defenders of the blueberry patch

I'm grateful for the fact that we have 5 lovely blueberry bushes of different varieties and sizes. At this time of year, we spend probably 30 minutes daily harvesting those berries that have passed from pale green, to blush red, to a plump, frosty blue.

We aren't the only ones who enjoy the blueberries, either. Sparrows, chickadees, and cedar waxwings all enjoy swooping in for a few pecks... sometimes even while I'm in the bush, picking!

So we daily defend our harvest against those thieving birds! I realize that they don't get away with all that much, so I don't begrudge them a few nibbles here and there. Plus, when the elderberries come in, they'll be able to gorge themselves, because our bushes produce more elderberries than I can possibly handle or use.


On other fronts:

D went frogging several times this week and brought home Charlie and Twitch. (This is Charlie)

They're now living in the turtle pond in the backyard. I hope they have the wits not to become dinner for the red-eared sliders. I'm fond of frogs and would hate to see that happen.

My kidlet S is very interested in American Girl things. She has the doll that's her namesake, she gets the magazine, she has all the movies.

The magazines always feature kid-friendly recipes and crafts for her to try, and so as a result she's made some "stained glass" cookies (cut out cookies with melted jolly ranchers in the middle), she's made some kind of tempura paint/waterbottle/fish thing--all kinds of neat, girlish things. The most recent magazine featured ice cream sandwiches, which nobody really needs, but she was dying to try them out. So we baked our favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, and she prepared them for the family using chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream from Tillamook, and rolled the edges in chocolate chips. Decadent stuff.

Meanwhile, I was "facebooking" (a fabulous time waster I might add) and not really monitoring what was going on. So when it was time for bed, S came groaning and whimpering into my room, "Mooomm, I feeeell siiiiick...."

Upon questioning, I discovered that, FIRST, she'd eaten a whole bowl of ice cream. THEN, because the weather is so hot, and everything was melting so fast... she'd also eaten THREE ice cream sandwiches!!!

She got no sympathy from me, but perhaps she learned a lesson: both about the sin of gluttony, and WHERE YOU CAN PUT THINGS if they're melting and you don't want them to. (smacking head and rolling eyes).

Fishing at the park

D considers any day not spent with some time fishing as a day wasted. So yesterday afternoon, as usual, he packed up his pole and gear and headed off to the park a block away.

He returned around dinnertime, hands full with his catch:



Notice the complete lack of fins and scales there?

The story runs like this: he was fishing off the dock, when a lady walking her dog came by and mentioned she had seen a guinea pig over in the brush nearby. Not only that, but she'd seen it there several weeks previously, so this little guy's been on his own in the wild for a good bit. D, having much experience with our 4 escape-prone guinea pigs, put his trapping skills to work, and soon succeeded in catching the little wheeker and bringing him home.

Now, I'm all for guinea pigs, but we already have four FEMALES. We most certainly cannot keep a male! So tomorrow he'll be going to the Foggy Creek Cavy Rescue up in Auburn, where Lisa will treat him for mites and get him on the road to recovery (he's missing a great deal of fur on his back half) and then adopt him out to another family.

I've been telling the kids not to get attached, but they've already named him Oreo. I call him Shaggy.

The kids were inspired to write about it in their own blog, which they set up yesterday. I'm keeping it private, but if you're really interested to see how my kids think and write, email me and I'll put you on the approved list. :)


So tomorrow might be traumatic for the kids. We'll see. But Oreo has got to go. I do NOT need 12 guinea pigs around here, which is what would surely happen were he to stay.

number one son is 1-1!

Here's some pictures of D and his luau party in our backyard and surrounding environs. I didn't have any Don Ho music to play, drat!

He wanted an island cake:




We made tie-dyed t-shirts - but I made everyone wear trashbags so clothes wouldn't get ruined. N. was visiting from Eastern WA, so we were glad he could join us at the party.... he's pictured here with S, who is MY S's dearest friend. (Lotta "S" names around here!)



SUCH a clever boy... always polite for the camera.




The turtle had the right idea: shaded from the sun, right near the water.

