What we've been up to...

Gideon started preschool.  And has never looked back.  In fact, he's asked more than once - thanks to older kids in the neighborhood - 1) why he doesn't ride a bus to school, 2) when he'll go to kindergarten, and 3) when he'll be five.

I canned.  Something I've never been really interested in, despite having grown up around it.  I blame the sudden interest on my neighbor and her mother's chinois sieve and the apples on our backyard apple trees.  I decided apple making apple butter - my preferred biscuit topping - would be a great way to use the less-than-perfect specimens from our trees (supplemented by apples on sale in the grocery store) and that I could it whip it up in no time and save it away for the next year by canning it.

Only after I'd started cooking down the apples did I realize that I really was going to need a water bath canner (instead of just one my regular, but rack-less, pots).  A quick trip to the nearest grocery/general merchandise store, $50 (!!!), and a couple more hours later, I had 6 half-pints of apple butter and a conviction that I needed to can a few more things to make my water bath canner investment slightly more worthwhile.  So far, we also have a few jars of applesauce and tomato sauce and I still feel a bit sheepish about the investment.  Although it's supposedly all the rage right now, I'm still not sold on the greatness of canning.

But the apple butter is delicious, at least:

5 pounds apples, quartered
1 quart unsweetened apple cider

Combine these in a large pot and simmer until apples start to break down.  Press through a sieve or food mill to remove seeds and peels.  Return to pot and add:

2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp allspice
juice and zest of 1 lemon
1/2 c honey
1 c sugar

Simmer for 2-2 1/2 hours, until thickened to desired consistency.  Follow proper canning or freezing procedures to store for future use.


Jeremy's worked.  A lot.  Most weeks he has at least two twelve hour days and occasionally has only Sunday for the weekend.  It's flight test and our time in Korea prepared us for this.  It appears, though, that the process does not necessarily run much smoother or more efficiently when everyone on the project actually speaks the same language.

Even so, Jeremy still made time to build an awesome sand box for Gideon at home.  One misty Sunday afternoon, Gideon spent two hours in it.

I decorated.  Or what's decorating for me, anyway.

The Guest Room

Gideon's Room

Our Room

We continue to purge and make room.  Jeremy ordered a new storage shed for us while Gideon and I were in Montana and the day it arrived, we were able to make enough room in the garage to park one vehicle.  This weekend, we hope to unload most of the rest of the stuff taking up the garage in a yard sale.  Many baby items will be for sale and yesterday I started to feel a bit panicked about that.  But I think it will be good - freeing.  Just trying to decide if I'm ready to watch people sift through the bins and bins of clothes I've saved.  Or if I should just sell them as a lot on E-Bay.

I've been reading.  Okay, so I'm never really not reading something.  But it's been months since I tore through a book with gusto.  Until I picked up this year's One Maryland One book - Outcasts United by Warren St. John.  I finished it in a week.  And then just this week I plowed through Neighborhood Watch by Cammie McGovern.  It feels good to get sucked in every once in awhile.


Outcasts United is about a soccer team of refugee kids in small-town Georgia.  Kids from all over the world - Sudan, Kosovo, Iraq, Liberia, Congo - that have been relocated, with parts of their families, through the UN refugee relocation program coming together to form a team.  Coached by, of all people, a Jordanian woman.  It's not a perfect book, but it's an easy read and definitely worthwhile.  The things these kids have seen and experienced in their home countries really puts into perspective my "bad days." The book provides great, succinct histories of the various war-torn areas of our world, also very critical for those of us who so easily get wrapped up in our own little worlds.

Neighborhood Watch is a novel, something I rarely read these days.  Twelve years after being imprisoned for the murder of her neighbor, librarian Betsy Treading is acquitted thanks to DNA testing and returns to her neighborhood to figure out exactly who did kill the neighbor.  Again, not a perfect book - contrived in places - but once I started I had to know who really did it.  And I wasn't disappointed in the end.  Not great literature but still a fun read.



And finally, I left Facebook.  Sorry, folks.  I tried.  But it's just not for me.  In related news, though, I'm trying to start a writing revolution by keeping in touch the old-fashioned way - pen and paper.  I mean, despite all our technology and constant, so-called instant communication, who still doesn't love getting a real piece of mail - hand-addressed, personal note scribbled inside - in their real mailbox?  Join me, won't you?  Pick up a pen and a cute notecard today and make someone's week by taking the time to hand-write them a note.

And how have you been?