Natalie helped rake today

Natalie helped rake the new dirt and compost we put on the garden today. Check it out--I especially love the last pic. :-)

Update

I haven't posted what we've been doing in school for awhile so I figured I better do that before I completely forget. We haven't been doing school very consistently the last couple of weeks due to Memorial Day and my working schedule. Also, Ellie went over to Emily's on Thursday to help with her garage sale. To her credit, she did work ahead on her schoolwork. Next week we won't get as much done since I just got the Iowa Test of Basic Skills in the mail yesterday. I had planned on having them take the Stanford Achievement Test (that is what they had taken at Schaeffer) but discovered that they don't allow you to give it to your own children unless you have at least 2 other children (not related to you) taking it at the same time.

Math: Ellie has finished Saxon 54 and is now working on some Singapore math while she takes a break from Saxon. Kara is almost halfway done with Saxon 2.

English: We've done a few lessons but not as many as planned. We've been doing just bits and pieces of Ellie's since she knows some of it.

History: The girls have been listening to Jim Weiss read their history chapters on CD since our afternoons have been a little busier and I haven't been reading it. They have been hearing about how Hinduism began, about life in India and about the Great Wall of China.

Science: We began studying Jupiter.

Reading: Ellie has been reading Mary Poppins. We started reading Follow My Leader for our read aloud. Darin has done a few lessons in OPGTR and Explode the Code. He gets so excited to "do school." It's quite cute.

Art/Music: Hasn't gotten done except that I got a movie from the library that showed clips of The Magic Flute.

Latin: Ellie finished a review lesson and another lesson. She has 4 more lessons and the final review before she is done with LC1.

Mulch

We had some mulch delivered to our house late last week so that Dan could spread it this past weekend as our flower beds were in serious need of it. So that is what Dan spent the weekend doing while I worked and slept. Here are a couple of pics of the flower beds. The neighbor behind us has a beautifully landscaped yard, but she is retired and spends lots of time working on it. And yes, I know that there are still weeds in my flower beds (it hasn't rained enough or at all so it makes weed pulling difficult and almost pointless) and that I need to edge. Just notice the mulch!!! :-)

New tree and new hair

Dan took Monday off and we went and picked up 2 pear trees--a Lucious and a D'Anjou. They aren't very big right now but they should start bearing fruit in 3-4 years. Since we will most likely be in this house when they start bearing fruit, we figured we might as well go ahead. Someday I'd love to have a yard large enough so that I could have pear, apricot and apple trees. But since right now we've got a very small city lot, we chose pear trees (Dan's favorite fruit which incidentally I didn't know until a few months ago).


By the time we actually got around to planting them, the weather was turning colder and it started to rain. So the rest of us went inside and Dan and Darin planted the trees. Darin reveled in his day with daddy which just reinforced Dan's conviction that he needs to be home more. Dan also took Darin out for breakfast that morning and they ran to Menard's together. It was a great boy bonding day for both of them.


Here are a few pics of them planting:




Yesterday I cut Natalie's hair. It was very sad day. I loved her long hair and the ringlets that she had, but it was such a nightmare to comb her hair everyday and she would just scream because of all of the snarls. So I cut it and said goodbye to her long hair. She's still quite cute.

A delightful weekend

We had a wonderful extended weekend in Duluth and the weather turned out much better than expected. We got to Duluth around 1:30 on Thursday and headed straight for Grandma's as we were very hungry. It was even warm enough to sit on the deck and we got there right when a ship was coming in.
After lunch we picked up a malt and a pizza for supper and headed out to the cabin.

