LAZY BLOGGER

Yep, that is me! Wow.....I have done a terrible job of it.

I will try to catch up briefly.

We got back from our trip on Labor Day weekend and got very involved in school for both boys, volunteer time at Keenan's school and just being busy in general. Kevin was working long days since it was the "shutting down" time for irrigation and I was working and teacher and "mommying".

Then in the blink of an eye it was time for Bird City convention. That in itself was an adventure in mud....I found out that somehow, sitting next to Keenan in meeting, it was possible to get mud on my scarf,which was around my neck....Now, I know he wasn't kicking me in the face so that is still a mystery!

We got home from Convention and found out that we were likely going to get to move but nothing was sure until the 16th of October. We started going through the stuff in the storage unit anyway and found out that remarkably, most of it was junk that we were paying to store...that could be thrown or given away! Lesson learned, don't keep things you don't use! On the 16th we found out that we were indeed going to be able to move and we got started with arranging painting and carpet cleaning and packing!

On the first weekend of November we moved in and then had a week to wrap things up at the old house. We were moving things quickly and just piling boxes everywhere...planning on unpacking right away. We did pretty well with all of that and were fairly well settled in when Aunt Pat and Uncle Harold came for Thanksgiving. That was a real treat and we had a nice quiet Thanksgiving in our new home. Then on Saturday of that weekend my friend from home, April, came and gave me decorating ideas (and a whole pile of wonderful goodies!!) There are no pictures on the walls yet but it is getting there. The only boxes are in one half of the 2 car garage so that is not too bad.

I actually ended up quitting one of my practices at the end of November due to some "accounting challenges" on their part (they thought it wasn't necessarily important to pay their vendors and I didn't agree!). So now for the past 2 weeks I have had only part time work. I really thought that would mean I had a lot of time for unpacking etc but it seems like life just gets busier when you don't have work to fill your time! I had a week at Keenan's school volunteering in the Holiday Shoppe, then we had lots of projects for Conner's school, a game day, some other events and field trips, special meeting and special company, and then school is out!

Now we are at Grandma and Grandpa Lerwick's house waiting for a "big storm" but it hasn't hit yet!

School is going relatively well for both kids. Conner still loves COVA and is doing well with it. I believe he is nearly at 50% or greater for all of his classes, and he is required to be at 42% by the end of the semester for advanced so he is well beyond that. He likes math a lot and science is interesting but a bit frustrating. If I have one complaint about the K12 curriculum it is that there is no text book, not online OR hard copy. The information is in each lesson and they have to take notes and then if they need to go back and find information they have to go through the lesson to find it. Conner learns very similar in style to the way I do, which means going back and looking things up several times to remember them. He is very interested in science though and overall is enjoying the class very much. Reading is definitely his challenge class as he really doesn't enjoy it that much, but he did read Tom Sawyer and enjoyed that very much.

Keenan has had some bullying issues in his school this year and I think that coupled with the long drive every day is making all of us eager for him to home school next year. Unfortunately I believe that the public school is rapidly going downhill, even the great charter that our kids have been a part of. The problem we have come up against is that it seems that the trouble makers have more of a right to misbehave than the good kids have a right to a safe environment. Currently the school is taking some measures to deal with the issue but it is frustrating to mom for sure. It is disappointing to see what was an excellent school go down in quality because of behavioral issues. I guess that maybe it has to do with more and more people removing their kids from the environment that is bad so what is left is the ones who make the environment bad!

One really good thing though is that one of Keenan's best friends has also moved north in Colorado Springs so he actually lives only about 5 minutes from our house and it will be easy to get the two of them together! Conner's good friend still lives down south but we have been able to get together regularly with him as well so they will be able to maintain those friendships.

I will attempt to get some pictures posted of the house as we get some things done to make it a home in the next week....(Laura is coming for a week so maybe between the two of us we can figure out how to hang pictures!) And maybe we will have some cousin pics this week too!

I will really attempt to get more into the nuts and bolts of schooling this semester and keep you updated on some of the things we are doing. We have some really exciting field trips coming up and are looking forward to those (I think Keenan may get self declared holidays for the ones in Denver and get to go along with us).