... and the living is easy

Ah, it's been restful... kids away at Church Camp last week... painting the Master bedroom a lurvely sage green color... soaking in the kiddie pool when the temps were in the 90's... actually studying the Word of God for extended periods of time without being interrupted or losing my train of thought... piano lessons only one day per week...

if I believed in Nirvana, this would definitely come close.

Here's a few kidlet pics of our recent Seattle Center trip - D and S and lil' buddy S.


We don't know if we were allowed to play in this fountain or not... but we saw other kids doing it, so we figured why not? Plus an employee drove right by us in his golf cart without hollering at us, so we decided it was okay.




This fountain we KNOW we can play in. It's got a nice sloping pathway for you to walk down to the dome and get squirted. You just might be able to see S there over to the right, wearing her purple swim shirt and trunks.






The obligatory Space Needle shot. :)

More photos to come!

filing away for future blackmail

Today's topic: personal hygiene.

Our subject: 10yo male, firstborn, Type A personality

The circumstances: He failed to use soap/shampoo in the shower he was persuaded (under duress) to take. So he had to take another shower, his father threatening to come in to the shower WITH HIM and scrub his head for him. This did not actually transpire, but the idea of his father coming IN TO THE SHOWER and viewing him in his altogether put the fear of God into the boy so he actually used soap.


His enraged quote (at the top of his lungs, whilst in the shower the second time): "Hygiene stinks! It's pointless! It's disgusting!"


The family's collective mocking did not improve his mood any, but at least the boy is next to godliness now.

"what we did in the month of May"

1) Finished the concert series with South Sound Classical Choir. Yes, the sound tech came to the final concert and he made a good recording. I'm too lazy to go find one of those players right now to put on my blog sidebar so you can hear me-n-Kari playing.

2) Had a great visit with Grandma K from Michigan. We went to the Woodland Park Zoo with her and as part of a school field trip. We also planned to go whale watching up in the San Juan Islands, but alas, one of the Victoria Clipper ferries was having mechanical difficulties, so they had to cancel the whale trip. We got a refund, but that's not as satisfying as seeing orcas up close and personal.

3) I had a battle with boiling caramel for my popcorn, and the caramel won. My middle finger of my left hand will have a lovely, inch-long burn scar on it. The bandage made playing the piano rather interesting for a week or so.

4) Celebrated my 38th birthday and my 17th anniversary! Still deciding how to spend the birthday booty, but pretty sure it involves kitchen gadgetry, or bike things.

5) Snapped a photo with my cell phone at the outrageous price of gasoline on May 9, 2008: $3.79 a gallon! Decided then and there that it was high time to pull out the bikes and leave the car for long trips, or trips up to South Hill. (Price of gasoline yesterday, May 29? $4.19. Now even more determined to make bicycling a way of life.)

6) Spent a lot of time trying to get school completed. Still working toward this end. I told the kids yesterday we could finish school in ten days, IF we do 3 math lessons a day, etc... They are motivated, because we've left long division in the dust (or in S's case, set it aside) - and we've moved on to fractions and decimals (they love these!), and next up is geometry: rays, line segments, angles, graph coordinates, etc. Very visual, very geared to their learning style. Things are looking up.

7) Neglected this blog and all yours as well. I will snoop around and catch up with your postings sometime over the next day or so.



Is anyone out there a serious cyclist? I'm looking at acquiring gear to make it possible to transport groceries via bicycle. I could very easily go to Safeway, and even Fred Meyer or K Mart if I needed to - it's all here in the valley. (Don't think I could make it up South Hill!!) Richard, if you're out there... are you still in to this? Where's a good place to get saddlebags? or panniers or whatever they're called? I don't quite fit into this bicycle subculture I'm just starting to learn about. I just have a cheap, purchased-from-Target bicycle that's functional and fits me. Is there a niche for peeps like me? I'm daunted by these racing people.

grasshoppers, 2; sensei, 1

Ooh, hot off the camera. Two grasshoppers (left and right, above) played a duet tonight - Mozart's Sonata in Bb. The sensei (center) was in the audience, and the grasshoppers were jittery. We pulled it off, though of course we know exactly where the problems were. 98% of the audience, however, did NOT know we flogged a few of Mozart's carefully penned chords at the last, especially since we ended it with a flourish, completely unified. Sensei, not one to waste compliments, was pleased with our performance.

