Saturday, December 15, 2007

Ice storm 2007

Here's our house last summer, during the National Night Out ice cream social:


Here it is Monday morning, when we thought things were bad:

And here it is this morning. Our poor trees.


Of course, some of our neighbors had it worse. This poor tree:


now looks like this:

They lost four big shade trees.


And this tree:
is now completely gone.

The ice was beautiful as well:


We lost power Monday afternoon. Fortunately I have lots of candles and candleholders in the house. And our gas stove meant we could have hot cocoa by candlelight:
and cosy up by firelight. In case you can't see the kids, here's the same photo with flash:

In reality, it was neither so dark as the first shots or as bright as the flash shot. And the power came on at bedtime, so it was something of an adventure.

Back to our tree woes -- here's some shots of the devastation in our back yard:



Owen and George are surveying the damage with me. We had our utilities flagged recently so there's a big yellow DO NOT CROSS line in the backyard that even a three year old could understand.


Sarah & family stayed with us for a night while they were without power. They helped us start the clearing out process:


More cleanup is occurring today -- don't ask me why, because it is bitterly cold and windy. Tomorrow will be in the 40s and calm. But they're out there today:

Charlotte and George, sawing off little branches.


Dean was supervising saw use, making sure the branches could not fall on the kids -- and still managing to pile up a bunch of branches himself.

Me? I'm blogging and making hot cocoa.

Monday, November 19, 2007

We must be doing something right.









Yesterday we were driving in Oklahoma City. George pointed at a Wendy's sign, saying, "Look, Daddy, there's Pippi!"






Thursday, November 01, 2007

Morning after.

We had a lovely Halloween. George's class had a party in the afternoon at which they served PIZZA -- hurray for the person who thought of that one. The solid base below the sugar rush seemed to make a big difference.

Here he is in his knight costume -- no weapons. (Sorry for the sideways pics but I don't have a way to turn them right now.)



Then we went to the library for George's favorite after-school program. Charlotte declined to wear her ghost costume since she had on a ghost t-shirt already. (Note the fetching pink tights and sparkly pink shoes -- a new necessity for every outfit.)

Here's my gang, poised and ready to go trick-or-treating.


Here they are two seconds later, clearly unable to wait for the obligatory "just one more" picture.

Charlotte is wearing last year's ghost costume, but with face makeup so the costume doesn't have to go over her head (last year the chiffon layer slipped off a lot). She is also wearing the bark pants that went with George's tree costume of several years back.

George is a Ghost Knight. His first idea was to wear BOTH his ghost costume and his knight costume, but we settled on face paint. It worked out pretty well although he was puzzled when some of his classmates didn't recognize him.

Our street was busy enough to be fun but not too crazy. The kids went trick or treating, handed out candy at home, and made it to bedtime without too many tears. No one got sick, no one got hurt, we all had a good time. All in all, quite a successful evening.

This morning all is quiet as we recover from the excesses of last night. George is at school, Dean is at work, and Charlotte and I are at home. We seem to be out of bread, clean clothes, clean floors, and all the other things I'm responsible for supplying. I'm sure things will be back to normal soon, though.

Or maybe not quite yet. When I got out of my shower I was puzzled to see Charlotte's candy bucket on the dining room table, filled with candy. I was sure I had emptied that into the box in which she is storing her haul.

"Where did this come from?" I asked her.

"Oh," she said, "we left some in there last night."

Then I noticed she was purple around the mouth, and smelled rather fruity.

"Did you eat candy while I was in the shower?" I asked.

"No, she said, predictably. Then she glanced over at the candy bowl, still on the chest by the front door. "And I didn't push that chair there, either."

We both looked at the chair for a minute.

"Maybe a bad ghost did it," she offered.

Happy Halloween!

Monday, September 17, 2007

Unnatural.

Our cat Toby developed some digestive troubles last spring. We thought it was because he was drinking milk out of cereal bowls left on the table -- something he had never done before but which clearly upset his stomach. So we tried to be very careful about clearing the table immediately, and otherwise keeping people food out of his reach.

It didn't seem to help, and things went from bad to worse. Finally I took him to the vet to see if there was something that might help. The children went with me, and found the whole experience interesting, especially when the vet took Toby's temperature. Oh, my! Various tests were run, and while nothing seemed conclusive, the vet thought that Toby might have a bacterial overgrowth that could be helped with antibiotics. He also suggested that we feed him a couple of ounces of yogurt several times a week.

That night at dinner we were all telling Dean about the visit to the vet: the scale, the wait (45 minutes!!!), the pictures on the ceiling of the exam room, the rectal thermometer, the pictures of the vet's family on the walls, etc. "The vet said we should give him yogurt," I said.

Charlotte looked up, horrified. "But we told him NO," she said, holding her hand up in the STOP position.

She hadn't said a word about it in the vet's office -- maybe she wasn't listening -- but she was really upset at the thought of giving Toby people food. Later in the conversation she suggested, "We not go to that vet again." She was so bothered that I gave Toby the yogurt only after she went to bed.

