We keep going places and I don't have my camera. We went to the Farmers Market yesterday and it is such a nice mix of tomatoes and squashes and apples. I bought apples and two chickens, one of which we ate yesterday (and a little more today). The kids had biscuits with huckleberry jam and cupcakes with very sweet frosting and I also bought these amazing dark chocolate covered hazelnuts because it is that time again, the time for hazelnuts.

Before the market, we took two giant bags of miscellaneous plastic and another big bag of plastic bags/plastic film to the plastic roundup. Samuel found a plastic case that he just had to have in the reuse section and now that is also in the garage. I am going to give it a little more time before I move it over into the recycling section {again- but this time for our family}. Our recycling company takes a larger variety of plastics now and I have my plastic roundup recycling down to just the miscellaneous, unlabeled plastics, which is nice and totally doable three or four times a year.

Today we stayed home and now that it is almost time for bed, I am wishing I had made more of an effort to get Eva out to the park or at least a walk because she is currently racing herself across the carpet on her knees alternately with swimming across the kitchen floor. She currently seems to have quite a bit more energy than I do. Hmmm...

Friday we went with a group of other home schoolers to the Columbia Slough classroom and learned about watersheds. Portland is one of two cities in the country that gets its water from a natural watershed source (hoping I got that fact straight). We also took a walk around Whitaker Pond, where the classroom is located, and saw signs of beavers! and frogs! and a whole berry-tree full of cedar waxwings! I am smitten with cedar waxwings after hearing their call for the first time while camping last summer. Lots of Red Alders and Black Cottonwoods.

After that we got Hotlips pizza and spent several hours at the park with our friends Nicole and Esme and Eva and Esme played and played and played. Earlier this week we spent time at another park with our friends Kate and Jack and Samuel and Jack played and played and played. Nice for me because I get to talk and talk and talk. Nice to be outside for a while during these fall days. We actually had hail on Thursday, along with quite a bit of rain. The weather was quite cold for Portland for the next two nights and it nearly froze. Today I found a garden spider inside the house, near the front door, looking for a reprieve from the cold I guess. I can't help but wonder if her luck will be as good in here as outside but I suppose she will go back outside if it isn't.

plastics roundup day

Today is a really fun day! Every four or five months or so the Master Recyclers have a huge plastics roundup and you can take all of your plastics there to be recycled or even reused if it is something like a bucket or kids toy or we found a plastic kiddie pool to take home and also a giant rubber made container for legos- yeah! We left our kids basketball hoop this time and also a quite a bit- three bags- of miscellaneous plastic and also a bag of plastic bags and a bag of assorted numbered plastics. We leave out some plastics for our curbside recycling, but this is a limited amount. I also take some of our numbered plastics to the recycling center every month or so, as well as some plastic bags- although we use larger ones for trash bags. The Master Recyclers send all the plastic to a plant in Eugene that recycles all of it! I am particularly excited about the miscellaneous plastics they accept. All of those little plastic fasteners and lids and packaging without numbers can go there. And they take things like broken laundry baskets and big wheels and cd's and plant containers. All in all it is big fun for me and this was our third time there. The next one is not until October 6, 2007 and I am already assessing some of the bigger plastic items in my garage for the occasion!

We also found a couple of gigantic water shooters at the plastics roundup that someone must have brought in to recycle. We brought them home and Samuel had a lot of fun with one of them for a while and then its pump broke and now it doesn't function at all. We could not figure out how to load the water into the second one. Finally I looked online and found that this particular speed shooter needs an additional fill up device, so.... that one is not working either. But- the real fun was that we found out that Jack really loves the water guns too! At first he did not like the water because someone [accidentally?!] shot water at Jack and he came in and hid behind me. But when they went back out and were told to NOT shoot water at Jack, he began running at the water shooting out and it turned into a great game. He barked and jumped around and chomped at the water. Everyone was quite disappointed when the shooter broke for good!




After the roundup and the farmers market (hooray!) we had to pick Magoo up from the vet's office. She had some sort of accident or unknown medical event today and was not able to use her right front paw. She also lost most if not all of her vision. Magoo is complicated in that no one is sure how much she sees as it is and her head wobbles and she spins, but these symptoms were odd even for Magoo. Unfortunately the vet could not offer us much in the way of information about what happened to her. The good news is that she is doing better and I just found she had pushed Maxwell out of the way of his wet food and gobbled it up herself. She jumped up on the counter top and when she jumped down she only had a slight limp. I am hopeful.

The kids were a little wound up from all of that activity and decided to paint- a sure fire way to focus and change the mood. Here are some of the lovely paintings they created today.




Eva also made a 3-D flubber-apple extravaganza that she said was a sponge cake and which she also really wanted me to REALLY eat and pretend it was sponge cake all the while. I declined, respectfully, of course. She seemed ok with it and I noticed she also declined and did not eat her own creation!


And our lovely table with some magical irises just out in the garden. Behind them you see the new paintings and many bowls of flowers Eva brings in to me daily.


Samuel has been using the large cash register lately and is learning about how a calculator works. Like magic! He was so excited when I showed him how to use the "+" and "=" signs. We are also reading quite a few books on dinosaurs, as well as books on anteaters and one on armadillos. Today we read a book called Joe Cinders, a sort of Western male Cinderella. Samuel loved that one. I am flipping through many gardening books, as you may have well guessed. I have a couple more chamomile plants to add tomorrow, as well as yet another cucumber plant. The man at the market told me they aren't really supposed to be planted until the second half of May. He just keeps the plants there because people want to buy them. I thought this was strange but it did explain why none of the other cucumber plants have survived. I cross my fingers for this one!