We are ready for lift off.

Today was our final day before school officially starts tomorrow. We couldn't have asked for a nicer day either. Dare I say there was a chill in the air today. We finally turned off the air conditioner and I opened all the windows up. I dried three loads of laundry on the line and I worked on this weeks lesson plans and schedules while the kids played.

Nothing but blue skies and cool breezes today. My clematis has climbed all the way up the side of the garage and I'm training it on a string across the patio to our carport.

Aidan's racetrack he drew on Nancy's driveway. It has crocodile pits that you have to take a ramp over, and walls that you have to jump over, and walls with rocket launchers on them that you have to punch down...or you can take the short cut on the right side and miss all the fun stuff.

Connor and Aidan trying out the race track.

Patchy keeping an eye on everyone...and happy to do so.

My favorite little piggies enjoying the cool grass.

It's now just after 8:30 pm and both boys are tucked in and headed to dreamland. They have actually been really good about adjusting back into a nighttime routine. The rule is lights off at 8:30. Well we were letting them brush teeth and all that jazz at 8:25 and then they went to bed. Connor has decided that he likes to read for a half hour before he sleeps. We have readjusted and now they start their bedtime routine at 7:45 with their butts in bed at 8 pm. Connor reads and Aidan either flips through a book or plays on his nintendo. He was just playing Big Brain Academy. I guess he's prepping for school tomorrow. I can hear them in there chatting to themselves right now but I suspect they will both be sleeping in about 5 minutes.

I am feeling pretty good about school this year. We are going to try to get some pretty strict routines down that will hopefully make it easier on everyone. One thing is that I'm not going to even think about laundry until Saturdays. That will be official laundry day. Another thing we are trying is Crockpot dinners. We've done it two days in a row now and it is working great. I get up and throw everything in the pot and then I don't have to do anything until I dish it out at dinner. It really helped today because while Tim took Connor to his karate class tonight I did another huge batch of tomatoes. I'm also happy because the first two weeks of school are four day weeks and I think that will help ease us ease back into hitting the books.

The rules are up...let's see if they follow them.

The apples are hanging. Sept is the month Johnny Appleseed was born. There will be a lot of apple activities.

The kid's workspace is ready to go. Oh, how I hope it always looks this picked up.

The dividers are mostly done. I had this idea for splitting up the big desk so that Connor and Aidan can focus on their own work. Connor's has his monthly schedule and a fun facts calendar and a list of the classroom rules. I would like to put more in there, but I don't want it to be distracting. Aidan's I'm going to have him write his "words he knows" as he learns them. He decorated his a little bit with some glitter.

And last, but not least, my new best friend. I had to go out and get a bigger crockpot. I had a 3.5 qt one and it always boiled over so now I have a 6 qt one and it works beautifully. I am so happy/excited that I found another blogger who blogged for a whole year with her crockpot. The best part?! Well, two best parts...One...all of her recipes are gluten free! and Two: she has a book coming out in October. I already have one pre-ordered. Check her out if you want. I've made two of her recipes so far and they have been really good.

Tomatoes. Ugh. I don't care to see another tomato for a while. Unfortunately there are bunch more out there on the plants. I don't think we are going to plant as many plants next year. Although they are really good. We picked a whole bunch of them on Saturday along with a lot of peppers and a couple of cucumbers. I'm not sure what I'm doing with the peppers yet and I'm scared for when Tim's haberneros are all ripe. I counted about 20 of them on one bush and he has four bushes out there. Yikes.

Saturday's harvest. Not too shabby!

Well, the clock just chimed 9. As I guessed, both kids are sleeping and I'm about to curl up with my new Country Living magazine. I have to get up early tomorrow to walk Patchy before the kiddies get up and then we start our first day. I'm pretty optimistic about how it will go. I hope I'm not singing another tune tomorrow night.

