Ms. September's package has arrived.

S.S., a friend from Newburgh, is a fellow quilter and invited me to join a virtual quilting bee. In a nut-shell - there are 12 quilters and 12 months. Each month the 12 quilters make 1 block for 1 of the members, who has been predetermined. (So that at the end of the month that 1 quilter has 12 blocks to put together as a quilt.) At the start of the month, the quilter of the month sends out a package with some, or all of the fabric needed for the block and basic guidelines.

My friend is the guinea pig and sent the beautiful fabric above. I have been looking through one of my quilting books and making sketches ever since the mail arrived. (of course watching Anna on the playground during Matthew's soccer practice and later in our back-yard all-the-while)

I think I have my basic idea, but plan to consult my sister-in-law (quilting genius) this evening to see what she thinks. I also am going to make a small test run on some of my own fabrics!

Update on my goals from today - clearly I had too many goals for a day in which fabric arrives in the mail. I made terrific headway on both, but neither goal is completely done. To be honest, I could power them both out before bed, but I would rather tinker with my quilt block and go to bed happy rather than with a clean dining room table!

I love a new project, especially one that reminds me of simpler days, when I had time to make an entire quilt! I also like making new friends, even if they live across the country!

Good to have a goal!

Ok - so my only goals for today are:

• get EVERYTHING on September's calendar (this may take the rest of August :)
• put away ALL the laundry (ok - I do have a mountain - but most of it is clean, and I know that it can be done quickly if I just do it)
• have Anna wear panties (won't say all day, because she will wear a diaper for napping and in the evening if it is clear that she is getting tired). She is wearing a pair of Carolyn's socks that go up to her panties, so that she can keep warm, but "do it herself" in the bathroom. She has been doing great in the potty training dept., so it is time to take the next step!

Pretty simple huh? Wish me luck! (thought it would be good motivation to write it here...we'll see)

Better than M2M Consignment Sale

I know you Newburgh-tonians are saying, "there is nothing better than the Mother to Mother Consignment sale". I will agree that I LOVED this sale. I bought my kids many "gently used" items that stretched my clothing budget in a big way. For the uninformed, this was a sale that my mother's group in Indiana put on twice a year. It was a service to the buyers (like me) and the sellers (who made 70% of the profit) and the group (who netted 30% of the profit, plus $1 at the door from each shopper). It was one of the THINGS I missed about Newburgh. Of course I didn't miss it as much as all the people of Newburgh. They aren't so easily replaced!

Anyway, earlier this summer, my cousin's wife (aka the kid's piano teacher), gave us 3 winter coats, 2 skirts for Carolyn and about 20 dresses for Anna. (She has one on below and a different one in the "Summer's Cooking" entry. Of course neither picture does the dresses justice, but she is sleeping now and you can all understand that blogging can only be done during certain time-windows.) Wasn't that sweet? These clothes were worn by my 1st cousins-twice-removed (if I have that right....basically my cousin's grandchildren). They live in town too, so we got to see them bring up the gifts today at Mass. Last week we also got some great yellow boots for Anna and some blue-jeans for Joel!

When Anna got all her new dresses, Carolyn was very excited by her new coats and skirts but was sure wishing some of the larger dresses would fit her....but they didn't......

FAST FORWARD to last week.

We received a box in the mail from my good friend N.C. who has a daughter who is 2 years older than Matthew. Anyway this box was filled with clothes for Carolyn. We got the box out today because we finally had a bit of free time and it was time for a fashion show. One thing was cuter than the next.

This will be Carolyn's Christmas dress in 2010. There was another beautiful dress, but figured I would give you the much abbreviated fashion show. (of course Carolyn posed for pictures of each and made the comment to me...."Mom, we have a big thank you note to write". Isn't that true!)
Here is Anna in one of her cutie dresses. There are dresses up to six 6X in my stash now! This is perfect, because I didn't start keeping Carolyn's clothes for Anna until I realized that there was going to be an Anna! So I don't have anything saved for the next couple years.

Here is Carolyn in one of the many sweaters, all beautiful,many with tags. Again - it is wonderful because there are clothes for now and clothes to grow into. Note to N.C. ..... Carolyn was gaga over the clothes. She commented about the dress above. "It has a ruby button, and it's real I think". She loved absolutely everything and was like a baby-fasionista in a clothing store. (Just this summer, she has really started getting interesting in looking at clothes and things in the stores and wants to wear scarves and denim vests....the box came at the perfect time in her world. Plus since they were J's, she would think a rag was gorgeous, but of course everything was in perfect condition!)

