That Was Then, This Is Now

These first pictures are from the then of today (think morning). It was a bit foggy and just beautiful.

This little guy was easy to miss way down in the grass as it was.

This tree is by the road where the rock wall ends by the driveway at the bottom of the hill.



Part of the tree. I like the green in there amongst the yellow.

Just trees. Down near the stream. And the stumps with mushrooms which you will see later.

Awesome web!

The view looking up the hill toward the back field. The barn is behind trees on the left.



The 'road' leading to Daniel's grave.



Looking up the hill from near the Christmas trees.

Cool vines on a tree. Love the red.

Daniel's grave. Looking like autumn.

Looking down the 'road' from Daniel's grave into the woods.

The top of the garden. The red barn-like building is the chicken coop and it will be moved eventually to the rock foundation in the  middle of the picture.

Mushrooms along a stump.

Mushrooms on a stump.



And again.

There is still some clover out in the field.

A sunflower by the fort by the barn.

Rainwater collected in a discarded lump of cement.

A tree.

 

Looking down the hill over the Christmas trees into the woods.

You'll have to guess what these are

I wish I could tilt the picture.

These are from this afternoon, or the now part of the day. Looks like fun, eh?

Amena and Cedric in the tree; Seth on the rope. Joseph watching.

My monkeys.
Someone had to take the job since Daniel isn't here to do it.
Might as well be these two since they'd been practicing under his tutelage.

Seth taking a swing.

Cedric getting ready to take a plunge.

Amena's turn.

Seth headed to the house for something.

Sister overboard!

Joseph overboard!

I think there's a boy in there. Taking it easy. You know. Like a 6-year-old.

Cedric down.

Seth swinging. Again.

Cedric down again.

Joseph down again thinking that it doesn't take nearly long enough to get from point A (out of the leaves) to point B (in the leaves) and that it takes entirely too long for three siblings to take their turns.

Ahhhh, Yeah

Sorry for the lateness today. Yesterday was quite an uneventful day, well, sort of, and there isn’t much to tell. I do have some pictures that I will be posting and, really, that’s about it. As you will see, there was baking. Other than that, school work and feeding the missionaries. And giving Joanna a ride to work because it was rainy. Hope your day has been good and the rest of it is even better.

The pans. Clockwise from the top: teddy bears, dinosaurs, Cars II, and gravy. That comes into play later.

Sugar.

With butter added. And you can tell over to the left that there was some turbinado sugar left in the sugar jar.

Sugar and butter mixed.

Eggs added. The lighting was really off but, hey, at least you can see.

Eggs beat into the sugar and butter.

Bananas. Perhaps my least favorite fruit.

 

Ready to be  mooshed.

Mooshed. This is the second half. The first half had already gone into the bowl.

Bananas added.

Bananas and water mixed in.

Everything else added.

Cars II pan full up.

Dinosaur pan full up.
That's all that will fit in the oven at one time and I don't fill up the cast iron until ready to put in the oven.

Used measuring utensils. I finally have almost enough glass measuring cups and I do have enough stainless steel measuring cups. Measuring spoons I'm not sure if there can be enough.

Sorry, no pictures of the final product. I think I've posted them in another post so if you really want to see, you can look around. Or, let me know and I'll take pictures next time.

Here is where the gravy comes in. It got added to the pan of canned beef and vegetables to look like this:

Which I think looks much better than it did before the addition of gravy.

Then a crust.
Awesome and groovy, eh?

And I didn't think to take a picture of the final product of this pot pie. Mainly because it was going straight to the table because it was time to eat. Anyway, that's what we fed the missionaries. Ask me sometime about the last time before yesterday that we fed the missionaries pot pie. It has to do with Daniel and a chicken.

And that was yesterday. More about today soon.

Grey, Wet Day

Good morning! It’s a grey and wet one but it’s nice, nonetheless.

The snack routine. This particular day we started with bags and scissors.

Big bags (aka 'sandwich bags') for the. . .

. . . grapes.

Small bags (aka 'snack bags') for the . . .

. . . cookies. Sorry, no picture of the cookies in the bags . . . it was then that the battery in the camera decided it just did not have what it took to take any more pictures.

