7 Quick Takes Friday - part trois

Okay, so it is a day late...

1. Some folks' kids sing "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" (or Eensy-Weensy, if you prefer) and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and the such like. And while mine do as well, that's not what they were singing yesterday as we were school shopping yesterday - instead, they were merrily riding through Target singing "We Will Rock You". Thanks to those folks who create music videos of Thomas the Tank Engine to non-kid type songs...

2. Speaking of school shopping, I thought I had the correct supply list for Pre-K, which was very short - and I had only managed to get the Kleenex by the time Meet the Teacher night came on Thursday. Glad I only grabbed those, because I then found out that Patrick's Pre-K class had a DIFFERENT supply list (due to different needs in that classroom) - that was somewhere around 4 times as long. At least the Kleenex was also on it, so I hadn't wasted effort - but instead of the supplies running right around what would probably have been $15 or so, it was around $50. Oy.

3. Patrick LOVED Meet the Teacher night. I think he's REALLY going to like Pre-K -- he kept saying how much he liked "Play School" (I think he picked up the term from Caillou?), so hopefully, this will be an enjoyable year for him, as well as one that will finally finish getting him caught up on speech. I do think he'll thrive there - he's such a friendly and social little guy, and the instructors & aides really seemed like they belonged there, yaknow? Good vibes or whatever you wanna call it.

4. Car club event today, thankfully really local - nice change as compared to driving out 30 or 45 mins. Having lunch at the event, which, since it was local, meant that my mother-in-law was making two briskets - which meant that one was in her oven all night, and one was in mine. Nothing like smelling brisket all.night.long. Talk about waking up HUNGRY. Yeesh.

5. Twilight of Dragons is back on Facebook. I'm happy. You have to start all over again at 1st level. I'm very sad. :(

6. One of Calla's dolls has been sitting on my desk for nearly a month, in need of repair. It was a garage sale find, and she really has been pretty careful with it (the head is breakable), but this time the back of the doll's head is in pretty bad shape. :/ If I am able to repair it, the head will be almost as much superglue as whatever-it-is-made-of. I hope I can, but I'm really not sure. I'll definitely need more superglue first. It has a cute hand-crocheted gown, too. Looked great in the little cradle.

7. Still need to get the tree cut up and hauled away. Not sure how or when that'll happen. Hopefully, though, we'll finally be able to really get the back-backyard cleared at the same time; it'll give the kiddos at least three times as much room to run around. Can't wait for fall temps so they'll be able to play outside longer!

The Tree

Once upon a time, there was a tall tree in our backyard.



Really tall. Just over 60 feet.

There was an itty-bitty problem - the tree was rather unwell, as evidenced by two branches that fell off the tree. Not small branches, either (nothing about this tree was small), and not during a storm. Nor even a wind. Just fell. One of them took out Calla's play-tent-castle-thinger:



Obviously, this made playing in the backyard a little on the risky side, so at that point, the kiddos were banned from the back. But this meant no playing on their swingset, nor with the new sandbox. Something had to be done, and that something was the tree coming down. Now, in the ideal world, where money falls from the sky like the tree branches, we'd have hired someone to do this. Alas, branches fall, but money does not, and this would have to be a DIY project, which was started before the kiddos and I returned from a trip up to see my folks, but completed the day after we returned.

The crew (the hubby and his father) had already cut into the tree quite a bit. They were hoping to pry it loose. You've heard of Wedgewood, right...?



Well, the chisel is pretty buried in there. Maybe something longer?



Nope. Even had the hubby swinging from the bar, and it still didn't budge the tree. At this point, the tree was held up by a central portion of the trunk the size of two 2x12s. The rest of the trunk had been cut through. Now they wondered what to do...



They had the tree tied off so that it didn't fall toward the house (remember, this was day 2, so they were trying to make sure it didn't drop on the house overnight. I think they were actually surprised to see it still up on day 2, as it had definitely been creaking and popping). It was the rope and pulley that finally did the job - they moved the rope to the back of the backyard, tightened it, pulled, tightened, pulled, and...




The remaining stump is still 7 feet tall. Current plans are to level off the top of the stump and build a platform treehouse, since we do know the stump is solid. Either way, though, the kiddos have been able to play outside again, and they are HAPPY. Mission accomplished!

Enter to win...

Melissa at The Inspired Room is hosting a giveaway - leave a comment on her post to have a chance to win an antique grain sack. Normally, this wouldn't have caught my interest as much b/c it just doesn't quite fit our house; but it's printed in German, and I just can't resist that German-farmer-type link (mom's family). I'm sure I could find someone at church who could help me pillow-i-fy it. :)

7 Quick Takes Friday - part deux

Link party at Conversion Diary, host of 7 Quick Takes Friday.

1. Have cooked like crazy this week, and portioned out the leftovers to freeze, so that the hubby will have stuff to eat while the kids and I...

2. ...go back to see my folks. They got an incredible deal on air fare. It'll be nice to see them again, though the hubby's gonna have one heckuva quiet house here while we're gone.

3. Trying to find some sources from either Jewish tradition or early church writings/tradition on Melchizedek. There is so little said about him (yes, references to how Christ is like him, but not much *about Melchizedek himself*). He kinda appears out of nowhere in Genesis, then disappears. There IS an interesting passage in Hebrews that mentions him as having no genealogy, no death, no birth, etc. - but it's hard to say whether the writer means exactly what I said above - that he is just mentioned with no reference other than being King and high priest of Salem, Abraham gives him an offering, and then that's *it* - or whether the writer is implying something about Melchizedek's actual origin and such. Thus the search.

