Spring Feast

We had a lovely little feast of Springtime treats for dinner this evening

Fresh asparagus from the garden, grilled chicken breasts, and fried morel mushrooms gifted to us!

Mama Mia...Where Has the Time Gone?

We are about to enter the final month of school, and I'm beginning to wonder if there will actually be a time when I have NOTHING TO DO?!

I should have been posting pictures of L running track, but the season has passed me by and her final meet is Saturday.

I should have put up pictures from the AMAZING school musical, "Mama Mia", in which J sang and danced her heart out, but it is long over.

I should have noted that we finished 2 more puzzles, numbers 17 and 18, (the final one of which was in honor of "Mama Mia.")

Norman Rockwell paintings

Sunset over a Greek Island

Maybe I should talk about the long, long drive down to NC over Easter Break, and the wonderful visit that we had with JP's family.  I could note that we stopped at one of our old favorites, Lexington BBQ, where I found this pig.

I could also mention the excellent symphony that we attended last weekend, which featured the soprano, Sierra Boggess (the voice of Disney's "The Little Mermaid"),  and I could make note of the European looking gate into a hidden garden that we discovered in the most unexpected place.

Instead, I will show pictures of what Spring is bringing to Poplar Ridge:

Wind...this sheet has actually blown OFF the clothesline,

 and is stuck in a tree about 10 feet behind it!

Dogwood, Redbud, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Bleeding Heart

I hope that Spring is bringing green, blooms and sunshine to your neck of the woods as well!

Signs of Spring

I feel like I haven't been able to catch my breath lately!

L slid straight from basketball into Track & Field - in fact, they overlapped for a week or so!  Her first meet is tomorrow.

J's spring musical opens next week, so the rehearsals are getting longer and more frequent.  In between times, she has participated in another open mic, as well as continuing her music and dance lessons.

There are many days when I need to be in more than one place at a time!

The weather, however, is becoming milder and milder, and signs of Spring abound.  The hellebore and crocus are blooming.  Besides being covered with buds, my 2 weeping cherry trees are decorated with 17 preying mantis egg sacks between them.

The seeds that we planted a few weeks ago are up.

We completed puzzle number 16:

Snow and Grow

We have woken to a couple of inches of snow several days this week.  This morning was another one of those days, and I have recently returned from taking the girls to school on a 2 hour delay.  I am hoping that we don't end up having any more snow days, or our Spring Break will slowly dwindle away.

Things are looking up, however.  We survived February, and are just about 2 weeks away from Spring.  With that thought in mind, L planted about 90 seeds over the weekend - tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash and melons.  It is a couple of weeks later than I usually get my starts going, but better late than never.

Speaking of starting tomatoes, I found this little tomato plant growing inside my tomato this weekend!

With all of the wind (knocked out internet, cell service and power on Sunday and Monday), snow, and forecasted single digit temperatures, it is always a struggle to keep the outdoor animals warm, and with liquid water and access to their food.  Apparently the wild beasties have roamed a bit closer, looking for easy food as well.  I found these prints on the lid to the bucket of kitty food - looks like a raccoon to me!

L has her first Track practice this evening.  She has never done this sport before, but she did great at that 5 K last November.  Of course, she is not completely done with Basketball yet, although her team played their final game on Saturday.  They will have playoffs this weekend - sometimes these end up being VERY long days!

I have spent the winter exercising on the elliptical and occasionally the rowing machine, instead of venturing out of doors to exercise.  (That stress fracture in November convinced me that my running days are over.)  I have one final episode of "Midsomer Murders" to watch while I exercise - I have watched all 19 seasons over the past year!    I have learned a couple of things from watching:  there are an astounding number of murders in tiny English villages, and a large number of medical people with knowledge of medicines that can be used in poisonings seem to be involved.  I'll have to move on to yet another British TV show after this, since I've exhausted the "Call the Midwife", "Midsomer Murders", and "Sherlock" episodes.

I need to close and get my house cleaning done before all craziness erupts this evening- J has an appointment, vocals and choreography, finishing up at 8.  L has Track practice, followed by a parents meeting, and voice lessons.  Whew!

Just a final note to say that I am changing the status of my blog to private at the request of J.  I don't believe that this will affect anyone who actually reads this, but will not let it pop up for viewing for others.  Let me know if there are problems!

Brilliant

This morning I tried a new recipe from America's Test Kitchens, and it was brilliant - ended up being the easiest ever French Toast to make!

Everyday French Toast

3 large eggs
1 T vanilla extract
2 t packed brown sugar
1/2 t ground cinnamon
1/4 t table salt
2 T unsalted butter, melted
1 c milk
8 slices hearty white sandwich bread **

1.  Adjust 1 oven rack to lowest position and second rack 5-6 inches from broiler element.  Heat oven to 425*.  Generously spray bottom and sides of 18"x13" rimmed baking sheet with vegetable oil spray.  Whisk eggs, vanilla, sugar, cinnamon, and salt in large bowl until sugar is dissolved and no streaks of egg remain.  Whisking constantly, drizzle in melted butter.  Whisk in milk.

