All Systems Go?

I got my fabric today, all 6 pieces. I don't think this picture does them justice; they look much better in person I think. (Click on the picture to blow it up some.) So now I just need to put the quilt together! The butterfly print is the largest block and also the outer border. The countryside fields scene is for the back of the quilt. This is the pattern I will use.

A How-to Tutorial on Embedded Hyperlinks

You guys, this is so funny. It's not hard at all, but it took me how long to figure it out? And since a few have asked, here it is:

As you are typing along in your blog, you'll come to a place where you want an embedded link. This is another link to a neat online quilt shop, for instance. I typed that sentence just now, then highlighted the words I had chosen to be the link (online quilt shop). Keep it highlighted, then open another tab in your internet explorer. Go to the designated destination website (what are you linking to?) Copy the website addy, and bring that back to your blog post you're working on. With that "online quilt shop" still highlighted, go up to the blogger tool bar. See the little green ball looking thing? It's beside the text color box (capital letter T with color square).
Click on that green ball thing, and up pops a little place to paste your desired linked website addy into. You had already copied it before, so it should paste where you want it. And that's all there is to it! Now you can be all computer savvy too.

I've Caught Another Bug

I am hoping that this bug is more fun than the last one I caught. I've been struck by the quilting bug (obsession!). I think I am going to join some ladies from our homeschool group, and try my hand at quilting. I have never made a quilt before. Once in high school (or was it college?) a friend of mine and I were going to make our first quilt each. I even bought fabric for it, but you know what happened: I was too busy with classes, and working constantly to pay my school bill. That quilt never got made. (I found out recently that she never made her quilt either!) I still have the fabric for it. I am afraid that the colors are totally outdated, though, so I want to start fresh with something more in touch with my taste now, some 18 or so years later. Anybody have a need for some mauve and country blue fabric?

I have been pouring over quilting websites online for ideas. My head is spinning with visions of beautiful quilts. I have to catch hold of myself, though. Bringing myself back down to earth, I am reminded that I better not get too carried away with something too difficult. I am a perfectionist by nature, and may even get discouraged if it gets too difficult. So I will be starting with something fairly easy. I haven't even had my sewing machine out since 11 yrs. ago when I was pregnant with our firstborn. I was teaching myself to sew then, and never got to the expert or even proficient stage.

I found this lady's quilting blog when I was searching. She's got a "quilt-a-long" and other tutorials. She does some really nice work. Some of you quilting fanatics may find her site interesting. Here's another of her amazing quilts that I'm drooling over. Okay, pulling myself back down to earth, I'll probably start with something like this, or even like this. Maybe even something like this one! Do you see what I mean? It's too hard to decide!!! Any recommendations from you expert quilters out there? Please feel free to chime in with any pointers for this floundering novice. I have already had one recommendation for a log cabin quilt because of it's simplicity. But I have to decide soon because the first quilt meeting is in less than 2 weeks. I don't think I'll have time to mail-order any fabric. I'll have to drive to a quilt shop somewhere and find something.

Here's another question for you: Did I really have that many quilt websites I just HAD to show you, or am I just showing off that I finally figured out how to do the embedded hyperlinks? I guess some of us (little 'ole me!) are just a little slower than others to get the hang of computer stuff.

On-going annoyance

We've been having trouble with the plumbing in our new house. We have 3 bathrooms, and all 3 had a leak in the shower fixtures. It was just pin-prick holes, but I think that might be worse because we didn't know for quite a while that it was going on. We found the first leak in our master bathroom and then the other two followed. Hubby investigated for the exact cause around the New Year, and thought he fixed them. The faucet was actually faulty, made with cheap parts. Well, thinking they were fixed, we forgot about them, except for the holes in the 3 closets, waiting to be patched. They were still leaking, can you believe it, from another faulty spot. SO, another home in B's closet. Hubby says he will patch them when he's good and sure they are truly fixed this time. I know it's a minor annoyance, unlike a fire inside a wall, but annoying all the same. I think the fact that it's gone on for so long now is what bothers me the most. Two of the closets were bad enough to cause mildew problems as well. So I've got the fun chore of carting the dehumidifier back and forth between the two closets on opposite sides of the house. That thing is heavy!! (They seem dry now so I think the problem is finally solved.) Here's a picture of B's troubled wall.

