The Best Salad

All summer and fall I have enjoyed the best salads ever! It's one of my favorite blessing of having a garden. Sorry, the picture didn't turn out so well.

The ingredients in this one were:

• Lettuce (from my garden)
• Green Onions (from my garden)
• A tomato (from my garden)
• Beets (which would have been from my garden if Peter Cottontail hadn't eaten them, so these were from the local farmer's market)
• A hard-boiled egg (from a local farm)
• Cottage cheese (from Giant Eagle, you can't produce it all on a city sized lot)
• And my own homemade Italian salad dressing

I'm going to be so sad when the first frost comes and I can't walk out to my garden to get a tomato. I'm only growing yellow ones next year, they are so good!

I had to add this picture, it's Heidi's favorite place to lay

The Woes of Home Schooling

OK, so I just blogged, but just as I was publishing my last one, Dave put the icing on the cake of how my day went and I couldn't pass up the chance to blog about it.

So as many of you know I began homeschooling Karilyn a few weeks ago. I have mostly loved it so far. I will actually be pretty sad if she wants to go to "real kindergarten" next year. Most days go good, some not so good, as the case was today:

We stared out OK, but as Karilyn was laying on the floor working on math Heidi thought it was funny to tickle her, we deal with that one pretty much everyday.

But then as we were reading her book together Misty, our dog, ran to the front door hacking, then proceeded to throw up. I quickly opened up the door feeling relieved that I caught it before she threw up all over the house...or did I?

I walked down the hall to find throw up in the hall, and in three different places in the family room.

It was about time for her science experiment anyway. We were going to evaporate water out of salt water. So I thought I'd give Karilyn the directions to mix up the salt water while I cleaned up the vomit.

However...as I was getting the salt down, Heidi stepped in the..you guess it! Then she walked all around the rug in the family room. Karilyn was screaming "Heidi stepped in the throw up", then she started to gag. I told her to run in and finish mixing the salt water.

We got everything cleaned up and called it a day for homeschooling except to watch the pan of water on the front porch. Until Dave came home from work...

He brings me an empty pan and asked why it was sitting out there. I told him that it was our science experiment. He said, "I'm sorry, I dumped it out."
Luckily, Karilyn and Heidi were at Grandma's house at the time, so he quickly replaced the salt and water and put it back out there.

Barbecued Beef

Last night for dinner I made Dave's favorite: barbecued beef. He always requests it! I will leave the recipe at the bottom of my blog. It's easy and yummy!

Here's my sandwich:

Here's Dave's sandwich:
Karilyn wanted her "chicken" with no bun:
She calls any meat that she likes chicken. Turkey is actually called "juicy chicken".

Heidi wanted to have fruity pebbles instead:

I don't know what I'm going to do with her

So here's the recipe:

3 pounds boneless chuck roast..but I suppose you could use "chicken"

1 1/2 cups ketchup

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons Dijon-style mustard

2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce (I actually didn't put this in last night because we were out.)

1 tablespoon liquid smoke flavoring (I never put this in)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Put roast in crock pot. Combine remaining ingredients in a bowl and pour over roast. 8 to 10 hours on low or 4 to 5 hours on high. It's good either way. Remove roast and shred it with a fork. Place shredded meat back in pot and stir.

I usually cut off as much fat as possible before I cook it.

Heidi's first gymnastics class...and a trip to the emergency room

Don't worry, it's not what you are thinking. Heidi's first gymnastics class didn't go horribly wrong. It was Karilyn that we took to the emergency room. I had this blog all blogged out in my head, but I didn't get a chance to blog it before Karilyn got hurt, so this is a two part blog.

Heidi's class first:

I am so glad I signed her up for gymnastics. She was so fun at the class. First we sang a song and stretched and then did an obstacle course. Then Heidi went straight to the parallel bars and did it over and over and over. Her teacher said she never saw a little kid do it so many times in a row.

After about 50 times I asked her if she wanted to do the tumble track, a long trampoline, and she nodded her head excitedly. Then she proceeded to do that over and over and over! She jumped down it saying "wee, wee, wee, wee, wee". It was so much fun to watch her have such a good time. We will definitely be doing more gymnastics!

Karilyn's trip to the emergency room:

So, on a pretty regular basis, Karilyn gets nursemaid's elbow, a condition in small children in which their elbow tendon gets out of place. We had some friends over yesterday and while she was playing she hurt her elbow. I knew right away that it was nursemaids elbow again, but Karilyn was more upset about it than she usually is.

She usually lets us pop it back into place, but this time she wouldn't let us come near it. So I thought we might "wait it out". However, it didn't get better. She woke up every 30 minutes all night crying and clearly in pain. So in the morning I called the doctor. He said to take her to the emergency room.

So we went to the germ-infested place, and waited to be seen. They weren't too busy and shortly the doctor came to see Karilyn and fixed her elbow good as new before I even knew she did it. Hum, I think I want my $50 co-pay back!

