Happy Easter!!

HAPPY EASTER!!!

HE IS RISEN!!! 

We had a wonderful Easter today.  I made our usual Easter dinner and wanted to try the "stained glass" or "marbled" Deviled Eggs that I had seen on Pinterest.  They turned out awesome and were a big hit.  :-)

Tasty!

Our youngest Easter Bunny with the colored eggs

and his Peeps on a stick that I made for the

kiddos as part of their Easter basket candy.

Son #6

CUTE!!!

Our Easter Activities Coordinator!

Daughter #2

Check out those nifty socks!!

The Ellis Family 2013

Hope you had a blessed Easter too!!

Q Aftermath

Well, we did get some snow.  And some sleet.  Actually it was sleet, then snow, and then more sleet.  About 7 or 8 inches total.  The top was thick and crunchy enough for the Dachshunds to walk on!!  But the temperatures were above freezing today and everything is already melting into history.  DH and his uncle took turns playing working hard with the snow-blower to clear pathways to walk and the driveways in case we needed to go somewhere.

The Robins here don't migrate.

The other day I was walking one of the dogs and

I discovered a whole flock of Robins looking for

treats in the wooded area next door to us.  There

were at least 20 of them and I wished that I had

had the camera with me because I've never seen a

whole group of Robins like that before.  :-)

The sun was trying to peak out of the clouds and was

very pretty on the snow.

By the time I got the the picture I wanted the sun

had went back behind the clouds.

But here it is!!

The sun and snow are just beautiful together!!

Son #6

Does anyone else's children like to lay down in the snow?

Crazy!!!

The three youngest boys (#4, 5, 6)

Son #5 is ready to attack with his Bokken sword and the

other boys aren't even paying attention!

Behind the boys is our mobile home that we are slowly remodeling.  We have been working to replace the windows and rotten wood (LOTS of rotten wood).  Whenever we get a warmish day DH works on it as much as he's able.  We have the one new window in at the left side and have removed one that was leaking badly between the new one and the large window beside the door.  The large window beside the door is ready to be taken out and 2 new smaller ones ready to be put in--in place of the 1 large one.  We are also replacing the blue vinyl siding for white siding to help keep the heat down in the summer.  We have so many enormous shade trees growing all over the property--except to shade our mobile home.  Go figure.

Anyway...

So, now I'm pretty much done with winter.  Can we have some spring soon?  Please!!

Poor Little Livy

We've been occupied as of late with our poor little Dachshund Olivia (fondly known as Livy).  Nearly a month ago we noticed that she seemed to be hurting and not wanting to move around much.  Sometimes she would yelp for no reason and just wasn't up to par.  We noticed a spot about 3 inches above her tail that had started to swell.  We took her in to the vet and they said it was degenerative disc disease.  Dachshunds are the poster child for this disease and about 10% of them have it.  :-(

About 4 months old

2009

She has green eyes and a brown nose.

I had never seen a dog with green eyes before Livy.

They gave her a steroid shot, some meds to take home and strict orders for us to keep her in a crate/kennel.  She did great for almost a week and then hurt herself in her crate.  It's a small crate and there wasn't enough room for her to move around and get comfortable.  This time though she was in a lot of pain and her back legs became paralyzed.  It was horrible!!!

Another trip to the vet and another steroid shot!!  Sigh.  We got her a clear storage bucket that was larger than her crate and put a heating pad and a stuffed toy to keep her company and she's been doing a lot better.  It's been almost 2 weeks since the last vet visit and she has regained much of the use of her back legs though she's still very wobbly.  We're hoping that in another month she will be fully recovered.  The vet says that if she heals up she may not have any more problems but we have to keep her off steps and from jumping.  Thankfully she's been good about that kind of stuff and it's a mystery how she got hurt in the first place.  The vet said that some dogs don't do anything--the disc just goes bad. 

Such a beautiful girl!!

Doing what weiner dogs do best!

Top: Uno

Center: Livy

Bottom: Oliver

We hope she makes a full recovery and gets back to her old adorible self.  She's such a sweet doggie and we love her a bunch!!  DH says she's the best dog we've ever had.

