Nesting Failure

Three baby blue robin's egg later ....

Three cheers for standing on a ladder, ducking under the eaves and aiming the camera in a downward direction.

Confirmation:  3 eggs.

I took a look through the living room window the first thing when I got up Sunday morning, wondering if I should check on how the eggs were doing.

Thinking better of disturbing a bird who was settled on her nest, instead I left to walk down the property and visit my neighbours who also get up at 6 a.m.

Waaah!

Bonnie called me two or three hours later with the sad news.

She and David found the nest on the porch.

Now only scrambled eggs, the remains taken inside to David's science table for all to view.

Shadow, and 2 leaves holding an egg shell

Those eggs were so tiny that Bonnie put the shells on a leaf on the porch so you can get the idea of their relative size.


As well, she gave herself a lecture about anthropomorphizing a bird.

She told David that though the nest was lost, she was sure that the mother bird escaped unharmed.

Arta

Singing a Song is Fun to Do

On any song, as a general rule, I know the tune, but the lyrics are missing for me.

I know how to remedy that.

So one day when I heard David intone to no one really, since he was all by himself, "I have no one to talk to," I thought about that old Louis Armstrong song, "Ain't Misbehaving" with those lyrics.

I found the words on the web, memorized them as I was taking two of my early morning walks and transferred them to a cheat sheet, just in case of brain failure just at the moment when I want him to think I know all of the lyrics in the world.

"No one cares for you a smidge / when you're in an orphanage"

When I came in the door ready to do my musical magic  and teach him the song, Bonnie told me that David had watched Annie, learned the lyrics to It's A Hard Knock Life for Us" and had choreographed a dance to go with it, just as they do in the film.

Then he proceeded to perform the song by singing and spinning on the floor at the same time.

Whoops.

Looks like I have to up the ante on musical theatre if I want to keep up with David.

Arta

An early morning view of the Shuswap

The bird writes "D" for David in top right hand corner.

I had my eyes on the chickweed in the strawberry patch, barely after daybreak and long before the sun had risen.

One hand was pulling out the weeds and then other was gathering the small stones and tossing them in an old ice-cream pail to get them out of the garden bed as well.

I was dreaming of the strawberries I would eat in the summertime as I would stroll by that bed.

A robin kept swooping back and forth above my head.  Finally I looked up to see what the trouble was since it couldn't be me ... quietly weeding there.   

I could see she was building a  nest, tucked above my drain pipe.

I dropped my trowel and went to fetch a ladder to see how far she was along on her spring project.  The inside of the nest was a glistening brown colour that reminded me of melted chocolate.  I made a mental note to get a camera and take a good picture when I was through with the weeding.

But it was the next day when I finally climbed up for that picture and by then she had lined the nest with straw – and even put a signature on the outside of her creation – a “D” for David, I told him.

Please don't let the ladder shake.

He was as excited as I was to take a look in the nest.

But I didn't see the robin again and she didn’t seem to come back for the next few days.

I thought I had ruined everything in my excitement to take a look.

I pulled the nest down, only to look into it when I had it in my hands ... and see one little blue egg.

Sick at heart and hoping that no one had seen me, I  quickly tucked the nest back up on the drainpipe and waited a few more days.

Confirmation:  the bird is still interested in the nest!

 Glen did tell us to pull the nest down, ... that we would just have a mess there, and have to put up with the chirping birds.

But instead, we were thinking of how to make signs to alert everyone they would have to use the garage door.

No one was to get in the way of our science experiment.

No one was looking more forward to having them hatch than she and I.

I went to the inside corner of the house often to check and see how the our robin's nesting instincts was coming along.

Everything looked fine.

To be continued ....

Too Many Lemons

"What are the reasons you bake? Do like the process of making things? Are you cooking for others? Are you baking so that you can eat it yourself\?"  Joaquim was peppering me with questions while I was working in the kitchen

Scrap reasons one and two, I told him.  Working in the kitchen isn’t that fun.  I have no interest in doing three hours of work so someone else can polish off food in 20 minutes.   I am selfish.  I only cook for myself.  Watch and see if I ever make anything I don’t like just because I want to please someone else.

So, ... wanting something good to eat and seeing a bag of 20 lemons for $6, I purchased them, looking forward to making some lemon tarts.

When I got out to the Shuswap with them, I found Bonnie already had 8 lemons in the fruit basket on the counter. Now I was  trapped with the other reason I cook -- I hate seeing food wasted and we now had a lot of lemons.

