Red Goes to Germany

We just dropped Red off at the airport so that he can go to Germany. His unit is doing their AT there in April and since he is the Training NCO he has to go there ahead of time to get things squared away. It's very cool that he gets to go there and hang out. I'm pretty excited to see his pictures and hear what he has to say about it, plus Germany has some really great yarns...;)

The Dishwasher

The dishwasher washes dishes every single day in our house, sometimes more than once. Therefore it should be the cleanest thing in the entire house, right? Now I'm not the best housekeeper, nor am I the worst, but I feel pretty dumb and a bit dirty that I had never in my grown up life (which has been about 12-14 years now--then again by some standards I might not have achieved that quite yet) cleaned the inside of a dishwasher. I can't say that I ever really looked in my dishwasher.

But I did today and I was appalled. How can something that has hot soapy water sloshed around in it be that disgusting? It's not an easy place to clean either. But I did it and it looks amazing. Who knew? The grime grows so gradually that I forgot what it looked like when it was brand new two years ago. If you haven't looked hard at the inside of your dishwasher lately, I highly recommend it, but be prepared.

I'm not one to make resolutions.....

...however, I think this year I may make two giant resolutions.

1. I have struggled with running for several years now. I enjoy running. I really do. I can't seem to find a way to make it a consistent habit. I will get going for many months and then just one day I'll stop and then it takes me many more months to start up again. I want to find the time and make it a priority. I am resolving to start running and to change my attitude so that I can keep running.

2. I am a really easy-going, happy-go-lucky, fun person when I'm out in the world and with people other than my immediate family. When I'm at home with Red and the kids, though, I tend to be short and more easily irritated. I hear the tone in my voice when I talk to my family sometimes and think, wow, I really need to check myself. I'm resolving to be hyper vigilant about my attitude and demeanor with my family because they are the ones that matter the most--not the least.

The Weather Outside is Weather

Updates on our life, bullet style:

• Our halls are all decked--not with boughs of holly, but lots of other good Christmasy decorations. We've got most of our gifts taken care of. We've really scaled back the last few years on how much we get and for whom. It feels good to be free of the materialistic obligation that we used to feel. I didn't like my kids thinking Christmas was a time for getting "stuff" and they've got a good handle on it now.
• We've had a really nice fall with mild temperatures after having a few snowy spells in early October. All of a sudden in the last two days we've dropped in to single digit highs and windchills below zero. There has been a tiny bit of snow but not enough for my liking.
• I'm preparing to participate in the Ravelympics on Ravelry this year. I am probably a bit more excited than I should be! It is making the upcoming Olympics much more exciting to me than it has been in a few years.
• Blue is going to be testing for his yellow stripe in Ju Jitsu next week. He's pretty excited and I think he's learned more than we realize.
• Pink saved up all her birthday money and bought an electric scooter last week. She's pretty proud of herself (it cost over $200) and now a bit disappointed that she can't ride it because of the weather.
• Purple tried playing the violin for awhile and she's just not feeling it. She says she wants to play guitar so I guess we're going to try that next.
• Red's previous job has finally been filled. He's been doing two jobs for about 5 months now and it's time to be done with that!
• I deleted my reading blog. I haven't been reading as much as I was or as much as I'd like due to lack of time, so the blog is neglected a lot (surprise, surprise). Plus it seems redundant when I put the same information on Shelfari.
• I guess that's enough updating for now. I'm a terrible blog maintainer, but that's just the way it is.

Homemade Laundry Soap

I've been experimenting with making my own laundry soap. It's works really well and I am a convert now. There are many variations on recipes out there but they are all basically they same. I tweaked a couple of different recipes until I found what works for me.

The recipe I've been using:
2 cups Borax
2 cups Washing Soda
1 cup Baking Soda
1 bar Fels Naptha soap grated
Use 1/8 - 1/4 cup per load.

Washing soda and Fels Naptha can be a tiny bit trickier to find, but it can be done. If nothing else, eBay and Amazon have tons of them. I think the Fels Naptha smells great, but it isn't overpowering when the laundry is done. I need to get another Downy ball so that I can start using vinegar with essential oil in the rinse cycle as a fabric softener and then I'm going to make felted wool balls to put in the dryer to take care of any static cling.

I've found some recipes for dishwasher detergent that are just as easy to make. I'll be trying those next...

Who knows?

Who knows what makes me ignore this blog for months at a time and then, out of the blue, decide to post.

Have to play a little catch up now with the highlights from the past couple of months....
July:

• Taylor Swift Concert
  Thanks to another homeschooling mom who had Taylor Swift tickets, but then wasn't able to go, I took Purple and Pink to the concert along with Kirstin and Brandi.
  


• Dansby Wedding

Our friends, Walt and Terra, got married at the end of July. Red was unfortunately at BNCOC (Basic Non-Commissioned Officers Course) in Sioux Falls, therefore I was the only "single" person out of our group of about 7 or 8 couples. Here's me and Red's empty chair.