Thank you to all our generous friends. My kids look wonderful and my budget has you to thank!

This week's this and that.

Yes, the kids are very excited to see a bunny in our bucket. Ken has a soft heart for living animals and once even put bunnies from our yard into our (finished for the year) garden, so that he wouldn't run over them with the lawn mower. All of this bunny's siblings had a run-in with the neighbor's dog and since our neighborhood is teaming with dogs, Ken took this bunny to a field far away. (witness protection program for bunnies) Because you know our house is just too quiet....... Matthew is starting band this year. We found this Yamaha trumpet on Craig's list for $125 and were able to get a "terminal clean" (the entire trumpet was taken apart and chemically cleaned). We hope band will be a nice way for Matthew to meet new friends. Ken and I were both in band, but just between you and me - I liked playing the flute, but wasn't all that crazy about band. I think this might relate to the fact that I was in band during middle-school, freshman, sophmore and junior years of high-school and I don't think anyone thinks these are the easiest years to live :)

What do you think Carolyn is trying to tell us with her choice of books at the library today? You know that Ken took the kids to the library (rather than me) because I would have said, "only 5 of one kind of book". Otherwise what will the other deprived children check-out to get their doggie fix?

Getting my voice heard!

In the past, I have occasionally written to my congressmen in order to support/oppose legislation. I have done this for 2 reasons: 1. pro-life message 2. something that impacts my profession (ie. my profession's organization ASHA (American Speech Language Hearing Association) sends out email asking audiologists and speech pathologists to help support something that is good for health care providers that aren't MDs, since we sometimes get the short end of the stick).

Well today I wrote to my representatives (and the president) about health care reform. I am not against health care for those in need, but I am worried about the legacy of debt we are leaving our children. That is why I wrote, just to ask for fiscal responsibility! Regardless of your position, if you feel moved to write, I found a website that gives you quick access to your congressmen.

shockingly it is called: congress.org

I feel like such a responsible citizen! I feel very empowered. (That's what that Fox news at night has done to me.)

Now I better go be fiscally responsible and get some work done while Anna naps - ha ha.

Gardening in the Rain

If I was one of my own children, tonight I would have asked myself, "How in the world did you get so dirty?" Of course I already knew that I was like a kid again playing in the rain. And if you know me, my kind of playing is of the garden variety! Because of our busy schedules (I am doing many of the things I didn't want to do with 4 kids in tow, and have all the back to school meetings and sports) I haven't gotten to the garden since Saturday. Today, I decided it was now or never, because we have sports the next 2 nights and we have had so much rain, there is NO WAY I am going to take Anna to the garden tomorrow. She would be covered with dirt and slipping in the mud......

So tonight, although it was raining, I had a little escape to the garden. It wasn't really raining that hard and there was a lot to be harvested.

The bad news is that I have a weed that is almost up to my chin and many of its friends joining the fun. The good news is that I have too much to harvest to worry about silly things like weeds. I will just have to have Ken mow them all down after the harvest is complete!

Organic gardening at its yuckiest had me jumping up and down on my now dead zucchini plants to kill the thousands of squash bugs that did the zucchini killing! If I leave them alone, the internet says they will somehow last though the winter (maybe just their eggs) and then I will have a worse problem next year! I figured if I used a pesticide they would be dead anyway, but it just isn't like me to smash bugs, but since their name is "squash", I decided it was ok. Plus they are ugly and I hate what they did to my zucchini and yellow squash. I also want to prevent them from getting to the butternut (or coconut if you ask Joel for the name) squash. I planted 3 kinds of tomatoes

1. an 8 pack of "whatever" they sell in an 8 pack
2. 2 cherry tomato plants
3. 2 "early" kind of tomatoes.....

As you can tell from the pictures, I have an endless list of tomato shapes, sizes and colors. It really reminds a gardener of how amazing God's work can be. There is one volunteer bush that must be a mix of several kinds of tomatoes, because as I pick from it, there are tear drop shaped tomatoes, golden cherries and "regular (kinda small, but bigger than a cherry) volunteer" tomatoes. I have other plants offering up golden and regular romas and a few beautiful heirloom types of tomatoes. The added bonus is that the cherries and romas don't seem to get much blight on the fruit. This may be due to the fact that I actually started fighting the blight before the volunteers were fully grown. Here is one of the 5 bags of tomatoes I picked tonight. Keep in mind, it had been 4 days since I had picked any and we have had a nice amount of rain. I take no credit for this wonderful bounty! I am just glad that we survived the blight (for the most part) and have had a fantastic time in the garden (diamond loss and car damage forgiven :)

Happy Birthday Carolyn

Carolyn Margaret is eight. She helped design and make her cake. Her love of the summer has been "rainbow magic fairy" books. There are a bunch and she has read every one, putting requests in at the library for those hard to get ones like "the giunea pig fairy". Therefore, I wasn't surprised that she wanted to make a fairy cake. Luckily, (sometimes) she is easy to please - so we printed off 2 of her favorite book covers from the internet. Of course the pictures needed to be removed before any candles were lit, so that the cake didn't go up in flames.
Carolyn and her crew!