I began baking up loaves of lemon bread -- the kind that you bake and then pour syrup over when it comes out of the oven, just to enhance the crusty, outside with a sweet lemon syrup.  I use Nadine's recipe in the Johnson "Manna from Heaven" cookbook, but that is a standard loaf.

Then I switched to lemon tarts, having bought 3 new fluted pans and never having used them.

Three full recipes and 9 tarts later Bonnie and I were down to 8 lemons left.

Then I had to pack up and return to Calgary.

Anyone out there reading the blog with a new lemon recipe, or alternately, want a lemon tart delivered from Lot #3 at the Shuswap to their house.

Arta

Montreal Community Clean-Up

From Eric Jarvis

I thought you would like to hear about another of Cathy's community projects. She organized an Interfaith cleanup of an inner city park, and it was a great success! Her co-organizers were predicting 50 people would come to the event, but more than 200 participated, the numbers swollen by LDS from around the stake. We were assisted by a smattering of others: Jews from a local synagogue, members of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue of Montreal, members of a local (Filipino) Catholic congregation, members of a peace group in Montreal, and even a small Muslim delegation. We scoured the park in less than two hours and miraculously the rain held off long enough to permit a relatively dry event. Even Mark Garneau gave some opening remarks and everyone that participated wants to have another event like this. Thank you, Cathy, for organizing this community event!

A Baby Boy

Richard and I had our 18-20 week ultrasound yesterday, and we found out that the lovely little creature in my stomach is a boy! And a very healthy looking boy at that. No markers for any problems, and all his parts in the right places.

Richard says that this picture proves that he'll be a back flip champion. I'm still amazed at his flexibility!

His overall length is about 26 cm (almost the length of a ruler) right now, but he spends most of his time curled up like this playing with his toes.

We had thought this was 19 weeks and 4 days, but according to his measurements it was 19 weeks and 6 days, making today officially the halfway point. His arms and legs actually measured closer to 21 weeks, but I'm sure that's just because he's going to be tall like his dad.

During one of his breaks from kicking my very full bladder (I guess it was taking up his personal space) we got a sweet picture of his tiny foot. It's about 3cm long right now (just over an inch).

I hadn't realized how enamored I would be with this little guy, but I could just look at these pictures of him for hours and never get bored. I thought I understood how much I would just adore this little creature, but it turns out that reality is something altogether different.

This is my favorite picture. It shows his nose, lips and chin. If you tilt your head to the left its a little easier to make it out. I just love the glimpse into what our little boy looks like.

I think for both Richard and I, the best part of the ultrasound was the huge yawn the baby let out at the very end. It was like he was working very hard to make sure we got all the good angles and was ready for a nap. It was the sweetest thing.

Another Spring Day

I was cleaning up the front gardening bed so that we could plant strawberries along the south and west side of that space.  From the corner of the brim of my hat, I kept seeing a  robin swooping into my peripheral vision.  I put down my trowel to see what was going on.  She was flying in and out of a  nest with the drainpipe meets the porch.  Since she had been carrying something in her mouth, I was hoping to see chick and stopped to get a step ladder to see what was going on in the nest.  The centre was a beautiful shiny chocolate brown colour, the mud still glistening.  I forgot to get David up there to look until the next day, by which time soft pieces of dry grasses lined the nest.  I left the ladder there so that she can get used to it in the environment, since we are going to be going up and down those steps a lot of time, watching first for eggs and then for chicks.

David and his mom are learning to practise behaviour regulation and they took along their behavioural therapist on one of their trips involved going to get him new clothes.  Buying new clothes is not a problem for David alone.  The claustrophobia of a changing room, the task to find the right waist size, the problem of too many choices and too few definite ideas about what a person wants had him dropping to the floor a number of times.  Shopping is not easy on the child or the mother in perfect situations, which this was not.

David is old enough to use the male changing room at Zellers.  Right outside the door are the men’s hats.  David didn’t care about the clothes being brought into the changes room, but he did care about and a wide brimmed, under-the-chin-chorded, man’s hat with an army camouflage pattern is the product that he spotted on his own.  Since the hat is only in men’s sizes the circumference of the hat is 3 inches too wide for him.  He gets the looks when he walks down the street.  He loves the hat and is oblivious to social cues so everything is copacetic when he wears that hat.

