Friday, February 22, 2013

7 Quick Takes Friday



--- 1 ---

I usually get my weather report from the little security system panel on our wall and it's usually wrong.  So when it told me that snow was likely last night and said there was a 67% chance of waking up to a winter wonderland, I thought, "yeah right, that's what you say, and then the rest of Michigan gets snow and we get a few little flurries."

So, of course, I was shocked when it was right and we woke up to a white winter wonderland.

My observant four year old gasped after being awake for roughly two hours and said:  "It's snowing outside!"

I have seen a plow now.  It plowed one lane of our street three days after the last storm, but the snow was already so packed into such an icy solid strip that you couldn't actually tell that it had been done.  But at least we know that the city has them... and that they sometimes do find their way down side streets!

--- 2 ---

Last night I finished setting up our seed starter area.  The seeds arrived this week, with their guarantees of being of the organic non-genetically modified heirloom variety, because I don't like looking at tomatoes and automatically thinking, "tomato frog" and I got all ready to plant them because in the past when I've done major gardening years, February was the time to start and let's face it, February is practically gone.

I felt like I was running behind schedule.

Then I decided to see what the internet had to say about planting indoors in Michigan and the consensus seems to be not to do it before mid-March if you want those little plants to survive in their starter containers past the last frost.  So March it is.

The year before Sadie was born I planted a couple entire packages of tomato seeds, thinking that I'd never grown tomato plants before and most probably wouldn't make it to adulthood and I ended up with 90 fully grown tomato plants and more tomatoes than the local soup kitchen could get rid of on Tuesdays.  This year I'll try to be a bit more realistic... so that the tomatoes don't take over the entire yard.

--- 3 ---

Paul's in the midst of the sugar/carb withdrawal headache.  I remember it well and it is definitely not fun.  At least it's a weekend.  And I imagine it will make this Friday especially penitential...

--- 4 ---

One of my favorite parts of each day is snuggling under a blanket on the couch and reading to the babies.  We've been making our way through the Little House on the Prairie series and are halfway done with Farmer Boy.

Yesterday we decided we're going to try Almanzo's giant pumpkin recommendations for a "milk fed" pumpkin.  Let's just say it involves cutting all the vines but one, and then all the flowers but one and making a small slit in the bottom of the vine and inserting a piece of wick in the slit so you can feed the pumpkin a bowl of milk each day.

And then I just hope that the freakishly large black and grey squirrel that I see skulking about my back yard every day doesn't completely destroy the garden... like they destroyed the Halloween pumpkin within hours of putting it out on the front porch...

I could just hand out snuggies
to everyone...
Tempting...
--- 5 ---

After three days of battling with the laundry room, I believe I may have finally won.

I finally came to the conclusion that hauling laundry up two flights of stairs and putting it away in the already small bedrooms was just never going to happen.

Especially since laundry is a night time thing, and I can't very well put away the girls' clothes without waking everyone up.

So now everyone has a shelf or dresser in the basement laundry room and I can put the clothes away the moment it comes out of the drier.  This strategy is making laundry time so much easier.

--- 6 ---

Last night I made lettuce enchiladas and waited nervously to see the crowd's reaction.  They liked them and said that they were "cook book worthy" which is the test of any recipe these days around here.

I haven't typed up the recipe yet, but it pretty much involved using my regular enchilada recipe and then using lettuce to wrap the filling instead of tortillas.

--- 7 ---

Patrick is attempting to scoot himself along the floor when he's in tummy time.  He can get his little knees and bum in the air, but he can't quite do it while pushing himself up on his arms.  He is trying to worm his way forward though, and spends ten or fifteen minutes before bedtime working on this new skill while I clean the downstairs.  

I'm not particularly enthusiastic about him being mobile just yet, since I have visions of a certain two year old trying to ride him around the living room and know that mobility will mean a whole new level of vigilance to make sure that that situation never, ever actually happens.  

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

No comments:

Post a Comment

I love comments and I read every single comment that comes in (and I try to respond when the little ones aren't distracting me to the point that it's impossible!). Please show kindness to each other and our family in the comment box. After all, we're all real people on the other side of the screen!