Shameless Bragging

Well, OK, I don't really want to brag. ...but I am afraid its going to sound like it. However, I decided to take the risk and post anyway. ; )
This is a picture of my son's favorite lunch. His peanut-butter and jelly sandwich. He would happily eat them for every meal if I would allow it.
I have a vague memory of hearing someone say something one time, about making all the ingredients for their PB&J Sandwich...or wishing I could. I can't quite remember just how it was, but what I clearly remember was coming to the conclusion that there are just some things out of my reach and that is one of them. End. Of. Subject.
...or so I thought. And all this time later...it turns out not!!!!!

Yep, its true all three ingredients are 100% homemade right here in my own little kitchen. And I won't lie. I feel quite proud of myself, I do. For it has happened little by little with a lot of work and sacrifice and the result has been very rewarding. ...Ironically, what is probably easiest for many people, the Strawberry Jam, was the biggest stretch for me. ...But I finally figured out how to make it work (I can't get me hands on Pectin here) and I wrote it down so I won't forget!

Well, among other fun things I had my first ultrasound last week. It confirmed that yup! I am very pregnant (OK, that really wasn't in question), and yup! I am 13 weeks along...and what an amazing little kicker I have growing inside of me! Never had I seen so much detail in a plain old black and white ultrasound on a baby so tiny. We saw both little hand prints and could count out all five fingers clearly on each hand. And also got a clear look at his/her face--eyes, nose and mouth! And the whole time the baby was wriggling, kicking, moving and dancing. Just amazing, breathtaking, and unbelievably beautiful. What an incredible Creator we have!!!
The other fun thing about this weekend has nothing on my growing baby, but in its own way is exciting for me. I love to organize. I love when things have a place to go. And my little storage room as gone from messy to down right hazardous over time. But this weekend DH finished mounting the shelves in there! To give a little background...when we got married we didn't have a closet or wardrobe, but came across some free metal shelves. Imagine the type of thing that would typically go in a shop or in the pantry to fill with canning jars. We turned two of those and a big dowel into our temporary closet. Temporary turned to months and months turned to almost seven years. And then, whoo-hoo! Another heaven sent (free!) gift! A wardrobe! (Not the one I painted awhile back, that one is for the kids, I really need to take a picture of this one too, I love it, it is beautiful--AND, bonus, I didn't have to paint it.)
So, this weekend I finally got our clothes moved into a "real closet" and the metal shelves were demoted to what they were made for...organizing "stuff" in a spot where they won't be an eye-sore. I still have a huge pile of things in the middle of my living room to go through, and either toss or organize--this is no small task. But even that can't get me down today! I am just so happy to finally have a place to be able to put them when I eventually manage to get it finished. Not to mention that I have all kinds of great art and craft supplies that I couldn't even get to that I will now be able to start employing as we begin Mic's kindergarten.
And finally another little oral feeding note, I think its going a little bit better, but please don't stop praying for us. She really did hit her lowest low since therapy. At least she is eating again, a little bit the last couple days, after a few days of literally almost zero oral cals.

Being Careful

Well... as you probably know there is a flu bug going around in our town. I personally feel the media blows things way out of proportion. It annoys the bajeebers out of me to read things like "New, Never-before-seen, Deadly Virus Appears". Ummm, hello, correct me if I am wrong, but every round of flu is "new" isn't it? Isn't that why they create a NEW flu shot for each flu season? So, please, don't make the herd of people who don't think this through for themselves feel like the world is going to end just because this strain of flu isn't familiar. And then there is the classic "as many as 83 dead due to Swine flu" but if you keep reading clear to the end actually in reality only 23 of those deaths are confirmed to have been this flu thus far. Sure, 23 are worth taking into consideration, but really what percentage of this city's population would 23 work out to be? More babies than that died in this city today because of abortion, which is beside the point, but perhaps helps perspective a little bit? And finally there are the "fears that it could spread into a global pandemic" though if you continue to read you will discover that the same expert does admit that it is far to soon to actually declare such a thing. So my point, before I step of my soap box, is simply that it drives me nuts to see the media paste half truths and some down right lies* in the big letters at the top of the page which, sadly, is the only part that many people read and thus promoting panic, fear and terror to a world that doesn't need that on top of everything else!

