We Were Flung Back To The 1800's

It has been raining, a lot.  Monday night we had a meeting in town and it poured so hard we could hardly see to drive.  On the way home the roads were covered with frogs (seems way to early for them) and night crawlers.  The ground is still has frost in it so I am sure when it rained their little homes became swimming pools because the water could only seep down so far.

We pulled in the drive way, hit the garage door opener and nothing happened.  We had lost our power. A quick drive around the neighborhood showed that the outage started at our corner and wrapped around the block and went north.  There were a few houses where we could see they were enjoying their evening by candle light so we assumed that they had called the outage in.  We hadn't notice on the way home because the place we go by is a dairy farm and they have a generator, can't lose a whole bulk tank of milk just because the power goes out.

We popped some batteries in the radio and played cards by candle and flashlight.  We still had to do chores, it would be so much easier in the light, so we waited.  By 10:00 it was getting on where we couldn't wait much longer so Dad, thanks to the wonder of cell phones, called the power company.  He had no sooner said our address than the power started back up.  "WOW, you are good," he told the lady.  While he was saying that Spark let out a loud "Woo Hoo," which the lady could hear and echoed his enthusiasm back to Dad.  I am sure they appreciate a happy customer once in a while.  We were thinking "Hello, 21st century!"  This is the second time in a few weeks we have lost power, hope this isn't going to be the theme for the summer.

Now we are on day three of off and on rain so it is getting quite soggy out.

The driveway was wet enough before the rain and now it is even worse.  We have been out their several times a day making little rivers to encourage the water to run off.  It is so saturated that when we drive, or even walk on it, it ripples like a wave.

The lawn is really greening up, it seems so strange to see another color outside after all the months of brown and white.  It is getting green except for the dark part back by the trees where it looks brown.  Not really brown, the chickens have been back there scratching up worms.  We won't need to worry about aerating the yard this spring.  Actually that is a laugh, we don't worry about aerating the yard.  Of all there is to do, the grass, besides keeping it mowed, is so not on the top of our list of priorities.

Here is one of the culprits up close.  Whenever they see me out on the deck they come running over to see if I am going to throw out a treat for them so I am sure she (this is Paige) was disappointed when all she got was her picture taken.
If April showers bring May flowers, what are all these March showers going to bring?

Courageous Movie

A local church, the one we go to for AWANA, had dinner and a movie last night.  Dinner was pizza, can't go wrong there, and the movie was really good.  Plenty of humor, action, drama and heart string tugging to make it, in our opinion, a superb way to spend the evening.  Dad had to work so he missed out.  Dancer went on the library website and requested it but we are number 214 so we may see if we can rent it at the Redbox or just pick it up the next time we are at the store.

Super Tasters

We are studying the senses in our homeschool co-op and I just happen to be the teacher for those chapters.  Today, while I was getting the class materials ready for Tuesday, I came across this interesting tidbit of information - all tongues are not created equal. 

25% of the population are super tasters

50% are middle of roaders

25% are non-tasters

So super tasters, an interesting group of people, make up 35% of the female populations and 15% of men on average.  Super tasters have about 1000 more taste buds, medically known as fungiform papilloe, than other people.  To understand how they taste their food, think of eating neons and non tasters as eating pastels, that is a huge difference. 

Super tasters don't usually care for bitter foods so they would shy away from veggies, grapefruit juice, alcohol, spicy foods and coffee, or they add lots of sugar and cream to make it palatable.  They tend to be heavy salters and liberal with the sugar as in the coffee to cover up bitter tastes.  Taste buds, I like that word so much better than fungiform papilloe, also feel foods temperature and texture.

So how do you know if you are a super taster, a regular taster or a non-taster?  Take some blue food coloring and rub it on your tongue.  The taste buds do not pick up as much of the coloring as the rest of your tongue does and the taste buds will stand out on the tongue. 

Take a little square of  wax paper and punch it with a paper punch like in a note book.  Lay the paper on your tongue and count the number of taste buds in the circle.

Super tasters will have as many as 60 in the circle and non-tasters as few as five.  Big difference.

Up close and personal with Spark's tongue.  He has quite a few taste buds on the tip of his tongue, where he didn't get the dye, and less as you go back, but we found this true of all of us.  He is probably a upper middle of the roader as he doesn't have trouble with veggies or spicy foods, he does, however, like lots of cream and sugar in his morning coffee. 

Jobs for super tasters can be sommeliers, a wine steward who can differentiate between hundreds of wines and tell you which goes well with the chicken you ordered.  (I have never eaten any place fancy enough to have an actual sommelier).  Nestle and Cadbury have chewing gum tasters.  Other companies have people who taste cheese, olive oil, coffee, tea, ice cream, cookies, jam, bbq sauce, chocolate and lots of processed foods.  It is also an asset to being a great chef. 