Cutting out recipes.  That is one of my long-time my hobbies.  Recipes from the Calgary Herald, the Glob and Mail, me and Canadian Living Magazine.  The hobby expanded when I could find recipes on the internet, and even better when Bicks or Epicurious.com would send recipes to me with any work on my part at ferreting them out.  I have saved the recipes in designated drawers in my kitchen, in cardboard boxes to be looked at on some later date.  I have collected them in binders, determining to categorize them at a later date.  I don’t have to do anything with all of this paperwork – just keep it as a project should I run out of other things to do. Since I have been here with Bonnie we found another fabulous way to explore this cooking hobby. And the exploration requires no paperwork.  Vegetables like the butternut squash come with small stickers that carry full cooking instructions.  Just pick up the squash, read the instructions, cook it, and throw the sticker away.  To add to that,  I couldn’t find a cheesecake recipe in all of my recipe collections, but while the cream cheese was coming up to room termperature and I was searching through books of recipes, my eyes fell on the Philly box which promised that inside was “our classic cream cheese recipe” was on the inside.  No more clipping recipes or printing them from the internet from me.  From now on, straight from the instructions on the sticker or the recipe on the box for me to the oven for me.

David is making a new fort. The fort is down in the Skunk Cabbage Reach of the Campbell Spring.  David’s helpers are out in full force:  Papa, Mama and grandmother, all down there with their clippers, their wheelbarrows and the spades and shovels.  Bonnie and Arta even leave other work since fixing up that walk is more fun than another other work.  There are sticks, leaves, stones, an old culvert buried so long ago that roots have ground around and through it.  All of that came out in the 14 wheel barrows of slash that came out of the3re.  It is so much fun that we just can’t wait until someone comes in there with a chain saw to take out what we can’t get at.  In fact we could wait and we discovered the way for two women to pull out a fallen tree that was at least 16 feet long.  We wondered if we were crossing the fineline between clean-up and fighting mother nature.  All it took was moving saplings out of the crotch of limbs shaped like a v off of the trunk, angling it between the new first that were growing.  One woman at the top.  On in the middle, coordinating efforts, ... one, two three, heave.

Joaquim asked if we were going to build an auspicious entrance, an arch with a some words above it.  Tremble, all ye who enter here, or as David says, “Enter here if ask people in white house”.

A Spring Day

This was a three part day for me: first weeding the front bed so that we can plant this year’s new  strawberry plants.  We only had one visitor to the house: the census taker, trying to pick up packages of census he had not received.  “No, while you may not have received it yet, I know my husband has mailed it in.  He is very conscientious.  He would not have missed a deadline.  You can trust in him to be prompt.”  She went on and on extolling his virtues and in between accolades about Joaquim, she asked him where he lived and why he was doing this census.  Mr. Small said, “I retired five years ago, to Canoe and thought this might keep me busy but I am finding it is not lucrative.”

“But you are seeing all of the homes built in your community.”

The ones off in the woods at the end of a 2 mile walk, with a locked gate and a dog barking make me nervous.  I am afraid I have run .  I am afraid I have run into a grow up”, I heard him say and I knitted my brows.  “Oh, a grow-op,” said Bonnie.  “That would make me nervous as well.”

As the man left, I said, “That is an interesting job.” 

“Yes,” said Bonnie.  “He sees a lot.  I just wish he hadn’t drive up while I was inside the garage its door wide open, getting into my out door work clothes.”

The second part of my day was then a work party with Joaquim, trying to clean up the slash around the south end of the garden.  One of the logs he tossed in the wheelbarrow had been the home for a colony of red ants.  Now they were crawling over the bucket of the wheelbarrow en masse.  Next he found a bug the shape of a rhomboid, its out casing a beautiful green fuchsia colour with chocolate brown markings.  I picked it up and put it on different colours of trash – it was perfectly camaflouged wherever I place it.  “Do you know the name of that bug?”, asked Joaquim.  “No.  I need to buy a bug book.”

He went on, “Why are we doing all of this work up here.”

“To find a place to plant the corn seeds David bought.  I know.  A lot of work to save seeds that cost $1.99. but some parents will do anything when their child is busily engaged in Science Club.”

The third part of the day was spent cleaning out the brush in the Skunk Cabbage Reach of Campbell Spring.  The job started small, but morphed into 6 wheel barrows of underbrush for the trash pile.  As well, Joaquim pick-axed an old rusted ½ culvert out of the ground.  “Everytime I felt like quitting, I thought, just one more whack of the pick-axe and I will get this out,” and that kept me going until I finally unearthed it.”  We are going to have to rake in the gaping hole that left in the earth.  David spent his time under a cedar tree, one whose long under branch had touch the ground for such a long time that it had re-rooted itself to the nutrient rich soil underneath of it.  The skunk cabbage was was still in flower 10 days ago is now lush and green, its beautiful elephant-eared leaves upright in the stream and along the bank.  David spent his time making a small bridge across the stream whose banks are now overflowing with spring run-off.  “I have on my cousin’s crocks.  My feet are big enough to wear them,” but my feet are so cold I can’t feel them any more,” He changed footwear when he went back to the house, but the trip was mainly to get out of his sopping wet sweats, since he finally took a full fall into the stream.

