"Mom? I have a complication."

I should have dug out our camera for this picture, but my phone was handy and I didn't want to miss the shot. If you look to the left side of the picture, there is another cat there curled up against Kitty Kat's side. Tiger, the cat on Kat's lap, curled up there on his own while she was working.

Poor Lily

Lily

We decided to air out the house yesterday, so we opened up the front and back doors. We kept a close eye on the cats to make sure that they didn't venture out. Our cats are indoor cats and have not been vaccinated for some of the ailments they could contract if they come in contact with outdoor cats. We did really well until later in the evening. The cats had been so good that we quit checking on them. Then, we went to bed.

Apparently, no one checked to be sure the cats were accounted for. This morning when I let the dogs out, an animal started fussing. At first, I thought it was the puppy from across the street. However, the longer the animal fussed, the more cat-like it sounded. Birdie walked up behind me and said, "I hear Lily". I told her that I knew it sounded like Lily, but I thought Lily was inside. I brought the dogs back inside (they were dawdling), and I kept asking everyone to keep an eye out for Lily. Finally, I started calling the cats. Midnight, one of the dogs, about went crazy wanting me to go out back. I went to our back entryway and sure enough, there was Lily at the door crying to be let in.

Midnight

Lily was a little cold and a little scared, but she seems alright. Tiger, our other cat, is not pleased. He has been hissing and growling at Lily all day. He has even started to hiss and growl at us, if we pick him up or pet him. Lily must not smell right. Seriously though, I wonder how long this will last? Tiger is usually our laid back kitty.

Tiger

*Our other dog, Maggie, did NOT want her picture taken. She is a bit shy and kept cowering away from the camera.

**Oh yeah, yesterday, Kitty Kat found our camera under a china cabinet of all places.

+ Kitty Kat had the idea to rub a towel over Lily and then over Tiger. Unfortunately, it didn't work. So, I gave the cats a bath. Hopefully, that will do the trick.

Today Was Better Than Yesterday

I think a big part of today being better than yesterday was that I started my day out with God. The pets woke me and I had to take care of them, but none of the kids bothered me until I was done with my devotions. I take that back. I sent two girls back to bed. Puppy Dog came to our room while I was praying and laid down beside Jon. P.D. was quiet though and let me do my devos. without interruption. I went back to sleep after my devos. LOL

When the kids all started to congregate in the dining room, I told them that we were having cold cereal for breakfast. Some time went by and they started fussing about really being hungry. Apparently, I have catered to them too much this past winter. It only took a small verbal nudge to convince them to fix their own cereal though. I came out while they were fixing theirs, fixed mine, and added some banana slices to everyone's bowls.

Lunch was Sloppy Joes, baby carrots, applesauce, and milk. We used Manwich, because it was a good price this week and Jon wanted it. I used two pounds of ground beef and two cans of sauce. We had enough left over for Jon to have enough for a sandwich at work later this week. The buns were also storebought. They were on sale and I had a coupon.

Jon took the rest of our leftover chili, a yogurt, and some pop for his work lunch. He usually drinks water and eats some of the fruit that his workplace keeps out for employees as well.

The kids and I had yogurt for an afternoon snack while we waited for our bread to cool for supper. I also made rolls for tomorrow.

Tonight's supper was egg salad (homemade) sandwiches (homemade bread), baby carrots, cottage cheese with pineapple rings, and water. We had enough egg salad for Jon to have a sandwich later.

This is Little Bear's plate from supper. As the youngest, he got the priveledge of having the heals of the bread. The younger three children tend to take turns eating the heals. If they fight, then I get them.

I assigned How-to reports to three of the children this week. Kitty Kat decided on "How to Make Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies", Froggie chose "How to Make Meatloaf", Monkey chose "How to Make Chocolate Tea Bread", Puppy Dog chose "How to Make Chocolate Chip Cookies", Birdie wants help deciding, and I haven't heard from Little Bear yet. Did you catch that five children are planning their reports when I only assigned reports to three?

Kitty Kat decided to use the recipe on the back of a sugar package. I tried to dissuade her, but she wouldn't budge. I let her try the recipe without interference at first. She would ask my opinion from time to time.

