Odds and Ends and Things Not Of General Interest

If you are familiar with the book "Cheaper By The Dozen", you immediately recognize the reference in my title. I feel like I have nothing of great importance to say -- things that Frank Gilbreth would have marked 'not of general interest' -- but I'm gonna give you a hodge podge anyway. 

We've spent a good bit of time the last few days peeling and cutting up peaches to put in the freezer. This was a fun book to listen to while we worked. 

We listened to it on Libby, read by the author, which made it very entertaining. She has fantastic, practical tips for decluttering and we all enjoyed her humor. Highly recommend. 

I also highly recommend having a husband who brings these home and sticks them in the freezer for his wife. 

I'll generally decline ice cream, and I'm not that much of a candy fan. Like my mom, I usually can't resist a candy bar, but these? These are over the top. I love them. 

It has rained and rained and then thunder stormed again in Ohio the past two weeks. We thought we might need to borrow the Amish neighbor's boat directly. 

Our grass was looking like we should invite the Amish neighbor's horses over for a free smorgasbord. Isaac finally got a bunch of it mowed today. 

I don't listen to podcasts a lot. I'm not particularly a fan of them, honestly. Every once in awhile I'll listen to one and actually love it. One that I do listen to fairly regularly is Couple Things with former Olympic Gymnast Shawn Johnson and her husband Andrew East. They are kind of the most unlikely people for a little ol Mennonite mom like me to listen to -- wildly different backgrounds and lifestyles, but I think that's why I find it so interesting and intriguing. Their faith and commitment to their marriage are not so very different from my own and it's eye opening to listen to people with a different world view. They host a wide variety of couples on their podcast and, while I don't always agree with all of their beliefs, I have come away inspired many, many times. 

Next week, school starts. It still does not seem real at all that I will be home alone five days a week again and I have a lot of emotions about it.  Pretty sure I will sit down and have a good, long cry and then I plan to sit on my recliner, put up my feet, and eat the silence and solitude with a spoon.

* * * * *

And now, I will leave you to decide if this hodge podge was of general interest or whether, like Mr Gilbreth, you are bored stiff. 

'Dad was the one who decided what subjects were of general interest. Since he was convinced that everything he uttered was interesting, the rest of the family had trouble getting a word in edgewise. 

"Honestly, we have the stupidest boy in our history class," Anne would begin. 

"Is he cute?" Ernestine asked. 

"Not of general interest," Dad roared. 

"I'm interested," Mart said. 

"But I," Dad announced, "am bored stiff. Now, if Anne had seen a two-headed boy in history class, that would have been of general interest." '         ~Cheaper by the Dozen

Just For You If You Like Yellow Squash

Remember all those little yellow squash, hanging on my enormous plant?

Well, they grew, and grew, and have produced a bumper crop!

I love squash fried in lots of butter and cornmeal, seasoned with onion and salt and pepper. (It's good on butter bread!)

But after awhile, even I can only eat so many fried squash. I haven't convinced many others in this family to join my squash feasts -- the funny thing is, I used to feel the same way when my mom tried to interest me back in the day. I'm honestly not sure when I started liking them?

So, anyway. I decided to go looking for a different squash recipe. I found a super simple one, and is it ever good! Thought y'all might enjoy it too. 

Yellow Squash Casserole

   ° 2 Cups sliced yellow squash

   ° 1/4 Cup chopped onion

   ° 20 Ritz Crackers, crushed

   ° 1/2 Cup shredded cheddar cheese

   ° 1 Egg

   ° 6 T milk 

   ° 1/8 Cup butter, melted

   ° 1/2 tsp Salt

   ° Black Pepper to taste

   ° 1 1/2 T melted butter

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 

Place squash and onion in skillet over medium heat; add small amount of water. Cover and cook until squash is tender, about 5 min. Drain well and place in bowl. 

In a bowl, mix together cracker crumbs and cheese. Stir half of the cracker mixture into the squash and onions. In a small bowl, mix together egg and milk, then add to squash mixture. Stir in 1/8 C melted butter and season with salt and pepper. Spread into a greased baking dish. 

Mix 1 1/2 T melted butter with remaining cracker mixture and sprinkle over top. 

Bake at 400 for 25 minutes or until lightly browned.

(Recipe could easily be doubled for a larger pan)

After I could hardly stop eating the stuff, I started googling "how to can yellow squash in a water bath". Found a recipe for that too! Tried a jar of canned squash in the recipe, and it worked perfect. 

Canned Squash

   ° 4-5 squash

   ° small onion

   ° 4 T apple cider vinegar

   ° 3 1/2 C water

   ° 3/4 T canning salt

1. Bring water, vinegar and salt to a boil

2. Cut squash into small pieces; chop onion

3. Parboil squash and onion in vinegar mixture for about 5 min

4. Scoop squash from vinegar mixture into prepared jars. Remove liquid from heat and ladle into jars. Wipe rims clean and seal jars. Process pints 15 minutes and quarts 20 minutes. 