David is getting bigger.  So big that he can’t ride the lawnmower with Glen anymore.  That news hasn’t been broken to him yet, a telling that will make a sad day for him.  I remember, myself, the day my dad, laying on his back on the floor, telling me that now I was too big to sit on his feet and have him toss me over his head and his head and back.  I remember the longing for that fun, did not diminish as I grew older and watched him do it to successive babies.

We spent a long day outside.  When I came in I said to Bonnie, “Let’s all go to bed hungry tonight.  I am too tired to cook.” 

“Tossing a squash into the oven and frying pork chops is not really cooking,” she said.  “And a piece of the new fresh bread baked today would be sufficient.” We wound down our evening looking at a recipe book called The Brownie Lover’s Bible: 100 Ways to Make Brownies, all the time eating the fudgey brownies she had made from the back of the circular, yellow Fry’s Cocoa tin.  That recipe is not one either of us would make again (I looked in one of my books and I had tried it as well.)  Lucky that we have that book one of my roomers gave to me as a parting gift.  We have 150 more variations to try, though I doubt any of them will match the splendour of the one I find in the Johnson Manna from Heaven cookbook.  The relatives on that side of the family really know how to cook.

fiddleheads for lunch

fiddlehead fern -- yum!

I am going to BC tomorrow with Wyona and Greg. 

I am going to search the forest and see if I can find some fiddlehead ferns to eat for the reasons listed below.  According to epicurious.com, they taste like a cross between asparagus, green beans and okra.  I will report back as to whether they are used as a first course or as a side dish.

"fiddlehead fern"
A young, edible, tightly coiled fern frond that resembles the spiral end of a violin (fiddle). It is also referred to as ostrich fern  and pohole.  The shoots are in their coiled form for only about 2 weeks before they unfurl into graceful greenery. Fiddlehead ferns are a rich, deep green color and are about 2 inches long and 1 1/2 inches in diameter. They have a flavor akin to an asparagus-green bean-okra cross and a texture that's appealingly chewy. Fiddleheads can be found throughout the eastern half of the United States, ranging from as far south as Virginia north to Canada. They're available in specialty produce markets from April through July, depending on the region. Choose small, firm, brightly colored ferns with no sign of softness or yellowing. Refrigerate, tightly wrapped, for no more than 2 days. Fiddleheads should be washed and the ends trimmed before being briefly cooked by steaming, simmering or sautéing. They may be served cooked as a first course or side dish or used raw in salads. Fiddlehead ferns are a good source of vitamins A and C.

Read More http://www.epicurious.com/tools/fooddictionary/entry/?id=2503#ixzz1Lh5vGhwX

Ezra Garrett Bates -- brave spearman

Hello,

I was with Wyona when she received Trent's phone call announcing the birth of Trent and Jamie's new baby boy, born this morning at about 8 am -- 10 pounds, 10 ounces and 23 inches long.

The baby's name is Ezra (like in the book of the Old Testament) and his second name is Garrett (meaning strength of the spear or brave spearman).

Arta

Second Try at my new blog...

So... my new blog is rebeccaj63.wordpress.com. And here is my second attempt at my first post there! .... same topic! Women Judges!

Annis Bay surprise

Every walk on the Annis Bay beach reveals a new suprise.

Yesterday, David took three of his friends on a walk down the beach to see the "biggest fallen tree in the world". You may not recognize it by that name. Perhaps you know it as that large uprooted tree laying on "the sandy beach" in Annis Bay. Or perhaps you remember it is the one an adult had to boost you up onto when the water level was too high to cross on foot on the beach. The log is long enough that all of the children at the Lake this summer could sit on it, and there would still be room for more. I don't recall it being there when I was a child, but I have had fun watching the next generation test their balance skills on it.


I went to boost the first child up onto the log, to brave the balance beam left there by nature on the beach, and a flurry of goose dander was blown into my face. I brought the child down and off flew a goose towards the water with some angry honking. As the feathers settled, I could see a nest built just at the base of that fallen tree close to the massive tangle of the long dead root system. I had no idea that a nest would have so many soft feathers lining the foundation of twigs and grass. One by one, adults lifted the children to have a close look at these massive eggs. The count was three. The eggs were larger than a child`s hand.


