And So it Begins...

Wintery weather.

Thanksgiving preparations.

Christmas letter.

The above picture was taken on the way home from errands in Iowa Falls, yesterday. We received a little more of the white stuff overnight, so it looks to be snow for Thanksgiving. And I can remember having none for Christmas in past years. Could this be a portent?

The arrival of Thanksgiving week brings various preparations. For one thing, that huge turkey is comin' out of the freezer tonight. Wrapped in newspaper until Wednesday evening, and then set in a water bath overnight, I am confident there will still be opportunity to freeze my fingers whilst extracting the gizzards on Thursday morning, before the annual "stuffing o' the bird."

This week means a slight break from school activities: no spelling, and shortened math assignments for Tuesday and Wednesday. Leaving ample time for Ma's slaves to help with cleaning chores, heh, heh.

And just today I was able to start the infamous Christmasletterwritingproject. It may be more of a New Year's letter, due to a few extra ingredients in our end-of-year potpourri. I guess most of you (three or four, anyway) wil have to wait to find out until then!

Along with, I have been fooling with photocard designs on the Walmart site....*sigh*....

Why do you sigh, Ma? (you ask)

For two reasons: they say there are new designs, but I find less from which to choose, for my personal tastes. Accommodations must be made for the two pictures, one of which holds eleven people. My second trial on this point concerned my computer, which was going OH SO SLOW most of the day. Finally I broke down and asked Loren for help. He looked at this and that and then it was great! "I didn't do anything..."

Sometimes I feel like Clara trying to get into the Tardis.

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¿Qué Pasa, Baby?

Ma is pretty stoked!

Tonight I installed the Spanish program for Nolan, Trevor, and I, on my computer,

All by my lil' ol' self :-D

Tell that lady at Yahoo she had better watch out, Ma is a comin' !

It called "Ouino Spanish Complete" and it came with its own activation code.

I know !

Just like Jason Bourne except I got my wrinkles the old fashioned way, and not from lazing about in the sea for two days.

The "complete" part means it will take us past the rudimentary levels of learning and into the big leagues, oh yeah.

I was tempted to jump in tonight but managed to restrain myself; we'll explore things together, tomorrow.

Should be fun :-)

In other news, we spent more time making applesauce, today. I washed up 150 last night so they were all ready to go (I hate washing them and wanted to get it out of the way). Then the three boys spent 1.5 hours cutting, and after they had finished it took me another hour to finish cooking, sieving and washing everything.

Not too bad. Though I'm guessing we have enough apples left for three more sessions. But it went so much better with Ethan helping, this time. The lure of working with knives aside, Nolan and Trevor get a little demoralized if they are the only ones coring and slicing apples. Particularly Nolan.

We also had the assistance of Ethan's laptop and Pandora. First he played movie scores but then I had him switch to barbershop. Good stuff, all around.

That's all for now. "Bon soir"...I mean, "beunos noches, baby."

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Mayo-land, Boys Town, and the Grand Ol' Opera

Hark, 'tis that special time of year. The advent of Thanksgiving, the selection of the Christmas card photo, the writing of the Christmas letter, and.....

Loren's annual exam up in Rochester.

He arrived late this afternoon in the home of the brothers Mayo, settling in at the usual, cheap motel of yore.

All the yearly tests followed by an angiogram on Thursday. If I were up there Loren might be able to come home that same day, providing I drove. But driving home alone requires an additional day's wait.

And that brings us to the Hoytstead, a.k.a. Land of Boys, wherein Ma still rules with the iron rod of baked goods, videos, computer games, and an outing on Thursday (if you behave !)

I have the week all planned:

Tuesday--school and then applesauce....*groan*...."No more than 2 hours...2.5, tops."

Wednesday--school and then grocery shopping

Thursday--school and then a museum visit, followed by subway dining.

Barring that, supper at Subway "Restaurant."

Throw in the last book of the Percy Jackson series and a couple episodes of Hogan's Heroes and we've got the coming four days and certain personages all locked up.

In the meantime, all the boys are down in the new, dirt floor basement, working on a building project. Or at least they were when this post began.  Which means, Ma has free reign with the CD player and speakers that actually work.

Time for a little "Essential Opera."

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What We Done Did Last Saturday

So here is the product of our apple labors on Saturday. Around 33ish quarts; the square ones in front hold 1.25 quarts (also, I would like folks to understand that is not my tablecloth. It's an old sheet, set there to catch drips. No way I want people to think I have that kind of taste in tablecloths).

It took Nolan and Trevor four hours of cutting. I helped cut a little but mostly I was washing apples, watching the four pots and stirring, running hot apples and peelings through the ricer, cleaning out the ricer, adding a little sugar to the finished sauce. And trying to get Nolan to quit saying, "This will never end!" "Dude....you are bringin' us down....knock it off!" "That's enough discouraging talk, Nolan..."

