What Happens When You Throw Out the Halloween Candy

After a few weeks of doling out a couple of pieces of candy each evening to little boys who ate their dinner, I decided it was time to get rid of it all.  Besides, I'd already picked out and consumed the good chocolate myself.

 We let the boys each pick out 3 pieces and then say goodbye to the candy.  And then we realized, that somebody was hoarding! 

All we could do was laugh.  Can you blame him for trying?

The Battle of the Stinkbug with Giveaway!

If you've been following my blog for a while, you know that we have battled and battled the stinkbug population the past couple of years.  It's definitely been a losing battle.  We've tried all sorts of remedies and traps but still they descend on our house each Fall and put me in the grumpiest of moods.  This year we tried to be proactive by filling in some small cracks before stinkbug season rolled around, and I do think it helped, but we still have a few that have made their way in.

I have good news, though!  Terro has recently released two Stink Bug Killer sprays.  One comes with a nifty little straw for spraying in those tiny crevices, like all the ones we have in our logs.

 You know what else?  These sprays are also effective on boxelder bugs, asian lady beetles, carpenter ants and a few other pests.  Since we didn't have many stinkbugs in the house right now, I headed down to one place where I knew they were congregating....our tack shed.  Check out my saddle after I took the cover off:

 Even worse?  Look at what I found when I lifted up the flaps to look underneath.  Gah, totally creepy!

 They were in every little saddle crevice!  And I have several saddles.  I knocked all the stinkbugs out, because I didn't want to spray the Terro directly on my saddle leather. Instead, I sprayed the ground where all the nasty little stinkbugs were scrambling about.

Then I sprayed along all the crevices and windows inside our tack shed, and followed up with a good spraying along the outside as well, which you can see below.  You know what's great?  The Terro Stink Bug Killer works for up to 4 months, so any little creepies crawling through it anytime soon will be a sorry little creepies!

If you want to learn more about Terro products, you can check them out on Twitter and Facebook.  And if you'd like to put Terro Stink Bug Killer to work at your own place, you can enter my Rafflecopter giveaway, below!

Disclaimer:  I received the above pictured two products for review purposes.  The opinions stated above are my own.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

A Day of French Cooking

Last week I was pulled into the beautiful book My Life in France by Julia Child.  It was so much more than I expected, and I fell in love with her story, her writing, her determination, and her foods.  When I was in high school, I took 4 years of French, and in college I followed it up with another 4 semesters of the language.  And yet not only have I never been to France, but I've never even been to a French restaurant.  It's just too expensive for either to be practical.  So I decided to try my hand at French cooking at home. 

Thrilled with the idea of the daunting task of French cooking, I perused recipes on the internet.  I finally decided on a menu of salade verde with Humboldt Fog (aged goat cheese) and walnuts in a lemon vinaigrette, estouffade provencale, a slow cooking beef stew with slices of French baguette on the side, and gateau nantais which is a rum cake from the Northwestern region of France. 

All of the ingredients I had on hand except for the cheese, the baguette, the nicoise olives and fennel that go in the stew, and the rum.  The salad greens and veggies were even fresh from my fall garden!  So overall it wasn't too costly to prepare the meal - definitely much cheaper than a French restaurant.  Maybe one day I'll get to eat at one, or even get to travel to France, but for one evening, it was fun to pretend. 

 

The foods took time to prepare, but were divine in their assortment of flavors.  It was fun to put on French music, drink wine, and enjoy several courses at dinner.  The food was so rich that I was stuffed for hours afterwards, even though I had small servings. 

 

How about you, readers?  Is there any type of food that you've always wanted to try?

Happy Thanksgiving!

May your bellies be full and your hearts be warm today.  Happy Thanksgiving!

From Reid, Cort, and Harry Potter! 

 

 

Antietam Battlefield

Although I had run walked all through the Antietam Battlefield during my marathon, I wanted to return to share the experience with my boys and walk through the visitor's center.  This is the Burnside Bridge:

 See the rock wall?  The Confederate soldiers crouched behind it, perching their rifles over the edge as they fought to maintain control over this bridge.

 So many died (500 casualties) behind the wall that they pulled planks off the bridge to use as grave markers, and buried them in the ground until they could be moved later.

