It was always burning, since the world's been turning

I feel like I've been fighting a total lack of motivation lately.  I'm getting the bare minimum done, but I have no desire to do anything else.  And I have so many unfinished projects and no energy.  Hopefully cooler weather helps.  And hopefully the nausea will decrease soon.  The very optimistic OB tells me most people feel better by 12-13 weeks and I just want to say (in my best Les Mis Gavroche voice of course) "Liar!" A month later than that and I'm still relying on nausea meds to keep me at a level of coping.   I am sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.  Anyway.

It was the first day of school!!  Awwww.  They're getting so grown up. Sniff. Sob.  haha. 

Cadence was excited for Kindergarten and so far she likes it.  The first day she was disappointed that she wasn't going to get to eat lunch at school, but she got over it pretty fast. :)  

We made it through the first three days and then had no plans for Saturday... I thought.  haha.  Apparently we had gotten left off of the emails to schedule potluck and so we didn't know about it and I was very confused when they wanted to know if we were still coming.  :P Oops. I mean, we are pretty forgettable.  

Sunday evening we went to a cookout with the Lake Day people.  The girls spent most of the evening in the water and Bob fished and Miri was being her usual barnacle.

They just put in fiber internet in town, and it is cheaper and faster than what we had previously.  (woot woot)  Getting it installed required Bob to move all of his work electronics out of the way and it meant I could CLEAN this corner of the house really well for the first time in 1.5 years.  It was very exciting and Bob was basically a kid in a candy store- 'look at the upload speed!' 'have you ever seen such a low wireless ping?!'  Haha. 

Ok, so I have a slightly dark sense of humor... but this cracked me up and made me laugh all day.  Spelling errors are great.  The kindergarten has a daily "mourning routine." I'm just imagining the possibilities- what sorts of mourning are they learning about? Victorian? Viking? Ancient Hebraic dust and ashes? :D 

Some days when you don't feel good but you still want to feel halfway like you're accomplishing something you sit like a lump on the couch and work on a miniature dollhouse quilt (Tiny hexagons are so cute!!).  And Miri thinks the ipod is her 'se-phone.' For 'moo-sick.'

Emmy is getting pretty good at this pie business.  We have lots of raspberries this year so we made a strawberry-raspberry pie.  Also, it's always good to have an excuse to quote Grandpa Schlipf- "I don't like hot pie, it melts my ice cream!"

Sunday I had a really rough day, culminating in an incident that will be funny... someday.  (ok, parts of it are funny now.) Apologizes if you are weak stomached.   I felt awful all day and nothing helped.  So when I changed Miri's diaper late that evening it sent me over the edge. I dropped her in bed and headed for the bathroom, except, Cecily was in the bathroom.  Cecily is absolutely terrified of throwing up... she will start edging away from someone who is coughing hard, just in case. So I dithered for a second debating if I could make it to the kitchen sink.  Nope.  Not only did I make Cecily jump halfway out of her skin, it was too late.  I had to clean up the hallway, the door, the bathroom sink, everything.  It was awful.  And poor Cecily was cowering in the bathtub with her nightgown over her nose completely freaking out.  :D  (her reaction was the only funny part.)  It's fairly safe to say that she's never going to have kids.  Also, I hate being pregnant.

Monday the girls got to go back to tumbling again, which they love.   

If she takes a nap she's up until after I want to be in bed.  If she doesn't take a nap she falls asleep in her plate.  :D 

Emmy is my little chef. She thought we needed cookie bars so she made some, mostly by herself.  Grandma Marjorie would have enjoyed Emmy Marjorie very much- I use Grandma's canisters; "Grandma Marjorie had really stylish things!"  haha.  Also, tis the season when I have no available counter space.   

Cadence is still learning to make box mac-n-cheese.  :)

"I fishing. Hat." 

 Emmy and her friend have the same dress and they planned to wear them today.  :D  They have the same shoes too. 

I caught myself singing along to "We didn't start the fire! It was always burning, since the world's been turning..." at the grocery store (I'm officially old!).  Maybe the only reason to be glad we have to wear masks again- no one can see me.  But that song brings back so many memories- it became something of an unofficial class anthem in HS and we featured it in our ACS class project, and given current events it's still relevant.  It made me feel really old, though, to realize that ACS was 20 years ago.  Yikes.  

Otherwise, it's been pretty quiet around here.  Getting up early means I usually need a nap and I haven't been making plans since the girls need some time to adjust to school without a lot of other things going on.  I have lots of green tomatoes that I'm waiting on to turn red so I can finish making sauce but the rest of the garden is pretty much done.  

