Summer Days

 The lazy days of summer are winding down and I'm looking forward to transitioning back into our regular rhythm and picking up our school books again :)

We have packed our days full of camping, exploring, playing and enjoying the special moments that summer provides with nights spent on the beach in our cozy camper, collecting buckets full of shells and other treasures that I know we'll find a use for somehow, watching little ones fall asleep in front of the campfire and become brave little swimmers at the lake, trips to the aquarium and special dinosaur exhibits, watching our baby calves grow and making wishes on every dandelion gone to seed in sight.

I think we made good use of our days *grin*.

Hugs,

Rosina

Summer Beach Bums

So where have we been hiding?

Why at the beach of course with nature as our personal playground :)

We've been to a couple of different lakes but I just love being near the ocean and I definitely wasn't disappointed when we found a spot right along the beach.

 

 We enjoyed sunshine and welcomed the cloudy days to recover from the heat..

played with giant bull kelp...

swam in the ocean while tug boats, barges and fishing boats chugged by...

 

scrounged under the rocks at low tide catching crabs and seeing who was brave enough to hold the big ones that threatened to pink our fingers...

dug for clams...

 

watched the cruise ships float by each evening and slept so deeply after each day of play to the lapping sound of the ocean with the rise and fall of the tides :)

Oh how we are counting the days until Hubby comes home from work again and we can do it all over again *grin*.

How is your summer going? What makes you smile during the summer months?

Hugs,

Rosina

Raising Painted Ladies

 Early in April I received an email letting me know that one of the resource companies that I purchase homeschool material from occasionally was doing a big butterfly larvae order and since it had been a few years since we had raised any butterflies and they were willing to ship them to me I was all over it :)

 Two months nearly passed and one day there was a surprise package that needed to be picked up at the post office. Of course silly me had completely forgotten all about the butterflies by the time we reached June and it wasn't until I saw the red 'live specimen' tags on the outside of the box that I finally remembered that we were waiting for them *grin*.

Our caterpillars were well on their way when we placed their container on the mantle in the living room so they could happily munch away. Only a few days later it seemed they started to hang from the fabric top and spin their cocoons....

and the beautiful metamorphosis from wiggly caterpillar to butterfly began resulting in six pretty orange and black painted ladies. We were all captivated by them as they slowly stretched their wings, pumping blood into them and learning how to make them work. 

 We got this little pop up mesh enclosure the first time we got butterfly larvae a number of years back and it has been fantastic for housing other little creatures besides butterflies that the kids bring home to visit... like frogs, salamanders and so on :)

 It was tempting to keep our little visitors longer so that we could enjoy their beauty but today the sun was shining and it was time to let them take their first big flight.

Each of the children took turns helping one of the butterflies out of their temporary home and enjoying the tickle of its feet on their palms before it flew away.

Butterfly and Flower

See the flower open
Its petals one by one -
Butterfly wings upon a stem
Waving in the sun.
See the flitting butterfly
In shimmering colours bright -
A flower free and flying
In the warm summer’s light.

~ Paul King

Hugs,

Rosina

Summer Solstice 2012

As we celebrated Summer Solstice it was a perfect sunny day, kissed by a light breeze as it swayed through the fields of tall grass surrounding our home. The wildflowers were all bursting heavenward in multitude and beauty as their new life that had sprouted in early spring is finally coming into its fullest :)

And just in time to!

We picked clover, buttercups and daisies to decorate our sun shaped solstice cake with.

The children enjoyed cooking hotdogs over hot embers as the fire burned low...

and warming toes chilled by running through damp grass that wasn't quite dry from the wet days before.

No one really wanted to wreck our cake by cutting into it but you know that didn't last long *grin*. I think a few even had seconds and perhaps thirds LOL.