Two months later Toby is flourishing. The yogurt has worked wonders. But Charlotte still has her doubts.

Saturday, September 01, 2007

This one's for Dean ...

... who wonders where our summer went.


The kids made a lot of stuff.


There was a parade.


We swam a lot. (Thanks, Andy & Amy.)


The kids had summer school, together.
We went to the Wild West.


We live in Camelot.


A firetruck came to our house.


It rained a lot.


And school started.

Details to follow.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Sanitation crew

When we moved into this house, we put Toby's food bowl & litter box in the spare bathroom and called it "Toby's bathroom." Unfortunately, once George reached the shrieking-and-chasing age, he terrorized Toby enough that he would no longer use that litter box.

After some intense negotiation, we set up a litter box in the living room (eech!) which has worked out fairly well. But as George and Toby have gotten on better terms, Dean and I have wondered if we couldn't get the litter box back into the bathroom and OUT of the living room.

So I set the second litter box up in Toby's bathroom. It hasn't been a huge success, but he does use it occasionally. George likes to use that bathroom, too, though, and he is not crazy about sharing.

Saturday we found the door closed, with this sign on it:



I'll let you guess who got to do the unstinking.

Father's day

For Father's Day we made Dean a shirt (surprise!)





He liked it.

Later on, the kids helped with water changes. Here Charlotte is scraping algae off the hood, while George pulls out algae.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Safety Town 2007

George spent a week at Safety Town again this year -- an hour in the evening, learning bike & pedestrian safety from the police. I wondered if he would get much more out of it, since he went last year, too, but as it turned it he really liked it and I think it solidified the lessons he learned last year.

He and Grayson were inseparable -- odd, because they knew each other as babies but haven't played together much in recent years. I love the Abbey Road look here.


Here they are a block apart. This is a tiny town in the parking lot of the local shopping mall, used only for this purpose. Safety Town has been held every summer for 30 years -- many of my (younger) friends went as children. The traffic lights and streets are the right size but the buildings are diminutive.


Leader of the Pack.

Gardening

I am woefully behind in my gardening, and it has gotten HOT. So my big task this past weekend was to get the garden beds in shape and transplant the poor leggy seedlings that need it so badly. I got much of it done, though not all. Part of the reason I got as much done as I did is because of George's help. He and I worked over the center bed and planted it with eggplants and peppers. He really worked hard, and it was hard work. It was fun to do it together.

Here he is chopping away at the clods down at the west end. The soil quality is much worse down there -- I think maybe I've always started at the east end and given up before I reached the west end! I hope we did enough & added enough compost to even things out. That end is where we'll be growing cotton this year.



Our first daylily is blooming. Isn't it lovely? George found the idea of a flower that lasted only one day quite sad.

Butterfly tree

Early last week the children took me to an oak tree outside their school, saying it was the Butterfly Tree. Sure enough, there were dozens of butterflies on the tree when we went up to it. They fly off in clouds when you approach, but quickly return. Some even landed on us. I was fascinated, and brought the camera back for pictures the next day, and the day after that. One of the days was really windy, but it didn't seem to deter the butterflies.

We mostly saw two species. This, I believe, is a Hackberry Emperor:



These two, who seem to be jousting for position, are Question Marks:


If you look closely you can see that they are drinking sap from the cracks in the bark:


This should give an idea of how densely covered the tree is. I count six butterflies on this root, and there were many more right out of the frame:


Unfortunately this is the closest I came to a spread-wing shot of the Question Mark. They are stunning:

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Mama goes "whoosh," Charlotte goes "bang."

Last week we finally got to weave off the warp I've been struggling with for months. It was about 5 yards of 8/2 cotton, intended for dishtowels, and it was just exactly the weaving experience I'd hoped for. Both George and Charlotte were able to experiment with it; the warp was long enough that we could stretch the weaving out over several days; and the end result is recognizable to them as Real Cloth. We really had a lot of fun.

Here George is treadling and beating.

He wanted to know about tie-ups, and also why you push down on the treadle to make the harness go up.

He was able to weave all by himself!

Here Charlotte is treadling. I had the middle two treadles tied up so she didn't have to stretch to the outside. Turns out she really knows her right and left!

But what worked best for us was having her beat. We had a little chant worked out: Mama goes "whoosh," Charlotte goes "bang!" Mama goes "whoosh," Charlotte goes "bang!" .... ad infinitum. She was even able to see whether she was getting consistent placement of the weft, and beat a few more times if necessary to make it match.



We invited Mikelynn and Alex to help, and they picked it right up, too.

I must say, though, that I found it a little hard to share. I really wanted to spend more time weaving by myself. If I had managed to get the whole warp on, I would have been able to weave at night and still have had plenty of warp for the kids. As it was, there were a few undignified moments when I found myself saying, "Now it's MY turn!" I'm already planning the next warp.

Next up: from cloth to towel.