If anybody knows what these bugs are and how to get rid of them, I would love some advise. I found them on my tomatoes this morning and there are LOTS of them.
I woke up this morning with a terrible head ache and, although I've taken something for it, I still don't feel very well.
Blaze had a very rough night, therefore I had a rough night. It stated with him not going straight to sleep when he was supposed to, but instead, laying in bed and playing with his tongue until he managed to gag himself with it and threw up all over the bed and pillow. So, I got to make a late night trip to the laundry building.
Then, just as I was about to leave the apartment to go put the laundry in the drier, he fell out of bed and came very close to hitting his head on the wooden pirate ship. He said he had been having a bad dream and he didn't really want to get up and climb back into bed.
There were 2 raccoons wandering around by the laundry building and I almost stepped on a toad in the middle of the sidewalk right by our apartment.
This morning, I woke up early with my teeth clenched and a really painful head ache.
Blaze was also up early and has been very perky. He keeps asking if it's time to leave for swimming yet. This is one of those busy days when Blaze has swimming, speech, and occupational therapy.
Ula is talking about walking the 2-3 miles to the library today, even though it's hot and very humid outside. Nika is planning an exciting day of laying on the couch watching t.v. and rising only to forage for food or use the computer.
They have always been complete polar opposites.
Yesterday I bought a birthday card for my mother and Nika was the only one who didn't sign it. She flat out refused. I'm sending pictures of the kids in with the card ( my mom doesn't have internet, so she's never seen any of the pictures on this blog), but the only recent pictures I have of Nika are from behind or of her hand being held up to block the camera.
Monday Memories: 6/24/92 and I just added a ticker to my site this morning
Monday Memories is the continuing adventures of our family taken directly from the pages of my old journals. Only the names have been changed to protect the teenagers who might be embarrassed by what they did as toddlers.
When we last left our heroes, they were jobless, living in a tent and an old VW van, traveling to land owned by relatives in Montana. Ula was 3 years old and Nika had just turned 1.
6/24/92
8:51 a.m.
Place: Goose Island Campground, south of La Crosse, WI.
We pulled into the campground at 10 O'clock last night. There was no one around at the entrance to pay when we drove in, so we just set up and went to sleep.
At 8:00 this morning, we were awakened by the ranger asking if we'd registered. I asked him if he'd take a check and he said they preferred cash, so I went and got the $8.50 fee in cash. Since that incident, Jasper has given me a lecture on assumptive speech.
"You don't say, 'do you accept checks?'" He instructed, "You say, ' Who do I make the check out to?'"
We had hummus, crackers, and cranberry juice for breakfast and now Ula is sitting at a different table, away from the rest of us, because she wiped her hummus covered face all over my sleeve.
"Dog! Dog! Dog!" says Nika, even though there are no dogs anywhere near here.
10:17 a.m.
We are back on the road again, driving through La Crosse.
We have just seen the World's Largest six pack at the Heileman's Brewery.
11:00 a.m.
How's this for a silly idea? Amish Market, 24 hour car and truck stop. We just passed a billboard for it.
The corn looks terrible here. The leaves are turning brown and the stalks are only about four or five inches tall.
11:35 a.m.
We just pulled over to the side of the road and Jasper is taking a picture of the sign for Elgin, Minnesota, population 733.
I had a teacher back in grade school who told my class, at Channing school in Elgin, Il., that there were only two Elgins in the country, the one in Illinois and one in Texas. She claimed that the one in Texas was named after the one in Illinois. It turns out, however, that there are Elgins in almost every state.
2:03 p.m.
I drove for a little over an hour, starting when we left Elgin, but Jasper is back in the driver's seat now, because I didn't want to drive in Minneapolis traffic, especially with the way the wind has been blowing this van all over the road.
5:09 p.m.
We have stopped for a rest at a park in Kerkhoven, Minnesota. Ula is playing on a bouncing airplane toy and Nika is on a bouncing duck.
We are only 60 miles from the South Dakota border, but we will probably stop for the night before we get that far. Jasper says he figures we'll get across one state each day.
A violin student across the street from the park is practicing "Home on the Range".