4. Biscotti in the oven for Sunday's potluck. I don't think I have a choice anymore as to what to bring; there would be a lot of disappointed people if I didn't make my biscotti. At least it's easy, cheap, and I always have the stuff on hand to do it!

5. I had lunch today with one of the women I used to work with. We'd like to start a book club of some kind. We're not planning on anything huge, probably just start with the two of us and see who else expresses interest.

6. Hoping to have dinner out with the hubby tomorrow night, for some us time before we leave on Monday. It'll be nice. Looking forward to it, but we still need to figure out where we want to go!

7. And the timer going off means that it's time to pull the biscotti out of the oven. The kiddos think they're having cookies for dinner. Hope they won't be too disappointed...

7a. Am I the only one who can NEVER get the correct yield for cookies? I exaggerate a little, as there are a few times I've been very careful to try to do exactly the 1 inch balls or whatever, but typically, I never get what they say I should. Heck, the biscotti recipe is supposed to yield 3 1/2 dozen. I get almost 2 dozen instead, and that's even with measuring the rectangular loaves. I suppose I just can't do true 1/2 inch slices. Or I get pretty close, but just a little over with each cut adds up to nowhere near the predicted yield. Oh well. I just end up doing a double batch to get a respectable potluck amount.

7 Quick Takes Friday

(Go see Jennifer at Conversion Diary, hostess of 7 Quick Takes Friday.)

1. What the heck is so special about washing hands? I don't mean in a hygienic sense, but in the sense that Calla would happily stand at the sink and wash her hands for hours.

Heck, I wouldn't mind, if it weren't for the huge amount of water involved. Am I the only mom around whose kiddos have started crying because she made them STOP cleaning themselves...?

And yes, they do like showers/baths - until I have to wash their hair. Cue wailing and gnashing of teeth.


2. Now that the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing has passed, you can go through the mission at your own pace at We Choose the Moon. Very nifty for being able to see the stages quickly, though you miss out on the behind-the-scenes banter, troubleshooting, and such. (It will still play all of that audio, but if you skip ahead to the next stage, you'll be missing it.) I do kinda wish they had the rest of the time on the moon and the return trip available - the audio feed ends with Neil Armstrong's famous step.


3. We were going to be going to a Christmas in July shindig this morning, but my in-laws decided to host a family cookout this evening with a whoooooole lotta folks coming - so I decided overloading the kiddos with both would be a bit much. I was kinda looking forward to Christmas cookies and crafts today, though. :( Oh well.

(153 Days until Christmas. Oh, and Nick? 99 days until Christmas music! It's double digits now!)


4. I'm sick of the kiddos' room. Not in a decorative sense, but in a cleaning sense. The kiddos do try to help clean it, but it's difficult because their space is limited (which means it is that much worse than it could be, and gets cluttered QUICKLY). We really do need to get going on that attic conversion, and get them their playroom. And separate bedrooms. Preferably before high school... :D


5. Were overalls really THAT popular during the original run of "Lamb Chop's Playalong"? It seems like that's all Shari Lewis wore.

Related to that, wonder what kids' shows from now will be shown twenty years from now, and what the adults THEN will be saying "We really wore THAT?" about?


6. We're considering my returning to teaching in the 10-11 school year, with the hubby as the stay-at-home parent. It *would* be nifty for vacation time (and there would be other benefits as well); gonna need to think about it a lot.

7. "Can I make fireworks, Calla?" There's a sentence you don't expect to hear. Making fireworks, by the way, = hitting the bed with Calla's toy broom. Apparently it sounds to them like the *boom* of fireworks. Patrick usually makes a kind of "raspberries" type of sound to imitate the sound of the fireworks flying before the explosion.

And now Calla is upset because Patrick has the broom and she can't make fireworks.

Wouldn't that be something to overhear without explanation...?

We Choose the Moon...

Go read the post here about a re-creation (of sorts) of the Apollo 11 mission. It'll be a real-time thing with tweets and all, and on the website for the "recreation" itself, you can download a widget for your desktop (or facebook, or myspace) to follow it all.

It looks really nifty!

Random stuff from vacation.

We saw one of these while on the drive home...

It was rather amusing. We joked about folks just not knowing what was that-a-way. "Gas station is that direction, hotel is the other direction, but that way? No idea."

(Of course, we did fairly quickly realize that it was a directional sign for an information booth/tourist info, but the first reaction is still funnier.)



Also saw a sign advertising used cows for sale. I'm not sure that I want to know about that one. I mean, used as opposed to...what exactly? Calves?

That ranks up there with the question of whether they repo mobile homes the same way they do cars - in the middle of the night. Probably not, but still, the mental image is amusing.

Finally remembered to look up the "Which came first, the hotel or the movie?" in reference to Holiday Inn. It was the movie first.

Then we started thinking about names; specifically, the names Tracy, Kelly, Stacy - all of which have that y ending (or could be done with -ey as well), and all of which have changed from a masculine to a predominantly feminine name. We wondered if they had a common origin. Turns out, from my very limited research (one website, so I wouldn't go basing a thesis on it, LOL), two of them do (Tracy and Stacy; English), and Kelly, as one might suspect, is Irish. I think Stephanie has also had a masculine spelling with the same pronunciation (i.e. not just as Stephen)? I know names have a lot more gender fluidity now, but these seemed to be older examples (as opposed to the much more recent ones like Jordan, for instance).

Or maybe the masculine in all of the above are the -ey spellings, and they're no different than Frances/Francis.

Eh well. Guess I should go catch up on the 1976482 emails that accumulated while I was gone...