Some Visitors

We've had some visitors lately...

Guess who's come to dinner...

Newly hatched squash bugs on a pumpkin plant.

Those guys are just creepy no matter what stage they're in!

I've been using Pyola once or twice a week and

still having a terrible time keeping up! 

"By the sweat of your brow" is taking on a new meaning!!

And a welcome visitor...

Mourning Cloak Butterfly

Doesn't it look quite weary and tattered?

Amazingly, it was able to fly away without any apparent trouble.

Son #1 brought his family for a visit last weekend.  We're always so happy to see them. 

Grandson #1 was excited to be able to play in the swimming pool

and the littler ones (and mommy and daddy) were content

to play on the teeter totter.

Daughter in law sent me this picture today...

Precious!

From Left to Right: 

Grandson #3 1 year old next month

Grandson #2 3 years old

Grandson #1 4 years old

This holiday weekend we will be gifted with a visit of the remnants of Isaac.  They're forcasting 2 to 4 inches of rain for our area and I will be happy to see it!!  Hopefully it's not the "gully-washer" kind and comes steady and gentle to moderate.  Hey, I can dream, can't I?  :-) 

Have a blessed and wonderful Labor Day Weekend!!!  :-)

P.S. As of Thursday morning they've updated our rain forcast to be 6-12 inches. Joy. NOT!

Catching Up

Sorry I haven't posted more often.  Busy, busy, busy!!!  :-)

Aside from normal everyday stuff, I am working to preserve the veggies that have survived the horrible, killing heat.  I recently canned 15 pints of the best salsa I ever tasted!!  You can find out how to do it here.  And my latest project was "gummy worms" made from zucchini which you can learn about here.  None of my own pictures since I've just been too rushed. 

Our tomato plants are in a lull.  There are a few tomatoes that we have left to ripen and we have many new blooms but the tsunami of tomatoes is over for now.  I'm hoping for another go around in a few weeks or so.  I still haven't come close to meeting my quota of diced tomatoes that I had hoped for (100 pints and 50 quarts).  I managed, give or take, 25 quarts and 15 pints so far.  We eat them sliced for meals or for mid-day snacks too (and we do share with extended family and friends).  Plus there was the salsa mentioned above.  Not too bad, all things considered.  Sadly, I let a big batch get away from me when I couldn't find the time to process them and they ended up in the compost pile.  :-(  Ripe vegetables wait for no man (or woman!).

I've replanted cucumber seeds since the heat killed the others.  I did put up about 5 gallons of pickles and 30 smaller jars of relish.  I'm hoping to be able to process many more jars of pickles to get us through the winter--the ones that I made are already pretty much gone  The relish is from my all time favorite recipe found here.  I LOVE it!!

I bought some new green bean seeds to replant as well since I only ended up getting a meal's worth from ours (the heat burned the bush beans up and my pole beans got a mosaic virus so I pulled them up).  Gonna try to get those planted today.  Unless something weird happens weather-wise I should get a nice harvest before the cold weather truly hits.  I'm hoping for the best but considering how this year has went so far, I'm not holding my breath.  :-) 

My garlic harvest was disappointing.  The heads/cloves all turned out pretty small but I guess that I should be thankful that they survived at all.

It's time to be getting ready for a winter garden.  I'm hoping to make some coldframes like we did here.  I'd love to try winter cabbage and carrots especially.

And like most gardeners, I am already thinking about next year's garden and how to improve things.  We would really love to have all of the garden area close by and since our front yard was decimated by the chickens last fall/winter we're thinking about building a bunch of raised beds there for everything.  Thankfully we don't have neighbors or any home owners associations to throw a fit and we are rural enough that we don't have to worry about any city officials coming to demand we tear it all out since "front yards are for grass only".  Didn't you know?  Grrrrrrr!!

(click on the picture to read about the "war on gardens"!)

I mean honestly, this is an enviable work of art!!!

