I am declaring this a Fun Day. I'm letting Blaze sleep late, mostly because he was so tired this morning that he wouldn't wake up, and then we are going to go have a picnic at the nature center.
So, in keeping with this theme, here are some fun things from the web:
What was the number one song the day you were born? Find out here:
Nika's dad sent her this link and she used it to make a very cute little box that looks like Totoro. There are lots of other characters on the site as well. You really should check this one out! :
Blaze loves his Hamtaro DVD and spent several days wanting to watch it over and over ( if you are not familiar with Hamtaro, it's a sweet children's cartoon about hamsters who have adventures while their owners are away). This site has free Hamtaro paper dolls: www.ru****a.com/sm/dolls2.html
the above website address is not correct because the program that moderates language on this blog believes I was trying to type a forbidden word instead of someone's name. If you would like to access this website, the first * stands for s, the second is h, the third * is i, and the fourth one is t.
Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream has a cute set of New England style building to print and assemble:
I had a really strange dream just before waking up this morning. I was in a car and the man driving was a representative of death, but he was also a regional manager for Burger King. On our drive, he was stopping at various Burger Kings to asses their profitability. I remember one was in front of a big swimming pool and water slide. He told me about how it only made a profit for about 3 months of the year. So, I started asking him about his job and if he always worked the same region and stuff like that. He said I was the first person, who had ridden with him, who had ever seemed interested in him and his work. Everybody else was always too busy worrying about themselves. As a result, he decided I would be spared.
The dream continued with the man from death and I visiting another being like himself, only female, who managed a beauty parlor. She debated for awhile about whether or not to cut the four long dangling ribbons from the head scarf I wore, and finally decided to leave them the way they were, because they were part of what made me a unique individual.
After that, we went to see a woman who lived with her very young daughter in a complete disaster of an apartment. There was garbage thrown everywhere and they had nothing to eat.
Then we went to an office building to try to stop a woman from dieing. As soon as we walked through the front door, all of these other supernatural beings began coming through the door, and as they entered the building, they changed forms so that they looked like the woman we were there to save, except each was a different nationality.
One of the doors coming off of the office building's lobby was a place where they kept children who had been taken away from their parents. One of the women opened the door and there was the little girl we had seen earlier. The woman said she would take the little girl with her.
There was also a little bot there, and I said I'd take him. "But how will you be able to clothe him?" Asked the woman who had taken the girl.
I checked the tag in his sweat suit and it read "size 3".
"Size 3, perfect!" I said, "Ula is just now growing out of size 3".
And then I woke up.
Back in the waking world:
We are back in the van and driving again. The decision was made not to go back into Helena today, but to go on to Missoula.
( We drove through Missoula and continued on to Seeley Lake.)
3:30 p.m.
Stopped at the post office in Seeley Lake to mail a letter to my Mother.
Seeley Lake is one of those resort towns that makes a serious effort to look quaint.
Since filling the gas tank, we now have $5 cash. We ended up at another gas station that wouldn't take out-of-state checks.
I stepped on my good pen and broke it.
It's now drizzling outside.
4:00 p.m.
The rain is picking up again and the van has been doing some hydroplaning.
Nika is awake and Ula is sleep now.
5:20 p.m.
We are stopped on a dirt road full of ruts and mud puddles. There were signs posted all along the road that said, "private, keep out", but we were already driving down the road when we saw the first sign and there was no where to turn around.
We were bouncing along and came to a turn in the road, when Ula yelled, "Don't hit a car!"
We were explaining to her just how unlikely it would be for us to meet another car out here, when I spotted another car. There is a green compact car with 1984 Montana license plates and a red VW van. Both have been abandoned and have their windows broken out.
Jasper has left us parked here by the wrecked cars and gone to scout around to see if he can find the property we're looking for and make sure the road is passable.
He's already stopped by the van a couple times to report his findings. The road we are on, ends at a creek. There is a trailer next to the creek, but no one was there. He said it did look like someone had been there recently, though.
On his second stop by the van, he said he had found where the cabin was that is marked on the map MIL gave us.
MIL had shown us a picture of a frame cabin, but now Jasper says there are two log cabins on the site.
I've been feeding the kids crackers and carob soy milk and reading Dr. Seuss books to keep them happy and entertained.
It's still raining pretty hard.
6:26 p.m.
Jasper is not back yet.
The girls and I have been singing songs. We have already gone through "Skip To My Loo", "Eensy Weensy Spider", "The Wheels on the Bus", "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean", and "Go Tell Aunt Rhody".
6:50 p.m.