No pictures this time, I have to get some off of my camera and get them into this computer.

Labor Day Weekend

****Shhhhh***** Don't tell the boys, but they were in school the whole weekend!

Actually, Keenan is studying Colorado History and Conner is studying US history and the unit he just finished was on cliff dwellers, so the weekend was very educational and time appropriate! We had a wonderful time and saw lots of history.

We started off by hitting the sand dunes...where mom's camera battery died, so only a few pictures there!
















Then we went on through the beautiful Pagosa Springs area to Cortez where we had a hotel. And all the way the question was "what time does the pool close? Will we make it in time to swim"....





The next day was Mesa Verde and it was beautiful!




























We did the Cliff Palace tour and I strongly recommend that to anyone going to Mesa Verde. It was amazing and interesting, not too strenuous of a hike, but there are ladders to climb, pretty steep ones, so dress appropriately. I wish we would have had much more time since I think I could have hiked around that area for days, but we didn't so we just saw what we could.















Then on to 4 Corners, the kids were pretty fascinated with the whole 4 states at once thing and we spent some time there. Also got a chance to watch and visit with a man (navajo) who was making arrowheads, carving them...then the boys picked out an arrow shaft and a kind of stone and he made them arrows while they watched. So if you hit the 4 Corners area, look for the booth with Edward Begay...he is an interesting guy to visit with and does make beautiful arrows!

My boys are of course too big and too cool to bend down and put a limb in each state....oh well!

























This was a really neat rock formation that we saw on the way back to Cortez. It has a really stark beauty!





And of course, the best part of any vacation!!!! The pool at the hotel.

Art experiences

Art is something that I am not much help with, but fortunately Conner loves it and has a lot of fun following the step by step directions. The lesson plans are very detailed and work out well for someone with no art background (like me!) Fortunately, he has Mrs. J at Soaring Eagles still available for any assistance he may need...and as long as he goes in once in a while to help with the bulletin boards, I think that she will continue to love him!

Tuesday's lesson was to make a mask, then on Thursday he had to paint and decorate the mask. It is an Indian story telling mask, they would put their fingers through the holes on the bottom and use it to act out stories, almost like a puppet. So here are the various stages of this project.

Science days.

What is worse than doing poorly on a science test?

Having mom as your "teacher" so she knows right away?

No...having mom as your "teacher" and she is MEAN and makes you repeat every lesson in the unit because you were hurrying and didn't do it well!

Oops!

Conner likes science but thought he pretty well KNEW this unit so he could rush through it in a couple days and not take notes. Well, after pretty well failing the unit test, mom made him redo the entire unit, not just hitting the high points but doing EVERY SINGLE LESSON (novel idea that!) and taking notes (even more novel idea!)....so here are some pictures of the "redo", which he has been doing at a rate of 3-4 lessons a day and actually finding it to be interesting!



And it is snail and swamp water day in science. Guess what? Snails will leave the area they are in if there is no lid, then they will slime their way across the table we eat on, leaving a shiny little trail, and then they will fall onto the floor, where the cat will watch it move along very slowly until Conner rescues it! I can tell that science is going to be quite an experience! There were also little bugs that moved like tadpoles in the water....I was ready for that one to go outside!





Hmmmmmm.....Don't you wonder what he is thinking about here? There is something going on in there! Science is so much fun, isn't it?













This is the "work space" in our home currently, doing Social Studies (which seems to be the current favorite and no wonder, the books are EXCELLENT!)





So, today's lesson learned is that you cannot neglect the lessons if you want to pass the test. That could apply in many areas of our life! Good counsel indeed for all of us from school to eternity.

FREEDOM!

That is what K woke up saying this morning, after his measly 4 hours of sleep! Today was the day of his neurology follow up! We had to have an EEG done because of some strange "events" he is having so that is the reason for the 4 hours of sleep.














As you can see, sleep deprivation worked! He fell asleep before she even got all the leads attached and she had wake him up to do the "awake" portion of the test.

After the EEG we waited and waited to see the doctor and when he finally came it I didn't have a good feeling since it had taken him so long to read the EEG.

He asked if we wanted to easy part of the hard part first.

