Too Early!

I am up way too early for a Saturday morning! After waking up shortly after 4:00am, I gave up trying to get back to sleep and just got up at 5:30am. It's going to be a long day!

The boys had their colour belt testing for Tae Kwon Do last night, testing to receive their orange with black stripe belts. They did very well! Matthew even remembered to be more vocal than usual, except during his sparring match when both he and the girl he was sparring needed to be reminded. Amazing how a child who can be very loud at home seems to lose his voice when he's concentrating on the moves! lol!

I took a few photos, but did mostly video of the boys doing their patterns and breaking techniques so that they can see where they need improvement. Last night the instructor brought out real wooden boards for the kids to break so that was a huge novelty for everyone. They were optional (since you have to pay for them), but every person there wanted to break a real board rather than the foam rebreakable ones! lol!

They'll get the results of their testing Monday night at class, but they are happy that it's over for now. Andrew had previously decided his goal was to reach green belt by the end of this calendar year and he is well on pace for it since it is the next one to test for. The next testing our boys will do will be in the fall. We are taking a break for July and August since the kids will be busy with swim team and camps. That's busy enough for me!

Today K is coming over to watch the boys while Adrian and I go to a homeschooling conference in Barrie. We've actually never been to one before and only received notice of this one last week. Adrian surprised me by suggesting we go to it. Normally we just do our own thing when it comes to researching anything to do with homeschooling, but two of the places we've ordered supplies from in the last year will be there, along with a local business from our own small town and I'm eager to take the opportunity to actually view some of the materials we're interested in rather than trying to make a decision based on a small online photo and description. Some of the seminars sound interesting and there will be one on homeschooling through high school which we'd like to hear more about. Of course, that one is the last scheduled seminar of the day.

K will take the boys to their sport class this morning, which will only be one hour instead of the regular two because there is black belt testing today. Afterward she said she may take them to camp for some of the work party that is on today. Andrew knows he's responsible for Panda before they go out so everything is in good hands.

Eeek! Matthew just came downstairs! The kids were pretty wired (and hungry) after testing last night and didn't get in bed until 9:30pm. Matthew and Andrew were still awake after 10:00pm. Ohhh, I hope they aren't too crabby for Grandma!!!

Homemade Scones

Yesterday after dinner I gave scone-making a try. The first batch were blueberry-streusel and were nearly a disaster! Everything looked great, the dough had just been kneaded the four or five times that is called for and I was just about to cut it into pieces to put on the baking tray when I realised I had forgotten a key ingredient - the blueberries!!! I quickly put the dough back into the bowl and added the blueberries, but since they should have been added before the wet ingredients they didn't really go into the dough very well. I ended up pushing most of them in place. lol! So, while tasty, these scones were a little over-kneaded and didn't quite look the way they should have.

The second batch did better. They were chocolate orange and turned out perfectly. Whew! G & K were here for a prayer meeting last night so they joined us in giving these a taste. The reviews were good for both. Matthew and Nicholas even had leftovers (not that there were many) for breakfast this morning.

Saturday Fun

Besides transplanting our tomatoes on Saturday, the kids helped weed the vegetable garden and finish planting the seeds. We actually have peas, lettuce and sunflowers growing at the moment. We planted more peas along with corn and carrots on Saturday so we'll see how things turn out. Have I mentioned before we don't have the gardening knack? We are stumbling along each year and we have deemed all our gardening efforts 'experiments' so we don't feel too poorly when things don't grow well! lol!

Saturday was a beautiful day, nice and warm with sunshine making its way through the clouds much of the afternoon. The kids decided it was a great day for water games. The backyard was filled with seven boys ranging in age from 3 to 13 at one point! There was much laughing and squealing in delight.

Avoiding the sprays of water, I managed to get a few shots of the last of the fancy tulips that grow in the grass at one side of the far back of the yard. They are a little more frilled than the tulips in the front gardens and the petals turn down a bit more. They're pretty and I'd like to move them; I'm just not sure where so for now they stay in the grass. Adrian's good about waiting until they've gone over before mowing them down! lol! I also took a shot of one of our apple trees in blossom. Those are nearly finished now, too. We don't usually get much fruit from our trees - the squirrels enjoy chewing the apples and pears before they've finished growing.

Saturday evening I was treated to a lovely performance of The Nutcracker by our local dance academy. I had heard wonderful things about their year-end recitals, but had never gone before. This time, some friends of ours asked if I'd mind taking their daughter (who was in the show) and their sons (who were there to watch) since they couldn't make it for the Saturday evening performance and I am so happy I was able to!