5:48 p.m.
We are now leaving Kerkhoven on Rt. 12, which is Atlantic Ave. in town. Jasper was just complaining about this choice of a name for the street, since he says that he thinks the closest Rt.12 gets to the Atlantic Ocean is Detroit.
I really wish Jasper would stop reading the map while driving. He puts the atlas across the steering wheel and it makes me very nervous.
We just passed the first Wall Drug billboard of this trip. It read "5 cent coffee at Wall Drug" and was on the Western edge of DeGraff.
8:12 p.m.
We have found a free camping area on the Pomme de Terre River. Jasper translated the French name for me. It means "Earth apple", which is a potato.
I am boiling potatoes right now, so that we can fry them for breakfast in the morning. We've already had dinner, which was pasta, served with a garlic and herb olive oil sauce. We had Ginseng Rush to drink.
There are signs all along the forest warning that it is private property and that trespassing is not allowed. This does make looking for firewood a little more difficult.
Easy Potato Pancake Recipe for Sunday Brunch and a Batman Breakfast
Potato Pancakes
1 large red potato cut into chunks, but with the skin still on
1 yellow onion cut in quarters
1 egg
2 Tablespoons unbleached white flour
salt and pepper to taste
vegetable oil for frying
Place potato, onion, and egg in a food processor and blend until completely liquefied. Add flour, salt, and pepper and turn the food processor back on until well blended. Heat oil in frying pan and then fry the pancakes until they are brown on each side.
For our family of 5, I double the recipe
The girls did not go see Batman yesterday, because Nika wasn't feeling well, but I had Batman on the brain, so I made a Batman Breakfast bento for both Blaze and DH ( who is really still a kid at heart). The Joker eggs kind of creeped everyone out, though.
It is a beautiful sunny morning and the garden is in bloom. We have our first fully opened Sunflowers and first Morning Glories.
I was also out this morning collecting rose petals to dry for potpourri.
Who would have thought that we would have our best garden while living in an apartment in student housing?
The garden has not been without trouble, though. I was growing two strawflower plants, so I could dry the flowers for craft projects, but they have both died from mold. It's been raining that much here. One of the Malabar Spinach plants had to be pulled up because of the mold,also.
Ula had been going out to the little bamboo house in the garden to find peace and quiet to read, but "tourists" kept stopping to talk to her about the gardens, so she stopped going there. A few days ago I came up with the idea of making a curtain of hanging shells for the bamboo house, in hopes that it would discourage the tourists. DH thinks it will just make the house look more tropical and inviting. Ula and I started working on it any way, but now we need to go to the beach because we are out of usable shells and we only finished one and a half strings.
My idea of mapping out the garden by putting together lots of little pictures of it, taken from above, has not worked out. I spent a long time working on it, but I couldn't get the pictures to fit together right.
So, Ula's best friend asked if I could do a super hero themed bento. Here is my first try:
Blaze didn't have swimming today, so this was his dinner while DH and I went to the movies.
DH and I went to see The Dark Knight tonight and the girls are going to see it tomorrow. It was very intense! I think this was the best and creepiest super hero movie I have ever seen. It made Batman and the Joker believable and, therefore, more frightening. NOT A KIDS MOVIE!
This is Wednesday's lunch with alien rice balls and left over Guthries chicken. This was today's lunch with dinosaurs made from peanut butter balls and molded in a dinosaur shaped lollipop mold. The Volcano is a cream cheese and jelly sandwich on toast.
Today's lunch container is new, because we went thrift store shopping yesterday afternoon at the Humane Society Thrift Store and found some wonderful stuff for not much money.
The lunch box, which came with one of the thermoses, was $1. The extra thermos was 20 cents. The ziploc containers and the Sponge Bob tin were a quarter each and the other containers were 50 cents. That cool bunt pan in the back was $2, but it's normally a $30 pan.
The silicon baking cups in the front (the moon and the bear) were purchased today from Dollar Tree ( they had a couple other designs available as well).
A couple weeks ago I discovered the website, Lunch in a Box, while looking at the favorite links section of another blog. It has all kinds of creative ideas for packing bento lunches for small children.
