Garden Club 5/ 22/ 09

I think I missed a couple weeks, so I may have lost our few Garden Club members... spring is such a busy time here!

Anyway- my garden is looking great. My peas, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage all look great, but as of yet have no fruit on them. I am not sure if they will just look good but not produce, or whether we are still OK.

We have been eating turnips every day, so my spring garden wasn't an entire loss, I suppose. Oh yeah- and lettuce is still producing, although our spinach bolted. The kids don't like it as much, and since I send them to cut the salad greens before dinner, they didn't get much of the spinach.

Our peppers have flowers coming on them. Tomatoes are small, but we have solved our cutworm problem and they are now growing. Cucumbers are starting to vine. We have lots of cataloupe and watermelon planted, so we'll see how these do.

We are getting a few strawberries a day, but not enough to even give everybody one. I am not sure we'll keep them, since to give enough space to grow enough for us to feed us would take a whole other garden.

Our fruit trees and blueberry bushes are in the ground and looking great. We'll only get about 4 apples this year, and a handful of blueberries, but soon they will be fully producing. We have room For about 5-8 more fruit trees. I hope to get them in the fall.

Green beans are growing up their poles, but something is eating the corn... I am guessing it's deer. That particular garden is not fenced yet.

I have Thyme and Lavender from last year. The Thyme is ready to be cut back and dried. The lavender has lots of buds. When they bloom I will dry them too, hopefully for a wonderful sachet of potpourri!

And, although it is not from my garden, it IS part of feeding my family, we bought 3 flats of strawberries and made two of them into 20 pints of jam. The third one we froze whole strawberries to use in smoothies. The children LOVE to add milk, frozen strawberries, and a little sugar (or a lot depending on which child is adding it... I have one who figures if a little is good, a lot is better. We're working on it!). Yum, Yum!

That's all that's going on in my garden!!! What's growing in yours?

Mercy Medical Update... May 2009

We had a WONDERFUL series of tests/ appointments in Cincinnati early this week. On Monday we had an echocardiogram, EKG, and meeting with the cardiologist. He said she looks, "Fantastic." Her heart size is reducing, which we suspected as she has a lot more energy. He had not seen her hemangioma since we started the propranalol, and was amazed at the reduction of the mass.

The next morning we had an MRI, but we don't have the results yet. Then we went to do a blood test which shows whether her body is making whatever hormone the prednisone replaced for two years. We won't get the results for a week or so.

From there they did a scan of her spine to see about the bone density. Evidently long term prednisone use can reduce the bone density. These results came back PERFECT... as if she never used prednisone. This is a miracle.

Then we saw Dr. Adams (hemangioma), Dr. Azizkan (head of surgery), and Dr. Elluru (ENT). They were all thrilled with her progress. She has an ear infection in the bad ear, so we have antibiotics. We also increased the propranalol, since she is doing so well cardiac wise.

AND!!! We don't have to return for 6 WEEKS! We have NEVER had a 6 week break from doctor's appointments. In this busy time of year, I am thankful to not have to go to Cincinnati!

In other Petersonclan news, Josiah fell off a slide at the park and hurt his foot. It is evidently not broken, but he is in bad enough pain for it to be. So he is out of commission. Lucky him... he now has no excuse to not know the Bible verses for the week. ;)

Off to make strawberry jam and weed the garden. Have a great day!

Bible Bee Schedule Week 2

Hello, fellow Bible Bee participants!

We had a VERY successful week in our memory... especially since the leaders at Bee headquarters took off the highest levels for the local contests. All the girls made the memory goals, and are drinking their choice of hot chocolate or tea in celebration.

The boys came a little short, but they both did pretty well, so we count it a success all the way around.

I am changing things a little this week... we will still take the verses we need to work on, but I have divided it between the days of the week, so they have certain portions to work on every day. Just saying, "Memorize these by the end of the week" was a bit too broad for a couple of them.

If the verse has a * next to it, a portion of this verse was memorized last week, so we already know a portion of it.

So here is our goal for Week 2:

Category 1

Psalm 34: 8-9 (M)
Psalm 34: 18-19 (T)
Psalm 56: 3-4 (W)
Psalm 90: 1-2 (Th)
Psalm 100: 3 (Th)
Psalm 119; 10-11 (F)

Category 2

Joshua 1: 7-9 (M)*
1 Samuel 12: 22-25 (M)
1 Samuel 15: 22-23(T)
1 Chronicles 29: 10-13 (T)
Psalm 19: 1-4 (W)
Psalm 32: 6-8 (Th)
Psalm 33: 6-9 (F)

Category 3
Psalm 1 *
Psalm 8
Psalm 18: 30-36
Psalm 23 *
Psalm 32

We will continue to learn 5 Bible Knowledge questions each week, and will continue to work through Genesis at 3 chapters a day... this week will be Gen. 31 - 45.

We are all having such a good time doing this together as a family. It is a wonderful tool!!! I do quiz the kids each day on the verses they have memorized, maybe for about 10 minutes a day, but the children are doing this.

I have all the OT verses printed out with just the first letter of each word. We have put these on the backs of our cards. If you want to have these, please contact me. I will try to send them. I have them in power point, but if you don't have that program I can try to make it a PDF file to send you. Just e-mail me at: petersonclan at momys dot net.

I will be out of town for Monday and Tuesday taking my little one to Cincinnati for a couple days of tests, so if you do not hear back from me until the end of the week, don't worry. I'll get to you!