The rest of the South Sound Classical Choir concert went rawther well, also. We listen so much better now, and we don't oversing. Peter, our new director, is extremely good about the human instrument, making sure we don't sing outside our "box of beauty."

I was hoping to be able to post a video/audio of our group, but alas, we were stood up by the sound technician!! He's got two more chances to get this concert, so I hope he gets there tomorrow or next Saturday to do his job! I might have to get irritated with him to get him there, and I dislike doing that.

workin' for the weekend

For several years I have considered Wednesday to be my "Friday."

Saturday is a day of preparation - not necessarily a restful day.
Sunday is the Lord's Day. Imagine how much resting gets done in a pastor's home. Hah.
Monday - the beginning of the school/work week. Tuesday - more school, with the time constraint of piano. Wednesday, more school, and a lot of piano. And usually school AFTER piano too. Gads, do I ever dislike harping on children to finish up schoolwork when it's 8:30 p.m.

So now that the heavy teaching load is done for the week, I'm sitting and knitting in the La-Z-Girl chair. Well, blogging now. I'll have some knitting pictures on Ravelry soon - I finished D's socks, as well as made a pair of Spring Mittens for S. Still chipping away at A's sweater, now nicknamed The Shroud, because that's how long it'll be on the needles...

Did you catch that back there? SPRING mittens. Alaska's been sending their cold air down to Seattle. It snowed last weekend. Snow! In April!! (You high prairie states people just quit your scoffing; I live at sea level and this simply should NOT be--see previous post and consider our blighted hopes... and plants and shrubs...) So anyway, with the bone chilling weather, S. requested a pair of mittens. She dolefully asked, "will these take as long as D's socks?" Fortunately for me, they didn't, because knitting with size 5 needles is much different than size 1's. They were begun Friday night and finished on Tuesday.

Last weekend (the frigid snowy haily rainy one) I worked in the museum at The Fair. Unheated building. I was thinking warm thoughts as I knit that mitten, though, and I had more than one offer of purchase from passersby. My friend Christy ran and got me some hot coffee, so the day wasn't a total freeze out. I informed A. that I would require a HOT meal when my shift was over with, so he lovingly prepared a six-course meal drove me to the Old Country Buffet, where I could warm my hands in the hot macaroni and cheese casserole. Well, I was sorely tempted to, anyway.

Monday we went to a pastors/wives conference up in Gig Harbor. I was not too thrilled about taking the day off from school: WASL testing was last week and we got virtually nothing done school-wise, and I'm feeling rawther behind the 8 ball (did you hear my Eloise accent there?). That said, however - I changed my attitude rapidly once I got there. Not only were Dr. Bob Jones III and his wife Beneth there, but Dr. Jim Berg was also one of the speakers. The overall theme was "Reclaiming Our Teenagers," but for me the shot between the eyeballs was "What is your purpose in life?"

Oh sure, we all know that one from the catechism: To glorify God and to enjoy Him forever, right?

Back in the day when my kids were toddling and non-schooling, I kept a yearly notebook to record observations from sermons and things that God was showing me in my study of the Word. At the front of every notebook, I wrote out that year's mission statement. The wording might change slightly from year to year, but the basic gist was always the same: "By God's grace and power, and for His glory, I purpose to: 1) sit at Jesus' feet, learning of Him by His word, loving Him by my obedience to that Word, and living out my faith in expectation of His coming; 2) be an encouraging wife and mother, creating a haven of peace, order and safety; 3) encourage and equip other women to live for God's glory, sharing a current message from a close relationship to my Lord."

Somewhere along the way, I lost my focus. I'm notoriously forgetful; if I don't see it, I don't remember it. Long story short - I switched notebooks, and because the new notebook was not as user-friendly as my previous notebooks, I fell out of the regular habit of using it...and this mission statement (dated 2004) has been out of sight, out of mind.

SO, the circumstances of my life lately have brought my old yearly mission statements back to mind, and I need to get back to the "This One Thing I Do" mindset. That will help me clear away some of the clutter - not just in my thinking, but also in my scheduling (overbooking?) --even to the point of clarifying which activities/choices are best for our family as a whole - does it help or hinder my purpose? All things are good, but not all things are profitable. :)

That's what's rattling around in my brain lately. Need lots of grace to carry it through. Fortunately I have a Father with an abundant supply.

