Update + Camping Photos

What else?

Madelyn is having “fitting in” angst – in band, because she’s the only 6th grade trumpeter; she felt ignored by one of her best friend’s in choir. This kind of thing: M – “C didn’t say hi to me!” in such a sad voice. Me – “Did you say hi to her?” M – “NO! We were SINGING!” Me – “Well, do you think maybe that’s why SHE didn’t say hi to YOU?”. These years are so hard.

(And it doesn’t have anything to do with homeschooling – it’s just life and questions about who we are and how other people perceive us etc. – homeschooling doesn’t make that go away…)

She and Owen were invited to a karate party this Saturday with some friends, so that will be some good social time for both of them.

[Aside. Just took M to dance. I thought she was in the car and we were going to be on time FINALLY but no. She was chasing cats around the house. It just seems impossible for us to be on time for things. Sometimes it’s my fault; sometimes one of the kids’; sometimes something weird happens and needs to be addressed; sometimes etc & etc. It’s embarassing and I really, really would like to do better. It makes me see red though when I’ve stopped what I’m doing to take them to one of their activities and they can’t get it together to get in the car. Then I yelled at her, and now I feel badly about that too. UGH.]

I have a cold with on/off fever, my period, and I’m exhausted. Hah. There is this though: since Chris pulled the poison ivy, I haven’t gotten anymore, and what I do have hasn’t spread and isn’t itchy anymore. It’s been weeks – probably almost two months, since I first got some. It’s all secondary contact, from the cats or him or the boy, so it hasn’t been horrible, but still a bummer. Glad it’s one its way out and hope that’s all I get for this year.

And I’m through the 100lbs of tomatoes – 50lbs of regular size made vegetable soup (I want to make more for the freezer), four or five buckets of roasted tomatoes for the freezer, and 2 quarts of tomato pasta sauce. The 50lbs of romas made four or five big bags of oven-dried tomatoes, 8 pints of regular salsa and 20 pints (!!) of corn salsa. It always seems like salsa recipes make less than they say, so when this recipe said it made 8 pints, I was all – okay, I’ll just double it. I cut up the first batch of veggies, got it on the stove, and cut up on the second batch. I had no IDEA it would make that much or I would’ve only done the one batch. But I guess then I’d still have had to figure out what to do with the tomatoes. Anyway, it’s done now, and I hope to use that corn salsa to make easy meals – add with scrambled eggs + refried beans to make breakfast-type burritos (for dinner though) or with rice and pinto beans to make regular burritos.

Okay, pictures from our camping trip. For the record, I did not want to go over Labor Day weekend – I thought it would be crowded. It was. And the weather SUCKED. It was wicked humid, and really really buggy. I already said the outhouses were HORRIBLE. I have no interest in going back. Yes, there are good hikes around there, but it’s not super far away – the hikes are within driving distance. Not worth it.

I did get some nice pictures though… the campsite:

Didn’t take long for Owen to rustle up some critters:

Biking on the road & trails:

Wading in the lake:

Yeah… storm clouds…

They had a nice playground:

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