RIP Ben the Hamster

We had a bad weekend. Friday it was discovered that Ben the Hamster (Habenero, officially) had gone to that Great Hamster Wheel in the Sky. It has been a very emotional weekend here as a result.

Interment took place in the backyard under a pine tree out in the "Back 40". The Boy, in particular, was instrumental in the final arrangements.


Unlike certain other people who shall remain nameless we don't leave our dearly departed in a brown paper lunch bag in the Arizona sun for the pool installers to trample. We do things differently in Pennsylvania. Just sayin'...

I'm not bragging or anything...

Your Vocabulary Score: A

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TODAY ONLY 11/20

Giveawayoftheday.com is a great site that I discovered recently. Every day they give away a different piece of software. The catch is that the download is only available for 24 hours and you have to install it in that 24 hour period.

Today's download is Photo Toolkit 1.5 . It adds functionality to Windows Picture and Fax Viewer that allows you to do quite a bit of photo editing. I've been editing some photos this morning and the only thing I needed Photoshop for was to make the background transparent - everything else I could do right in Win Pic/Fax Viewer.

Go! Now! If I have to reformat my computer and lose this software I will definitely buy it.

Here's the garden, Jenny. We still have a little green - Italian Parsley and a second (tiny) crop of Cilantro. I'm sloooooowwwwly cleaning it up...

Cousins in the leaves

The two little ones are my sister's boys

Just a pretty picture

I thought of you, Jolene, when I took this photo:

Scary

After posting the pics in the post below I thought that YD looked really familiar. She turned 7 in October. Here's a pic of my 7th birthday many, many Octobers ago... Can you figure out which is me?

Pictures

This year's Jack O'Lanterns. Younger Daughter cut most of the mouth of hers; OlderDaughter spent mucho time cutting her cat out; and The Boy cut the skull.



Younger Daughter's last soccer game two weeks ago -- and her first lost front tooth, just in time for Halloween!


















j

The Husband remarked that I haven't blogged in awhile, so I am at least dropping in to say hello.

I have a backlog of photos in my camera that I need to post. Fortunately I remembered this before I did laundry this morning (bear with me - this will make sense) . Our desktop computer is having issues and needs to have Windows reinstalled. We haven't been able to do that because we need to find the driver for the hard drive (and The Husband just picked up the phone to call the Computer Store to get that! Yay!). So since that computer is mostly non-working - none of the USB drives will work - I can't use my camera dock. So last night I took the card out of my camera to take upstairs to my laptop. For some stupid reason I put the card in the little watch pocket of my jeans so that when I emptied my pockets I didn't pull out the card. The jeans then went into the wash. Something made me remember the card this morning.

Maybe I'll find time to post some photos later - right now I'm scrambling to figure out dinner and I'm going to a Pampered Chef party tonight, not to mention that Jericho and Lost are both on tonight (both of which are mind-blowing shows that one needs time to process so they shouldn't be on consecutively. I really wish we were a Nielsen Family - they NEED to know my opinions).

This...

...is what the world frequently looks like to me. Give it a minute and you'll feel nauseaous :o)

If blogging seems light lately

it's because my Mom took the kids apple picking last weekend and they picked 70 lbs of apples! So I'm spending my days looking for apple recipes. We had baked apples and apple pie. Tomorrow is apple cake and I'm considering apple pancakes for dinner...maybe some apple chip cookies or macaroni and apples?

My total

at the grocery store this morning was $50.00 even. Shouldn't I get a prize or something?

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Gametime was 4:05 yesterday. We got there early, with plenty of time to watch batting practice. We even managed to randomly pick the parking lot nearest the gate that was nearest our seats.The street crossing signs have cute little ballplayers:




Boy is Yankee Stadium high! We were in the next to last row! The air was mighty thin up there - we were actually looking DOWN on the Foul Pole!
But we had a great view of everything





Oh yeah - the Yankees lost to Toronto 5-4. This was the 4th game I've been to and they've lost every one.

Mmmmmm...bagels......

They were yummy with Lignonberry jelly, but by themselves they needed more flavor. I think I'll use the dough to make pretzels next because the cooked bagels had a "crust" like Auntie Anne's pretzels (and the salt should help the flavor).

Recipe from The Bread Machine Cookbook by Donna German

In the bread machine:
1 c water
1 1/2 T honey
1t salt
3 c bread flour
1 1/2 t yeast

Let the machine knead the dough once and allow to rise for only 20 minutes. Divide dough into 12 pieces. Roll each into a rope and form a circle, pressing ends together with a little water to seal. Place on a well greased cookie sheet , cover and let rise 20 minutes. Bring 2 inches of water to a slight boil. Carefully lower 3 bagels at a time and boil 30 seconds on each side. Drain on a towel and return to greased baking pan. Bake in a preheated 550` oven for 8 minutes.

Nothing to report

Same old stuff going on here. Soccer, baseball, riding lessons and other activities keep us hopping. Speaking of hopping, we've been letting Neo out of his cage more often. He now spends most of the afternoon free and he loves it. He and Wilma play - really roughly sometimes, but they both instigate it. Neo has tried playing with Shadow this week but Shadow has turned into such an old man in the past year (he's around 7 or 8) that he just grumbles and moves away.