I used jars with twist lids, you can use regular canning jars, of course. 

I was worried you would taste the vinegar and so I rinsed the squash before using it in the casserole. They tasted fine! Too bad I didn't discover this earlier in the summer before I gave squash away... I must say though, it was fun to be able to give away garden produce for a change. 

Enjoy!

These Busy Days

Well. I did not mean to go silent for two weeks running! Somehow the time got away from me, and here we are. Nothing says (end) of summer like rushing around willy nilly doing all the things, I guess. 

A week ago we were all breathing an exhausted sigh of relief after six days of going away every night for VBS. We were in charge this year, and being the Eicher/ Gingerich combo that we are, we couldn't possibly just do the normal thing of ordering a curriculum and doing what's usually done. We had a lot of fun brainstorming and tweaking ideas and being creative but I won't lie, there was a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Not everything went nearly as perfectly behind the scenes as it might have appeared. While we might be a very creative family with some wonderful talents, we are not perfect. We knock heads and hurt each other's feelings and have our issues, just like everyone else. 

At the end of the day, I think we learned some valuable lessons and hopefully a whole crew of children learned some things and had a good time in the process. 

Preparing bags of candy for a treasure hunt after the picnic Friday night. 

We went straight from the intensity of Bible school last week, to the hard work of putting up piles of fresh veggies this week. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, we saw enough corn and green beans to last us for a while!

Everyone pitched in Monday evening to finish up the corn. Isaac even learned the fine art of cutting corn off the cob -- I told him his wife would thank him someday. 

Those were some of the biggest ears of corn I have ever seen! Yum. Summer time is just the best, hard work and all. 

Friday we headed out first thing to do some school shopping.

I am glad I don't need to do that every day. Shopping, in general, is not my favorite thing in the world and shopping with four people in tow does not enhance my appreciation of the chore. Shopping for shoes for those four extra people is one of my least favorite things of all. But we survived. 

Our favorite bit of the day was buying this chair at the Goodwill.

It was priced at 99 cents, but since furniture was 25% off, we got it at the extraordinarily low price of 79 cents. We figured at that price we could use it as is, try our hand at restoration, or throw it over the bluff if all else failed!

Two more weeks until school starts, and they already look like they'll be full of all kinds of things. I don't know when I'll have time to sit down and unwind my brain and sift through all the things that are hiding under the surface there. I took a few minutes Thursday morning and ended up with more tears and words spilling out everywhere than I quite knew what to do with. I think I'd rather just bury my nose in some old book and not bother.

Onward and upward........

Nothing Says Summer

 Nothing says summer like...

Hummingbirds at the feeders -- flitting, darting, fighting... I love watching them on a summer evening as they busily fly in and out! 

Nothing says summer like...

Wildflowers blooming along country roads. Queen ann's lace and black eyed susans are some of my favorites; daisies are another one. My mom was the one who taught me to notice the beauty God provides along the roadside "for free!" as she would say. 

Nothing says summer like...

Fresh squash

And cucumbers

And green beans in the canner

I planted a patch of green beans this year for the first time and was so thrilled to come back from our trip and find them growing beautifully, with tiny little beans hanging thick. We've had so much rain since, that I've been having problems with slugs, so we'll see how much they actually produce. There's nothing like canning produce that you raised yourself though!

Nothing says summer like....

Trips to the lake. 

But between our long trip and the many rain showers, we've only gone once this summer and I took no pictures!

Nothing says summer like....

Spending ridiculous amounts of time on Summer Bible School preparations that will only be used once. You have to know the huge part Summer Bible School played in my past to understand how this is practically programmed into my DNA. I wrote about my memories once upon a time here. I am again remembering my mom this year, but also remembering that it was my dad who came up with a lot of the complicated, creative ideas -- like recording a mockingbird to play over some rigged up speaker or practicing his continued story on his youngest (me) and choosing the most exciting places to say "You'll have to come back tomorrow night to hear what happens next!"

Nothing says summer like...

Messy floors and children playing their hearts out, letting imaginations run wild. (Who am I kidding? My floors always look like this!)

I love summer. It is my very favorite season of all. Every day, after seeing Chris and Isaac off to work, I do my little rounds in the cool, wet morning. I check my squash plant -- biggest old thing I've ever grown -- and wonder what I'll do when all the little squash start getting ready to pick at once!

I check out my tomato plants, with their tiny little green tomatoes hanging tight.

I check my cucumbers, and silently applaud their sprawling leaves -- especially the plants that were planted where the ground stays wet and I feared they would die.