The recital was held at the local public school and I was surprised to see that parking was at a premium - we had to park on a side street and walk over to the school. After I got V settled in with the other dancers in her group I found the boys and we sat down to wait for the start of the show. The chairs arranged on the gym floor were nearly full by the time the show started. We were sitting in the bleachers above and to one side which was great for seeing the stage (and the dancers' feet), but not so great for my back! lol! The bleachers were fairly well filled, too!

The costumes were spectacular, so much more than I had expected and the dancing was wonderful. I was surprised to find that in almost every group of girls who got up there I recognized at least one or two! I had no idea so many little girls in our community danced. There had to be nearly one hundred involved in the show! It was a lovely treat!

Tomatoes

Our tomato seeds have done well in one group, not so well in the other. The kids are certain they know which group is the 'treated' group! lol! We figured we'd better transplant some of them since they were falling over in the trays. We made note of how many from each group we were removing since the only information we need to send back to Tomatosphere is how many were planted and how many germinated in each group. We've been keeping track of that pretty much daily. Last Saturday, Nicholas and Matthew emptied the pots that had leftover bits of plant material in them from previous years, then Nicholas helped fill them with soil and transplant the tomatoes.

Unfortunately, we didn't do this the smart way. Actually, we pretty much did everything wrong. I know last year we left it so long that many of the tomatoes were dying in the small peat pellets and while we rescued most of them, many died or didn't survive transplanting. This year, we decided to do it earlier, but did it in the bright, hot sunlight in the backyard. We didn't take a week to acclimatize them to their new outdoor homes. We could have planted them deeper in the soil. Someone (ahem, me) may have forgotten to cover them one night when we thought there might be frost (and there was). So the net result is that as of today there are only two of the fourteen transplanted tomato plants that are still hanging in. The rest have turned white and shrivelled up.

There is hope, however. We still have a number of plants inside that were too small to transplant so we'll deal with them the 'proper' way. Lesson learned. This whole tomato plant in containers episode is an experiment in itself. Last year the ones we put in our garden didn't get enough sunlight so while they grew some and even produced a few tomatoes, nothing ripened. It was a little disappointing so we decided to try them in containers this year in order to be able to move them to where the sunlight is. If this doesn't work, we'll have an entire year to research the best ways to grow tomatoes!

I did it!!!

This morning I did my final run in the Couch to 5K program! Thirty minutes of running non-stop, plus five minutes warm up and a few minutes cool down. It's taken me a total of 20 weeks to complete this 9 week program (eek!), but I kept at it. My total distance each workout is still just over a kilometre short of the 5K goal, but that's no big deal. My next goal is to increase my speed so that I can reach that 5K mark within my total workout time (about 38-40 minutes in total, including walking times at beginning and end).

I know that I have not done this on my own strength. I have used my workouts as times for reflection and prayer (okay, and I've put a movie on occasionally to help pass the time so I wasn't focusing so much on the clock) and God has given me the strength to do this through some very difficult times! I wanted to give up so many times!

"I can do everything through him who gives me strength."
Philippians 4:13

Four Kids and Four Dogs

At the beginning of May we visited my parents. They live almost an hour and a half away from us on roads that are rather nasty in bad weather so visits aren't that regular, unfortunately. My sister, R, her boyfriend, M, and my niece, S, were there as well. We had a great visit and one of the highlights for the kids was getting the dogs to all sit nicely together for a photo session. I took many, many photos. R took many photos. Getting one where all the kids were smiling and looking at the camera and all the dogs were sitting nicely was a challenge. The pugs kept trying to escape the arms that held them and were more interested in sniffing each other than in sitting pretty. Oh well. We tried. These two photos really are the best of the lot!

From left to right are S holding Chevy, Matthew holding Dodge, Andrew holding Jazz and Nicholas holding Panda. Chevy and Dodge are both pugs and Jazz and Panda are both Giant Schnauzers. Dodge is the only male dog and the most timid of the lot. This was the first time Panda had met the pugs and apart from some initial barking from the pugs, all was well. The four dogs had a blast racing around the yard. Panda slept all the way home and had to have several naps the next day! lol!

Spring Garden

Tulips, bleeding heart and forget-me-nots in one of the front gardens at home. The photo was taken May 11 and since then most of the tulips have had their petals blown off with the high winds we recently had.

Spring at Camp

We headed over to camp Monday afternoon to help with getting the dishes washed and ready for the season. The dishwasher is an industrial unit so each load takes about thirty seconds to do. The dishes come out piping hot and nearly dry completely on their own within moments! K had already been there before us and had finished with the plates, cups and bowls so Adrian and I got to work on all the baking trays, mixing bowls, cutting boards and cutlery. It still took a couple of hours to wash all the dishes!