Agenda

What I did today was not on my agenda. I was trying to lay low and relax and prepare for starting school next week. Wrong. When I was out with Patchy I was looking at one of the tomato patches and realized that I need to pick them NOW.

So pick them I did. Sadly, I lost 8 of them to the compost bin. We left them on the vine too long. I posed them for a lovely picture:

A huge haul of orange tomatoes.

Here's when the funny thing happened. I had a total brain fart. I got them inside and knew that I needed to deal with them ASAP. They were really ripe. I ran for a couple of my books. Do I can them whole? Do I make sauce? Do I attempt to use my pressure canner? Ack. What to do, what to do. After a few minutes I calmed down and decided to blanch them, peel them, run them through the mill and then Tim could make sauce when he got home from work.

I set up a nice little line in the kitchen. First I boiled them one or two at a time. Some of these tomatoes were bigger than my hand. I dropped them in then water for a minute until the skin started to crack:

Boiling for a minute.

I then fished them out of the hot water and plunged them into ice cold water. The skins for the most part just slid right off.

You can see the skins pulling away from the tomatoes.

The skins went to compost as did the cores. The tomatoes were so large that I had to cut them in quarters before I could run them through the mill.

Waiting to be quartered.

A very large pile of scraps to go out to compost.

Now the tomatoes are ready to be squished. I am pretty sure this is what a mill is, if not, I apologize. It's like a big mortar and pestle in that you squish the tomatoes and it separates the juice from the seeds.

A very large pile of peeled and quartered tomatoes.

The mill...I think. =)

I ended up with a very large pot of tomato juice. I called Tim at work and told him he was making sauce when he got home. He ran by the Farmer's Market and picked up some onions and garlic.

Big pot of juice waiting to be spiced up and cooked down.

So, Tim is home. He chopped up a bunch of garlic and onions and sauteed it in olive oil. He then dumped it all in with some oregano and it's currently reducing as I type. In the end, Tim is going to add some Parmesan cheese. We are going to fill up freezer bags and freeze the sauce. There was a lot of confusion (on my part) about if the orange tomatoes would have enough acid in them to use a water bath canner or if I had to use the much feared pressure canner. We are taking the easy way out (this time) and just freezing it.

We still have one more very large patch of tomatoes that need to be picked ASAP. I'm hoping that I can hold off until Saturday, but then again, I don't want to lose a bunch to compost. Tomorrow might be a repeat of today.

Well, I'm going to go enjoy some gluten free peanut butter brownies and finish my Dead Until Dark. Connor finished his first 39 Clues book last night and is bugging me to go get him the second book. It is gearing up to be a busy weekend. Have a great night everybody.

Direction.

Sorry faithful readers for my lack of posting. There really is no excuse except for laziness. I'm trying to figure out the direction I want this little blog to go. I originally set it up to keep track of my garden experiments and keep family members in the loop with the craziness we call life. I'm not sure if I should limit it to just gardening. Or include everything else. Maybe I'll make a daily schedule like Monday will be news about kids, Tuesday will be gardening news, etc. Of course that means that I will have to do something daily and I'm not sure if I can commit to that right now.

I think for this post I will break it up into topics.

Homeschooling:

Where did this summer go? It boggles my mind that next week we start school again. I am going to do another year of homeschooling with Connections Academy. I like the ability to work at our own pace and the curriculum provided. I like that each of the kids has their own teacher that I can touch base with if I need help. I like spending time with my kids because I know soon enough they will be out on their own and I like being able to mold them into decent human beings while I have the chance. I also like that I get to see them progress through the years. If they were in public school I don't think it would be as noticeable. Their teachers would change from year to year and the new teacher would not know what giant steps the kids make each year. I get to see them mature and learn every year. I learn too, which isn't a bad thing. So, school is back on as of next Tuesday. I have the classroom 95 percent ready to go. The kids have all of their books and I have the first week of lesson plans already organized and ready. Tim has to make sure their computer is up to date with all of the software they need. I am also going to try and make something to put on their desk to separate their work areas so there will (hopefully) be no fighting/arguing. I am hoping this year will be better than last. There were a lot of things going on and I wasn't as focused as I should have been. There were also some serious extended family issues that we had to deal with but all seems to be calm for now. I did learn that I am not going to give my power over to anyone to adjust how I feel or make me feel like I'm not doing what I think is best for my family.