Off we ran down the beach to let the mother get back to her work of keeping the eggs warm. We stopped a long enough distance away to watch the mother goose return and to eat our snacks of apples, bananas, and oranges. Teh sun was setting and I knew it was time for us to make the trek back. I gave the boys a challenge. The goal on the way back was to make it by the nest without disturbing the mother goose again. The boys ran off ahead of the adults on their `covert mission`. In the distance, I could hear David singing snips of a song his grandmother taught him, `the one she`s been saving to make a feather bed`...

Die Walkure in Popular Culture

Here is one more reason to see Die Walkure.

Charise and I were looking at a birthday card today, one that used the phrase, "It ain't over until the fat lady sings."

"Where does that phrase come from, anyway," said Charise.

I didn't know.

My internet search took me to a phrases bulletin board:

"The outcome of any contest isn't known until the final results are in. Thus, don't make premature judgments or give up too soon. Often associated with Wagnerian opera, specifically Brunhilde's 'Fire Song,' in 'Die Walkure,' and the fact that Wagner may seem interminable to nonaficionados. Thus one's impatience would be relieved when 'the fat lady sings.'"

As well Wiki tells us that Brunnehilde's "aria lasts almost twenty minutes and leads directly to the end of the opera, though the character Hagen has one final line, "Zurück vom Ring!", to sing after Brünnhilde's death, and there is also a substantial orchestral finale. As Götterdämmerung is about the end of the world (or at least the world of the Norse gods), in a very significant way "it is [all] over when the fat lady sings."

Who knew, Charise?  Especially given that we had just seen that opera!

Thanks for the question.

Arta

Die Walkure - Amazing Moments

Photo Credit: Ken Howard

I spoke with Bonnie Wyora,  Charise, Wyona and Moiya since the opera.

We saw the same opera in different ways

All of us agree -- some operas should not be missed, and are worthy of second viewings.  Of course, I will probably say that about ever HD Met performance.

In this opera, besides the fact that the music was so beautiful, I want a chair just like the one Frika is sitting in as she negotiates her moral compass with Wotan.

The image only shows the ram's horns in the bottom part of the picture, but  the front legs of the chair are each a ram -- now there is a stunning piece of furniture!

There is a better image of Frika in that chair in the New York Times slide show, but that image wouldn't copy here.

Photo Credit: Ken Howard

As well, I was sitting too far away from Wyona in the theatre to poke her, but when I saw the flowing skirts on the Valkyeries, I wondered if Wyona had been the wardrobe mistress and designed the flow and softness of those dresses with one of her recent Vogue patterns.

The skirts were engineered so that they would slide up and down the planks of wood, as well as carry their softness and style across the stage. You could have blown me over with a feather when I figured out that the burlap bags at the feet of the women were filled with the bones of dead warriors!

This was my first time to hear Wotan's farewell song to his daughter as he banishes her to live in a Ring of Fire.  That was a wonderful moment in the opera.

I will be back when she can be rescued -- by her hero who will appear in the next part of this cycle.

She will have to live there in that ring of fire until at least the fall opera season.

Phot Credit: Ken Howard

Or longer, if I stay with the mythology and wait until her hero is born and grows up.

One can see her in the middle of this picture -- just a little white spot.

Hanging upside down, the wings from her hat, folded back over her eyes and fire flashing all around her.

I love reading the reviews of the performance -- both before I go, and when I get home. 

If you plan on seeing the Encore of this opera, here are links to some of the reviews I read.

Brünnhilde’s Trials Beyond Wagner’s Dreams

The Stars Who Don't Sing
 
The Ring: Part Two Storms into the Met

As I was skimming through reader comments on some of the above reviews one person wrote, "I'll be sure to buy the DVD when the MET makes it available. While we're watching it, I can tell my grandchildren I was there that day."

I am one step luckier.

One day my grandchildren will say, "I was there that day.  I watched Maestro Levine conduct his 2,000 plus opera at the Met, I heard Wagner's Der Walkure for the first time, I listened to Placido Domingo act as the master of ceremonies and I topped up with candy and pop."

