Bubble Skins

For Cristina of Home Spun Juggling

Blowing bubbles when the temps are way below zero makes them freeze almost instantly.

Some froze and stuck onto Dancer and her coat.  The others blew away over the top of the snow in the wind.  I wonder how far they will go.  Wouldn't it be unexpectedly odd to come across a bubble perched on the snow.  How do you think the person who saw it would try to explain this frozen bubble phenomenon?

In this picture, and the one on the top, you can see that they didn't all freeze bubble perfect round, some had flat sides.

This is one that collapsed in on itself and Spark said, "These look like bubble skins." 

To see what happens when a glass of hot water is thrown in the air at subzero temps, you can look at our post from a couple of years ago Winter Fireworks.

Better Than Deli Ham Spread Recipe

One of the snacks our family makes fairly often, especially in the winter, is ham spread.  The spread is good on crackers or a sandwich.  This spread is made from those odd 5 lb blocks of chopped ham in the grocery store.  We also make it with left over ham.  The block of chopped ham is cheaper, keeps a long time and you can just cut off the amount you need and rewrap it.  Packs of ham "ends and pieces" are another way to save money on the spread.

Chop the ham in to pieces about the size of dice,  pulse in the food processor until the size your family prefers but not so long it becomes a paste.  remove the ham to a bowl.  Add onion to the food processor, pulse and remove.  If your onion is strong or you add too much, you can get pink onion spread--trust me.  If you do just add more ham.

The spread in the picture has chopped sweet pickle relish mixed in.  Alternatively, you can chop up green or black olives or dill pickles.  Add mayonnaise to the other ingredients to get the consistency you like.  Serve on crackers, toast or on a sandwich (rye or pumpernickel is good).

When I was in high school I worked in a deli, we made the spread from just about expired bologna and other meats from the deli case.  I don't know if they still do it this way but, to this day, I can not eat deli ham spread. 

We have come to this

Dancer got the game Professor Layton's Diabolical Box for her birthday.  She has been burning through the puzzles but once in awhile she gets a stumper and asks for help.  At first she would bring the DS over with the stylus, then it progressed to a Lego sword and now she brought it over with a toothpick.  I laughed so hard when I saw this.  I think her brother playing it has something to do with the declining progression of the stylus tools and he better get busy and start looking for the actual one.

Bundle Up!!

Let's not even talk about the windchill. 

How we digest fat

Spark was reading about the stomach digesting fat and he did this little experiment.  Using two glasses he filled them with warm water.  Into each glass he poured a dollop vegetable oil.  He wanted to use olive oil, but after a little discussion on the cost of olive oil, he made the wise choice to use the vegetable oil and will not be making the mistake again of thinking of using olive oil for a science experiment.  He put a couple drops of food coloring in each glass to make the oil stand out better.

The drops of oil in the glass were really large.  To show how intestinal peristalsis, a rhythmic movement of your stomach that moves food downward, breaks up the fat molecules (triglycerides) he stirred the oil in the glasses.

When the water and oil was stirred it broke apart the oil into smaller blobs.

In our stomachs after the fat is broken down, pancreatic enzymes (in our case a squirt of dish soap) then digest the fat into smaller fragments.

Bile formed in the liver keeps the little fat molecules from separating out of the watery chyme (the semi-fluid mixture of food and gastric fluids that pass from the stomach to the small intestine).  The fat molecules are broken into small fragments, then enter the absorptive cells (villi) of the intestinal lining.  After being absorbed into the body they recombine into large globs and are sent into the lymphatic vessels that deliver them to the general circulation.

In the 1970's Proctor & Gamble developed a fat called Olestra (or Olean).  This is a modified fat that is too large to be absorbed into the body.  Because it is not absorbed the calories of the fat pass through the body.  It is available today in various chips and crisps like Pringles lite and Lay's Potato Chips Lite.  Unfortunately there are side effects when eating olestra.  The FDA required a warning: This Product Contains Olestra. Olestra may cause abdominal cramping and loose stools. Olestra inhibits the absorption of some vitamins and other nutrients. Vitamins A, D, E, and K have been added."

