Category: General News

Aug. 15: I’m doing a huge amount of posting these last days.  I’d like to dole it out more evenly, but that’s not how my life works:)
On Sunday, August 3, Maretta drove down from St. Paul to spend the week with us.  She stayed at our house, and we spent a lovely, full week together.  I’m so appreciative that she sacrificed a week away from her new husband to play with us.  And just so you know, she has scored a job at Penumbra Theater company working on costumes for the show Fences.

I’ve decided that my life would be notably calmer, happier, and more fun if an adult whom I love and who has no kids could hang out with me at least 12 hours a day.  No Kidding.  Having Maretta around was awesome.  And that’s just from a child care and mental health perspective.

Maretta and I went down to Janesville to visit Mum early in the week.  Speaking of Mum, I got a call from Debbie, one of her friends, the other day that she had fallen and Debbie had taken her to the hospital.  Another friend was spending the night with her.  X-rays showed that she hadn’t broken anything.  Debbie’s increased the assistance she’s receiving at her assisted living home.

Maretta and I spent a couple days clearing out her room at Dad’s house.  It’s a small room, but there was a lot in there!  We packed up four garbage bags to take to Good Will and filled the minivan with things for her to take back to St. Paul.

We didn’t end up getting to go shopping together…that’s one thing I really like doing with my sister…but we had lots of other good times.  We got together with Michael and Joe for lunch – one of the first times I can remember that the four of us kids have been together sans significant others or parents.  Andrew and Sylvia were hangers-on.  Maretta, Sylvia, and I had dinner with Terry.  I think he liked going out with his three girls.  Then on Friday night, Maretta, Bryan, and I had a get-together with Terry, Dad, Becky, and Joe to watch the opening of the Olympics.  We ordered Chinese food, and I made peach shaum torte and peach ice cream.  Good stuff!

I was sad to see Maretta go on Saturday, but I’m so glad we got to spend a whole unstructured week together.  Now that she really, truly lives in a different state, I appreciate these times we spend together even more.

PS.  LuAnn or Melanie, if you’re reading this, “sister” can be replaced by “mother” or “sister” if you’re interested!

Aug. 15: Two weeks ago, we had a wonderful time at our annual pilgrimage to Jack’s house near the Wisconsin River in southwest Wisconsin.  We had 12 adults attending this year.  Maretta and Kyle couldn’t make it because Kyle’s sister Pam got married that Saturday.  Tom was able to come…he’s doing really well post-surgery.  Michael’s friends Matt, Josh, and Betsy also joined us.  Lisa stayed home this year, but Becky came.  So we had a full house.
Pictures of our weekend are in the gallery.

Joe and I did the menu planning early in the week.  Then Michael, Joe, Matt, Sylvie, Andrew, and I went grocery shopping on Thursday (eating is, after all, one of the major activities of the weekend).  We stayed pretty traditional with the menu, only adding home made chocolate ice cream as a new dessert item on Saturday night.

We all converged on Jack’s house on Friday evening. Sylvia and I rode in Terry’s car, and for the first time, Sylvia did not cry most of the drive to Jack’s house (this is her third time to Woodman).  Thank heavens!  We all tried out the Harry Potter-esque Jelly Bellys, which were disgusting, played night frisbee, played some games, and went for a late-night walk down to the boat launch – the stars were absolutely amazing.

On Saturday morning, for the first time in memory, we all got organized pretty quickly.  We ate breakfast on the patio, got the canoe out (so I could go along with Sylvia), and drove upstream to Bergum Bottoms to put in.  Tom stayed back at the ranch, but the rest of us floated down the Wisconsin River for a few miles, stopping to crack open a watermelon and hang out on a couple sandbars.  Andrew had a blast, and Sylvia (for the most part) did really well.

After the mid-river gorge (which we noted involved somewhat less gorging than normal), Jack, Bryan, Joe, Michael, and Matt re-did the float down the river again.  Meanwhile, Josh did dishes and Becky and I prepared the Jambalaya, corn bread, ice cream, and bread.  The evening was filled with game playing (the fogies beat the youngsters soundly at Trivial Pursuit).

On Sunday, Jack took Terry, Matt, and myself on a hike up to see his prairie.  He’s been working to restore the pasture to native prairie plants for the last 10 years.  Jack’s recently received several grants to help (a tiny bit) with the restoration work, and he’s put tremendous numbers of hours in to his restoration work.  It shows.  The prairie is beautiful.

We left Sunday afternoon, wishing the weekend was longer.  At least I have pictures to remind me of the lovely times!

Aug. 14: Boy am I behind on posting pictures!  I just added captions to the pictures I took when we went to Texas in late July.  Here they are!

A couple fun things that happened in Texas:  the kids took their first bath together, Sylvia had her first solid food, we went swimming at a nearby pool (SO FUN!), we played charades and poker, we ate lots of yummy food, we mostly stayed cool indoors but ventured out for a walk and some backyard splashing, and we basked in our time together.

I’ve also uploaded pictures from the last couple weeks and some pictures from an art group we did in late July.

