(I'm tired of coming up with clever titles.)

Guess what we did this morning.



We went to the beach.

Lydia had fun.

There was sand. It got on my feet.



I'm glad it wasn't snow.

From the Sunshine State!

And now we will go south, where Erika is just brimming with the latest news. She even has pictures. (Question: Why am I in third-person?) Anyhow, on Wednesday, various members (namely, Uncle Victor, Julia, Grandpa Bob, Annetta, Lydia, and yours truly) went on a canoe ride. This means that we paddled ourselves roughly 700 kilometers (Question: Does anybody know how long a kilometer is?) up a river, and then back down it. Along the way, we saw such things as alligators, egrets, anhingas, other canoeists, water, trees, sky, etc. Thankfully, I had my trusty camera with me, and I was able to eternally preserve the picturesque sight of us all in life preservers. Now that's something worth looking at!


After that, we went back to our cabin (pictured below)


and had Thanksgiving Dinner with Aunt Marge, Uncle Ron, Teri, and Doug. There was a lot of food and it was all really good. Especially the manatee.

Next. Thursday morning was the day Annetta and Lydia have been looking forward to. We all went to a horse farm near Ocala and rode horses. Julia and I had a 1/2 hour ride, which we both enjoyed. Then, Grandpa Bob, Uncle Victor, Annetta, Lydia, and Mama went on an hour-long ride. So Julia, Aunt Joanne, Grandma Suzy, and I had to entertain ourselves. Thankfully, we had food, and were able to snack on it.



That evening we got lost and went to Aunt Marge and Uncle Ron's house, in that order. We left there this morning and cruised (and by cruised, I mean we became airborne multiple times) back home. It took roughly 5 hours, with a lunch break which was desperately needed by the starving travelors. Speaking of which, supper's nearly ready, and so I have to go!

Meanwhile, back in New York....

....our heroine is still juggling everything--kids, laundry, meals, dishes, school, and changing bed sheets--with the skill and grace of a professional. Riiight.

Anyways, it's Jess here again. I guess it's about time for another update! I'll see if I can cover some of what we've been doing:

School. Hosanna and Joanna have so far not needed any help with their schoolwork, which makes me more than a little suspicious. Especially because it takes them roughly 32 seconds to finish for the day. They assure me, though, that if Mama were here, she would say they were finished. Whatever.

Joshua and Katrina and I have been doing a lot of coloring. Very educational, really. Josh and I are working in the Bible Stories workbook from Rod and Staff, and today we did the one about Jonah. (Mama, you'll know which one I mean--it's the one where you cut out Jonah, and stick him into the boat, the waves, the fish, etc. I think I remember you doing it with me!)

Katrina and I understand each other quite well, as long as neither of us tries to talk. This morning, I was trying to teach Katrina her colors:

Katrina: (coloring a picture of a cow) Cow eat grass!
Me: And what color is the grass?
Katrina: Boo. (Blue)
Me: Actually, it's supposed to be green.
Katrina: [proceeds to color it orange].

Baths. Believe it or not, I managed to give BOTH Katrina and Josh a bath. (This was after the neighbors started calling to complain about the smell....)

Other Things: They've all been playing Indians lately, which actually works out quite well for me. This is because I've discovered that these particular Indians are very good at filling the wood box!

I'm trying to keep up on piano practicing, which is going okay. The scales are getting more complicated. (To give you an idea, let me just say that the one I'm learning now involves doing back flips on the piano bench).

Oh, and right now I'm sitting in the airport, waiting to catch my flight to Hawaii.....

From Florida...

So here we are, in a place called Silver River State Park, and we're coming to you from a laptop. You might think that this is where we were going right after I typed up my last post, but we were actually going to a place called Blue Springs State Park. The Blue Springs Run is inhabited by manatees, which are also known as sea cows. They do not say moo, but they breathe funny because they breathe air, but live underwater. So, they either must a) invent scuba equipment or b) surface to breathe. Seeing as how they have roughly the same IQ as a cucumber, I don’t think that a is going to happen.

So anyhow, we drove up to the Blue Springs park, and walked around looking at the lovely Spanish moss, feeling the warm air, enjoying a snow-less climate, and eating manatee pemmican. Then, we ate supper which was spaghetti with manatee meatballs. Following that, we once again went to bed. Those of you who remember when we went to Allegany State Park will also recall all required to get ready for bed and/or go to bed. This cabin had an indoor bathroom, with shower! It was such a nice cabin that Grandma Suzy had to reserve it in July. Unfortunately, the mosquitoes reserved in April, and they confiscated our cars, too. I have a bite to prove it.