Are there any benefits from Olestra?  Sure, Olestra, like any fats, absorbs dioxin poisons.  Unlike other fats, the olestra and dioxin are not reabsorbed by the body.  The chemical is also used as an industrial lubricant and as a paint additive (don't be grossed out, lots of edible products have industrial uses).

Difficulty digesting fat can cause steatorrhea, that is fatty, or oily stool.  This symptom may help diagnose physical problems such as gall bladder disease, liver problems or pancreatic problems.

Spark thought this was just the coolest topic and experiment, he made sure we all came over and checked out his work.

Step up

When we got Bert, his old owners told us that he would "step up" on your finger.  We have been trying and trying to get him to do it and he never made a move towards stepping up.  Finally, finally, he stepped up on to my fingers.  I have a socked wrapped around them because he does bite and draws blood.  If he bites something, and it doesn't pull away, then he quits biting it.  I want him to bite the sock not my finger.  We think it must mean that he thinks it isn't something trying to attack him if it doesn't jerk back when he strikes.

As he was sitting on my hand he did a little flap and jumped up onto my shoulder.  He is so light weight that I could hardly tell he was sitting there except for the claw he was using to hang on.  We hope this means he totally trusts us now.

172

That was Dancer's bowling score of her first game on Monday.  She was on fire!  She filled all but two frames. 

Watch where you are going!

We were coming home from bowling yesterday afternoon on a township road and we see a car parked on the side of the road about a 10th of a mile away from us.  I thought they were probably checking their mail but they were on the wrong side to reach the mail box from the passenger side and it was MLK Day so no mail.  The car pulls forward and then backs into the drive way, a long one where you can't see the house from the road so probably about a quarter of a mile long.  Again odd, why would you back down that long of a drive way.  We were going along at about 45 mph, thankfully I wasn't going 55, and as soon as we get to the car it pulls forward into the road.  I put on the breaks and lay on the horn but we were probably no more than 20 feet from the car.  I said to Dad, "What should I do?"   As calm as calm can be he says "Put her in the ditch."  I swerve to the right and slam into the ditch.  Thankfully we had have tons of snow this winter and the ditches are full so we didn't roll.  The car though was just buried. This whole incident happened in less than a minute.   I took a deep breath and shoved open the car door as best I could and yelled over to the driver, "What were you doing?!!!!"  I was proud of myself I didn't swear and conducted myself in the respectable manner I wasn't feeling at the moment.  She rolls down her window and says "Sorry, I was looking at a deer and didn't look before I pulled out."  She finally says she will pay for a tow and do we have a phone or do we want her to call.   She can start calling as we can't find the phone book.  I trudge up to her car through knee deep snow and stand at her window.   She has AAA and they are closed because of the holiday.  I didn't even say anything, just looked at her.  She looks at me for a few seconds and says "I will try someone else and I can probably turn the bill in."   She finally gets someone and I go back through the knee deep snow to wait in our car because it is below zero degrees with the wind whipping.   Spark is so upset he is crying and crying.  I needed to get back out of the car so I could hug him and calm him down.  By now I am wet from my knees down.  The tow truck that was suppose to take 15 minutes took over 45.  I took down the woman's license plate number so she knew she couldn't leave, but she never got out of her car.  If I had caused the accident I would have been out of my car so fast and run over to see if everyone was okay apologizing in between every sentence.   

Dad looking to see just how far we are buried in the ditch.  He could barely get out on his side as he was on the passenger side where the snow was even deeper.

The field where she was gazing at the deer instead of looking where she was driving.

The tow truck that finally came.  He dug the snow out of our wheels but the brakes and the engine are firmly packed with snow.  We were less than three miles from home so thankfully the car drove and we didn't have far to go.  Tonight Dad will put it in the other garage and run heater with hopes that it will melt out.

Spark after he calmed down.   I told the woman, as she was calling for the tow truck, that I would have hit her on the passenger side door and she probably, at the speed we were going, would have been killed if not all of us.  At the least both cars would have been totaled and we would have had serious injuries.  She did say yes she realized that but there was nothing she could do about it now.  No, I am sorry or are you going to be alright, is there anything I can do while we wait.  Nothing.  I just hope she learned to look from now on when she pulls out on to a road. 