Aug. 14: I love when I get comments on my website.  It’s like a hug or a piece of chocolate or a nice piece of mail.  And it makes me smile.  Unfortunately, my comments have recently been targeted by spam.  LOTS of spam.  Like dozens every day.  I’ve tried to find a new security system to use, but I haven’t been successful.  So I now have it set up so I have to approve comments before they are posted.  And I delete oodles of spam each time I log on.  It’s really annoying.
But it’s less annoying when I have some real comments in there (thanks Lisa, Sarah, Karen, and Julie!).  So if you’re considering commenting, please do.  It’ll make me smile.

Aug. 14: My husband is so sweet.  Thanks to him, this post is coming to you live from JavaCat.  I’m playing with pictures from Jennifer’s wedding on my computer and sipping on a frappe.  And unless my cell phone rings, I have no one needing me right now.  It’s absolute bliss.

We’re all recovering from our adventures with virus.  Andrew has a runny nose and a bit of a cough, but for the most part, he seems back to himself.  Sylvie is crankier than normal and has an occasional really rattly cough.  On Tuesday, we watched about five hours of PBS and movies.  All I wanted to do was sleep and all Sylvia wanted to do was be held and bounced.  Yesterday afternoon I showered and got dressed and felt much better.  Joe came over in the evening and we hung out and watched the Olympics together.  He had the same cold, so we could spend time with him without worrying about transmitting…that already happened last week!

Then today I attempted to take part in a conference call for Carleton’s Alumni Adventures.  It didn’t go well.  We went to lunch with Gathering Waters to celebrate Joe’s last day there.  And I was adventurous and took the kids to Woodman’s to stock up on food.  By 3pm, I was more than ready to crash.  CRASH.  But the kids were not.  We limped through until 6 when Bryan came home.  He walked in the door and said, “Get thee somewhere else!”  I’m almost never not with Sylvia, and it’s pretty nice to spend an hour without her company:)

So that’s what’s happening in our world.  Our illness is on the mend.  I’m loving watching the Olympics.  On Tuesday, Bryan brought me home sherbet, Dove bars, and a Glamor magazine.  What a wonderful guy.  It’s kind of fun to get pampered when a person isn’t feeling well.  Or when a person is feeling well!

I took about 400 pictures at Jennifer’s wedding, so I’m going to return to my post-processing.
xoxo
~Althea

Aug. 12:  Sylvia and I returned home from Vermont late (1am) last night.  We had a wonderful time at my friend Jennifer’s wedding.  Grace and I spent a fun few days together, and Sylvie did an absolutely fabulous job being a cute kid.  She turned six months old yesterday!
Andrew came down with a coughy, snortily cold while we were gone, and Sylvie and I both woke up this morning feeling rather cruddy.  My throat feels like sand paper, and I feel achy and like I could crawl in bed and sleep for about four hours. Oh well.
I took about 400 pictures at Jennifer and Do’s wedding.  And I still have pictures from Jack’s to post.  Soon, soon!  We’re home for the next two weeks, and then on the 23rd Andrew and Sylvie and I fly to DC.  Good to be home for a while:)

August 4: We’re back from Jack’s house, and it was lovely lovely!  Amazing weather, fun games, delicious food (more on that soon), Sylvie’s first ride down the Wisconsin River, campfire, prairie hike, frisbee, wet campers, and great company.  I made chocolate ice cream for Sunday evening.  It was…really good.  So to ensure that others can enjoy the creamy chocolaty-ness, (and so I can find the recipe after I return the book to the library) I’ll share the recipe here.

Chocolate Ice Cream
From: The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz
(by the way, I’ve made three ice creams from this book – chocolate gelato and avocado too – and they’ve all been amazing)

2 cups heavy cream
3 tablespoons unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
5 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped (I used bittersweet)
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
5 large egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Warm 1 cup of the cream with the cocoa powder in a medium saucepan, whisking to thoroughly blend the cocoa.  Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer at a very low boil for 30 seconds, whisking constantly.  Remove from the heat and add the chopped chocolate, stirring until smooth.  Then stir in the remaining 1 cup cream.  Pour the mixture into a large bowl, scraping the saucepan as thoroughly as possible, and set a mesh strainer on top of the bowl.

Warm the milk, sugar, and salt in the same saucepan.  In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks.   Slowly pour the warm milk into the egg yolk, whisking constantly, then scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan.

Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula (note from Althea: really do stir and scrape constantly…I ended up with some cooked eggs on the bottom of the pan).  Pour the custard through the strainer and stir it into the chocolate mixture until smooth, then stir in the vanilla.  Stir until cool over an ice bath.

Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.  (If the cold mixture is too thick to pour into your machine, whisk it vigorously to thin it out.)
(note from Althea: I made a double batch which worked fine until I tried to freeze the second half in the ice cream maker.  The ice cream maker didn’t have enough cold left to successfully churn the second half, so it was more goopy than churned.  Yet somehow, it was still delicous, and no one complained!)

