Mother's Day Bliss

Celebrated my 20th Mother's Day this year.  Wow.  Also celebrated my first Mother's Day without a mother. Wow.

Dancer worked on the actual Mother's Day so she and I celebrated a few days early.  Her gift to me, or should I say treat to me, was a pedicure.  I had never had a pedicure, I'm not one to like people, especially people I don't know, fussing over me.  Also the cost. Dancer and I paint each other's nails at home, so it seemed frivolous to pay someone to apply a little polish on something that spends most of the time in my socks.  But then I sat down in that massage chair and oh, my, goodness. Then the nice lady, who I held off telling her I loved her because it would seem odd, massaged my feet and legs and double oh, my, goodness. She did paint my toes a beautiful shade of purple, but I am counting that more of a souvenir of my time in the massage chair. Wonderful, I will be back. 

On Mother's Day my family gifted me with two gifts.  One was an extra battery for my phone. You can never have to much battery. My phone seems to use much more battery away from home than it does at home. Odd how that works.

My second gift was this metal rooster.  I love this bird, he is so well behaved! He doesn't get up early and crow outside my bedroom window looking for the cat food bucket. And he doesn't poop on the porch or deck. He is suppose to be a lawn ornament, but I think he is better suited for the living room. Besides, we have plenty of chickens outside roaming the lawn. 

Let The Sun Shine

As a family we did a run/walk for mental health.  Although this picture says run we are walkers.

We choose this one because it is only 2.2 miles instead of the usual 5K and a good way to get our feet wet in the spring for walking.

Dancer at the finish line.  There were well over a 1,500 people who completed the event. 

Dad and Spark finishing.  At the end you got a bottle of water and a huge chocolate chip cookie so any calories burned off we put right back on.

YouTube for cats

 We were checking out April the Giraffe on YouTube and that got us interested in other live cams.  These live cams are a little addictive and more entertaining than some t.v. shows.  We were watching a bird nest and the bird sounds brought Fluffles out from where ever he spends his days to see what was going on.

He got down way low like an outside cat would do when stalking a real bird and slowly crept up to the t.v.

He was so sneaky that he got this close and they still didn't see or hear him. A mighty hunter he is!  He finally gave up, I don't know if he figured out they weren't real or if they were like a chicken on the deck safe behind a pane of glass.  Probably the later.

Greenhouses and Goats

Our 4H club enjoyed a behind the scenes peek at a greenhouse.  So much more goes on there than meets the eye.

Some of it is right before our eyes, but I just never noticed.  For example, each one of these hanging baskets has it's own drip irrigation.

Another thing I learned is that those first two tiny leaves on a sprout are called cotyledon. I feel so garden smart now. 

Seeing all these plants got me itching to get a couple seedlings started.

A small sample of bird feeders they had.  If there is something to stick out in your backyard, they had it there.  Everything was so, so cute, I didn't see one thing I wouldn't want.  The only thing that kept me from backing the car up to the front door and loading it up was that all that cuteness comes with quite a price tag. If we lived where it was nice out most of the year it might not seem like so much, but here in Minnesota, where our first and last frost dates only span about 4 1/2 to 5 months, it sure does.  

Next stop was the park for a meeting, Subway lunch and knocking a volleyball around.

We finished up the day with a visit to a goat dairy.  Nothing will make you say "ahhh" faster than 80 plus goats all together.  This pen held over 25 newborn kids. Made me think we needed more goats, but then I came to my senses.  Dancer's goat Jamal is from this dairy so I scoured the mommy goats to see if I could see the one that might be his mom. There were a couple that would fit the bill so there will be no definite  family reunion for him. 

Birthday X 3

We have had three birthdays since our last post.  Spark was way back in October.  Lots of presents.

Lunch at one of his favorite places, KFC!

And of course, birthday cake with 16 candles.

Dancer was in January.  Twenty candles on her cake this year which means I only have one teenager.  

Presents, presents. presents. 

We ordered pizza for supper.  It wasn't going to work for us to go out on her birthday so a few days prior we celebrated at Pizza Ranch.

My birthday was in February. No candles because I had an ice cream cake and the number of candles for my age would probably melt the cake!

Celebrating National Days

There is a national day for just about everything under sun. They range from the common, such as, Grandparents Day, that even gets a mention on most calendars, to the uncommon celebration of the rather morbid National Life Insurance Day. Over the last couple of years we have added celebrating these days into our homeschool.  We mostly focus on the days that are food related or one that can be celebrated with food. The first reason for the food focus is our co-op is teenage boys, who are always looking for something to eat, and secondly, teenage boys are not interested in making a craft that goes along with a theme.  There might be one, or maybe even two out there, but I don't know them.

In the last few days we have celebrated National Milkshake Day, I recommend peanut butter

and National Cheeseburger Day.

There are lots of websites out there to tell you what day it is, here is one to get you started National Day Calendar. I can tell you, I have my eye on the up coming National Ice Cream Cone Day (19th) and National Corn Beef Hash Day (27th).  

The Running of The Llamas

The Running of the Llamas is a fun celebration that was held in Hammond, Wisconsin.  This was the 20th, and final year, of the event. During the event, which packs the town with people far and wide, heats of four llamas race down the street for about two blocks to the finish line.  Some llamas are great runners and others are not all that interested.  A llama that isn't interested in doing something just doesn't do it.  If you are holding on to a lead of such a llama, you may not even get over the starting line.  Spark brings Marceline because she makes it her goal to be the leader of whatever group of llamas she is in.  This means that she naturally wants to be in the front of the pack and that her personality makes her a strong competitor in a race.  The last two years Spark and  Marceline won their heats, but came in third over all.  Since this was the last year, Spark ran sprints in the backyard for a good portion of the summer to get ready for a win.

