Friday bullets, June 15, 2018

It's still Friday, just a little later than usual.

  • We are getting ready for a whirlwind weekend. We have a wedding tomorrow, and then we take G., L., K., and Y. up to church camp. This means that today has been spend getting them all packed and ready to go. We're up to two trips to Target in a 12 hour period so far.
  • TM also comes back from his mission trip in Mexico tomorrow evening. Getting him from the airport just adds to the logistical fun of tomorrow.
  • We just got to watch of video that was posted of the mission trip group's FB page of TM getting baptized. Yes, I teared up.
  • Yesterday was also a big day. First we went up to Wisconsin to go strawberry picking. We picked 40 quarts of ripe strawberries. This means I now have 40 quarts of ripe strawberries to do something with before they go bad. Actually, I'm down 8 quarts already. I have berries sitting in sugar waiting to be made into jam, and I have more berries in the dehydrator. I'll share more pictures tomorrow, but this is what my extra refrigerator looks like right now.

Each of those baskets is 4 quarts, and those drawers down below are also filled. 


  • Today is B.'s 23rd birthday and G. and L.'s 9th birthdays. We had donuts this morning, but we're going to celebrate all the June birthdays together later in the month. 
  • L. chose macaroni and cheese (homemade), mini-sweet pickles, and squishy bread for her birthday dinner. (Squishy bread is what she calls the supermarket French bread, without a thick crust. You know, as opposed to her mother's homemade bread, which is not squishy.)
  • G. is having a stir--fried spicy pork and cabbage mixture which is served wrapped in tortillas with hoisin sauce. Kind of like a variation on mu shu pork.
  • I heard Fluffy the Rooster (not to be confused with Rooster the Rooster) crow for the first time today. That's not to say it's the first time he's crowed... he has been waking people up for many days now... it was just the first time I've heard him. 
  • I just finished reading The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See. (I realized a put a spoiler in. Stop reading now, if that will bother you.) I enjoyed it, especially learning about one of the ethnic minorities in China. I enjoyed it even though at the end it fell heavily into the fairy-tale-y, marry the uber-rich, but fantastically wonderful man, and have everything work out perfectly sort of ending. I like happy endings, but there are happy endings and there are happy endings. That's probably a spoiler, huh? Sorry.
  • The children have loved having their father home for the past week. We will have to come up with some sort of schedule to keep us all on track as the summer progresses, but we're giving ourselves a few days' grace before than. 



  • With our change in employment, I'm going to keep reminding of you about P.'s Go Fund Me page. we have until November to figure out how to pay the balance which she will owe. It becomes a little trickier, given the circumstances.

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