Our oldest (DD15) is the one who NEVER gets sick. So she was toughing out the pain, thinking it was just hunger until we noticed how she was doubling over--she had really hit her pain limit. She has put a lot on her plate this fall, starting high school (grade 10) plus daily cross country team runs (3-5 km per day) along with Girl Guides (like Girl Scouts, see my post #70) and Youth Band practice once a week. Even the doc said she's too busy and should give something up--he thinks she's put a lot of stress on herself, which is what we've been telling her as she's been stacking up her plate with activities. She has some decisions to make about her weekly schedule...
It's our youngest (DD14) who has had bronchitis several times, pneumonia in first grade, several falls and bumps, and a trampoline accident (at a friend's house) and who is more accustomed to visits to the ER. So far, knock wood, she hasn't broken any bones...
My 11 yo is famous for those stomach aches. The first question out of my mouth is always "when was the last time you ..." For some reason every once in a while he just gets backed up.
I hope she feels better. Perhaps with winter coming she can drop Cross Country and not miss it too much?
The thing is that we actually did ask about any bathroom issues, and she said that she'd been going every day--just not enough apparently She was surprised when the doc told her what the problem was.
Cross country ends in a month, so she's going to go to the practices and weekly meets that she feels up to, and then it will be over for the season. Then she'll be way less busy till Track starts up in the spring, and hopefully she will be able to keep it down to just 2 or 3 track events. She loves to run, and says that daily practice actually helps her to center herself after a long day at school, but it does cut into her day as she doesn't get home from school till 5pm each day.
Cleaned out the garden under the hoop house last Friday because, despite my desire to keep the carrots in the ground till just before freeze-up sometime in December, the slugs were having a serious party in there. So we picked all the tomatoes, took a few cuttings to keep overwinter, and I have 3 trays of green tomatoes ripening on my dining table.
I have a 5-gallon bucket full of layered carrots and damp sand, we got a whopping grand total of 3 long english cukes (one of which had a slug nibble at one end so we ate that right away, we had the rest with Thanksgiving dinner), and we pulled the last few beets and radishes. The baby greens that were coming up were all slug-ravaged so we just pulled everything and put it in the compost--my garden beds are bare earth.
We still plan to leave the hoop house up over the winter to see how it holds up though, and we have high hopes for early planting in there if it warms the beds up early.
We sampled our first home-canned pickles of the year a couple of weeks ago during my 40th birthday party--the pickled beets, dilly beans, dill cukes and cauliflower were all lovely! We had a barbecue and also popped open the first sweet pickle relish and a lovely jar of home made mustard that hubs whipped up, never did do ketchup but I still want to try that--especially since Calendula recently posted her recipe that sounds yummy.
Canadian Thanksgiving always takes place on the second Monday of October, it's a stat holiday. We generally have our Turkey dinner on the Sunday: church in the morning, family hang-out day all afternoon as the turkey aromas fill the house, and then we have leftovers for the holiday Monday. Our dinner was fab: organic free-run turkey with sage stuffing, home made cranberry sauce, potatoes and gravy, roasted garden carrots (so sweet!), brussels sprouts, corn on the cob, lots of home made pickles, and apple crumble with home made ice cream and pumpkin pie for dessert. I swear I'm still stuffed days later, but we've been noshing here and there on the leftovers throughout the week.
We had family out from BC for the weekend and the girls had a super time with their cousin--time spent at the wave pool at the rec centre on the Friday, a family hiking day out in Banff/Canmore in the Rockies on Saturday, aforementioned Turkey day on Sunday, and the kids all spent Monday at the local amusement park while the adults all went through family photos and did some organizing on a family history project I'm working on--I hope to make photo books for each family group in time for Christmas, but I have a lot of photos to scan/copy now that I've been loaned photo albums from cousins, aunts & uncles.
It's been really neat to see photos I've never seen before of my Mom growing up, because her family never had a camera till she was older and all the photos she has were given to the family by other family members. I already have quite a number of photos from my Dad's side because my Grandpa gave most of his photos to me a year or so before he passed away from a stroke. My Dad also has lots, but I copied them years ago (we scan everything but also use a copystand and camera to make photographic copies--makes a larger more useful image file than just scanning). I got lots of stories from my aunt this weekend as well, which was super fun.
Well, it's official--we've had a full week of below-freezing nights so Fall is fully on and Winter is soon to arrive. Fortunately we are still having nice daytime temps around 60F and lots of sunshine
With Fall in full swing, the garden cleaned up, and the kids back in school I'm settling in with some projects. I have two quilts to make for the girls for Christmas--got the fabric on sale just before summer hit and now it's time to get it all cut out and put together.
This is the fabric for each girl's quilt--they are very similar but will look different once made up:
And this is the pattern, that I will modify a bit to make it the correct size for a double bed. Also, the green print for each quilt will be the inner border and the black print the outside border:
I'm also working on a family history project that has been in motion since a school project I did in grade 11 (almost 25 years ago!) I have got all the newly shared photos scanned/copied and organized in my computer and now I need to get cracking with designing the book for everyone.
The toughest part is that I want to make a book that is suitable both for my generation as well as my Mom's generation, that tells the story of all of us without getting specific about the recipient in particular, so that I can just order multiple copies. If anyone has any advice in that area... I'd be very grateful!
The quilt sample is great. I know there is a trick to sewing all those little pieces together straight but I have no Idea how. I tried once or twice to build something out of a jelly roll. Never worked.