Before the race there is a parade with the llamas, local royalty, and others community groups.

This year Spark's training paid off, he and Marceline came in first place.

For her effort she was awarded with a large basket of vegetables.

The prize smelled so go we could hardly get her back to the trailer to go home.  Bet she wishes she had run faster those other years now that she has "tasted" success.

At home, Spark cut up all her winnings to share with the entire barnyard.

We Visited A Zoo

 Last week we took a day trip up north for our last big hurrah of the summer before Dancer started school this week.  Truth be told it was one of our only hurrahs of the summer, seems no one has the same days available anymore. We went to a zoo/wildlife/petting zoo place.

Dancer and I posed sweetly on the bear's lap for a picture.  

And then realized, what are we doing, we're sitting on a bear's lap!

Dancer ain't afraid of no bear!

Dad is so hard core he flossed the bear's teeth. 

My picture with Spark.  I guess this is all you get with a 15 year old.

 I did get a picture of both the kids and Paul Bunyan.

On to the petting zoo.  This camel knows where the treats come from and he wanted Dancer to feed him.

Dancer with Mother Goose

The parakeet house was one of the coolest things I have ever seen.  It is a large, screened building with about 75 parakeets in it. All the birds fly from one side of the building to the other in a big swoop.  If you stood with your arms out a bunch of them would land on arm.

They also loved my shoes for some reason.  I don't have any food on them so not sure what the attraction was.  I had to shake them off to get them to leave because they were starting to creep me out.

Not sure why there was a table in there, but as soon as Spark sat down the table filled up with birds.

The cutest thing we saw there was a mom kangaroo giving her little joey a bath in her pouch.

We finished the day off with a Chinese buffet and now we are back to the grind.

Dessert Sushi

The 4-H camp counselors made these for evening snack at the bonfine to complment their Under the Sea theme.  The ingredents are: Rice Krispies, fruit roll ups, Swedish fish, gummy worms, marshmallows and butter.

Make a regular Rice Krispie bar recipe.  Smoosh it out flat on a big baking sheet.  Quickly, very quickly, while they are still warm, put on Swedish fish and gummy worms.  Roll the sushi up the long way to make a long roll.  Wrap the fruit roll ups on the outside of the roll, this helps to hold it together.  Put it in the freezer for about five minutes until hard enough to cut. Slice with a surrated knife.

Dutch Oven Maiden Meal

We have been scouring the thrift stores for a Dutch oven the last few months with no luck in finding one.  People must not part with them, or else it is going to go the other way and now that we finally bought one I will start seeing them for sale everywhere. We choose a traditional cast iron one with legs and the curved handle.  They make really fancy ones, but those come with quite the price tag so we went with one priced in the middle of the road.

First step in using the oven is seasoning it.  Just spray that baby all over with some Pam.  Bam, done!

For our first delicious delight, we threw in sausage, apples, a bag of cabbage and onion.  Dump it in, stir it up.

The coals to bake it need to be made before you put them on the oven.  To make them, burn logs in the fire and when they are black and charcoalish, lay them on the ground and then load some on the lid.

For the oven to bake the meal there needs to be heat from the bottom and the top.  Turn the oven every 15 minutes to avoid hot spots where your meal is burned on one side of the oven and raw on the other.  This goes for the lid as well, give that a little spin when you turn the pot.

When you are going to check how it's going in there, the suspense will be killing you, the cover needs to be completely cleaned off.  Remove all the embers and dust off the top or the meal will be adulterated with coals and ash. 

The end result was so worth the hour it took to cook this.

Dancer goes to camp

Things changed this year when Dancer was getting ready to go to camp. When she was younger I use to help her get ready, make sure she had everything she needed and brought her to camp. This year she planned out her entire session she's teaching by herself, got all the supplies together, packed her dufflebag and loaded up her car. Only thing we did was take her out to lunch before she left at McDonalds.

Then she got in her car and drove off. This is the last year she can be a counselor, if she wants to go again she has to wait a year until she's 21 years old to be a chaperone. Spark will be a first year counselor this year, he goes on Wednesday and we will be bringing him. Dad is going to be the camp nurse for two of the days so we will see Dancer and Spark during the week or I would really be sad at Dancer's new independence.

Vanilla Fire Starters

These fire starters are made with those cotton face cleaning pads instead of cotton balls. These stack really well and a lot would fit in a sandwich Ziploc bag and take up less room in your camping supplies.

Melt down a candle, they don't have to be vanilla like my title says.  Actually, they would be prettier with another colored candle, but vanilla is my favorite scent so that's what we had on hand.  

Our stove is broken so when I put the paper plate in to melt the wax in the "toaster" oven, surprisingly the plate started to "toast." Wasn't thinking there.  Anyway, once the wax melts, dip the cotton pad in the wax until it is completely saturated. Lay it on wax paper or some other nonporous surface so they don't stick what ever you put them on to harden.  

Try number two.  Make an aluminum foil bowl to melt the candle in.  "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work" Thomas Edison  See, we are getting smarter and it only took us one fail.

 And now the test, did it work?  Sure did, and it only used one match. We proceeded to have to have perhaps the world's smallest bonfire.  It burned quite a while though, about five minutes so you would have plenty of time to get a fire going if you didn't have all the wood handy or your tinder was a bit wet.