cvirtue | Entries tagged with nibling

Yesterday started just after midnight, as Arthur was sick to his stomach. For six hours. Eventually it quieted down, and we headed to Karen's house for Gabby's birthday, and to the photographer session for family photographs as a present to Mom for her recent birthday.

The photography session went well, even though Arthur was queasy the whole time and spent most of the time apart from the photography asleep in Karen's bed. (He's still poorly today.) Gabby enjoyed her presents (we gave her mostly doll clothes for the Rebecca doll she received for Xmas) and her pink angel food cake with purple frosting.

This morning, Liz got sealant on her newest molars, and then she and I went to Dabbler's (in West Concord, easy to reach by Commuter Rail) so that I could work on the stocking order for the Ukrainian Egg Decorating. The first class is a week from today, and western Easter is about a month after that. Orthodox Easter is in May. This year, I've made an Egg Tree (like an ornament tree) to display the eggs in the store. Maybe we'll have fewer kids grabbing them!

I'm very excited to be doing my third year of egg teaching for the store. Y'all come on down, have lunch, learn something!

Dabblers' Hobbies + Cafe

Edit at 1am: Back from the ER for nausea meds and IV fluids. Fun. At least they had cable TV, and I brought books and things.

Crossposts: http://cvirtue.livejournal.com/1930978.html

Today went down to see Karen & Gabrielle, and we packed a picnic and went to Plum Beach in Narragansett. That link will take you to a view of the new bridge under construction (it's now completed.)

It's a private country club sort of place in the warm weather, but during the winter it's open to all (at least unofficially.) Beachcombing there is like shooting fish in a barrel - drifts of shells. The bulk of the shells are boat/slipper/ark shells, with a lot of scallop and old man's toenails which are sort of like a cross between capiz and oysters. When you have a bunch of them and jostle them around, they have a lovely jingle/clinkling noise.

Crossposts: http://cvirtue.livejournal.com/1874205.html

Had our first real video call with Karen and Gabrielle today. I look forward to the day when the kids don't spend the whole time making crazy faces and holding objects 2" in front of the camera lens. I hope this was due to the novelty.

Arthur finished his Unit 2 (in year 1) of Spanish Rosetta Stone today, so he gets to go out to lunch at a place of his choice.

Tomorrow is their birthday party with friends at a paint-your-own pottery place. We hope that Elizabeth's best friend can attend; she's having a rocky time in her foster home and it's been threatened that she can't attend if she doesn't shape up, apparently. Sigh.

Crossposts: http://cvirtue.livejournal.com/1872729.html

Edit:
She's fine now. This happened late last night.

K has ended up in the ER yet again for eating foods for which tests said she was not allergic. At this point we're starting to wonder if she's allergic to preservatives.

It's darn frustrating for her, and for those of us who wish we could help, and who would really like to hold some allergist's feet to the fire to be more aggressive with diagnosis. Fortunately she has some good friends on whom she can foist Gabrielle, who is three*.

*"Almost FOUR!" corrects Karen, virtually. Ok ok, "3 and 3/4 years." But if you asked for four pounds of prosciutto at the deli, and they gave you 3.75 pounds, you'd ask for a little more, wouldn't you?

Crossposts: http://cvirtue.livejournal.com/1837793.html

Note: Those of you who liked my Links to Share postings, I'm posting a lot of them on FB these days, because it's so quick. If it's something I feel like discussing at more length, I'll still be posting them here.

On Saturday we did our weekly "One-on-One Time" which is our solution to the problem of how to spend quality time with twins when Mommy tends to have lots of projects and Daddy spends 12-14 hours a day holding down a job. He barely sees them on weekdays, although he is usually home in time to read to them before bed.

This was inspired by what my parents did for us under not-dissimilar circumstances (Dad was in the Air Force,) we each had a weeknight we got to stay up an hour later than usual, to do things with Dad. I haven't a clue what we actually did during those sessions, though! (Memory failure is damned annoying.)

At any rate, Metageek and Elizabeth worked on green-screen techniques for photographing dolls, and Arthur played with my father's 1940s-era Erector Set. He found it a little frustrating, as the instructions consisted of a drawing of the finished item with little lines and labels showing the parts that went to make it, if you were lucky; sometimes the illustration had no labels whatsoever. While he was working on that, I sat next to him on the couch and took grapes off of vines for the second batch of grape jelly.