We've now gone through "Pop Goes the Weasle", "She'll be Coming Around the Mountain", "The Ants Go Marching", "This Old Man," " Pink Pajamas," and "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes".
Ula is now playing with an imaginary dog and Nika is shouting "Dog! Dog!"
The windows have fogged up and the rain has not let up at all.
7:21 p.m.
Jasper's back andit doesn't look like we'll be camping on MIL's land tonight. He wasn't able to find any access, although he thinks he was on the property and says it was very nice, except that the stream is only about 2 inches wide there. That's the stream we were hoping to use as a source of drinking water.
7:36 p.m.
We drove for awhile on a road that had daisies growing on each side of the car tracks and down the middle, until it came to a fork in the road. The van has been turned off again and Jasper is out scouting down one branch of the road.
It's still raining and Jasper says his water proof boots have about an inch of water inside them.
I've changed Nika's diaper by laying her on my lap.
7:43 p.m.
Jasper's back again and is very out of breath. He said he was smelling gas and when he opened the driver's side door, the smell became stronger.
9:52 p.m.
We are now checked into a motel in Seeley Lake. We tried to check into a new Super 8 Lodge in Condon, but they wouldn't take out-of-state checks, so we drove all the way back here.
Jasper put on some dry clothes and went to call his dad.
The rest of us are sitting in our room, eating refried beans and salsa on crackers, and watching Return of the Jedi on television.
Before I get started with my Monday Memories post for today, I just wanted to say that my heart goes out to all the people who will be effected by Hurricane Gustav today.
To everyone else, I want to wish you a happy Labor Day!
Labor Day is a big deal in the little town where my mother grew up, so she's having her annual Labor Day party today. This year's theme for the party is "Chicago", so she will be serving Chicago style pizza and Chicago hot dogs. The pre-parade entertainment should be starting in a few minutes.
Then, after the parade, my mom's family and guests go back to her house for the back yard party.
I push my way through a tangle of knee high weeds. Ahead of me, the trees are so enveloped in vines that they look like rolling green hills. An animal rustles the leaves as it scurries from branch to branch, but I can't see what it is. Bugs swarm over a fruit they have pulled from a near-by plant. The heat and humidity are oppressive and sweat has already begun to trickle down my face and into my eyes. I wipe it off with my shirt sleeve and watch a hawk circling over head. There was once a well warn path here, but it is now littered with moss covered branches and dead leaves. I pick up a rotting branch and throw it as far as I can.
Then I reach my goal, the ruins of my once tropical paradise, my retreat from the outside world, my little bamboo garden house.
O.K., that was a bit dramatic, but my little bamboo hut is no longer usable and I figured it needed a good send-off.
So, today's garden update is a eulogy to the garden house, which has gone from being a cute little tiki hut to an over-grown ruin in just a single summer.
We began gardening our plot in the U.F. student gardens back in April.
Even in April it's hot in Florida, so I wanted a shady place in the garden where I could sit. The lab where DH spends a lot of his time is surrounded by bamboo and I was inspired by the palm thatched houses in the books we were reading, as Blaze learned about Mexico and South America during our homeschooling last spring.
DH helped cut the bamboo and we transported the longest pieces by sticking them through the skylight in the car.
Blaze and I did all the building ourselves. It was a great building project for us, because the only expense was the string that we tried it all together with.
We collected palm fronds from the woods to cover the roof and it was almost water tight. There were several quick summer showers, when either Ula or Blaze sat out in the hut with me and waited for the rain to pass.
I added a bamboo table to the hut for Ula's birthday garden party (which was also sort of a birthday party for the hut, because that was when I considered it truly complete).
The vines we planted around the hut, birdhouse gourds, luffa, morning glories, and beans, began climbing up the sides of the house, providing us with more shade and privacy. It became a place where Ula could go to read, and I could go to in the morning, before anyone else was awake, to enjoy a little peace and watch the birds. It also became a conversation piece, as tourists coming to see the bat house in the evenings would stop to talk.
There were even a few times when it was a fun place to hang out at night.
It worked very well as a trellis and we soon had gourds growing and flowers blooming.
It was becoming a bit too popular as a stopping place for tourists and Ula's reading was constantly being interupted by people wanting to ask questions about the gardens, so she and I started stringing shells to make a curtain that would provide more privacy, but we never finished it.
Then, while we were away on our vacation to Sanibel, a tree fell on the hut causing it to tilt.
I thought that if I could remove the tree, I could probably straighten out the hut again. It had held up amazingly well. But, I didn't have the right tools. I had built the whole hut using nothing but a small hack-saw and that's what I was trying to cut through the tree with. I managed to cut off some of the branches that were in the neighboring garden plot, but I couldn't cut through the trunk.