Thursday evening we went for a walk and found this boat. As Dan says, we rented a boat and this was all we could afford:
This is the scene Friday morning:


On Friday we stopped for breakfast at The Vanilla Bean . Their food is wonderful and I had french toast made from bread pudding which was very, very yummy. After breakfast we went hiking. We had planned on stopping at the Superior Hiking Trail office (which is right across the street from The Vanilla Bean) in order to get a brochure on the several loops that are available on the trail. However, we were done with breakfast at 8:15 and the office didn't open till 9:00. Since we knew we'd be hiking most of the day, we didn't want to wait around. So we decided to just drive aways until we saw a Superior Hiking Trail sign and we'd just go from there. We went about 10 miles north of Two Harbors, saw a sign and parked in the parking lot. The sign said that it was 4 miles to Nestor Grade going one direction and 2.7 miles to Encampment Creek the other direction. We figured that we'd do both and that would be about the right amount of hiking for the day. So we started on the hike to Nestor Grade. We didn't really know what Nestor Grade was but figured it would be an okay destination and that we'd just turn around once we came to it. This is Nestor Grade:

Yep, friends, this was the destination of our first hike. Turns out Nestor Grade is the name of an old railroad line. Not only was our destination not all that we had hoped, but this particular section of the trail was particularly marshy.

After we got back to the parking lot, we rested and ate out lunch. We had picked up sandwiches from Amazing Grace and packed them in a cooler.

An aside about buying our sandwiches--Amazing Grace has great sandwiches and they are typically quite large. When we went to get them on Thursday, there was a new kid working there who apparently hadn't had enough training. I always get a hummus sandwich loaded with veggies and this day was no different. I told him I wanted a black bean hummus sandwich so he sliced the bread and put a razor thin amount of hummus on one half. Then he asked if I wanted any hummus on the other half. Um, yeah. Hummus is the main ingredient of the sandwich!!! Normally I have to tell them not to put so much on as they usually really slather it on. So the kid puts a little hummus on the other half of the bread. Then he looks at me and asks me if that was it. It was actually quite comical. I just wanted to laugh but figured he probably wouldn't appreciate that. So I told him that I would also like some veggies on it. It was just a comedy of errors as he forgot to put my cheese on and when he wrapped Dan's sandwich, he laid the saran wrap right in the tomato juices from where someone had been slicing tomatoes. And when I gave him (and another coworker who had to help him with the register) the coupon for 1/2 off one sandwich, they thought that 1/2 of $4.50 was $2.75.

Back to the hiking--after lunch we were tired but decided to hike the other leg of the trail that we had planned since the previous destination was not what we had planned and it was short in comparison. It may have been shorter but it was much hillier (is that even a word?). Here is Encampment River (it's a close-up, not the full view of the river):
It was a better destination than Nestor Grade but I don't think we'll hike this section again either. Next year we'll do some better planning.

Here are some pics of other things we saw on the trail:

Anyone know what this plant is? We found them in several marshy places.
On Saturday we just hung out at the cabin. This is the scene to which we awoke:
It was a gorgeous morning!! The water was calm and the sky was blue. We thought that we were going to have colder weather and many more clouds. Periodically a breeze would blow and it was really cool to watch it move the water and how the sun would reflect on that part. We had a good day reading, napping and setting our goals for the year. As the day progressed, the weather became a bit more unpredictable. It would be blue skies and then a storm cloud would come in, then blue skies and then another storm cloud. Here are two pics of after one of the storm clouds came through:


This was a really cool scene. After the second storm cloud came through, the skies were still pretty dark but this boat came along and the sun seemed to be shining right on it. And it was such a stark contrast since the boat is mostly white. It was really a neat thing to see. The picture doesn't really do it justice.

Sunday morning we again awoke to sunshine but it was much cooler. We packed up, stopped for breakfast at Chester Creek Cafe and drove home.

We're on Our Way!!

We are finally on our way to Duluth for our annual weekend getaway!!! The weather at home while we are gone looks gorgeous--low 70s and sunny. We'll finally be having some spring weather as it seems that winter has been incredibly long this year. The weather in Duluth doesn't look nearly as nice--lower 60s, cloudy with a chance of rain. Of course the weather at home has to be nice when I'm leaving town. :-( Oh well. If the weather stinks we'll just have to stay at the cabin more and that wouldn't be so bad.

We've been off school this week as I've been preparing our house for company (it was good motivation to get some spring cleaning done). My mom and Laurie are here to watch the kids while we are gone. I've been doing lots of cleaning, organizing and baking this week.

