Today...

Today, I'm going to try to not lose the mail.

Some days it's good to just have a simple goal. That's what I have for today--to not lose the mail. We are in day nine of construction and the chaos continues. To put order to some of this, last night I set up a station in the basement that will hopefully take the place of our desk and drop spot upstairs. The mail will probably get sorted into the bins here just as it always has. Hopefully, it will not go the way of the hats and gloves that are nowhere to be found. Now where did I put those? :)

Boys vs. Girls--A Visit to Teddy Roosevelt Island

Before I had kids, I thought that each child was an individual, and didn't believe much in gender stereotypes in children. Little boys ran and jumped a lot because that's the kind of games they were taught. Little girls played with dolls because that was the kind of toys they were given. I thought that if all kids, regardless of gender, were exposed to the same things, they would have the same tendencies. Then I spent some time in the real world of kids and figured out that I was wrong. Possibly there were some differences between boys and girls. From time to time, I'm going to share some of my experiences that led me to this conclusion. However, so as to not bias you, I'm going to let you guess, who are the boys in the stories and who are the girls.  

Today's Story--Sticks
( Blogger is REALLY not cooperating, so no pictures today. :(

Ward and I visited Teddy Roosevelt Island in Washington, D.C., yesterday. It is an island in the middle of the Potomac River and has a memorial to Teddy Roosevelt on it as well as several hiking and biking trails. We visited the island several years ago, but had been meaning to go back again since I read a biography about him.

We visited the memorial section first which included a statue as well as four granite monoliths with sayings from Roosevelt. Shortly after we arrived, another family joined us. They appeared to be made up of a grandmother, mom and dad, and three kids of elementary school age. The mother was carefully reading all of the quotes to the kids and asking them what they thought our former president meant. The dad and the grandmother would occasionally chip in comments to help the mother. The oldest kid sort of listened but kept repeating the story they had heard about the Teddy Bear. The middle one was maybe listening but was mostly digging in the dirt with a stick, and the youngest one was definitely not listening and was hitting everything they could see with a stick including their siblings. So what do you think? Was this a group of three brothers or three sisters?
_________________________________________________________________________________
 It was a group of three brothers. Not that little girls don't play with sticks, but they don't seem to seek them out no matter what and continuously hit things with them. Or least that has been my experience with Wally, Theo, and lots of Cub Scouts. 

But Wait, There's More:
My favorite quote that I read at the Island.
  "Keep your eyes on the stars, but your feet on the ground."

Thankful Sunday--November 3, 2013

I am thankful for slip-on shoes.

We are having our floors worked on, so these days the chance of getting a splinter from just walking around is high. I am thankful for these shoes that are easy to slip on and off and make the whole process of walking and lounging in the house a lot easier and safer. 

Food Waste Friday and True Food Conressions--Nov. 1, 2013

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money. Also, I am using this public forum to encourage us to eat out less which includes better meal planning. You can follow how we are doing in this endeavor by reading True Food Confessions. (Thanks to Jo from Simply Being Mum for sponsoring FWF this week.)

This Week's Food Waste

Two Stalks of Celery

At least that's what I can remember. When I got the celery out to put into some chicken soup, two of the outside stalks were bad. The fact that only two of them were bad was actually quite remarkable because I have had this celery at least a month. I contribute this to the fact that I stored the celery with a paper towel to prolong its life.

This Week's True Food Confessions

Highlights from the week:

Last weekend we went to a cookout at my-father-in-law's house. This smoker was made by him from an old hot water heater. Two briskets, stuffed squash, and a pork roast were cooked in it for the picnic.

At the cookout, I got to try a new thing--black rice. It was in a Thai dish with fruit, nuts, mint and other spices and was quite good. I will share the recipe later.

Monday, work started on our kitchen and downstairs so the house is rather discombobulated making regular food prep difficult. We were thankful to be eating leftovers from the weekend some of the time.

This is our temporary refrigerator in the basement. One day I used the slow cooker down here to fix pork barbeque.

It was raining on Halloween, so we got no Trick-or Treaters. Ward and I took the opportunity to go out for dinner at the local pizza place. We couldn't remember the last time that just the two of us went out together and really enjoyed it. We had Halloween candy for dessert. And if we're going to have True Confessions, I broke into the bag of candy bars during the afternoon. However, I made it a whole week before I gave into the call of chocolate, so I consider that a major success. :)

Until next time...


But wait there's more,

This is a fire pit that my very clever father-in-law made from a dryer drum. A couple of these helped keep people warm during the cookout.

A Second Look--October 30, 2013

Ward feels invigorated by cold weather. I just feel cold. So at the first hint of cold weather, my instinct is to stay inside under a nice warm blanket. This week we had our first heavy frost, so the blanket instinct was in full force. However, I managed to pry myself out from under it and spend a pleasant time this afternoon under blue skies and a warm sun doing my Second Look. I had a lot of fun walking through crunchy leaves while looking at mostly either green or brown leaves on the trees. The fall show of colors seems to be subdued this year, but there are still many colors to be seen. 

Here's what I saw this week during my Second Look.

A few blanket flowers managed to survived the frost.

However, this coleus didn't fare so well.

Small mud heaves from the frost. The one in the main part of the picture is about an inch long. Does anyone remember what these are called?

Japanese Maple Seeds. The rest of the maples we have form their seeds in late spring. This one drops its seeds the same time it drops its leaves.

If we're lucky, these pansies should keep blooming for another month or two.

Maple leaves just starting to turn.

A variety of tree states. Some have lost all of their leaves, some have leaves that have turned, some have leaves that are still green, and some are evergreen.

There is a lot of good leaf crunching to be had these days. Does anyone else go out of their way to walk on crunchy leaves?