That said, the illness is real, and I have always been a firm believer in being safe rather than sorry. So, while I am not hiding in my home panic stricken nor in fear. We did decide to stay home from church today. Our reasoning being that Mic has a higher risk factor and lower defenses than the average person and almost always comes home from Sunday School with a runny nose anyway. She is just finally pulling out of her last illness and...its just not worth taking a chance on my princess' health. So, we slept in, and when we finally got up, had a silly slipper morning while listening to our church service online.

Hooray for a relaxing morning and super silly slippers!!!

*This mornings news lie being that the papers had pasted in big letters that any Churches that held meetings today would be severely fined. Flat out lie. Our church was on the phone to the actual powers that would have the ability to make such a fine and both last night and this morning they did confirm that the headline was....FALSE! Unbelievable.

HAIL!?

I have a little back patio. I have mentioned in the past how much I love that particular spot. It is the center of much activity, work and play. It is peaceful, cool, private, useful, safe for the children, really just right in almost every way. As you can see below it houses my laundry/cleaning center. Maybe part of my special feelings toward my back patio has to do with the fact that laundry really is my favorite chore and nothing pleases me more than having the right space, tools and organization to get a job done, and my patio fits the bill perfectly.
...at least it did until the tarp that shades it broke...again! Without protection from the fierce sun, wind and rain my back patio is effectivly "broken".
My dear husband spent all his spare minutes during Holy Week and the week that followed building a little roof as a much more stable and permanant solution! I am SO happy, and SO proud of him! It really turned out beautifully!

When if was finally completed he said, "now we just need it to rain real hard so we know if it is sound or not". I smiled and said, "just wait a couple more months". Rainy season usually starts here about June.

However, last evening we got some real excitment!!! We had a blistering hot afternoon, followed by a cool cloud cover as evening approached, and then I realized it was going to rain! Well it didn't just rain. We had the biggest hail storm I personally have ever experienced! (I'm a west valley girl, so real hail is even one rung above snow on my excitment list!)

This was one of the bigger balls I got my hands on--about the size of a marble. If I would have been willing to get pelted I could have found even bigger ones to fotograph---but I wasn't!

The most amazing thing is that it just kept coming down harder and harder and it started to really pile up and it just wouldn't quit falling. The sound was so deafening on our roof we literally could not hear each other speak even in the same room.

My poor little raised bed didn't fare so well. I had cilantro going to seed, I was going to harvest the seed for later planting,...its all but gone.

When it finally calmed down a bit of course every one began to emerge and assess the street, everyone except me that is, I was in shorts and flipflops and had no desire to get my feet wet, so I let my husband man the camera and give me a full report. : ) As soon as they had seen what there was to see the next step was to get the hail off of the roofs so that the rain could drain. From my window I could see five guys up working on different roofs, and from my in-laws you could see about another ten. I tried to get pictures of them, but my little camera wouldn't focus that far away and as previously mentioned I wasn't willing to get wet--even for good pictures!

And, of course we can't have a storm without the power going out. When I lit the first candle Mic began to sing "Happy Birthday" to me. It was very cute and sweet.

To top off the excitment about bed time C realized that there was a fire truck right outside our gate. He went back out to see what was happening. We are at the top of our street and from here it declines, then ends in a sharp corner. Evidently as it rained after the hail all the ice stacked up at the bottom of the street. He said that there was about a foot and a half of standing hail at the bottom of the street!

This morning with the hail melted you could really see how our trees did...unfortunatly thats not just leaves on the ground...

Its also hundreds of baby avocados! : ( SOOOOOOO sad! But unbelievabaly even though the ground is covered with them I did manage to see that there are still a few in the tree too, so it wasn't a total loss.

...and my new roof on my back patio, stood up valiently to the true test!!! Congratulations Honey! I am so proud of your skills!

The Good, The Exciting...