Snake Update

He got out of his mess! We got up this morning and he was gone. We were so relieved. Silly, maybe, but our mouse-eating machine is still on duty. Unless he has internal injuries that is. Which, of course, I will never know.

Wordless Wednesday, Not!

I was going to use this picture for my first "Wordless Wednesday" but I could NOT go without saying something!

My son C found this on our back porch this afternoon. It's up high on the screen enclosure. He had crawled from the bottom all the way to the top, where he tried to make a U-turn apparently. No, it's not our pet corn snake! I believe it's the corn snake that we found a couple weeks ago, and turned it loose in our wood pile, which sits just a few feet from where he is seen in this picture. We were hoping he could help with our field mice situation. (We've found 4 mice drowned in the swimming pool in the last several weeks.)

I think this snake is stuck, and I fear for his life. I keep trying to figure out how I can get him out of that tight spot, but don't think I can. I tried really gently, to slide him out of the tight bind. It didn't seem to be working so I stopped. Maybe he can somehow wiggle his way out? (When I was a kid, my step-brother once tied a garter snake in a tight knot in a tree. He was surprised to find out later that the snake had gotten himself free.) He was still there after several hours from when he was discovered, so we'll wait and see if he's still there in the morning.

Tomato Mission

I am on a tomato mission of sorts. Our family absolutely LOVES good, flavorful tomatoes. You know, a tomato that really tastes like a tomato! Well, everybody but C love them. He says he only likes the ones we grew in our garden 3 yrs. ago. They were called Brandywine. Anyway, really good tomatoes are hard to find. And if you do find them, they will cost you your right arm to purchase some. Our local grocery store has heirloom tomatoes, but we have never purchased them before because they're so expensive. Well, today, we bought 3 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes, one of each. They were on sale, but they still cost me $8.00!! I almost choked. So, I got to thinking. I need to save some seed from those golden nuggets and grow some myself! So I did some researching tonight online and it doesn't look too hard to do. I see a homeschool project in the works.....

In this picture, B thinks I'm getting a picture of her beautiful flower she found on the weed plant.

Back to tomatoes. We have 3 varieties planted in little pots. I ordered some heirloom tomato seeds online this year. I was upset though, when the variety I really wanted was on back order and still hasn't come in yet! We've had some near-frosts lately, or at least pretty low temperatures, so we keep bringing them in to the garage to keep them warm, just to be safe. Then we cart them back outside. Every time we cart them back and forth, we seem to drop one or two, or three! This last trip I nearly had a heart attack because we had a flat break on us. It was cracked and we didn't realize it until it was too late. I think we may have been able to rescue the seedlings without too much damage. I hope that's the end of the low evening temperatures. Florida isn't supposed to have weather like this!

So, these tomatoes we've planted. I am clueless as to what comes next. You see, we have a friend who is a professional horticulture specialist. He is going to tell us his secret on how to grow prize-winning tomatoes. He's swearing us to secrecy over this. Oh, the suspense is killing me! And he's too funny. He shows up to my hubby's shop every few days to get the "tomato report" and the "blueberry report". He keeps giving us incremental, step-by-step instructions on just what to do. I can't wait for juicy, tasty tomatoes. And I'm hopeful that C will like the ones we grow this year as well. Maybe that's why he liked the Brandywine so much a couple years ago, because they actually tasted so good, and not like the cardboard tasting tomatoes I can find for a decent price in the stores. I tried to buy Brandywine seeds again, but could not find the seeds in the local garden stores. I think produce gardening is a dying art. I haven't done much in my recent past either, so I'm not casting stones here! We had about 3 gardens right after we moved here, but we finally gave up because of poor soil and major pests: both insects and rabbits. Hopefully, we'll have learned a little more this time to make this project worth our while!