Tow truck got us out and I said "She'll pay you" and we drove off.  Dad had to work last night so we needed to get home so I could start supper before he left and now he didn't get a nap in.  He and I had sore shoulders on the side that our seat belts were and the kids were fine.  Today we both feel better. 

One good thing that did come from it is the kids will know first hand that when they start driving to be alert.  It also reminded us how quickly our lives could have changed and we thanked God that they didn't.

Really, really low fat Pumpkin Chocolate cake

Just two ingredients - a 15 oz. can of pumpkin and a cake mix (doesn't need to be chocolate, that is just what we use).

Mix the pumpkin and cake mix together.  Get out the hand mixer or your muscles because this is the hardest part to get these two mixed together.  The batter is very think.

Put in greased 8X8 pan and bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes.

Party all day long

We hurried to get to Pizza Ranch to meet Grandma Pat at noon.  Dancer was born at 1:32 a.m. and she wanted to stay up until then to be awake for her "actual" birth minute I guess you would call it.  When the time came around we were right in the middle of watching "Chopped" on the food network and so we stayed up until 2:00 then to see who the winner was.  Needless to say, we had a hard time getting up in the morning. 

Yummy buffet at Pizza Ranch as always and Grandma brought gifts.  She gave Dancer a ceramic birthday girl, she gives her one every year, and the game "Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?"

The rest of the afternoon we went to the mall, Barnes and Noble, and Walmart to find a movie Dancer would want to watch for her birthday night.  It took us longer to find a movie she wanted than it will to watch it.  Actually she got the three "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies which are each over two hours long.

Opening the presents!  The best part of the birthday celebration.

Spark got her a Webkinz fox, which she named Silky Nicole, and we got her.....a box full of presents!  They would have all be obvious what they were if I had had them all out individually so I wrapped them all then wrapped them in a bigger box.

A quick run down of the gifts, Burt's Bees pomegranate lip balm (she loves this kind), purple glitter nail polish, purple sunglasses, facial mask, embroidery hoop, punch needle kit of a cow jumping over the moon, and a DS game.  She opened and started playing the DS game and we wondered if she was even going to want to watch a movie after we had spent all afternoon looking for one.  She did tear herself away from the game and we watch "The Curse of the Black Pearl."

She choose a cheese cake for her birthday cake.  I realized that we were all out of birthday candles so we lit a votive candle for her to blow out.

Oh, what a good choice she made.  The cake was rich and thick and oh so good.

Dancer and Mom.  Happy Birthday sweet girl - you are the best!!!!

Happy 14th Birthday Dancer!

 

                                                                     Pre-Dancer - November 1996

One month old 2/15/97.  She was such a tiny thing, this a preemie outfit but she was full term.

Second birthday - Dad must have been telling her something she wasn't believing.  This was a Tweety themed party and even her outfit matched, Tweety bib overalls with a Tweety turtleneck.

First haircut on her second birthday.  Spark looked at this and said "we are still using that gray comb!"  Well, how often do you need to buy a plastic comb?  Dad probably had it in high school or college.

Yummy cake!  This was the party we had with the daycare kids.

December of 1998, almost 2 years old.

Third birthday with a Minnie Mouse theme.  This year she had a matching Minnie Mouse t-shirt.  I must have been so much more organized back then!

April 2000 at Grandma's house in Arkansas - 3 years old.  I was pregnant with Spark on this trip and so sick.

Three years old wearing Grandma's straw hat.

Right by the dock at Grandpa Bob and Grandma Shirley's house.  She is in a little inflatable canoe.

  April 26th, 2002 - 5 years old.   I had forgotten it was picture day and she had spent the afternoon in the sandbox.  Thankfully we lived across the road from the studio and I could run home and quick get her costume.  Her hair was in a french braid but you can see it was falling out by this time in the day but I combed it as best I could in the few minutes we had before it was her turn to have her picture snapped.  The picture still turned out cute.

April 15th, 2003 - 6 years old.  This  year we were ready for pictures.