Carolyn wanted a DS game (Kirby) and a cookbook. I thought the DS game was an interesting choice because she only played DS a handful of times this summer, chosing instead to spend her "screen time" watching a TV program. (Unlike the boys who would give blood to play DS.) We already have several "kid" cookbooks and she has checked out 10 others from the library, so I got her a cookbook she could use for her whole life. Plus, I decided if she was going to cook all the time, she may as well make something that will keep us healthy! It has a fun happy style to the recipes.

On the Sunday before her birthday, Carolyn took her best buddy Lauren (our neighbor), Joel and Daddy out to eat and to a movie. (Ponyo - they loved it.) After the movie, Ken picked up Anna and Matthew and they all went to Kaleidoscoop for ice-cream.Carolyn got a card from her teacher today in the mail with a dollar bill in it. She thought that was pretty sweet. "she remembered my birthday and she's not even family"

I think she had a pretty good birthday - including her favorite meal (Mrs. Hansen's party casserole.....Mrs. Hansen is a friend's neighbor and our friend made us this meal one day when we baby-sat her kiddos. Today was the first time I actually made it.) Carolyn and all the kids loved it. I am excited because it made a big batch, so we can have leftovers too, it also was easy to make healthier by adding some stir fried veggies (just to Matthew's plate and mine - I figure the other kids were eating corn for their veggie - I just wanted to stretch my meal, since it was a bit creamy :) When Carolyn saw me cooking the veggies, she said, "I didn't want veggies for my birthday meal." It kinda cracked me up.

Here is the recipe, if you are interested......(might make a good "new mother meal" since ALL my kids love it and it is pretty easy- but try it first)

1 lb hamburger

1/2 cup onion (browned w/ hamburger)

1/2 box pasta (cooked)

3/4 cup milk - I may have forgotten this ingredient

1 bag of cheese

1 can of cream of mushroom soup

1 can of corn (I used fresh off the cob!)

After cooking the hamburger, onion and pasta...mix everything together and bake for 30 min at 350. I had my first helping while everyone else's dinner was still cooking - it is THAT yummy.

Back to School

The kids started back to school on Wednesday morning. It is wonderful that school is only .3 miles from our home and we can walk to and from! Joel was VERY quiet the first morning (ala "deer in the headlights"), but full of smiles at the end of the day. The kids have many great things to say about school on our walks home - which makes me pleased as punch.

Unfortunately I am swimming in meetings and sports practices as everything starts back up at the same time - eichs. Luckily Anna and I will get some quiet time during the day to recover from our busy evenings.

Mother's Helpers

My end of the summer blogging-blitz would not be complete without a photo of our "mother's helpers". These two girls were fantastic. My kids LOVED them. The only bad thing is that we didn't start having them come over until the middle of July!
J* just turned 12 and B* is 14. Although J* is only a little over a year older than Matthew, it seems closer to 5 years. These girls are the daughters of my friends J* and C*. J* went to undergrad at the U of I and got her masters at the U of M, just as I did. Unfortunately she finished her masters before I started. Fortunately, she was doing her Clinical Fellowship Year (in audiology) at the same time I did my externship at the University of Minnesota Hospital and Clinics. We kept in touch via Christmas cards and again via Facebook (which was the best thing about facebook - which I have since stopped using, so don't send me a message :) J* and I were good walking buddies before the summer got too busy, but plan to pick it up again. This family lives about .4 miles from us - it's a small world after all.

Our last hurrah!

Our "big" summer trip was to King's Pointe in Storm Lake Iowa with our friends the S*. The lake was beautiful and it was nice to get away.
Here are the kids, (minus one S* who ran ahead with his daddy).

If you are going to flip while I am taking pictures, you know it is going to end up on the blog!

Anna loved going down the slide! It was funny, because everytime we got to the top, she got fussy - like she forgot that I would go down with her! Let's just say it is hard to get a picture of someone going down a slide. Luckily Anna was willing to go down again, and again and again!

