Please keep Isabella in Your Thoughts

My friend's 3yo is not doing well, they put her on a ventilator today. She is having another session of dialysis too. Please pray, light candles, send healing vibes, send whatever positive energy you can spare. Her name is Isabella.

Live Dangerously

That's what I told the UPS man when he couldn't believe I was sitting outside in the yard, planting some rose bushes while there was a thunder storm going on. I also told him that I didn't particularly feel singled out by the gods as some one who should be hit by lightning. Geez, there were tons of trees to be hit first, not to mention objects like houses and such. He said he would never be gardening out in a thunder storm.

I thought about it some more, and decided that thunder storms definitely rate high on my list of favorite weather types. Especially when it has been in the high nineties and horribly humid for the last few days. My only regret is that we didn't get a nice rain storm to go with the thunder.

Harvested lots of strawberries again today, our strawberry bed is producing like crazy. I guess that's one thing that's good about the hot weather.

Attack of The Killer Frogs

We have a tiny pond next to our house, in which more and more frogs have found their home. Last count there were 14, and we also have a bunch of tadpoles, so we are definitely frog rich. Sylvia likes to look at the water, and the frogs, and a few days ago, she was laying on her belly next to the pond, dangling her hand in the water, and enjoying the frogs jumping away from her. Till suddenly, one of the frogs swam back, and broke the water surface very close to her face, which startled her enormously. She jumped up and started crying. She has not been dangling her hands in the water since. Attack of the killer frogs!

Too much going on here, including having a friend's 3yo in the hospital with E. Coli sepsis, which developed into HUS (Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome). She is on dialysis now, because her kidneys have stopped working, and it's going to be a long road to recovery. Please send positive energy her way.

Gardening, Geocaching, and Go!

Those three words are a pretty good summary of what has been going on around here. It has been raining a lot, but on the sunny days, I am always outside. I have moved tons of cow manure, planted a few rose bushes, and done all kinds of other stuff around the yard. Bulbs all have sprouted, we have crocuses, daffodills, tulips, and more. I just love spring!

In between all this, we have been able to do some caches, including some in the White Mountains. That day was just perfect. The cache was at some beautiful falls, I love standing there, hearing the water rush down, seeing the rainbow, enjoying the solitude. I thought it was a nice day already, but it got even better when we saw FIVE moose on the way back down from the mountain. Yes, five! Never had seen a moose in the wild before, so this was quite a treat. We also saw a turkey, which wasn't as spectacular, but still fun.

On the way back, we saw so many amazing sights, and a magnificent sun pillar. Such a wonderful day!

Go is going well. I am progressing, slowly but steadily. Last weekend, I played in a tournament, and I am an AGA 11k now. I am getting closer to shodan, only 11 stones to go :-) I spend a lot of time studying and playing, and once in a while I even make a good move :-)

A few days ago, we were looking at old photo albums, including ones where we only had Cees. Erik clearly started thinking about the sequence of one kid, two kids, ... etc, up to seven kids, and then extrapolated it in the other direction. He was convinced that I must have been living on my own, before his dad came to live with us. He pondered that for a bit, and then came with the question that was haunting him about this 'Mama? When you lived all alone in this house, how did you have sex??????'

Busy Day

Wow, what a whirlwind day this was. Started out by doing twenty go problems before even getting out of bed :-) Then the normal morning rush, breakfast, two loads of laundry, starting bread, dishwasher, and such. While doing that, I looked at my kitchen, and decided to make it my project for the day. It was in desperate need of a cleaning. Then I looked at the floor, and decided to offer an incentive to make those the kids project for the day.

We all got started on our stuff, I was going to reward myself after doing part of the kitchen, by playing some go. But the kids weren't ready yet with their things, and I thought I shouldn't sit down at the computer while they were busy working still. So I kept going, and going. And going, and going, and going. Till suddenly, the kitchen was clean! What a miracle! Not only that, but the kids were about ready with the floors, so I could run a vacuum over them and they looked great.

Now I was going to reward myself with go, but who calls, but one of my geocaching friends. She didn't have much trouble convincing me that it would be way more fun to go out geocaching with them. She was right :-) Was still in the middle of making bread, so just shaped it and put it in the basement to slowly rise.