But all the extra energy was quickly burned off by having a snowball fight in June. Oh how I love the fluffy ball shaped clusters of flowers that my snowball tree provides and they really do make for a fun summer snowball fight :)

 

As the sun finally dipped below the mountain range, streaking the sky with pinks and purples, we waited for the darkness to come so we could stoke up our fire and sit in its glow...

keeping warm, roasting marshmallows and setting our sticks aglow :)

Hugs,

Rosina

Recovering

Okay time to break the radio silence that has engulfed my blog! *grin*

My keyboard feels foreign beneath my fingertips after all this time away. It's like riding a bike though, you never forget right? Plus I have SO many photos that I have wanted to share but just haven't been able to get here to post them :)

I guess it was probably a few days after my last blog entry on my homemade rhubarb juice back in June when I suddenly became seriously ill. At first I thought I had just caught a really nasty bug but when my one leg turned flaming red and swelled up three times it size and felt like it was on fire I knew something was terribly wrong. I was in and out of the hospital ER for a week getting IV antibiotics while they tried to figure out what had happened but when all the tests came back normal they ended up telling me that they figured I had been bitten by a spider.

Okay I can go with spider bite but my leg didn't go fully back to normal and I just didn't feel like myself. A lot of the time it was all I could do to get through the day without dropping from exhaustion and sitting at the computer was painful for my leg so the summer was spent unplugged which I must say was really nice :) When Hubby was home from work we did a lot of camping and I lounged beside the lake with my feet up while he took care of everything. He's so good to me *grin*.

It probably was mid August before I started feeling more energy and like my old self again and I thought, yay, it's finally over.... I was mistaken.

We were out camping at one of the forestry lakes about an hour from the city at the beginning of this month when I woke up one night shaking and having uncontrollable spasms. I felt like I was going to have a seizure and I could hardly talk. I woke up Hubby and he said we had to go to the emergency room immediately. The kids were sleeping but thankfully one of our friends and his son had came out that day to join us camping so we woke him up at 2:30 am to come over and sleep in our camper so that we could leave the kids behind.

The ride just to get back to the highway seemed impossibly long. I think Hubby thought I wasn't going to make it and we were so far from help. There is absolutely no cell service anywhere around here so he couldn't even call for help :(

A little over an hour later we arrived at the hospital and they told me I had a fever of 103.5 and the mysterious leg ailment was back. The nurses swarmed around me as I shook uncontrollably on the gurney taking blood, hooking up iv's and trying to get my fever and shaking to stop. I don't know when I finally fell asleep but when I woke up my fever had come down a little and they told me I was septic.

An infection (presumably from the first mysterious bout of illness in June) had run rampant throughout my system and was wreaking havoc.... and the scary swollen foot/leg was back. I spent the next couple of days in the hospital and then back home where I was put on permanent couch rest for 2 weeks and that brings us to now.

Yeah, it's been one heck of a summer and one I'm sure I won't forget anytime soon! I'm stuck with what I'm calling my elephant leg and in a couple of weeks they're going to run some more tests to see why the swelling isn't going down. They're concerned that it has now caused some lymph damage and I'm sporting a very stylish anti emboli stocking. Think Mrs. Doubtfire's hosiery LOL. Seriously not a pretty sight!

I apologize if you emailed me this summer and I didn't get back to you. My email inbox is overflowing with more than 12,000 emails and I'm afraid I'm never going to make it through them all. I think I'm going to have to cut my losses and just hit delete and start fresh so that I don't have a mini anxiety attack just looking at the number climb every day *grin*.

Please email me again if you did send me a message or had asked me a question that you would like me to get back to you on. I know that there have been some new comments the last couple of days on my fall felt leaves and I just wanted to say hi to my new followers and hugs to my long time faithful followers that have been waiting patiently to hear from me again :)

I'm going to try and keep up more regularly here again. It probably won't be everyday like it had been but definitely more than once every 3 months and I've got tons of summer photos that I'm going to try and post some of to. Like the rainbow cake I made for L's 8th birthday, how our chick's are doing (we're getting eggs now!) and our Michaelmas celebration that we did today :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Happy Birthday

Today we celebrated L's 7th birthday.
Her actual birthday was last Wednesday but with my dad being in the hospital and all of us spending so much time with him we thought that it would be best to postpone her party so that we could really make it special for her and I think I succeeded :)

I wanted to make a fun cake for her along a princess theme and I had previously done the castle cakes with towers so this time I thought I'd experiment with fondant. Now that is some fun stuff!