Easy part: He appears to have no sequelae from his head injury and is free to have a gradual return to activity as his body allows! YAY, that is the FREEDOM part! He can go out for recess at school, eat in the cafeteria with his friends, hang out outside the door with his classmates, even go to PE class when they are not using basketballs. That is the happy and easy part.

Hard part: He "performed really well" for them on the EEG. His EEG is grossly abnormal with lots of activity. We don't know at this point what the activity is from. It could be post traumatic or it could be something to do with the family history and he is developing a seizure disorder, or maybe it is a non seizure anomaly. There is no real way of knowing, but what he is describing and from what they see on the EEG it appears that he is having simple partial seizures (a seizure where he is aware that something is going on, but would be unable to vocalize it until it is over). The other kinds of seizures are unconscious seizures, where the person would not be aware that there was anything going on, just lost time. K describes this event as "A feeling like a static balloon on my hair but inside my head on my brain. When it happens my ears and eyes are fuzzy and I cannot move my arms or legs". This fits with the simple partial seizure. On a positive note though, no one has noticed any behavior that would indicate any other kinds of seizures. No tonic/clonic motions, no head nods, no drops, no flutters or staring spells. At this point we are "waiting and seeing" what will transpire. He just has to be careful, but most of the "be careful" precautions we were given are already in place because apparently I must be a bit paranoid!

Anyway, that was our exciting day and now I need some sleep pretty badly after that day!

Tomorrow is another day and I am reminded of something Grandpa Lerwick used to say a lot...
"This too shall pass (and we will wonder where the time went)."

And now...a birthday visit....

Friday we had C's friend from Soaring Eagles come for the night and Saturday.

Imagine if you will...One child is home schooled, the other attends a 21st Century Charter School. Both LOVE what they are doing. They were talking so fast about school that neither one heard the other...then the spent the weekend making paper airplanes!

But A was interested in C's school so C saved science to do when his visitor was here. As luck would have it, that science lesson included a lab!


They had a lot of fun with the balloon and yeast lab...and yeah, if you add a LOT of yeast, sugar and water to a bottle then put a balloon over the end, the balloon will expand so much it blows off...do you want to know how I know this? But they learned and had fun and MOST of the mess was outside the door! As you can tell, he is completely thrilled that I am taking his picture here and put on his best "I am interested in what I am doing here look".

Oh, and then he and A made a stuffed crust pizza for lunch and had a lot of fun with that...and apparently, one pizza is not enough when you have 3 hungry boys to feed and a hungry dad! He will have to make 2 next time.

Meet the teacher!

Thursday night we were invited to go to the zoo and meet the teacher with the other local COVA families. I cannot believe how many families have gained the sanity and are "Taking their children back"! The line to get in was all the way around the circular part at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo (don't ask me to guess how far it is because I don't estimate distance very well, it was somewhere between 100 feet and half a mile!). We got in line and when we arrived at the front of the line, the line was longer than when we had joined it. I don't know for sure how many people were there but I do know that the main parking lot was full and the overflow had lots of cars in it too.



We were fortunate to get to the teacher area before it was too crowded and got a chance to meet C's teacher. This is a different teacher picture than ever before, since we don't even know how many times we will see the teacher this year but Mrs. W is our contact for everything this year.

The evening was a lot of fun and we did run into a family we had met earlier in the year who is in their first year of COVA as well for their 7th grade daughter. They also have a 4th grade son who is going to continue at a brick and morter school for a couple more years. When we first met S and I were looking at each other with fear in our eyes, wondering if home school was something we could even manage. Tonight when we saw each other we both had the same comment..."can it really be this easy"? She had met C only once, at the tail end of last school year. After being with him only about 20 minutes her comment about him was "I wouldn't have recognized C at all, he is so happy he is almost sparkly"! He even talked to their daughter and had conversations wtih virtual strangers! The change in my quiet little boy is remarkable and other people are noticing it! I couldn't be more happy with the process at this point!

Happy Birthday Conner!!!

C is 12 today! Wonder how that happened? I am not old enough to have a 12 year old am I? Anyway, he worked ahead on school so he could have the day off and now he is happily playing with his birthday Lego set, one he has waited almost 7 months for, since it came out and he saw it in a magazine. If you can imagine, it is a farm set and he REALLY wanted it badly!