Garden:

This is a gardening blog, is it not? I like to call my garden the half-assed garden this year. We planted our things into the ground and have occasionally weeded and that is about it. I'm not too proud about it and I am already starting to plan out next year. We had a rough start to the season with an inordinate amount of rain. I thought that perhaps we had turned into Seattle. The high amount of rain had it's ups and downs. We didn't really have to water anything this year...but I think our tomatoes suffered early on because of the amount of water. We have had a couple of large harvests so far and I think we will probably pick most of our tomatoes this weekend and then make them into sauce and can. I will say that the tomatoes that we have picked already have been so amazingly tasty. They are insane too. They are big and meaty. When you cut into them there is very little seed goop. It's all meat. We have also been very successful with peppers this year. I'm going to do some reading about pickling some peppers later today. The cucumbers have been so-so. For the amount of cucumber plants that got planted I haven't really seen a lot coming off the vine. I was hoping to make some pickles, but no such luck (yet).

An assortment of peppers picked before vacation.

Tower of tomatoes picked before vacation.

Tomato picked yesterday.

Tim's haberneros are starting to turn orange. His four plants are covered with peppers.

Food:

Yes, this is now a big topic in our house. I've been gluten free for a month now. At first I didn't see any real big changes in how I felt. I do think that I am starting to feel better and I know that I have more energy. Tim says he can see a big difference in how I act so that is something. It's been a huge adjustment though. I love to bake. I mean I reallllllly love to bake. It's not so easy do to when you have to do it gluten free. Instead of using all purpose flour, you have to use a mix of other (expensive) flours. I have been successful in making cakes and bread and I even tackled a pretty good pizza crust. It's harder though. The pizza crust for instance is a pain in the arse to get rolled out into the pan. I also miss kneading. I used to take pleasure in kneading dough for ten minutes. I could feel the elasticity of it and I could feel it getting warm in my hands. I miss kneading. I have also decided that I'm going to have to break down and buy a KitchenAid stand mixer. I only have a handheld mixer and it barely cuts it for the mixing. I haven't gotten one yet because I haven't decided if I'm going to just abandon my love of baking. I'm sure around the holidays I will change my mind because the kids and I really do enjoy the tradition of cookie weekends.

The other problem that I've run into is gluten hiding in things that I don't expect. I've always been a pretty good label reader. You have to be when you are vegan (as we were for a year), but gluten takes on so many names that it's confusing. I find myself cheating and just buying things specifically labeled gluten free. That is all well and good until you travel. Let's just say we had a very packed cooler of things safe to eat. So, we are still trying to adjust to the new GF lifestyle. I find that I'm not as interested in food as much, which is probably a good thing. I'm just replacing it with liqueur. Just kidding (I think).

Vacation:

Ah, vacation. The one time a year that I look forward to and dread all at the same time. Don't get me wrong. I love to travel down to Florida and spend time with my family. That is not the part I dread. It's the drive. 18 hours. Long hours. This is the first year that we took it easy on ourselves and didn't drive all the way through. We splurged and got a hotel for the trip down and the trip back. Not an easy task when traveling with a dog either.

We left on a Friday afternoon and drove 12 hours and ended up in South Carolina the first night. We rolled into the parking lot at almost midnight and before we got out of the car we were approached by a woman and her two children begging for money. Tim talked to her because I was trying to get the kids to pack up all of their electronic equipment into their backpack to take inside. The woman told Tim some story about how they were staying in a nearby hotel and that they needed (she sized him up to see how much she could get away with asking for) 22 dollars. Huh? You are going to approach a very tired family at midnight in a dark parking lot with your kids and ask for money?! I think not. Tim said he got a weird vibe and was pretty sure it was a scam so we didn't give her anything. It was weird. I didn't sleep all that well that night because of that and because it takes me a while to unwind from driving 12 hours to actually go to sleep. Everyone else passed right out.