All this made me think that the person who wrote the lyrics to the Mary Poppins song, "A Spoonful Of Sugar Makes The Medicine Go Down," must have been a super taster.

4-H Clothing Camp

Spark made a pair of unmatching mittens.  I was a helper and had a few other kids to help so I wasn't able to help him cut his out etc.  It started last night and after I got home he decided he wanted to go this year.  A little last minute or we would have had it more organized for him. 

He did confess though that he only wanted to go for the lunch.  I can't blame him, it is excellent every year.  He also had a couple friends from our club that were there and he wanted to spend some time with them.  All around a fun two days, but I am happy to be home with my feet up.

Ice Skating

Ocean Zones

We drew out a big diagram of the ocean zones today and I wanted to try the new anti glare lens we got for the camera so there is pictures.  Also it was a huge task to find all this info and draw it out so we wanted to preserve it since it won't last long on the white board.

The whole time we were drawing this the song by Mr. Ray on Nemo was going through my head.

"Oooh, let's name the zones, the zones, the zones. Let's name the zones of the
open sea.  Mesopolagic, bathyal, abyssalpelagic. All the rest are too deep for you and
me to see."

Our Walk

Still plenty of snow in the woods, but now that it has been rained on it is more like a glacier than snow.

A quarter mile hill, our calves were burning by the top. 

The neighbors picture perfect farm.  The cows were out, a sure sign of spring.  It is a Kemp's Select farm so if you drink that milk it could have come from here.

Way down at the bottom is the school bus the kids don't ride.  Two buses went by us because we are right on the school district line and of the three houses on this road one family goes to one school and another goes to the other school even though they are neighbors.  Open enrollment is very popular here so both buses cover the same area.  The other house, the farm picture above, doesn't have kids, three bachelor brothers live there.

A field with corn stubble.  I always think fields look like they need a shave in the spring. 

We walk to the stop sign and turn around.  This is one mile away from our house so we get a two mile walk in.

The half mile hill.  Yes, it really is up hill both ways just like your grandparents use to say they walked to school.  On the flip side it is also down hill both ways.  This hill isn't as steep as the other one so it feels like we just zip right up it.

Here's looking at you.  Spark making an eye shadow, always makes me think of the CBS logo.

This pond usually has something wildlifey (yes, I made that word up) going on, be it tadpoles, water fowl or cows.

Another view, there are duck nesting platforms and houses but they don't show up in the picture very well.

The only green we saw, but it's a start!  A few more days and green should be abounding from everywhere.

Day Light Savings Time Celebration

Excited that the days are going to be longer into the evening we celebrated by spending the day geocaching.  Geocaching in the winter means that your done by about 4:30 p.m., tonight it was still light out at 7:00 p.m.  Love it!

Our geocache mascot Jason always goes with us.

Beautiful day, the temperature was 65 degrees and most of the snow is gone!  We didn't even wear coats, that felt so liberating after months of heavy coats.

We even ventured under roads in these tunnels.  Spark has his "tool of the trade" glove on in case we needed him to reach into any questionable crevices.  We didn't, but he was prepared.  Warm enough to wear shorts and t-shirt!!!!

Thought we had found our 800th find but we had a 'did not find' in the found list and it was only 799.  Here we are celebrating our 799th find at a Pizza Ranch.  Spark said we would have to celebrate again when we get the 800th.  Not at 40 bucks a pop for one meal.  Maybe we will celebrate number 1000.

Here is what we look like driving down the road.  I had to run really fast backwards to get the picture, not.  Look at all those cat prints, we call them popcorns, on the hood.  I would clean them off but the cats are right back up there redecorating so I don't bother.  Happy Day Light Savings Time!!!!!

Love You Lois

When we were at the pharmacy the other day there was this flower in a plastic display box.  The flower was all closed up and when you pushed the button on the side of the box it slowly opened to reveal the message of love in the middle of the flower.  Upon very quickly glancing at it I read, "Love You Lois" instead of "Love You Lots."  Thinking that strange, I asked Dancer if there were a lot of people named Lois in the area.  She burst out laughing and said, "Love You Lots."  Oh.  In my defense, why would they make the "t" in lots capital when the rest of the letters aren't?  When we stopped tonight after church to pick up a few things we showed it to Dad and Spark and Dad suggested that maybe they had more but this  Lois one was the only one left and on clearance.   I love how he always comes to my aid and loves me Lois.

What's Up?

The last few days we have not really done anything "blog worthy" but I will make a quick list so that we remember this week as we look back. 