Speaking of a gracious Father, I'm so excited for both Karen and Kari - both of them moms to be, via adoption!! Makes me get all farklempt, in a good way.

Okay, part of that mission statement involves maintaining an orderly schedule; meaning, I get enough sleep so that I'm not tempted to eat my young tomorrow morning when they invariably act up. Talk amongst yourselves.

gonna be a bright, sunshiny day

Today was the nicest day of the year so far in the greater Seattle area! The weather broadcasters were all nervous, saying "maybe" we'd get to 69 (staying away from the 70 degree mark). When it was all said and done, the high in Seattle was 78 degrees - so Puyallup probably hit 80.

Kids pulled out the Slip-n-Slide, which wreaks havoc on the grass,but I can handle it once a year or so. I prepared early for grilling chicken and made potato salad (I do not possess potato salad skills, but I looked around at allrecipes.com to find something that looked tasty.) I also made an apple pie and some chocolate chip-toffee-pecan cookies. Oh great, two desserts--JUST what I need!

After getting the meals squared away, it was time to play in the dirt outside! I planted my flower baskets and dug up/replanted my strawberries, then sat in a lawn chair to knit whilst the children slipped and slid, creating a mud wallow of the front yard.

Today I also received a call from my credit card company. Apparently they noticed some suspicious activity on my card today, and they were calling to verify everything was okay. Everything was NOT okay, as neither I nor A. had used the credit card at all! Some internet cad attempted to make three separate purchases on my card, totalling somewhere in the vicinity of $140. I thanked the credit card company profusely for their watchfulness. That account is now closed, and we'll be getting new numbers/cards next week. That has me a little paranoid about online purchasing, which is my holiday lifesaver. My Christmas shopping is about 65-70% completed online. The company representative assured me that Paypal is VERY well protected, so no worries there. She said what probably happened is that someone sat down and punched in sequential numbers until they found one that worked - but just to be sure, she wanted to know if both A and I had our credit cards in our possession (which we did, so they weren't physically stolen).

This makes me wonder about sites that don't require the use of the security code on the back of the card - I mean, you have to get all 16 numbers on the card right, and then the 3 on the back, what are the odds, hm?

We'll see what the fallout of this will be in the weeks to come.

It hasn't ruined my bright, sunshiny day, whatever! ;) Tomorrow, though - I won't be seeing so clearly, the rain will be back.

And now that it's sundown, the kids are bathed and ready for church tomorrow, and freaking themselves out by watching a video of Doctor Who -the Third Doctor - hiding behind my green chair so the hissing maggots with fangs and the glowing green stuff doesn't get them.

Bright, sunshiny day - green, glowing night... it's all good.

geek quiz

Quick, name the tv show! (Linnet, you are disqualified from this)



see more crazy cat pics

Potato

A pointless song to enjoy. I need to stop wasting time at YouTube :p

The Lord's Prayer

Cute and a half.

perspectives

Earlier in the week, I sat and drank morning coffee with my husband, who was looking out the window.

"Look at that," he mused, "How long the smoke from the neighbors' chimney lasts."

I turned to look as well, noting the wispy clouds moving and dissolving within feet of their entering the brisk outside air.

What is your life? I said to myself. A vapor... here, then gone.

All the frustrations of school/nonschool homemaking/nonhomemaking - as real and as big as they seem... aren't.

At choir, we've begun singing a song with text by the English poet Christina Rossetti called "All Flesh is Grass." More perspective. :) Here's the poem (with the line that smacked me upside the head this week):

So brief a life, and then an endless life
Or endless death;
So brief a life, then endless peace or
strife:
Whoso considereth
How man but like a flower
Or shoot of grass
Blooms an hour,
Well may sigh "Alas!"

So brief a life, and then an endless grief
Or endless joy;
So brief a life, then ruin or relief:
What solace, what annoy
Of Time needs dwelling on?
It is, it was,
It is done,
While we sigh "Alas!"