Halloween when she was 7 years old.  As a true homeschooler she wanted to be Betsy Ross.  I made this costume for her and the next  year it turned into Laura Ingalls.

Here was nine years old, the spring of 2006.  This was one of our first baby goats, either Cappy or Panda.  They were Toggenburg/La Manchas. 

Spring of 2008 - 12 years old.  Spark danced that year as well.  Since he had to sit and wait during her two hour lessons it gave him something to do for one hour.  He danced for two years and this was the last year.  I did like having their picture taken together, I think they look cute together in their costumes.

It's good to be home

Spark and I were laying on the big bed, that is what we call our king size bed, talking before bedtime.  Spark lets out a big sigh and says, "It feels so good to be home." 

"What do you mean," I ask him, "we have been home all day."

"Well, the other part of the house, the living room and dining room area, are where we go to school and work and in here we just relax and read."

I never thought of that before, that our kids are always at school or work.  While I see it as our escape from the world, as opposed to having to be at a job or school building, they see it as school and work.  I am glad he has a place where he feels like he can "get away from it all."

Beepless

The grocery store nearest us is very small.  It has five short aisles that only one narrow cart can fit down at a time.  It is busy though, you usually always have to waiting in line to check out and often they have two registers going.  There are, however, no bar code readers.  Everything is still priced by hand and the check out person rings up the dollar amount on this little cash register, about a third the size of one in a big grocery store, beeplessly.

Class Clown

 When Nikki wants to play, she bring us her toys and pushes them at us.  When we don't respond to her, she pushes them at us harder and will finally just lay the dog spit covered toy on our leg.  But sometimes she just will not give up.  In those instances we put the toy up so we can get on with whatever we were doing.  As a side note, we do play with her a lot but Nikki would like play several hours a day which just isn't feasible. 

This morning, as Dancer was trying to get some school work done, Nikki comes with this pink, stuffed bone that she wants Dancer to throw for her.  To appease her for a few minutes Dancer holds the bone up and keeps on with her studying.  This tactic can usually buys a few extra minutes. 

 

As Dancer is reading, Nikki starts jumping up .....

and down......

and up and down and so on and so on.  To tell how high this is for her, she stands about 9 inches from the floor to the top of her head and as far up as she jumped along side the chair was about 43 inches.  Just think if she was a basketball player with a vertical jump like that!  She would have herself a NBA contract for sure.

4-H Dance

Last night Dancer went the 4-H Jr. Leader dance with a her friend.  I took this picture when we went to pick them up and Spark jumped in the picture even though he wasn't old enough to go.

Dancer did a lot yesterday and then it sounded like she danced for three straight hours.  She was a little wound up when we got home and didn't go to bed until after 1:00 a.m.  This morning she got up at 10:30, shuffled around the kitchen for a little, turned her nose up at everything we offered to eat and decided to just go back to bed.  I woke her at 3:30 this afternoon and she ever so slowly crawled out from under the covers.

Now that she has fully woken up and eaten dinner she back to good as new.  Oh, I am envious of her teenage ways.  Those were the days! 

Dutch Blitz

I picked this game up years ago on a free table at a homeschool book sale.  The date on the box was 1973 and the game was brand new.  I was excited because I had heard what a great game this was and that all homeschoolers just love it.

After looking at the directions, of this so called simple game, we couldn't figure out how to play it.  Back in the box it went and it sat on the game shelf in the basement.  I realized why it was offered brand new on a free table and one else picked it up, the prior owners couldn't figure it out either and everyone else must have known the same thing.

A couple of months ago the discussion of the mom's at the YMCA turned to games.  Remembering the box on shelf, I asked if anyone knew how to play this Dutch Blitz game.  One of the moms said yes, she played it all the time when she was in college.

I brought the game in the next week and she taught all of us how to play it.   It is so simple, sort of like double solitaire.  I think we just couldn't figure it out because it is a hard game to learn from written directions, it takes more of an oral approach to teaching it.

Dancer and I have played it almost daily since then.  Dancer is super good at it, it takes a quick hand and eye,  and I rarely win but the game is so fun it doesn't matter.  Pretty soon we will have the cards worn out and will have to actually buy a new game.