After the final apple had been cut, it took me over an hour to finish up the last four pots, run them through, take the last old peels out to the burn pile, and wash up all the pans and utensils.


Quite the ordeal but we did get through all of the Red Delicious apples. That's the good news.

The bad news: that was around one fourth of all the apples from our trees.


On that same day, Ethan finished digging out the grey water ditch. This is something that has to be done every couple of years. Arduous work, partly with wet clay that sticks to the shovel. I did half of it one year, right before our Thanksgiving Dinner at church. I could hardly sit up during the services that day and we ended up leaving right after the meal. A bit of digression but Ethan was working hard and even though he was missed in the apple cutting party I would never have wanted to trade places with him that day!

Normally this would be enough, but once you get in the groove of working like dogs, it just feels so good to keep going...

About the time Nolan asked for game time, I said, "Oh...I think Daddy needs you guys to load up Kendra's stuff in the van." Of course that went over well, ha ha. But once they got started everyone got into the spirit of things.

In theory. I didn't witness the above because I was out at my "new bed" digging and plunking bulbs in the ground. With that accomplished just as it was getting dark, I came in and had lunch at 5:30 (or as they say 'round these parts, "dinner" ...I can never get the hang of "lunch" not meaning the noon meal). Whatever one calls it, I had skipped it because of the hot-n-heavy apple processing.

After 15 minutes of glorious rest it was time to make supper and while it was baking in the oven....*gasps for breath*....I cut Nolan's hair and had him jump in the shower ("But I already took a shower, once, this week...it's just going to be a trim, right?")

Then, the same for Trevor...after which we ate supper...

THEN I made brownies and granola,

watched a show or two with Ethan and did my nails,

and thought how ridiculously busy the day had been.

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Adjustments

It looks like Ethan might finally be almost well, hooray!

With that, and Loren arriving home this evening, and school starting back up for the week....perhaps I can find my new "normal."

I'm one of those funny creatures that functions better with a routine, operated within a settled atmosphere.

Until I go nuts and need to get away, ha ha.


As is usual with Loren arriving back, I am pulling my "let's clean and pretend we do this all the time" stunt.

Not too much of the house, mind you, but somewhere between "bare minimum" and "mediocre at best." Probably closer to the first designation, because.....I woke up with a knot in my back and slight dizziness....head can only turn so far either way.

I like to think of this as God's way of protecting me from too much cleaning.

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Huge House, Four People

It's a quiet Sunday morning, here at the Hoytsead.

Loren will be coming home from Indiana on Monday, and Kendra left for Le Jobe in Minneapolis, yesterday evening.

So just the boys and Ma hangin' out together on this fallback Sunday. Other than not wanting to visit a new church while Loren is away, Ethan is still fighting off the latest odd virus.

(I very nearly called it "this weird virus" but remembered just in time that's what I called the last virus...can't have that type of redundancy despite repetitive sickness). Rather hesitant to take anyone with any symptom to any new church. We took a recovering Nolan with us to visit one place and the pastor mentioned "the coughing and sniffling" in his pastoral prayer. Unfortunately, there was no trap door through which I could escape. One way or another I do not intend to put myself in that position, again.

This morning's extra hour of sleep was nice, especially after reading all the Facebook comments from parents of young children who didn't get to sleep in because of their live-in biological alarm clocks. It only took 30 years but I am now reaping the benefits of having older "young" children.

To compensate for our spiritual slackery I am listening to  "New England Sunday." It doesn't have the penitential effect of "Chant" but I couldn't find the monk CD and actually, this is quite nice.

We'll have  pause it in ten minutes to watch a nature program but hey, I can always finish it afterward. Besides, there's a certain spiritual dimension in how "Life on Fire" animals adjust to living near a volcano. (narration by Jeremy Irons :-)

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In other news...

I hear someone asked to see a picture of my new glasses. This presents a problem in that:

1. Not sure if I like them....asking someone who is horribly nearsighted to try on new frames is like asking Loren to say which shade of green looks best (he is partially colorblind). I would have gotten my old ones but naturally, the clinic doesn't carry them any longer. Hence, new (and larger) frames. I'm working on the whole "embrace your inner geek" thang.

2. I put a few pounds back on this aging flesh, some of which coalesced around the face, so yeah, I'm old, but not too old to be shallow.

 Also accomplished this weekend, the final mowing of the lawn before winter.

(it was at this point I went into some detail about mower troubles, filling the wrong mower with gas, etc....it was so boring I deleted. You're welcome!)

 And on the happy note we'll adjourn.

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