Zucchini

I usually plant two zucchini plants because one usually dies. Last year they both lived so naturally I thought I'd plant two again this year. Well now I have 3??? To my amazement another one grew. I planted some crook neck squash and cucumbers and none of them came up. A plant started right next to my other zucchini plants so I let it grow thinking it was a crook neck or yellow squash because that's what I planted there. Well it wasn't it as another zucchini plant. Now I have zucchini's coming out of my ears.

I am searching for recipes to use zucchini in. I have a zucchini mushroom casserole recipe, a zucchini bread and a zucchini chocolate cake recipe. All of those I love. I found a zucchini muffin recipe that you use Raisin Bran with so I need to try that and someone gave me a cream of zucchini soup I thought I would try in the fall. It's too hot for soup right now. My cousin gave me a zucchini boat recipe that I need to try.

So if you have any recipes let me know. I am giving zucchini's away and making things like crazy. I guess I should freeze some but I think I will be zucchinied out here pretty soon.

I'm back

The bad blogger is back, hopefully for good this time. It's been a long summer. Haven't had a lot of time to get on the computer. Now that summer is winding down and school is about to start I'm hoping to get into my old routine.

I've started putting the kids to bed earlier in hopes that the early morning wake up call in a couple of weeks won't put them into shock.

I've started them back on chores again. They've been doing them but not all of them. Summer use to be the best time for chores for me and the kids but with the baby this time its thrown us all for a loop.

So back to the old routine and getting everything back to being organized!!

Yeah!!

Too much family Too much!!??

On Saturday we had 3 family parties. Yes, 3 of them. The first was my husband's dad's side. We have it every year and this year his uncle was in town that we see maybe once a year. It's a swimming party at his uncles.

The second was my side a family reunion at my Grandma's. I was in on the planning so I had to go. Needless to say my kids were the worst there. I don't know if its more competition because there is more kids or what but they weren't at their best. Let's just say it wasn't the funnest of all the parties.

The third was at my hubby's Grandma's. His cousin was in town from Georgia. I've met her once since we've been married. I think we haven't seen her for about 5 years I would say. She brought her daughter which we haven't seen in person who is now 3 years old.

Well we went to all of them. The first started at one and the last we got their at 7:30 p.m. They were only serving snacks which struck me as kindof weird since it started at 6 p.m. which is most peoples dinner. We didn't eat at the first one since we were planning on eating at the second. Needless to say we were buying pizza at 9:30 at night. The kids were starving and so was I.

So after all the break downs, the whining, the bloody swelled lip, the crying, some laughs, we were exhausted yesterday. My youngest son was sick from not eating. He plays so much its hard to get him to eat. So a couple of bites of pizza at 10 when we finally got home, trying to keep him awake to eat it his pizza just isn't enough.

I talked to my mom yesterday and she said I need to learn the word no. Well in hindsight I wouldn't have gone to the party on my side. There wasn't enough food and the kids were either getting punched or getting into trouble. If I would have told my mom I wasn't coming she would have had a fit.

So how do you go about making it easier on the kids. It was way way too much for them and too much for the parents. I know it doesn't happen often but the recovery from it all is exhausting. The kids are still tired today and my hubby well, I'll just say he is ornery.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to not live around so much family. My husband and I have 2 sets of parents each. Both of our parents are divorced and remarried. My dad lives the furthest away in Idaho so I don't see him very often, my mom is 30 minutes away, mother-in-law 5 minutes and father-in-law 15 minutes. We don't see his dad as much as the mom's. It seems we are always having family things, birthday parties, reunions, etc. It wouldn't be so bad but some of these people I see several times a week. There are the blessed times that we go a month or two without seeing them. I guess I shouldn't complain because they are close. You would probably say you have a sitter whenever you need one but it never works out that way.

Our anniversay was last Tuesday. My mom was sick and my MIL had things going on with her mother. We had the kids and the weekend was shot with family things so I planned a scavenger hunt with my hubby and the kids to find things and pick up chicken and meet me at a park. The boys loved it. I kept the baby with me and my oldest son whose 17 was gone on the trek. It turned out nice. So now that I wanted my blog to not be about venting here I've gone and done it again. Oh well....I'll try better tomorrow :)

BAD BaD Blogger

I admit it I'm a Bad BAD BAD Blogger lately. I've really been slacking and I try not too. This summer has been more hectic than I am use to. I've also felt that I'm so negative on my blog and I don't want to be. I think I've used it as a place for venting out my frustrations. Venting how imperfect I am lately and how I can't seem to get things done. So I'm trying to change my negativity to positivity!!!