On Sunday, Karen and Gabrielle came up here, and we went to Chili's for lunch and then to a local multi-attraction apple picking farm. It was PACKED with families, but we fortunately fell between two huge swells of people and it was merely Extremely Crowded, so Metageek only spent 15 minutes in one of the many lines to buy a bag for the apples, instead of 30+ minutes as appeared to be the line length when we departed. (At these places, you buy their special sack, and that's your "ticket" to get on the hayride out to the apple trees.) We often go to a quieter place, but this busy location was fun for a multiple-household outing.

Considering how often they tell you how to pick apples and what to do with ones you don't want, and not to pick apples in rows not designated by orange cones (aren't ripe yet) it was astonishing to me how many people I saw doing all of the things they tell you not to do, and more. No wonder the cost of the apples is so high; you're not only "buying the experience," you're paying for all the lost apples and damage to the trees caused by idiots. Sigh.

Crossposts: http://cvirtue.livejournal.com/1830431.html

Yesterday, with Gabrielle, I harvested a large kettle of Concord grapes from the arbor. There are several kettles more still hanging, which I may or may not get to.

A heaping kettle of clusters, once I took the grapes off the stems and boiled them (no water) came to about a third of a kettle of grape juice; when the 1.5x amount of sugar was mixed in, it came to about half a kettle. I jarred four pint jars and one quart jar, and had a small bowlful left over.

I tried something new: I like the idea of grape JAM, but it's a hassle to take the seeds out by hand, so what I did is used my immersion blender on the boiled grapes, and then put the whole pot in a sieve with holes too small for the seeds to pass through, but large enough for some grape skin fiber to pass. It is cloudy, but yummy.

Tip: after I drained the juice out of the boiled grapes, the resultant mash was so redolent that I put it in a pot with another 4 cups of water, and then strained it again. That plus some sugar became grape juice for drinking; clearly less flavorful than what was going into the jelly, but still far-and-away better than the stuff you buy at the store.

Crossposts: http://cvirtue.livejournal.com/1829165.html

It's not every day you get to give your sister heat stroke.

The morning was spent straightening up the house; doing exciting things like cleaning the bathroom and so on, and Karen and Gabrielle arrived around 1pm. Shortly thereafter we departed to drop a car off at Great Brook, then returned home to depart on foot to walk to the ice cream stand at Great Brook.

This was the first time Gabrielle had walked it with us, although I think Karen had walked it with us a few years back. It's about 1.5 miles one way, and the day was hot, but the ice cream was tasty at the end. We threw sticks and leaves in the stream at the bridge.

I grilled many things for supper -- really great "weisswurst" from WF, some Neiman Andouille, and some good hot dogs; zucchini and asparagus, pineapple, and packets of apples+brown sugar+ cinnamon, the latter going on vanilla ice cream for dessert. Unfortunately Karen had some kind of reaction to the day or other things, and she spent supper and much of the evening lying in bed, while the rest of us got to have fun with Gabrielle. They ended up spending the night, and she felt much better in the morning.

I've now given Dabbler's notice that I won't be coming back to work after summer vacation.

*Not actually heat stroke, but she thought it was for a while.

Crossposts: http://cvirtue.livejournal.com/1814688.html

After my egg class yesterday, during which

metageek took the kids to miniature golf at a nice place, we had our "Google buys ITA celebration." It was everything I wanted it to be.

We went early to Outback Steakhouse, arriving about 5:15pm. We are shifting our alliance from Chili's, because at Outback, they make things fresh on site, instead of mostly cooking them offsite and heating it up when ordered. Of course this means it takes a little longer, but we have found it to taste better.

Then we considered a movie, and found the movie we thought was still in the theaters was older than we thought, but was available on Blu-Ray for less than paying for all four of us to go to the movie theater, so we went to Target to get it and some ice cream for dessert.

Upon arriving home, we all changed into jammies, moved the couch close to the TV, and snuggled down to watch Tangled, which was excellent. The kids were scooped into bed about 9pm.

Today will be another warm Spring day. After a little housework, I hope to make the second swarm box, and then the kids and I are going to visit my sister and mother and nibling. The swarm box needs to be ready ASAP, because as the weather warms, the likelihood of swarming increases, and the boxes have to be ready to be discovered.

I see that LJ is under attack again this morning.