Here is what I have done this week:

• Baked 4 loaves WW bread
• Baked 4 loaves banana bread
• Baked 3 dozen cinnamon rolls
• Baked 2 dozen hot dog buns
• Mopped the kitchen floor
• Cleaned out the fridge
• Organized/cleaned the pantry
• Cleaned off the computer desk and dusted it (lots of dust bunnies)
• Vacuumed the stairs
• Mowed the lawn
• Pulled some weeds
• Washed, folded and put away at least 5 loads of laundry
• Scrubbed the upstairs shower
• Cleaned our bedroom
• Helped Kara bake chocolate chip cookies
• Cleaned out the storage closet downstairs

Here are a couple of pics to document that I actually had a clean fridge and pantry.

Apple Nut Pancakes

I made these for supper tonight. They are from Food To Live By.

2 crisp apples, cored, peeled and thinly sliced
1/2 c toasted pecans or walnuts, coarsely chopped
2 large eggs
1 c milk or buttermilk
4 T melted butter or 4 T canola oil
2 c less 2 T whole wheat pastry flour
2 T sugar
1/2 t salt
1 1/2 t baking powder
1 T cinnamon

Mix eggs, milk and butter. Mix dry ingredients together and mix with wet ingredients until moistened. Spoon batter onto hot griddle to form 4-inch pancakes. Arrange apples and walnuts over batter. When small bubbles begin to appear, flip pancakes and cook until the other side is brown. Serve with warmed maple syrup.

A couple of good recipes

I recently asked the library to purchase this cookbook for me and I've found several very yummy recipes so far. I've asked Dan to buy it for me so hopefully he will as I can't keep the library's copy forever. Here are a couple recipes I've tried so far.

Maple Almond Granola
4 1/2 c rolled oats
3/4 c raw, unsalted sunflower seeds
1 1/2 c slivered or coarsely chopped raw almonds
2 T ground cinnamon
1 1/4 c pure maple syrup, preferably Grade A dark amber
1/3 c canola oil
1 c raisins

Preheat oven to 325. Place oats, sunflower seeds, almonds and cinnamon in large bowl. Stir. In a small bowl, combine oil and maple syrup. Pour over oat mixture and stir until all ingredients are moistened.

Place in 12x17 rimmed baking sheet. Bake about 25 minutes, then stir. Bake another 15-25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until granola is light golden brown, dry and fragrant. Remove from oven. Stir in raisins and let cool.


Banana Maple Walnut Muffins--makes 16 muffins
2 c whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 t baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
1/4 t ground ginger
1/4 t ground cinnamon
2 large eggs
1/2 c pure maple syrup
1/2 c packed light brown sugar
1/3 c milk
1/4 c canola oil
1 t vanilla
1 1/2 c mashed very ripe bananas
3/4 c chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 375. In large bowl, combine dry ingredients. In smaller bowl, combine wet ingredients. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and stir just until moistened. Fold in walnuts. Place in greased muffin tins and bake for 20-30 minutes.

Outdoor cleaning

It was a beautiful day outside yesterday--mid 70's so we all went outside yesterday after nap time to mow the lawn, weed and pull the dead stuff from last year. I need to make a Menards run soon so that all the kids can have a pair of gardening gloves since they all want to help (and will be helping). I found a few worms while digging up some weeds and Natalie and Darin thought they were great. Natalie would giggle every time it wiggled in her hand. It was quite cute.




This past weekend I worked and it was incredibly busy. I'm not sure I've had a weekend as busy as this one since I've started there (if so, it's been blocked from my memory). Too bad I don't have a pedometer. I'd like to know how many miles I logged this weekend. We had a potluck at work Sunday night since it was one of my co-worker's last nights before she moves east. I made a fruit pizza and Dan convinced me to make one for home too. Usually I make something to take to work and only leave a few pieces at home. This time they got their own and they were all excited. Ellie made me promise to take a picture of the fruit pizza and post it, so here it is.

Words I never thought I'd say. . .

Darin--No more spinach till you eat your enchiladas!

I'm still not sure what happened at supper tonight. :-)