I baked a chocolate cake for the two layers and then rolled out a large sheet of the white fondant and popped it over the base of the cake. It went on so nice and smooth and it just took on the circular shape without much effort at all :) For the castle top I worked in some pink gel food coloring into the remaining fondant and then rolled out another rectangular strip to wrap around the top layer of the cake. I put a dollop of icing in the top of the base layer in the center and placed the second cake on top of it and then wrapped the pink castle tower shaped fondant around it and inserted another circular piece of pink fondant inside the top so that it was completely covered.

For the circular embellishments all around the bottom I just used various small objects I found around the kitchen for the circles and when you dampen the backside of the fondant it instantly becomes tacky so that you can just press the shapes onto the other fondant and they stick like glue.

Of course I couldn't resist making matching miniature bunting flags to adorn the top of the cake to go with the larger set of special birthday bunting that I made for her just days before :) It turned out so cute!

The weather cooperated beautifully and the rain held off long enough so that we could have her party out in the gazebo like we do every year :) With the amount of food my mom and I made you would have thought the entire neighborhood was coming but it was only the six of us *grin*.

There we were outside in the garden sipping raspberry spritzers with little strawberry & umbrella garnishes...

and nibbling on our ice cream cake cones *grin*.
L was definitely one happy birthday girl :)

~ Rosina

Finding Normal

I brought my dad home Sunday afternoon after 6 days in the hospital and I think we're all still struggling to find some sort of normalcy. The traveling back and forth to the hospital an hour away each day has taken its toll on me and left me feeling drained and we're trying to get back into a normal routine again.

Dad seems to be doing well. He has no pain at his incision site and his bodily functions are starting to return so that is wonderful. We had a bit of a scare tonight when I helped him change his dressing though. He had some weeping from part of the incision and I ended up calling the nursing hotline for advice but she let me know that it wasn't out of the ordinary if there was no sign of infection and if the weeping stopped and didn't get any worse than it would be alright. So far it seems to have stopped so we'll just keep a close eye on it for now. Thursday is the big day when we finally find out if any of the cancer has spread into his lymph nodes and I think that once we have that final okay that he is in the clear we will all feel so much better.

For now I'm busying myself with party preparations for L's 7th birthday :) Her actual birthday was last week while dad was in the hospital but we postponed it and on Friday we will finally have a big party for her. I can't wait. I'm working on a special bunting for her and some pinwheel party favors, special cupcakes and more. I always love to put on a big spread for her and treat her like a real little princess. I know she won't be disappointed with this years surprises *grin*.

I can't believe summer is finally winding down to. Only a handful of days left before we get back to our homeschooling routine. I've been pulling out books and making plans but I never set anything in stone as I like to have the freedom to mix it up :)

How about you, are you ready for these care free summer days to end?
~ Rosina

Water Fun

My sister had a day off work and invited all of us in for the day so we packed up and headed off to the city :) When we got there she had the pool all set up in the back yard and the sprinkler going for the kids. Once I saw all the water I knew no one was going to stay dry for long *grin*.

They had so much fun jumping, splashing and screaming. I swear the whole neighborhood knew we were there by the amount of noise that was coming out of her backyard! If there's one thing you should know about our family it's that we are rarely if ever quiet *grin*.

It was a great afternoon and hopefully we'll be able to do it again soon :)

~ Rosina

Picking Blueberries

A few weeks ago when picking up my eggs from the lady down the road I learned that she grew blueberries and every year after she picked what she needed for the winter she let others come and pick. Well you knew that I was going to be all over that! *grin*

So this weekend we headed over with our buckets and I brought along my oldest son to help out and we set to work.

They were giant bushes nearly 7 feet high as I had to stand on my tippy toes to reach the berries on the very top branches and they were just loaded with berries. I've never seen such big berries and even the slightly under ripe ones were sweet :)

So far we have picked two pails full and I'm hoping to get another 1 or 2 if I can but if not I'm still happy with what we were able to get :) One great perk to picking our own is I know they weren't sprayed with any pesticides and I was able to pick out all of the stems if we pulled any off the bush. That way I know I can just use them later without worrying about checking for any unwanted bits :)

I see a lot of blueberry muffins & pancakes in our future *grin*.

~ Rosina