One of those times was when the "dough" was supposed to be ready to go in the fridge to chill. It looked like quick bread batter. I went through the ingredients with her and double checked the measurements she used. It turns out that she measured the milk before adding the lemon juice to it (as a replacement for buttermilk). I had told her a day or two ago to first put the lemon juice in and then to finish measuring the milk. Apparently, she forgot. She also confessed to having the milk a little over the mark on the measuring cup. Add that to the fact that the eggs we have right now are extra large and there was definitely too much moisture. I had her add a little extra flour a 1/4 cup at a time to get a better consistency. She added 1/2 cup and we decided to try it.

I let her work on the cookies alone after the "dough" chilled. I came to help her check on them when the first set was ready to come out of the oven. The cookies were a little burnt. I helped her get them off the pans quickly and then the kids and I ate those cookies as a bedtime snack. The oven temp. was at 400 degrees and she baked the cookies for 7 minutes. I checked and she had followed the directions. I then proceded to help her by getting the rest of the cookie "dough" onto the pans and she added the cinnamon sugar. I made the cookies bigger than the recipe called for, left the temp. the same, and had her time them for 5 minutes and then reset the timer as needed. She ended up with enough nice cookies that she can take them to her small group at church tomorrow evening and leave a couple for Jon to have later. She will be trying a different recipe before writing her report though. I tasted the raw batter and it tasted just like the batter minus the bananas of a banana bread recipe that I once made from a recipe on the back of the same brand of sugar. I have never made that recipe again because the banana bread turned out bland.

The kids were in bed before 10pm tonight. I actually sent them to bed before 9:30 but I had to fuss with the boys to get them to stay in bed. Once the boys were in bed, they fell right to sleep. I did have to go upstairs to send the girls back to bed a little while ago, but I think they have settled down. Hopefully, they will get enough sleep, because we are going to be at church a lot tomorrow.

Rough Day

bacon, egg, and cheese onion bagel

Thursday night we were up late, so I let everyone wake up on their own. I also didn't fix breakfast or brunch or whatever you want to call it until everyone was up and downstairs. Yes, that's right, the girls are back upstairs! So, we had our first meal at about 1:00 pm. That was not a good start to the day! We hoped that the day would get better after everyone's tummy was filled with the bacon*, egg, and cheese bagels and orange juice we had. The day did not get better.

Jon had a family ticket to go to a Cincinnati Bengals vs. the local Sheriff's Association basketball game at an area school. He was going to take the kids to that while I went to see my niece in the musical, THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE. The kids were so rotten yesterday that Jon decided they wouldn't go. If you know Jon, then you know what a big fan he is of the Bengals.

We had our next meal, vegetable beef stew with biscuits, before I left to go to the musical. The stew was planned for earlier in the week, but our plans had changed. I would normally make homemade biscuits, but there was a very good deal on biscuits at Kroger this week. We got four four packs of ten count Pillsbury biscuits for $4.00. I sent Kitty Kat to make some biscuits and she pulled out a can. I had totally forgotten about the canned bisuits. LOL We drank tea with our meal. Kitty Kat makes most of our iced tea and yesterday's was no exception.

I left to go to the musical with a heavy heart knowing that Jon was missing out. I'll have to be sure to take someone with me next time I go to something like that. There were long periods of time when I was by myself and I didn't know what to do with myself. My mom, nephew, and niece were there too, but Mom and my nephew were helping with costumes and my niece was running around with a cousin. There was also the trip from Springfield to Urbana and back alone in the car.

I got back and was swarmed by kids and pets. The pets are still acting like I was gone too long.

While I was gone, Jon and the kids snacked on some battered shrimp and Girl Scout cookies. When I returned, we had hot dogs and jalapeno brats with leftover chili, applesauce, and salad. We only had six hot dog buns, so some of the kids had their hot dogs cut up and had leftover rolls to go with it. Little Bear didn't want to eat his salad. He asked if we could put it in the fridge for the next day, and since he asked nicely, I complied.

Once again we got to bed late.

*I saved the bacon grease to use later in the week.

A Little of This And a Bit of That

First, Lucille at Who's Going to Tell You? wants to know if she should keep blogging. She says she will continue if she gets fifty comments. She did not specify that the comments had to be from fifty different people, but wouldn't it be neat if she did get comments from fifty different people? I've started her off with ten comments. I'm just ornery that way. LOL So, everyone head on over to Lucille's place. I'll wait. I need to change around the loads of laundry anyway.



