A couple of weeks ago I thought it was past the 6-8 week mark that J9dd had to clean around the earring and twist it three times a day, so I told her she didn’t need to do that anymore. We weren’t always so religious about it anyway since part of that time was quite chaotic with our traveling and moving, which may have contributed to the problem. Anyway, the other day, we noticed that it was starting to get infected and causing her some pain. We needed to take it out and keep it out, even though that means that it will probably close up. Ben commented to her that he doesn’t understand why women go to such lengths for cosmetic improvements. If it closes up, I wonder if she will be up for it again…It’s turning into a kind of traumatic experience…
The other day, J3ds was outside watching bugs and it was cute when he said, “Look Mom, I found a hop grasser!” I wonder if there is a term for that kind of word mixup?
I was flipping through a Woman’s Day magazine from the library and found an interesting dejunking/decluttering strategy…It was to find 10 items a day in your home that you no longer use/need to donate or dispose of…The author said it could even be small things like things in a junk drawer. Maybe I should try that…
Posted 9/25/2006 at 4:6 PM
Monday September 25, 2006
| September 24, 2006 <!– D(["mb","\nFreakonomics:Â \nSelling Soap\n\n\n\n\n
\n\nBy STEPHEN J. DUBNER and STEVEN D. LEVITT\n
\n\n\nHow do you get doctors to wash their hands?\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n
ks Jenny, for e-mailing us the article above…It’s very interesting…I need to go buy more Purell gel…I really enjoyed reading Freakonomics, even after waiting a long time on the library’s waiting list (I was number 54!). Which do you think is safer for your child, a sleepover at a friend’s home whose parents own a gun or a swimming pool? You have to read the book to find out the startling answer…
Posted 9/25/2006 at 3:39 PM
Sunday September 24, 2006
Ben will be extra busy for the next month during the academic portion of his API, Aviation PreFlight Indoctrination. Tomorrow he has a weekly quiz. Try a practice one yourself here... He also has a weekly swimming test, this one involves wearing a flight suit and boots, jumping from a 12 foot diving board into a 14 feet deep pool and swimming 100 yards.
The Playstation 2 suddenly konked out on us (doesn’t read the disc right). It was just when the kids were doing fine in our new routine of doing it with a daily time limit of 30 minutes (just J11ds and J6ds would normally play). My friend here Susan E. told me that theirs did that and it cost $80 to send it in to Sony to get it fixed. Ben wants the kids to get creative in earning/saving the money to fix it and doesn’t want us to automatically shell out the money anymore on electronics. The kids were toying with the idea of setting up a shaved ice stand or J11ds was thinking about making and selling marshmallow guns, like we’ve heard about on the web. Or we can set up a “Help J11ds Get His PS2 Fixed Fund”!
Saturday evening Ben took a study break and we went to the Pensacola Seafood Festival. For what it’s worth, we did our own Florida Fear Factor thing and tried Alligator (tail) on a Stick. I think if they fry it up in a batter and serve it with a tasty sauce, they can make almost anything palatable. I only had a bite, Ben ended eating most of it. We thought it would taste like chicken but it was more like chewy beef. I wondered if Steve Irwin ever ate it? Was he a vegetarian in his line of work?
Posted 9/24/2006 at 9:18 PM
Saturday September 23, 2006
One thing we’re acutely aware of is that Florida sure has lots of bugs…We’re already on our 2nd bottle of bug spray in a month. The other day, J6ds exclaimed, “Look Mom, this bug has two heads!!” His sister J9dd replied, “No, they’re just mating”. The notorious black and orange colored “love bugs” around here (here is a photo, scroll down to the 3rd one down “Mating Florida Love Bugs”) are everywhere, flying around in my hair, on our legs, on the car,etc. They come out like that twice a year in May and then in September. Can’t they find a hotel room instead???! (Thanks to the Joyfully Homeschooling in Baldwin County, Alabama support group for the bug link).
Posted 9/23/2006 at 2:58 PM
Thursday September 21, 2006
Yesterday afternoon happened to be a rare day without any baseball commitments, so the kids and I went to the base theater to see Ant Bully. It was a really cute movie…It almost made me feel guilty for killing the ants walking along our kitchen sink after we got home.