I was having a strange dream this morning. We lived in the house I grew up in in McCloud and I was coming home from somewhere. Grandma and Bislita were visiting and they’d gone out, at my mother’s behest, for supper. I was annoyed because I needed to talk to them about something. I was further annoyed because the sidewalk to the side door was shoveled but the area between where we parked and the gate was not and neither were the steps to the porch. Further annoyance came when I learned that Elizabeth had done the shoveling because someone had been asked to do it and hadn’t. Laura was working on a car. She needed a specific part for something and none of the places in town had it. They had a cheap version made of plastic but she wanted the one that was made out of metal. Adam was over and she’d talked him into taking her to New Hampshire to look for the part because she didn’t want to wait to order it from a more local store. Then I asked if she’d tried the auto parts store on the other side of the hospital. It’s interesting that while we lived in the house in McCloud, we still lived in Massachusetts. Also interesting that there is no auto parts store on the other side of the hospital. Night came and we had a full moon. It was one of those full moons right down by the horizon that look absolutely huge. I grabbed my camera and phone and went out to take pictures of it. The strange thing with that is that the moon was rising at the back of the field behind the house which is not normal. Then I heard a rooster crow and it was my phone (it really does crow).

I saw this out a front window a few days ago.

These little ones are so cute hopping along!

They were in front of the house again yesterday, eating something in the screen house garden.

Yesterday was another one of those days when I do not accomplish everything on my list. Almost everything, but not quite. I have some reading to do for phlebotomy because the last two chapters we covered are the most important. There is also a quiz that is supposed to be posted for us to do but so far it isn’t on my Blackboard. Other than that, I didn’t get the quiz taken for marketing and I didn’t finish my part of the group project. I should get those done today and then I’ll work on other things. Hopefully I’ll get to banana bread today. I didn’t get to that yesterday either. Part of the reason is that there is all this STUFF (I was tempted to say CRAP) from Matthew’s apartment and I went through some of it yesterday. I had to go through some of it because it’s everywhere (well, not really, but it seems like it) and I needed the table cleared off and the dishes washed.

Cedric and Seth had soccer practice yesterday but Joseph didn’t. I didn’t find out until we had gone to the rec field and noticed there was no one there from his team. Then I checked my phone for email and sure enough, there was one there from his coach saying it looked like we had another rain out for practice. It was only sprinkling but whatever.

Cedric is outside riding his bike back and forth in front of the house. It’s actually Daniel’s bike and it’s just a touch too big for Cedric but he loves riding it. The bus should be here in about four minutes and everyone (other than Cedric) seems to be moving in slow motion. Cedric has been up for a while as he wanted me to get him up when I got up (I told him I couldn’t because I’d have to get dressed so he said, “well, five minutes later?”). He had some homework he needed to finish that he hadn’t had time for yesterday afternoon or night.

Yesterday morning Paul took the truck to the place where the Aries was and brought the Aries home. Laura checked the oil in it and told me it stunk. Boy, she was right! I got in to go to school and just about died. It smells like something died in there. Pee-ewe! Yuck! And the steering wheel, which has a memory foam cover, felt nasty so I did my best to avoid touching it. I managed to survive the drive to school and then the drive home and I even managed to survive sitting in it during soccer practice (with the windows rolled down). This morning Joanna said, “We’re taking that thing? It doesn’t have heated seats!” And it stinks. With any kind of luck, we’ll sell it soon. The Mercedes is gone; it would be nice to have the Aries gone.

Then there is the Toyota that I have a feeling I am not going to like driving in spite of the fact it is a stick shift and the Volkswagen Rabbit hiding at the back of the field behind the house. I’d be fine getting rid of all of those, working for Anji in New Hampshire (because it’s far enough away to make driving a diesel worthwhile—it seems they don’t like short trips as they don’t get hot enough to clean out the fuel lines), and getting a Jetta like Paul’s. Or a Jetta like the blue one he got for me that we traded for the white van. Ah, such is life.

Right now I would really like to go back to bed. I feel almost as tired as I did when I was sitting here last night working on the group project for marketing. Maybe I’ll do that once I’m done here. Anyway, have a wonderful day!

Untitled

Good morning! We’re off to an unusual start thus far. Joanna spent the night at a coworker’s house last night so I didn’t have to take her to Gardner this morning. My alarm went off at 6:00 and it was still dark so I didn’t hurry to get out of bed which means I didn’t get up until 6:20. While it felt nice to stay in bed for an extra hour this morning, it wasn’t long enough. Paul stopped by Matthew’s apartment and loaded the van up with stuff. Mostly stuff he thought we could use or stuff that we can give away. There were some plants including two spiders, a philodendron, and a couple of Christmas cactus types. Paul said he used to have some but killed them. Grandma, I think we need you to come take care of them. Maybe we’ll get along okay if you just tell me what you’ve done with yours because I’ve never had one before. On the other hand . . .

Because I got up late and it was starting to get light out, the girls and I did go for a walk. I figured they would need to because they’ve been having accidents pretty regularly during the night. This is something I do not understand because they go out at night before we go to bed and they go out in the morning, sometimes before Joanna and I leave. In spite of this, in the last week or so, I’ve had messes to clean up about two thirds of the time. I do not like cleaning up messes.

Because I got up late, the milking happened late. When I came in the with canine girls, Cedric still hadn’t washed the milking bucket. He did by the time I fed the dogs and got stuff ready to go out and the bucket was washed so I went out and got that done after I made sure people were getting up to get ready for school. When I got in from milking, I had to go back upstairs and make sure they were getting up.

Yesterday I got almost everything done on my list. I did not finish reading the chapter for marketing I wanted to and because I didn’t get that done, I did not do my questions for the group project. I also did not make banana bread but that just means the bananas will be even more ready today than they were yesterday.

Last night was phlebotomy. We got to draw on each other which was fun. I hit gold first time. I’m not sure it’s quite fair to say first though since I have actually drawn twice before. Not that that makes a whole lot of difference. When I started the class last fall, I stayed for two classes and we drew on the mannequin and I did not hit anything. This time I did. What does that mean? Absolutely nothing. There were a lot of missing people last night so I am wondering if they are no longer in class or if they were just missing. There were an odd number of people last night so it meant someone had to be drawn twice. Pretty exciting, that. If we wanted to stay and go again if we could find someone who didn’t mind being stuck again, we could. If not, we were free to leave once we were done. I chose to leave because I still had some reading to do at home.

My tourniquet. Isn't it lovely?

Yesterday I made fudge. It turned out okay. I mean, it’s edible and tastes alright but it is not exactly the way fudge should be. There is a reason for this. It is called Adam came over and so I was messing around in the kitchen until I had nothing left to do (I could have done more but the dishes hadn’t been finished so the bowl I needed for banana bread was still dirty) and then I went upstairs to read a marketing chapter while the fudge was cooling. Rather than going down to check it often enough, I kept thinking to myself, oh, another page, it won’t be cool enough yet. By the time I checked it, it was cool enough alright—it had cooled so much it didn’t really want to come out of the pan.

Today I have English and stuff to do at home and now a whole bunch of stuff to put away or throw away or feed the goats or feed the dogs. Hooray.

Becky and Jay, I need pictures from Sioux Falls. You can email them to me please.

AD, isn’t it nice to save money when you don’t expect to? I sure like it when that happens.

Have a wonderful day, everyone!

Busy Day Behind, Busy Day Ahead

Full moon from two nights ago (September 30, 2012).

This morning I made rolled oats for breakfast and told children if they wanted that, fine, if not, they were on their own. Cedric had some. Seth made some toast out of bread from the store. Joseph wanted homemade bread with butter. Noone could or would cut it for him until Joanna got home. Amena still hasn’t eaten and has only nine minutes until the bus is due to arrive. This is typical for her. She is finally downstairs but is still running out of time.

Waning moon from this morning when I was waiting for Joanna to come out.

Milking was milking this morning. Nothing unusual happened. When I was coming in, a bit of pink caught my eye to the east and we were having a beautiful sun rise. I hurried in, put everything down, grabbed my phone because the battery in the camera was about out of juice, and went outside. It was still pretty but not like it had been less than two minutes earlier.

Yesterday was yesterday. You already know about the adventures in the morning before Paul finally left for work. After that I had just a little time to get something done before leaving for class so I made hot chocolate and ate a bagel. Pretty exciting. I took some hot chocolate with me to class which was nice.