Second, I don't think I mentioned before that Jon, Kitty Kat, and Monkey are in a Christmas play the Stage Right drama group at our church is putting on. The play is (if I have it right) "Scrooge Revisited". Jon got the lead part of Scrooge. The girls are extras in a scene or two and are the great-great- great...granddaughters of Scrooge in a modern day scene. The girls had their lines memorized for their audition. Jon, on the other hand, has a total of ninety-nine lines to have memorized. He is finding that it is a lot harder to memorize lines now than it was when he had less responsibilities.



Third, things have been crazy around here.

The two aforementioned girls had to be at church every day but Friday a couple weeks ago. Sunday: we had morning and evening services and activities. Monday: the girls and I had Sunflower Scouts. Tuesday: Jon, Kitty Kat, and Monkey had play practice. Wednesday: Baby Bear had his Wed. night class; Puppy Dog, Monkey, and Birdie had children's choir; Kitty Kat and Froggie had small group; Jon had Men's Fraternity; and I had Teacher Training. Thursday: we had homeschool P.E. Saturday: our church had their Fall Festival and Trunk and Treat.


This past week was all mixed up.

A week ago Saturday, Birdie was playing ghost in a sleeping bag after I warned the kids to put the bags away before someone got hurt. Birdie tripped and chipped four of her teeth.

A week ago Monday, I dropped the other kids off at Mom's and took Kaycie to the dentist. Jon met us at Mom and Dad's and we ate supper with them before the girls and I had to run off to Sunflower Scouts.


Last Tuesday was election day so we tried to focus on the elections. The kids and I went over to Jon's Mom's place and picked up her pop cans (to recycle) and ran her vacuum. We took all our cans to the recycle center and then picked up lunch. We ate lunch at Jon's workplace. It was a nice day so the kids and I played games (i.e. Mommy Says instead of Simon Says) on the lawn while we waited for Jon to get off work. When Jon got off work, we went together in the van to go vote. The kids did great! They only got riled up when one of the poll workers started encouraging them. The workers were bored and enjoyed the lively chatter of the children. After we voted, we went shopping and then picked up Jon's car. The evening was spent watching the voting results, watching an online video about how the voting process works, etc.


Wednesday Birdie had an appointment at the E.N.T. doctor. Monkey, Kitty Kat, and Froggie stayed in the reception area and read. The boys went back to the examination room with Birdie and me. They all behaved well at the doctor's office.


Thursday the kids had their homeschool P.E. class and I got a chance to talk with some of the other homeschool moms from our church. We also had to run some errands.


Friday the kids and I (my mom came too) went to watch Jon at a forklift rodeo. As the day's events ended, Jon was in first place in the masters division. Jon's supervisor invited the children and I to go eat with them afterwards at Lone Star.


Saturday was the final day of the rodeo. We went again hoping that Jon would stay in the top six. During the final half hour, he was knocked down to seventh (I think) place. Needless to say, he was very disappointed. Jon stayed for the catered award ceremony while my mom, dad, the children, and I went to Frisch's. We then went back to our MESSY :. ( house for pumpkin pie that my mom had brought.

We also were getting back into our early rising routine this past week and dealing with the time change. Our pets are still messed up over the time change.

The children were really trying my patience this last week or so. They have been fighting and arguing, talking back, grumbling, complaining, deliberately disobeying, and making messes without cleaning them up. Between our busy week and trying to fit in school we didn't have much time to keep up the house. When we were working on the house, it was like we would take one or two steps forward and at least five steps back. I'm still trying to find the optimistic side of things.

This morning before he left for work, Jon told me I really needed to enforce a mandatory nap time "right now". He gave them all a talking to as well. The kids were already at each others throats before 6:30 am this morning! The kids have been watching preschool programs this morning ever since breakfast was over. They're not allowed to mess around or the T.V goes off. The girls won't take a nap anymore, so this down time is about as close as we'll get to naps. I was hoping the boys would fall asleep, but they're not. They are close though. We might just have to start our school day with story time. We've really got to get the kids back into a better routine.

This post is getting pretty long, so I'll end it here. I'll have another post up soon with yesterday's creative writing assignments.

A Busy Weekend

We had a pretty eventful weekend. I finally have something to blog about! LOL I could do without some of it.

Saturday, the kids and I went to a Pow Wow. It's not something we will do again. It was a BIG letdown. The kids and I were all bored, we had to pay to get in (more than was locally advertised) and they had merchandise booths surrounding the center circle , and I got sunburned.