The other day I was walking around outside and saw this enormous wasp kind of thing buzzing clumsily about and wondered what in the world it was.  I had seen them before but never could keep it close long enough to identify it.  Then yesterday the kiddos skimmed this creature out of our pool...

Can you see the size of that stinger?  Ouch!

I finally got a chance to identify it at my leisure and discovered that it is a Cicada Killer.  I know that Cicadas do a lot of damage to the trees and such but I do love their buzzing in the dry days of summer.  In fact I can even tell you when I heard my first one this year... June 20th.  :-)  We have a lot of fun finding the empty Cicada shells (exoskeletons that they outgrow) and "playing" with them (putting them on our clothes or in our hair--the brave children put them on their faces.  :-P)

Son #3 in 2000 while we were in Michigan for the

birth of Son #5 (who was diagnosed with Hypoplastic

Left Heart Syndrome but was healed in the womb).

Excuse the bad exposure of this scanned photo!  ;-)

Daughter #1 with her Cicada "skins". 

Apparently she doesn't like them on her face like her

brother did!  :-)

I hope that everyone is enjoying their last few days of summer before Memorial Day hits and we have to truly start thinking about fall.  :-)

Weekly Wrap Up 5/27-6/2

Our weekly comings and goings...

While out in one of the garden areas we discovered one of my in-laws cats had some sort of critter.  I thought it was a mole and since they've been wreaking havoc in the gardens I chose to turn away and let nature eliminate a pest.  Then the critter broke free started hopping around.  Not a mole.  A bunny!!  A baby bunny.  So we shooed the kitty off and picked up the terrified bunny.  (Sorry about the fuzzy pictures but I didn't want to use the flash and scare the bunny.  As if being nearly killed by a cat and held by humans wasn't scary enough!!)

Daughter #4 holding the bunny.

Son #6 isn't so sure about this.

Son #4 holding the bunny.

Wonderfully camouflaged.

Goodbye little bunny!

Grow and be happy!

The evil predator kitty!

A relative perhaps.

A nuch bigger bunny with a robin friend nearby.

A Red Eared Slider like our Squirtle--only bigger.

This turtle was about 6 or 7 inches long so not completely full grown yet.

There is a pond about 1/4 of a mile from our place.

We've seen this guy around a couple of times.

I'm watching you!!

Cabbage White Butterfly

The butterfly who lays the eggs that become cabbage worms.

This butterfly fluttered around my brassicas all day.

I will have to stay vigilant to keep my veggies from total infestation!!

Fledgling robin we found hopping around on the back of our property.

We could hear mommy or daddy close by.

This is our front garden with the tomatoes staked and caged.

The peppers are in front and still quite small.

I've been looking around and it seems like these plants

look pretty much the same size as everyone else's.

Which isn't too bad really. 

But check out our tomato plants in our side garden!!

They are huge!!

They were planted two weeks earlier than the ones

in the front garden.

The cages here are the same size as the ones in the front garden.

Here's Daughter #4 standing next to our tallest tomato plant.

The cages are 6 ft. tall.

Daughter #4 is 5'5" tall.

Do you see how big my cucumber plants are

along the bottom sides of the cages?

They are already loaded with blooms.  :-)

The sunflowers that I planted in front of the cages

are sprouting and will hopefully grow big and tall.

This week promises to be busy and exciting with family coming in from out of state, the Partial Lunar Eclipse on June 4th (which will be tricky but maybe we'll get to see it) and the transit of Venus across the sun on June 5th. Looks like we'll be able to use those Eclipse glasses after all!!

Hoping everyone has a wonderful and blessed new week!!!

Ramblings...

I got a surprise earlier today when I went for my evening stroll through the gardens. It had cooled off from today's high of 94 to a "chilly" 85 and I was taking advantage of the cooler temps. :-) Imagine my shock when finding my Umpqua broccoli just skeletons of their former beautiful selves of just yesterday.

This was the culprit...

Cabbage Worms!!!  Ugh!!

This was just one of many!!!

They blend in perfectly and it was quite hard to find them at first!

I picked them off by hand.