The kids can't wait for their favorite part of tomato gardening. One of the websites I looked up tonight about tomatoes stated it this way: "To kill the most destructive, ravenous tomato-eater, the Tomato Horn-worm Caterpillar, put a 10 cent bounty on their heads and turn your kids loose in the garden to hunt them down." My kids LOVE this activity, and search for them with vigor. They argue over who gets to stomp and squish them, when I find the caterpillars. Large smears of green goo in the dirt. Isn't that gross?!?

And here is a picture of the tomatoes as they look today, with their buddy the avocado tree. Before the Tomato Horn-worm infestation begins.

One of "Those" Days

I had one of "those" days today. I've had them before, but it's been a little while since the last one. You thought I was going to say it was horrible, didn't you?!? I've had those kind of days too, but today was of the wonderful "those" days variety. We got a late start because of the stupid time-change our government thinks we need to operate at peak condition. I don't understand that, and they should just leave nature alone, but that's a subject for a different day.

Today was just wonderful. I'm sure that today being a good day was somehow magnified in intensity because of our recent bout with the flu. Those days were NOT good. But, nothing wonderfully exciting or special happened today. We did school work, and the boys did very well and I maintained extra patience. We seem to be getting into a better groove, with less complaining and more listening and stamina on all of our parts. Even B kept herself reasonably busy with her books and projects. She's just a little sponge anyway, soaking it all in! Our neighbor came by the other day and we started discussing our way of "schooling". I explained to him how B, for the most part, does participate in our learning efforts even though she is so young and not even "school age" yet. He commented that B will end up being a genius in the end because she'll learn stuff so well with her frequent exposure. That was kind of funny.

Here I go again; I'm caught up in a rabbit-trail. I was trying to describe to you how well school went. And then how well the kids helped with various things we needed to do around the house. There was even some volunteer activity where that was concerned. The kids did relatively little bickering and got along well together with minimal fuss. That's my kind of day. I made sure to compliment the kids several times on their behaviour. I am hoping that positive praise will bring back more days like this, more often. I can tell you one thing though. Days like these make me feel SO good inside. And it reminds me how much I love being a mom! I'll be sure to come back to this blog post and reread it on those days that aren't so great.

Rain Update

Well, we had 2 1/2 inches of rain from that storm. Our grass will certainly appreciate it. When I woke up in the morning, I looked out across to our neighbor's property, and found several places of standing water, not just the one I could see shining in the moonlight during the night. I got a picture of them, but not all of them show up in the frame of the picture. This is the view from the front of our house, which includes the kids' bedrooms, the office, and the dining room. I am using a new camera here (got it on a close-out special with a large coupon too, so it was pretty cheap. I'm just not sure yet what kind of pictures it takes.) I needed a camera of my own. I've been using one of the boys'.

Anyway, back to the storm. I found out when I got up that the tornado watch for our county had expired (!) and I didn't realize it. I'm always making silly mistakes like this. Could it be because I'm blonde? No, I don't think so. It's because I have so many different things on my mind all the time, that when I hear bits and pieces of the news, I get it put back together in my head, but all wrong! So, I stayed up to protect my family from something they didn't need protection from after all. That's the breaks!

I had to drive in to town to get some things for Ch. We are laying irrigation in our fields, in prep for planting. Well, on the way back home, I saw another Bald Eagle flying above the main road near the park that our homeschool group frequents weekly. It could be the same one our friends, the B's, saw at the park a couple weeks ago. And here is a wonderful picture of a Bald Eagle, sent to me by a friend. The picture was taken by somebody in Montana. But it's too pretty not to share. It definitely helps me feel better after missing my fantastic eagle photo-op the other day. Okay, so I am leaving you with 2 eagle pictures. I couldn't decide which one I liked better.