Did you know that you "can't see" this man. He is doing a "stalking dance". He is supposed to be sneaking up on buffalo and when he is crouched down he is "invisible". The announcer even said if we had our pictures developed, then they would come back without the image of the dancer. lol
The kids thought the announcer was insane.


These two showed up on/around our porch Sunday early morning. Jon was a pushover and we have now adopted them. It wasn't too difficult to persuade me.

Tiger is a little timid. He likes to hide in their new refuge. Lily is more adventuresome and curious.

This tree fell in the wind storm Sunday and blocked our side street.



It almost hit a neighbor's car.


We had some damage around our house, too. This is one of the sections of privacy fence that fell down.

Some small branches fell on some wires between our garage and house (we got them off each time) and a large limb fell on our house. There doesn't appear to be much structural damage, though I could be wrong. I think God was really looking out for us!
Do you see the crack in our next door neighbor's tree? We were really watching it Sunday. None of our children slept upstairs Sunday night. Our neighbor moved one of his daughters out of her room that is on the corner of their house near the tree. It really looked like it was going to crash down. We think the ivy vines wrapped around it are holding it up. Our neighbor isn't allowed to mess with it and has to wait on the city/county to take care of it.

Our electricity went out Sunday at 4:11pm. It came back on a little after 5:00am this morning. Now, I need to go clean out our refrigerator and freezer before I put our food back in them and catch up on the laundry.

Camping '08, Part II

Monday (6/30) evening we were supposed to have two ball games to go to. Both were rained out.

The sun came out on Tuesday (7/1).

In fact, it was so sunny that the dogs were getting overheated where they were tethered. We moved them into the shade and tied them to the same tree. Oops! Big mistake. Froggie was petting Maggie later and Midnight got jealous so she tried to get in on the action. Maggie snapped and attacked Midnight and an all out dogfight ensued. Froggie backed up out of the way as Jon told me to stop the fight. So, I did the crazy thing of reaching in to pull them apart. I pulled Midnight back, but Maggie was still able to reach her. Maggie tried to attack Midnight as I was reaching for Maggie's collar. Maggie ended up scratching my arm (about a three inch shallow cut). I cleaned it out and put triple antibiotic on it, but it still bled so we bandaged it. I don't know what got into the dogs. They had their rabies boosters right before we went camping, but I don't know if that had anything to do with it.

Jon took Kitty Kat, Birdie, Baby Bear, and Midnight to his game. I took Froggie, Puppy Dog, Monkey, and Maggie to Monkey's game. I know I took pictures of Monkey, but for some reason they are not on my computer. I'll have to check my camera's memory cards to find them.

Monday night we ended up taking the dogs into our tent, because they didn't want to stay quiet. Tuesday night, Jon was determined to leave them outside the tent. We didn't get much sleep because they would bark every time someone walked by our sites and every time another dog barked.

Wednesday (7/2) afternoon, I sent a couple of the girls to get water and they ended up fighting loudly. Then, a little while later, a ranger stopped by. I wasn't sure if it was going to be about the girls or the dogs. It was about the dogs. He said there were some complaints and that some people had left. The dogs were annoying, however, so were some other dogs in the park (ours just have bigger barks). It was interesting, no one had gone from our area who was not already scheduled to leave. Hmm. That night and another night the dogs stayed in our tent. Two other nights we left them at home, because we knew the fireworks would drive them crazy.

A lesson learned: Guard dogs do not belong in a campgrounds. I guess we'll have to board them somewhere after this.

An Unwanted House Guest

My husband woke me up last night with these words, "Sorry to wake you up, but I have a problem." My foggy brain automatically began to imagine all kinds of worst case scenarios. I asked what the problem was and he told me that the bat was back, flying around our house and Midnight (You remember, the bread thief.) was trying to catch it. I don't think the bat has rabies, but you never know and our dogs are due for their rabies boosters. We shut the dogs in our bedroom and managed to trap the bat in our enclosed back porch. The children found the bat this morning and I got a picture. I was going to post the picture, but Blogger is having issues with images.

Kat and Dogs

"When does water act like glue?"

That is the riddle, and the next clue will be at the end of this post.

_______________________________________________________

This is Midnight, a.k.a. "The Bread Thief".

Center: Kitty Kat
Left: Maggie
Right: Midnight
Kat had me take this picture so she could send
a picture of herself with her pets to her pen pals.

_________________________________________________________


Today's clue: Autumn leaves are falling.