Yes this is Iowa (but the entire drive to Storm Lake was surrounded by corn field, complete with sitings of 3 crop dusters)!

They were missing a lily pad at the end, luckily Joel is an expert at the monkey bars!

Carolyn has gotten arms of steel this summer with all her swinging across the bars (and in this case - the ropes)!

Matthew - on top of the world!

Road Trippin' continued

Here is my college room-mate (in Iowa City and Minneapolis) M*. We have made a point to stay in touch and see each other, even though we live far apart. I know this picture is "distant", but I loved the scenery too much to use the close up!

The kids and I drove to Sioux Falls to meet M*'s family after being in Omaha. We only stayed the afternoon, since M*'s family was only in Sioux Falls for the day - they live in Rapid City. Although we were in the car longer than we were in Sioux Falls, it was worth every driving minute. I would drive for days to see M* for a few hours. She inspires me to be more free spirited and energetic.
My kids love M*'s family! Her older daughter is 3 years older than Matthew. Her 2nd daughter is just a bit older than Matthew (our pregnancies overlapped). Her youngest and Carolyn also had overlapping gestations.

Carolyn an M* are 2 peas in a pod when we are together. They also are occasional pen pals.

It is always a party with the L* family!

Road Trippin'

We made 2 trips to Omaha. One for Anna's speech evaluation by my colleagues at Boystown and the other so I could work and visit other friends.

Below is a picture of my first (and forever) friend in Omaha. C* welcomed me with open arms when I moved to Omaha. She and her roomie had us over for dinner, we took walks, sometimes shared an office at work, this list is too long to list to write in its entirety...... C* was one of the speech language pathologists who evaluated Anna. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera that day, so I couldn't get a picture of Miss D*. Below are C*, her hubby and her cute kiddos, who are a little younger than Anna.
Here are some of Matthew's "play group" buddies. We moved shortly after Matthew turned 2, but I have kept in touch w/ these kiddo's mothers (see next photo).
Here are two of the buddies that I shared all my "new mommy" concerns with when Matthew was but an infant!

Summer was really cookin'

First of all, I don't think I have mentioned, but this summer was one of the top 2 coolest summers that Iowa has on record. It was wonderful (except for the swim passes were neglected). So although this post implies that it was hot this summer, it really wasn't.

Carolyn, however, decided that she loved to cook this summer. She wanted to take the "Little Chefs" class at the Parks and Rec. dept, but it was full by the time I went to sign up :( So she had a "do it yourself" cooking class this summer. She checked out a ton of kids cookbooks and was often heard asking, "Mom, do we have ____(insert ingredient here)?"
Of course Anna wants to do everything Carolyn does. Thank goodness we often had a "dry bowl" and a "wet bowl" of ingredients.

The budding chef.

Joel is always willing to join the fun.

Matthew was often my bean snapper this summer.

Best News of the Day

The owner of the auto-shop called this morning. He said he spent some extra time with my car at then end of the day (they had to wait until this morning for my part). He said he thought that there might be something more to the story and there was!!!!!! There was a fuse that was blown not allowing the energy to get to the alternator. That makes perfect sense given the cause being reversed leads for the charge. Basically I will have to pay for the diagnostic and the $5 part!!!!!

Everybody jump for joy.

The challenge of the day

Yep. This is my mini-van getting towed. You might wonder why I took a picture, but I guess because you are reading this blog you already know the answer! (Blogs are better with pictures.)

So we went to the garden and it was pretty overcast. I decided to turn on my lights. They automatically go off unless you leave a door open......well we had several doors open and ended up with a dead battery. Of course you typically don't need a tow for a dead battery. Since we were at the garden, I asked Pastor Mike for a jump. Unfortunately pastors must not jump cars very often and he put the leads on backward. We did eventually get the car jumped and the battery is fine. Unfortunately having the leads on backward probably killed the watchamacalit. (I can't remember what is broken, I just know that the nice auto-shop owner (who had one of his men pick up my quintet in his personal vehicle) found me a used part, for less than 1/2 of the $900 new sticker price). Hopefully they will have the car repaired tomorrow. Luckily we live within walking distance of the school, so we can get to "Meet the Teacher" night without a problem.

Let's see....in about a month I have paid $1000 for repairs and licence registration on this vehicle. Last week I ran into a large box that was in the middle of Interstate 235 - 4 lane traffic. I am missing a piece of the front bumper/grill - it didn't fall out right away, but obviously was loose, because now it is gone. Add to that today's mishap and my car is having a bad month! Luckily it had a good run the entire previous year!