I admire the flowers and cheer on every new black eyed susan that opens its sunny petals.

Then I might climb the little hill to my green bean patch and see how they are faring. Also, to pause and inspect mom's marigolds. 

Yes, I love summer. Most of all, I love watching things grow and marveling at a Father who makes it all happen. 

Ten Year Blogiversary

 I kind of missed the big day, but so it goes -- a week ago today, my blog turned ten years old. TEN YEARS.

Wow. A lot has changed.

Back then, my phone would only allow about 200 words per post and no pictures. Everything I wrote was short, and the words carefully selected. I still tend to write that way, and I think some of it comes from those early years of blogging. 

I didn't have a big vision for my blog when I started it. Mostly, I had always liked to write, and this felt like a creative outlet where I didn't have to meet magazine guidelines or editor revisions. It was a place to kind of say what I wanted, if I wanted, and how I wanted to. So many people marvel at me being able to put myself out there for all the world to see and it's hard to explain why a shy, quiet person would do that all these years. I think the biggest thing was that I began my blog for fun. I didn't look at it as pressure or big expectations, I looked at it as doing something I enjoyed. 

I will be quick to admit that there came a time down the road when I turned it into me putting pressure on myself to meet unspoken expectations. That's always when my writing would struggle. There was a point where my blog was almost my identity, and it took going silent for awhile for me to move past those feelings. 

I don't have the same passion for blogging that I did 10 years or even 5 years ago. I don't feel the creative urges that it used to bring out of me as much. I also don't put the extreme pressure and expectation on myself anymore either. It's a good thing and a not good thing -- I miss the old passion and wonder if it's possible to have one without the other?

2011

Seasons of life affect so many things; I am in a very different season than I was ten years ago. My children were ages 9, 7, 3, and 1 and I was facing one of the biggest changes of my life -- moving from Arkansas, where I had been born and raised, to Ohio. I was a busy mother, with very little time to pursue any outside interests. I was an introvert, who found initiating/ pursuing relationships and activities difficult. Blogging was, not only a creative outlet, but a way to connect with people without being face to face. I don't know that that was always all healthy, but it was definitely the spot that blogging filled in that season of my life. 

2021

Ten years later, my children are ages 19, 17, 13, 11 and 8. My life is not nearly so 'mothering' focused and I don't need blogging to fill the spot that it used to nearly as much. For the least two or three years, I have grappled with whether blogging fills any spot of importance in my life or not? Has the season passed? Is it time to let it go?

As I look back over ten years, what is it that I have enjoyed about blogging? At the top of the list is the interaction I've had with strangers who I have never, and probably will never, meet. The personal emails I've gotten are some of my very favorite gifts from blogging. I love the comments/texts/messages. Never, ever underestimate how much your feedback will mean to a blogger. Try to imagine what it means, and then multiply that by 1,000. Verbal feedback is also nice but I'll be honest, it's a lot more awkward and uncomfortable. I have also enjoyed a place to practice my gift. I process best by writing and it's not easy to find places to use that gift; blogging has been a safe, enjoyable place to do that. 

Contrary to what you might be thinking, I didn't come here to announce that I'm going to stop blogging. I mostly came here to ruminate and remember out loud for a bit. 

Also, to celebrate ten years of this little corner of the internet. 

Now, if you'll join me, let's cut the imaginary cake and serve ourselves our favorite beverage and you talk to me -- when did you start reading here? Why did you stick around? What are some of your favorite memories? I'd love to hear!

Home

Home...

    Where there's comfy beds and showers

Where there's no suitcases to re-pack

   Where there's a stove to cook on and a washer and dryer that are free. 

Home...

   Where there's a job to go off to every morning and work on every side

   Where there's people to deal with 

and expectations to meet.

Home...

   Where you have your own room

and personal space for time alone

   Where you can relax on a couch and stay in one place and put your belongings away. 

Home...

   Where you have to face responsibilities

and the weeds are taking over

   Where you step back into reality

and grapple with real life problems. 

Home...

   Where the flowers are blooming

and the veggies have tiny little fruit

   Where the familiar welcomes you

and the views are your own. 

Home...

   Where you have to deal with relationships outside of your own little world

   Where you can't block out the future forever and pretend that only now exists. 

Home...

   Where real life is lived.

Where the grateful ache over the 

beauty and blessing of vacation

makes us live life a little more fully

    If we let it. 

Geyser Day

 Friday, July 2

One of the coolest things to see at Yellowstone are the geysers. Old Faithful is obviously the most famous one but there are hundreds of other active geysers at Yellowstone. The thing that makes Old Faithful so popular is it's predictably; it's eruptions can be predicted closely enough to easily sit and wait on it. So, it might be predicted to erupt at 5 pm, plus or minus 10 minutes, whereas some of the others might be predicted for a certain time plus or minus 45 minutes to 2 hours. Which leaves you sitting on a bench waiting for quite some time!