Yet saints are singing in a happy hope
Forecasting pleasure,
Bright eyes of faith enlarging all their
scope;
Saints love beyond Time's measure:
Where love is, there is bliss
That will not pass;
Where love is,
Dies away "Alas!"

about me

Yesterday I received a homemade card from my dear 9 yo daughter, and I just now got around to reading it.

There's a heart with a smiley on the front - and when you open to read the inside, it says in wobbly crayon cursive:

"To the
biggest,
grumpiest,
Mom ever!

I(heart)U
UR the
BEST!"

...I think I need to change the "about me" section.

cabcree is so cool

....Look what she did for me!! She redesigned our church web site!

This is still (as crafty people would say) a WIP. Any mistakes in text, etc. would be mine. She took our old site and refrubished it so it's more kewwl with CSS-ey things. Mine looked very 90's old school.

And A. still gets his favorite colors on the web site.


So, props to Raba-baba-caba!

rant. please ignore.

True Confessions:

I am unable to successfully home school (keeping children on task and in harmony with God and fellow man), keep a home clean and running smoothly, manage the family finances, keep everyone fed regularly, and keep the laundry from taking over my garage floor.

Do not bother to read my blog for motherly wisdom and chipper bits of advice, because I do not have any to offer.

That is all.

Slinky cat

see more crazy cats



I enjoy the silliness at ICHC - thanks to Mrs. Blythe and Rebecca for making me aware of the place. :)

indoor water feature, part the second

WOOT! (=general expression of joy and happiness)

We just returned from a mini family vacation. Extremely mini - as in, left yesterday afternoon, back this afternoon.

Just one hour south of us near Chehalis/Centralia, Great Wolf Lodge is now open!

Weeks back when I was in a haze with the flu, I stared at the TV mindlessly until the Great Wolf commercial came on. My mind rallied to one thing: A treat. A RE-treat. We so need this. Immediately I tottered over to the computer and made online reservations... planning ahead for everyone else in the family to get as sick as me, and their approximate recovery times... and decided March 27 was The Day to go, because, Lord willin' - we would all be Over It by then.

As we drove south on the interstate, we saw snow on the sides of the road. (Lovely: Spring is here!!) The kids had no clue what we were doing or where we were going, so it was a nice surprise to pull into the parking lot of what looks like a massive Indian casino and announce we're staying here. Even then, it wasn't until they were in the lobby area that they put it together that GWL is a huge indoor waterpark.

Our rooms weren't ready when we checked in at 1 p.m., so they gave us wristbands and turned us loose on the waterpark anyway (my friend Lori had prepped me to bring a day bag along so we could do this). Wave pools! Waterslides! Arcades! Joy!! I was delighted to be in the waterpark basking in the 84º degree "weather" - watching the spring snow drift down and collect outside.

Around 4 I headed back out to the lobby to see if our room was ready yet, and entered a line that wound around several times and back a good ways. Having been to Disneyland and Magic Mountain many times, I could handle the wait. The staff wandered around serving different kinds of cookies and confections to keep us from becoming disgruntled. With time on my hands, I bonded with the four women surrounding me in line. We weren't about to go buy a pair of pants together or anything, but it was nice to chitchat the time away.

Joy! our room was ready (one of my cronies had to continue to wait for her room). They switched out my first wristband for a techno-cool gadget wristband with a microchip in it. It was my room key AND also contained my credit card information, so I could just swipe the wristband at any establishment at GWL and it would charge my account. (I chose not to do this--too easy to spend too much!)

Rooms clean, beds comfy, towels thick and fluffy - granted, the place has only been open for one week. We'll see what it's like a year or two from now! Food - incredible buffet with "real" food - and also some kid-friendly fare like jello, corn pups, pudding, etc. Service - overall, very good. They're still working out some bugs. A. noticed that the men's lockerroom still had tape up from where they had painted; I got stranded in a women's bathroom because there was no TP - and none in the stalls surrounding it either. This almost happened to me in a different women's bathroom near the arcade, but I hadn't committed myself at that point and hence was able to avert disaster. (Lesson learned: look before you leap.)

We turned the kids loose back into the waterpark after dinner until 9 p.m., and kicked them out of the room at 9 am this morning- back into the waterpark. They are TIRED, which was the goal. We had to be out of the room by 11 a.m., but we were welcome to remain on the grounds until 10 p.m. tonight. We opted to stay until a little after lunch, then headed back north. It was a sad wrench for me to leave 84 degrees for 33 and snowing, but the contrast was enjoyable.