I don't know about you but this summer has been crazy between art camp, 2 gaming camps, and keeping the kids from boredom and fighting, planning a reunion and more I've been really busy. We are not planning a vacation this summer. It's been too hard to plan with the baby and all the other activities my oldest son has going on. He just left today to go on a Pioneer Trek for the next 4 days. I think I need a vacation though. Mom's deserve a vacation, maybe a spa treatment, a pedicure picture this with me...



a good book and a nice hot bath. (Ok the hot bath isn't sounding so good right now. Its 96 degrees here.) The nice warm bubble bath. That could work ;) time away from the kids, a massage. Sounds nice to me where do I sign up!!

With the current economy and my husband being in real estate not so good for the vacation either which is fine since its hard to plan with all of my sons activities. So we are doing a "Staycation". I've heard a lot about it lately in the newspaper and on tv. Here's how ours is playing out swimming, playing in the backyard in the sprinklers, with the slip and slide, water fights and just playing around. The local amusement park, dinosaur park, the zoo and a trip to the Childrens Discovery Center we are having our "Staycation". I think I'll book mine after the kids are back in school.

Camping Week

The summer fighting has begun. My kids need some structure or some activities to keep them from fighting. I usually have crafts set up and a day to cook or bake something, we do a field trip once a week, maybe the $1 movie at the theatre but this year with the baby its been hard to get anything set up.

I can't stand all the fighting that has begun now though. My two younger boys play together really well. They will go outside and jump on the trampoline play outside with toys, in the dirt or mud. But its been raining a ton so they haven't been playing outside as much. They have good imaginations and play with toys and come up with things inside but then they get fighting and I want to rip my hair out so I sat down on the computer and thought I can do a week at a time so this week we are doing a camping week.
Our activities for camping week is as follows:

We are going to the library to get books on camping. I ordered one from the kids last book order of the year. Mercer Mayer's Little Critter book Me and My Dad and they go camping.

Make indoor forts or tent with blankets etc.
Tell ghost stories
Let them sleep in it at night

For cooking and baking:

Hobo dinners
Another dinner night will be roasting hot dogs and marshmallows. (the weather is supposed to clear up and be good this week except one day)

Make smores and trail mix.

Make Banana boats for dessert one night.

Go on a walk and gather twigs, leaves, rocks, etc

For crafts we are going to do:

Camping Paintings-
we will use our twigs, rocks, leaves and stuff from our walk.

Camping Collage- they can make with the leftover stuff from the walk and I'll print out a few pictures too.

Make stick men- have them hunt for sticks and glue their own stick men together along with googly eyes.

Make grocery sack backpacks

Make glow in the dark pictures that they can see while they are sleeping in their tent.

Coloring and some activities on paper about camping.

So this is my plan for this week. Hopefully the weather will hold out maybe I'll let them sleep out in the backyard but the mosquitos are so bad after all the rain. Hopefully this will make my week go by faster.

Busy Summer Days

I am such a bad blogger lately. With the kids home, baseball, t-ball and summer camps I haven't had much time lately. I've also taken a couple of digital scrapbooking courses. Its so much fun. I'm just getting into it and trying to figure out Photoshop Elements.

This year I wanted to make a plan for my kids for summer. A calendar of activities and ideas of things to do so the summer didn't just fly by.

Some of the things could be reading, our library has a summer reading program. Workbooks so my kids don't forget during the summer months.

I also wanted to include cooking days, activity days, field trips (inexpensive ones), craft days, etc.

Well I haven't done it yet. I wish I could find a website that would have something already done that I could just vamp to my family. I found a couple that have some ideas. Here's one Chocolate On My CraniumNow I just need to incorporate it.

Do you make plans for the summer months or do you just let it fly by? I don't like to be all scheduled, I like some spontaneity so I can go do something with friends or family if needed. But I also want some scheduling some sort of plan.

Pumpkin growing contest

My dad, brothers and I are having a giant pumpkin growing contest this year for fun. This is the first year that all of us have a place to grow a garden. My older brother is a pretty avid gardner. He loves it, he's good at it and he has a good, warm, longer growing season too.

My youngest brother is pretty good at it too. This will be my other brothers first year with his garden. I've grown pumpkins but not giant pumpkins. So we'll see how it turns out.

Last year I had a beautiful hubbard squash plant. It was dead in a day. Squash bugs got it. So I'll need to be careful to watch my pumpkin plants.

I planted some seeds back in March. I finally got them in the ground a couple of weeks ago. So we will see how they turn out. My dad probably has the shortest growing season. Late and early frost but I think he has a few tricks up his sleeve (so I've heard) to get his going and growing.

Wish me luck and we'll see how big they turn out.