First Day of Kindergarten

At school for the first day of Kindergarten!

Goofy Grace

Grace at home before school

Grace, Mrs. Short and a new friend

Today is Grace's first day of Kindergarten! We went to meet her very nice new teacher and see her room last night. She wanted to stay and said she would spend the night there. We opted for home.

She did pop right up this morning and did all the things I normally have to grump at her to do and was ready in record time! I don't know how long it will last but I liked it!

There are 23 kids in her class and she gets to sit by one of her best buds from preschool so I think she'll have a good day. She has her own little desk and there are class guinea pigs and fish. We took the gerbils back to Mrs. D for the preschool kids last night.

Her room is fun and decorated in lots of bright colors and they have a jungle theme (seems appropriate). She'll get to go to real art and music classes this year and there are now THREE neighbor girls all her age (one is 5 and in her class and two are 6 already and in first grade). I hope they all become good friends. Bryon said Teddy might have to bushhog a trail through the corn field for them all to visit each other someday. Addy can visit from just next door and Ashton from the other side. The other little girl will need some more help.

Grace said in the car one day last week, "Mama, I want you to have a baby, because Daddy doesn't wrestle with me enough and I don't have anyone to play with upstairs." I told her Mama was NOT having any more babies. She asked why. I said "because". She asked why. I said "because". She said, "Well Jesus decides and maybe you will."

Not cool. Definitely not cool. Jesus and I have an agreement. He better stick to his side of things.

Grace can play with the neighbor girls.

Amen.


More first day pics here ...

O' Tomato!

Before

After

Well, once again this year we have not grown enough tomatoes to can. Our heirlooms did MUCH better this year (I think they could sense it was their last chance!) and I have managed to make four quarts of freezer pasta sauce from them. But I have just not had enough to can up for stew tomatoes so I bought twenty pounds from my Grandma and did these last night. I had one quart and two pints of just leftover juice I went ahead and canned and figured we could use it for soup base.

I think she'll have enough for me to get some more from her Sunday and do a few more. Then I think I'm done for the summer. It won't be enough but it will help.

I've heard lots of folks talking about canning this summer. I think everyone is doing it and trying to keep the old home fires burning... at least in the kitchen.

Greenhouse

We got this cool greenhouse this week.

Bryon has been looking at them on Craigslist from time to time and found this one AND the guy was willing to do some trading for it. We had some old farmy stuff just lying around that we had tried to sell to no avail.

Bryon was about ready to just haul it up to our grassy triangle along the highway and put a FREE sign on it. It wasn't even worth anything for scrap really.

Then he found the ad and made the deal. Our seemingly worthless farm stuff plus $500 for this greenhouse that just last week was for sale at Nixa Hardware for $1199.00.

I think it was a GREAT deal! It would have cost $500 in lumber and materials AND we got this rain barrel and stand which is hooked up to the little gutter on top of the greenhouse.

It got me motivated enough to go out and pull all the weeds (well MOST of the weeds) out of the gravel paths in the garden. The ONE night last week that was not unbearably sweltering I went out and pulled weeds. My behind is paying the price. Seems I haven't been doing much bending and squatting for a long, long time. Eeeek!

I always lose my motivation this time of the year and getting that greenhouse out there really perked me up gardening wise. I collected some seeds off the parsley and Devil's Ear and Lollo Rossa lettuces and I've made four quart zip locks of pasta sauce for the freezer from our heirloom tomatoes.

We are still getting quite a few tomatoes but none of them are really the good canning tomatoes. My 83 year old grandmother has a pretty large tomato patch again this year and I'm hoping to buy enough from her to can up for stew tomatoes.

I read a cool article about Community Canning Kitchens in various small towns across the country. It's an old idea revisited. Everyone who wants can take their stuff to the community building on certain days and they all can everything up for each other. Everyone helps by doing various parts of the process.

Bryon's friend Steve and his buddies did that this summer.

Seems like a good idea to me.

Now I just need to talk someone into organizing it... other than me, ha!

Swim Little Fishes

Bryon has been taking Grace to the pool several times a week this summer. By the time he gets off work and picks her up they get there in time to enjoy the last hour the pool is open AND it's FREE that last hour! So they have been taking advantage of the opportunity.

Grace took swim lessons again this summer (second year) and she has become a good little swimmer. She can even jump off the diving board and swim to the side by herself now!

I actually went with her last night for an hour and then stayed for water aerobics with the old ladies. (Okay, so they weren't ALL old ;) As a testament to just HOW out of shape I am, I'm ashamed to tell you I have sore muscles this morning.

Of course we were going to get home so late that I took some snacks for Grace to eat and ordered a $10 pizza at Pizza Hut (best deal EVER) to pick up at exactly 7:05 pm. We got BOGO free wildberry smoothies at McDonalds and headed home afterwards.

I suppose that means I'm 0 for 0 as far as the aerobics go.