Then comes Saturday. We were all up and showered and on the road by 8 am. Yay us! I stopped at a Dunkin Donuts to get Tim and I a coffee and get the kids each one donut. This is where our day turned sour. I don't know if it was something in the coffee, or if it was the fact that I touched the donuts as I handed them to the children (and then proceeded to eat my watermelon) but an hour later I knew I was in trouble. I was driving along the highway at about 75 mph and I got sick. I had a sudden stabbing pain in my gut and then I felt like I was going to get sick and pass out. I was attempting to find a rest area to pull into but I knew I was a minute from passing out. I very quickly pulled off the highway (scaring Tim) and got out of the car....got sick and then passed out. We were on the side of the road for about 2o minutes. It was terrible. I am so thankful that I knew that I was going to pass out though. My ears kind of went dull and I had the cold sweats. It's happened before. I don't even want to think about what would have happened if I had passed out while I was driving. Probably wouldn't be sitting here typing about it now. I am also thankful that when I pulled over it was really cloudy and windy but not yet raining. The breeze helped me slowly come back. Tim took over driving for a while and sure enough five minutes back into the drive it started to rain really hard. Good timing, eh? Well, that little incident kind of wore me out for the rest of the day. Tim drove for a couple of hours until I felt better and then I took back the driving duties until we got to my parent's house. I was beat and not very sociable when we got there but was much better by Sunday. Like I said, I'm not sure what set my episode off. I still am a tiny bit skeptical if I am in fact celiac or at least intolerant to gluten. I don't know if the fact that I handed a donut to each child and then ate my watermelon did it or if it was just something in the coffee. I may never know what happened...but it seems to have convinced Tim that I cannot eat or be around gluten.

The rest of the vacation was nice. We had an amazing day at the beach. I mean AMAZING! We got there early before it was filled with people. It wasn't too hot. The tide was on the way out and the kids had a blast in the water. We saw a lot of small white fish with each wave that came in and receded. We also saw a lot of little live conch shells. The kids were fascinated with them. I was also amazed at how much Connor has grown up. In the past, he has been terrified of the beach. The waves were always too loud and too rough for him. This trip he strapped on a boogey board and hit the waves with Tim. Aidan, as usual, showed no fear of the water at all. He went right in, got knocked over, got back up and did it all over again. I kept freaking out because there had been rip tide warnings because two separate tropical storms were off the coast, but everyone survived. I also scored one of my classic beach sunburns which I enjoy. I know, it's crazy, but I can be bright red one day and the next day it's nice and brown. It was awesome.

We could not have asked for a nicer beach day. It was perfect!

Aidan showing his no fear. This was like two minutes after arriving to the beach. Everyone else was laying out blankets, putting on sunscreen, etc and Aidan was running towards the water by himself.

The only other major thing we did was take the kids out to Downtown Disney. Aidan got jipped out of a trip to the Lego store last year so we had to do it this year. He was beside himself with excitement. He looked at everything. He spent a lot of time on the wall where you can pick out certain pieces. He spent time playing on the table where they had legos out to play with. He scored a bunch of stuff. It was a great trip. We then ate at the T-Rex Cafe. If you've ever been to the Rainforest Cafe, it's the same thing instead of having Rainforest scenes and animals it was all prehistoric scenes and dinosaurs. It was really good. The chef came out and talked to me about the whole gluten thing and helped me pick out what I could eat and was a great help. The food was tasty and the meteor shower stopped the kids in their tracks. We shot a video of Aidan with a spoon halfway to his mouth and him just staring at everything happening during the meteor shower. Highly recommended if you happen to see one.

