Are you following this?

This little pumpkin seed is going to get a new cousin...

And this big baby lover gets to be an uncle again...






...and so does Uncle Neal....





...and Uncle Kris too...


...and Uncle Peter...

...and Uncle Seth...

So that means Alyssa gets to be called Auntie by one more special person...

And Jonah gets to be a big brother!

Which means that these two....

...have been messing around!

So we get to be grandparents again!

Our motley crew is getting bigger!

Vocabulary Lesson

Grade 11

1. ameliorate

2. paucity

3. aerie

4. comestible

5. loquacious

6. paean

7. turnkey

8. philtre

9. supplant

10. cant

11. frowzy

12. pragmatic

13. twit

14. dilletante


Match with their definition:

A. practical

B. a song of praise

C. to improve

D. love potion

E. talkative

F. to tease

G. a person who dabbles in the arts

H. a nest

I. food

J. scarcity

K. jailer

L. to take the place of

M. tilted

N. slovenly

Goodbye Blue Matrix

For the last three years or more I've been trying to figure out how to get rid of the blue laminate countertop in my kitchen.

It was an unfortunate decision of mine about fourteen years ago when we were building the kitchen on a shoestring budget. I wanted a blue and white kitchen and settled for this solid blue color formica. Didn't love it. Didn't hate it. But my indifference changed over the years to strong dislike. I take full responsibility for it too. I had been warned.

In the mean time I had my blue and white kitchen, complete with my own hand made tile back splash. It was followed by a yellow and blue "Provencal" kitchen. Now I'm in a more bold gold phase.

Over the last several years I've looked at every possibility under the sun for new countertop. I've looked at ceramic tile, concrete, Silestone and Corian. I've consulted with two different contractors and driven 100 miles to a place that sold granite slab remnants.

Finally, I found a product that looked like a compromise, both in price and ease of installation.

Grantite tiles that are 31"x 18".

"Easy" is relative, though right?

Unfortunately, after I purchased enough of this product for my kitchen, my contractor pulled out of the job. Now I had the materials but no labor.

I decided to trust my son with the job. He's a can-do kind of guy and was temporarily out of work as an electrician in this down economy that we are in. Though he had never laid tile before, Neal has done lots of jobs requiring different skills with his dad and even spent some time building houses in Hawaii so I knew that he would have the confidence to do the job. It would also be a good learning experience for him. I know he'll have occasions in the future to again use the skills he learns here.

The first phase was to re-do the island. It was a good way to learn about the handling of the materials and the finishing techniques. We decided to reduce the size of the island so that it would be the size of four whole tiles.

Neal brought along a friend and they proceeded to fling sawdust all around my kitchen.

They next covered the laminate with backer board. This gave Sammy a chance to step in and help. Doing the big boy jobs is his favorite thing in the world.

The next day Neal mixed up some mortar and started laying the tiles.

He worked like a pro.

He was meticulous with detail and finished in a few hours.

Transformation.
I love it.

Incentives

So to encourage my boys to practice their reading skills just a bit more, I did what the libraries and public schools do....I gave them an incentive.

Or a bribe. Whatever.

When one of my little boys finishes ten extracurricular reading books, they get to have a day out with Mom for the activity of their choosing.

Wouldn't you read ten books for a day out with me?
No?

Well, my little boys would. Thank goodness.

Sam finished his ten books and chose to take Mom on a long, chilly, extended bicycle ride for miles and miles and miles around the valley. He talked non-stop and asked me 6, 245 questions and thoroughly enjoyed his day out with Mom all by himself.

I enjoyed it too! Though I was a bit tuckered afterward and my hiney still hurts from the bike seat.

Peter finished his ten books and chose the most wonderful thing he could think of for a day out with Mom.

Please, please, please! Take me to the tractor store!

We pass this "tractor store" frequently when we go to town but we have never taken the time to stop in. This was Peter's chance.

Disney World wouldn't have been any better.

So many tractors, so little time. And money.

Peter took this picture. He insisted on taking the camera to shoot some photos of this most hallowed of places. How many seven year olds do you know feel the need to record their special moments with a camera? I only know one.

He was primed to make a purchase but he had some decision making to do since he had a self-imposed budget.

Did I mention that he is seven?

He agonized over whether to get this front loader or a tractor with a DISC! He wished out loud that the front loader came with the disk so he could get both. He has a tractor but he needs the front loader to load the trailers. Etc. Etc. Etc.

He made his decision and whipped out his hard-earned money which he saved up after peeling apples for hundreds, nay thousands, of apple turnovers.

