Feels like Winter!

It is *so* cold here today! So frozen!!!! Jordan wore what was her winter coat in Houston—a fleece pullover—to school. I've noticed the trees are thinking about turning so this afternoon's baking effort will be whole wheat pumpkin bread and dinner tonight will be chili (and something less spicy for the littles). I might have considered making sweet potato cake, but Jamie claims he doesn't enjoy the sweet potato *or* the yam. And speaking of, I saw a woman buying washed and individually wrapped yams at Target a while ago, so now I'm thinking midwesterners have a very odd relationship with their yams.

I've been baking a lot lately. Monday I made oatmeal whole wheat spice cake (with our new ground cloves from Penzey's!) and yesterday I made a chocolate spice cake with chocolate icing. Guess which one I found Claudia tossing to the ducks yesterday?

Artistic Inspiration

In the past month, as Jamie worked with Claudia almost every single night into the late-night hours, helping her with her math and science homework, he unwittingly became her muse. Jamie commented that these are really well done and on the one with the elephant vomiting, that kind of head tilted back angle is tricky to draw and she really got it.

The weekend

Friday I had the worst migraine of my life. It was worse than my usual deal and I was pretty much incapacitated. Even the migraine medicine wasn't the magic bullet it usually is. So yesterday was a lot of hanging out and me recovering from that. We also went to Petsmart to see the dogs that were available for adoption, and met Wendy the dachshund who walked *us* around the store. Then after we got home, the little girls played and rode their scooter while Claudia practiced her trumpet. I played my clarinet along with her and it was so fun! We played songs together! Then Claudia started on a polymer clay project from a kit her friend, Cutter, gave her for her last birthday and after that, all three girls painted on the patio and then went to the park up the street. After dinner Jamie built a little fire in the grill and we roasted marshmallows and watched the UT/Ohio game (we lost).

Today we went to church and participated in the water ceremony. The water ceremony is a homecoming ritual that Unitarian churches do and the idea is for everyone to reconnect after being gone for vacations over the summer. Everyone is asked to bring water from wherever they've traveled and a large bowl is placed at the front of the church. Everyone takes turns telling where the water they brought is from and then pouring it into the bowl. At the end of the service, some churches purify the water and lets congregants take samples home to water gardens. Some churches take the water and pour it into the garden at the church and some purify it and use it for baby naming rituals throughout the next year. Jamie spoke for us and was his usual charming and funny self and had everyone laughing.

When I was in Houston, the water ceremony was voted "coolest ritual" by the alternative newspaper, which I thought was really funny because can you imagine how annoyed the Houston-area pagans were?

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Apparently, at our house, we Dress for Saturday morning breakfast. Sam chose a burgundy velour dress and dress shoes. Jordan chose a red plaid skort with matching long-sleeved red shirt.




Here's Claudia deciding what to make out of clay.



Here are Jordan and Sammy dressed down and painting.



Sammy and Jamie enjoying roasted marshmallows.

Labor Day

We learned in our God-optional church last weekend that Labor Day is a creation of the labor movement. Samuel Gompers, the founder of the American Federation of Labor, said, "Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country. All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, (Which is oh-so-very rich coming from the labor movement.) of glories achieved by one nation over another. Mr. Gompers also said, "Labor Day...is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation." Mmmmm, ok whatever.

This Labor Day, Sammy was still in Michigan with grandparents and Jamie, Claudia, Jordan and I spent the day hanging out and packing away all our white shoes. Then we drove to Andersonville (is that the name of it?) Indiana to Mounds State Park. It was a very nice state park and unlike the last state park we visited near Houston, there were no alligators, so the park staff didn't have to warn us not to toss things into the water for the dog to fetch. We had a very nice cookout and made some very nice cookout food, thankyouverymuch, that we actually cooked on the grill, including, but not limited to, basil new potatoes, chicken in garlic and wine, and pineapple upside down cake. And, of course, s'mores. I decided I'm kind of over s'mores. I mean, the name itself is kind of dumb—"oooooh, so good, I'd like smore!". But really, it's not ever so good I'd like smore because the chocolate bar never, ever gets melty. If you leave a hershey bar next to your computer tower, it melts in about 45 seconds. If you place it between two graham crackers with a melted marshmallow..…nothing. If you then try to melt it further by placing it over a white-hot pile of coals……still nothing except burny fingers. Are graham crackers some sort of super insulating substance? I'm sure I don't know.

Anyway, here are some pics of our labor day state park jaunt.

Laboriously yours,

Susanne


The park:



Claudia making a stick to roast marshmallows:



Blurry photo of walking in the woods:



Roasting marshmallows:

Jordan's new look

Here's Jordan with her new, shorter hairstyle after sleeping in pin curlers all night.