After class I didn’t have much other than school work to do. I took the second accounting test and did not do as well as I ought to have. I was looking in my planner for the calendar to figure out when a note was due and ran across the last prescription for Daniel’s glasses which caused an allergy attack and me to put the decimal in the wrong place four times for one of the problems. I still got an A but it was a low A (92.21) compared to the high A (99.17) from the first test. I also took the quiz for phlebotomy and got a 90. Why I am satisfied with that for phlebotomy and not the 92.21 for accounting I am not sure. I finally got my essay for English done and submitted. Before we turn it in to the professor, we are supposed to submit it to Safe Assign which lets us know how much of it we may have copied from other sources. It told me that 20% of mine was the same as other sources. This is funny because other than one sentence, "What was their involvement in the Harlem Renaissance?” everything I supposedly copied was sources and that one sentence seems pretty innocuous; anyone could come up with that. Even more comical is that Safe Assign says that some of what I supposedly copied, I got from Wikipedia. This is rather amusing because I did not look at Wikipedia until I was almost done with the essay and then I didn’t learn anything new and I certainly didn’t use it as a source. Noone in their right mind would. Get this though, the part I supposedly copied from Wikipedia is this: “24 September 2012.” Pretty cool, eh? A bloody date. Twice. Oye.

Other than that, I read some stuff (an outline and presentation) for marketing and read a chapter for phlebotomy. I started a chapter for marketing and sent everyone in my group an email because we have a group project to do this week and no one had volunteered to be the team leader so I did. It isn’t hard but it seems like people have a need to be told what to do. We did well on our last project and I don’t anticipate we should do less than that this time (in fact, we should do better). I begin filling out a paper to turn marketing into an honors component and emailed the professor about that. I am going to write up a marketing plan for Pam’s Soaps, Etc. Should be fun.

For supper we had left over lentils and rice with cheese. That was pretty good. After supper we did the usual stuff we usually do and then had popsicles. That was cool.

After supper I did more school work including most of what I mentioned already other the tests and writing of the essay. The submitting of it occurred after we ate.

On the agenda for today is making fudge if Joanna gets the dishes done. Also making banana bread because we have some overripe bananas to use and it makes really good snacks for the kiddos (especially when it’s in cool shapes which it will be). Tonight is class which should be interesting. We are supposed to get to draw on each other this week. I am looking forward to doing the draw but not being drawn. I didn’t get to practice on the mannequin last week because I left early as you  may recall for the Open House I ended up not attending. I did sort of practice on Laura by using the tourniquet and going through the motions of what would typically be done. And, of course, there is much homework to be done. Much reading. Reading for accounting, phlebotomy, marketing and English. Other than that, starting LearnSmart for accounting; picking a case study to do a peer review and working on my part of the group project for marketing; printing slides for phlebotomy; commenting on a couple of poems for English. Should be a fun-filled day.

Since I have so much fun stuff to do, I am going to leave you for now and wish you a wonderful day!

Happy October!

Good morning, good morning! Happy October 1^st! What a weekend!

Friday Cedric and Seth did not have soccer practice. I stayed home all day and worked on school stuff. I didn’t get my essay done but I did work on it. I’m not having any luck remember what else might have gotten done. Adam came over. He’s rented a car since his died. Thursday night he had dropped Ryan off and rear-ended an old lady on the rotary by Hannaford. Thankfully, she was not hurt and neither car sustained much damage and he opted for the optional insurance when he rented the car so he’s covered.

Paul and I went to a place in Brookfield called the Clam Box. I wanted to try some alligator but they were out of the ones I wanted so I ordered Cajun Frog Legs. I was expecting some heat because they were Cajun but there was no heat. They were good but have too many bones so I really don’t think they’re worth bothering with again. Paul had fish and chips and decided he likes SS Lobster better. It’s closer and their French fries are better.

Saturday Joseph’s soccer game was cancelled due to the possibility of rain. It ended up not raining but it was still rather wet out. We went to Petersham for Cedric and Seth’s game. We found it without issue and we weren’t even the last ones to arrive. Katie Butler was there with all four of her kids. I knew that the older girls played soccer and wondered if they’d be playing this year since they’re moving back to Washington state in a couple of days. Hadley was on the Petersham U10 team. I was kind of hoping that they’d be there because I knew that if they were, there was a possibility that Karen Dusty would as well in order to see her grandkids. She wasn’t when we got there but she did come so we were able to say hi and visit a bit which was nice.

The boys played well. I really like watching them; they make a lot of funny moves but they manage to make a lot of good ones too. Petersham managed to get a goal in the first half. We were sitting pretty near some people from Petersham and they said it was a lucky shot. I didn’t actually see it because Joseph was on my lap and I was attempting to get pictures. In the second half, Hubbardston was able to get two goals so we won 2-1. It was a good game.