Then the weather turned bad and for several days I couldn't go out to the garden at all. When I did get out there again, the dead tree had been removed. I should be grateful to the U.F. grounds keepers or whoever removed it, but they stomped down my sesame plants and broke the bamboo house beyond repair.
Blaze cried when I told him it couldn't be fixed. I just feel dissapointed and frustrated. I put so much time and work into this and it lasted such a short time.
Another lesson in impermanance.
Yesterday I removed all the chairs from the hut and pulled up the grass mats from the floor. Either today or tomorrow, Blaze and I will arm ourselves with scissors and begin demolition.
After the not-so-positive food post yesterday, I decided I needed to post pretty food today, to cleanse my mental pallet.
These are the lemon cakes I made for Ula, the night before she left for college. She is allergic to egg yolks and yellow food coloring, but really likes lemon flavored cake. These were made with a white cake mix, which only called for egg whites, and I substituted lemon juice for 1/3 cup of the water.
The glaze is just 2 Tablespoons of melted butter, a splash of lemon juice, and enough powdered sugar to make it the right consistency for spooning over the cakes. The raspberries really made them look elegant!
My boss was collecting stuff for a yard sale/fundraiser for the school and I told her I would bring in some things that Blaze has outgrown. So, I filled the trunk of the car with things from our starage locker that I felt we no longer needed, and one of these things was the old plastic baby food grinder.
But that was also the day our catalog arrived from HearthSong, which contained this product for catching ice cream drips.
I went running out to the car and rescued the baby food grinder from the yard sale stuff. I removed the grinder from the top and made Blaze an ice cream cone. The fit wasn't perfect, but by wrapping the bottom of the cone with a folded paper towel, it became a snug fit.
Blaze loved it! He worries a lot about making messes and this took that stress away completely.
"Stop fondling the box with the delicate electronic equipment" Said Nika to me
We are one step closer to having a home computer again. The hard-drive arrived in the mail yesterday. Now, we just have to wait until it's installed. The tower is at DH's lab, so he needs to bring it home today.
Blaze started first grade today. I'm working at the same small private school that he's attending, but not in his classroom. My job only lasts two hours, so I stopped by Blaze's class to see how he was doing, as soon as I finished my work. I was told he was doing well, but when I told him I'd be back later to pick him up, he got upset and said he didn't want to stay at that school. I had originally planned to just put him in school half-days and it's only been a week since the school director suggested trying him with full days to start out with. I'm still not sure this is what's best for him and I still plan to work with him at home.
His classroom is very nice, though. Here is a picture of the wall opposite from the wall I posted a picture of yesterday:
They have a nice collection of historically inspired play clothes, as well.
I will not be doing any "Monday Memories" entries until our home computer is up and running again. Sorry, Ula.
We survived tropical storm Fay with very little trouble. Nika's school was cancelled both Thursday and Friday, but we kept complaining that is was "called on account of drizzle", until the real rain and wind started half way through the day on Friday.
I went out to take pictures of the rising lake water, during a lull in the rain on friday, and came home with my umbrella looking like this:
Ula's flight left Jacksonville on-time yesterday morning.
Then, we decided to go spend the rest of the day in St. Augustine, the oldest (European) city in the U.S. We went to the fort, The castillo de San Marcos, and then to the beach. We drove through some pretty heavy rain between Jacksonville and St. Augustine and almost changed our minds about going, but once we got there, the sun came out and it was a nice day, except for the wind.
There is not usually water in that mote.
Aug. 21, 2008
It's raining, It's Pouring!
We did not send Ula off to college this morning. The Jacksonville airport was closed and we were able to rescedule her flight. She will now be leaving Saturday morning. Nika's school was closed today, as well, but the rain and wind have not been all that hard so far. Tropical Storm Fay has not left the coast yet, so it hasn't really reached us. Right now, we just have the outer bands of the storm going over us.
Blaze and I are "out and about", because his speech class this afternoon has not been cancelled, so we've stopped at the library on the way.
It looks like we may have a home computer again by the end of next week. DH ordered a new hard drive today. He says the new one is 3 times as powerful as the old one. He and his friend tried to extract all our files from the old one today, but there is something wrong with our old hard drive that makes that impossible ( Thank goodness I put most of my pictures on Photobucket!).
In real time, Ula is all packed, but we are still not sure if her flight will be leaving on time. Many things in Jacksonville are closed tomorrow as Fay appoaches, but Air Tran (the airline she is flying with), tells us that everything in Jacksonville is fine. The radio says they are even closing the bridges if there are gail-force winds.