The other set is a camper from K. For years they have worked at creating a camper and made all kinds of varieties of them, and now they have a set that is a "real" camper with beds, chairs etc all in the vehicle.

I am delighted that at 12 he would rather play with Legos and use his imagination that play video games. I love that my kids love their toys still. I really think that brains develop so much better when they are playing with things like that than if they are just interacting with a machine.
K is wildly jealous that C gets to have his birthday off...so we may have to create a "holiday" for K when his birthday comes around so he can have the same privilege. The only class C will do today is Spanish, since he needs to do that every day, but that class is like a game. It is amazing, the program is Power Speak. It is really an interesting way to teach language but he is having fun with it so that is great.

Tuesday: Company coming!

Today was a fun school day....C worked ahead so he can have his birthday off! Smart thinking huh? Don't you wish you could do that in the real world?

Science started a new unit about food and nutrition so you KNOW that mom is involved in that one! We had a stack of books all over the table, didn't take a picture of that though, of "supplemental materials" that I just happened to have around! He had to learn the different classifications of food: Protein, lipid, carbohydrate. He then had to make a collage of the different categories with pictures from magazines. That was a fun project!

For reading he read a story called "How the Cat Played Robinson Crusoe". For anyone with kids who like cats, that is a GREAT adventure story that has lots of advanced vocabulary words in it. Well worth reading. It is in "Classics for Young Readers" edition 6 but I am sure it is its own book too. The author is Charles G.D. Roberts.

Then for supper the workers came over, Cheri Fisk and Stephanie Kinney. C wanted to make something different so we did. Thanks to April for the recipe that turned out to be VERY YUMMY! and very pretty too.

It is called Peach Salsa Chicken and preparing it gave a cooking lesson and also a math lesson since the recipe was for 1 4oz serving and we were making 16 oz of chicken!

2 bell peppers (we used yellow and red for color) diced finely












16 ounces of chicken cut into chunks













All the ingredients ready.














The finished product! YUMMY.













Peach Salsa Chicken:

*2 cups of canned peaches (yes, we used our home canned ones!) diced and save the juice off of them.
*16oz boneless skinless chicken breast cut in chunks
*4tsp olive oil
*2 medium bell peppers (any color you choose)
*8T chunky salsa
*4T unsweetened orange juice

In large skillet heat oil and cook chicken till no longer pink
Remove chicken from skillet
Add bell peppers to skillet, reduce heat and saute for 2-3 minutes, stirring, until pepper is tender. Add reserved peach juice, salsa and orange juice to skillet and bring to boil, scraping up browned bits from the bottom of the skillet. Add peaches and stir until hot. Add chicken, stirring to coat with sauce.

We served this with zucchini and summer squash with tomatoes, one of our favorite summer veggie dishes.

Saute onions and garlic together and then add sliced zucchini and summer squash and cook till tender, then toss in tomatoes and warm.
















Dinner was delicious and C did most of the work by himself! I might not be needed anymore!

Tomorrow is C's birthday and he is very excited to have the day off! We had cake and ice cream and sang happy birthday with the workers so that was his "party" at least the most formal one he has.

Monday: Grocery Game WINNER!

We are doing a lot of discussions about finances, money, making the most of your money etc. I do the Grocery Game and normally save about 40-50% off our grocery bill. Well, this week was a much bigger winner. C helped with coupons, helped with shopping and learned that with just a little inconvenience you can save a LOT of money! General Mills was running a special, with a limit of 2 per shopping trip, where if you buy 10 of their items you got 5 dollars off. We coupled that with LOTS of coupons, and basically ended up getting 300$ of groceries for 80$! This supplies us with cereal, granola bars, fruit snacks etc for a year! And the kids get a lot of things that their cheap mother would not typically buy for them! Wanna see what we got for 80 dollars?

