Header Fixed, Thanks to Vin

>> Thursday, June 19, 2008

I'm not sure who Vin is, but after days of messing with trying to fix the header, Vin patiently went over the HTML code and did all kinds of magic and presto! it's all fixed.   Thanks, Vin!  I tried to put his button on the blog as a thanks, but the HTML code didn't like it and couldn't save it. His address is:  http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com   


Baseball is over as of today, HoneyHusband starts a two week vacation tomorrow, I'm hoping for some time to focus. 

For the before and after thing, I weeded 15 minutes last night and today I got the backing material for Tristan's quilt. I love having a deadline! It is just the motivation I needed. 

I have lots more to say, but I need to go get dinner on. It's 8:30 and we just got back from baseball.  Have a lovely evening!

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Before and After

>> Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Boomama has a great idea for motivating us to get some long put off projects finished. She is having a Before and After link so that we can show what we have accomplished by July 25th. I have so many projects I don't know what I'm choosing yet, but I'll definitely be doing something. Maybe Tristan's quilt. That's only been in process for 10-12 years. 


Okay. Here it is:

1) Finish Tristan's quilt
2) Weed garden beds
3) (because I'm nothing if not out of touch)  Lose 10 pounds.  I can make it work with the HGTV thing because I live in my Home. I walk in my Garden, and I don't have TV. Losing weight would totally work within the parameters.  

Oh, wait. Pictures before and after. Ten pounds won't show a thing. Plus I would have to post a picture of myself.  

Okay, I've got it.  I'll leave it and if I decide not to post pictures I'll pretend to have forgotten. I'm so smart I just kill myself. 

Anyway, here's to one more finished project. Or three.  

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Catching Baseball Fever

>> Sunday, June 15, 2008






The boy is getting so good! Doesn't he look like a real pro?

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Penelope Chinchilla and the Fire Truck Ride

>> Wednesday, June 11, 2008








Tyler with Penelope. Isn't she cute?!























Jason and Jaime getting to ride on the old fashioned fire truck. I would have loved to hop on but someone had to be the world famous photographer.  That would be me. 


We're almost at the end of Little League baseball for Jason, another couple of weeks for Tristan and Tyler, then Junior Giants baseball starts up until the end of August. 

Tristan went to play airsoft wars all day with a friend and ended up having a pool party instead, while the rest of the children went for an hour trail ride at Kay's.  It's been a very active spring and we are pretty booked already until August.  The increased pace has had it's good points and other side (ahem).  I like to have special project goals for each summer and I think this summer we are going to concentrate on science and geography.  We love to play Where in the World (Aristoplay game) to learn the name and location of every country, but we'll do more now with our Flat Traveler project.  We've got some maps printed out so we can put our pins where our flats have been and where we've hosted travelers.  It's been so nice to connect with the Flat's families! I love that more than anything. Hello, Bridget!  

Tristan has been weed eating almost 6 hours and will come home in another hour,  just in time to get showered and get to the church youth group.  I'll take my book and have a bit of rest for the couple of hours, and make out the summer schedules and take the computer and check email.  And take my knitting and finish those two projects, then get the rest of the material to finish the top of the quilt I've been making for Tristan for the last 10 years.  Or I could watch a movie on my laptop and eat sunflower seeds.  The choices. They are just too many.

Andrea is about to go on a road trip to Houston--she and a friend are camping on the way down and she will fly back.  She's doing a lot of things, including having lunch at the Hobbit Hole restaurant one day, as well as going to Beth Moore's church. I hope she is blessed beyond words on the entire trip. Surrounded by God's goodness and protection.  Have a great trip, Andree!


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Climbing Cecile Bruner

>> Friday, June 6, 2008

This side yard is my favorite spot this time of year. There is lavender and rosemary blooming in the foreground (my picture didn't get it very well), the Coat of Many Colors rose and another spicy scented one that I bought on a whim. The label said it wasn't hardy, but it's lived through five years of snow and ice and is doing great.  The Cecile Bruner is over the arbor and really needs another arbor on the other side. I love the smell of all of these drifting up to my bedroom window! 

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What Not To Wear To Baseball

Because strangely,  they just don't let kids play baseball with cowboy boots, even if he has Shoe Retrieval Issues, as has been discussed before.  He's such a kick in the pants!



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We have a new pet

>> Wednesday, June 4, 2008


We did, in fact, get the chinchilla. They are pretty amazing little animals. (I'll keep saying positive things about them in case I need to offload her at some point. I'll hold a contest for all two of you reading this. Your odds of winning her may be very good.)  So far she has been way better than we even thought she'd be.  Here are a few pluses:

Chinchillas have absolutely no odor.  (There's not even a quantifier for that one)
They are smart and can be trained to a certain degree.  (I doubt we'll be able to put in that amount of time, but still--smart is better than dumb as an oyster)
They are very, very soft.
They don't eat much at all.
They take the most entertaining dust baths as they don't do water *at all*.  Our canaries drank more water than this little girl does! 
We've learned a lot and they are really interesting.  This is a wonderful place to learn some fun things about them.  
If we kill her, I will no longer say she is interesting. 

 In other news, we finally sent off all our flats yesterday. I'm going to miss them, but it feels good to have them back on their way. My biggest fear has been people thinking we lost them instead of realizing we just couldn't find a stopping spot.  And now we need to stop procrastinating and get our flats sent off. We meant to do that at the original exchange, but well, here we are, still working on it. 

And we need to get the garden done. The tomatoes are doing well but I need to plant the rest of the things--chard (plain and in rainbow colors), bush beans, zucchini and yellow crook neck squash, spinach (oops, too late), beets? I can't remember. Whatever, they need to go in the ground because studies have proven that they grow bigger and better in the ground than left as seeds in the package. 

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