Now back to pictures of better times:
Lunch at the Bubble Room ( chosen by Blaze because he liked saying "Bubble Room").
With colored lights and movie star pictures covering the walls, waiters and waitresses called Bubble Scouts, and 5 floors of stuff to look at (including a year-round christmas scene), The Bubble Room was the tackiest restaurant on the islands, but it was also Blaze's favorite non-swimming activity. The food was o.k., too.
our table
Ula humming along to a Cab Calloway song
Playing in the ocean right after lunch
We left the islands early in the day on Saturday, but didn't come straight home. We stopped first at the Winter homes and lab of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford in Fort Meyers.
That's the largest Banyan tree in the continental U.S. right behind Blaze and the statue of Edison.
Edison's lab
Then we stopped again at St. Armond near Sarasota to walk around and play on another beach.
We had not realized there was a Columbia restaurant in Sarasota until we were walking past this one, but then we had to stop for lunch, because that is where DH and I went out to eat on our Honeymoon.
I tried to turn it on the morning after we returned from Sanibel and was greeted by the "blue screen of death".
So, here I sit at the public library listening to "Layla" playing on the earphones of the guy next to me and on the other side, a group of teenage boys laughing about a friend's Facebook page.
So, I decided to go out to the garden to see how it was doing after being left for about a week untended (Nika stayed home from the trip, but she won't help with the garden). Nature has tried to take back it's own. The weeds have gotten completely out of control and a tree has fallen on my little bamboo house.
Then, of course, there is Tropical Storm Fay, which is predicted to hit Jacksonville about the same time that we are supposed to be taking Ula to the airport there to send her back to Minnesota for college.
I'll post more fun vacation stuff soon, but my computer time is up now...
This is the last week before people in this household start going back to school. Nika starts on the 18th and Ula leaves for college on the 21st. DH doesn't start until the 25th., but the class he was teaching at the university for summer semester B, just ended 2 days ago. I don't actually know when Blaze and I start school. I have to call the school tomorrow.
So, anyway, we decided to dedicate most of this week to doing fun things as a family, although Nika refuses to participate in most of it.
We started off today by taking Nika shopping for school clothes. She got two t-shirts. Then, Nika, Ula, and I became separated in the store (after the girls started arguing) and a comical chase scene ensued though Target as we tried to find each other again.
After we returned from Target, DH, Ula, Blaze and I drove down to Alexander Springs in the Ocala National Park to go canoing (Nika wouldn't go).
The spring water was a great way to cool off on a hot day and floating down the river was very relaxing.
We saw lots of birds and turtles, but no alligators this time.
Ula was offended by this graffiti she read as we passed under a bridge:
We were out in the canoe for 3 hours, being entertained as we paddled by watching the fish through the crystal clear water, listening to Blaze sing (or repeatedly ask for things), and DH make up imaginary creatures to explain noises in the woods or holes in the sand under the water. There was much talk about the Swamp Yeti that makes sounds like human voices in the woods, and its battle with the Fresh Water Krakken, who makes holes in the sand under water (it's a very small krakken).
Here are some little movies I took on the trip ( can you tell that this past week's new skill is embedding movies into this blog?) :
After the canoing we went swimming in the springs.
Happy 08/08/08!
Today is the beginning of the Olympic Games in Beijing, China.
The Bento Challenge website is doing an Olympic theme this week, so check out the panda made of rice:
Taming the Chaos in my kitchen (and getting distracted by cuteness)
I have started a major reorganizing project in my kitchen. There are ships galleys that are far more spacious than the kitchen in this apartment (I don't think they expect college students to cook anything more complicated than Ramen). We have a lot of dishes and cooking supplies, so when we moved in here, we were just piling things on top of each other to fit them in the limited cupboard and drawer space. The result was a disorganized mess.
I started with the drawer where I keep the cookie cutters.
Before:
After:
Now, I may be able to find things.
I have started working on the pantry-style shelves where the food and spices are kept, but I'm not done because I keep getting distracted by other things ( at the moment the kitchen is even harder to move around in, because so much of the stuff I took off the selves is still all over the floor).
Here is one of the distractions, the baby bird that Blaze and I found next to our building:
I have to give up the computer to Ula for awhile because she is working on a favor for my mother. My mom is preparing for the big Labor Day party she holds every year. Every year she chooses a new theme for the party and this year's theme is Chicago. She has asked Ula to make a CD of all the songs about Chicago that she can find.
If anyone has any suggestions for songs we may not have thought of, please post them in the comments section.