August:

• Same everything else, different job
  Red laterally moved into a different job with in the same unit. His rank stayed the same, his office stayed the same, his desk stayed the same. The only thing changing will be that instead of taking the plans someone else made and logistically making it happen, he will make the plan and then hand it to someone else to make it happen. This is the job he originally wanted when he took an AGR job five years ago and he's already much happier--even though he's doing both jobs now until they hire someone to replace him in his old job which is taking FOREVER.


• Three Day Weekends
  In addition to Red getting this new job, the South Dakota Guard has also switched to a four day work week, so he has Mondays off. He ends up with four day weekends a lot also because if a federal holiday is on a Monday--which he would already have off--he gets the following Tuesday off as well.

September:
Birthday
Purple's 10th birthday was at the beginning of September. We offered her a choice of a party or of taking the money we would spend on a party and going to the mall with it. She chose the mall--(yay, I hate planning parties!). So I don't have any birthday pictures. Sad.

• Camping
  We went camping over part of Labor Day weekend. It was already starting to get chilly, so there was only one other group of people braving it the same time we were out there. We had a great time and I wish we could go more often.
  
  
  


• School
  We never really stopped schooling over the summer, but we definitely kicked into a high gear when all the other kids went back to school. This year Purple is learning the violin. It's very exciting and I'm actually her teacher--at least until she has passed all that I can teach her and that shouldn't be too long. :-)


• BHVHM
  Red participated in the Black Hills Veterans Honor March again this year. It was his fourth time overall, but his first time as an individual rather than part of a team. The march is a marathon distance (26.2 miles) that has civilian and military categories. If you enter in a military category, which Red did, you have to wear full uniform and boots. Red still came in 2nd in the military category and 4th overall. That means that only two civilians--who ran the marathon in shorts and running shoes--came in faster than he marched it. That's pretty fast marching! I am a terrible photographer and the only pictures I took were of poles and the ground. Oops. He was moving and there was stuff in the way...


• Tattoo
  I was given a gift certificate for a free tattoo by Jody, who had already had a new one done a few weeks before winning this one. Long story short, Purple drew it out and then each of the three kids wrote their own initial. It's my 3rd one and I had it done on my shoulder. I didn't realize until after the fact the the order they wrote their initials is a president. Purple realized it while walking downtown in Rapid where we have statues of presidents on every corner.
  


• Buffalo Roundup
  Every fall in Custer State Park they roundup the herd of bison that live in the park in order to do regular maintenance (counting, checkups, vaccines, selling some). They allow people to come watch and it's supposed to be a big deal, very exciting. They always do it on a Monday morning and because of the size of the crowd you need to be there at like 6am even though they don't round the bison up until like 10am. I've always wanted to go, but when kids are in school or really young (it's cold outside in late September in the hills at sunrise) and it's so early it's hard to make it happen. I was determined this year because we had no reason not to. We got up at o'dark thirty, Red's dad came to our house to ride up with us, we got donuts and coffee and headed up to the park. Here is the line of cars snaking through the valley below to the south viewing area. There were several miles of this beyond what the picture show, but it moves along at a nice pace.
  
  Here we can see the bison starting to come into view. I was disappointed overall in the whole thing. I thought there would be many more animals as the herd is supposed to be around 1200 head, but they only rounded up a few hundred. The animals didn't "thunder across the prairie" as was billed and I would have expected anyway after seeing Dances with Wolves. ;-) It seemed like much ado about nothing by the time it was over. Oh well, now we know.
  
  Video:
  

October:

• Ju Jitsu
  A guy Red works with is a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu teacher at a local martial arts school and he's pretty involved in MMA stuff as well. He got us a deal for Blue to take Jukite Ju Jitsu classes even though they are supposed to be five and he's only four. He goes twice a week, he's naturally, intuitively good at it and he loves it! He finally has something of his own. :-)
  
  


• Gymnastics
  The girls are doing gymnastics now. They really like it although they are kind of behind the curve since this is really their first time (classes at the Y when they were 3 don't really count) in doing this. Cartwheels are quite an amusing struggle for them.


• Knitting
  I'm still knitting up a storm. This month marks one year since I began. Here is a collage of the things I've made recently. As you can see, socks are my favorite thing to knit...and I'm just getting started.
  

Hopefully, now that I am caught up, it won't take me months to get back on here...

Julie and Julia

I don't usually blog about movies that I've seen, but in this case I can't help myself.

I just saw Julie and Julia starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams about Julia Child and a woman named Julie who wrote a blog about cooking her way through Julia's cookbook. I knew who Julia Child was--I remember her being on tv when I was kid, I remembered that she talked funny, and I vaguely remembered that she had died sometime in my adult life. That was about it.

I think this may have been one of the best movies I've seen in quite awhile. I don't know that I've ever heard an audience laugh out loud in a movie theater like I did today--and so many times.

I walked out of there in love with Julia Child and with Meryl Streep. I put Mastering the Art of French Cooking on my wishlist, I reserved a copy of My Life in France at the library and I put The French Chef with Julia Child in the top spot of my Netflix queue.

Not only did I find Julia Child, as portrayed by Meryl Streep, fascinating, but I was also mesmerized by Meryl Streep in her own right because she did it all the way. I think it's widely acknowledged that Ms. Streep is one of the best at her profession...ever...and I have loved so many of her movies, but this one takes the cake for me. She was incredible.