Spider Web

Sunday morning weather

It's 56 degrees right now! That's cold! In Houston last year, the lowest average high temperature was 62 degrees and the lowest average low was 41 degrees.

I see that it's supposed to rain at my parents' house in Marble Falls, Texas, today. Fingers crossed on that! My dad said they got about 3/4 of an inch the other day and that's the only rain they'd had in about three months! That and the very high temperatures for months on end all adds up to very unusual weather for them. They've lost trees and grass this summer and have been watering the foundation of their house to keep it from cracking.

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

Today is Grandma Knight's 81st birthday! Jamie, Claudia, Jordan and I got to spend it with her and Grandpa at Bill and Connie's seriously cool and beautiful place near South Whitley. We had such a fun time and I got to meet lots of Jamie's family. A big highlight for Jordan was getting to ride one of their horses. Meanwhile, Sammy's having a blast in Michigan this weekend with another set of grandparents.

Here are some photos I took today. I somehow didn't get photos of everyone there and I'm bummed about that, but I like how these turned out.

Jerusalem

Jamie and I know a very interesting man, Gil Ronen, who lives in Israel. Gil has created a short film about Jerusalem. Two reasons to check it out: The photographs are compelling and Gil's trying to reach 15,000 hits.

Monday night wildlife

They're coming!!



Claudia is the Queen of Ducks:



Claudia and Jamie attempt to domesticate the duck with a lime sugar cookie:




Claudia lures the ducks by getting down on their level:

My sister's an awesome photographer

For those of you who don't know, my sister, Amy, lives in Los Angeles and is a really great photographer. I *love* her photos. I asked her if I could link her and she said "yes"!

Here are some examples of her work and you can see lots more of it on her webpage.

Polaroid Pinhole (that's Amy on the left):


Digital:





Holga:






Pinhole:







Lomography:

The French Toast War

The philosophers have famously asked, "War. What is it good for?"

Here's one answer, courtesy of noted historian Shelby Foote. (If you've seen the Ken Burns documentary "The War of Northern Aggression", then you know Shelby Foote.)


In the early months of that war, Foote tells us, a squad of Union soldiers had closed in on a ragged, outnumbered, Confederate soldier. Figuring that he did not own slaves, nor had much interest in the constitutional question of secession, they asked him: "What are you fighting for, anyhow?" The Confederate replied: "I'm fighting because you're down here." Foote regarded that as "a pretty satisfactory answer".

Shelby Foote would have looked kindly on our kitchen this morning. It was the dawn of The French Toast War.

Here you can see Jamie making "french toast" the wrong way!




He cooks it in butter. Which is just *odd*. When I gently indicated to Jamie that the proper way to cook french toast is fried in oil, he said we southerners really do eat a lot of "carnival food". So I told him a) I'm telling my mother you said that!!! and b) generations in my family have fried it in oil and he said, "Well, Indiana's been a state longer than Texas" and so I said, "My family's originally from *South Carolina* and eastern seaboard trumps Indiana all day long" and I think we can all agree.....oh, yes. I won that battle.

So then we decided to get it on---fried style. Jamie made his recipe of french toast fried in butter. I made mine fried the appropriate and yummy way.

Wrong way:



Yummy way:



Unfortunately for me, I got a taste of oh, no, General Longstreet's in charge today because I forgot that my kids aren't crazy about french toast. Jordan asked for a waffle and Claudia said it "wasn't that good" and Sam just sort of politely said it wasn't really her favorite, but she ate her dad's just fine. I lost the war and Jamie's smugness stung like.....reconstruction.

The Weekend

Friday night is always pizza/soda/movie night, but that's recently turned into pizza/soda/Meercat Manor night. This week we got a little crazy and did pizza *rolls* instead of pizza and we also had italian cream cake cupcakes (minus the nuts and coconut) with cream cheese frosting.

Jamie already mentioned the car thing which was *so* good. After Jamie got the car to start yesterday, I was following him home and I had all the girls in the car with me and we passed a bunch of people out on the side of the road holding huge, graphic photos of aborted fetuses. Nice. I was *so* irritated. Before the girls saw anything, I made them look down and continue to look down for about *forever*, which they thought was very weird, but oh, well.

Then we made a spice cake and went to a wine/milkshake/dessert/vegetarian dish party at our church where we met a bunch of interesting people and learned where to lay hands on organic and free-range stuff in the area (there's no Whole Foods Market here!). And also, unpasturized milk. I always have a lot of fun at parties with Jamie so it was a really nice evening.

This morning we skipped church and the kids were in their pj's until, oh, 1:00 or so. They went out back and fed the ducks



and then played Zoo Tycoon while Jamie made breakfast



and then Jamie took them to see Nacho Libre and I ran some errands and procured an antique organ stool that looks a lot like this, only with no seat and it's white: