Blueberry Pickin'

We went blueberry pickin' with one of our favorite people, Mrs. Diane.  She taught E for 2 years of preschool and just finished up teaching Z-man for his 4k year!  She picked blueberries with us last year, too!

Then we headed over to visit her new chickens!  The kids got to hold them, how fun! 

It got my kids to talking about when we get "our farm" and all the things they want as part of it!

Grubbs' Cousins

Yes, 5 boys and 1 sweet precious angel girl!

My Grandpa

I never had a close relationship with my Grandpa.  I lived 2 hours away when we were growing up and I didn't really enjoy visiting his farm.  There was "nothing to do" and it was "boring."  If only someone has pushed me out the door and told me to go explore!  But back to my Granpa.
My grandpa has lots of great stories and strong opinions. 
He rode my kids around on his tractor every time we visited for as long as he could - he isn't able to any more. 
He loved my grandmother and cared for her faithfully through many years of deteriorating health.  (She passed away in August 2010.)
He is still happy to see me and the kids come for a visit.
He is isn't doing so well and probably won't be with us much longer.  It certainly makes you think about things differently.

Z Man and his "Strawberry Tomato"

 

 When we went to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens Plant Sale this year to get our garden plants, Z-Man picked out a Cherry Tomato, which he immediately began calling a "strawberry tomato".  He has looked after his plant and helped to water it since we planted it.  So, he was very excited when we arrived home from the beach to find his first ripe "strawberry tomato".

Too cute!

More Beach Pics!

LuLu's

My FIL paid for my kids to do the Mountain of Youth at LuLu's.  It was $12 per kid, so we would probably have not have paid for that.  They loved it though!

 Z-Man was too short so he had to have a parent.  Tony went up but shortly decided it really wasn't for him.  Given he has vertigo and a slight fear of heights, I really wasn't surprised.  They very nicely let me trade places with him.

After waiting an hour and 45 mintures, we finally got seated.  We quickly ordered drinks, chips and salsa appetizer and our food.  We got the chips and salsa even before our drinks and they were a big hit.  But our food seemed to take forever.  When it finally arrived it was good but not great.  I definetly don't think it is a place that I will feel a need to go back to.  We were there for 3.5 hours and  food for the 5 of us cost $64.  So I'm glad we went because, apparently many others think it is "the" place to go, but I didn't really enjoy it and certainly not $64 worth.  (Since we were a large party that automatically added an 18% gratuity, which is included in that $64.)

Beach Trip

We are having fun at the beach!  The kids always do and they love being with their cousins.  Here are just a few pics!  My camera lens was fogged up but just had to share these:

Here are some better ones:

 My kids love to dig holes and tunnels.  Here E is digging a hole and you can only see his feet so his cousin runs over and pulls on his legs like he is trying to save him!  These boys are so silly!

What to do with all those blueberries

On Friday morning I went out to pick blueberries, a job I had neglected for a few days.  I was surprised that I picked about 3 cups from our 2 small bushes!  So what to do, what to do?  We were leaving for a 7 day family trip on Saturday morning. My mother-in-law and father-in-law were coming to our house Friday night so they could leave with us the next morning for the trip. I was busy trying to pack and clean the house (to leave it "show ready"). 

My choices were freeze them for later of make a cobbler.  I finally decided on the cobbler.
First I took the berries and put them in a small casserole dish and sprinkled them with sugar.  Sorry, didn't measure this, but really, you can eyeball this!

Next I mixed together the mixture for the "bread", which is what makes cobbler, well, cobbler.

I used

3/4 cup milk

3/4 cup flour

3/4 cup flour

I used self rising flour because I had it, but if I didn't I would have used all purpose simply adding in 1 tsp of baking pour and 1/4 teaspon of salt.

*Note: for every cup of berries you plan to use, you will need 1/4 cup of each of these ingredients.  Feel free to adjust for the amount of berries you have or how many people you need to feed!

It is ok if the batter has a few lumps.  As you can see, by now the sugar and fruit are starting to make a little juice...yummy!  Next I put a few "dots" of buter on top of my fruit.

Then I poured the batter on.

No, it is not easy to hold the bowl while pouring batter and take a picture, but I managed
Next I sprinkled on a little cinnamon, because, well, everything is better with a little cinnamon!

I am sorry to say that I forgot to take a picture when it came out of the ove, but let me just tell you, the batter puffed up and made a lovely golden, sweet, biscuit like dough on top of those luscious blueberries from my garden, that I grew.  And it was REALLY. GOOD.  My MIL and FIL both enjoyed, along with me and hubby!

Making Pesto

My basil is flourishing so I decided it was time to make a big patch of pesto to freeze.  So I went out and picked the basil. I brought it in and rinsed it off.  We haven't used any pesticides this year on our garden, so a single rinse was fine. I then laid it out on a dish towel to dry.  I did blot it with another dish towel to speed along the process!

This ended up being about 3 cups of basil. 

