I made enough spaghetti sauce to fill one large jar and I put the rest in the fridge. There was only enough left to fill a third of another large jar. So we will have that for dinner one night this week.



This is how much patty pan squash we picked just yesterday.



This is the squash and the zucchini cut up in bags to go in the freezer. The patty pan in front is what I still have to cut up left from yesterdays harvest.



This is what I still have in the fridge that I have yet to do something with. This is harvest from this past week. My vegetable drawers are 10 inches deep.

I have cut some much zucchini and patty pan squash that my fingers are permanently covered with squash juice. It made sort of a layer of stuff on my fingers that I can't get off with regular washing. Weird.

Putting Up Day

Today we are putting up tomatoes, zucchini, and patty pan squash. I am freezing the squash and zucchini and I am right now stewing the tomatoes for spaghettin sauce. I usually freeze the sauce but today I think I am going to can it. I think it will work better that way and won't take up any room in my freezer that way.

Yesterday we picked 10 lbs of zucchini, about 12 lbs of potatoes, and about 15 lbs of patty pan squash. We picked a mess of roma tomatoes but only really enough to make one big batch of spaghetti sauce. It will feed us three times.

I will take pictures of the harvest when I get it canned.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

What my 5 year old thinks I should talk about today...

So I sit here thinking about updating my blog and at the moment can't think of a topic. I ask my 5 year old daughter, "What should I talk about today?"

"Scissors.", she says.

"Scissors?", I ask.

"Yeah, scissors"

"What should I say about them?"

"Well, they cut. They can make hearts.", she says with confidence. And hearts mean love. That is exactly what she means. If only it was so easy. Scissors make hearts and hearts are love.

5 year olds have the best insight sometimes. They are so innocent and curious about the world they live in. I love to watch her in her activities. Just today, she was working so hard to catch a butterfly with her hands. He was just a bit too fast for her and she thought it wasn't fair that he wouldn't let her catch him.

The other day we were sitting on the front porch and we were watching a Robin pulling worms from the earth. He had gotten a couple and would carry each one off and then return for another. My 5 year old got angry because he was taking all her worms. She stood out in the front yard and yelled at him as he took to flight, "Go away bird! Stop taking our worms. I like worms and bugs! Leave ours alone!"

Then she came to where I was sitting and said that we needed to fill our bird feeder so the bird could eat the seeds and not take our worms.

I love 5 year olds.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

An Old Friend

Just a quick note! An old friend emailed me this morning and shared her blog address with me. Her daughters are beautiful and it is a fun blog to read so I am sharing it with everyone. I have put a quick link on my sidebar but here it is:

http://stopperfamily.blogspot.com/

I am so glad to have found her again!!

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

It is Bunko Night tonight. I get together with 11 other friends once a month for Bunko. Honestly it is just an excuse to get together with friends and drink a bit. We have bunko every first Tuesday of the month. We rotate houses and the host makes heavy hors'douvers and stocks the bar. We play 2 rounds of Bunko and then we have coffee and dessert. I hate missing a month because I miss seeing all my friends who I don't get to see or spend time with that often. Tonight we are meeting at a home where she goes over the top with a theme. I think tonight is Tropical Night. I usually don't drink that much and don't stay out late because I usually have to work in the morning but tonight is different because I am on summer break. So I may want to sleep in tomorrow morning.

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Our Fourth of July Float


For the last several years our neighborhood has had a Fourth of July parade. The kids decorate their bikes and moms decorate their strollers and we all parade around the neighborhood to the community pool. Last year some moms built floats. This year we had floats and old time cars and of course our decorated bikes. It is a lot of fun and the neighborhood comes out to watch the parade if they are not participating.

This year Kenneth drove our 1959 Farmall Tractor pulling a trailer with straw bales with the kids for an old-fashioned, all American hayride.

The neighborhood loved it and asked lots of questions about the tractor and practically rushed Kenneth as he parked the tractor at the pool at the end of the parade. This was great for Kenneth as he "stole the show" with the men of the community, but it left me to setting up the tables, chairs and canopy at the pool for our family alone.
Here is Kenneth entertaining his "fan club".

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

What do you do to celebrate the 4th?

What do you do to celebrate our nation's independence day? On July 4, 1776, our forefathers of our country, including, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, John Hancock, and Benjamin Franklin gathered together in the Philadelphia meeting room and with fear for their lives signed the Declaration of Independence. At one point just before Benjamin Franklin signed the document he made one of his many famous statements. "Gentlemen, we MUST hang together for assuredly we will all hang separately!" This meaning that if we don't win our independence we will all hang for treason.

As historians, many hold these people up on a pedestal as great men who were wise beyond their years, almost like they were gods. I, too, think they were great, brave people, willing to hang for what they stood for and willing to do what it takes to make things better for others. I often wonder if they were thinking, "what will the history books say about me?" No, I don't think they were. I also wonder how they got to that day. What made them come and sign, basically, their death sentence if we didn't win the war.

Today, our politicians and government leaders seem to have many things in common. It is hard to find someone who isn't egocentric, a bit narcissistic, and thinking of their next political step. They also are looking for historic "prosperity". Or in other words, "what will the history books say about me?". What happened to those people who lead because they are good? What happened to those who make good decisions without thinking what will people 100 years from now think of me?

Are our leaders now trying to live up to the standards set by our forefathers? Is anyone able to live up to them? Will we have great leaders like them again? Will it take another all out war? It seems that our other great presidents were also in office during time of war. The Civil War with Lincoln, WWI with Truman, WWII with Roosevelt and Wilson. Eisenhower and Kennedy. Reagan with the Cold War ending.

I have been thinking recently of our presidential elections coming next year. Our candidates have already been campaigning and for most, by the election, they will have been campaigning for 20-22 months! Great Britain just had their election and now have a new Prime Minister. Tony Blair announced a few months ago that he would be calling a new election and would not be running, they have campaigned and had the election all in a few months time. It is over. We draw ours out. By the time the election comes around I feel browbeaten by the candidates. They have invaded every orifice of my being. They are in my mailbox. They are on my TV. They are in my newspapers, magazines, and radio. They are on street signs and billboards. They are everywhere. By election day, I just want it over with. And by that time we know everything about them and some things we didn't want to know. I am not sure this is how our forefathers had imagined it. Maybe some did. George Washington was elected without a political party, but by the time he left office 8 years later he warned us of political parties. Maybe he did know. Maybe we should take some lessons from out "greats".

Oh, we are spending our Independence Day as a family. We will be participating in our neighborhood parade with bikes and floats. Kenneth is driving our big 1959 Farmall 460 tractor with a trailer behind it filled with straw bales and kids waving the flag of our country (the red white and blue). Then we will be participating in the events at our neighborhood pool. Then ending the day with my parents, cooking out, eating watermelon, and roasting s'mores!