The first weekend camp of the season, Spring Alive, is coming up the first weekend in June, so we'll get in before then and do a thorough cleaning of the cabins. The boys are usually good helpers with anything they are asked to do at camp and they are becoming very good at cleaning cabins! Wish I could say the same for their bedrooms.... There is much work to be done at camp and the rest of this week and next looks pretty good for weather so I imagine we'll be back in there before long, doing whatever needs doing. It's a good place to work!

After we finished in the kitchen, the boys and I took a walk down to the pond to see if we could spot any frogs and/or frogs' eggs. Andrew caught a frog, which did it's best to escape before I finally was able to snap a quick photo of him with it. It kept leaping out of his hands every time he tried to pose! lol! We did find some eggs, but they'd already hatched. There were dozens of tiny tadpoles all around the eggs and the plants on the bottom of the pond. We were amazed to see the size of the fish in the pond this year. It is a spring-fed pond beside a river and small fish do get into the pond through the spring, but the larger ones? I think they end up in there when the river overflows into the pond in the spring. Of course, the larger minnows are probably just last year's little ones! The fish tend to not really bother us while we swim in the pond, but every now and then when you're standing still you might feel a little nibble at a toe! I'm starting to get a bit nervous about Day Camp! lol!

Skipping stones.

Andrew with the only frog we saw.

Tadpoles recently hatched (they are the black specks on the white eggs and in the plants below).

While we were waiting for Adrian and his Dad to finish up at the workshop, I amused myself with taking some photos of wildflowers. I'm much later getting into camp this year than I normally am so I've probably missed some of the really early wildflowers already. I'm hoping I haven't missed the trilliums though. They blanket the forest at the back of the property and are beautiful to see!

Wild Strawberries are found strewn throughout the soccer fields.

I think these are Field Pussytoes. They cover one area beside the driveway and the field leading to the volleyball court. They are really very soft!

One of many types of Violets found at camp.

Well, this one isn't a wildflower, but it is a ground cover found in one of the gardens in front of the staff lodge. The name of it escapes me at the moment, but the little purple flowers are very pretty!

So much to write about...so little time! I have blog posts backing up for two weeks so I figure I'd better get some of them posted before much longer! I've been keeping busy with various projects including gardening, decluttering around the house, working in the abominable craft room, getting Day Camp forms out and receiving the applications back, and just life in general.

We've been going through a lot of stuff as a family and I'm really heavily relying on God. Each day I see evidence of his work in my life and the lives of my family members and I'm so thankful! Things are looking up!

Vegetables

Yesterday the boys and I got out into the garden and turned the soil again. Adrian had done it twice already, mixing in some compost as well. After the soil was turned we finally planted some seeds: romaine lettuce and dwarf peas. They are the only seeds we have that can be planted before the soil warms up. Once that happens we'll be adding corn and carrots to that garden plot. Oh, and the sunflowers we started inside last week will go at one end of the garden. That just leaves a second type of pea, a climbing variety, that we're going to try alongside the sunflowers so they will hopefully climb the sunflower stalks.

More than half of the sunflowers we started inside have sprouted and are growing well. We'll transplant them next week, I think. The tomatoes have also started to sprout. The kids are certain they know which seeds have been treated and which ones are the control group because at this time one group has only one seed germinated and the other group has five. Maybe I won't be scrambling to find homes for all the tomato plants this year and we'll only end up with a small number for ourselves!

Tae Kwon Do Demo Team

The kids' Tae Kwon Do instructor had been planning for some time to put together a demo team for performing at local events. When he set a date to start he invited all the students to participate if they wanted to, knowing that it would involve additional practices. In March of this year they had their first practice, followed by two more in April. Last Saturday, with just three practices to their credit, the demo team performed at our local Home and Garden Show. The majority of the things they were performing were moves that they did in their regular classes already so it was a relief to them that this was not all new stuff! The feedback from the show was very good and there are plans to perform again this summer at the Fireworks Festival!

The video below is of Andrew, Nicholas and Matthew performing the third pattern, Taeguk Sam Chang. Doing this pattern in a triangle posed some coordinating problems for the boys at first - they kept moving in too close by the end and kicking each other! Their instructor helped them with this and the final result was pretty good! They yelled with each movement in order to keep together even though the yell is only supposed to be made at the very end. Well, Andrew and Nicholas yelled with each movement. For some reason Matthew (who is in no way quiet at home! lol!) tends to keep his mouth closed or just say something very quietly, hardly moving his mouth at all, while doing Tae Kwon Do. They were all quite nervous before the performance, but afterward said it was a lot of fun.