Spring Break part 2

Truthfully I can no longer remember what I was planning on posting for my spring break follow up post but we did have a couple of additional activities. 

To keep the kids from laying around during this week off and complain of nothing to do, we did a couple of easy projects.  First we made new crayons.  They all ripped the paper off of the old accumulated nubs and we tossed them in the muffin pan.

put them into the oven and

Viola!  Cupcakes that you draw with.  The little girls really liked this.  I think they drew for an hour.

Here is another picture where I have discovered a new setting on my camera.

Mostly I have over pictured you with the first experiment since sadly the moon sand experiment seems to have gone undocumented.  However, mixing flour and baby oil really do work fairly well.  We mixed in a crushed piece of caulk to give it color.  And no I have no idea what color we made it now.  Probably pink since that is the color everything in our house seems to be.

And we’ll finish off with a picture of Gabe.  I think this is one of my favorites.

Turning 5 months

I sat down to post a blog post about Gabe.  How much he’s grown, how much we all adore him.  Then I looked up previous posts to see where I last left off and realized… as far as I can tell I haven’t posted a thing.  So a quick rewind back to October 28, 2012 to meet once again

Gabriel John Deters

He’s 19 days early so a tiny 6 lbs. 6 oz. Since I had gestational diabetes he had low blood sugar issues that first couple of days and had an IV in to give him glucose.  So we autocratically decided no one outside of John, myself and the hospital personnel could hold him until the IV was out.  I felt bad when grandparents came by but we wanted that IV to stay put.

After a couple of days all was well and we went home with our brand new baby boy to 4 girls who couldn’t wait to have him home.

We have a lot of pictures of sisters taking turns holding little Gabe.  This one is of Megan.

On December 15 we baptized him.

To keep a long story short and spare you from multiple pictures of sisters holding and playing with Gabe we will fast forward a bit.  At his 4 month appointment he weighed 16 lbs. 10 oz. and is a chubby happy little boy. Just in the last week he has conquered rolling over.

As a bit of a side note you may be able in the picture to detect a slight rash on his forehead.  He has had a stubborn bout of eczema that we mostly have figured out now and is going away.  Since I am nursing I have been trying to eliminate things from my diet and so far we have had issues with dairy (Karla did too at first) and olives (this is what I was eating for snacks because I couldn’t have cheese.)  I’ve not sure why olives didn’t occur to me sooner because when I was a kid olives would make me break out in hives. There may be something else yet but it may still be a little dairy since small amounts slip through occasionally.  I didn’t know how difficult it would be to remove dairy in a dairy farming family in whom the various forms of the dairy group are eaten daily.

Happy Gabe’s 5 month birthday everyone!

A Sluggish Monday

 

The coffee is only very slowly kicking in this morning.  In fact I may need to make more.  So only a series of completely unrelated tidbits.

Easter egg hunt on Saturday was moved inside due to the cold so the kiddos played games instead.

Karla has figured out the best approach to this game.

Good Shot Laura!

View out the window on Saturday as it began to snow.  We have ducked most of the heavy snow that the rest of the state has been experiencing this winter.

Immensely disappointed that I have been unable to view PANSTARRS.  Many times I’ve gone to check it out and discover clouds hanging low on the western horizon.  It may still be visible with binoculars but its supposed to be fading fast.

My latest kitchen experiment is sourdough bread.  This is a picture of the starter.  I would have taken a picture of the bread but my family inhaled it straight from the oven.

Everyone have a good week!

Spring Break part 1

Spring Break last week was full of fun.  First we made donuts.  Twice.  They were REALLY good.

For our next culinary adventure I made corn tortillas.

Then, owing to the oil left over from frying the donuts, we made them into tortilla chips.

This also happened twice.

Then the adventure part happened.  On a particularly windy morning a silo fell down.

So we are now down to two silos. 

Because last week was so nice (unlike this week with all the cold, wind and snow) we pressed the kids into cleaning out the garage before they could weasel out of it.

Check back soon for the rest of our spring break memories!

Megan’s Vocal Concert

 

Congratulations to Megan last night she sang a short solo in the song, “Operator, Get Me Jesus on the Phone.”

A Little Education

 

It started out innocent enough.  I clicked on a Geology article discussing the anomalous regions in the Sierra Nevada region linking together subducted masses of material into an extinct plate running underneath the entire west coast.  The existence of Farallon was new but the idea of subducted material and the accretion of island arcs drive the theory of the creation of California.  I even knew of the existence of the Isabella anomaly.  However near the end of the article I ran into a term I had never encountered before in Geology.  Delaminated. It sounds like something I would do to my kitchen floor.  Apparently the Sierra Nevada are delaminated.  Who knew? 

Googling the term I discovered that I really needed to get myself up to date.  Delaminating apparently occurs when

 “the lower portion of the lithosphere becomes more dense than the surrounding mantle. Because of the instability of higher density material atop lower density material, the lower lithosphere separates from the tectonic plate and sinks into the mantle.”

This tends to causes little things like volcanism and rapid uplift resulting in mountain ranges such as the Sierra Nevada.

Rest assured this is only a part of what is affecting this region.  I completed my degree 14 years ago and it was already becoming known that everything we thought we knew was probably wrong about that area.  New theories were starting to bubble to the surface.  I think it is time to re-educate myself on my chosen field.

Someone turned Two

This gorgeous little girl had a birthday back on January 21.

Karla is now an ornery two year old.

The beanie baby cow was a hit Gma and Gpa Thornton.  She insisted on sleeping with it for several days.  We seem to accumulate cow toys.  I wouldn’t know why…

If you look at the background of the above picture this was taking place during kitchen remodeling so the birthday celebration was moved to Gma & Gpa Deters house.  Grandpa Deters had a birthday two days before hers and she’s still at the age where we can get away with a little date slight-of-hand.

She has mostly gotten over her shyness but it came back with all the extra people around at Grandma’s house.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KARLA!