Rained Out

Well, if you live here locally, you can imagine that Ch's race was indeed rained out. He was pretty upset. He had been so ready: car's gears changed to match the requirements of the track, the weights shifted around appropriately to suit the upcoming track conditions, a new friend ready to come to the track with him, the car washed and mud free. He's had H practicing all week on using his new-fangled stopwatch and marking the times, so he could record his dad's lap times and those of the lead car. The car was even loaded up in the trailer and ready for us to pull out of here today promptly at 2 o'clock.

We were wondering last night if there would be rain trouble. When a weather forecaster on the news predicts 60-80% chance of rain it can mean one of three things. Either they are right on with their predictions, or they have just timed it wrong. The third option is that they missed the mark completely, but that actually doesn't seem to happen much these days thanks to their massive modern computer weather analysis programs. Today, they miscalculated when the rain would hit us. We woke up to tornado watches which included our county. We expected rain to occur starting sometime fairly early in the morning. The race track, a little north of us, said they would call the "rain-out" by 1:00 p.m. if he was going to call it at all. They weren't getting any rain either.

They finally called a cancellation on the race at around 4:15 p.m. and they really needed to. Evidently there was a lot of street flooding there in the area they ended up with so much rain. But I feel like I wasted half of my day, waiting to find out what would happen. I had to keep checking the radar on the computer, and the track's website every so often. I needed to pick up a prescription (a 1/2 hr. drive north of me) and made it there in time before closing, but I've never made it there that late before, and didn't even know when they would close! As it is, I barely made it to the library just 5 min. before closing time. But I'm glad to have the books I requested, since if I don't get them within a few days of them calling that they're in, they will return them to the host library. Invariably, they always come in the very afternoon of the same day I had already visited the library in the morning.

Well, we finally got some rain here at our house. It started raining around 7 p.m. and hasn't really stopped until now. It is pretty late now, after midnight. It let up somewhat a few times, but rained continuously since then. I cannot wait to check the rain gauge to see how much rain we got. It should be quite a bit this time. As I sit here tonight, typing up this blog post, I can look out my front window across to our adjoining neighbor's property, and see a really large spot of water. It's dark outside, but it's actually reflecting the moon light. That's how I know we must have gotten substantial rain because that "lake" has been dry for many months now.

I do worry about our little bitty tomato plants though. They were out in the storm. I didn't think to bring them in for cover but probably should have. They are very small. We started them from seeds. They actually sprouted very well, but may be quite flat now if the rain was too hard on them.

And what am I doing up so late? Insomnia of course, induced by the fact that we are still under tornado watches. It has that kind of effect on me. Ch sleeps like a log and won't even wake up for a security alarm blaring away in his ear. So the burden is on me to hear stuff in the night, like the sound of tornadoes, or kids stumbling around in their sleep, looking for the bathroom. This has happened a few times already in our new house, and it wasn't pretty. Yes, lucky me. The boys both sleep very soundly, just like their dad.

Wormy Conversation

Various statements made by my 4 yr. old, quite the chatterbox tonight, as we checked on the status of our worms:

• Mom, these worms are my friends. I know worm language so I know what they're saying. They tell me that they like my hand a lot. They tell me if they're hungry or not, too.
• They only talk to me during the day. When they're tired at night, they just want to sleep.
• Mom, this worm is a mama and she's getting ready to have her babies. She told me that just now. If you ever find a long, long, worm with a pink, pink round dot, she's having a baby tonight. And that is a good thing because we need more baby worms.
• Mama and Daddy worms don't take care of their babies, because they're scared of the babies. People take care of their kids, but not worm mamas.
• This worm is a school kid. There's lots of school kid worms in here.
• This worm right here is a teenager.
• Worms like to eat lots of rotten fruit that you don't care for. Their favorite rotten fruit is fruit that's been cut up that people won't eat.

I think I learned a few things just now. Some kid philosophy.

Playing Catch-up

Caution--Potentially boring post to follow!