Our original plan was to leave Yellowstone sometime Saturday, drive to Rapid City for the night, and then take Sunday and Monday to drive home. By Thursday night, we had decided we would just leave Saturday and do two long days of driving, since Monday is a holiday for Chris and Isaac. 

So, suddenly we were on our last day! We designated it Geyser Day. 

We really wanted to try to see another geyser erupt besides Old Faithful, and so we chose the Grand Geyser, which was predicted to erupt at 12:30, plus or minus forty-five minutes. We arrived Friday morning in time to watch Old Faithful again. 

We came prepared for lots of waiting, with legos and games and sudoku puzzles in our backpack!

Then we hiked down the boardwalk to check out Grand and to see the sights along the way. 

It was a beautiful morning, with a nice cool breeze. 

So many things to marvel at... 

Pools of water, boiling away like a kettle on the stove...

Geysers, quietly letting off steam...

Different colored rocks, beautiful trees and blue, blue skies...

After checking things out, we walked back to the van and found a place to spread out our picnic under some trees. 

We spotted a geyser erupting in the 

distance while we ate

We had plenty of time for lunch and a bathroom break (with seven people in our group, the dad sometimes felt like he had taken a trip west just to check out all the bathrooms along the way) and then we headed back to Grand to stake out our spot on the benches and settle in for our wait. 

We played Uno and did Sudoku puzzles and waited. 

This child had become the world's best shade seeker by this time, stopping under every shade tree along the trail we were walking, but there was no shade beside Grand and that made it a pretty Not Fun Thing. I finally showed him that there was a little shade under the benches, so there he lay. 

We weren't the only dedicated wait-ers, so there was plenty of people watching to entertain ourselves with as well. It was funny to watch people walk up, "Oh, there's lots of people sitting here, must be going off soon." So they'd stand around a bit and then they'd ask when it was predicted, and when they heard it was 12:30 plus or minus 45 minutes, they would look at their watches and say, "Oh." And then most of them would move on. 

I don't have a good picture of Grand when it wasn't erupting but basically it's a big pool of water -- at least the pool is big right before it erupts. Afterward the water goes way down, and then gradually builds back up again in the 4 - 8 hours between eruptions. Grand is the tallest predictable geyser and shoots up to 200 feet in the air. 

When you're waiting on Old Faithful, it will start sending out bigger puffs of steam as it gets closer to erupting and little teasers before the real thing. Grand is not like that. At about 12:28 there was suddenly a little stirring in the water, and then, boom. There it went!

It erupted for 12 minutes, shooting and spraying and boiling! At one point it abruptly paused, and everyone thought that was it and then it came back with more force than ever! It was definitely worth the hour long wait. 

After that, we trekked back to the van and headed back to camp. We stopped to take some pictures on the way out...

Lillian's trusty selfie stick/tripod 

came in handy more than once!

Back at the camp, we had some discussion to decide what we should do with the rest of the day and when we should leave. We decided we didn't want to go back to Yellowstone but would rather take one more swim. We weighed the pros and cons of sleeping through another chilly night and getting up at 5 to take down tents and finish packing up or packing up everything in the evening and driving through the night and decided on the latter. So, Chris headed into town on some errands and the rest of us headed to the river. 

We weren't there long till the sun disappeared behind the clouds and swimming didn't seem that appealing after all. It had done this Thursday too, but we only got sprinkles. Sure enough, here came the sprinkles.... and then it kept on! 

We hunkered down under some trees on the bank, figuring it wouldn't last long, but instead it came harder and Isaac reached out and found a little piece of hail! We finally ran through the rain up to the roof beside the bathroom. Some of us were laughing and some of us were nearly in tears. 

And then, it stopped as abruptly as it started and Chris picked us up and took us back to camp to assess the damages. I suppose our adventures wouldn't have been quite complete without a little rain while camping, right? The one tent had some puddles and a wet sleeping bag or two, the other one had only a few damp spots. We hung up everything that was wet,  and then we set to work packing up. What a job!

It probably took a good two hours till everything was tucked away. The tents dried quickly, so we went ahead and packed up everything. 

Best way to take down a tent? Carry it out to the road! 

We ate up our leftover lunch food and cereal and packed our dirty, unshowered-for-days selves into the van. Chris treated us to one, last splurge -- watching Yellowstone at the IMAX. We headed out around 7:45 pm. It felt a little crazy and surreal, driving toward the Great Tetons in the gathering darkness. 

It felt unreal that the much anticipated adventure was almost over and we were heading home.