• Dancer was sick and slept for about two days and is still sort of laying low.
• Our co-op was cancelled on Tuesday because of sick families and other obligations.  Dancer was happy because she would have missed for being sick, Spark was disappointed because he missed seeing his friends so it was a toss up between the two.  I was sort of glad to have a week off.
• Dancer also missed her church youth group that meets at the same time as AWANA on Wednesday.  She stayed home but Dad and I took Spark and we were asked if we would like to sit in on her class.  They were having a speaker about evolution and all I could say was "wow."  I am too old to have been taught evolution (and why they say the bible is a lie) in school and since we homeschool I haven't paid much attention to it except to edit it, or say that the dates are wrong, in some of our materials.  Kids are really being hit hard with this in schools and I now see why churches are working so hard to fight back against it.
• Thursday Spark was invited to play at a friends house and he was beyond excited about it.  I am horrible about calling people for the kids to play with, glad other moms aren't.  It's not that I don't want to, it just seems that it is always Friday because our weeks go so fast as it is.  I need to work on that. 
• Dancer and I went to town when Spark was at his friends.  It took us three hours to go to the library, Walmart and the pharmacy.  That was about 40 minutes of errands and over two hours of driving and traffic.  Now I know where my weeks go.
• We found a new geocache when we were in town.  When I went to log it I saw that it had been a month since the last time we had been on the caching trail.  Need to work on that too since it gets us outside and hiking around.  The weather has been really nice so it has just been being busy that has kept us inside. 
• The kids ran out to do chores that night and found that one of the goats had chewed out a board on their pen, stuck her head through the hole into another goats pen and got it stuck.  The other goat took advantage of her being stuck and gave her some good butts to the head.  She was bloody, had a swollen lip and eye, but is okay.  Spent the night deciding if her jaw was broken, Dancer hand fed her some chicken food (they are in 7th heaven when they get into the chicken food so we knew if she was going to eat anything the chicken food would entice her), and going out to check on her multiple times all night.  Also spent a good hour fixing the hole between the two pens. That was a whole night gone.
• Tonight we went to play based on Pilgrim Progress put on totally by homeschoolers, adults only helped the kids did the rest.  Dancer, Spark and I saw it last fall when they did the play but Dad wasn't able to go because of work so we went again this time so he could see it too.  It was phenomenal.  There was a few hundred people there and they are doing four evening shows and a matinee on Saturday.  There have been over 1100 people to see the first three of the new shows.  If we didn't homeschool, and I saw what those kids were able to do, our kids would be pulled out of school on Monday.
• We did get a good amount of school work done.   We are reading Swiss Family Robinson and the kids and I are getting a good chuckle out of their supposed survival skills.  If something moves they kill it and if they don't kill it they bring it back to their tree house and have it tamed in less than a day.  So far they have managed to tame a buffalo, monkey, jackal, eagle, ruffled grouse, a penguin and they charmed a swarm of bees.  We can't get the dog to follow directions unless she feels like it.
• Last, but not least, each cat has snuck in the house no less 20 times.  Once they get in, the dog chases them downstairs (she how trained she isn't) and we have to go down there, find them and throw them back out.  Once the weather turns nice they give this nasty habit up which hopefully will be next week.

Don't Throw Away The VCR Just Yet

First, pull out some tools

and dissect it.

There are some pretty cool pieces in there.

State Project Day

Spark did his poster like a newspaper. 

Parents went around and the kids talked about their posters.

There were ten kids and two picked Ohio and two picked California, what are the chances of that out of 50 states?

Curls, Curls, Curls

Cat In The Hat Pizza

The Importance Of Doing Business Locally

This afternoon we felt the effects of a local, small business closing their doors first hand.

We have not had a toilet that has flushed without the help of a bucket of water for the past few years.  Embarassing when friends would come over, but it is amazing what we get use to when we live with it every day.  But today, today, Dad put in a new toilet that flushes all by itself!!!!

Of course, it wouldn't be a do it yourself project if we didn't run into a little snag.  We chose a taller toilet than what we had before.  All was going well until Dad went to hook up the water line to the tank and realized that the water line was too short.  Until a few months ago, when our local hardware store closed because they didn't get enough business anymore, he would have made a quick trip into our little town and that would be that.  That is not the case anymore.  He had to go to the nearest big box hardware store which took an hour and used about seven dollars worth of gas.  All that for a $5.16 part.

We always bought what we needed at the local hardware store, including our rabbit feed when the local elevator got torn down and they took over the feed sales, but I guess not enough other families did.  For the most part, to make up for the lack of convience, we just make a list and pick what we need when we go into the big town, but when it is something that you can't live without we sure feel the loss of our local stores.

Coraline Button Cookies

The movie Coraline is creepy to me, but these cookies are cute!

Just make your regular peanut butter cookie recipe, Dancer used the recipe from the reindeer cookies she made for the cookie exchange at Christmas time.  Sugar cookies would also work wonderfully. 

