New Post...Finally...At long Last

Finally I'm feeling a bit more like myself again. For the past couple of months I've been very tired (actually having to take naps) and generally queasy. What's wrong with me?? Well..... I'm pregnant! OOOOOOOPPPPS! Baby will be here in April 2009. We're getting over the shock and accepting the reality slowly but surely. The kids are very excited. I've seen my doctor and my midwife and we actually heard the heartbeat...going fast at 150-160 beats per minute.

The kids have been a huge help. They've been patient and cooperative with me. Kyle's favorite way to help out has been to pick things from the garden. Here is a pic of him picking parsley in our much needs-to-be-weeded-herb bed.

He also likes to pick the scallions, basil, and tomatoes. Reeve helps by making food in the kitchen. My stomach was pretty unsettled and making food hasn't been my favorite thing to do lately. Reeve loves to make sandwiches, and he knows how to get leftovers out of the fridge...it's a start. He actually loves being independent and showing Kyle how to make a sandwich. They both know how to pick and clean apples from our apple tree.
They're even kept company buy our adopted hedgehog.

It's the friendliest hedgehog we've ever seen. Most run away when they see us coming outside. Not this guy, he's way more interested in eating the clover in our unmowed lawn. However he did get a little too close to the Red Russian Kale, the kids helped me scare him away.

Reeve and Kyle both have a great sense of play and love to be pirates. Here's Kyle decked out with his pirate gear: compass, telescope, sword, etc...

The swingset is their ship. They named it "The NonStop."

Ahhh they spotted some trouble...

Tommy did have to work on Labor Day, but he was also able to get in some rest and relaxation. In addition to working his day job he's also starting his own company. I'm working on creating a website for him. Right now I'm using a freebie site (there's advertising at the top). It's pretty easy to use, but it's also fairly restrictive with what I want to do. Sigh. It needs a lot of work, but here's the site: www.buildingenergycontrols.com

In between working 2 jobs Tommy's been coaching the kid's soccer team. The first day he helped out with Kyle's Team, and now he's the coach for Reeve's team.

Usually their games are at the same time on Saturday, so I don't get to see Reeve play very much. Kyle loves to score goals.

He has a slight advantage because he has some really good girl players on his team. The other boys are quite sure what to do a lot of the time and they have a tendancy to sit on the field.

They also like to all bunch in around each other...especially at the goalie box.

It's definitely entertaining.

Reeve's team really good too. He's been playing against some really tough teams, and a lot of the kids are 1-1.5 years older than him.



Hopefully it won't take me another month to make an update here. It's hard to believe October will be here next week!

Kids in Yoga, Garden & Canning

Every Monday the kids start their evening out with me in my outdoor yoga class. They actually both really enjoy it and it gives them a good stretch before they play soccer.

About 15minutes into the class Tom picks them up and takes them to soccer practice. The Tomah Area Youth Soccer seems to have some sort of soccer going throughout the spring, summer, & fall for the kids. Right now it's just whoever shows up Monday night they either work on drills or play a pick-up game with the parents. Reeve and Kyle love it. They come home sweaty and happy.

If you scroll back a few posts you can see the above tomato bed in a weedy mess. I put my heavy duty gloves on, got my long neck weed puller, some scissors, string, and went to town weeding and tying up the tomatoes. I braved the many mosquitoes and nasty thorny thistle weeds. I do love the raised beds because they are significantly easier to weed. I was glad I put the stakes in the ground when I planted the tomatoes, but next year I really want to invest in some good tomato cages.

I also started to work on my long beds. I found a ton of tomatoes, which was pretty amazing considering the fact that they were 100% buried in tall nasty weeds. You can see from the above pic that most of my stakes were way too small. The poor tomatoes were actually using the weeds for growing support! I did find a couple of rotting tomatoes, and I threw one over the fence. I must have come close to hitting a sleeping deer because I heard it get up, snort loudly, and then run off into the woods. If you've never heard a deer before they make this snorting noise. It's not a noise you'd expect to hear from a deer. It makes me think this is what a bull must sound like before it charges you...deer can be pretty fierce when confronted, so I was glad the weeds were so tall we didn't see each other and it ran off into the woods.