The rest of the vacation was just spent hanging out with family and spending a lot of time in my parent's pool. The visit was somewhat bittersweet though because I think my parents and my brother and his family are going to be moving out of Florida within the following year. I basically grew up in Florida and I have a lot of memories there. It will be sad to not go down there and see things and spend time in the pool anymore. Of course, I guess there is nothing saying that we can't go down and get a hotel and do stuff...it was just nice to not have to worry about the expense of that.

Aidan an d Connor hamming it up in the pool.

Oh well, we are home now and Tim is getting back into the work routine and I'm getting back into my routine and trying to plan for the school routine for next week. We are glad to be home all safe and sound. Tim has 8 days of vacation left that he needs to use before the end of the year and we are trying to decide what to do. Neither one of us really want to go anywhere. There are a couple of things I would like to do before the end of the year and maybe he can take a day here and there to do that. I know that I want to go to Knoebel's again in the fall when it's cooled off. I want to go to the county fair next month and the Sheep and Wool festival in NY is quickly approaching. Beyond that, he will probably just take a day here and there and do nothing.

Misc:

Well, I don't really have all that much more to write about right now. I have a kitchen sink full of dishes waiting to be tended to and some folded laundry that needs to be put away. I think I will spend the rest of my afternoon trying to finish my book as I know reading books for pleasure will be a luxury once school starts. I will probably try to do a summer wrap up in the next week or so.

I hope everyone else is doing well and enjoying the winding down of summer. Personally, I'm ready for fall and all that it entails.

Note to self....

Self,

Happy day! After doing some research, ALL of the Method products are gluten free. You don't have to go through the house and rip out all of the foaming hand wash, the bar of soap in the tub, the many assorted cleaners that are around. It's all safe. Oh, such a happy day.

Love,
Me


Seriously, how awesome is that. I stumbled across Method products a few years ago when we did our year of vegan. They were products that smelled good that didn't have any animal products and they don't test on animals. I have stuck with the products. I have a foaming hand wash at each sink in our house. We use the bar soap in the bath. I use the counter cleaner, the window cleaner, the furniture polish, the floor wash, the hardwood floor wash, and now the dishwasher tablets. I've been waiting and hoping that they would put out a tablet for the dishwasher that would fit into our "be nice to the earth" lifestyle, and alas, they did. I ♥ Method products and will continue to use them daily. Thanks Method, you rock!

Musings.

It's Tuesday. It's 10:18 am. I'm still in my pajamas. I may stay in them all day. It's one of those days. It's grey outside and we are supposed to get some rain today. I have been up and gotten some things done. Both children have been fed. Coffee has been made (and drunk). I've finished another granny square and that may be the extent of my day. Thankfully, our home is pretty much picked up and the kids are content to play on the computer. Connor did have me put his time in for reading on the Scholastic site. He's been devouring a new book that I got him last week. I hope he slows down so I'm not buying a book a week like I was with the Wimpy series. Aidan has been ruling supreme on Bejeweled Blitz. Although I just beat his score and he has vowed to take over the top spot again.

It's been an interesting week. Two weeks ago I went for some blood work (a lot of it). Thursday night around 5 pm, the doc's office calls and the nurse tells me that the Celiac test came back positive. I had antibodies in my blood and the doc said that I should adhere to a gluten free diet. That was pretty much all she said. No follow up appointments? No words to the wise? I was kind of shocked, but not really. I had a feeling that I had at least an intolerance because I couldn't seem to shake my crappy feeling. I started reading immediately and 9 out of 10 of the symptoms fit me to a T...all except the weight loss. Go figure. I had a quick little cry...really just a couple of tears at the loss of my fave foods and beer. I was happy to finally have a conclusive reason for my feeling the way I have.

