If you read Slobo’s blog, you are probably up to date on our activities this weekend. Me - I post alot less frequently. Still, the news isn’t too old. haha.

Slobo got him and the kids a camera that does video. It is so neat. You can take a color sample of an image area and it will take the pic in black and white except wherever the color you picked shows up. It will do macro pics - he got a really awesome pic of a yellowjacket on apple cores yesterday and a very pretty butterfly. With an extra card he can take over 600 pics and an hour of video. His is the Canon Powershot. He also got a Canon Powershot SD1000 for our nephew in Iraq.

Chris is stationed over at Camp Cupcake (Al Asad) AFB. It’s about 120 miles from the center of Baghdad. He said they have been under sniper attacks and one of the guys was killed a few days ago. (See how little the news media reports?). The fighting is intense over there. Soldier’s Angels Germany has been getting 100’s of guys at the hospitals a day. Don’t hear about that on the news magazines either. We just sent 12 lbs of candy and the cam as a suprise for him and his buddies. My brother and sis-in-law just sent him 21 lbs. of candy and three motorola hand helds so he and his two best friends can communicate without getting into full gear to visit eachother’s pod.

He said the heat was unbearable - well over 105 and in full gear - they are getting over heated quick. The kids and I sewed up 30 cooling scarfs and sent them in his box for now, but have well over 180 more cut out, ready to stuff and send. They will have to wait til Thursday’s payday. But at least he and 20 or so of his closest friends will be cooler. lol.

The kids and Slobo love the cooling scarves. (Pssst…. great for menopausal hot flashes too….lol) We kept the four samples we made. We are going to make 7″ discs of these for the guys to put in their helmets and later on, when stateside, baseball caps. The medical teams use them and cooling vests to aid heat stroke victims over there, as well.

The websites are selling them for about 6$ each, but we were able to make over 200 for $40. JoAnne’s has khaki cotton for 2.00 a yard (Made in the USA - Yeah) and we only used 3 very small bags of water crystals from Michael’s (1/2 tsp. each). One bag will make 34 scarves. When we used 1tsp - they bulged and it was like having an italian sausage hanging around your neck. The lady at Michael’s recommended testing the amount because some of the guys were complaining about how hard they were when they hydrated - she was right! 1 tsp is way too stiff. Here are the kids making them - and if you want to make some - here is a pattern. Again - I caution you on the amount of crystals - a little does go a very long way!

As for the canning / gardening update:

Our garden has stopped producing anything except rust fungus so we will be tearing it out and replanting this next week.
I’ve started a compost heap and it seems to be working really good. I had a grocery cart from when I lived in Simi Valley, CA. It’s a metal wire frame on wheels. I lined it with hardware cloth and put layers of newspaper in the bottom. Then stack the veggie parts, etc layered with meadow grass clippings (hay). It’s 3/4 full already after just two weeks, so I need to make another, much larger version. Hopefully this will all decompose nicely for next years garden - which will be about 40 x 60 ft.

We purchased 3 bushels of apples from the Collins’ Brother’s Farms at the State Market last weekend. One bushel of Rome’s has made 14 quarts of applesauce. 7 of which are cinnamon (the kids love that one).
Today, I’ll make the apple butter - yummy - from a mix of Romes and Granny Smiths. Then the final bushel of Romes and Granny Smith’s will be used on Monday to make Apple Pie Filling.
I absolutely am in love with the apple corer / slicer. The whole family never tires of taking turns peeling and coring apples. It is just such a fun and helpful invention!

Slobo and the kids will finish going through the last of the donate bags today and I’ll start scrubbing the classroom and bathroom before Tommorrow. Tommorrow the kids get to move back into their classroom - and they are very excited! They have donated 3/4 of their toys, helped organize and finish up seasonal chores. The two youngest have already packed their backpacks with books and bandaids in anticipation. They will be late getting started full-time, but they are so enthusiastic about it, I don’t think it will matter at all. They’ve learned measurements just in the last couple of weeks helping to can and have been studying birds, bugs and wildlife while setting up habitats last week. It’s amazing how they absorb so much information just from every day life. They’ve already mastered basic fractions and basic multiplications like 2’s, 5’s, 10’s, just helping to count veggies. Still - they want their classroom with their new supplies and the best of all - Great Snacks and New Books! lol.

Til next time……. Hope you are enjoying cool, breezy, crisp days too………