Well, were back to our normal, boring selves again.

The Triathlon and a Yankee Pebble

Saturday I raced in my first triathlon. I had a great time. It was a 250 yard swim, a 7 mile bike, and a 2 mile run. I finished in 1 hour, 4 minutes, and 30 seconds. I wanted to finish in under an hour, but I still felt pretty good about it, except for the fact that there were a bunch of 50 year old maniacs! We had our ages marked on our legs and I looked if someone passed me, they were ALL 50! That sure made me feel lousy! Oh well, I didn't finish last, which is always my biggest fear.

Oh yea, it rained the whole time too! I got so cold that my finger shrunk and I had to hold my wedding ring on during the swim.

My cheering squad:

Yes, Dave is wearing my coat.

The swim:

I'm the one with the orange cap.

The finish: I have the green shirt on.

After the triathlon we went to the Yankee Peddler. Last year Karilyn called it the Yankee Pebble, so I can't resist still calling it that even though she corrected me this year. Lucky for us Dave's mom usually gets us free tickets!

We were especially excited to go this year so Karilyn could see the old covered wagons. We are reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's books and I thought this would be a great experience for her. She was pretty interested.

Then there was a magician preforming and Karilyn really wanted to be picked to be a volunteer the first time we saw the show, but she didn't get picked. So we attended a second show and the magician STILL didn't pick her. She was so upset. Yes the same magician both times!

So then we went to the children's show (The Little Red Hen) and guess who got to be picked to play the part of one of the apples. It was kind of funny because they didn't want anyone to be left out so they let all the kids come up even though they only need 4 apples.

They had 4 apples because they had to solve the question, if you have 4 apples and someone eats one, how many apples will you have. Well, the dog scooped up Karilyn and pretended to eat her. She was freaked out a little. I guess being an apple isn't all it's cracked up to be. She was still pretty proud of herself.

Our Summer in Review

Our Summer

Just in case you were wondering, here's what we did all summer:

1. We put a garden in. I hope to get a chance to show the progression in another blog. It was a huge project and kept us pretty busy.

2. On the 4th of July we went to Monument Park to watch the fireworks. Although the girls look like they are about to fall asleep in this picture they did have fun. Heidi oohed and aahed the entire time and after every firework she said "mor" and signed the sign for more.

3. We had the pool up for about a month. We emptied and refilled it a couple times, it got pretty yucky, especially since they loved to eat corn on the cob while swimming. Obviously we don't wait 20 minutes after eating to swim.

4. This was our first harvest of multiple things. I just had to take a picture of it. It was so pretty and colorful! Included in the picture: one cucumber, green bell peppers, purple bell peppers, one beet, green beans, a couple strawberries, red and yellow tomatoes, and peas.

5. Karilyn went to princess camp at church. She had a blast. She got to have a ballet lesson, story time, a snack, and they made a craft. They did a little production of dancing for the parents at the end. We got there late and missed most of it. Shoot!
6. We put a huge sandbox in for Karilyn and Heidi. They absolutely love it.
7. I ran in the Hall of Fame race, but did horribly. I came down with the flu just hours after the race. Karilyn and Heidi did the kid's fun run. It's about a 1/4 mile "run". Karilyn ran with her grandpa...and his coffee. Heidi ran with Dave but tripped on her way across the finish line. Sorry the picture is sideways. 8. These next pictures are from our trip to Cedar Point. We had a blast. Karilyn rode a kiddie roller coaster, it was a little scary even for me. She laughed the whole time. She wanted to ride a bigger one so bad, if only she was a few inches taller. Heidi liked the rides that went slow the most, but she had fun on the faster ones too as long as we were right there with her.
They both fell asleep in the middle of the day, Dave and I didn't know what we did to get so lucky!

Heidi like the horns, which sounded more like buzzers.
9. For the Olympics we had a gymnastics party on the night of the girls team finals. We sat up a vault, beam, and a floor exercise area. It was a lot of fun!
10. And lastly, we went to the zoo. Everyone had a great time.

And I just accidentally just deleted the last picture of all of us at the zoo in front of an elephant. It was a cute on too. Close your eyes and try to imagine it because I'm not redoing this just to add it.

I'm glad it's fall, I'm tired!

The Trialathlon

We went to Portage Lakes today to do a trial triathlon (a trial-athlon). I went through the swim, bike, and run and practiced my transitions, the part where you throw clothes and shoes on your sandy wet self and grab your bike. I feel better about it now that I know the route a bit better and was able to do it.

There were a bunch of other people there practicing also, and the competitive part of me was wondering who I could beat which is silly, I should be happy to just finish!

Then, after an hour of vigorous activity, I went back to the beach where Dave, Karilyn, and Heidi were waiting for me. Heidi was extremely cranky so I walked her to sleep. Here she sleeps on the beach all bundled up. I was so jealous.

Karilyn was cold in the water and Dave said that there was nothing he could do about that. She said, "yes there is, you can pray for God to warm it up." hum...