Off we went to go caching! Nice hike into the woods, a bit muddy. We saw mallards, and very recent beaver activity. It was so nice to be out in the sunny spring weather. Sylvia loved watching the water in the river next to it, she kept making the 'water' sign.

Did another cache, and then suddenly realized how late it was, so we hightailed it back home. My friend was driving the van, so I could be in the back with Sylvia. She misjudged something on our driveway, and managed to get the van stuck in the mud next to it. Really stuck...

We tried cardboard, didn't work. We tried bricks, didn't work. We tried sand, didn't work. We tried about 5,000 other things, nothing worked. So eventually called AAA and had a tow truck show up at 10pm on Sunday night... They did manage to get it out, phew. What an excitement, more than we really needed.

Got the kids to bed, and then suddenly realized that I never baked that bread. Walked into the basement, having visions of the bread dough haven risen so much that it would be crawling up the stairs. Luckily, it wasn't that bad, just a bit overrisen, but it's fine! Finally finished baking it at 1:30am or so :-)

So a nice productive day, with a bit too much excitement in the end. Oh, and the electrical system on Sander's van seems to have died, looks like there will be yet another nice big car repair bill...

Spring!

Spring is finally here! That's one thing about living in New England. The winter is too long and bitterly cold, but the spring just is so magnificent. Bird songs every where. Robins hopping around on our lawn. Hiking for hours and hours. The first cockroaches, I mean crocuses blooming in the front yard. Forsythia blooming every where. The first frog in our pond. The wonderful sounds of peepers at the beaver pond. Start of gardening season. Yes, I love it.

Yesterday, we went hiking for a few hours. The trails still are a bit muddy (spring is also called mud season around here), but we still had a great time. Erik wanted to know whether the hike was going to be freaky. 'Ummmm, no, it won't.' I was a bit puzzled. That is, till he went on with 'So it isn't Freaky Gorge?' LOL! That explains it. Our caching was at Quechee Gorge, so he must have misheard that :-)

Saw a wonderful rainbow today, just in the middle of the day, no rain to be seen everywhere. It was straight up, just sitting there, such an amazing sight. Another amazing sight yesterday, was seeing an air plane being refueled in the sky over our house. I had never seen that before. Heck, I hadn't even thought about the possibility of in flight refueling. It looked like a big air plane was pushing a little air plane. The little air plane was doing the fueling.

Today was clean up day with our homeschool group. We picked up all the litter around the church that we use for our support meetings. It was mind boggling how much litter there was to be found!

First To Find!!!

Yesterday, I happily discovered that one of our local cachers had hid a new cache. Not only that, but it was pretty close by, and we didn't have any other commitments for the day. So it was an easy decision to go for it.

Still, by the time we got our act together, it was afternoon. So I thought somebody else might have been there before us. The terrain was supposed to be 2 (out of 1 to 5, 1 being easiest), so I figured it would be an easy walk. Hmmmmm, not as easy as we thought. We ended up bushwhacking, climbing, sliding, and there was some whining and gnashing of teeth. But eventually, we made it to the cache location.

This was next to a rapid river, Sylvia loved seeing the water and kept excitedly signing the water sign. The other kids just liked the rocks and the river, and were partly looking for the cache, partly just goofing around. We looked, and we looked, and we looked. We looked some more. But still no cache. Cees was asking me whether we finally could go home, and asking me that again and again. But finally, I heard Tara's voice exclaim excitedly 'I found it!!!!!!!!!' And yes, there it was!!!!

Not only that, but we were the very first ones to find it! Always fun to have a first to find. Especially since about an hour later, another local family came to find it, and found out that they were the tenth person there (We were 8 + my friend Iliana). Serves them right for being so unorganized that they couldn't come out sooner :-) :-)

Had a wonderful dinner last night, something that same friend gave me the recipe for last week. We found 'beef' TSP strips in one of our local veggie places, and she made up this recipe with it. I made it last week, and I liked it so much that I decided to make it again. Here's her recipe.

I took a cup of the TSP and poured a cup of boiling water mixed with 2-3
T of regular ketchup on it, set it aside.

