Vocabulary Builder

With two teens and a tween in the house, and college on the horizon for all of them, a little early SAT prep seems like a good idea. This vocabulary builder has some fun stuff you can do right on the site, like vocabulary tests similar to what you'll find on the major college entrance exams. You can choose testing formats, and there are downloadable tests as well as learning tools available to purchase. Since our kids are homeschooled, they haven't had to deal with as many of these standard-format tests as a lot of their public and private-schooled counterparts, so this kind of prep, especially since it's kind of a fun game they can do on the computer, could pay some pretty big dividends later. There's even a "Star War" game, and "Memory" games, both of which will go over big with the younger set.

Pickled Garlic

I made pickled garlic this week for the first time in ages. Years ago, when the boys were much younger, a boy on Eli's soccer team had pertussis--whooping cough--and the next thing I knew, Eli and Clayton were coughing like barking seals all night, sounding like they couldn't breathe. It was awful, and it went on for several weeks. We did all the home treatments I could think of to make it more bearable--a humidifier, hydrotherapy in the form of Wet Socks every night, and twice daily they took two cloves of pickled garlic chased by a spoonful of honey from our own bees. I considered it a powerful anti-viral punch and I believe that those measures, along with their naturally strong immune systems, are what got us through whooping cough in a relatively short period. For an awesome pickled garlic recipe, check out this natural health forum, and have some on hand for your family.

Scientific Basis for My Morning Exercise Preference!

I'm definitely more of a night owl than a morning person, but for years I've known that the best time for me to work out is in the morning, before I kick off my daily activities. The longer I wait, the harder it is for me to get out the door for a run, or to head to the gym. What's up with that? Well, a post on http://www.healthyfellow.com, illustrates what I've found to be true for me. Exercise was perceived by subjects in a small study to be more taxing after intensive mentally challenging activity. So if I've spent my day working, studying, and generally managing my life, my workout is likely to feel more difficult. Intuitively I think I've realized this, since even the idea of starting the workout becomes more difficult, seems more daunting, as my day progresses. So even though I'm a night owl by nature, morning workouts are definitely for me. You can check out the post at http://www.healthyfellow.com/152/the-best-time-to-exercise/#more-152.

Spring Break in NOLA

Mark and I decided to go visit Everett in Mobile over spring break, but something is seriously wrong with the Mobile airport because it costs twice as much to fly in and out of there as it does to travel to and from any of the nearby cities: Pensacola, Florida, Gulfport/Biloxi, Mississippi, and New Orleans. So what could we do? We were forced to fly into New Orleans, rent a car, drive the two hours to Mobile, hang with Ev for a couple days there, then bring him with us back to the Crescent City, spend the weekend taking in the sights with the boy before Greyhounding him back to Mobile and--sigh--endure a romantic couple of days on our own in the French Quarter before flying home.

It was 75 and sunny the entire time we were down south. The people were friendly and charming, the Gulf of Mexico was cool on the toes (as opposed to painfully frigid, as the Pacific is in Oregon), and the food was to die for. My ambition in visiting the south, besides hanging out with Everett and seeing his stomping grounds, was to eat and drink myself along the Gulf Coast, and I am nothing if not focused in my ambitions. We ate crab cakes, fried oyster po' boys, deep fried alligator, frog legs, crawfish, gumbo, jambalaya, alligator sausage, shrimp, oysters rockefeller made into an omelette, muffulettas, beignets, bourbon pecan pie, and enough bread pudding to last a lifetime of stairmastering. We drank with equal enthusiasm, from the morning ritual of chicory coffee at Cafe' Beignet, to my newfound love of sweet iced tea, to a boozy concoction called Louisiana Lemonade, New Orleans microbrew Abita Amber, amazing olivey martinis at Emeril's restaurant in the Quarter, NOLA, Sazeracs--an cocktail featuring absinthe, traditional absinthe...

New Orleans is a jewel, drop-dead gorgeous, soulful, vibrant, and sexy. The architecture, the lush flora, the brassy, bluesy Dixieland music wafting along every street in the quarter along with the smell of something spicy and rich. Walking two city blocks is an entire sensory banquet. I won't go on too long trying to describe it, but here are some photos...

Soggy, But Otherwise Well

Apparently our NW weather has garnered national attention and some of our peeps from far and wide have been checking in to make sure we haven't been swept away in the flooding. It was good and wet for a few days, and we had some high water in places. The creek on our property didn't flood the driveway, but where it flows through a neighbor's land down the road, it did flood the ditch and create a nice lake for us to drive through. The highway into St. Helens was closed with about a foot of standing water. The wetland in that stretch has recently been in-filled to accommodate construction of a car wash and storage unit business. Because, as you know, those wetlands aren't good for anything, that's just a waste of some good, buildable land. Way to go, Planning Commission. We did lose power briefly, had a bunch of limbs come down but no trees this time, and our cabin was leaking around the woodstove chimney--Mark had to get up in the middle of the night and set a milk bucket to catch the water. Other than that, the worst thing we had to deal with was sinking almost to our knees in squelchy, sucking wet mud when we went to the barn to milk the goats. The ducks are living large in all the newly formed ponds on the place. Oh, and the kids lost a money-making gig. We're doing a 4-H fundraiser--Elves for Hire--the kids are doing holiday chores and errands for people, just by donation. A local assisted living home had recruited them to help with their big Holiday Bazaar this Saturday, but they wound up with a foot of water on the first floor, had to evacuate all the residents, and now have two to three months of work ahead of them to repair the damage. We're all okay, thanks for the calls and emails, and please feel free to continue to call and email, just because.

Sad, Neglected Blog...

What exactly was I thinking when I decide to go back to school full-time, while building a house, homeschooling Eli, Jaeger, and Keegan, managing the madness of soccer season, Eli's first season on the climbing team in Portland, and the gazillion other balls that have to stay in the air? It's been a crazy couple of months adjusting to yet more logistical challenges in our lives, but this is our last weekend of soccer, school is going well, and we all seem to be suriviving this latest chaos. Clayton is also carrying a full-load at Portland Community College, and working 4 nights a week washing dishes for Dave at The Klondike. The house is coming along, slowly--tomorrow I'll post pics of the huge roof beam going up. Updates to come, Halloween pics, and generally scintillating news!

October issue of Outside Magazine

Pick up a copy of the October issue of Outside, or check out this link to Hampton Sides' article about swimming the Mississippi River. This is specifically of interest to us since Clayton and Eli were along for the trip. John Ruskey, the boys' Mississippi mentor, was Sides' guide on his river quest. There's no mention of the boys, but they're able to point out where they were while the photos were taken.... http://outside.away.com/outside/destinations/200710/swimming-across-the-mississippi-river-1.html