Arta

Die Walkure - Questions and Answers

Photo Credit: Andrea Mohin /NY Times Review /Brunnehilde and Wotan

Ceilidh, Dalton, Kelvin and I went armed with snacks to Die Walkure, the second in the four part series of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Our snacks were M&M Peanuts, Redfoots and Dino-sours, topped up with popcorn from Wyona. Dalton had Strawberry Frutopia, Ceilidh a Coke and Kelvin, the best of all drinks – ice-water. And we ordered hot dogs and chips and cheese dip at one of intermissions. This was a l-o-n-g opera – where else is there a theatre with a production that is five hour and 35 minutes.

The plot is built around Norse mythology, much of which Dalton already has a handle on. We brushed up on facts about the opera as we waited for the show to start. There was a small glitch in the computer that runs “the machine” on which the action revolves, and that was enough time for us to refresh our memories about the characters we were about to see.

I promised a cash reward for any three questions that could stump Kelvin when the show was over. On the way home, Ceilidh and Dalton began their question and answer period with him.

1. What is a valkyrie?
(ANSWER: in Norse mythology, a Valkyrie is a woman who decides which heroes will be slain in battle (chooser of the slain). They bring the bodies back to the Valhalla which is presided over by Odin.)

2. What is the name of the sword that Siegmund needs to defeat Hundig?
(ANSWER: Sigmund names the sword “Nothung” which means needful.)

3. The sword was stuck into what kind of tree
(ANSWER: Ash tree)

4. Who composed the opera?
(ANSWER: Richard Wagner)

5. Who is the maestro for this production of the opera?
(ANSWER: Richard Levine)

6. What is the last name of the twins, Siegmund and Sieglinda
(ANSWER: the Walsung Twins ... with two dots above the “a”)

7. What is the name of Wotan’s wife whom we met in Das Rheinegold?
(ANSWER: Frika – the Guardian of Marriage)

8. What is Wotan’s daughter’s name?
(ANSWER: Brunnehilde)

9. Who is Brunnehilde’s mother?
(ANSWER: Erda: the personification of the earth)

10. Who is the hero in Der Walkure?
(ANSWER: Brunnehilde)

11. Name the demi-god of fire who establishes a ring of fire around Brunnehilde to protect her? (ANSWER: Loge)

12. Who is wolf cub?
(ANSWER: Sigmunde)

All of these answers are easier to remember when there is money involved.

Arta

Charise's Yellow House

(sung to the tune of a yellow submarine)

While Teague and Cheri went to Hawaii for Teague's school band, they left all 5 of their kids with Aunt Charise in her yellow house.

Of course not all their time was spent at the house.

One of the things they wanted to do was go to the CALGARY ZOO.

It was awful weather that morning.

Look at all that snow.

Fluffy fun flakes and freezing.

My back was covered and Lurene didn't like it that much either.

The kids wanted to carry on!

This was one of the things to do on their list while they were here.

There was some difficulty finding indoor places until the snow stopped.

The map was rendered unfit to lead us indoors.

Andrew was freezing under just his coat.

Lurene was nice enough to take him to the gift shop and got him this awesome tiger hoody.

One of the indoors places we found was an explorers's cabin, one of the few places in the zoo where you can find dead animals.

Kalina Leunetta Oldham

Greetings, gentle viewers.

On Monday, May 9th, we've had another birthday in the family.

And it's all because of Kalina Leunetta Oldham.

She was 9 pounds, 1 ounce........born 8pm?

Yes, born 8pm.

Grandma Wyona was there helping out.

Tim was there the whole time helping Lurene.

Lurene did most of the work.

Kalina looks like she's got attitude already.

YOU GO GIRL!

Notice in the first picture how we're getting creative with our modern technology; the heart monitor is in the shape of a valentine.

Kalina's probably thinking 'what's my heart doing outside of my chest?'

posted by Aunt Charise

Want a hard boiled egg?

I like an automatic email that comes to my email box from the Egg Farmers of Canada.  I thought that I knew how to hard boil an egg until I read  their latest tips.  I learned 4 new things, 3 of which I will use. 

The fourth?  Well, 75 % is good for me on this one

http://eggs.ca/cooking-with-eggs/recipe/basic-hard-cooked-eggs/

How I did on my self-test?

1.  I already knew that the longer the egg has been in the fridge, the easier it is to shell.
2. I already knew to start boiling the eggs in cold water, 1 inch above pan.
3.  I did not know only a single layer high in the pan.
4. I did not know, prick the end with a pin.  Now that is harder.  I don’t know if I will slow down long enough to do that.
5. I did not know leave the eggs for 23 minutes in hot water after it comes to a boil and you take it off.  I thought it was only 5 min.
6. I did not know that egg peels easier from long end.

Live and learn and eat eggs!

Arta