Friday morning I geared up to go hit the book store to get a couple of cookbooks and a book about the disease. Right before I leave the house the phone rings. It's the doctor's office. I pick it up thinking that maybe they were going to schedule a follow up appointment. Nope. The nurse tells me this time that the doctor consulted a GI doctor and that I don't have Celiac. Huh? How can you misread a test like that? Apparently it's a common test that is misread all the time. So, now what? Do I sigh a sigh of relief that I can continue to live without any restrictions or do I pursue the gluten free diet? Right now I've decided to eliminate gluten. Not only for me, but for the whole family. I figure it will be better for Connor's diabetes. Also, I can't get the symptom list out of my head. I had every one of the symptoms. It made perfect sense. I went out and got some books and spent the weekend reading them.

Saturday was also my birthday. I'm inching closer and closer to 40. I'm ok with that though because I still feel like I'm in my 20's (minus the digestion issues). Tim was super sweet and printed off a list of gluten free products from Burt's Bees and hooked me up with a bunch of lotions and shampoos and stuff and he got me one of my favorite movies, Amelie. The biggest thing that I got though was my Ipod Touch. I was surprised. I'm such a gadget geek and Tim is the total opposite. He hates them. He is the best. I love it. The kids and I have been playing with it non stop. So, a nice weekend kind of took my mind off the gluten free nonsense.

Oh, and Sunday I was just finishing up cutting the grass and our neighbor Jeff brings over a bag of three trout that he just caught in Toby creek. He offered to them us. I know Tim had been wanting some fresh fish and I asked if they were ok to eat. Jeff said they were, so we took them.

The smallest of three...before gutting.

Connor loved identifying the guts as they came out.

Tim cleaned them up, with the kids watching his every move. They have been wanting to go fishing for a while and we might have to break down and actually do it soon. I remember going fishing once when I was Connor's age and I have one word for my experience. Boring. I was bored to tears...and hot. I didn't have fun. Now, I don't think I would mind it as much. Sitting still next to water in the quiet. I think I could handle that. I see a fishing license in our future. Tim grilled up the fish Sunday afternoon. I wasn't planning on having any because it kind of grossed me out but I caved and had a bite. It was good. It was really good. Both boys ate it too. I was surprised that Aidan ate it. Mr. Picky. I will say though that he is starting to slowly branch out and try new things. We just had to stop bugging him all the time.

The garden is doing great. We've been picking zukes and summer squash like crazy. Both of which are tasty grilled. The tomato plants are officially taller than I am. The tomatoes are huge but don't seem to be turning color yet. Tim and I starting to lay down bets as to how big they will get. I've seen a couple of cucumbers starting to get bigger. Peppers, oh man, we are going to be drowning in peppers. I let Jeff pick a bunch as a trade for the fish. They are getting big and I'm going to be making some salsa soon.

I dragged the kids away from their water gun battle to stand in front of the tomato plants so you could see the difference in size. I'm 5'10" and a couple of them are over my head.

Perfection!

Patience will pay off.

What else? Oh, I got an email today saying that Connor's textbooks will be here tomorrow. I'm just now starting to unwind from last year and now we are looking at next years work. Do I start early? Do I let it go until Sept and enjoy the summer? I know that I'm going to take off the rest of July. I might start him up in August so that we can get some lessons done and work ahead a little bit so that we have some "give" time next year. We'll have a week off in August for our trip to Florida, but we could still get three weeks of assorted lessons done. I guess I'll have to wait and see what shows up tomorrow.

27 days until we leave for Florida. We are all getting excited. I'm looking forward to a week of laying in the pool and going to the beach and seeing my family. We usually drive straight through but this time we are stopping mid-way to take a break. I already have reservations so it will be nice to have a destination to shoot for. I had to make sure that the motels we are staying in will let us have Patchy. We are taking Patchy with us. I don't think my dad knows that we are bringing him yet. My mom is keeping it a secret. Patchy is the worlds' best dog though. 100 percent house trained. Quiet. Cute and fluffy. What more could you ask for...plus Patchy loves and I mean LOVES riding in the car. It will make packing the trunk a challenge though. His crate takes up 80 percent of the trunk space. We'll pack the crate full and then wedge everything else around that. The only thing I'm kind of freaking out about is the food issue. No more running through a fast food on the fly. It should prove interesting in making sure I have breakfasts, lunches and dinners packed for us to eat. I've already started my list making and research.

