The Bird's Nest: September 2007

My Sisters' Recipes And Other Family Favorites

Yes, THE cookbook arrived a little over a month ago and I have been busy selling them locally. It has tabbed divider pages with family photos, helpful hints, 400 family recipes, two adorable little girls on the cover, and is available for sale. The cost is $18 which includes sales tax. If you need a cookbook mailed, shipping costs are approximately $4 for the first book and $1 for each additional book. Just let me know if you want to place an order.

Busy and Fun Weekend

No pictures to post of the weekend...we were too busy having fun to be snapping pictures. Saturday the girls spent the day with Pa and Grandma while Ken and I went to his company picnic. We enjoyed (thanks to Beitzel Corp) a ski-lift ride, mountain coaster ride, catered lunch, and two hours of white water rafting. We had such a good time! Especially rafting the class III and IV rapids with good buddies Dan & Becky and Diane & Sheldon. Sunday we had a ground breaking ceremony for our new church sanctuary. Since Rachel was the youngest person who brought a shovel to the ceremony, she and the oldest person who brought a shovel got to break first ground. After that everyone else with a shovel dug in too. When the church service was over we had a carry-in lunch and our church retreat. Emma and Rachel had great fun at the retreat. The girls took part in a saw dust dig. Emma dug up over a dollars worth of change and Rachel over two dollars, I'm sure they thought they were quite rich. They also bounced a long time in the moon bouncer and finished the day off with a swim in the pond. To quote Emma "There's lots to do here!" Sure was a tiring but fun weekend!

Creepy Crawlies and Caterpillars

Never trust a caterpillar to stay in his jar unless you seal him in! I found this guy one morning sitting on my sink with a trail of caterpillar scat behind him. Unfortunately his jar-mate didn't leave any traces behind and is still AWOL. This has not been a good caterpillar year for us. More MIAs and deaths than survivors. We currently are left with 1 egg ready to hatch any minute, 3 chrysalises, 1 monarch caterpillar and 1 as of yet unidentified caterpillar.

Can you identify the guy in the following three photos?

It may be hard to see in the pictures but he has a red line down the center of his body lined by two blue ones on either side of the red one.

He is quite an aggressive fellow. When I tried to pick him up with my cater pillar wrangler (a small paint brush) he went psycho and would flip, wriggle and strike at the brush with his head. Much more violent than Monarch caterpillars. He doesn't eat as much or poop as much as the Monarchs but is growing at what I think is a good pace.

Also on the creepy crawlie note. Today I found a small snake skin by my front door. I'm not exactly thrilled to know another snake is out there lurking somewhere...I have made a mental note to put the big spade shovel where Emma can easily access it if she needs to fetch it for me again!