Speaking of baseball (this is where the kids have practices and games), at Jds11’s last game, it was a bit traumatic for him (and me) when the pitcher pitched a hard and fast ball which accidently hit his hand, his knuckles. At that moment, he continued playing and struck out, but later my friend Susan E. was telling me that the umpire should have let him walk since he had that kind of contact with the ball. Maybe I need to find him a batting glove, would that have helped him? He wasn’t injured, thank God, but it was kind of endearing, I could tell it was hurting him, but he was keeping up a good face to his coach and teammates trying to play it down and didn’t want to put ice on it. This was the first type of minor sports injury with a contact sport that we’ve had, I guess since he’s done safer sports before like years of swim team and one year of Tae Kwon Do (other than one season of soccer as a 5 year old). It’s also our first time he’s needed to wear a “cup”. It was funny at first because Ben hadn’t played baseball growing up in a relatively rural area of South Korea, so he had no experience with it either. It has straps so I didn’ t even know if this thing was supposed to be worn inside or outside of the underwear, so I had to ask my friend Lillian for advice. Jds11 didn’t like wearing it at first, hopefully it is something he’ll get used to eventually.
I’m still on the lookout for a market that sells Azuki beans around here, maybe I’ll need to try the Asian market or health food store on the other side of town, or if I get desperate, I can order online at Amazon grocery. In the meantime, yesterday, I improvised and made sweet beans out of lentils and mung beans using this anko recipe ,
doing the simmering part in the slow cooker. Then we used it on our shaved ice along with some low-fat sweetened condensed milk.
Posted 9/21/2006 at 8:46 AM
3 Comments
Wednesday September 20, 2006
We are trying out a program recommended by my friend Jo Ellen in San Diego. It is called IBM’s Via Voice, a voice recognition program. It was on sale at Price Castle.com. Hopefully, it will help the kids with their writing, as suggested by Julie at the Bravewriter.com website. Now, I am trying it out and training it. So, if the words come out strangely, we are still in training.
Posted 9/20/2006 at 9:11 PM
Wednesday September 20, 2006
(I hope you can read this ok, I’m trying out blogging/typing while doing the exercise bike, so please excuse the typos.) On our cross country trip, one of our friends, Carol Ann (currently in IL near St. Louis, MO) showed me her MOTH book (Steve and Teri Maxwell’s Managers of their Homes) With that in mind, I went to a local homeschool mom’s meeting a couple of weeks ago and someone mentioned that book and system again. At first I wasn’t sure if such a system was for me, it sounded kind of restrictive and constraining, but even though I can manage physical space, clutter, and “stuff” fairly well, I knew I needed help with keeping a better schedule, so I ended up ordering it and the one to organize chores. In terms of chores, during the past few years when we had a growing family with babies in the house , we had someone come to help us weekly with the heavy duty cleaning, but now that the kids are bigger and our house is smaller, we need to discontinue that and train the kids to do more of their share of the chores.
Posted 9/20/2006 at 8:23 AM
Wednesday September 20, 2006
(I hope you can read this ok, I’m trying out blogging/typing while doing the exercise bike, so excuse the typos.) On our cross country trip, one of our friends, Carol Ann (currently in IL near St. Louis, MO) showed me her MOTH book (Steve and Teri Maxwell’s Managers of their Homes) With that in mind, I went to a local homeschool mom’s meeting a couple of weeks ago and someone mentioned that book and system again. I ended up ordering it and the one to organize chores.
Today is the 2nd Anniversary of Hurricane Ivan, which hit Pensacola very hard. Recovery is slow and still painful for many…In some parts of town, it’s quite challenging for newbies like me to get around because a few of the road signs are still missing.
My (Vicki’s) dad passed away couple of years ago but today would have been his 85th birthday. Also, Happy Birthday to Vicki’s niece Michelle and Ben’s niece Jeannie, who have birthdays this month.
