Random Musings

Our house has been noisy in a different sort of way since the kids have left: Bobby's been sick, and therefore at home. Which means the TV has been on and on and on and on and...get the picture? I told him whenever he retires he's getting a quota on how much tv he's allowed to watch. There's a limit to how many westerns, oldies, newscasts, and just plain old noise a gal can take. And life has been different without children in another way...our computer network adapter fried itself and is now on it's way to Kentucky to be repaired. I'm rejoicing for warranties! So yesterday was really my first "home" day without children or a sick husband or visiting family since I stopped work...and I absolutely LOVED it. I had time to do things that seldom, if ever, got done, and I'm targeting one small project every other day. I've cleaned and sorted the pantry top to bottom (that actually took 3 days because I did it with the kids and was interrupte...

The kids are gone, the house was semi-clean, and we headed outside to handle routine chores. I had just finished dealing with produce (which included throwing ripened, chicken pecked tomatoes AT the chickens), when my dearest comes around the yard and tells me the unbelievable. All that work I did cleaning out the pantry, preparing jars, buying lids and jar rings for canning the next two weeks...it's worthless. Someone came into the yard between last Sat evening and today and TOOK EVERY SINGLE PEAR AND APPLE OFF OUR TREES!!!! There was probably about a 5 gal bucket of apples left (thankfully I had already done some), but we had yet to pick a pear, and this was probably the nicest looking pears we've had in the last five years. I feel violated. If someone had wanted some, all they had to do was ask and I would have gladly shared. BUT TO TAKE EVERYTHING?!? This is not the first time this has happened. This is what I hate about living where we do. It's isolated, but a n...

My pickles are almost finished!!! And the heirloom tomatoes (Orange-Banana Tomato) have finally ripened. They don't have as much juice as the red tomatoes, but they taste exactly the same. I don't know if we'll try to salvage seed from them for next year or not. Meanwhile, the chickens have discovered my tomatoes and ate 3/4 of 6 on the vine. A small part of me regrets not letting the dogs eat the chickens yesterday. But that's a story for tomorrow.

I'm not sure where the pack of worms originated from. Men are forever leaving fishing lures at the pond when they fish, and Mikalai and Aleh were forever scouting the pond's edges to see what "treasures" they could find. But I also had family visiting a few weeks ago who are also fishers and slept in the room the boys now occupy. Regardless, my "superheroes" (that's was one of the many names the Wells twins had for themselves) discovered a pack of sparkly, plastic fishingworms . They had glitter in them. They were worms. They made Lauren squirm a little. And if you stuck them in your hair, you had superhero hair. Out of all the legos , play guns, cars, and toys, the worms seemed to be their favorite toy. Until yesterday, when in a moment of disagreement a worm was torn in two. Convinced they could see the worm's guts, they declared the worms living, not plastic, and totally lost interest. At least for a while. I later found all the worms dismembere...

1. The National Archives: we spent a LONG time in there, and had exhaustion and time not been a factor we could have stayed longer! In addition to getting to see the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carter, the Bill of Rights, and other historical documents, there are SO many exhibits and modern layouts of information! There's a small section on patents, as well as an interactive exhibit where you can attempt to guess what the patent is for. There's a small section displaying letters people have written the Presidents over the years; video footage of funny Presidential speeches or comments; video footage of historical events, and so much more! 2. The Library of Congress. As a child I dreamed of getting locked up in this humongous library overnight. I was disappointed that we didn't actually get to see the stacks, was surprised to find out it actually consists of three HUGE buildings, PLUS a warehouse, and was AMAZED at the main building we saw (the Thomas Jeff...

The Capitol Building was our first place to visit (mainly because we had a scheduled tour there!) I was in awe of the building as well as its historical significance and important to our daily lives. I left there feeling a mixture of awe and amazement at what a wonderful and blessed country we have, plus a feeling of inadequacy and "plain Jane" origin. I can't imagine what it would be like to have such an important role in our country that one could actually work there. As for the tour, we had ours arranged through Senator Burr's office instead of the Capitol Tours group. Even though your Senator's office is also where you get a pass to tour the House and Senate Chambers, come to find out, the tour arranged with the office does not include the pass. Our tour guide was an intern who had only been in the district for two weeks. He seemed knowledgeable enough, though I wondered had we gone through the Capitol Tours how it would have been different. The above sta...

Washington DC is WOW and OW! My mind was and still is totally overwhelmed with the many sights and thoughts we encountered. My feet were excessively sore every single day, and I am thankful for a very patient and understanding husband. I'll have to post my favorite and bizarre things later, but if you ever get the chance to visit DC, it is definitely a place worth seeing.