I had to go on top of the roof to adjust the TV antenna...it's no fun watching the Summer Olympics with a ton of snow. While I was up there I decided to take the camera to get an aerial pic of the garden.

I also took a few pics of the organic corn our neighbor is grown in our fields for his organic dairy cows.


It's hard to see from these pictures, but his corn is some of the finest corn I've seen around here. We've had so much rain that the corn growth has really suffered with most of our neighbors fields having flooding problems.
It looks a heck of a lot better than the field that borders our property as seen in the pic below.

This farmer is not organic and he planted a no till herbicide injected seed that is supposed to kill the weeds as the corn grows. It looks lousy, it's smaller, and it's full of weeds.

I sprayed some clay on our apple trees to ward off the vicious plum curculio

I was supposed to spray the clay on right after the blossoms fall off and then re-apply 3 times, and then after a heavy rain, and weekly for about 10 weeks. I didn't get the clay until I noticed the crescent shape wounds in some of the apples, but hopefully I've saved a few of the apples using the clay. Next year I'll be more vigilant!

This is 16.5lbs of tomatoes from our garden. Yesterday I decided it was time to make my first batch of pasta sauce for the year. I love my Ball Blue Book (for Canning, Freezing, & Dehydrating), but for the life of me I cannot figure out their Tomato Sauce recipe. The recipe calls for 45lbs of tomatoes to make 7 quarts of pasta sauce. The last time I made this pasta sauce I took some notes...I weighed 22.5lbs of tomatoes, and I made 9.5 quarts of sauce! I thought it was because I didn't peel the tomatoes, which I highly reccomend you peel the tomatoes. If you don't the skin becomes leathery and not fun to pick out of your spaghetti. This year I peeled the tomatoes, and cooked them down for 5 long hours. 16.5lbs of peeled & diced tomatoes filled my large stock pot to the brim. While the tomatoes were cooking down (lid off) I sauteed my onions, garlic, & spices. After about 3 hours I added the saute mix and cooked it down for another 2 hours. After 6 long hours in the kitchen my 16.5lbs yielded 7 quarts. I was thrilled with this, but uber confused as to how Ball thinks 45lbs should yield 7 quarts. Was it because I was too lazy to strain out the seeds? Could the straining really make THAT much of a difference. Did I not cook it enough? I cooked it for 5 hours, was I really supposed to cook it for 10 hours? My sauce is a little watery, but we really love it. Also Ball calls for 1/2 tsp of citric acid in each quart...I like using a full tsp. It makes me feel safe and we really like that tangy taste. It's not overwhelming at all.

So far this year I've canned 7 quarts of pasta sauce and 5 quarts of pickles. I have a lot of little cukes growing, so I'm hoping I can can another 5 quarts of pickles.

Guilbeault Family Reunion

This weekend we went to the Annual Guilbeault Family Reunion...in Appleton, WI this year. We had tons of fun and really enjoyed spending time with my cousins...4 first cousins once removed (& 3 spouses), 8 second cousins (& 4 spouses), and 6 second cousins once removed! All in all we had about 30 people gathered. Unbelievable as it may seem...we didn't capture one single picture. How did that happen? The weather was perfect, the food was delicious, and the company was top-notch. Next year's reunion is set to take place in Boulder, CO around the 15th & 16th of August 2009.

The second butterfly we raised was released July 27th...


For our 15th Wedding Anniversary we went to Baraboo with the kids and saw a free Concert on the Square.
The kids had fun on the cannon

We all enjoyed listening and watching the Chicago steel drum band OD TAPO IMI. They put on a great show, but I have to say it wasn't original...well I hadn't seen this grinder bit before:

But we have seen the Blue Man Group do the neon paint drumming bit:

I don't think they played one original song...it was all covers. Which is okay, but I really enjoy hearing bands play their own music. They covered Jimmy Buffet, some Santana (that part I digged...I love Santana), some Shakira, and some Todd Rundgren (Bonus points if you can guess which Rundgren song they played).

New Monarch, Garden, & X-Stitch

Yesterday morning the Monarch broke out of it's chrysalis. Looks like the other one will be breaking out today.

Reeve took the monarch outside to tell it a secret.

Kyle thought the monarch was stinky.

The bumblebee was willing to share her nectar.

We have yummy cherries growing on our cherry tree.