We have tickets to see the Yankees play on the 30th, thanks to Daddy's recent bonus. We're getting a little nervous, though. We bought the tickets in late July. At the time this was the only game that we could get 4 tickets together at (Younger Daughter will be spending quality time with Grandma). Problem is, the time of the game was "TBD" and we didn't know if it was day or night (we're hoping for day...). Well as of today the game time is still TBD. And it's the ONLY game on the schedule without a time. Arghhh.

Older Daughter's birthday is this coming Saturday. We'll be spending the day at my sister's house for my nephew's 4th birthday (which was Sept. 2, but somebody couldn't pick a better day for a party..., at least it's also Town-Wide yardsale day in their town). OD is turning 12 (yikes!).

True Confessions

We've been watching this.

Not only have we been watching it, we actually look forward to it!

I'm so ashamed

The Husband thinks Lucy Lawless looked better brunette. I didn't recognize her as a blonde but I think she's far more attractive on Duets then on Zena (not that I watched Zena!)

Another Thursday and more rain, so I'm guessing that soccer will be cancelled again - which is fine because we also have 2nd Grade Open House tonight.

I've been managing to get some small projects done of late - I have an art swap to get in the mail tomorrow and I have MUCH junk to clear out of here (as usual), but we did manage to put up curtains around the pantry shelves so I don't have to look at the mess all the time. Someday it will be a real pantry...maybe.... I had to do some pantry cleaning because when I wanted to make cinnamon rolls yesterday I discovered that my yeast was dead and my flour was infested with Indian Meal Moths. Ick! And when one dry good is infested it's a good bet that the others are too. So I need to head to Sam's for yeast and flour and buy more of the Lock 'n Lock containers that I LOVE to store dry goods in. We still need to retile the empty space in the kitchen floor but otherwise the Kitchen is more or less under control. Younger Daughter has a corner of the Living Room for her use since her bedroom is so tiny and that has been slowly getting cleaned up and she moved her 'desk' so that she and her Sassy friend can play school (they're in the same class this year and enjoy doing homework together).

We went to a new church last Sunday and The Husband and I both felt at home. We'll be back this week to hear the sermon since Sunday's sermon wasn't really a sermon - it was the (new) pastor's vision for that church, which was pretty much the vision that every pastor (and Christian) ought to have for every church. But both the choir and the congregatonal singing was AMAZING! The Husband, who has a wonderful singing voice and usually sticks out in any congregation, was able to sing loudly and not be obvious. Even the hyms sounded like they were being sung by a full choir, not the anemic, half-hearted singing we've been hearing at other churches. Just a few days earlier I had ordered some Traditional Hymn CDs from CBD because I missed them, but this church could easily fill that void and we hope it will fill some others. If you know me in a churchy way then you won't be surprised that I have chancel issues about this church (there's no cross at the front, only a denominational seal!). Sighhhhh. Maybe the new pastor will address that at some future date.


So I was looking through my photos from Maine in August and noticed that I didn't take very many - and there are even fewer that I really like. The two girls below are Younger Daughter and her cousin "Gwen" (Girl Who Eats Nothing !) who lives in Maine.

Trying to catch up...again

Things are plodding along here. School's in full swing - next week will be the first FULL week of school since they had last Friday and Monday off for Labor Day. Both of the older kids are in Middle School now and they only have one Back-to-School night for all grades, so we'll only have two to go to this year instead of 3.

The Husband is swamped at work, unofficially managing a project and a moderately clueless consultant. When he was working from home yesterday he ran some stuff by me to try to figure out if the problem was in his explaining or in the Consultant's understanding. Well, since I understood it pretty well I'd say it's not the explaining...

We've had lots of rain and it mainly seems to happen in late afternoon so soccer has been frequently cancelled. They had pictures last night (but no practice), and The Boy has a baseball game tomorrow morning (they've also been rained out a lot so this will only be his second time at BB since it began in August. Also tomorrow Older Daughter will be starting Horseback Riding Lessons, thanks to her wonderful AuntL who is not only paying for lessons but also transporting OD along with CousinS to the barn every Saturday. Thanks AuntieL and family!

The garden is horribly overgrown but I'm harvesting mucho tomatoes and basil. There are a few eggplants and peppers holding thier own and I picked (well, I accidently mowed over the vine) a watermelon today that's the size of a cantaloupe. That's bigger than last year's which were the size of tennis balls! The Boy ate both in one sitting.

Rain

It hasn't started yet, but we're supposed to be getting buckets of rain this weekend from Hurricane/Tropical Storm Ernesto. It's nice and cool so since the kids are off today and Monday we'll probably do some baking. Older Daughter has a friend who spent the night and The Boy has a friend coming over later, but Younger Daughter's friend couldn't come over which left YD crabby (surprise!). I have her reading right now but I only have about 3 pages left before she whines again.

This is what happens when you want to go canoeing and a cloud breaks open just as you're getting in the boat. The Boy made a break for the house while OD and Dad pulled the boat up onto shore. I think they were glad that they hadn't left 15 minutes earlier.