Nothing feels better than the satisfaction of earning it yourself.

The kids were playing with the camera...

...and the markers.

Snidely Whiplash, Fu Manchu and the Van Dyke.

According to this, Sam's modeling the Franz Josef

Pete's always a clown.

Meoooow, Pfffftt!

Pete said, "Hi, my name is Dad."
(Notice the stubble)

Face Lift

I got new slipcovers for my furniture.

I spent weeks and weeks searching and researching to find just exactly the right ones so I wouldn't waste my hard-earned money.

I wanted dark blue ones, since that is the color of my furniture and I like that color. I wanted quality fabric that would stand up to the children's abuse and be washable. Most importantly I wanted either stretch covers or two piece covers that would STAY PUT. I was sick of tucking and retucking and fixing and adjusting the slip covers that I had. And they couldn't cost $300.

This is what I finally settled on. They are not dark blue which I found out is like asking for zebra stripes.



The color was called "Loden". And looked like this on the website:


I was all set to write a post about how the website misrepresented the color. How the photo looked more sagey green and what I got was dark olive, army green.


But then I tried to take a photo to show you how dark and olivey and army green these covers are...


..and found out that I can't make the photos and my computer represent the color that I see in my living room. Huh.


What do you think? Do my covers look like the one in the website photo?

I was thinking that maybe the medium blue on the website is actually dark blue in real life and I should exchange these for blue?

The green does look fine with my rug and the rust wall color and I love the pillows. Everyone here says I should be satisfied.

I'm very happy with the quality of the fabric and the construction. They fit well. They are scotchguarded against the kids. I got them on sale and with free delivery.

But like always I'm second guessing and worrying that I'll be unhappy down the road.

Diversions from real life

I have been (slowly) reading Maureen O'Hara's autobiography 'Tis Herself. It's been many years since I have read a biography of a film actor or actress from Hollywood's Golden Age. I read quite a few as a teenager and for a while was just a wee bit obsessed with all things Gone With the Wind. I read every biography of every actor in that movie. I also read the biography of Margaret Mitchell. I even own an original Gone With The Wind theater program from 1939.

Ah, those were the days when I had nothing better to do than read books about beautiful people long dead.

Anyway....Tis Herself is interesting enough to be diverting. I am enjoying reading about the behind the scenes development of the movies in which Maureen O'Hara performed. So of course, it will be necessary to watch the movies too. It's great how modern technology has made that possible.

The kids these days (Ugh... isn't that something only grandmothers say? Wait a minute...I am a grandmother!) don't realize how privileged modern life has become. When I wanted to see a movie as a young person, I had to wait until the movie-powers-that-be decided to play that movie where I could see it. Thankfully, Gone With the Wind came on television once a year. Here's how obsessed I was with that flick: during one broadcast of GWTW, I parked a cassette tape recorder in front of the TV and made a Memorex tape recording of it, stopping and starting the tape to edit out the commercial breaks. That's four hours of movie on audio cassette. This was before VCRs people. Back in the olden days when we couldn't record a movie for viewing later as is so easily done today. And I was strangely happy with my audio copy from which I could listen to the dialog from the movie at will.

I remember scanning the TV guides to find out when my must-see movies would play. (Hey, it beat studying for biology exams.) I'd look for something like Wuthering Heights because I had read the book and simply HAD to see the movie but of course it would come on at some ridiculous hour like 3 a.m. and would be on a snowy far-away station that our TV antenna would not pick up.

But today- glory be!- if I want to see a movie like Maureen O'Hara's How Green Was My Valley, all I have to do is stop into the local movie rental and pick up a copy. Or beam it into my computer via NetFlix. It really did become the Jetson age just like they predicted in the movies they made us watch in fifth grade in public school.



How Green Was My Valley won six Academy awards including Best Picture in 1941. It is a beautifully photographed story with many memorable images. My favorite was at the very end of the picture when the men in the coal mine are coming up on the elevator after a mine collapse. The scene is so artistically filmed with the positioning and lighting, it's like a bronze sculpture. Gorgeous.

Maureen O'Hara was only nineteen years old when she was in this movie. Even then she was a moving actress and stunningly beautiful.

Next I'll have to get The Quiet Man, another masterpiece that she appeared in with John Wayne.

But I better be careful. It's not like I don't have kids to educate, cookies to bake, and laundry piles to process. And she did appear in about fifty other movies...like swashbucklers with that handsome Tyrone Power...Jamaica Inn - I read that book too!...Oh! And The Hunchback From Notre Dame!

Somebody stop me.