After a picnic lunch (any guesses at what we ate?) and fighting off a hungry and hostile squirrel, we hopped in our cars and drove up to Silver River State Park. This is a Cabin Castle. It is huge. It has a porch that goes halfway around, and a refrigerator and shower and stuff like that. We are planning to have our Thanksgiving Dinner today with three other relatives and a friend. I hear the menu includes mashed potatoes, squash, desert, and smoked manatee…


P.S.No, we didn't really eat manatees.

P.P.S. Yes, Jess, I know...I'll get people pictures up here hopefully tomorrow.

Back on the home front....

Jessica here. Yeah, the one who is stuck in New York in a blizzard, babysitting 37 small children (not sure what happened to the others) while simultaneously doing 15 loads of laundry, 34 sinks full of dishes, and making 10-course meals. Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration.

Anyhow, I have managed to hack into Erika's blog (at the risk of stating the obvious), and will proceed to update any and all of her blog readers with what is going on here. (Bonus: I will not be using military time! None of this crazy sixteen hundred hours stuff! *cheering*).

Actually, not much is happening on the home front. I have managed to teach Katrina that my name is not mom, and I will not be addressed as such! :) And Josh has learned that it is pepperoni, not peppermint, on his pizza. (Whoops, now you all know what we've been living off of so far....)

Yesterday, Katrina was in the kitchen, having her second or third lunch (I lose count), when I heard her say "Uh-oh." [Not a good sign!] I asked her what was wrong, and as she didn't have the necessary vocabulary to say, "I spilled my juice on the table," she demonstrated by pouring the rest onto the table. Nice. And of course it was grape juice....

Besides covering every square inch of the kitchen in juice, Katrina is also keeping me busy in other ways. So far, she has wet her bed every chance she has gotten. (ie-every time she is in bed).

So, I have determined that by the time the vacationers get back....

I will be MIA*
Katrina's room will be one large puddle (and she'll sleeping in the bathtub)
The stack of empty pizza boxes will have reached the ceiling
The dirty dishes will have covered the counter and the kitchen table, and will have started filling up the couches
All the movies in the house will have fallen apart from extensive use
(and the VCR will have blown a fuse, if that's possible)
And I will have disabled the ridiculously annoying computer game that Josh would like to play 24/7

Remind me again why *I* am not in Florida?!

That's it for now. I realize that I'm not as funny as Erika. :( But until she gets to the internet again, you'll just have to put up with me! :)

*is that a military term?? Oh dear! I'm afraid Erika's been rubbing off on me. And she's not even here...scary. :)

And we're here!

Yes, we are here in West Palm Beach area, which is in Florida, which is the Land of Sunshine and Oranges and Sharks and Suicidal/Maniacal Drivers (which includes Grandpa Bob) (he is a suicidal/maniacal driver, not a shark or an orange). We had an extremely full day of traveling yesterday, and we had a layover at JFK International Airport. This is where we had lunch, and I had a cup of strawberry yogurt with granola and real strawberries. It was good. After this, we had a three-hour flight to PBI, and on that flight was my first experience with Dramamine. I am not sure if it helped, but it made me get really, really sleepy.

Grandpa Bob met us inside the terminal, and we went down to the baggage claim area to get our 4 pieces of check-throughs. My duffle bag weighed roughly 25 pounds, but I should add that it was my only luggage, and I had school work, my entire dress blues uniform, and my Bible inside. Anyhow, we took the elevator up (*shivers*) and piled our luggage into Grandpa Bob's waiting car, and then we went home. (Note: For purposes of brevity, I shall hereinafter refer to Grandpa Bob and Grandma Suzy's place of abode as "home.") We ate supper and got our sleeping arrangements arranged, and then went to bed. Somewhere between 10 PM (2200 hours) and 6:40 AM (0640 hrs), all the air in my air mattress decided to leave. That works better than an alarm clock...There was nothing left for me to do than get up, so I did. Thankfully, there is this thing called breakfast which made the experience less undesirable.

We just got back from swimming. Yup, before 9:00. Amazing, isn't it! The pool was heated to about 84 degrees, and all of us but Grandma Suzy went in. Including Grandpa Bob. And we are about to leave to drive up to some camping place, so I need to get off! Have any of my readers been to Florida before?

What is coming up on my blog: Part 2

In my previous post, I mentioned our upcoming trip to Florida. My mom, Annetta, Lydia, and I are going down there to visit relatives. We'll be leaving this Sunday, and getting back December 3rd. I'm hoping to be able to blog while I'm down there, and Jessica (who will be watching the little kids up here) says she will try to blog some on this blog as well.

It's finally finished!

