Soap July '08

I've started making soap with organic ingredients again. I recently made some with palm oil that hasn't been bleached. So now I have peppermint soap that is orange :) it looks very interesting, I'll post pictures soon.

This week I'll make some household cleaning soap to grind up into laundry powder and also a powdered cleaner (like comet or ajax). I like this stuff, it's much more natural than the storebought stuff for cleaning, and with a little bit of elbow grease it works very well! As a laundry powder, it works well in my front-loading machine. I use vinegar in place of fabric softener and everything comes out nicely.

We're getting ready to spend a week at the beach in North Carolina. I'll post pictures when we get back... sooner if I have a connection there. My daughter will turn 15 while we are there... when did that happen? 15... my baby!!!!

The kids had a wonderful time visiting with my sister for 10 days... they got to see my father and his fiancee, and my aunt and uncle. My daughter got to go to her first Anime Convention while she was there. She said it was a lot of fun and can't wait to go to the next one in August.

We're watching my nephew's cat. Very sweet fluffy little guy, but he wants to be the top male in the house and my boys aren't having any part of it... and my little female says she's the boss... he ended up with a nice little scratch on his nose that got infected but it's healed up nicely. He gets his own space now. I am having to sit with him while reading email because he is alone all day. This seems to be settling him down. When my nephew gets a new apartment, he'll be getting his cat back. Rufus will be happy when that happens. But for now, this works. Like I said, he's a very sweet cat... I just wish he wouldn't pounce on my boys!

Our van is in the shop AGAIN. Something made the battery drain and it wouldn't start yesterday. So Darrin is working on it and we'll see if he can determine why we need to keep replacing batteries in that thing. It's 12 years old with about 150,000 miles on it. We've had it on the Autobahn quite a bit... so it's been well used. I just need it to survive two teenagers learning to drive and then we can let it sleep :) keep your fingers crossed for us! :) I think in the fall we'll be getting two Honda Fits (hybrids maybe?) in trade for our Accord. The Accord is a nice car, but we don't need that much power in traffic. And the Fits would get better gas mileage!

While we are at the beach, we're going to do some melt and pour soaping with the kids and put shells they find in there... and some candles too. Buddy candles is what my SIL called them. you use tuna cans and some cardboard rolled up but let loose to be the wicking. pour wax in there and burn. I have Citronella oil, so we're going to try to make our own mosquito repellent candles. I'll let you know how that works!

More About the Froglets!

I went out and took more pictures of the froglets today. You can see they are starting to have color patterns like their parent bullfrogs now... they are no longer just black things.

I was finally able to get a picture of the lilies! They weren't here last year.

More Pond Pics

I went out today to get pictures of the lillies, but they aren't open today. I did see the froglets though:They are getting big and fat! and they were swimming all around. They like to eat the fish food, but we saw them digging in the algae too!
And finally the 4th koi. We thought one had been taken by the birds, but apparently only the goldfish have... we bought 10 and see only 5. They could be hiding, but I haven't seen them! I hope you enjoy the pictures... I also found a snakeskin near the pond... maybe the snake is fishing?

Tadpoles!

We have frog babies!!! here's a picture of a few of them... there are tons! the parents are all gone and the tadpoles are swimming around enjoying the pond. We only see 3 of the 4 koi and 5 of the 10 feeder goldfish.

Boo is 5 years old!

She was born on a Friday the 13th under a full moon! Doesn't she look so sweet? She's our very first Sphynx. I'll post pictures of Suede and Gandalf and our temporary kitty later :)

Frogs in My Pond!

Went out this evening to check on my fish and the new plants I just got from my MIL... this is what I found... at least EIGHT frogs! AND there are eggs! Check out these bullfrogs. We have never had a pond before we came here and we're having a lot of fun with the 4 Koi, 10 feeder goldfish, and 8 frogs we have in our pond. We had 6 large goldfish, but after we removed the net from the fall and winter, they disappeared. I think they were kidnapped by birds and maybe raccoons. We have put in new plants, more fish (less space per fish means they don't grow so big?), and now with all of these frogs... maybe the nasties will stay away.



Last week my neighbor helped me rescue a box turtle that was wandering down the middle of the street. He brought him to the backyard and we released him. I didn't get any pictures of him... but we got a bunch of the frogs... my kids call them Herr Frosh and Frau Frosh... Mr. and Mrs. frog. :)
I hope you enjoy the pictures!

More About Teaching

I realized today why I love teaching. While working at the learning center, I had a student for the last hour that needed some help with his algebra two homework. He was struggling. Said his teacher told him to not pursue a program next year that required that he take an advanced math class. His focus was drama, but he really seemed interested in this program. He was having a really hard time with algebra, but the stuff he'll be doing is probability and statistics! I worked with him only for an hour, but found him very easy to explain things to. He seemed to be missing pieces to the puzzle, but once I explained things he seemed to 'get it'. The light bulb turned on. THAT is why I teach. Watching his face, listening to him tell me that I have no idea how much easier it is now that I have cleared up a few things or put it in a different way than he has seen it before and that now he gets it. He was so excited. I was really happy to have worked with him. I was trying to decide if I shoudl go back to teaching... I've been out of it for a while, I haven't managed my own classroom in a long time and wasn't sure I wanted to. But after helping this kid, after seeing his reaction... I know this is what I need to be doing.