Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Baseball and Bruises

Tonight was our annual time of helping run the concession stand for our baseball club. The children as usual loved it. The only disappointment is that the popcorn machine is broken. Hopefully they will fix that soon.

It was a much warmer night tonight and while we were waiting to open the stand, Aaron and Stephen went into a field and sat and talked. I took this while sitting in my van. It turned out very cool, I think.

And now for the game. The children thought this would be great to post on the blog. So guess who's bruises are who's. Child #1:?

Child #2: ?

Child #3: ?

Here are the answers: Child #1: Nathan, Child #2: Deborah, and Child #3: Stephen

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Nathan's First Game

Monday night was Nathan's first game. It was against the dreaded Sanford team. Sanford is serious about their baseball. They have a pitching coach (I've heard) that works with their boys and they practice every Monday through Friday in April to get ready for the season. So they are serious. And they are good. So we didn't win the game.

Nathan played shortstop for four innings.

Then he pitched the last two innings. He faced 14 batters and struck out 4.

And he got the only hit of the game, a single to leftfield. He stole second but was stranded. Before the game, we talked about what he should define a successful game as. He decided that he would have a successful game if he had fun playing, he struck out some batters, and he got a hit. He achieved all three things so despite the loss, he was happy with his performance.

It was still cold. Deborah ventured outside to sit with a friend, but the rest of us stayed in the van and watched from the warm inside.

And now for something completely different. My dh picked these from my flower garden (with my permission) for me. I was so pleased that they have stayed nice for a couple of days. Like our chicken salt and pepper shakers?

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Play Ball!

Today was Picture Day and Opening Day. But first the pictures. I don't do the professional pictures but I do take my own on picture day. As you can tell from the long sleeves, it was a cold day.

I let each of the boys pose as they wanted to.



As I was saying, it was a cold day. It was about 50 degrees but there was a very brisk gale blowing and it made it pretty miserable for the parents and siblings not running around the ball field. Here is Deborah under our ballgame quilt. After the other people who were there taking their pictures left, I was able to pull the van closer to the field and watched part of the game from inside the van.

Aaron pitched two of the three innings and did pretty well despite the cold weather. Notice he is pitching with his sweatshirt on! Love these Michigan balmy spring days. He struck out five or six batters.

Aaron got a single and scored once for the team.

He was walked his second time at bat and was stranded (I think that is the right baseball term).

We have more boys than positions so today Stephen had to sit out two innings. He played right field when he did get in.

Stephen had one time at bat and was walked. He later stole bases and made it home.


As you can see, it did get sunnier as the morning progressed but it still was pretty cold. Deborah and I had on our winter coats (after I had already put them away for the season. Silly me!) and we were still cold.

But it paid off and our team won 13 - 11 after 3 innings. Those three innings took 2 1/2 hours! There were a lot of time outs to tie shoes, give coaching tips like the batter needing to get out of the way of a boy running home, console pitchers who were replaced by other pitchers, check on the hands of the pitcher to see if they were getting too cold (have I mentioned that it was COLD yet?), and to yell to the outfield to stand up and stop playing with their hats/pants/grass/rocks.......

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Our June Berry Tree

Our June Berry tree burst into bloom this morning!


Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Housework

This post is for Betsy. She asked how we do the housecleaning and chores around our house.

Before kids and while working away from the house, I was a "do it all in a day" housekeeper. But now that I have four children that need training and make most of the mess, I've changed to the "do a little every day" method. So here is what we do. I have morning after breakfast chores and afternoon chores for Monday thru Friday.

Monday
After breakfast: S to sort S and N's laundry and put it in washer
A to clean out van (empty trash, retrieve light sabers, papers, etc)
D to straighten up magazines
Afternoon: S to sort laundry and put his half away. N to put his half of laundry away.
A to sort clean laundry (his and D's) and put his away. D to put her half away.

Tuesday
After breakfast: All children clean bedrooms (go under beds to get books, get rid of papers floating around, decrease the number of animals in bed to 3 and books to 5)
Afternoon: S, A, and D, clean bathrooms, I do the insides of the toilets, N sweeps the wood floor downstairs

Wednesday
After breakfast: N and S to trade off cleaning the kitchen appliances and dusting upstairs
A to empty and refill water bottles
D to pick up wood scraps (in winter when we have wood fires)
Afternoon: all to help me put away groceries and whatever else I brought in from our errand time.

Thursday
After breakfast: N and S trade off doing windows (the big sliding glass doors and my kitchen windows) and dusting downstairs
A to empty trash cans from basement
D to empty upstairs trash cans
Afternoon: N to vacumm the upstairs wood floor, I vacumm the downstairs carpet, S, A, and D do odd jobs for me (like clean the top of the refrig or wipe fingerprints off of walls

Friday
After breakfast: N to sort S and N's laundry and put it in washer
S to sweep front porch and walkway
A to water plants
D to straighten up her room
Afternoon: N to sort laundry and put his half away. S to put his half of laundry away.
D to sort clean laundry (hers and A's) and put hers away. A to put his half away.

In the summertime, we have lots of outside jobs to do on Saturdays. And of course, everyday someone has to take care of the cat and the chickens.

