Last day of school

Well, today is daughter's last few minutes of school. I'm not exactly why they insisted on having the kids go to school today as they will get out of school 2 hours after they get there. Seems like a waste of time to me, but I guess the kids will enjoy saying goodbye to all of their friends. And maybe the school district needed a couple more hours of school to have the right number of days for the year. Whatever.

We were going to have lunch in the park and try our hand at geocaching today, but now that it's raining outside I'm not sure what we'll do. Maybe we'll go to a kids' museum or something like that.

Son is mostly over his cold now. Yesterday he was sneezing out lots of yucky stuff, but after a great night's sleep in his own bed he seems to be better. Yay! He stayed in his own bed ALL night, which was great timing since the night before he kept me awake almost the whole night with his kicking. I was ready to go sleep on the couch if he did it again.

The garden and pumpkin patch are enjoying the rain, I'm sure. I seem to have lots of volunteer plants in random places throughout the garden. I noticed I have a volunteer tomato in with the butternut squash, one in the pumpkin patch and another one in with the beets. And yesterday I noticed I had a volunteer watermelon in with the beets, too. When I looked at the compost pike the other day I noticed a bunch of little pumpkin plants sprouting in the middle. I guess those came from the rotten pumpkins we threw in it last fall. Last year my volunteer plants did almost better than the ones I planted. My spinach is starting to show signs of flowering, which is not good. But I guess I've gotten quite a bit of baby spinach out of the patch anyway, so if it bolts it's not a tragedy. And the lettuce is growing like crazy. I think hubby is getting tired of salads already, but he better get used to it! :)

Rachel's Bean and Corn salad/salsa

Rachel made this awesome bean and corn salad at playgroup the other day, and I couldn't stop eating it. So I made some for dinner the other night with a few modifications based on what I had on hand. It wasn't quite as good as hers but was still pretty tasty. Thought I'd share the recipe.

Rachel's corn and bean salad

vinaigrette:
1/4 cup lime juice (1 lime is about perfect)
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
1 tbsp. honey
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. chili powder
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
3 tbsp. olive oil

salad:
1 cup fresh or frozen corn (I used about a cup and a half)
2 cans black beans (drained and rinsed)
2 cups chopped tomato
1/2 cup chopped red onion
1/2 cup chopped green onion
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 tsp. cumin seed

mix together, pour vinaigrette over salad and mix well. refrigerate a couple hours before serving to let the flavors blend well.

Random stuff

So, I don't have much to write this time, but it's been a while since I wrote anything. So here goes. Today is daughter's ballet/tap recital. She had her dress rehearsal a few days ago, and as long as the teacher in the wings doesn't mess them up with the wrong steps (she did this twice during the rehearsal), they should do ok. We're thinking of going to see Up or Night at the Museum 2 as a treat after the recital.

Maybe before it's time to go I'll get out and weed more of the garden. There's a row at the very front that never got weeded when the we did the rest of the garden, mostly because it was the worst one and hardest to weed. But it's got really tall grass in it now and It's looking pretty bad. The rest of the garden is looking great. The beets are growing really well, zucchini, butternut squash, pumpkins, red cabbage, lettuce, spinach, potatoes, peas, corn, green beans, soy beans, cukes, chard, watermelon & Onions, leeks are all growing like crazy. Broccoli, parsnips, green cabbage and rutabaga are growing pretty slowly, but I think that's ok. I've already been able to harvest enough lettuce, spinach, chard and beet greens to have salad for the family every night this week!

I think the little baby starts that got planted in friends' gardens all over the place are doing well, too. I'm not sure if they've started eating theirs yet, but they probably could tear off a leaf here and there to eat. I took a few zucchini starts to friends the other day. Hopefully they've got them in the ground by now (hint hint). :) And, Kate, I've got a couple more zucchini starts you can have if you want them. Just let me know.

Friday was Daughter's last Daisy scout meeting for the year, and of course she left her uniform in her dad's car that morning. They decorated daisy cookies, made little daisy bracelets and had a little graduation ceremony where they all got a fun patch to put on their uniform. She'll still be a Daisy next year, but she'll graduate into selling cookies. I think we're going to be in trouble then. :)

This whole month is crazy busy for me. Our family has a ton of June birthdays, Father's Day, etc. to do, and I've got a lot of MOMS Club stuff to finish up before passing the torch on to the new president. I just finished the Annual and Financial reports the other day and will mail them on Monday. We had our Board transition meeting and I handed the president binder to the new president. The last thing to do is plan the End of Year party. I still need to compile and print all of our fun awards, print our game directions, shop for the food and clean the house. When that's over then I'm going to sleep for a week before I emerge and have to start planning our 4th of July party...oh, wait, I don't have a whole week between those 2. :oP

We are the Cure!

This Sunday my MOMS Club friends and I walked and ran with thousands of others in the Susan G. Komen Puget Sound Race for the Cure. It was a sea of pink of white walking up and down the Viaduct as we all made our way 2.5Km away from Qwest Field and 2.5 Km back again. Along the way we were cheered on by teenagers standing on the sidelines chanting "Mammograms and Breast Exams" and such. Some of the names of the teams were great. I saw one called "Save the Tatas", one that read "Save Second Base", another that said "Boobs: Love 'em, Rub 'em, Save 'em". Several people, men and women, were decked out in pink tutus, pink wigs, sequins, and hats with flamingos. One woman walked with a stroller filled with a half mannequin painted with pictures and slogan such as "I've faced death now I embrace life". But the most memorable things of all were the pink papers a lot of people had pinned to their race numbers. They said "In celebration of..." and "In memory of...". So many people had long lists of friends and family members who were survivors of breast cancer and many who had lost their battles. At the end of the walk we made our way back to the field where we watched the Survivor Parade. Here hundreds of women walked behind signs designating how many years they had survived breast cancer. Some of those brave women had survived 25+ years and some were under a year.