Roll in small balls, about the size of a large marble, and bake as usual.  When they come out of the oven push the middle of each one down with the top of a soda pop bottle. 

For the holes in the buttons, use a straw the make four holes in the middle of the button.  This part is a little tricky because if you do it too soon the end of the straw melts and it doesn't make a hole any more but, if you wait to long the straw doesn't go through the cookie. 

I thought these were going to be time consuming, but with one of us pushing down the middles, and the other making the holes, it was only a couple of minutes for the whole batch.

Goop - Fun For Ages 3 To 103

I know it is fun for at least ages 3 to 46 because I made a batch of it when Dancer was about 3 and one of us is 46 now and we have all had fun with it.

Spark saw the recipe in a book today and whipped himself up a batch not being able to resist trying anything that's named goop. 

Goop

3/4 teaspoon Borax

4 ounces white glue - like Elmer's

1 cup water

tempera paint if you want it colored - when it gets dirty and looks like laundry lint we will wish we had put color in it but for now we left it white.

Put it all in a bowl and start mixing it.  We started with a spoon and then Spark got his hands into it.

When it was pretty solid he poured it out on a plate to mix around.  This part is just as fun as the finished product.

Pull it apart, squish it, smash it, and any other torture you can think of.

Eventually you will have a blob that looks like a big, hard boiled egg.

That will strech out into a beard.

Or you can rip it apart to get all your frustations out.  It really looks like hard boiled egg if you do this.  After a minute or two it morphs back into a blob.

And you can make it into a fried egg.
We have had more fun with this stuff, it is hard to put down.  As soon as one of us does put it down, someone else is right there to pick it up.  The few times I did get to play with it I was asked, "Can I have it now?"

So Thankful We Ran Out Of Fuel Oil

The kids and I got home from town this afternoon and realized that the it was a little chilly in the house.  I ran down to see if the furnace had blown a circuit breaker but they were all fine.  I hit the reset button on the furnace and it would start for about 12 seconds onlt to shut off again.

I quick called the oil company to have Kenny stop by and deliver some fuel oil hoping that an empty fuel tank would be the cause of our woes.  Sure enough, it was empty and as soon as it was filled the furnace started back up.

So why are we thankful that we ran out of fuel oil?  Because this had the hand of God all over it.  First, Dad was able to pick up an extra shift this week and, while it won't pay the whole bill, it will take a good chunk out of it.  Dad hasn't worked an extra shift for the longest time and just last night he picked one up. When we got home the house had only cooled down to 60 degrees so the furnace couldn't have been out for too long.  If we had run out of fuel oil after 5:00, just a few hours after we did, the oil company would have been closed and it would have been a really cold night.  I called the oil company about 3:00 and Kenny was able to finish up the job he was doing and come right over because he didn't have any more stops and still had plenty of fuel oil left on his truck.  He left at 4:40 and at 5:40 the winter storm we have been waiting for started to roar it's ugly head.  A foot of snow is coming our way, there are already large drifts, and it would have been hard to get the truck out here and in the drive way, and at what time would he have been able to get here.   As he was leaving, Kenny said that he was on our corner this morning and felt like he should stop in and see if we needed any oil but he had someone waiting for a delivery so he didn't stop.  I told him next time if he feels like he should stop to stop.  He said he could feel that we were out so he wasn't surprised when he got the call.  Maybe that is why he still had enough for us left on the truck.  Lastly, we are so thankful our tank was an empty and it wasn't a broken furnace that we would have had to pay who knows how much to be fixed and an after hours service call. Yep, God is good! 

  

Spelt Lemon Sugar Cookies

The spelt flour in these gives these cookies a bit of a nice grainy flavor.  You can change the recipe by changing the ratio of regular flour and the spelt flour to your tastes. These cookies are crisp on the outside and soft on the inside.

Spelt Lemon Sugar Cookies

2 cups butter, softened
4 cups powdered sugar
4 eggs
3 tablespoons lemon juice
3 tablespoons cream
2 teaspoons grated lemon peel
5 cups flour
1 1/2 cups spelt flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
Sugar

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add eggs one at a time, beat well after each egg.  Beat in lemon juice, cream and lemon peel.  Combine flour, baking soda and salt.  Gradually add to the cream mixture.  This is hard to get mixed together.  If need be, add more lemon juice to combine the two mixtures, but don't let this make you shy away from trying these.  Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours.

Roll out dough to 1/8 inch think and cut with floured glass or cookie cutters.  Place 1 inch apart on cookie sheet.  Top with sugar by dipping bottom of glass in the dough, then in sugar and then on the cookie.  Twist glass to get the sugar evenly on cookie.  Bake 350 degrees for 9 - 11 minutes or until lightly browned.