Cousins Ho/Jenny and Susan/Rob (Ho and Susan are siblings) inspired us with their shaved ice experience. First, Ho and Jenny took us to this great place near Hacienda Heights, Rowland Heights, I think, which serves Chinese shaved ice with unique flavors like lychee and taro (see photo). Then Susan made it for us when we stayed at their apartment in Chicago. Anyway, since she enjoys cooking and we needed an ulterior motive to buy one , one of J9dd’s birthday gifts was a Hawaiian shaved ice maker, although Jds11 has also been quite excited to make this dessert as well. We’ve been experimenting with different variations…I was a little bummed that they didn’t sell red azuki beans at Winn Dixie last night…But I was shocked that they do sell korean chap-chae (dang myun) noodles! Anyway, if anyone has any healthy, good, easy shaved ice recipes with easy to find items, please let me know…We’ve been using a small amount of sweetened evaporated milk and canned fruit.
I’ve been reading the Andrew Weil book below from the library. Some of it I take with a grain of salt, but basically it is helping me get back on track with healthier eating. We had gotten WAY off track the past few weeks from traveling and moving in (i.e. practially subsisting on junk food, fast food and take out pizza). It has been good to get a fresh start moving in and setting up a new (now healthier) kitchen pantry. My continuing resolutions are to try to eat lower on the food chain, more fruits, veggies, legumes (esp. soy and beans), whole grains, soy, avoid highly processed products esp those made with hydrogenated oil and high fructose corn syrup. We would probably strive to lean somewhere between the Asian diet and the Mediterranean diet.
funny kidspeak: This morning, while we were out waiting for J11ds’s baseball practice, the remaining kids and I stopped by at some nearby garage sales. In the van, J3ds asked me, “What do you need, a garage?”
We are experimenting with life without cable TV, and limiting electronic game time, so it’s been an interesting adjustment for the kids. Overall, it’s probably better since I’ve noticed that they spend more time in creative play, outside riding bikes or practicing baseball, or even reading.
We had some tradeoffs to consider when we chose to live on base – a much smaller and older home (about 1400 sq feet) with limited storage space (It feels even smaller than our place in Sigonella, Sicily) but with certain base amenities (close to Ben’s work, the pool, gym, etc.) . It’s been good because it has forced us to try to de-junk and eliminate non-essentials.We initially thought it was safer to live on base as well, however it was funny when we found out right after we moved in that our common-area/playground gardeners are actually (supposedly low-risk) prisoners from a federal facility on Corry Station, the secondary base nearby. Ahh, that explains why the sex offender rate was astronomically high for the house we remotely considered by the front gate. We were told that we are not allowed to offer them beverages and we can’t do them any favors if they ask.
It’s been an interesting contrast for us to go from living like a civilian last year while Ben attended SDSU back to living on a base. The exercise running track is behind our house, so we hear a lot of activity early in the morning, the bugle call, troops running in cadence down our block, etc.
Last week, Ben has been continuing his program’s orientation week, including fasting blood tests, a preliminary swim test, and intro lectures on atmosphere, motion sickness, and flight surgery admin topics.
J9dd had a fun birthday bowling with friends (Lillian O. and Susan E.’s kids) and brothers.
Posted 9/11/2006 at 10:18 AM
1 Comments
Sunday September 10, 2006
We were without internet access at home for almost a week in the midst of quitting the cable internet which didn’t work out for us and starting up the new dsl service (they had to snail-mail us their new modem), but now we should be back online.
Posted 9/10/2006 at 3:51 PM
1 Comments
Monday September 4, 2006
Here is an example of the hazards of being child #4 and having a mom with too many moving errands to run…J3ds takes a catnap in the shopping cart…We’ve been busy moving in and unpacking. We are supposed to have cable internet hooked up, but we got a bum modem, so we have to wait until after Labor Day for the cable guy to exchange it…(We’re using Ben’s computer at work right now while we set up his office). I’ll update more later…
Thankfully, our water damage from the storage sprinker malfunction was minimal, just one futon mattress, a bookcase, some books, small throw rugs, etc. I was mostly sad that my journal/diary from when I was pregnant and when J6ds was born was full of mold.
Posted 9/4/2006 at 11:27 AM
3 Comments
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