4 boxes of Capt'n Crunch
16 boxes of granola bars
12 boxes of fruit snacks
2 packages of bacon
1 20 roll package of toilet paper
2 (50 oz) bottles of Tide with bleach (we like to make home made laundry soap but for whites I use this)
6 rolls of dental floss
2 bottles of lysterine for kids
2 "Reach" toothbrushes
2 tubes of crest pro health tooth paste
2 packages of 10 pens
1 package of 10 mechanical pencils (an absolute must for homework!)
2 jars of pickle relish
4 boxes of Romano Macaroni Grill meals
6 boxes of Hamburger Helper
4 packages of Knorr Pasta sides
1 box of Uncle Bens long grain wild rice
2 Betty Crocker potato sides
10 bottles of Diet Mountain Dew (yes, we all drink it except for Kevin)
4 boxes of Pillsbury Toaster Pastries
6 cans of Grand's Biscuits
1 package of Sargento String cheese

Any doubters left about coupons? :) We had to do 3 different orders to get a total of 30 dollars off then on top of that there were 2 general mills coupons that printed at the checkout for 3.50 off your next order.

C had so much fun that now he wants to go grocery shopping with me each time! It is like a scavenger hunt!

We are going through the Dave Ramsey book with our kids and we talk a lot about managing money, making your money go as far as it possibly can and being not spending more than you have.

Much of that stuff we make from scratch 95% of the time, but with the sales like that, we throw a little convenience stuff into our fridge to make life a bit easier.

School was pretty standard today. All subjects covered but only "Project" was science. He had a test and had to classify living things by their 7 steps of classification by putting the little slips of paper in order and had to research on the internet to come up with the information. I really think they learn more by doing it that way than by reading in a book then regurgitating on a test.

Thanks to Mrs. R!!!!!

Last year C had an amazing writing teacher and she made them work VERY hard! There were times he was so frustrated he cried but he wanted her to be proud of him so he kept working, hopefully living up to her expectations. Anyway, today's literature block assignment was to write a riddle poem about an animal, at least 2, 4 line stanzas.

C literally *skipped* into the office while I was working and said "Because of Mrs. R this assignment is going to be a piece of cake!" and he went back to work, coming back with his finished poem in no time! So all her hard work paid off! And he wrote 3 stanzas, not just 2.

Here is his poem:

Who Am I?

Four legs and a tail,
Claws like a nail.
I have a triangle face,
And I often look into space.

Brown, black and tan hair,
I'm not all that rare.
I chase mice on the floor,
When I lose one I want more.

When I am mad I hiss and GRRRR,
But when I am happy I purr.
Sometimes I am shy,
Who Am I?


He loves to write and read poetry and that was something that came from last year. I am sure you can tell that I am proud of him but more than that I cannot get over how excited he is to be learning and doing well! And it is coming easily instead of with so many battles like the past.

By the way, the answer to his question?

Pickles and Pork

We have been working on the cinnamon pickles for a few days now, and just tasted the almost finished product.....YUMMMMMM!

C has been helping with each step of this as we go along and today he told me that it must have been tiring to live in the "olden days" if you had to do this much work! Silly kid! I explained that in the "olden days" we would have been doing it over a fire not the stove. But I think he is having fun.

Step one for cinnamon pickles:
Peel, cut, seed and slice 7 pounds of cucumbers, bigger ones are better but not soft.
Then you take those cucumbers and put them in water with 1 cup of pickling lime for 24 hours. Weight them down with a plate to keep them under water.

Step two:
Drain off the lime water and rinse your pickles, and soak in ice water for 3 hours. Don't taste them here! They are gross!
Then you take 1 cup of vinegar
1 bottle of red food coloring
1 T of alum
enough water to cover your pickles
And simmer for 2 hours.
Drain off that liquid and put back in your "soaking bucket"


Step 3:
While the pickles are simmering in the food coloring and alum you combine:
3 cups of vinegar
2 cups of water
2-3 packages (8 ounce) of redhot candies
10 cups of sugar (I actually cut mine in half as that seemed like way too much sugar and they taste fine without that much sugar)
Cinnamon sticks
3T Cinnamon powder
Cook over medium low heat until all the red hots are dissolved.

Step 4:
Once that is all dissolved you pour that over your cucumbers in the soaking bowl or bucket and weight down with a plate again. Let sit for 24-36 hours in that mixture. The drain off the cinnamon mixture and return to stove top where you heat to boiling. Pack the pickles in jars, pour boiling liquid over them and hot process in a water bath for 15-20 minutes depending on your altitude. Let age for at least 2 weeks for best flavor after sealing, although they aren't bad straight out of the soaking bucket!