Wii Fit?

Our local newspaper ran an article about a woman who lost 80 pounds in the last year by using a Wii Fit for an hour a day thus burning around 200 calories.  Inspiring.  So inspiring in fact that we have taken up that challenge.

Using Biggest Looser as our other inspiration, we also added in riding five miles on the bike, doing three reps of ten exercises with a five pound weight, 25 sit ups and five push ups per day.  I am always so pumped at the beginning of the Biggest Looser season and by the end when the contestants all look fabulous and I don't, I end up eating during the show.  Hopefully that will not be the case this season.

We have found that it takes a huge effort to get this all done.  To make it easier, I have decided that the kids physical health is just as important as their mental health so we have been taking the time to get the bulk of it done before we start school.

How successful have we been?  Well, Dancer got everything done yesterday and Spark did today.  I have yet to get it all in.  The important thing is that we are trying.  We are not going to have our spirits dampened if we don't reach perfection. 

The road block that we keep hitting is that it takes a huge amount of time for all of us to use the bike and Wii Fit.  The bike is pretty easy, it takes us about 20 to 25 minutes to ride five miles.  The hard part comes in when we can only do it one at a time so it really takes us an hour and half.  I have found I can get the five miles in if I start the kids on some school work, jump on the bike for a mile or two, run back to help them with the next thing, jump on again and so on.  It may take all afternoon but I have gotten the bike part in every day.   It takes about an hour to reach 200 calorie burn on the Wii Fit.  Choosing Island Run, cycling and hula hoop racks the calories up faster but it still takes about 45 minutes.  We did find today though that two people can do the Island Run at the same time and then the second person can add the calories on to their fit credits so that should shorten our time needed to get this done.  Shows how much we have used the Wii Fit before this that we just figured this feature out.  We got it last Christmas and Dancer and I have logged on ten hours so far after three days of our new challenge.  You don't see any results with seven hours a play time a year.  Funny how that works!

Next week I see a new challenge for us, one of our other activities starts up again.  At least it is phy. ed. at the YMCA so the kids will get a little movement in but I don't think it is anything too major.  And, of course, I sit in the lobby the whole time gabbing with the other parents so that does my back side no good.  This week the kids only had AWANA which is in the evening so we had five full days at home.  Next week will be four and the week after that will be three when we start bowling. 

We are not going to let time be our excuse though and we will keep at this.  Once it is spring we can do more outside at the same time and getting exercise in will be much easier.  I know by then we will all be ready to be riding bike outside and not in the basement.

Wii will be fit!!!

Dreams and best things

I don't know how this started, but every morning we ask each other what we dreamed about and every night we ask each other, "what was your favorite thing today?"

Crochet Ripple Baby Afgahn

I love these ripple afghans and have been wanting to make one.  Dad has a co-worker/friend who is pregnant and due in February so I thought this would be the perfect time to try one, and since it is baby sized it wouldn't be a year long project. 

I started it back in the end of August thinking that, in my big plans, I would whip it right out in a couple of weeks.  But, alas, my interest waxed and waned until this last week when I did a big push and finished it up.  Watching four movies on New Year's Eve really got a lot of it done.  It measures about 40" by 40", just the right size to lay on the floor for baby to lay on or go over a car carrier when the temperature dips really low.  I made it out of soft, soft baby yarn so it will be cuddly.

There are tons of patterns on the Internet for these afghans, the Lion Brand web site has bunch of them.  This pattern I modified from another pattern to get exactly what I wanted.  I can't remember what my starting chain was but the basic pattern is crochet three double crochets, decrease three stitches using a double crochet decrease to make the lower ripple, three double crochets, increase three double crochets to make the top ripple, three double crochets, and then start with the decrease again.  By the time you have gotten going on it you can almost sit in the dark and do it because the pattern is so repetitious.  You can probably tell the pattern better by looking at the picture above than from my instructions. 

Now I just hope the mom and baby like it as I know that people like the matching, themed, name brand baby gear instead of homemade, but this mom is pretty down to earth and it's not her first baby.