Overall, 4 stars out of 5. They'll work out the TP situation and long check-in lines, I'm sure. Now I'm going to be regularly checking on teh internets for deals. Can't beat this family getaway with it so close by!


Happy Campers, Tired Campers, Content Parents



"Oh the weather outside is frightful..."



"...but inside is so delightful..."

indoor water feature

The must-have thing in today's depressed real estate market is amenities. You know, those cool things that make a potential buyer jump at the chance to place an offer on your home.

D, ever thinking, ever planning, decided to add a water feature to our home yesterday. Taking a handy piece of tape, he covered over the bathroom sink outlet hole - the one near the top of the sink, got it?

He wanted to create a waterfall, and he succeeded.

The water ran over the countertop, filling the drawers, the storage cabinet underneath the sink, and added two inches of water to the (installed just last May) linoleum floor, soaking into the carpet just outside the door to a 6 inch radius.

Things are still drying out. It looks like the top drawer will be permanently warped, though perhaps we managed to save the other drawers, the cabinet bottom, and (I sincerely hope) the linoleum floor/subfloor.

At what age does The Citadel accept new recruits?

rat race

When I was young and actually running to stay in shape, we had a drill for basketball practice that we called a rat race. (Some other people call it "Lines".) Starting on the baseline underneath the hoop, we sprinted to the free-throw line (touching the line on the ground), then back; then to the half-court line and back; to the farther free-throw line, and back; finishing with a full-court sprint to the other side and back to the starting baseline--all under 30 seconds, or Coach made us do it again.

Since Monday, A. has been out of town at a pastors' conference in Eastern WA, so I've been experiencing to a very small degree what single moms do on a daily basis. It's a rat race!

Monday: Clean house @ Dr. J's, get A. packed and ready to leave; bless my own home by cleaning; get kids to piano lessons; do the weekly shopping; feed the kids and take them with me to classical choir practice for 2.5 hours. D has to miss an evening piano class because I can't be in two places at once. Go home, go to bed. (No school accomplished.)

Middle of the night: S has a nightmare and crawls in bed with me, crying. She later leaves and goes back to her own bed and has no memory of it Tuesday morning.

Tuesday: D wakes up at 0-dark-hundred to watch Jurassic Park 3 so I won't bother him about doing school first. 10 minutes before class begins I remember that D needs to get dressed and ready for band at school. He makes it on time! We have one hour between band finishing and leaving for swimming lessons, so we review long division (with much disgust and disdain from D). Then swimming lessons - and a trip to Costco while the kids backstroke and front crawl. Home for a late lunch and a little more school. Must clean bathroom, living room and piano/dining room of kid and school clutter before students arrive. Make arrangements to practice with flute player for offertory on Sunday. Teach 2.5 hours, finishing at 6. S has piano class at 6:45 so we have time to run to Pizza Hut (where we must needs go whenever A is out of town!) Realize at 6:25 that I had made arrangements to meet the FLUTE PLAYER AT 6:30 and I am sitting at Pizza Hut!!! (DOH!) Call frantically and apologize for my airheadedness and make other arrangements. Get S to evening piano; take D home to practice baritone and piano. Pick up S from evening piano @ 7:45 ("this was the worst night of my LIFE!!!") and return Jurassic Park 3 to the library so we don't have late fines. Rescheduled flute player comes over from 9:20-9:45 pm. Husband calls a little before 10 and I am still dressed to shoes, wishing devoutly I were in pajamas.

Tuesday night: Man, it's cold without A sleeping next to me! I shiver until 12:30 a.m., when I finally get a clue that another blanket will probably help me relax and actually fall asleep. It does.

Wednesday morning: Need I go on? I bailed out on my monthly music teachers' meeting. How can I possibly take the morning off from school, two kids attending the meeting with me - and then teach piano from 1:15 to 5:15? So this morning is an intensive makeup day.

Augh. I am so wimpy, I want a vacation. Yet single moms do this every day, not just for a paltry 3 or 4. So I'll shut up and keep running the rat race.