Lotsa people

It's been a busy couple of days. We had two of the ministers from our church overnight on Wed and Thurs. The girls cleared out of their bedroom so the guys had a place to sleep and moved downstairs. For some reason, all the kids want that room downstairs for their own...or maybe they just want their own room. They can have it, it creeps me out down there-rats, you know. Since the girls sleep with their cats, the rat issue probably won't be much of a problem for them, but still. ewww Along with the two extra guys last night, we also invited some friends over for supper. All in all, there were 11 people to feed last night. I made a couple of homemade pizzas and everyone went away full, so all is good.

Tonight, Angel #4 is having a friend overnight. #2 wants to do the Relay for Life thing at the high school tonight. It's an all night walkathon and hubby isn't too keen on her being there all night. Some of her friends are going to be there, so we'll have to see what we finally decide to allow.

It may look silly, but it works

I made bread today. I've been having a little trouble on the bread making front because our counter top is too high. In order to knead the dough, I've got to stand on my tip toes to give me a little extra height. Then today, the lightbulb went on. I went out to our van and got Auntie Lily's stool. Auntie Lily is a beautiful little old lady who lives at the nursing home. On Sunday mornings, our family picks her up and takes her to church with us. Since she had problems getting in and out of our van, we bought a collapsable stool and keep it shoved under the seat. Well, Auntie Lily's stool is the perfect height to give me the leverage I need to pound my bread into shape. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that good stuff.

Just in case you were wondering, I didn't put any green stuff in this batch of bread, it looks MUCH better than last week's bread.

The Great Pineapple Rescue

Jeannie, when I get my prize from AD, I'll give you yours. :D Maybe I'll sing a Jimmy Buffet song and dedicate it to you.

The other day we noticed some pineapple leaves poking through the vegetation growing along the side of the driveway. We figured if they were ever going to produce, they'd have to get weeded, so that's what I did today. Some of those poor plants were buried under vines and there was a stand of raspberries right in the middle of them, and I had to don my leather glove (I could only find one of them) and pull the thorny things out of there...after eating all the berries off, of course. All in all, I found about half a dozen pineapple plants. They look kind of rough right now, but I think after a little while of sun and rain without the competition of viney stuff and raspberry stalks, they should take right off. Now, I've just got to clear a space so I can plant the three pineapple plants I've got in pots.

Next on my outdoor agenda is clearing the area around the bee hives. There's a lot of long grass growing around them and the hives have been neglected for a while, so I think it would be nice to get it cleaned up and make the bees happy. Hopefully, whoever it is who owns the hives are okay with us taking them over. I'm not sure who they belong to, but whoever it is hasn't been taking care of them. I've been interested in beekeeping for years, yet never did anything about it besides read books. I'm currently working my way through Beekeeping for Dummies, and now there there's a hive right at my fingertips, I just might start nosing around there and getting a real live bee education. BUZZ!

I bought shoes!

Hubby and I went to K-Mart tonight. Angel #2 and her friend, Shannon the Slug, wanted to go shopping, so we picked Shannon up on the way and dumped the girls off at their store while we went to ours. K-Mart is redoing their shoe department and is having a clearance sale on what they've got now so they don't have as many shoes to deal with when they rip the department apart. I found the cutest pair of heeled pumps. I don't usually wear heels, or dress shoes, for that matter. The one pair I have about 1 inch heels, I bought them about 2 years ago and wear them to church on Sunday and to the writers conference I go to in Wisconsin each year. They're pretty ratty looking and it was really time to replace them, so I did. I've been trying to remember the last time I bought a pair of shoes, it's been a while. I think it was November of '07, when I blew out my flip flop right before we went to Oahu and I bought another pair. So, I was overdue for a new pair of shoes I think. I really need to get a new pair of flip flops too, my 1 1/2 year old ones are starting to fall apart. Yeah, I'm not much of a clothes/shoes shopper.

Daddy's Home!

Hubby was tired and missed his wonderful family, so he came home from Denver early. He was done with the work portion of his trip and was just planning on doing some skiing and that sort of thing over the weekend. He figured with what it would cost in hotels, car rental and ski fees, it would be cheaper to just change his ticket and come back home where he'd rather be anyway. I got him at the airport last night, so he got home 2 days early. Yeah! In honor of his return, Angel #4 made a blueberry cheesecake. She got a little help from me, but she was very proud of her accomplishment. We invited some friends over for dinner today and to share the cheesecake with us.

