Ahh, The Cake

Everyone keeps asking about the cake in the background of my daughter's photo.

Yes, I made it myself.

It took me three days.

EIGHT CUPS of ICING!

As I see it, I only have a few more years when the things that I know how to do will wow my child, then I will become boring old Mom and "Why can't I have a cake from the store like everybody else?" I have to score points while I can, lol. And believe me, she was wowed. She was in five-year-old heaven!

Here are a few close up pictures. They aren't very good, because, as I found out later (after the cake was devoured), the settings were off on my camera. Enjoy!

5!!!

 

Well, my Peanut had her fifth birthday party this weekend. I uploaded these pictures tonight and I just can not believe how grown up she looks. It makes me excited and sad at the same time. I look forward to knowing my little girl as a young lady, but I will miss her so much when she's grown and gone.

Although, if you ask her, she has no plans of ever leaving me. She tells me that she is going to stay with me forever and cries at the thought of having her own house and family. I keep telling her that one day she'll change her mind, but she doesn't quite believe me.

Notice Anything Different?

The blog has had a makeover!


My good friend juliemom, whom I have known since kindergarten (and who, by the way, is looking very svelte and healthy. Yea Jules!) worked her digital fingers to the bone in creating a new look for my much ignored home. I love the new color combinations!

Thanks Jules!

Retro Food

 

So, with the economy crunch and things in general being a bit mad, I'm trying to be more responsible with our resources. Trying to get every penny's worth from the money we spend on groceries. And for us this means utilizing the deep freeze in the basement. We're lucky enough to live in a very agriculturally centered area. We are surrounded by farms big and small from whom you can get quite a discount if you buy in large amounts. So I stock the freezer.

But...

Just because I put it in there, it doesn't mean that I remember to take it back out. Which is just like throwing money away.

So when I noticed a lonely pack of hot dogs languishing towards the back of the top shelf, my guilty concience kicked in and forced me to pull them out and serve them up. The only problem was how?
Generally, hot dogs around here are summer fare. Either roasted on a campfire or cooked on the grill, slapped into buns and slathered in condiments. That is usually the extent of our hot dog cuisine. And lets face it, they're not exactly a gourmet specialty. But with the banishment of highly processed carbs from the house, we haven't seen a hot dog bun in months and the weather was not compatable with outdoor cooking.

So what did I do with a sad pack of wieners that must be used up?

Beans And Wienies Casserole!

I haven't eaten this stuff in decades, and I don't think that I want to put it into regular rotation on the menu, but it was kind of yummy! And I tried to make it all "Betty Crocker Cookbook, circa 1965" beautiful with the 'fillet o' frankfurters' on the top. Very scary! Very orange! But we finished it off with no leftovers.

One More Thing Crossed Off My Winter Prep List

One flannel gown covered in marching elephants that is finally finished, just in time for my daughter to grow out of it.

Check

Visitors

Earlier this summer, we had daily visits from a small flock of turkeys. They came down to enjoy a dust bath in all of the newly dug earth at our construction site. We asked around the neighborhood to see who the owners of these "free range" birds were and apparently they are ownerless. The story goes that someone made a dump and drive of the poor mother turkey earlier this spring and she hatched four eggs. The flock now wanders the "neighborhood" on a daily basis and tends to roost for the night on our neighbor's garage roof.

We've gotten a kick out of seeing them for the last few months, strolling around like posh Edwardians on holiday. Of course, I can't help but look at them and think Thanksgiving.

This afternoon, I walked into my kitchen to put a glass in the sink, and there they were, all five of them, perched on my deck railing, just outside my kitchen window. I was shocked at just how big they really are. Of course I had to get my camera, although they weren't too happy about my opening the door and they quickly took off flapping for the yard.

Maybe if I spread some cracked corn I can keep them coming until November.

 
 
 
 

Number five seemed to elude my camera for every shot

Birthday

Tonight at 12:01 AM I will be 32 years old. And as usual, mentally, I feel no more than 15. I'm just as geeky now as I was then. It's just different categories of geeky-ness now. I hold no hope of ever growing up.

Peanut crawled into bed with me this morning and said, "Daddy is coming to get me from playgroup today and we are going shopping. Don't even ask where we are going." in her now, nearly perfected, teenage voice. She has already learned the knack of making her words drip with sarcasm and disdain. (Hmm, I wonder where she gets it from? LOL!) The present hunt is officially on.

Tomatoes, Ugh!

Canning season is upon us.

The family and friends are coming round with the excess produce that they can't bear to waste, thinking that we, with no garden, are in desperate want of it. And I am grateful, really. With the price of groceries in general and produce in particular, every little bit helps. I just wish it didn't mean that I had to drop everything and preserve the bounty before fruit flies began to fill my kitchen.

Last weekend it was a pile of peppers and two boxes of tomatoes, which I translated into 10 pints of salsa; five canned and five fresh. All of that boiling, peeling, chopping and onion tears. My husband will probably finish it all off before the end of October.


Maybe I should take my FIL up on the offer of more tomatoes.

Tonight is a dreaming night.