August 1: We’re off to Jack’s house today, but before we go, I really need to do at least a quick post to say what a great visit we had to Texas.  Andrew’s solo time went super-smoothly, and when we flew in, he didn’t even want to come to the airport…he was busy washing the car with Grandad.  So I think he’s ready to do trips to Texas whenever we can make it work.  It was such a great vacation for me…I’d love to send him down there monthly if it weren’t for the airfare issue!
Ben and Melanie drove down to College Station for the weekend, and we all just had a splendid time together.  I think we would have happily stayed for another week or so.  We went to a local pool one day, and Andrew had a lot of fun hanging on to a “noodle” and kicking.  It was one of his first times where he was really kicking and controlling himself in the water.  I could do that every day!  OK, Sylvie has had it with me not holding her.  Photos from our vacation are in the gallery!

August 1: Were Sylvia not at this moment waking from her nap, I would write a post about how nuts my kids are making me this morning.  More on that another time.

OK, I’m back.  I love my children.  I really, really do.  And I feel so lucky to be their mama.  But there are moments when I find myself plotting out an escape route.  Like I was seriously thinking of hiding from them in the back yard for a bit this morning.  But what I really wanted to do was to get on my computer to figure out why my website’s gallery wasn’t working after some tweaks I tried on it recently.  [Aside: is my gallery running slowly for you?  I “upgraded” it in December, and since then it seems like it might actually be slower.  Let me know]  Anyway, I was just wanting to check my email and fix my gallery problems.

But instead, I decided to take Andrew to a park in Monona to meet some of the kids he’s going to go to preschool with.  However, he adamantly refused.  He “never wants to go anywhere EVER.”  Instead he’d prefer to kiss Sylvie lots until it’s too rough, snuggle with her until he’s on top of her and squashing her, and shake/kiss her hands until it gets violent.  I think he’s like me when I hold a little bunny.  I sometimes think “It’s so CUTE.  I must squish it.”  Weird, I know, but it’s true.

When he’s not love-mauling his sister, he’s either crying or wanting to be doing something new or being totally adorable.  It’s been exhausting.

For example, just now he started banging our floor lamp into the wall.
“STOP, please, Andrew!” I say.
“Why?” says Andrew.
“Because that might put a dent in the wall or break the lamp,” I say.
“What dent?” says Andrew.
“The Lamp Might Dent the Wall,” I say.
“Why?” says Andrew as he walks away.

Then as I typed that, he went to the other room and came back with a finger painting he did this morning.
“Oh,” I say, “that’s your pretty finger painting.”
Andrew lays it down by my feet.
“Oooo.  It’s really wet still, let’s put it back on the table so it can dry.”
“WHhhhhyyyy?” asks Andrew as he takes it away.
“So it doesn’t get all over everything,” I call as he disappears around the corner.

As I typed that, Andrew came in the room with his new bug net and repeatedly “caught me” by plopping it over my head.  Oh, and Sylvie is nursing/typing/fussing/grinning.  She isn’t having a great day.  Wait, I take that back. If I hold her and focus on her, she’s fine.  She’s just teething and not feeling like life is OK if she’s been set down.

So we leave for Jack’s house this afternoon, and I’m looking forward to getting out of the house!!!

July 30:  We got home from a great vacation in Texas visiting Bryan’s family (more on that in an upcoming post), and when I checked my email this morning, I had notes from three (3) (III) friends who had babies!  Holy smokes!  Add in a baby born earlier this month and two (2) (II) friends who’ve told me in the past couple weeks that they are expecting babies, and we’re having a baby fiesta here this July!  And three more friends are expecting babies in August!

So which babies were born?

Wyatt, Andrew’s little friend, has a new little brother – Clay Oliver.  He was born on Friday, July 25, and the word is that he’s doing really well.  He was 7 lbs, 5 oz and 20 inches.  Sarah and Steve are now parents of two:)  Sarah had a planned c-section since Clay was breach, and she had some medical complications afterwards, but now all is well, and we’re really glad we live with 21st century medicine.

Lucy is another mom in my Happy Bambino group.  Her daughter, Isobel, is a big sister now that little Suvi Jane has made her appearance.  Lucy was 10 days over due, and her labor culminated in an emergency c-section, but all is well, and it sounds like Suvi is a pretty mellow little person.  She was born 9 lbs, 11 oz!  What a cutie!

My friend Liz from Michigan also had a baby in the last several days.  Her little boy, Zachary, was born a couple weeks early.  Liz and I went to Botswana together in 1997.  Her little guy was 6 lbs, 4 oz. and 21 inches.

Bryan’s high school friend, Mark, and his wife Brytt had a baby girl, Sutton Eileen, on July 9.  She weighed in at 7 lbs, 10 oz, and is 20 inches long.  Congratulations all!

As if that wasn’t enough, one of my favorite blogs, The Pioneer Woman, has gone baby-crazy because her sister had a baby boy.

And babies on the way?  Well, one is not-yet public so I can’t yet say.  The other is long anticipated makes me so very happy.  Julie and Jerry have had a really rough last 15 months.  They had two miscarriages, but as of today, they are 10 weeks along with a much-desired pregnancy.  Julie has been posting updates on her website.  Grayson should be a big brother in February!

In the next month or so, my friends Sarah, Jen, and Mandee are all heading toward delivery.  Babies Everywhere!