2.  Pour egg mixture into prepared sheet.  Arrange bread in single layer in egg mixture, leaving small gaps between slices.  Working quickly, use your fingers to flip slices in same order you placed them in sheet.  Let sit until slices absorb remaining custard, about 1 minute.  Bake on lower rack until bottoms of slices are golden brown, 10-15 min.  Transfer sheet to upper rack and heat broiler.  (Leave sheet in oven while broiler heats.)  Broil until tops of slices are golden brown, watching carefully and rotating sheet if necessary to prevent burning, 1-4 min.
3.  Using thin metal spatula, carefully flip each slice.  Serve.

**  I like to use Pepperidge Farms Cinnamon Swirl Bread for French Toast, and since the slices are fairly small, I fit more slices on the baking sheet.

Besides making break through cooking discoveries, I have stayed incredibly busy trying to keep everyone's schedules straight.  It is not uncommon for both girls to have an activity on opposite sides of town at the same time - its' been logistical nightmare, and I'm looking forward to the end of Basketball season!

Add to the mix that Flu Season is upon us - I was down for the count for 4 days last week, and J succumbed for about the same period of time this week.  So far JP and L have steered clear of the nasty virus.  Between illness and the weather, our schedules were wiped clean for about a week, which was a welcome relief.

While being stuck inside, we managed to finish puzzles number 14 and 15 (puzzles 5-13 were 500 piece ones that we did last year as well.)  We also watched a couple of Oscar contenders:  "Bohemian Rhapsody", and "A Star is Born."

I also tried my first batch of "Sea Glass" in the rock tumbler.  I wasn't sure how small to break the bottles that I used, and apparently I need to go smaller.  Otherwise, I think they look pretty cool!  Now I need to start scavenging at the recycling facility for nice colored glass.

J sang and played guitar with her friend at the Choral Cabaret at school.  L continues to shoot at least one basket per game at her Basketball games.

I hope you all are staying happy, well, and not too busy!

Ice Cold

Snow day today - as I write, the temperature is -4 degrees.  They have already called for snow day #2 tomorrow.  It has been difficult to keep the water in the chicken house in a liquid form today.

I just wanted to show some pictures of a project I've been working on since Christmas.  We got a rock tumbler for Christmas, so I have been tumbling a pound of gemstones in a step-wise fashion.  They turned out really nice.

Next I plan to try tumbling some glass to make "beach glass."

Stay warm!

A Couple of Fails in the New Year

Here it is, nearly the middle of January, and I'm only just now posting about our goings on.  Perhaps that is because we have been a bit lazy on the weekends, and perhaps it is due to the fact that our week days got suddenly crazier with the coming of the new year.

Not only is L having basketball practice 2 nights/week (one of those being Friday night), she now has games every Saturday, at a location nearly an hour away.  J has started rehearsals for the Spring Musical, which includes choreography 2 nights/week and vocals Friday after school.  Both girls also have music lessons after school, and J is still doing dance.  Luckily we were able to combine trips to the school campus on Wed/Fri until now...just was notified by the coach that basketball is being bumped from the gym until 7 PM on Wed and Fri, meaning that the end of practice gets bumped back to 8:30 (meaning ACTUALLY 8:45.)  This will require multiple trips to and from the campus OR extended periods of one of us waiting there for one or the other child, not to mention that it is already difficult to get L to bed on time on practice nights due to other issues.  It's enough to make me lose it...in fact, I DID lose it a little last night - tears were shed.  SIGH.  For the life of me, I can't figure a way to limit the pointless miles put on the vehicles, the endless hours driving back and forth, AND giving the kids time at home to do such mundane things as eat dinner and do homework.

At home, things have not always been faring much better.  Although I did have a couple of wins with a bag of needing-to-be-used apples shared with us at Christmas time:  I made a Dutch Caramel Apple Pie, featuring homemade caramel sauce (delicious), and last night an Apple Crisp.  There have also been a couple of fails in the cooking department.  I put dried navy beans to soak before I went to bed on Saturday night, intending to cook them for most of the day and have them for dinner.  After 5 hours of cooking in the oven, the beans were still hard, so we put them to simmer on the stove.  By dinner time (approximately 7 hours later) they were still inedible.  I transferred them to the crockpot, and after an additional 10 hours, they are soft, but taste burned - so basically edible today.  I have no explanation.

In addition, it never fails that just when I am the most exhausted from running and/or working all day, and want to sit down or go to bed, some calamity occurs, involving at least 30 minutes of clean up.  Monday evening a can of tomato sauce fell out of the refrigerator as I was putting away things from packing lunches (One of the things I had accomplished that day was mopping the floor.)  Several days later, it appears that the lever on our water container in the fridge was compressed while the door was closed, and when I opened it to pack lunches, I found the bottom of the fridge and the deli drawer full of water...not to mention a puddle on the floor.

It's exhausting.

Thankfully we had a fairly restful weekend, and even had the time to play outside in our 5 inches of snow as a family.  The sledding was great - we made record runs from the house to the driveway - and the weather wasn't too terribly cold!  JP pulled us back up the hill with the ATV until it sustained a flat tire.  Even though both girls look perturbed in the pictures, it is because I am TAKING a picture, not because they were having an awful time. 

So, we are on to another week.  Here's hoping that ALL of us (Electra the Subaru included) make it through to another weekend!