The chickens enjoyed these wiggly green treats!!

The broccoli went from looking like this...

To looking like this...

I had noticed a few small holes but wow!! Hmmm. Very hungry caterpillars!!! :-(

My Indigo Rose tomatoes are ripening already!!  I'm impressed!!  Can't wait to pop one of these beauties into my mouth!!!  :-)

Our Squirtle is doing well. I still have yet to see him eat anything. We bought tiny little pellets for hatchlings and he will snap at them but he just kind of blows them away from himself. I would assume he is victorious with them at some point because he appears to be growing a tiny bit and is quite lively. He sure is a funny little thing.

This week we lost one of our beloved parakeets, Elizabeth (Will passed away three years ago--they were named when Pirates of the Caribbean was first out)  She is the little turquoise and white one (sorry the pic isn't properly focused--buy hey, those bars are pretty clear!)  The green, yellow and blue parakeet is "Handsome" whom we bought to replace Will.

The day before she died, the cage door somehow got opened and she escaped. We haven't let the birds out in a while because this place is so small with so many of us running in and out all the time--not very bird safe. But I really was intending to exercise them soon! Anywho, the kitty--Fluffy--happened to be inside (I was outside during the ordeal) and she caught the bird. The bird wasn't hurt because the kids swooped her up as soon as Fluffy caught her. I wondered if she would be alright since birds have very weak hearts and this wouldn't be the first parakeet we've had to die of "fright". But she appeared none the worse for her adventure. Until the next day. I was getting ready to make supper when I heard some squawking in the cage and looked in to find her lying on the cage floor.  Poor little thing.  We had her nearly 10 years (give or take).  She was a brute with the other birds--quite a bully.  But she was very pretty and had a sweet voice. 

Now, of course, the kiddos are asking about another parakeet.  And it just so happens that PetSmart is having a sale.  :-) 

Son #6 is the big animal lover right now.  When we found Squirtle he asked if we could keep him.  After I told him that we could he said very enthusiastically, "Yes!  We finally have a pet!!"  Then I asked him, "Well, what about the dogs, cat, birds and chickens?"  He was like, "Oh. Yeah.  I forgot about them."  Too funny!!  If it were up to me and the children, we would have a regular zoo!!  Thankfully we have DH (NOT and animal lover) to balance us out.  :-)


We have begun our Summer Session of homeschool now.  I am enjoying public school being out so that the kids can go outside during "school hours" now without worry.  Since we live along the highway I don't care for the children being out and about where they might be thought of as "truant".  It's a little different than being at our old homestead out in the middle of nowhere where we could come and go as we pleased.  But this is ok. 

We homeschool year round and take off as needed and during major holidays.  Usually we take off from Thanksgiving until after New Year's day!!  We work to get in 38 to 40 weeks of school and only do 4 days worth of work in a week.  We're pretty relaxed. 


Hope everyone is enjoying their Memorial Day weekend!!!  I'm hoping we survive the record high temperatures--at least the garden plants are loving the sun and warmth!! 

Our Newest Addition...

We have a new pet.

As if 5 dogs, a cat, 2 parakeets and 12 chickens weren't enough. :-)

So, here is our latest addition...

A very young Red Eared Slider turtle.

We've named him Squirtle.

I made the name up myself--a cross between "Squirt" from Finding Nemo and "turtle".

Then the kids informed me that there is a character on Pokemon named Squirtle.

That's where they thought I got the name from.

Well, I don't watch Pokemon!! ;-)

Honestly I think I like "Fred" better--which was my first name for him.

I try to name everything Fred.

Don't know why.

I guess I just like the name Fred?

Isn't he so cute??

This is his home while he's small.

(I'm just saying "he" for convenience--I really don't know how to tell the difference!)

He's semi-aquatic and should have access to water to swim in.

He loves the water!!

As he grows we'll have to upgrade his living quarters.

This is his home security system.

Should keep most critters out.

I'm having trouble getting him to eat.  :-(

We've tried a worm (I even cut it up for him!  Blah!!).

I've tried lettuce and apples.