Bento is a Japanese style of packing lunches with a variety of foods in small portions and displayed in a pleasing way. Some of the bento website links on Lunch in a Box even have contests for best designed bentos with certain themes.
So, since Blaze has been so hungry after swimming class, which ends at noon, I decided this week to try my hand at bento lunches.
Here are my first attempts:
This was yesterday's Ocean theme lunch for after swimming class
As part of my loosing battle to get organized, I decided today to photograph every inch of my garden and try putting the pictures together and label the plants as a way of keeping track of where everything is planted. I'll post the picture when it's done, but it's a very time consuming job and my eyes are getting tired.
I also found this set of free garden journal pages
So, I just printed those out and I'm going to keep them in a 3-ring binder and include pictures of the garden.
Blaze didn't have swimming today and we didn't do homeschool, so I spent a lot of time in the garden or at the computer playing a gardening game. I bought the P.C. game Plantasia a couple weeks ago at Big Lots for $4 and the girls were instantly hooked. They thought it looked babyish at first, but they both found it to be very addictive. Today was the first time Blaze and I got to play. It was too confusing for Blaze, but I want to play it again.
Blaze began his swimming lessons yesterday.
He loved it, but it wiped him out for the rest of the day.
He took a nap when we got home and still went to bed early. He was even too tired to eat dinner last night.
But, today he was ready to go again!
I've been doing a little more planting in the garden this week. I planted carrot seeds and lavender seeds. I also planted purple bell pepper plants and Italian gold tomatoes.
When I went out to water the garden this morning, I noticed that our first cantaloupe was growing on the vine.
6/22/92
Place: the Parking lot of So-Fro Fabrics, Dubuque, Iowa
I just picked up my last pay check and said my good-byes to my boss. The check is for $174.90 and is all the cash we are taking with us to Montana.
Jasper and Ula have gone into the mall because Ula needs to use the bathroom and Jasper needs to call his mother to make sure she is at home before we drive all the way across Wisconsin to see her. If anything further has happened with her father, she will be with him out in California, instead of at being at home.
Nika is asleep in her car seat and it is raining rather heavily outside.
There is a fly in the van, that keeps landing on Nika and causing her to almost wake-up.
6/23/92
1:00p.m.
Place: Trevor, WI.
We just left Jasper's mom's house.
The kids are fighting over a tippy cup in the back seat.
Right now, we are on our way to Madison.
7:04p.m.
We've been to the storage locker, where we dropped off our dress clothes and some of my fabric, along with the finished quilt tops.
Then we went to the Willy Street Co-op to but spices, soba, and kombu.
After that, we went out to eat at Bahn Thai, where we stuffed ourselves with really great Thai food. About half of Nika's food ended up on the floor, though.
Now we are on our way out of town. Nika and Ula have been separated. Nika is in a car seat in the front and Ula's car seat is behind the driver's seat. I'm sitting next to Ula.
I really wish we were still living in or around Madison. I like this place a lot. We just couldn't afford to continue living here. Rent was too high and when we were living here, I was unemployed, first because I couldn't find a job and then because of a high-risk pregnancy.
7:30 p.m.
We have stopped to put gas in the van. Nika is asleep and Jasper is holding Ula up, so she can wash the side window next to her seat. She announced that she had to go "potty" as soon as we stopped the van. She actually asks to go potty at every gas station we stop at.
There has been a little sprinkling of rain, but it seems to have stopped now.
7:40 p.m.
It's raining again, a bit harder than before.
8:43p.m.
We've been through some very heavy rain, which made driving nearly impossible. Now, there are a couple drops of water on the windshield, being blown upwards as we drive. We can see the pinks and peaches of the sunset over the hills. This is beautiful country, big tree covered hills and fog resting in the valleys. We just drove through a cloud.
Nika is awake and smiling.
"Cows!" exclaimed Nika. This is quite an improvement. She had named everything else for the past two days "Dog".