May the circle, be unbroken

A few weeks ago, I was showing a friend around our house. She saw some old boards lying in the upper shed, and said she'd been looking for some exactly like them for her artwork and wanted to buy a couple. I told her I'd talk to our landlord about it. Well, he told her to come on up and pick a few out, then gave them to her, because he's a nice guy that way. She wanted to do something for him or pay for them, and he asked if she could bake a pie. She's not much of a baker, but I am - she, on the other hand, is an awesome artist. I told her that I'd bake the landlord a pie if she'd paint me a picture, and she was thrilled with the idea. I asked Mark, the landlord, if he liked banana cream and that my friend would bring me some bananas to make him a pie. He said he had tons of bananas growing at his place and he'd bring me some apple bananas, which are really sweet and tasty. I made him his pie today and he told me to make this whole barter thing even more complicated, he was going to give the pie to his sister-in-law for her birthday. Now that is a complicated transaction, but bartering is a much more fun way of doing things than boring old money. Besides, now I'm going to get a painting made especially for my by a very dear friend and all I had to do was bake a pie, which I can do blindfolded with one hand tied behind my back. Who could ask for anything better?

I forgot to mention in my crabby post yesterday how friendly the people at Walmart were. When I walked in, a guy was grabbing a cart for himself, he gave it to me said "welcome to Walmart" then grabbed another for himself. A little way down the aisle, I stopped to check out the DVD for Angelina Jolie's moving Changeling. It's set in the 1920's, which automatically catches my interest. The guy stopped again and gave me a movie review (it was a favorable one, but not worth spending $18 for a dvd). Later on, a lady helped me pick out curtains for my bathroom and in the sewing section, a really cool woman and I got to chatting about mending, buttons and ways to repair clothes (it really was an interesting conversation, despite what it sounds like). It just seemed like there were a lot of friendly people shopping at the same time. Not everyone is a vicious psycho driver out for blood.

I bought some brown paint yesterday, and this morning, I painted the grungy white stools that are at my counter in the kitchen. Angel #2, with her typical warped sense of humor said: Great, now we can tell everyone we've got brown stools.
UGH That kid must get her sense of humor from her father, I'm MUCH classier than that. :P

Someone painted my van with invisibility paint

I am invisible when I'm driving down the road. Sometime during the last week, someone sneaked into my driveway and painted my Dodge Caravan with invisibility paint, or maybe I accidentally pressed the stealth button on the dash, thinking I was changing the radio station. All I know is that I must be invisible as I drive down the road, the only other thing it could possible be is that there are a lot of idiots out on the road lately. Naw, I must be invisible. One thing I've noticed about drivers in Hawaii is that they're courteous, almost to the point of being dangerous sometimes. But lately, it's been like driving on the mainland out there. Twice this week someone in the merge lane raced up from behind and cut in front of me, forcing me to either slam on my brakes or sideswipe them. Considering my van is pretty junky, maybe I'll choose the second option in the future and let the idiots buy me a new car. Ironic thing is, in both situations, they still got stuck at the exact same traffic lights as me and risked both our lives just so they could get home 5 seconds sooner. Not really worth risking a ride in an ambulance, if you ask me. My friend has noticed the same thing with drivers lately. Her theory is that the economy is getting to people, making them crabbier and more dog-eat-dog. I've seen a couple of vehicles with bumper stickers that say: Slow Down, this isn't the Mainland I think I'm going to get one for my invisible van.

I got a call from the school today. WE passed out during Phy Ed class today. They figure he just got overheated. When he got home from school, I asked him what happened and he just said "I fainted". Well, duh, I knew that. I told him I wanted a play-by-play. He said, I was running and all of a sudden I fell, like this. Then he acted out running in slow motion, then falling onto the floor making that low, drawn out aauurrgh sound you hear when someone yells in a slow motion video. He said they thought he was faking it, until they picked him up and he was totally out of it. He seems fine now though, I guess it was just one of those things.

Tanya: Good suggestion about the fish dissection thing. That's entirely possible, Angel #4 is in the middle of taking apart an owl pellet in class, maybe fish are next.