I think that is the extent of my news for now. It's inching close to 11 o'clock now and I should get up and do one more productive thing before I call it a day and play with some more crochet...or read a book....or play scrabble on my itouch. I hope everyone is having a great week!

Busy day!

I had a very productive day today! I made 8 loaves of bread. A couple of weeks ago, our lovely neighbor Debbie gave us a loaf of bread with a bag of starter for Amish bread. I took care of my little bag of dough for ten days and made two loaves of bread. That one bag of starter dough made the two loaves and 4 more bags of starter. No one wanted any of the starter and I couldn't bring myself to throw away the starter. It had all organic flour, sugar and milk. So for ten days I tended to four bags of starter. Today I made 8 loaves and now I have 16 bags of starter. I can see this spiraling out of control here. I googled and found out that you can freeze the starter and then take it out and start from day one again. So, now I have 5 loaves of bread in the freezer with 16 bags of starter dough.

Before.

After. Two loaves of each: apple/walnut/cinnamon, chocolate/nut/coconut, lemon/poppy seed, and plain 'ol cinnamon. Delish!!

The other big thing that I'm proud of is that I FINALLY taught myself how to crochet a granny square. I see on Flickr all the time this one lady who is always crocheting these amazing granny squares in the most brilliant colors. I was jealous. I have tried several times with no luck, but found a decent site yesterday that walked me through it step by step and now I'm a granny square making machine. I see a large yarn purchase in the near future.

Not too bad for a newbie.

We have been having the most unbelievable weather here for July. Today it was 75 degrees at like 3 in the afternoon. It has been so nice. We had a perfect weekend to drive over and hang out with Michael and Carrie at Reptiland and then had an awesome meal at the Bullfrog Brewery. The kids enjoyed it because Carrie's nephew Noah was with them and they had fun tromping around looking at the snakes and alligators. I just enjoyed the beer at dinner...well, and hanging out with Michael and Carrie. We invited them to go to Knoebels with us in a couple of weeks. I hope that is ok with you Brian.

What else? I got a great book last night. I can't put it down. The Backyard Homestead. It's awesome. It says that on a quarter of an acre you can harvest 1,4oo eggs, 50 lbs of wheat, 60 lbs of fruit, 2,000 lbs of veggies, 280 lb pork, and 75 lbs of nuts. What more could you want or need? For some reason I had in my head that we needed 5 acres to grow enough for us to live on, but this is showing how to use what space you have to the best ability. I will be reading this over and over.

Not too much else going on. Oh, I did want to brag about our power bill. I paid it last week and compared it to the same time last year and our usage was way down. Our bill was 40 dollars cheaper than it was last year even though our rates have gone up. The ONLY thing that I've changed is that I am hanging out all of our laundry now. I think I had to run the dryer only one day last month when we had like three weeks of rain and we were out of clean clothes. Otherwise, it all goes out on our rigged clothesline.

It's funny how much I've changed in the last couple of years. I was telling Tim this morning that I am totally content hanging out the laundry, spending the day in the kitchen baking breads, knitting and crocheting...I think my grandmother would be proud of me. She did all of that and ran a farm. She was a pretty fantastic lady.

Well, I'll leave you a couple of picture from Reptiland. I have a ton of pics that I have to run through photoshop and then I'll post to Flickr. It gets to be a pain with posting pics all over the place...which is why I procrastinate all the time. I will work on my pictures tomorrow. For now, I'm going to curl up with my book and read until I fall asleep. Night all!