Ula's favorite Blue Cheese Salad Dressing and a great kid's gardening site
Blue Cheese Salad Dressing
4 ounces of blue cheese
3/4 cup vegetable oil or olive oil
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 cup of sour cream
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 clove of garlic crushed or 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder
Soften blue cheese at room temperature. Add oil and mash the cheese into the oil. Add the rest of the ingredients, beating well after the addition of each item. Store in covered container in the refrigerator.
This is the last day for awhile that I will be able to spend lots of time working on my garden. It's pretty hot outside, though.
Tomorrow Blaze starts two weeks of swimming classes 4 days each week. We are also going back to homeschooling, picking up where we left off with social studies and doing review in reading and writing ( he didn't do very well with his writing during his last occupational therapy session).
We are going to be learning about Australia for social studies and about plants for science ( putting my garden obsession to use).
I found a good website for children's gardening projects ( oddly enough, I stumbled across this last night while looking for information about Australia) www.global-garden.com.au/gardenkids.htm
* Take shower
* Make Coffee
* Water garden
* Harvest basil
* Make a double batch of pesto and freeze half
* Wash a load of towels and sheets
* Do dishes
*Go shopping ( we need light bulbs since the bathroom light burned out in the middle of my shower)
* Wash a load of clothing
* Work on Blaze's scrapbook, which is about a year behind
* Make dinner ( real food, since we lived on junk food yesterday)
* Weed Garden
* Do MORE dishes
* Work on organizing homeschool stuff (We are beginning summer school on Monday if I can get ready by then)
* Read to Blaze
It is 7:00 p.m. and our plan is right on track. We have eaten lots of junk food and watched lots of Twilight Zone. DH has just baked a chocolate cake and is talking about venturing out in search of more potato chips, so the Plan can continue well into the evening.
Happy 4th of July everyone!
We had our fourth of July picnic last night, because Gainesville always has their fireworks show on the 3rd.
The fireworks almost didn't happen this year, because the University and the City were having trouble coming up with enough money to pay for the event, but after they had already announced that it was canceled, an anonymous private donor came through with the money they needed.
We didn't want to go join the crowds, so we sat out in our little garden house and had a picnic dinner and played with sparklers.
DH drinking the Moxie soda his friend brought him back from Boston
Death lights a sparkler
(o.k., it's really Nika in her hoodie, but it looks like Death)
For a while we had a family of tourists join us. They stopped by to look at the bamboo house and talk about gardening and stayed for quite awhile. Having guests scared off Nika, because she was feeling crowded and doesn't like talking to new people.
The tourists left when the bugs started biting, so DH, Ula, Blaze, and I had the the whole student garden area to ourselves for the fireworks.
_____________________________________________
Today's plan is to lay around eating junk food and watching the Twilight Zone marathon on the Sci-Fi Channel.
Since we moved to this apartment I have not been able to do many of the crafts that had been my previous obsessions. Wood working would be impossible here. So, my gardening has become my new obsession. I go out to work on the garden every morning before the children wake up and again when it cools off in the evening.
All this work is staring to pay off, because now we have our first birdhouse gourd growing on the vines and lots of little green tomatoes.
I've been covering the areas in-between rows of plant with news papers covered with composted cow manure. This works really well for keeping down the weeds. For awhile there, our garden looked like a lawn around the little bamboo house, because the grass was so thick and high. Now, it's finally starting to look orderly.
The food I'm growing may become more important than ever soon. We just found out that DH does not have a job for Fall Semester. Thanks to cut -backs at the University, his department has gone from around 50 teaching assistant jobs, to 12 T.A.s.
I'm skipping ahead a little to just before we left the Dubuque area, because even living in a tent is not always an adventure. There were many days that just became routine. So, fast foreword ever so slightly to:
6/18/92
Place: So-Fro Fabrics
Dubuque, Iowa
We did get the van started last night and arrived at the post office about five minutes before Jasper got off work, but then this morning the van wouldn't start again. I was an hour late to work. I'm skipping lunch to make up for the hour I missed, so I can still get off at 6:00. It will be nice to find a campsite before dark for a change.
We spent last night at New Wine Township Park near Dyersville. It was $5 a night and was a quiet, out of the way park, but the showers were pay and there was a warning sign posted about drinking the water because it contained coliform bacteria.
