Cucumber Mania

Usually you hear about home gardeners being overrun by their zucchini crop. For some reason, our plants aren't big producers this year. We're getting zucchini, but not more than we can handle. In fact, on SUnday I had to use some of last year's frozen (shredded) zucchini to make our favorite summer cake: Chocolate Zucchini Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting. Yum!

But I digress from the topic at hand: cucumbers.

We started some of our own seeds in the springtime, but weren't confident that our plants would be successful once we transferred them to the garden. So, when my neighbor needed to thin her own seedlings, I happily took several and planted them beneath our blueberry bushes.

Fast-forward 2-3 months: This Sunday I picked 31 cucumbers. THIRTY-ONE!

I just thought I would go outside and grab one or two for dinner, but I kept finding another and then another and then another. (Please also note that about 4 weeks ago Damon picked 19 in one day, and 2 weeks ago I picked 13 at once.)

Adah & Maggie pose with our 31 cucumbers.

Everyone complains about too much zucchini. I've never heard of anyone lamenting an over-abundance of cucumber. Why is that? It seems to me that you can do a lot more with zucchini than cucumbers. I'm open to any new recipe ideas.

Meanwhile, we are enjoying all the bounty from our garden (1 of 4 beds seen above), and last night had a dinner that was almost entirely grown in our yard. We had some homemade pretzels along with all the home-grown veggies below.

Aren't the carrots cute? They have such a great flavor, too. This year is our best carrot crop ever, as well as best corn crop. I love having a garden---despite the overwhelming quantity of some plants.

House Beautiful

After we got the keys to our house in late April 2006, we spent the next 6 weeks feverishly remodeling the interior so that we could move in on June 15. While the new inside was a vast improvement from its 1971 glory days, I was always a little disappointed that passers-by were unaware of our hard work. (I know, I'm vain.)

Here is the house as it looked in April 2006.

Here is the house in October 2007, with some new landscaping and a new cedar fence that replaced a chain link one. (If you look at the left side of the photo you can see the tail light of Damon's car. The entire front of the house was our driveway until we shortened it and created a front yard with new sod in spring 2008. See a nice photo of the grassy front yard in spring 2009 here.)

Now, 3 years later, we have a completely new exterior, of which we are very proud.

I know that since seeing our garage-door-turned-window you've all been waiting on pins & needles to see what color we painted the house, so without further ado....I give you Squirrel (gray) and Spring Moss (green):

I originally wanted a blue house, but we chose these colors to match a mosaic tile blend that may be incorporated into the house's exterior. It's fun and different and I love it. We are getting mostly positive feedback from neighbors, friends, and our parents (who have both visited this summer), but I did have the following exchange with the neighbor across the street:

Mary: So, Jillaire...do you like your colors?

Me: Yes.

Mary: Oh...well...it's different.

Yes, it is different. It's different from other houses in the neighborhood, and it's different from where we started. It's perfect.

Oh! I almost forgot to show off the new front door:

Isn't it gorgeous?

The coolest part is the old fashioned turn-key doorbell that we installed. Visitors spin the key on the door's exterior . . .

. . . and it rings the bell on the door's interior. It is a happy (and loud) announcement that someone is at the door. We hope many of you will get the chance to use it yourselves!
A note on the grass: Our city has water issues. They are building a new system from another water source, and until that is completed the mayor has ordered everyone to stop watering their lawns. It's sad, especially when I look at photos from the spring.

First Day, First Grade

Wednesday was Adah's first day of school. She's in first grade now, and her teacher is Mrs. Hope. We have heard nothing but good things about this teacher. I even had one mom tell me, "You are so lucky. Really." Adah met Mrs. Hope at the end of last year and was so excited to be put in her class. She said, "I hoped I would get Mrs. Hope. That's how you get her. You hope you get Mrs. Hope, and you do!" Well, that's how it worked for Adah.

Here she is, ready to set off on Wednesday morning with her cute new haircut. (You can see how long it was at the Cat Party! the day before her trip to the salon last Friday.)

Here Adah and Maggie happily greet a friend who was arriving for her first day of kindergarten. Adah felt like such a veteran. She is such a confident and cheerful little girl that it doesn't take much for her to feel she's got a handle on a situation. We are proud of her and know she'll be a star in school once again.

Cat Party!

A few weeks ago Adah asked me if she could have a "cat party." I wasn't sure what that was, but she explained that it meant she'd have some friends over and they would do "cat things." With a little more planning and creativity, we put together a fun afternoon party for the girls and a few friends.

They began the party by making their own headbands with cat ears. (I even had a pair, which the neighbors just loved.) We played a game called Poor Pussy where everyone sits in a circle and one player, "Pussy," is in the center and must go up to everyone else and act very pitifully. The other players must pet him/her and say, "Poor Pussy" three times without laughing. Next the children played Pin the Tail on the Cat.

We ended by decorating cat-shaped sugar cookies that the girls and I baked the day before. We had also baked some oval-shaped cookies with scalloped edges (along with some other shapes for me to take to Young Women), and Adah declared those the hairballs!

Maggie piled on the frosting, sprinkles, and candy.

Adah models our refreshments: Swedish fish and goldfish crackers (because, you know, cats eat fish!).

Gunnar loved eating his own blue-frosted cookie, too!

Girls Camp!

At the beginning of August I spent a week at Camp Zarahemla, a Church-owned property a few hours northeast of White Salmon, with about 65 teenage girls and 30 other adult women leaders. It was my first time at Girls Camp since I was 17, and I had a great time, despite missing my children and husband who were at home with Damon's parents.

The camp was on the shores of a small lake where we could swim and canoe. It was a gorgeous setting. Here's the view from the hill just a few yards away from our campsite.

The theme for our Girls Camp this year was "Light of the World: Unity, Belief, Example." Each cabin (tent, really) took a country as its own theme. Mine was the United Kingdom, of course. My fellow cabin mom, Kathy, and I decorated our campsite with a Union Jack and some iconic British images.

Our tent became the Zarahemla stop on the London Underground or "Tube" (London's subway system). The tents were quite nice, since they were set up on wooden platforms--no sleeping on top of rocks or tree roots--and you could stand up in them. However, the canvas "walls" were not attached to the platforms at the bottom. This created gaps where the very brave camp chipmunks could enter the tent. Those little guys were seriously bold, illiciting cameos in the camps skits as "Killer Ninja Chipmunks" and as targets for Harry Potter's spells. We had to keep all food out of the tents since the chipmunks would chew through bags to get at campers' unguarded snacks. Some people even had chipmunks jump onto picnic tables and grab cookies right from under their noses!

Here's Kathy with the phone box that she painted for our campsite:

We also created a list of American & British English equivalents so that our girls could see that we don't totally speak the same language as our cousins across the pond.

We had a fun week eating international dishes cooked in the lodge by our camp chef, creating skits (I got to play Queen Elizabeth as we saw "what would happen if the UK visited Camp Zarahemla), canoeing, playing games, and certifying survival skills amidst a mock pandemic (we told the girls that swine flu had mutated while we were at camp and we had to stay there until the quarantine was lifted; their nervous faces made the camp director reveal the mock part of the dramatization right away).

There were also many spiritual classes and evening firesides that taught the young women campers and us leaders more about being "examples of the believers." (The 2009 theme for the Church's Young Men and Young Women is 1 Timothy 4:12 "Be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.")

We stayed up too late and got up too early and were very ready to go home Saturday morning. Unfortunately, the car that came up from White Salmon to take home some of the young women BROKE DOWN. A bolt had fallen out of the brakes. Fortunately the camp caretaker had a large set of socket wrenches, one of the men who had come up to camp knew how to fix cars, and we were able to have another driver stop and buy a new bolt.

Kathy and I caravanned home with the fixed car and finally made it home around 5:00 Saturday evening. What a week!

Anyone have the number for Simon Cowell?

The Super Laundress. Hamper Swap. Win, Spin or Dry.
I'm not sure yet what the title will be, but I think I've come up with the next great idea in reality television.

So many women I know have trouble with laundry. They complain about it. They feel like they're always doing it. They're never on top of it. They hate it.

I'm just the opposite. Well, I guess I don't love it, but I don't feel like it runs (or ruins) my life. I've got a plan and I stick with it. I only do laundry once a week, and then it's done.

Last week I was saying to Damon that I ought to teach a class on laundry. I could teach a class where I could share my systems and my expertise, my positive mental attitude about handling the dirty clothes we accumulate each week. I could teach a class at church, or--heck!--the local community college.

So, I was on this wave of laundress largesse the other day when I had an extended conversation with a friend who was, of course, feeling overwhelmed by her laundry. "I can help!" I declared. I told her how I just do my laundry once a week and that she, too, could be liberated from her piles of dirty clothes if she could just adopt a plan and stay dedicated to it. She has twice the number of children as me and scoffed at the notion that anyone with a family of 8 could possibly keep up on their laundry. I persisted. "After school starts, we'll pick a day and get you all caught up on your laundry. We'll bring some of it to my house. We'll wash. We'll spin. We'll dry. And then from there, you'll be set! You can do this!" I crowed. (I later learned she hung up with me and told her teenage daughter that I'm crazy.)

From there it was a simple step to realizing that merely teaching a class wouldn't cut it. I would need to be like the Super Nanny or that TLC show Clean Sweep that comes right into someone's home and turns everything around through a multi-day immersion in the dysfunctional home. I think HGTV would be a great market for So You Think You Can Fold.

My mother, of course, would be my co-host, because she taught me everything I know. Like some grade schooler being asked about their academic successes, she always said, "Laundry is my best subject." We would be a formidable, stain-busting team.

So, if anyone can hook me up with a reality TV producer, I would be much obliged. And, if you're having trouble with your laundry, just let me know. You can be on our first episode.

Final Note: My mom and I believe in ironing, too, so the inevitable spin-off: As the Iron Presses.

I'm Still Here

The last few weeks have been quite busy. My parents came for a visit from Salt Lake City and less than a week after they left I headed out for Girls Camp, a week-long event with the Young Women at our church. Many thanks go to Damon's parents, who came to take care of the kids so Damon didn't have to take vacation time.

On top of all this, I recently joined Facebook. I read in Boston College Magazine that if Facebook were a country it would be the 3rd most populous in the world. After being invited to join by half a dozen friends, I guess I no longer wanted to be left out. It's been a cool way to connect with some "long lost" friends, especially from college, but it sure can be a time drainer and I'm figuring out how to balance it with this blog and the rest of my life.

Soon I will post some photos and memories of our visit from my parents and of girls camp. And, as soon as I finished painting the trim I'll post house photos. I know you're all just dying to see what color we picked for the new siding!!

Meanwhile, I'm still here!