It was a very inspiring day! Our MOMS Club team exceeded our $2000 fundraiser goal for the race, raising $2735. I also exceeded my personal goal of $500 and raised $790! Thanks to all of you who supported me or the MOMS Club team. To make a donation to the Susan G. Komen foundation click here. We are the cure!

Bees a buzzin'

Our yard is covered in bees! We have rhododendrons, azaleas & lilacs in bloom and the bumble bees are swarming them. The whole tree looks alive with them moving all around. (yes our rhodies are definitely trees rather than bushes!) And I can't keep from smelling the lilacs every time I go out in the yard. I love that smell!

I put a few more of my starts in the garden the other day. I now have rutabega, green cabbage, green beans and butternut squash in the garden. I put the rutabega in the spot that held my pak choi. I pulled them out the other day when a few of them started to bolt. I'm just not sure how to grow pak choi. I started them early and planted them in the garden in early April. They really didn't grow until it got warmer these past few weeks, but I guess it's now too warm for them. But we ate them anyway, and they were a nice addition to the baby lettuce and baby spinach I got out of the garden. I just picked a few leaves off each plant so they'd all keep growing.

I got rid of a few more of my red cabbage starts today. I now have just a few red and green leaf lettuce and a very few red cabbage starts left, and I think they will all go to Rachel on Friday. Yay!

Ferry ride to the Island

Yesterday we decided to spend the beautiful day on Bainbridge Island. We got on the ferry just as it was pulling out into the water; perfect timing. The kids love to stand in the wind at the front of the ferry, so we went up stairs and went outside. Dummy me, I didn't even think about the wind and when son stepped over to look out at the water his Clifford the big red dog hat blew right off his head and over the side of the ferry. He was really upset (and so was I), so we had to go back inside and sit for a minute. We talked it over and after a while decided that he wanted his hat to go into the water because a turtle or a fish really needed a nice hat like his. Crisis averted and fun day saved.

We'd never been to Bainbridge before so we went downtown to see what was there. We had lunch then had Ice cream at Mora. I guess this is THE place to go, and after eating the dark chocolate mint I can see why! Yummy! My plan was to find some hiking and maybe a beach. So we headed to the Grand Forest thinking that with a name like that it had to be good. Well, after driving around for a while with a map and a GPS we couldn't even find it. So we went to this park with a HUGE castle playground. I don't think I've ever seen a bigger play structure than this one. They had bridges, lookout towers, xylophones, ladders, climbing walls, swings and even a little covered sitting space in the middle for the parents. I want one of these here! We all loved the playground, and when the kids' faces got a little too red from the heat we got back in the car and went in search of hiking. Next we tried the Gazzam lake park. This one was almost as hard to find as the Grand Forest. We drove on these little non-maintained roads until we found a small sign for the park and a closed gate. No luck here.

Next stop was the Faye Bainbridge State Park. A state park has to be be easy to find and open, right? Right! This one was pretty nice. They had spots for camping, bathrooms and a nice Big sign that was easy to see! I was expecting a sandy beach here, but didn't find that. It had a TON of drift wood that you had to climb over to get to the beach, then the beach was all rocks (smooth rocks but rocks all the same). We got there at low tide, so there was about 10 or more feet of this seaweed covered "beach" with little tide pools before you got to the water. Well, this turned out to be better than a sandy beach would have been. The kids loved the tide pools. They were filled with tiny crabs, shells, sea weed and lots of wet sand. Daughter collected a lot of perfect shells in her bucket while son dug holes in the sand and made mud pies. Fun!

We then had dinner at this place that had terrible service but ok food and got back on the ferry home. This time we stayed in the car and used our binoculars to look out at the sail boats and Mt. Rainier. The kids were asleep by the time we got home. So they got carried up to bed and slept through getting their pj's on.

I think when we go again we'll just go straight to the beach and skip the search for the hiding forests. (Pictures will be added later)

Lost Teeth and Veggie Starts

Daughter lost her first tooth yesterday evening! She's had shark teeth for some time now where 2 of her adult teeth are growing in behind her bottom front baby teeth. The dentist told her to wiggle the baby teeth until she could pull them out on her own or she'd have to have the dentist "wiggle" them out for her. So she's been working really hard to get those teeth to be wiggly and get them out. Yesterday at school the tooth was so wiggly that they nurse gave her the little tooth box to hang around her neck to put the tooth in when it fell out. But it didn't fall out at school; when she got home it was hanging by a thread. After bath she was really working on it and finally yanked it out. She put the tooth in her little tooth box that she bought at the Tulip festival; and during the night the tooth fairy left her $2! I believe that the tooth fairy was just glad that the tooth finally came out and will not be quite so generous with the teeth that come out next. :)

Son and I went from house to house today planting veggie starts in friends' pots and gardens. Well, actually the friends and I did the planting while son played. I brought both flats of starts to the first house early this morning, where 2 friends and I filled every pot and available garden space with lettuce, beets, carrots and cabbage and still had one whole flat left over. Then after spending a glorious day at the park with MOMS Club friends I went to my friend Kate's house. There we created a 7' x 10' garden space, framed it with wood found behind her compost bin and planted a ton of veggies. I found some strawberries growing wild in some weeds; so we dug those up and planted them in pots and in various places around the yard. So from the start of the day till the end I planted those little baby veggies all over. Spreadin' the love and the produce!