I loved the little poisonous frogs. I told Aidan that I wanted one, and he rolled his eyes at me and said, "They are poisonous Mama." I guess that is a no.

This guy was hilarious. The kids tried to feed him but he pecked their hands so hard they ended up throwing the food at him.

The perfect end to a great day with friends. Oh yeah, it was good!

I've been bad.

Hello Mr. Bee. Thanks for finally showing up and helping out in the gardens!


The procrastination bug hit and it hit hard. Sorry bloggie friends. I've been taking pictures. I've been keeping an eye on my little garden. I just can't bring myself to sit down and do five minutes of writing. Bad Bee...bad.

Things have been pretty good around here. We are going on one full week with sun out. Finally. We have had so much rain and so many grey days that I began to wonder if we were turning into Seattle. Our weather is so much nicer now. It's still kind of cool out and I don't think we've had a day over 83 yet. Perfect, if you ask me.

The kids have been enjoying their summer vacation so far. We've taken in some movies. We've been on some long walks. We've done a lot of jam making. We've had some trips to the Farmer's Markets and they have been going through our board games one by one and they've been giving them a whirl.

We had a really nice 4th of July weekend in New York. We got to see fireworks over the Hudson River and it was so cool that we all had to have sweatshirts on. We are on a countdown to go to Florida to hang out with Nana and Papa. Tim and I are still trying to figure out what to do for our tenth wedding anniversary. I think we will celebrate while we are in Florida because Nana and Papa can keep the wee ones.

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So, what was I saying about procrastination? Here I am typing this up on the next day. I couldn't get it all done yesterday. Of course, it's hard to do anything when Tim is working from home. Don't get me wrong, I love having him around, but our routines get all out of whack.

Everything is growing nicely in our garden. I was fretting for no reason about my tomatoes. I am so glad that I didn't yank out all of the plants. They are all covered with tomatoes now. Whew. Experiment worked. I'm very happy. Now I need to figure out if these tomatoes are going to need to be preserved with a pressure canner or if I can do them in a water bath. Of course, if Tim makes his wonder pasta sauce, we'll be using the pressure canner.

On to the pictures:

My patch of beets. I need to plant some more this weekend so that I can have another bunch of them in the fall. I will be pickling these babies.

Tomato patch number one. There are a line of onions growing behind these too. I don't know if they are getting enough sun though.

A couple of the tomatoes on the first patch. Interestingly, we planted these a couple of weeks before the second patch, but found tomatoes first on the other patch.

Our pepper patch. I'm really happy that we have a whole bed for peppers this year. There are three tomato plants at the very end that one of our neighbors asked if he could plant. The pepper plants are all covered with peppers and/or blossoms.

Ancho peppers

California Wonders

Tomato patch number two. These plants are up to my shoulders...so big!

This is the very first tomato I found. I think the whole neighborhood heard my sigh of relief.

A friendly little bee helping pollinate. Thank you little bee.

Our two yellow squash plants.

Our three rows of potatoes. I need to go out and hill those bad boys up soon. You can also see a couple of brussel sprout plants that were dropped down...they are still waiting for a permanent home.

Our cucumber vines finally found the trellis, thanks to Tim. They have gotten huge in the last week.

Hello there Mr. Zuke. I wish I had more of you growing this year but we'll be happy with you. Next year we'll make sure we get it right.

Nancy's broccoli looks much better this year. I still don't really care for broccoli.

That is all I have for now. I would like to say I've had a busy summer, but honestly, it hasn't been too busy yet. I'm waiting to hear on some test results and that will hopefully clue me in to what is up with me and then I can work at fixing my extreme tiredness and general yucky feeling. Until then, I'm going to enjoy our abnormally cool July and watch my kids have fun. Who knows, I might actually finish knitting Tim's scarf too. It's only taken me three years.

I hope everyone is enjoying the summer and everyone's gardens are blooming!