Blessings.

Pioneer summer

 Since Cecily didn't get to do much of the pioneer unit they usually do in third grade I asked her teacher for some suggestions of activities for the summer.  And then I made her write about it to tell Miss B. all about it.  :)  

Hi Miss B, it’s me Cecily and I am wacking some rugs with our rake which I am pretending is a stick. I think it is hard work.

In the picture below I am playing the Origen trail game. Many of the computer people died, only two people survived.

This is us watching a blacksmith straighten out a piece of bent metal. Do you see me?  I am the one in the light blue bonnet. I thought it was interesting seeing metal being straightened out.       

In the picture below I am writing my name with a feather pen and ink. I wrote my name in my best cursive handwriting.

 

In this picture our mom made an outline of a pioneer wagon and we got to put a big trunk in the outline.

 

In the picture below I am packing our big trunk. I put my ragdoll into the trunk. You can never believe how much stuff you have to put in the trunk.

As you can see in this picture we got creative and made it look like a covered wagon.

In the picture below I am washing clothes like a pioneer. If you were there you be surprised about how much of the soap bar my sister Emmy used.

In the picture below you will see a map of the Oregon Trail. We had sticker sheet to go with the map. When we were good for 1 whole day we would get a sticker. Once we got 3 stickers we would get to move to a landmark on the Oregon Trail.

This is a picture of me playing marbles, a pioneer game. It took me a little bit to learn how to shoot the big marble but I figured it out.

In the picture below I am making candles. First, you dip some string into hot wax, then you dip it into water. Finally, you do it over and over again until you have a nice fat candle.

In this picture I am using a hammer and a nail to make a tin punched lantern. I couldn’t believe how hard it was to hold the nail and the tin can (that was full of ice) still.

In the picture below we are enjoying the glow of our tin punched lanterns. In our lanterns we are using our homemade candles.  It was a lot of work but we did get to enjoy them in the end.

In the picture below I am working on a nine patch quilt square. A whole bunch of nine patch quilt squares can make a big quilt. I haven’t finished my first nine patch quilt square yet, but I will someday.

In this picture we have some beef stew in our fire pit. In the next picture we will have some corn bread in the fire pit to.

In the picture below me and my sister Emmy are roasting pigs in blankets. Two of them fell into the fire while we were roasting them

I can’t wait to see you at school again soon!

 

Love,

Cecily

P.S. We burned the cornbread but the stew was fine.

 

I think we all learned lots about pioneer life- and it's definitely different to think about from an adult perspective.  Being a pioneer sounded a lot more exciting and glamorous when I was a kid... and not considering how miserable washing 6 people's clothes by hand and cooking over a hot fire 3 times a day would be...  Her teacher gave me an A+++++ for effort; gratifying considering I feel like this summer turned into a blur of managing nausea.  

P.S. The cornbread was edible, contrary to popular opinion. :P

Blessings. 

Summers end

The week after vacation was full of catching up and weeding and doing corn...

One afternoon Emmy insisted that they needed to have a party with lemon shakeups for a snack.  "I'll do it all, you don't have to do anything!"  Except make the shakeups.  :P

I saved tin cans so that the girls could try making tin can lanterns like the pioneers.

It was harder than it looked.

Some needed more help than others- this one neeeeeded me to hold the nail and I'm not sure how my fingers survived.

We used their home dipped candles inside them.

Quick trip to the farm to get some sweetcorn... which she insisted on eating on the way home.  haha.  Dad let the girls pick a few ears too, which they loved.

They were super excited to shuck corn and were strangely disappointed to discover that grandpa had shucked it in the field for me.... and nobody wanted to help get the stray silks.  *sigh*  I shall remind them of that this winter when they are complaining about the ones I missed ending up on their plates. 

So usually if I do corn at the farm Dad picks two seed bags full and Mom helps and we split the corn.  I'm not sure what I was thinking bringing home two bags full just for us..... it ended up being twice as much corn as I usually freeze.  :P  And I was very tired. 