School continues to be great! C is really enjoying the new challenges each day and is really relishing the learning process. This is such a dramatic change that I feel like someone literally waved a magic wand over our house! Oh, and K is so jealous he almost cannot stand it! Every day he bursts in the door and asks C what time he got done with school and C tells him, noon or 1 most days...and K says "Man! I can't WAIT for next year!"

I seriously have no idea why all of this is underlined by the way! I really don't want it that way and cannot figure out how to turn it off!

Today's cooking adventure was an easy one since we had meeting to get ready for tonight. Pulled pork sandwiches and "grandma's" pork and beans.


This one only takes a few minutes, plus a few hours! (Oh, look, my underline is gone!) We had a pork roast for lunch on Sunday so then when it is still warm separate the fat from the meat and throw in the fridge. Then this morning C took the meat out and put it in the crock pot with enough bar-b-que sauce to coat it and it cooked all day on low. It is always tender and delicious and we have found out that it freezes really well too! The beans are just a can of Van De Camp beans with a squirt of catsup, mustard and a couple tablespoons of brown sugar, and you have "Grandma Lerwick's beans".

We are about half way done with the fruit preserving. We have 21 quarts of peaches and 7 pints of peaches. 5 quarts of pears and 3 pints of pears. 12 pints of peach jam. And one of the pears didn't seal so the kids were eating it and they like it SO much that they want to get another box of pears to put up next week so they have more to eat this winter!

I don't know if C is really going to use much that he is learning this week...he told me that he is going to cook when he grows up but he is not going to can that much stuff because it makes the floor sticky. :) Anyway, our next project, after the canning is done, is friendship bread. We are going to start the sourdough from square one and in a few weeks will have more than we could ever want! So put your orders in for starters if you want any.

Wow! We had quite a storm here today. I could see dark clouds coming up as I was heading to school to get K. By the time school got out it was hailing about marble sized hail and raining like crazy. I ended up running up to the door with an umbrella because the school phones were busy and I didn't want him taking his little injured head out and getting smacked with a hail stone! The rain was up to my ankles in the parking lot and just pouring down...I was wet from waist to toe and freezing cold by the time we waited out the hail and ran back to the car...but K didn't get his head hit.

Then home to work on the cinnamon pickles. They are now marinating

Lessons learned today.....

1. C is fully capable of finishing the entire day of lessons on-line alone and getting 100% on every assessment! Interesting considering that for the past 4 years I have sat down and held his hand and fought and pushed to get him through homework EVERY SINGLE NIGHT! I guess we have found our answer...

He told me today that he could have done that before at school if he hadn't had so many interruptions but when he got interrupted in the middle of writing and then had to go back and finish it later he had to "start his brain over". He even stated that he doesn't think he has any less work than before, just that he can work straight through and not have to distract himself. He is done in about 5 hours at the most without any further work, and that includes pre-reading for tomorrow.

2. Stalactites are not living things. There are 7 characteristics that must be present to be "living" and C got to study them all today, draw this cool picture about it and "teach" it to his learning coach (me)...and he was SOOOO excited about it. It was so fun to see him get excited about something to do with school!

3. The Anasazi Indians farmed on top of mesas above their cliff dwellings and had to climb 100 feet up ladders to reach their fields, that is about 10 stories! That is a long way to climb up ladders.

4. When C volunteers a hug and thanks me for letting him do school this way, it totally makes my day!!!

5. C can peel a cucumber faster than I can! And we peeled, cut and took the seeds out of 20 pounds of cucumbers, ending with about 14 pounds...which are soaking in pickling lime and will be made into cinnamon pickles.


6. Peaches must be RIPE if you plan on canning them, not a little bit green. You don't want to see the mess I made trying to "slip" the skins off of greenish peaches to put them in jars. My canned peaches are NOT pretty. But it is my first canner, only 7 jars, we will eat them and never know the difference. The next ones will be pretty. Oh, and put the syrup in each jar when you finish with them or they change color. Live and learn! That is my life story I think.