Oh, the life of a mom! It becomes especially interesting when the whole house gets ill with the flu. We've had a decent week now that we're all recuperating and nearly recovered. Lots of laundry and housework. There have been trips to the store for groceries, the bank, post office, and library. We don't live real close to any kind of shopping, so it's a couple hour trip when we go. I had put this off while we were sick. We even got quite a lot of school work done this week. Now I'll have to try and get caught up (again!) with blogging. The last few posts were only posted because luckily, I had several posts saved in drafts, just waiting for pictures to be attached.

And now it's nearly Friday already! We'd like to go to the park tomorrow, but we still have chores to do, and may not make it. We're going to the race track tomorrow with our own race car driver in the afternoon. Unless, of course, it rains all day and the race is cancelled. If that's the case, Ch will be quite upset. He's been working on setting up his car for the past 2 weeks after sunset. (It's time for farming if the sun is still up.) His last race, a special feature before the new season started, was cancelled due to rain as well! Tomorrow's race is the very first of the season.

I'm sitting here on the couch, typing away on my laptop, but I can't seem to wrap my head around writing. My favorite show is on though: Dirty Jobs. You've gotta love Mike Rowe. He's funny and truly educational at the same time. I love it! Maybe that's why I'm distracted. Oh, no!! The new segment of Dirty Jobs that just came on is of Mike being visited by the doctor in his hotel room because he's sick!! He's cracking jokes even while he's ill.

All Work and no Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy

Okay, so our family works together, but we also play together. We went to the race track with our own celebrity race car driver, my husband! Well, he's still working on the celebrity bit. Ch did some racing on the dirt tracks when he was in high school. He started it up again last year. The boys always go with their dad to the race track, but B and I usually skip it. They get home very late, and it can be dirty and noisy. It's not B's thing so I usually keep her home. (I'm kind of a homebody sometimes and may not need much encouragement to hang out at home!) But the other night, B and I went with the guys. The meet at the track was not for a race, but open practice. It's gearing up for the new racing season.

Ch is very lucky to have a couple boys old enough to help him out. He's got a built-in pit crew! There are lots of other drivers near us in the pits, and they all comment on how they could use our boys for their pit crew. They're not kidding; they really are quite helpful! It's so neat to see them running around with their many duties. They know just what to do and when! This time, B got in on the action too. She had fun doing it, but we weren't there late in the night. She's more of an early bird and doesn't last late into the evening!

In these pictures, C is checking the air pressures in all the tires. If there's too much, he can take some out; if there isn't enough, he puts some in all by himself. Ch will change the pressures throughout the night as the track conditions change over time. H is taking care of the tires, only I had to take the picture off. It had a close-up of hubby's name on the trailer. All 3 kids kept very busy scraping mud off the car. Every time Ch took the car out, the car gets caked with a heavy cement-like clay mud. It covers the entire underside of the car. The kids scrape everything off they can, before it's time for Ch to take the car out again. I kept myself busy with the stop watch, taking still pictures, and also video camera taping of Ch's laps around the track. He uses the video footage to critique his performance. He's always trying to improve his technique next time out!

I have to say something else about this whole racing business. It is not always inexpensive. I am glad that my husband has learned how to be very frugal. Because of his line of work, he has built up quite a network for himself. He's always got his ear to the ground, and paying attention to deals and barter opportunities that may become available. He got this whole car for a steal. He traded the decals on the car and trailer for some dirt work he did for the decal guy. He's always at the auctions (looking for trucks for the water trucks) and you wouldn't believe the deals that you can get on all kinds of stuff. Lots of times, he'll buy something at an auction and turn around and resell it for what it's worth. Oh, and I can't forget to mention that it certainly helps that Ch is very much a handy-man. Self-generated labor is free, and easy on the pocket-book! He's even got sponsors for his racing. Businesses pay for advertisement. So, for that I am truly grateful. And for anybody that's interested, here's a shot of the engine. This is an "open-wheel modified" race car. Whatever that means.