So last week was "spring break" here and that had us completely out of routine. Not because my children are affected by the school schedule, but because the entire city, and consequently my husband's work are all altered. This has good and bad parts to it. The especially good was no traffic and more time with Papa around!
There were also special meetings at church. I wanted to picture journal it, but forgot my camera every single day! It was beautiful! Good sound Biblical word, healings and miracles, worship, flags, rams horns, dance, lives changed, hundreds saved. What a great recipe!
On other news, my Mom is going to be married this summer, so we have the joy and "nervousment" that a wedding and new family bring. Its beautiful to see new love bud and blossom, and odd to become painfully aware of how my parents must have felt to see me engaged and planning to be wed. In some strange way, the table has turned! : )
For exciting this afternoon we had some extremely high winds and one of the loose sheets on the edge of the roof got picked up, tossed over and broken. Hats off to my Honey that figured out a way to wire the broken piece down and fix the problem.
Unfortunately its not always all good. Mic has a pretty nasty cold going on, it makes her already difficult night breathing far more complicated. So we are working on hydration and calories and defenses so that all is well, Lord willing, for her scheduled blood tests on Wed. We'll let you know how it goes.

Muddled Mind

Ever feel like SO MUCH is happening that you have nothing to say? I think that is the basic sum of my life for the moment. And my mind is just cluttered with it all...
...Bullet points! Mike W. always said that bullet points were great for organizing your thoughts...so here is my partial bullet point list of recent significant and mostly insignificant happenings in my life.

• I am planning on officially starting to homeschool this fall and trying to organize all that that entails...
• Friday night was girls' night out. We took deserts to a friends place and just had fun being girls. I didn't realize just how much I needed something like this until we started doing it. It fills an invisible hole in my life in a delicious sort of way.
• I finally got around to making more granola bars for Mic. These babies have 4.5calories PER GRAM and are YUMMMMMMMMY! Great for her, not so great for the rest of the household, but we all dig in anyway.
• My storage hole is an utter hopeless disaster that I desperately need to overhaul and I just can't manage to get to it. Such important things as my address book and my son's tennis shoes are lost somewhere in there.
• The tarp shading my back patio is rent in two. We need a mini-roof before my washmachine gets rained on. (Luckily it shouldn't start raining for another couple months)
• I am having a hard time keeping my mind off of the global situation, Revelations and the end times...
• Oral feeding for Mic is definitely stuck where we are at for now. No matter how positive I try to be the truth is that the cal counts are not budging. If I let it its gonna break my heart.
• Sunday evening we popped popcorn and took it to a little park nearby. The four of us played with a ball and a frisbee and ate "acorns" (as Mic calls them). Did you ever feel like you got to live a storybook moment that surly must belong to someone else's much more organized and romantic life? That's kind of how I felt...in a warm fuzzy sort of way.
• I am in some sort of mini-crisis concerning the proper way to go about Mic's BD and it is driving me crazy that I can't just make up my own mind. I want someone to tell me what to do, but I want to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that that someone isn't mistaken.
• We have been going through about 2 1/2 kilos of bananas a week! ...Bananas are expensive right now and its starting to hurt.
• My son has some sort of weird dry skin rash on the backs of his hands and its not going away on it own. I need to figure out what I am going to do about it.
• And the rest is just a little to personal to blurt out on a bullet point list on the internet. So, you'll just have to wait until when and if I am ready to share the rest of whats on my mind! : )

Happiness is...

...a load of fresh, clean diapers hung up neatly on the line to dry!!!

O.K., of course that is not my complete and exhaustive definition of happiness! It is just one little drop in the bucket. But, I do love the feeling of satisfaction that sight brings to me, all mingled together with the sweet smell of clean and the freshness of my back patio and the beauty of my huge potted fern that resides there... ahhhhhhh!

And speaking of "ahhhhhhhh"

I decided it was high time to make some strawberry jam before the season is past and they get expensive again... (Yes, I know its an odd time for berries, I have no idea why, but they are super cheap here from about the middle of December to between the middle and end of March. I have no idea if they are local, and my plant never gave me a single berry, any time of year, so I am none the wiser!)

They are one of my favorite fruits and this was an exceptionally beautiful batch of berries!

I'd never actually made this exact recipe before, but how hard can it be!?

O.K. so I messed up a bit with the thickener and it turned out all runny, but its still good.

Later on a did another batch and it turned out even better--nice and thick! I think I'll leave it at that for this year, but now I can't wait for next year to get here so I can continue to improve on my little production!!!!

EXCITING THINGS are happening in my yard!

Flowers on the way...

Makings for fresh camomile tea...

Cilantro coming in...

More flowers...

THE FIRST BLACKBERRY!!!!!!!!

(Sorry, but unless you were born and raised where they gr0w wild, then moved to where they don't theres just no way you will understand this excitement!!!)