When we were in the visitor's center, we saw a painting of the battle here at the bridge.  This tree, a sycamore, was called the witness tree.  Back then, it was just a young wisp of a tree.  Today, it is massive.  I'm sure it enjoys it's more peaceful days in the present, rather than reflecting on the past.  I couldn't help but wonder if there are any bullets still lodged deep in its bark.

Statues of soldiers tower over the battlefield as you drive (or run) through. 

This is the Dunkard Church, which was a reference point for soldiers during the Civil War.  At the day's end, it was used temporarily as a medical aid station.

On this day, we found reenactors set up around the church.

Inside, I was intrigued by various medical tools and bottles.

I confess that I totally have a thing for apothecary jars.

The boys learn from a soldier about how medicines were made during Civil War times.

I think some of the reenactors actually camped out over the weekend.

Ringing the bell, before hopping in the car for our journey home.


We learned that the Battle of Antietam was the bloodiest single day of battle in American history.  Over 23,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, or went missing. 

 

Talk about a profound event in American history.



He's Not Wasting Any Time...

Are you ready for this?

Translation in case you can't read his handwriting:  Dear Santa, I am going to teil you what i want for Christmas.  I want first aid kit stuff except bandaids and gloves.  And I want a pretend computer to.  And I want some books. And i want a pretend kichin to. And i want a Harry Potter double decker bus to.  And i want a pretend camera to.  And that is all.  I have been nice. Love Pierce.

Soooo...we've already had the conversation that Santa doesn't bring everything you want.  I think in this case with our very limited budget, he's going to bring some first aid kit supplies (Pierce already has plenty of bandaids and gloves, which is why he didn't want those) and the Lego Harry Potter purple triple decker bus.  But I can say that Pierce HAS been nice ;-)

How about you, readers?  Are your kids and grandkids writing to Santa already?



Getting Burned

Recently Paul lit up the woodstove for the first time since last year.  Previously, we'd always had a fence around it, but the twins are older now and we hadn't put it up.  Paul told the boys it would be hot, and then fired it up.  Not ten minutes later, Reid was walking by on his way to the table, and put his hand out to touch the stove.  He got burned.  And it looked bad.

I felt terrible as I ran his hand under the cold water, and he screamed and sobbed, huge tears swiftly tumbling down his cheeks.  Paul and I snapped at one another in our worry over what to do.  I ended up spraying it with Dermablast, applying triple antibiotic ointment, and bandaging it before calling the doctor for an appointment.  Luckily, they had appointments available that Saturday morning.  I held a shaky Reid on the couch while we watched Caillou and bided our time until the appointment.

At the doctor's office, the nurses applauded our treatment of the burn.  They applied some special burn cream (which would alleviate pain and prevent infection) before rebandaging it.  We were prescribed some of the special cream, and told to keep the burn bandaged for a week.  The key thing at this point was to prevent infection. 

Do you think a 3 year old likes to keep a bandage on for a week?  Not so much.  So I drew a cat on Reid's bandage every single day (his request) so that he would leave it on.

Below is a picture of the burn.  If you don't like graphic pictures, you might not want to scroll down any further.  You can see why I was so horrified after it first happened - you know how painful it must have been! 

Around the 4th day, the blister finally popped, and then Reid's hand was able to start draining.  Of course, once it popped it was more painful to him.  But thankfully he seems to be healing up well.  And while I seem to still be filled with Mom-guilt over the incident, slowly as he heals I am recovering too.  These accidents just seem to happen sometimes, regardless of how hard we try to protect our children.  I'm not the only one who felt horrible over what happened.  Pierce came home from school with this picture in his folder:

It's a picture of Reid by the woodstove, with a bandage on his hand.  On the back it says,
Reid hert his hand and has a blistr.  It hrtes rily bad. I got my frst day (aka first aid) kit.  Mom got her frst day kit.  Mom put a banddage on him.  His blistr is big.  Mom put medesin on it.

And every day Cort and Pierce both say, "Reid, is your owie hand feeling better?"  Nice to see some brotherly concern, in the midst of the daily squabbles.  I sure hope that's the last burn incident that we have in this family!