Tomorrow I'll go buy some fish and some turtle chow.

He's very lively and alert so I don't think he's starving.

Daughter #4 found him by our back mobile home while walking around outside yesterday morning. I've read that they tend to hang out near water--rivers and ponds. We haven't got anything like that nearby. And although they can walk long distances, I just can't see this little guy coming from the "nearest" pond or river!! So I'm wondering if some bird didn't drop him off in our yard! Go figure.

This breed of turtle, if kept as a pet, can't be returned to "the wild".  So if we keep him he will have to be looked after (they can live up to 40 years!!).  I'm envisioning a fenced in, naturalized area of our yard with a small "pond" (aka sunken kiddie pool with a heater in the winter) with aquatic plants and a nice sunny rock or log to sunbathe on.  There should be wildflowers all around.  Nothing poisonous, of course since they are herbivores as they get older (carnivores while young--weird, huh?). 

Son #6 asked me, "Who do you think will die first?  You?  Or Squirtle?"  Gee, I guess if he lives 40 years I'll only be a young, playful 86.  Definitely the turtle!  ;-)

I've never "owned" a turtle before although when I was about 4 or 5 I got my pinky stuck in a turtle shell when he closed himself up while I was holding him.  My mom and grandma had to get a screwdriver and pry his shell apart a wee bit to get my finger loose!!  Not fun--for any of us, I'm sure!  Seems I was a little leery of turtles after that!!


In other important areas of life...

We got the tomato cages up in the front garden area and the tomatoes are starting to really take off.

See all the help I get in the garden?  Well, I do enjoy the company anyway.  :-)

Son #5 hanging out with him mom in the garden.

Yes, I'm afraid that vampires are real!!  This guy was huge!!  I think he might have previously worked for Red Cross!!!  Yikes!!

My arm--as the main course!

We're hoping to catch the Annular Eclipse tomorrow!!  There's clouds and rain in the forecast.  Naturally.  Yes, story of my life.  But hopefully we'll be able to catch it.  We have Eclipse Glasses (kinda like the disposable 3D glasses only really dark "lenses") that I bought years ago.  (It's weird to look through them and see how small the sun really is.)  We're in an area that won't see the "total" eclipse but just a partial one.  It would be wonderful to be at the Grand Canyon for this but alas, it's just not going to happen.  :-)

If you get a chance to check the eclipse out, do so safely!!!  There's lots of info on the Internet about watching safely. 

Have a blessed Sunday!!

Easter Reflections...

I hope that everybody had an awesome Easter Sunday...

Celebrating our Risen Lord!!

We had a great weekend!!

Son #3 came for a visit and brought along Daughter #2 and

 my sister's 2 youngest kids...

Cousins #5 and #6.

It was a blast!

Easter booty!!  Woo Hoo!!

We don't really eat a lot of candy anymore--but we do

indulge on Easter.

Son #6 was my egg coloring helper since

most of the other kids were having a good time

with their guests.  He really had a lot of fun getting

to do the eggs without his older brothers (or sisters)

taking over the project.  :-)

The birthday girls.

This year their birthdays fell just a few days before Easter.

Daughter #2 has her birthday one day before

Daughter #4.

One year, when Daughter #2 was just 3 or 4, her birthday

fell on Easter.  She was really angry to discover the next year

that it wasn't on Easter again. 

She fussed and fumed for weeks!!  ;-)

This year Son #3 took the Birthday Girls and Cousin #5

out to the movies to see The Hunger Games. 

Of course they loved it (though they said it was stressful).  :-)

Daughter #4 and Cousin #5.

Best Friends!!

They are just a few months apart in age.

The "little" boys.

Bundles of energy, always on the go.

All the kiddos present.

They're so goofy!!  Never a dull moment!!

Do you see the ball that Son #6 stuck up his shirt?

My Kombucha was a huge hit!!!

I gave Son #3 his own gallon jar to brew at his own place.

What a ham!!!

All in all a wonderful weekend!!

So many blessings to be thankful for!!!

Thank you Jesus!!!!