After four weeks worth of dish-doing, I drained the few tablespoons of
hydrating liquid out of the bowl of TSP, and I added the following marinade:

1-2 T Kecap Manis (instead of the listed Dark Soy Sauce)
2 t crushed/pressed garlic
1 t cornstarch
1/4 t baking soda
a drizzle of olive oil (peanut or sesame prolly much more authentic)
pinch of salt

Then I made 3/4 of a large onion into long rough shreds (next time I'd
use the whole onion) and then I julienned, roughly, those teensy baby
carrots I got yesterday. I also chopped 3 fattish scallions, and I set
all that aside.

I heated wok on pretty damn high, and when it was well hot I added a
tablespoon or so of peanut oil. I put the marinated TSP & associated
juicy bits in the wok and tossed for a minute, tops --just until heated
and barely carmelized.

Then I added another tablespoon of peanut oil and the carrots & onions.
I cooked them for maybe 4-5 minutes, pressing them with my wok tool
thingie against the side of the wok in an attempt to get the onions,
especially, nice and carmelized while still crispy. Next time, I'd do
the onions solo, and then add the carrots toward the end of this bit.

Then I added the TSP back in along with the scallions & a generous
tablespoon of pepper. I tell you right now, it was a bit much pepper
:-) Next time, I'll try 1/2 teaspoon of pepper. This was good, just a
WEE bit more peppery than I wanted.

I tossed it around a bit, and voila! It was really pretty magnificent
over some brown basmati rice, but I think it would be even a tiny bit
nicer over fried noodles.

Last week, we had it over brown rice too, this week I made pad thai noodles to go with it. It was good!!!!

Purple Cockroaches

Yes, purple cockraches! Bet you had never heard of them, had you? I hadn't either, till, about a week ago, Jane ran into the house excitedly. 'Mama, mama!! I found some purple cockroaces!!!'. Now I might not be the world's greatest housekeeper, but I am not that bad that cockroaches usually are an issue. So I was kind of puzzled, thinking she might have seen a purpish beetle or so.

We went outside, I figured the beetle might have long flown away by now. But no, she led me to this patch of flowers, and, happily pointing to the crocuses 'See!!! Purple cockroaches!!!' :-)

Things have been a bit hectic here, lots of stuff going on. Sylvia is growing up way too fast, walking, signing, climbing, and just a joy to be around. I had a birthday party with my very own birthday cache, Kate had her birthday party with a store bought easter egg cakes and bunny ice cream cake. We cut Kate's hair, we went caching, we did all kinds of wonderful things. Oh, I played go too.

I will try to keep up a little better, I did need some time to myself, to process some stuff that was going on. Hope to be back now.

Master Flusher

Sylvia has mastered yet another important skill: flushing the toilet! She is extremely happy with this accomplishment, and makes sure she practices it a lot. She hasn't thrown anything in the toilet yet, at least not that I know of, but I am sure that moment isn't far off.

Not much has happened lately. I have started cooking and baking a lot more often again, and I discovered that the disadvantage is that we have way more dishes to clean now. Sometimes convenience food has its merits :-)

Still playing go, not progressing much, but immensely enjoying the studying and playing. I have thought about why I like it so much, and I decided that it must be the intellectual challenge it is giving me. I love my kids dearly, and I tremendously enjoy being with them, but I think I miss a certain mental challenge in my life. Go seems to be providing that for now. By the time I am a first dan, I might find another activity to hyperfocus on, to stimulate me :-)

Been geocaching, although not as much as when there wasn't all the fluffy white stuff around. We are being hit by yet another snow storm, I am so finished with winter!!!

Visiting Spain

Since our Texas trip still hasn't worked out, here a picture of the kids in Spain, where Erik's travel bug is.

Yes, it's done by the same person who made Be-ah's page. So nice of him! Talking about travel bugs. Tara's BunBun II is in Peru! Our second international travel bug!

Went geocaching today, did a bunch of urban caches in Manchester, NH. What a clever hides! It's amazing how hard it can be to find a film canister in an urban setting. It was frigidly cold, so we ended up using the van to do a longer multi cache. It would have been a nice walk if the temperature had been thirty degrees higher than it was today. Brrrr!

The kids were in awe about all the tall buildings. We went into the City Hall Plaza, which was nice and warm, but they didn't allow visitors to go up to the top floor. That was a small disappointment, but at least they had the revolving door as a neat new discovery. I guess we don't get out much. Last month in Burlington, VT, the highlight was the escalators, this time it was the tall buildings and the revolving door :-)