Here is my pesto recipe:

1 1/2 cup basil

1/4 cup raw almonds

1/3 cup olive oil

3 cloves of garlic

pinch of nutmeg

salt and pepper to taste

Next, I got out my almonds.  Today I had on hand raw sliced almonds.  I spread them in a pan and toasted them on 350 degrees.  It only takes a few minutes with sliced almonds as they are already so thin.  I used my toaster oven for this small job.

 Next, I tossed everything into the food processor except the oil.  I drizzle the oil in through the spout while its pulsing - sorry not talented enough to take a picture of me pouring oil while pulsing!

 After it was finished, I scrape down the sides of the container so as to not waste any of that yummy goodness and get out my old fashioned ice cube trays.  I fill the ice cube trays with my pesto. Then drizzle a little olive oil over the top of each one to help preserve color.

 Then I place a layer of plastic wrap over the pesto, pressing down gently with my fingers to remove any air.  This is also to preserve color and freshness. 

Now I will pop this into the freezer and after several hours, I will remove the pesto cubes from the ice cube tray and store in a freezer bag.  Now anytime I need an easy, healthy side dish, I will cook up some noodles and bring out a cube or two of pesto! 

You will see that my recipe does not have cheese in it, as you would expect.  My husband does not like cheese.  I have found that after I serve it I can sprinkle some on mine and the kids and it is quite yummy, plus they think that is fun!

For Sale

Our house has been FOR SALE since October. 

I hate cleaning. 

This is not a good combination! 

A few years back I was cleaning up something and one of the kids asked me who was coming over!  So that tells you a little about how much I hate cleaning!  It is frustrating that I worry about leaving the house to go off to science co-op or to the zoo without having it perfect because I can't rush home to clean it up.  And yes, I have had to rush home to clean it up NUMEROUS times for a showing.  Once I even had to call Tony at work and ask him to go home because we were an hour away (at science co-op) and I knew I wouldn't be able to get everything done that needed to be done in the time I had - there were still breakfast dishes on the table.  I hate that the days I get up, make beds, clean up that we never get a call!  The calls always come when I'm the middle of some homeschooling project with a mess everyone or their is laundry piled up needing to be folded or the kids have every Lego we own spread out all over the upstairs..... 

I have developed a sort of schedule for cleaning and that helps... the kids have certain chores that they gladly do for "stars" (this is our chore/reward system - maybe need to blog about that sometime!)  However with school being out, VBS and other summer fun, we have gotten away from this routine.  I spent Monday cleaning the whole house for a dinnertime showing and since we have one today at 1:30, that is what I'm going to be doing as soon as I finish this blog post!    There are just so many other things I would rather be doing like piddling in the garden, knitting, reading, working on homeschool projects, blogging, scrapbooking........ 

Well, I have procrastinated enough!

Photo Credit

The Perfect Planner

I can never find the perfect planner.  I never exactly love the page layout or there isn't enough room or I want more pages for lists and notes......  Every year I struggle and search dozens of stores in an attempt to find exactly what I want.  Now with me homeschooling, what I need in a planner has changed again.  And still I can not ever find exactly what I need.  However, I did find an awesome website,  Mom's Tool Belt - Home Journal that has allowed me to develop one that has everything I need!  Mom's Tool Belt has tons of different lists, calendars, blank planning pages, Editable pages, etc.  There are so many pages to choose from!  I highly recommend checking out this site.  For only $15.95 per year you can have access to all of these  pages and print them as many times as you want!  They have some free pages, too!

Now, back to the Perfect Calendar.  I found all the pages I wanted on Mom's Tool Belt and edited them the way I wanted and printed them all out.  Last year I used this same method and put them into a 3 ring binder.  But this year, I used my new GBC ProClick Tool to punch all the pages and put them into a spiral notebook.  I am so thrilled with my new school year calendar.  The best part about using the ProClick is that if I mess up a page or decide I need to add some more pages, I can easily open the ProClick spine and add the pages right in!  I have been using my ProClick to make books of our homeschool work from last year and getting some things ready for next year.  It is super easy to use and I LOVE it!

What a difference 2 weeks makes!

This was the garden on May 29th........ here is the garden on June 13th:

I have been enjoying lettuce all along since winter and we have had some carrots!  Now the sugar snaps are coming in and they are yummy to snack on!  There are lots of green tomatoes on all the plants - hoping they will start coming in soon.  There is a green bell pepper that will be eaten with our dinner tonight.  And I really need to make a batch of pesto in the next few days as the basil plants are huge!  The dill is crazy tall and I really don't know what to do with it yet.  I ate the first cucumber in a tomato, cucumber, onion salad  The squah is coming along - I just got it planted.

My beets, spinach and lettuce from the spring planting didn't do well.  It was so rainy that I kept waiting for a dry spell before planting and then after I planted it got so hot so fast that I don't think they could make it.  Will try those again in the fall.

Here are a few close ups:

E's Birthday Party!

For Eli's birthday party he invited some friends over for Pizza and Legos.  We ate pizza and then headed to the Lego Store. Each of the boys built a Lego figure to take home and played in the store. 

Then we headed up to Great American Cookie Company and picked up E's cookie cake.  It was really good!

This was a creative idea for E's party.  He loves going to the Lego store and really had a good time taking his friends!