Busy week

Last week was a crazy week and frankly, I'm glad it's over. We helped Nancy host a house party on Wednesday and it was a smashing success, if I may say so myself. We held it outside and I would guess around 20 people came. Tim fired up the grill and grilled some amazing ribs and Nancy and I had made a bunch of quick little side dishes. The weather was PERFECT. We dragged a TV out onto the patio and watched Joe Biden and Bill Clinton give their speeches. It was so neat to be sitting out in our garden with friends and enjoying nature while we watched history in the making.

But then all hell broke loose with Connor. He has been on an insulin pump for a year and a half and up until Thursday have not had any accidents with it. I guess we were due and accident. Instead of the fast acting Novolog being put into his pump, the long acting Lantus was put in. I couldn't figure out why his sugars kept going up and up even though I was bolusing his pump. Tim called from work and suggested I check the insulin bottle and make sure it hadn't expired. It hadn't....it was just the wrong one. So after a call to his doctor we knew what we had to do. By the end of the day we had control of his sugars and his ketones were headed down. It was a long, stressful day but it made me realize that we can't get complacent about his diabetes. He's such a good kid and he's been so easy to take care of considering he's had diabetes now for almost 5 years (diagnosed at 3)...but we have gotten into such a routine that it wasn't noticed that the bottle was different. It has made us realize that we need to still pay attention to what we are doing as if he were still newly diagnosed.

That brings us to this weekend. There was some confusion as to what we were going to do this Labor day weekend. Our original plan was to head over to NY and go apple picking but then we weren't sure if Tim's sister was coming into town and then his mom and stepdad would head over to our place. So yesterday morning when I got up I figured we would have a bunch of family coming over. Mom D called and said that plans had changed again and that we were in fact going to come over there, we just had to wait for his sister to roll in from Pittsburgh. I'm a pretty easy going person. I was fine with the change in plans and was able to get everything done yesterday before we left home, but it was made harder by the fact that Tim put his back out on Friday wrestling with the kids. The poor guy can't hardly stand up straight and has to kind of walk sideways because it hurts to lift his leg straight. He had to endure a 3 hour drive over to NY with a car full of kids, a sibling and a dog. Every pothole (and there are a lot where we live) made him wince in pain. As I'm writing this, he's still sleeping and I hope he feels a little bit better today so that we can go pick us some apples. Thankfully, when we rolled in here at 8 pm last night, mom and Ed and Amy had made an amazing dinner and it was all ready for us. I eased a growing headache with a couple of Screwdrivers and was sound asleep by 9:30. I'm itching to get outside and take some pictures of mom D's gardens. She has so many gorgeous flowers out there that I'm in awe.

I'll leave everyone with a couple of pictures of our flowers before I head out and take some new pictures.

Foxglove. I really didn't think this plant was going to produce any more flowers, but it has proved me wrong. It's beautiful!

Gerber Daisy. Again, I thought my two daisy plants were done for. I was wrong. I think this ranks up there with the Gazania as my favorite flower.

I think we'll be having cabbage rolls in the next week or two. The four savoy cabbage (although they don't look very much like savoy) are getting really big. I'm getting really excited!!

I hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend. I plan on it. We'll be home Monday night and then I start school with the kids on Tuesday. I'm starting to freak out about trying to work the schedule to get both of them taught at the same time, but I'm sure after a couple of weeks, we'll have it down to a science.

Tragedy.

I'm still here. I've been missing because I have way too much to do. I'm not even sure where to start today. I suppose I will start with the tragedy and then work backwards over the last few days. It looks like Nancy has saved our little family of four from certain death. Thank you Nancy!! And it was all by accident. She came over Saturday while Tim and I were in the middle of making tomato sauce and canning them. She saw that we had put zucchini in the sauce and told us that we had to pressure can them to kill the bacteria. I didn't even think of that. I thought that because the sauce was filled with a lot of tomatoes that it would be fine. No. Even though we blended the zucchini and garlic and peppers into tiny little bits it was not enough. So, we have 6 pints of tomato sauce that we canned a couple of weeks ago that have to go down the drain. I was really bummed at first. But I'm chalking it up to a lesson now. I would rather learn my lesson and lose 6 pints of sauce than lose my family to botulism. I ended up with 5 pints of tomato sauce on Saturday that we are now going to freeze and hope that will be ok. Saturday's sauce was insanely yummy chalk full of garlic and zucchini. We are going to have one of the pints tonight and then I've got four pints ready to freeze.

death in a jar

hopefully safe sauce

We made the sauce on Saturday because we ended up with a lot of tomatoes again. Aidan and I were out in the gardens first thing in the morning and picked a bunch. Aidan is so cute. Whenever he sees a red tomato he exclaims, "Look, it's the most beautiful tomato ever" and then he picks it.

Aidan approves of this tomato.

Saturday's harvest

tomatoes we had gathered during the week

So, as you can see we had a lot of tomatoes. We made the 5 pints of sauce and I made a huge batch of salsa. I didn't get a picture of the salsa because the boys ate it too quickly. I still have quite a few tomatoes left and I'm going to make a mega batch of salsa for tomorrow nights party.

Hmmm, what else? We had fun at the baseball game. We had great seat and our team won. Although we didn't stay for the whole game. We stayed through the 6th inning. It was getting late and we have an issue in our car where the interior lights don't turn off for some reason. I noticed it last week when we were leaving the fair. The computer in the car said the door was ajar and even though I got out and opened and closed each door twice it still kept the lights on inside like a door was open. It was difficult driving in the dark with interior lights on. Stupid car.

Aidan wanted his picture taken with the field behind him. This made his head look really big!

It was a beautiful night out and I'm glad I brought a sweatshirt. It got chilly when the sun went down.

That is about all we've got going on this week. It's a busy week. We are helping Nancy host a party tomorrow night and then I think, but I'm not sure, we are going to NY this weekend to pick apples. If we don't go, we'll be sitting on Debbie's back porch under blankies sipping some cocoa. The boys have been wanting to do this all summer and our weather continues to cool off. It was 48 this morning when we got up. Connor ran out quickly this morning to say hi to Mylie and was shocked at how cold it felt. I love it!

Just a couple more pictures and then I'm done.

I love this rose bush. I can see it out my kitchen window and they really are that bright pink. They are gorgeous and make me smile when I see them.

I'm about to break into this for breakfast. Mom D brought this little gem over from her garden. I tried to plant watermelon seeds this year but none of them sprouted. I will try again next year. Thanks mom for the melon. The boys and I are going to enjoy it now.

I hope everyone has a great day!