So there it is, my master plan. Actually I'm going to change it some this summer as Aaron and Deborah are getting much better at their tasks and can take on more work.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Peas and Potatoes

My dh was able to use the field cultivator that has sat for many a year on his concrete shed pad. He's using it to break up the clods on the south part of the garden. Last year was the first year for this part of the garden and since he didn't have a tractor at that time, we couldn't cultivate it. But this year, we do! We are going to be using this area for vine plants again so we'll till it just before we plant.


We did plant potatoes this afternoon. So now we have the makings for peas and potatoes. In about 7-8 weeks. After lots of weeding and watering. But it is worth it.

We try not to do gardening work on Sundays but up north, you have to take advantage of every warm day of the growing season. You don't get the chance to make up a week of warm weather up here in the tundra.

The warm weather made my daffodils come out in all their glory today.

The chickens enjoyed the day as well. Here two of them are taking a dust bath.

They use their claws to scratch and I finally caught one on film scratching. This is Bearded Lady again. Inside the fence today.

This is a picture of Blackie, Nathan's favorite.

Aaron and Deborah enjoyed Sunday afternoon inside playing with Playdough and making each other laugh.



Saturday, April 19, 2008

Let the Gardening Begin!

It was a gorgeous weekend up here. 80 degrees on Friday and 72 on Saturday. Sunny and beautiful blue sky.


The chickens are now confined to their chicken yard. Except of course the four Aracaunas that can fly over the fence. This is a picture of the Bearded Lady who will soon be confined. We've discovered that she is our egg eater and can't be trusted around any Dominique's eggs. Interestingly, she never seems to eat one of her own.

We spent Friday afternoon and Saturday working outside. Deb and Aaron are cleaning out my window wells. I washed windows and put in screens. I found the baseball cleats and got them out ready for practice on Saturday morning.

My dh prepared the garden. He took off on Friday afternoon and got two loads of cow manure. The two older boys unloaded it from the truck and helped spread it around.

There were two loads like this. They unloaded one on Friday afternoon and one on Saturday morning.

A job that they weren't too sure was worth the money they were getting paid for it. But a job that had to be done before ball practice on Saturday morning.

My dh tilling the garden. That tiller has been worth its weight in gold. It does such a great job in breaking up the clods into a wonderfully fine soil.

Then Saturday afternoon, we began planting. We planted peas (both shell and snap), carrots, lettuce, spinach, onions, and beets. Tomorow we plant the rest of the onions and the potatoes.

This one is for Mike. I call it "Waiting".

And this one is called "Vegetable Potential".

Literature Group

On Thursday, we finished up our last book in our literature discussion group this year. It actually was a play - A Midsummer's Night Dream. The children liked it very much and thought the characters of Bottom and Puck were funny. One boy liked Helena the most because she was the most pathetic.

And for snack we had a wonderful Globe cake complete with boat docks and boats on the Thames.

Gym(?) Time

We had our last scheduled inside gym time last Wednesday. And as you will see, it was nice enough to go outside.

Standard gym equipment should be light sabers, right? Nathan is dressed in his ball uniform because we were going to practice right after gym time. Needless to say, by the end of the day, he was one tired boy.

Some of the girls didn't do anything remotely athletic. Gym time is more like "find the children a very large place to run and play in" time.

A close up of the ladies and their pets.


Thursday, April 17, 2008

Summer's a coming

It was actually warm enough to eat on the porch today. I think we set a new record for eating on the porch. Last year, our first lunch on the porch was the 21st.


It's High Five Day!

Thanks to our very informative calendar given to us by my sister and her husband, we know that today is High Five Day! So everyone celebrate and give someone a High Five today!

Thursday, April 10, 2008

A Cuban feast

We have an annual event with another couple to make a fantastic meal for each other. Two years ago the guys made the gals a Lebanese with 9 different dishes, including a painstakingly made Baklava and Lebanese wine. Last year, the gals made the guys a Southern Feast which unfortunately I was so busy making that I didn't take pictures. We had grits and greens and mint juleps and everything. So this year, it was the guys' turn.

By the way, the type of cuisine is kept a secret. This year the my dh upped the suspense by "accidentally" leaving out a Swedish cookbook under some papers so that I could see it. So I thought that we were eating Swedish. Which is understandable since I'm from Swedish stock and so are our friends. But as soon as I walked into our friends' house, I knew that we weren't eating Swedish. Swedes don't use frying oil and cilantro and hot peppers. Turns out that we were going to eat Cuban.

We started with Mojitos, made the way Hemingway liked them and fried plantains.

Our next course was a salad with avocado and fresh pineapple. Very fresh and delicious.

Next we had corn pudding with crabmeat. There were lots of other things in there beside crabmeat and it was very different but delicious. Notice the coconut shell centerpieces on the right.

The main course was grilled red snapper on a bed of relish (more like a salsa with mangoes and papayas) and covered with a shrimp sauce with shrimp. I could have just eaten the shrimp sauce by itself - it was so good.

With the snapper, we had black beans and rice. The recipe called for cinnamon to be added which gave it a different taste from the New Orleans type black beans and rice that I've tasted before.

Another course was stuffed mashed potatoes. Inside these tasty deep fried mashed potato balls, the guys had put a meat stuffing that included golden raisins and capers. The children loved these leftovers.

And the crowning course (and my personal favorite) was the banana flan with coconut rum sauce. Here is the flan after it has been flipped out of its pan. A work of art, isn't it?

And here it is slathered with the rum sauce.

About the only thing missing was Cuban cigars and a picture of Castro!