So far we have:
In the Ghetto, by Elvis
The Night Chicago Died, by Paper Lace
Sweet Home Chicago, from The Blues Brothers
Chicago, by the Doobie Brothers
Bad,Bad LeRoy Brown, by Jim Croce
Stuck in Chicago, by Syl Johnson
The Death of a Cubs Fan, by Steven Goodman
When Ula arrived for her summer vacation from college, she told me she was craving okra, so I went to the store and bought a couple bags of frozen breaded okra and fried them. Then a couple weeks later I found little six-packs of okra plants outside the small independent grocery store where I buy most of my plants. I bought enough to fill a row in our garden, but I had no idea what to expect, because I had never grown okra before ( I grew up about 40 miles from Chicago, where okra is not such a big deal).
The okra plants have been doing great in this hot humid weather and now they have their first flowers. I was amazed by how pretty they are!
We have 3 eggplant plants from the same source, that were labeled "unknown variety" when I bought them. They have all started producing their first fruits, but one plant is different from the others and I really like the colors on it's eggplant.
The green beans have also started blooming and are a nice color, but DH says they look like something out of a Georgia O'Keeffe painting (he's not a big Georgia O'Keeffe fan).
DH is not feeling well today. He has been fighting a cold or allergies for several days, but now it has moved down into his throat and lungs.
It also looks like it might rain. Oh, wait! It's August in Florida. When doesn't it rain?! (Had I mentioned that I lost a few of my garden plants to mold because it's been so wet here?)
So, we may just have a quiet day at home.
Blaze had been asking us to take him bowling for a couple weeks now. He had never been before, but had seen it on t.v. or something, so when I got the e-mail that Endeavor (special needs activities) was having a free bowling night, I decided we had to go.
I almost didn't take Blaze, though, because I was so angry at him earlier. I walked outside to check on him and found him with his pants down around his knees, peeing on the ground right in front of the neighbor's open window.
Blaze, Ula, and I did go.
here are the silly clown shoes I was given to wear
Blaze was a little scared to try bowling at first, but with help from his sister, he got better and better as the game went on and even rolled one strike.
I guess we need to leave Ula in charge more often. In our absence, not only did she keep Blaze alive, but she declared a television-free day on Wednesday, cleaned, and made the other children clean.
DH and I returned from Orlando late last night.
My MIL's visitation and funeral were both on Wednesday at a large and very formal funeral parlor right on the cemetery grounds.
My mother had been upset that we were not taking Blaze to the funeral, because she doesn't believe that children should be sheltered from such things.
For a while, we did feel bad about leaving Blaze at home, because he had been so sweet when he told DH that he didn't want to stay home, he wanted to say good-bye to grandma. But, once we arrived at the actual funeral, we were glad of our decision. There were no other children there.
This was not one of the small, intimate funeral homes that I was mostly taken to as a child, where kids could be sent outside or to another room when they became antsy. Instead of a family style kitchen with a pot of drip coffee waiting for any mourners who needed it, this funeral parlor had a cafe, offering hot or iced lattes, chia, mochas, and anything else you could find on any Starbuck's drink menu, including frozen drinks. It was very hot Wednesday, so the cold drinks were very welcome, but it was strange seeing everyone paying their last respects while carrying to-go cups.
The priest had a slight Irish accent, which was a nice touch, since DH's family is Irish, but he kept trying, and failing to lighten the mood. He kept going off on long rambling tangents about the Green Bay Packers or movies like Mama Mia or The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and it was hard to see where these were going until, each time, he referred back to one of the Bible verses he had read.
After the funeral, there was a reception at a very nice Italian restaurant, which was a wonderful idea. It was the kind of place that DH's mom would have enjoyed, everybody was able to relax, talk, and eat, and nobody had to worry about cleaning up afterwards.
Then, yesterday morning, DH, two of his sisters, one of his brothers, one brother-in-law, and I went to the botanical gardens where they are going to dedicate a bench to the memory of his mother. We found the perfect bench, in the shade, near some plants she really liked.
Following the trip to the botanical gardens, DH and I went off on our own to take advantage of some of the shopping opportunities that Orlando offers, that we don't have here. We brought home lots of Asian junk food for the children and I was able to get some new bento making toys from the clearance table at William-Sonoma.
I found these molds for only $4.99:
And this cupcake pan for $9.99:
We also went to Ikea for the first time ever. That was fun. We even had dinner there (Swedish meatballs and sparkling pear juice).
Playing in the ocean right after lunch 
That's the largest Banyan tree in the continental U.S. right behind Blaze and the statue of Edison.
Edison's lab 
here are the silly clown shoes I was given to wear