Jasper is taking the van somewhere to have the fuel filter checked, because he thinks that's what's causing it not to start. It also needs an oil change before we drive it all the way to Montana (Jasper's mom's partner owned 40 acres of undeveloped land in Montana that she had told us we could go stay on).
The only piece of mail we received yesterday was a card from U.P.S., saying that our order from Lehman Hardware was available for pick-up. So, Jasper's supposed to go pick up the package today, also. If everything we ordered is in the box, it should contain a campfire grill, a book on edible wild plants, and a tin box for storing soap.
11:50 a.m.
My mother just called. "What are you going to do if the van breaks down?" She asked. "Are you going to call someone to come get you or have someone send you money to get home on?" I told her we'd cross that bridge when we come to it. She claims there are no Volkswagon parts or dealers West of the Mississippi.
She said my sister would call me Sunday to say good-by before we leave and that Grandma H. called her early this morning to get my work phone number.
4:55 p.m.
My Grandma H.called to wish us luck and to let me know that if things don't work out , she would pay for us to get back to Illinois. She said she really wished we weren't going, though.
I've been sewing all day and have finished half of the top of a lavender and
white baby quilt.
I have a bit of a rant this morning:
Blaze is 7, but he is developmentally behind by about a year to a year and a half, because of his Cerebral Palsy and Epilepsy. He is, however, a generally happy, affectionate child, who is quite teachable ( he is starting to read simple 3 letter words). He is very social and would like to be friends with everyone. He tries to make friends with everyone and tells me that each new friend is his best friend. He accepts everyone regardless of age, gender, or abilities ( I have to keep telling him not to talk to strangers, but he never listens to that).
I'm not looking at him through completely rose colored glasses. I know he can be very bossy and can play too rough at times, but get upset when he gets hurt.
What is bothering me, though is that none of the"normal" kids who are his age in this apartment complex will play nicely with him. One day he came home because they had been hitting him with sticks. Yesterday my oldest daughter ran outside to bring him home because she could hear a group of 3 boys quizzing him on math problems and then making fun of how stupid he was when he didn't know the answers. The problem with this latest incident, was that Blaze didn't even realize they were being mean. He thought it was all just part of the game they were playing. DH says that's the part that really worries him, because he's afraid that someday Blaze will be duped into doing something bad by evil children who pretend to be his friends.
As soon as we got it made, Blaze made himself comfortable on it and has been laying there watching cartoons ever since. He didn't even want to get up to eat.
Ula thinks it's too soft, but DH and I think it's perfect.
Nika hasn't seen it yet because she was up all night doing homework that was due today, but not started until 11:00p.m. last night ( something about the French Revolution for Florida Virtual School), so she is still sleeping.
DH, Blaze, and I spent the morning going around the park together, while the teenagers went off on their own. Then we met up at lunch time at the all-you-can-eat German buffet. The food was really good! The problem was, Ula felt like she was back in Wisconsin and Minnesota when the Polka band came on stage and started playing. She says she knows how to polka, but she wouldn't show us, even though the band kept inviting people to come down and dance.
The girls may have been making fun of the music, but their brother truly enjoyed it.
After lunch we went our own separate ways again until the fireworks show at 9p.m.
It's interesting how different our trips turned out to be. We didn't have time to see everything in the park, but the list of things we missed was very different from the list of things the girls missed. They focused on going to see the various live performers in the international area of the park. We spent more time in the "future" area and doing things that we knew Blaze would enjoy.
The fireworks show was completely awesome!
We had to return home yesterday, but not before spending a little more time in the hotel pool and then going to a huge Asia food market in down town Orlando.
This really was a great trip to finish off our school year. Epcot is like a permanent World's Fair that covers everything we learned about this past year and then some. It was so perfectly matched with our curriculum that it almost seemed like we had planned our school year just for this trip.
This is Wednesday's lunch with alien rice balls and left over Guthries chicken.
This was today's lunch with dinosaurs made from peanut butter balls and molded in a dinosaur shaped lollipop mold. The Volcano is a cream cheese and jelly sandwich on toast.
This is today's picnic lunch
This is the beautiful picnic spot we found