Oh well. There is always tomorrow, right?

F@$#%&# Dog!

Most days Ruger's actual name is F@#&^%$ Dog Ruger! And trust me, the F doesn't stand for Fantastic or Funny.

He is constantly pulling clothes off the line when I hang them out and usually gets put up if the there are some out drying. Today I let him out while I worked from home. All that was out there on the line was our swim towels, my swimsuit and Grace's so I wasn't too worried. I even flipped the towels across three lines so the dangling material wouldn't be so tempting.

Finally, after several hours of "working from home" upstairs on some Blood Center projects, I came down to see what he had destroyed while I wasn't looking.

Here is the FIRST thing I saw coming towards me...



It took my brain a few seconds to figure out what my eyes were actually seeing.

I cracked up. I went inside to get the camera before rescuing my swimsuit top. Served him right! Thankfully it wasn't any worse for its wear which was LUCKY for him because I really like that suit.

Zucchini Relish Redux

Okay, my friends tell me I should have hot water bathed those jars of zucchini relish for 10 minutes. The recipe sites seem to agree. I haven't in the past and they have been fine but I don't want to make anyone sick so if you make it you should probably do it!

I will next time too.

Good luck!

Toothless

Last weekend Grace lost one of her top front teeth. A few minutes ago, she was playing around and bumped her mouth on a chair and now, she has NO front teeth, top or bottom. She is officially a toothless wonder now.

I have no idea how she's going to eat.

She's pretty excited about it though.

Her mouth is getting expensive!

Zucchini Relish

We used our last jar of zucchini relish some time back in the winter. It is just so good. I was hoping I would have more than enough zucchinis to make a good supply this summer but alas the dreaded squash bugs have been victorious once again. Seriously, why don't they kill the ornamental squash? I just don't understand it.

I stopped Friday night at the Farmer's Market in Marshfield and BOUGHT zucchini (yes, yes, I know, please don't leave zucchinis in my mailbox now all of you who have a bumper crop). When inspiration strikes (or at least I have the motivation to do it), I have to strike when the iron is hot or in this case, when the zucchinis are large.

If also picked out some green, red and yellow peppers and used our onions and spent last Friday night dicing up veggies.

If you find yourself the happy recipient of four or so baseball bat zucchinis, you too could be on your way to zucchini relish. It's really yummy, especially on brats!

Here's the recipe if you decide to accept the mission:

Zucchini Relish

10 cups zucchini (about two baseball bat sized zucchinis)
4 cups onion
2 large green peppers
2 large red peppers (I added yellow too to make it pretty)
4 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp tumeric
3 tbsp mustard seed
1 tsp dry mustard
2 tsp celery salt
2 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup pickling salt

Clean out the seeds from the zucchinis and peppers and discard. Dice up all the veggies into a big stainless steel bowl. It takes a BIG one! Mix well. Add the pickling salt and mix again. Put into the fridge uncovered and let stand overnight. The next day, wash your jars and heat up your lids and rings. Drain and rinse the veggies with cold water. Add the remaining ingredients in a big pot. Stir it all up. Boil 20 minutes. Put into hot jars. They will seal themselves as they cool. Makes 6-7 pints.

Process 10 minutes in hot water bath.

I doubled my batch and it still didn't make enough to get us through the year so I'll probably make some more before the summer is over.

Enjoy!

Don't Throw It, Grow It!

I found this book several months ago and thought it was cool. The next time I bought avocados I decided to try it out and now I have this cool little avocado tree growing and another little one on it's way.



It's a long way from bearing any avocados, but who knows!

Recycled Bag

We have canceled our trash service. We went years without trash service when we lived in Highlandville and recycled as much as we could. Then when we moved out here, recycling became a pain.

It was too far and seemed too inconvenient to take our stuff into Springfield and the recycling center here was WAY too picky about stuff. Only 1&2 plastics, only cans with the labels removed, etc. etc.

So we signed up for trash service and each week happily deposited our bags and other flotsam and jetsam into the very tidy dumpster... for $25 a month.

Finally one day I actually WENT to the recycling center in Marshfield and they told me to bring them what I had and they would take it; paper, cardboard, 1-7 plastic, old clothes, glass, tin, aluminum. What? Really? Cool.

So I got some bins and started sorting stuff and now we are recycling enough that we barely have one or two bags of trash a week. We started using our burn barrel for the stuff we had left over and designated one old trash can for weird things that can't be recycled or burned and will take them to the dump once a year when we have to.

So far so good.

It's only been a couple of weeks but so far there is nothing in the weird, can't recycle can. I'm sure it will come eventually.

I was getting ready to throw the rabbit food bag into the barrel to burn and thought maybe I could make a tote bag out of it.

I'm not a very good seamstress so it's pretty rough but maybe the next one will be better. I'm already eyeballing the chicken feed bag for the next one.