Paul started working on the ceiling in the back room Saturday afternoon and had to stop because he ran out of glue. It is going to be nice when it’s done. I like the design and the fact that it isn’t flat. The Relief Society broadcast was Saturday night at 8:00 and there was a salad pot luck and service project before. Laura and I did not go for a couple of reasons. One, Paul went shopping which would have meant one of us had to stay home to watch kids or we would have had to take them with us or we would have had to leave them home alone. Well, option one just didn’t work because the reason I didn’t want to go was that I still had school work to finish up. Option two didn’t work because the broadcast didn’t get over until 9:30 and that’s just too late. Option three was no good because Cedric and Amena together along is just not a good idea. Two, I had school work I still needed to get done. So, we stayed home, I got almost everything done school work wise that I wanted to, and we both listened to most of it online anyway.

I did not get my essay done to the point of my liking it. It is just the rough draft but still, the better it is, the less revising that must be done. At the point it is at now, it would need a lot. It is possible I might get more done on it in the next couple of hours. If not, I’ll probably email it to her later today or tomorrow because I do want it back Wednesday to do the revisions. I did get my marketing quiz taken again and this time got 10 for 10. I like that. I also read all the material for this week for English but did not comment on it. I will either comment on it before class if I have time or after if I do not. Either way makes little difference to me.

Yesterday was Sunday. We had a little roast with potatoes for lunch/supper. I wish there was a word similar to brunch indicating a meal eaten sometime between lunch and supper. It was a little roast and it was almost rare and we ate the whole thing. The potatoes were. They needed more cooking and most of them had to be finished in the microwave. We also had a salad. Because the roast was small and our home teachers were coming over and Paul had at least two, maybe three, people lined up to come look at the Mercedes, we didn’t invite anyone over to eat. It’s just as well anyway because most of us were in a very grumpy state of mind. After we ate it was better but until then, it was not pretty.

I made chocolate chips cookies after our home teachers, Rich Troop and David Alexander, left. I had lots of good help. Joseph helped with the mixing up. Cedric and Amena helped with putting them on cookie sheets. Seth wanted to help but it was rather crowded so he contented himself with eating dough. I’m not sure how many we got but it was a double batch so it was a few. I thought about doing a picture journal of it but decided not to because the battery in the camera was getting low. It actually died on me this morning.

This morning was a fairly typically Monday morning. I didn’t want to get out of bed but did and went to see if Joanna was alive. She was but was still in bed. It appeared to me that she intended to get up so I went downstairs and let the dogs out and then dug my driver’s license out of the shirt pocket it was in. I let the dogs in and went out to the car. By the time I pulled up by the steps, Joanna was out. We got to Jared’s apartment late, Ruth was there already waiting, but Jared was later. Joanna didn’t want to get out because the Jetta has heated seats and she was nice and warm. At least her bum was. I came home and decided not to take the girls for a walk because they’d been out already and would likely go out with me when I milked. So I got ready to milk and they did go out with me. Milking was pretty typical. When I first got out, the moon was still up and I could see about half of it over the roof of the back room with wispy clouds streaming by. It was very pretty and I wished that I had my camera with me.

It is now 9:28 and I just got back from the Salvation Army with Paul. Saturday when he was there, he’d seen in the pile of stuff that was due to be marked half off for today a clarinet. He wanted to get there today before anyone else took it so I could look at it and see if I thought it looked like a good enough deal. It does need a cork and it’s missing a key and the hardware to hold the reed but we got it because unless it costs more than $100 to fix, it’s a good deal.

Now Joanna and I are the only ones home. Laura took Joanna’s scooter to Walmart and Staples and we’re hoping that Laura doesn’t wreck. She tried to drive into the garden as she was leaving.

On my agenda is class for which I must leave in about an hour. I also would like to eat breakfast and make hot chocolate. I may only do one of those things. I also need to finish that essay. Paul and I went to Salvation Army earlier because he thought they open at 8:00 but they don’t so we came home and he got his lunch together and ate breakfast while I took a shower and then we went back. While I was in the shower, I was thinking about my essay for English and a totally new way of approaching it came to mind and I thought, “Why didn’t I think of that before?” So, I am not going to have it ready for this morning but I should be able to email it to her later today or tomorrow.

For now I will bid you adieu. Have a wonderful day.

PS Grandma Sue (aka mom), Becky and Jay: Seth wants to know when you can come visit because he'd like for you to be here when he is finally baptized. I'd like to do it on the 13th of October but IF there is any chance any of you  might be able to come before the end of the year, let me know.