No recipe today, I didn't cook dinner and neither did C...this is why we didn't! 7 quarts of peaches, 21 pints of dill pickles, 8 jars of peach jam.

It's FRIDAY.....And there is NO HOMEWORK

Just a random picture of the kids having fun with a science kit we got.


In my house, we have a whole weekend ahead of us with no homework for the kids! Wonder what we will do this weekend? I believe home made ice cream is on the agenda with the old fashioned crank ice cream mixer.

We are going to spend a little time going on a "gentle" hike so we can get out of the house without overtaxing K! We all want to do the incline again but guess we need clearance from the neurosurgeon before we do that.

Looking forward to days off!!!!

And just so they don't feel left out...introducing our kitties. Ginger is from Uncle G and Aunt K's house and she is not quite a year old. She is very feisty and the kids have so much fun with her.


Dexter is a "fancy cat" purebred that we got from a neighbor who had an oopsie batch of kitties before the female got fixed. He can be quite snooty and fancy but he is also very fun to watch.
When we first brought Ginger home we thought we had made a huge mistake because they HATED each other, but they have worked things out for the most part. They still fight sometimes but they get along pretty well and play together too....all over the house and sometimes very loudly at night!

Farm market day

Today was the day for the farmer's market and I really went overboard! We got lots of soft peaches, roasted peppers for salsa, cucumbers for pickles and much, much more. So.....Thursday I had K's back to school night and after that we hit the canning! It was a bit of a late night but C learned how to make salsa and can it and make peach jam and can it! We have 5 pints of salsa (which is a little too spicy for my taste but Dad and C loved it enough to eat it like soup when it was hot, crazy guys!), 10 pints of dill pickles, and 12 half pints of peach jam (well 11 because one is already gone!).


We are going to make cinnamon pickles next week so watch out!

Salsa:
1 quart size bag of roasted chilis (mild)
take the skin off and take out most of the seeds then chop
1 1/2 large fresh onions
Dice up finely
2 cloves of roasted garlic
Peel and roughly chop
1-2 small jalepeno peppers
Take out the seeds and dice up
2 large cans of diced tomatos
1/3 cup lime juice
1/4 cup kosher course salt

Cook until the onions are just starting to look a little cooked, then put in canning jars and water bath process for about 20 minutes (at our altitude anyway).


Peach Jam

4 cups of mushy (almost over the hill peaches)
cut them up and take off the peels, slide any really soft spots off with your fingers
Take a potato masher and slightly mash these, leaving lots of large chunks.
1/4 cup lemon juice
7 cups of sugar
fruit pectin (one package)

Cook until a hard boil, add your pectin (I used liquid for this because I wanted it to set for sure)
boil hard for one minute, pour into jars and hot process for 20 minutes (again, that is for our altitude).

STUFFED CRUST PIZZA!!!!

This post has to start with a big thanks to Aunt K, who taught C how to make Pizza when he spent the night with them this summer.

C came home with a couple recipes that he couldn't wait to try out on us. Wednesday when I went to pick up K from school C asked if he could make dinner. I told him he had wait to put anything in the oven until I got home...so what was on the counter when I walked in? All ready to go in the oven? A stuffed crust pizza, and he made the crust from scratch!!!!

He had a total blast doing it, made the dough, let it raise, rolled it out and made a pizza, and it was REALLY GOOD!!!!

Stuffed Crust Pizza!

Recipe: (The credit for this goes to the Benjamin Family Cook Book, via aunt K)

Ingredients: Pizza sauce, string cheese, mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, sausage (browned)
Dough:
1 cup of warm water
2 T olive oil
2 cups of flour
1/2 tsp of salt
2 1/2 tsp yeast

Mix this in a mixer with a dough hook for about 5 minutes. Put this in a bowl to let the yeast work and raise the dough until it doubles in size.

Roll out on a floured surface until slightly bigger than your pizza pan, then take string cheese and divide the pieces in 1/3 and lay around the edge of your dough just at the edge of your pan. Roll the dough over the cheese and press down. Then put your sauce and toppings on your pizza, top with cheese and bake at 400 for about 10 minutes (adjust time to your oven). Enjoy!!!