Note: This is a more girly post, guys. :)

A long, long time ago (like July 24) I ordered some material and a pattern from Modest Swimwear, in hopes of making myself a swimsuit to wear on our upcoming trip to Florida. Well, today it's finally done! My mom and I both worked on it, and I think it came out fairly well. The lycra was somewhat hard to work with, because it's slippery, but by putting the pins fairly close tgether and making a second row of pins, I was finally able to keep the material close enough together to make semi-straight seams.

The pattern itself was very simple and easy to follow. For example, to make the skirt, you cut out the pieces, sew the side seams, and attach it to the bodice. You don't have to hem it because lycra doesn't fray. The bodice has an inner lining, which makes it thicker. And, there are leggings/shorts to wear underneath. I cut mine off so that they are just above the hem of the skirt part.

I realize that going swimming is probably the last thing on your mind (unles you live in Hawaii or something), but if you don't have a good swimsuit for next year, I would definitely encourage you to check the website out.

Piano Recital

Friday night was the night that Jessica, Annetta, and Hosanna, plus four of our other friends, plus 13 other music students shared their musical abilities. Annetta and Hosanna played their violins, and Jessica played piano. They all did very well. I did videotape it, and I tried to upload a clip, but it was taking so ridiculously long that I think I shall just share some pictures.

This is Jessica, playing after the recital was over. Our friend, Rachel, who also played the piano in the recital, is watching.

Heels and piano pedals...



...and hands and piano keys.

Civil Air Patrol Open House!

For the past couple of months, my squadron has been planning a squadron open house. The staff has had several meetings, we made up the schedule, we promoted it, and Thursday night, we had it! I think it was a definite success. My unofficial count of the attendees (not cadets) was around 30, with a possibilty of three kids signing up.



We had our color guard present the colors, and then everybody mingled, looked at our displays, ate cookies, and chatted. From there, we had a Moral Leadership class for cadets and perspective cadets, and for the rest, we had our flight simulator. During this class period, we had an unofficial staff meeting to decide that we wanted to have a full closing ceremony, instead of simply retiring the colors. I realize that some of you may not be quite following the terminology here, but if you have any questions, leave me a comment. Anyhow, we then had a more official staff meeting (meaning all the staff memebers were present, instead of just four) to officially decide that we were going to do a full closing ceremony with retiring the colors, indoors. With that out of the way, we all then went down to the lower lobby to hear all the presentations. Our squadron commander, cadet commander, Alpha flight commander, the senior who started the squadron in 1965, and our safety officer/sometimes-deputy squadron commander all spoke. This lasted about a half an hour. Following this, we had our closing and retiring the colors.

The closing ceremony went fairly well once we got it under way. Afterwards, we had cleaning up to do, and then we went home. If/when we have our next one, we will have a much better idea of what to expect. Most people (maybe even all people) came from word of mouth promoting, mostly from cadets who go to school with their children. Also, I think that having Moral Leadership as a class wasn't the best choice, but it worked. We had many well-put-together members who were able to go with it and make it work.

If you are interested in learning more about CAP, go to www.cap.gov

Jessica's Trip

And I am finally blogging pictures from Jessica's trip to Tennessee campaigning for David Hall. She got back late Wednesday night. (True to form, while my dad was getting Jessica and my mom was at a literacy volunteers meeting, Katrina wet.) Basically, Jess did signwaving. Two people from the campaign would go to a certain location and wave signs all day. They also would wave signs at certain events, go to certain events, and stuff sample ballots.

These are all the teen volunteers. Jessica is the second from the right, standing next to Emily.

These are the four girls: Emily, Annie, Jessica, and Allie.

I probably shouldn't be blogging...

...because I'm tired. But, that hasn't stopped me in the past, so why should I let it bother me now? I thought I should post and inform everybody that tomorrow is Election Day. And if you don't vote, I'm going to be verrrryyy angry with you. I am personally supporting the McCain/Palin ticket. Why? McCain and Palin seem to be the most Christian. Palin supports ideas that I also as a Christian support, and whereas I do not see McCain as religious as I would like him to be (think Mike Huckabee!!), I believe he is more religious than Obama. I do believe he has more experience, and as a veteran himself, I feel that he will be able to handle the state that our veterans department is in.

Anyhow, tomorrow will tell us which one gets in: "that one" who has the audacity to hope that the American people will vote for the ideas of 'change' and 'charisma' and those little hints we see of a socialistic mindset, or will it be the other one who gives us something solid to vote for, but we don't even see his foundation, because we think it blends in.

In summary, pease go vote. If you have done your homework and still support Obama, vote, because you still have that right. If you vote for McCain, that's awesome. But whatever you do, please vote.