Royal Wood at the Shuswap Theatre

Bonnie and I slipped off to hear pop and ballad singer, Royal Wood tonight.  The light was shining through the opening of the hills around Bastion Mountain.  Ahead of us, one traveller had pulled off the road to catch the light of the sinking sun against the hills.  The theatre was sold out.  As one patron said to me at intermission, "We went to the other theatre tonight and when we could see we were at the wrong venue, we still had plenty of time to get over here to catch the event."  This was said in the context of our evening drive through town:  two teenagers at the light on mainstreet, and four blocks further we saw two other kids out on the streets.  This is a sleepy town. I hope the two groups of kids meet up with one another.

Perhaps everyone was at the theatre for no one was on the streets.

After intermission, Bonnie won the door prize -- tickets for two for May 6th's "Heartbreak House" presented by the Shuswap Theatre.

Arta

Science club member takes to the kitchen

Where shall we start?

There is a new club in the Shuswap - Science Club. Science Club started two weeks ago when David asked me when we was going to be done with Behavior Intervention. I asked him what he meant. He said, "You know, all those eye-games I play with Dawn, Behavior Interventionist".

With the Autism Funding from the BC government, David has been attending 9 hours a week of a program called "Reference and Regulate". In the program, children learn to get themselves calm and to start watching adults for nonverbal signs of what they are thinking. Many of the activities are done without using words at all. Apparently "the gig was up" and David had figured out that these games were actually work.

I replied to his query, "If you say you are done, you are. Congratulations. You officially have graduated from Behavior Intervention. How about we have 'Science Club' instead?" He had the same look of joy that you see in the photo above. So we picked a friend from school and invited him to join David and Dawn (former Behavior Interventionist, new Science Club teacher) for two mornings a week.

Science Experiment #1
Creating a volcano and making it erupt. Thanks to Cousin Naomi and her volcano summer birthday party, they were able to observe the eruption in one the volcanoes saved in Arta's house. They then made their own volcanoes using modelling clay.

Science Experiment #2
Create a robot. The robot is a dinosaur. It has a head, a little piece of lightening coming out of it's mouth, it's medium sized, and the feet will be put on next week.

Science Experiment #3
Dawn is out of town, so we have moved the club to Arta's kitchen. Stay posted for what comes next after homemade slurpees and poppy seed cake. They came after making oatmeal for breakfast and discovering the properties of brown sugar and the reaction between the brown sugar and the heat of the steaming bowl of porridge.

Science Club

What shall we do next, Grandma?

This morning David and I made a poppy seed cake. I was practicing using attachments to a Braun 5in1 machine which I have had for 15 years, but have only used to slice onions.

This morning we used the whippers to beat egg whites, we used the cake paddle to make a poppy seed chiffon cake, and we practiced making ice with another blade twice, once for David and once for his dad.

Now we are going out to plant an apple tree. Having heard Glen say you cannot buy the tree until you dig the hole, we are taking the pick-axe out and our shovels. We are headed out to dig a hole 17 paces away from the pear tree and 5 paces in from the road. In six years we will invite you over for apple pie, the filling grown on our own lot, and the apples cut with the 5in1.

Arta

Homemade Slurpees this Summer

crushing ice

Hurry summer! Hurry to the Lake cousins. This morning's kitchen experiment was to see if we could crush ice with the 5-in-1 machine. We had apple juice over crushed ice, but the ice was crushed so tiny we think it will be perfect for making slurpees. If "screamers" is what you want, David has a machine to make Dairy Queen blizzards that will make the soft icecream to go in your homemade slurpee. Come soon. We can't wait to see you all.

Happy Easter

hens, nests and eggs

When Easter comes later, rather than earlier in April, there is more opportunity for celebration.

I would have let decorating the house pass me by, but the international students are always asking about celebratory customs, wanting to know the difference between secular and religious holidays.

I decided to explore their interest and slipped out to the garage to survey the shelves for boxes of decorations labelled EASTER.

I have eggs stashed away that we blew out years ago.

Remember when we would put pin pricks in the tops and bottoms of raw eggs, blow out the centres and then colour the empty shells and hang them on a tree.

egg decorating by blowing out the centres of eggs

I can still feel the ache in my cheeks after blowing out a couple of dozen of those.

I can remember fishing bits of broken egg shells back out of the bowl into which only the whites and the eggs yolks were to fall.

As well,  I can still remember the taste of  the raw eggs that somehow reached my lips instead of ending up in the bowl of middles that we made into scrambled eggs later.

There is no one who can remember eating those scrambled eggs without having to pick out the stray shell here or there.

Amazing that anyone can still love Easter after bringing up those old memories.

I am not introducing the guys who live here to the pleasures of colouring eggs, either the empty shells or the hard-cooked ones that we used to roll down the hills on Easter morning..

the really good treats are long gone from this dish

For Easter joys, I did a candy run to London Drugs and what you see here are the less preferred of the candies that I brought home.

All that is left from what I bought are some Easter ju-jubes, some malt balls and a few foil-wrapped chocolates.

Two weeks to go ... and more Easter treats to come.

Home-made hot cross buns are next on my list of tangible Easter joys.

Arta

A Cheesecake Photo-Op

"I have a perfect coach."

Mati and I have been thinking about cheesecake recipes.

He has been making them.

I am only his coach.

Each practise gets a little better, though we didn't get in on the first tasting.

That cake went straight to his workplace for a party.

Now he made a second one for us, using all of the right methods: the cream cheese was soft and not overbeaten, the top of the cake was finished with a ganache and the cake was cooled before we cut into it. Add to that, the batter was flavoured with Wyona' special spice: Kaluha.

"I have a perfect student."

Can life be better than that?

All I had to do was provide the cheesecake spring form pan.

Arta

Quilting as a Hobby

Tools of the trade - scissors, pliers, needles and thread

Hello,

I tried everything I knew to disuade Miranda from learning how to quilt.

I told her that it is the old-fashioned way, no one does it like that anymore, it is cheaper to buy a quilt than to make one home-made, that she should just wait for hand-me downs from other babies and do something else with her time, that I am no good at patchwork and couldn't help her, that it would take time and trouble to borrow the stands, buy the frames, and that she would have to buy new needles, a set of pliers, quilter's thread, and use a staple gun to attach the quilt to the frames.

... a few more stitches and we will be done

None of this was enough to prevent her from going ahead and putting on her baby quilt.

When we were quilting this morning, I was thinking of how beautiful the quilts are that Moiya and Wyona have been doing by machine, and I said to her, "I think you are going to be the only one who is making a quilt the old-fashioned way."

She just smiled.

I am leaving for 10 days, and Miranda is going to finish it on her own.  When I try to take picture of other women, they duck out on me.  I understand since there is a part of all of us that likes a finished photo presentation.  She was willing for a candid tonight.  This photo is not posed.  She is really quilting.

Look!  Even a thimble on her finger, and blood on the tip of her thumb if one could see it.

Stitch and pull.  Stitch and pull. 

Snip.

Arta