Thankfully, I am having a good week - or I might just be crabby! Today, I am just trying to look at the bright side - no one was injured, the tow truck and ride to the shop came quickly. I have a friend to give me a lift back to the shop tomorrow and the kids were on pretty good behavior through it all.....say a prayer for Anna though, who has a runny nose :( and didn't sleep well last night.

Beautiful Children, Ugly Veggies!

Here is our Boston Marrow Squash (click on the name if you are dying to know more about this funny plant). We bought the seeds at the Living History Farms. Let's just say that this plant has been around awhile (200 years of documentation, but the web site says it may be prehistoric - which sounds like the time of the dinosaurs to me, but I guess that isn't really what it means in this case :)

Since its survival can't be for its beauty, we are hoping it will be delicious. We cooked our first pumpkin today, so the Marrow Squash will have to wait.

I think we will blame our crazy carrots on the fact that they were VERY neglected and not well weeded. So I speculate that weeds were in the way when this carrot tried to grow down. Our carrots are not only ugly (well not all of them) but NOT tasty either. I guess they have had a fun factor - harvesting has been enjoyable!

(Yes my kids did eat carrots tonight - but they were from the grocery store - the garden carrots will be hitting the compost heap!)

This one is going to the Fair

OK - not really - but if we were Fair people - we would be entering this zucchini! Truth be told, it just must have been missed when we harvested on Tuesday - otherwise it would have been picked in it's youth!
Anna is 2 1/2 zucchini's tall.

NOT WORTH IT!

Ok - so I was going to do a post about my favorite garden food. Fresh Salsa. Also about how happy I am that I have tomatoes to sing songs about. After praying for help in saving my blighted tomato plants, I can happily say that we are getting the better of the blight! I am sure we will be picking bad vines off the tomatoes for the rest of the season - but the good news is that the season is going to be a long one and MANY MANY tomatoes are blight free! yeah...

Ok, so that was going to be my happy post until I came home from the garden (buying cilantro and onions along the way) only to find my diamond was missing from my wedding ring. Certainly taking my garden gloves off and on all summer has done the damage and I should of had my prongs checked! So I fully take the blame. Best case senario is that the diamond didn't fall off until I got home and maybe it could be found.....worst case is that it fell off in the garden that was completely drenched by rainfall this morning. Making a needle in a haystack look easy!

Hold me to it!

The adventure has begun. I have started to tackle the store-room in the basement. The problem is that there are too many miscellaneous boxes of "stuff" down there that just need to be sorted! (there are the misc. boxes when were trying to get the house ready to show, the misc. boxes when we moved out of the apt., the misc. boxes when we moved out of the house, the misc. boxes that got shoved down there so I could finish another part of the house, or have company....do you see the problem????)

Now that the upstairs is complete (for the most part). It was just time to get started with the "pit of despair". Actually one of my motivations was the need to sharpen 45 pencils before school starts and the fact that the electric pencil sharpener was still in a box. BTW it was found!

Do you remember this? click on the word remember to hyperlink to a previous blog and see my beautiful storage shelves. Well, they were full before the movers arrived from Indiana. However - for the first time since those movers arrived - you can now walk through the storage room. I am creating a MY SIDE and a YOUR SIDE. I am going to make a deal w/ Ken that I will go through all my boxes and all the "kid" related boxes....and he gets to go through HIS! (So he needs to get started too :)

Keep me honest - I hope to keep plugging away, but do expect it to take a couple months to complete this task!

The much maligned watermelon

Ok - there are ZERO watermelon in my garden (as far as I can tell). Of course, you probably trust me as far as you can throw me, since I told you that watermelon vines were the bully of my garden about a month ago.

Well, my mother-in-law came and said "those are pumpkin, not watermelon" and straightened me out. I must say, now that they are turning a bit orange, I probably would have figured it out on my own - but always appreciate the help in the garden.

Just so you know, pumpkins look alot like watermelon in the early stages. If you don't believe me just ask Winnie the Pooh (who is very disappointed at the early stages of his pumpkin-growing adventure). You may be asking yourself - didn't this woman know she had planted pumpkin?....yes I did, but I also planted watermelon and just assumed the pumpkin didn't make it! Maybe we will be surprised and get a watermelon yet-there is another plant that I think is pumpkin, but since they have a different shape than the pumpkins that I thought were watermelon...you never know.

Our big producers now (growing in amongst the pumpkin) are spaghetti squash. Well worth a 10 hour drive - if you would like some! We'll also have butternut squash to share when it ripens.

By the way...this does solve the mystery from the previous post - the plant in the picture was a pre-mature pumpkin!