It's a difficult task, but I've been trying to focus on weeding the garden.
The garlic is about ready to harvest. Once the tops look really brown I'll dig out the garlic & then hang it to dry for about 5 weeks.

The scallions needs water, but I did get them weeded. It was really hard because there were so many tall weeds in this bed that you couldn't even tell it was a raised bed!

I harvested all the basil I could get yesterday and made some delicious pesto. I froze most of it in muffin tins. Today I'll pop out the flat pesto circles, put them in a container, and keep them in the freezer. In the top left corner of this bed is the basil, below that is the majoram, the right corner has the parsley, and the dill is in the top right of the bed.

Yesterday I weeded my cabbage patch. I was surprised that they looked so good considering the horrible neglect. My theory is that they were so well covered by the weeds that the stupid cabbage moths couldn't get to them.

We've picked a couple of cukes, three to be exact. Not exactly pickling quantity, but hopefully we'll be able to make a couple of quarts of pickles...I hope!

This is a new bed for the cukes and muskmelon. They don't tolerate heavy clay soil. We had a lot of sand from when we poured the cement pad in front of the garage, so I made a raised bed on the side of the cement pad.
We have one lone muskmelon...hopefully there will be more.

Our neighbor did a lot of work to get our land ready to plant his organic feed corn for his organic dairy cows. The corn looks great and we're all happy about that!

My next weeding attack will be targeted on this tomato bed...how did this happen?

Once that's done I'll move in on this mess...

Can you believe we had some volunteer kale from the plants I let go to seed last year? We've eaten a ton of it already. I love red russian kale! It's got to be one of my favorite things to grow. It's so hardy and it tastes wonderful.

Inside I've managed to keep a good sprout system going. For the last 3 weeks we've been able to eat fresh alfalfa sprouts everyday. They taste great and I can't believe how easy they are to grow! In the past I've used awkward sprout growing systems that were frustrating, expensive, and never really worked for me. I read an article in my Yoga Journal and the author said that she likes to use a mason jar with a nylon cap to grow her sprouts. I had some left over netting from the butterfly houses, and I cut that up for the the tops. I also found a sprout lid that I use for the sprouts that are about ready to eat. Everyday I start a new jar. You soak 2 tbsp. of seeds in a jar full of water for 8 hours. Then you make sure to rinse the sprouts 3 times a day. I've skipped a rinsing here and there, with no ill-affects. I let them drain in my dish drainer. Now I'm motivated to get the dishes cleaned and put away to make room for my sprouts :-).

I haven't had much time for cross-stitching these days. I can't believe I started this project in May of 2006! Here's the latest look of the last chair...the autumn chair. When will I ever get this done?

Monarchs & Rainbows

We missed seeing our 1st set of monarchs break out of their chrysalis because we went camping over the 4th of July. Luckily we brought them over to my friend Brenda's just in case they would break out while we were gone. I didn't want to come home to dead Monarchs! Sure enough they did emerge while we were gone. Brenda said she was blown away and had never seen anything so amazing.
We find the whole process amazing. Feeding these little caterpillars milkweed, and watching them quadruple is size in a matter of days. Then when they've gorged all they can on milkweed they make their trek up to the top of the netting enclosure and hang out upside down for about 4-8hours. Then they will "fasten" themselves to the cardboard and form a J-hook. I tried to get a pic without disturbing the little critter, but it ended up curling up out of it's J-hook.

They stay in this pose, which to me looks like the yoga shoulder stand, for at least 8-15 hours. It looks like the are chanting the way they rhythmically move and their little legs come together as if they are praying. Then they start to twist and writhe around, they shed their skin, and their chrysalis starts to form. You can't see it in the pic below, but this little guy was really moving about.

Then in about another 4-8 hours the chrysalis looks like this pic below. Incredible shiny gold dots decorate the chrysalis. How does that happen? Simply amazing, and beautiful to look at. The monarch will stay in the chrysalis for a couple of weeks before it will emerge as a monarch butterfly.

We're usually lucky if we see one really good set of rainbows a year, but this year we were blessed with another awesome display. Kyle was the first to spot it. It happened after an evening storm passed through and the sun was just about to set...about 8:45pm.

The colors of the sky were surreal

We were racing around the house trying to get pictures before the sun set

you need the sun behind you in order to see the rainbow.