Book Recommendations

I found this website this morning, I think I vaguely heard about it from someone.

Have you tried it? Opinions?

http://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/search

Did you register? Did it give you good ideas for your next book?

I think I'll try registering this evening, I'll update later.

What should I read next has been my theme lately.

Heather

Our ward had a camp out at Lost Lake. Although I've been there many times for bbq's and picnics I have never camped there. What a beautiful place. The only thing I could have improved was the bathrooms. Why haven't they upgraded to flushy toilets? Cristine and her super good friend. They had so much fun playing together.
Peter enjoyed fishing and roasting marshmellows.
A rare picture of me. (All of our camping pictures were taken by Abby)
Well almost all the pictures were taken by Abby.
Michelle roasting a marshmellow. Crissy eating a raw one.
While Abby, Peter and Rick went out fishing, Michelle Cristine and I went on a walk around the lake. I really wish I had taken my camera, when we had gotten most of the way around the lake, we had a beautiful view of Mt. Hood, pink from the sunset. http://lostlakeresort.org/about.php I also managed to read most of the Twilight series before we returned home, just in time for the 4th book to come out.
The potluck Friday night was incredible. Rick bbq'd several tri-tips and deep fried a turkey, which was the best one he's ever done (we'll see if he can do a repeat this Thanksgiving). There wasn't a huge turn out, but we had fun getting to know the families who camped with us. Next year I plan to pack 2 air mattresses so I don't end up on the ground again.

Birthday Girl

My mother-in-law, Hana had her birthday today, she turned 87 today!

A few things you may not know about Hana:

She loves Elvis. She even went with one of her daughters to a concert. This was in his later years, her daughter thought he looked a bit fat in his jumpsuit.

Dark chocolate is her secret indulgence. She has a few bags of Dove Dark Chocolate hiding in the freezer. Sometimes she even shares it with me. When I see Dove chocolates on sale, I stock up for her.

She is a knitting and crocheting maniac. For her birthday her daughter brought her a bag of netting to be made into kitchen scrubbers. She blew through the stash in about 2 days, making several scrubbers. She makes hats and booties for newborns at the hospital. Each of our babies wore hats and booties home from the hospital that she had knitted. I've also kept a few sets for our grandbabies to wear. Rick's niece and nephews each have sets for when they start having babies.

She loves to enter canned goods in the county fair. She use to can a lot, but has slowed down the last few years. Each summer she would take a box full of peaches, pears, green beans, pickled garlic, tomatoes and other perfectly packed preserves to the fair office. Later we would have to go to the fair to find out how her items did. Most years she dominated the categories. She has a shelf full of trophies she proudly displays. For several years we had a friendly competition in the freezer jam section, for some reason I would take 2nd to her 1st. One year we made our jam together, same berries, same sugar, same jars and she won. Last week we made jam together, I may have to see if my jam finally beats hers.*

I hope Hana had a fun birthday. She had phone calls from her friends and kids, nice cards in the mail. and a beautiful floral arrangement from a daughter. We took her out to pizza and had a couple of her friends meet us there. The kids made fun cards and a yummy cake. The oven at Pietro's broke down or something and it took forever to get our pizza, but everyone seemed to enjoy just chatting, so I think it went well.

Birdhouses, Bikes and Bubbles

For school this week we, painted. Yes, that is a smiley on the birdhouse.

The kids have been riding their bikes a lot this summer. Peter is great at riding on our dirt roads and driveways.

Michelle is telling Rick all the reasons why she needs a 2-wheeler. She must have been convincing because yesterday we went to the bike shop and got her a super cute pink and purple bike-with streamers-need to get some photos of her on it.
We've also been busy blowing bubbles. I think we have tried most every brand and style of bubbles and bubble wands, large, small, no spill, gazillion bubbles etc. Rick's sister bought these for our kids, bubble wands for use at W-mart. I thought they were great. Your hand stays dry and you get lots of large bubbles, two important factors for me.

Summer School

Self Portraits
Fun flying fish project

4th of July t-shirts Abby's shirt.

Our 'classroom'.
Michelle in the classroom
Another view of the classroom.

My kids love school and playing school. On the days that I work, I give Abby a class plan and she is the substitute teacher. She loves to be in charge. My mother in law's house has a neat 2nd floor landing we've taken over as our school room. The mess bugs her, but we try to keep it neat.

A few of our recent activities: We studied fish and then made a fun craft flying fish. We each had a package of m and m's we counted and then made a graph showing how many of each color was in each bag. We made self portraits. Last week we had a t-shirt making party. Six friends came to decorate t-shirts for the 4th of July. We also made strawberry freezer jam. For exercises we've been jumping rope, playing in the sprinklers and throwing water balloons.

Upcoming activities: more freezer jam, first the kids get to help pick the berries. Sewing scripture bags using placemats. We will also study birds and then paint cute bird houses I found at the dollar store. We've blown lots of bubbles, but I want to add food coloring and blow them onto paper. I have a fun science book with lots of neat experiments we plan to use in the upcoming weeks.

Abby and Peter also have jobs. They get up each morning at 6am to help change sprinklers. Then we go back out in the evening to change them again. They have also been out almost daily to help Rick with other farm related activities.

Here are a couple fun websites I've been using:http://kidscraftweekly.com/ , http://www.starfall.com/ , http://www.funbrain.com/

for some reason blogger is not letting me put spaces between my paragraphs-sorry

Laundry Update

The sheets have been saved. The shorts, too. The waist band is very stiff and feels like it may be quite scratchy, but they were salvageable. The blanket was not. I could not get very much of the gaak out of it. It looked like a snail threw up all over the blanket. It was an older down blanket and most of the down had moved to the bottom edges, we decided we could sacrifice it.

Note:
It is not a good idea to type "removing gaak from clothing" into your search engine. Lot of strange things come up.

A Little Laundry Help Please!

No, I'm not going to ask you to help fold or put it away. Instead I need a bit of wisdom and advice.

Last night in celebration of my birthday, we went to a fun local pizza place. While there, we let the kids play the super cool video games. Peter spent a fist full of tokens trying to win a teddy bear for me. Michelle and Cristine tended to play the games with bright flashing lights, while Abby earned enough tickets to buy herself a million small erasers and a bucket of gaak (or is it slime or snot?). Much fun was had playing with that oozing sticky stuff.

When we arrived home, the kids were put through the bedtime routine and hustled off to bed. The gaak, supposedly, was placed on a dresser. This morning when Peter climbed out of bed, the slime was all over his sheets, blanket and shorts, reminiscent of special effects used in alien movies. Except aliens weren't blown to bits and the slime wasn't stuck on his face and hair.

Here's the questions: How in the heck do you get the slimy stuff out of fabric? I've washed it once. The sheets look pretty good, they were washed in warm water. The down blanket and shorts, both dark colors, were washed in cold water. The gaak is still firmly attached to those. Should I wash them again, but with warm water or give it up as a lost cause?