In this years episode of garden misadventures, not only did Bob plant a "sweet" pepper variety that turned out to include serrano peppers (even hotter than jalapenos), I planted watermelon seeds TWICE.  And grew cucumbers. *sigh*  So we had a bunch of cucumbers that nobody really wanted.  Bob suggested I make sweet pickles, which is fine, except that we don't hardly eat pickles and Bob can't eat anything raw.  A lot of recipes for sweet pickles just sealed the jars with hot brine (since the pickling is what preserves them) and don't fully cook the cucumbers...  but then I found my Great Grandma Carrie's sweet pickle recipe in ye old Lester Cookbook.  :D  

 

 Lots of ingredients I don't keep on hand- alum, oil of cloves and cinnamon.... ha.  Also I am not even a quarter of the homemaker she was so I used my food processor to cut very imperfect slices and did not core them. :P  But 11ish days, and much complaining about the "horrible" smell from my lovely children later we have 3 quarts of sweet pickles that no one will probably eat. At least, if it takes us 10 years to get through them they'll still probably be good. 

The older three got to go to kids night at church and were soooo excited about it. They brought back some cute pens and some interesting wood creations.  :)  (somebody donated a fortunes worth of scrap wood...)  

One super hot afternoon I burned the stick pile and the girls helped me cook supper over the fire. 

We made beef stew, corn bread, and then Emmy insisted on making pigs in blankets (not very pioneer like, but whatever). 

The stew turned out fine, we burned the cornbread pretty bad, and the pigs in blankets didn't really cook through (hooray for ovens).  It was all edible though, even though everyone else refused to eat the cornbread because it tasted like smoke. 

Bob's Grandpa Beutel died early the morning of the 7th.  One of the best parts of marriage is the bonus grandparents. I'm thankful we don't have to say goodbye forever.
 

 Sunday was a long day with church in the morning, then visitation in the afternoon.  The girls went back to our house with Grace and Eden for a while before supper at the church. The funeral was Monday... as an introvert all of the people and emotions really exhaust me so I definitely needed a nap.   

Also, our kids are weird but they help to keep the mood from getting too heavy around here.  Discussing how old Grandpa was- "wow, he was really old!  He must have been really good when he was a kid! (In a "that your days may be long on the earth" sense)  Other child- "it's so hard to be good when you have 3 annoying sisters!"  

Loud whisper as we walked into the visitation- "will the carcass be here?"  hahahahaha ummmmmm I hope no one heard that!!  

We missed part of my families staycation, but we met everyone at U. Roy's pond Monday evening.  The kids swam and fished.

Emmy was not so sure about fish at first. :D

 But she just kept catching them and catching them!  She says she counted 15 and I believe her- I've never taken that many fish off of hooks before in my entire life.  Not that I fish much.  

Cecily caught quite a few too- this one was one of the bigger ones of the evening.

 Cadence caught one too!  She wasn't as interested and was off to the playground. 

 

 Miri just watched. She couldn't decide if she wanted to swim or not so I just let her run around in her diaper.

 Mom wanted to take the kids to bicycle safety town even though it was going to be super hot.  We joined them for awhile.  The girls liked it but wished it wasn't so hot. :) We spent the rest of the day at the farm swimming in the cow tank with cousins.

 They had "The Nutcracker" at full volume one morning and were acting it out.  :D 

 Cadence is starting kindergarten....  aaahhh.  But that means we get to go shopping for a first day dress and she gets to graduate to a church purse- no more toy bag!  She is, um, interesting to shop with.  She has to touch everything and wants one of everything and this is why I never take them shopping.  haha.

 Miriel was very sweetly carrying around her dolly: "Don't worwy.  I gotchu." 

 I maybe got myself a new shirt.  :P

 So we've had a box of 'face paint tattoos' floating around and they all decided they needed them on one day.  And then promptly decided they didn't like how they felt and tried to take them right back off again.  Poor Cadence scrubbed and scrubbed and then I scrubbed...some of her skin off.  ooops.  People kept asking at church how she hurt herself.  :P  She didn't, I'm just a bad Mom.  

Last night we dug potatoes.  Considering how many rodents we've, um, disposed of this summer there wasn't a ton of damage.  We still didn't get as many nice potatoes as Bob was hoping for.  haha.  I'm more of a it's fun to grow things and eat our own produce but other than sweet corn I can survive on boughten produce kind of gardener so I'm not too disappointed. 

 I never got around to thinning the carrots so it was fun to see how many actually grew and weren't super tiny!  Miri is super helpful in the garden. Or something.  She was wading through the tomato plants and got thoroughly covered in yellow pollen and picked a bunch of green ones.  "I pick it! Mato!"  

And tonight we went to meet the teacher night and we have to get up for school tomorrow.  Mur.  Where did summer go?  I am not a morning person and I do not like alarm clocks.  But they are super excited and a little bit more structure is probably good for all of us.  

Blessings.