The laundry is undone.
The dinner dishes are still sitting and waiting to be washed.
Today's mail lies unopened on the table.

Maybe it's the crisp change in the weather.
Perhaps it's that the moon is just past full and glorious to see.

Likely, it's just that I have been rereading the "Anne of Green Gables" series lately.


Whatever it is, I'm not anxious to break the misty little spell that has fallen over my house tonight and has me staring at stars and planning in my head. I think I'll just enjoy it.

The dishes will still be dirty later.

Stoned

Yesterday was spent in the ER having my first CAT scan. My husband made a silly joke about feeling like the jelly in a doughnut. I thought I was going to leave the hospital with frostbite, the ER was so cold.

It turns out I had a kidney stone.

I say had, because as of this morning, I no longer have a kidney stone. But for the last four days, it was all that I could think about. All I can say is "Ouch!". Don't get one of these if you can help it.

I've had my gallbladder removed, I've endured labor pains, and I've gone through a scary hemorrhaging miscarriage. This was less fun than all three.

But now things are fine and my bladder isn't making me do the twelve-trips-to-the-bathroom dance all night long.

Now if I could only get my daughter to be as considerate about my sleep.

Short Vowels and Miracles

This has been the week of "Zac the Rat". Next week it will be "Peg the Hen".

Yes, we are working our way through the short vowels.

It's funny, but I expected this to be the most boring part of our homeschooling years. I thought that the interminable repetition and struggle that comes with laying down the foundations of reading would frustrate me, but it just isn't the case.

Seeing my daughter's eyes when she realizes that all of those sounds that I have been forcing her to learn actually make words when she says them out loud together is priceless. Walking through the grocery store and noticing that she is actually reading the signs for "milk" and "eggs", carefully sounding out each letter, is such a thrill.

I love that I get to be here for those moments and that they are not wasted on some exhausted teacher with 38 other minds to mold who has seen it so many times before that it is no longer miraculous to her.

I love that the miracle is mine.

Autumn

The first Canadian geese were sounding their call over the house tonight on their way south. My heart heard them and instantly thought, "Ahhhh, Autumn!" My favorite season of the year is nearly upon us. I am so thankful that we live in a place where we actually have a change of seasons to enjoy, instead of where my husband would love to be (Utah anyone?). The changing leaves and crisper air just call to me.

Also, that other inevitable is upon us, the new school year. Peanut and I have officially started kindergarten this week. I'm being blown away by how much that little mind can retain when it's something she enjoys (Reading, Yay!) and how stubborn she can be when it's something she feels challenged by (Handwriting). I don't know if it is because I fill double duty as Teacher and Mother or if it's just that my child is stubborn as mule, but when it is time for something that she considers work, the excuses and the guilt trip come trotting out.

"My tooth hurts."
"I'm thirsty."
"My pencil is too small."
"My pencil is too big"
"I already know that, Mama."

And the child hates to practice. Unlike a lot of children, repetition is not her strong suit.

Except when it comes to her favorite books. Now, those I have to read over and over and over.

So I feel safe in saying that I think I have a reader on my hands. Which comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me. In fact, it was probably inevitable. But my heart is joyful at the thought!

Hello! I'm Back!

Well, I'm back!

If there is still anyone around to care, lol.

It was the strangest thing. I was sitting around tonight, wading through my oceans of email and I had a sudden longing for my blog. "I wonder if you have anything to say?" piped a little voice in my head. "It's been so long. Should you bother?"

I decided that I should. I've missed my blog many times over the last year-plus, but everything else in my life has been so double-helix-crazy that I guess I just couldn't make sense enough of my thoughts to share them out there in the big, wide, webiverse. Things that were very scary, dark, and bad just couldn't find a voice here. But now it is time to emerge from the cave and allow the sun to warm my pasty frame.


Let's see...

We are now settled in the new house. I could sing to you "The Ballad of the Septic System That the EPA Just Couldn't Love" and regale you with "The Tale of 15 Months With the In-Laws". I could move your heart with "Termite Damage Tales From Beyond" and bring you to tears with the rollicking ditty, "Your Boxspring's Just Too Big, and It Ain't Gonna Go Up Those Stairs", but I won't. We wouldn't want to add too much entertainment value to the blog too fast.

But we are here and we are getting comfortable. The new house is perfect. Not in looks (goodness no) or in an impressive way, but it is the most homey place I've ever lived, including my childhood homes (which weren't very homey, by the by). It's as if all the horrible, rotten delays and set backs that we had to endure were bringing us to this house at this time. It's truly our 'home', the home that Brian and I have been waiting for our whole married lives.

I can't wait for the discoveries to be made in this new house. I can't wait to see our lovely wood turn blazing soon. I look forward to winter's coziness. Next spring's garden will be so much fun with all of our new-found room. And raising my Peanut here, watching her grow and learn, will be the sweetest gift of all!


So. I'm back. And I think I'll be around for awhile.

I've Always Known I Was Born in the Wrong Era

88 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Superior Take the test!

Vintage Lust

I so heart this velvet cloche. I've been staring at it for days now, trying to talk myself into buying it. It looks so Lizzie Bennet to me :)

Read It!