And despite a massive and late pruning, the peach tree is even blossoming...

Projects

I have many home improvement aspirations, however there are certain things that are simply impossible to do without help. ...like getting that old wardrobe painted up to use for the kid's clothes.
Sooooo, new years day I took advantage of my SIL's presence as well as my husband's helping hands and we got the job done! I forgot to take the very first before picture, but here's a getting started snapshot.

SIL helping with the backside...its use as a divider in the bedroom made painting all angles necessary.

And the finished product! All the black parts are done with chalkboard paint and can be drawn on with chalk.

Another pending "to-do" has been to change out Mic's tube. It was already looking iffy before our trip, but that little balloon hung on and hung on and made it to seven months, six days before it absolutely definitely HAD to come out. That's the most time we've ever got out of a tube, so I was pleased!!! I wanted to picture journal the steps to a tube change. I thought it would be very interesting for those who have never seen it done...however my little miss was NOT cooperating so the only picture we got that's good enough to post was the preliminary balloon check. But at least you can see what the tube looks like on the inside. The "top" is what you see on her tummy when its in and the "post" and balloon are what go on the inside of her. The balloon inflates and deflates through that little valve where I have the syringe stuck.

Whats for Dinner?

We had company for dinner this weekend, and I made stir fry. I have a favorite Terriyaki Sauce recipe. I got this recipe from my sister. Two of my more superficial favorite things about my sister are the great recipes she gives me and the awesome hand-me-downs she passes me without which I would be even more hopelessly out of style than I already am! : ) But back to the recipe...I thought it would be fun to share it with you just in case you can't decide what to cook today. (I hope I am not infrindging any copyright laws!)

1/2 c soy sauce
1/4 c vinegar
2 T brown sugar
2T minced onion
1T veg. oil
1 clove garlic
1/2 t ground ginger
1/8t pepper

This time I made it in a hurry so instead of mincing the onion and garlic I threw everything in the blender. It was different, but also good like that. My sister makes some killer sirlion shishkabobs on the BBQ with this as the mariande. I like to soak my chicken for stir fry in part of it then cook with some more and put the rest on the table for those who want still more.

On other news, last week we saw the ear/nose/throat specialist. Mic had so much snot that even using a tweezers and a sucko machine they were unable to actually check her nose canals, which is what we have concerns about. (sigh). But we all got an AWESOME look at her palate and could admire once again the amazing job Dr. Waldof did closing up her palate, and we were able to confirm that there are no fistulas. (a slight concern because of food coming out of her nose on occasion.) The not so happy news was at the weight check. She grew a couple more centimeters tall and is still stuck at the same old 12kg. It feels like we have been there FOREVER. I am getting a little desperate to put at least a little bit of weight on her before the rapid wean therapy. Desperate times call for desperate messures, I'm off to make some BD and see what I can find to slather on the calories! LOL

I'll be using the crib forever.

Well, ...OK, more exactly the sides of the crib.

I have had this little project in mind for my storage room for some time now. it has a very high ceiling and all that wasted space kills me. ...and the removable crib sides to the toddler bed are made of strong high quality wood, but are rotting outside in the humid gardening closet. SOOOO, I did the measuring and cutting, and finally yesterday got my husband to do the drilling, and here is my new (and already full) storage space.
I LOVE to organize. I get great joy from having the proper place to put something and seeing it there when not in use. .....I cant help myself, it makes me so happy!!!

Like Mother Like Daughter

Yesterday I had some cooked peas in the fridge that I wanted to use up. After thinking for awhile I decided that a tuna cassarole would be a nice place to put the peas, so I made tuna casserole for supper.

...this morning I was rearranging things in the fridge...and lo and behold the peas are still there! We had a lovely, pealess cassarole for supper last night.

Now (for those of you who know her) doesn't that sound like something my dear, forgetful mom would have done!?!

MARKET DAY

I get a high off of coming home from the local wholesale market with a big load of fresh goods.
It feels like thanksgiving......and for me it is. I am so thankful that we have fresh healthy foods to put on the table and so in awe of our creative God that made food so varied and fun. I love it so much I just can't resist pulling out my camera every once in awhile. Heres a peek at todays catch!

......now comes the fun part. Putting it all away in my mini-fridge! : )

(yes, that is a kilo of fresh pomegranite in the lower left......YUMMMM!)