Pecan Harvesting

It's February and we still have a ton of pecans falling from the trees. We have been picking buckets of pecans since this fall. We had a great harvest this year, and they are sooo good. Have you seen how expensive organic pecans are at the store? We have so many that we have taken to using them as recreational items. Sometimes we launch them across our backyard with a bat, and other times we put our busy little boys to work shelling them. The little one will NOT be exempt from this task. I suggest you purchase your own pecan trees if you live in a place that can grow them, because it will keep the the kids busy for hours.

One must first collect the appropriate pecans.

Then one must bang them with a rock to crush the shells and remove the pecans. I am so proud that my little cavemen know how to use tools.

Don't waste anytime eating them as they can provide proper fuel for more crushing.

Mmmmmm! Yummy pecans!

Me Me Memes?

1. I was tagged for the first time ever for a meme by Julie from the the calm before the stork.

As usual, I am behind on these things, but it isn't unusual for me to procrastinate things. In high school, I used to get up an hour before class to cram for my biology tests, which I had to take during first period. I guess I did okay in that class considering I didn't usually wake up until 3rd period and basically just sat there during class with a glazed look on my face. It's the same glazed look I have for the first two hours after my kids wake me up every morning at seven. Who designed kids to wake up so damn early anyway? They should be born with the coordination to pour their own cereal and drinks if you ask me. Every night I prepare their drinks--chocolate milk for the older boy and plain milk for the Bee--put them in the fridge, and then pour cheerios into their supposed-to-be-no-spill-but-spill-all-of-the-time-anyway containers and place them on the high chair in attempts to buy myself just a few more minutes in bed. Sometimes it works, and sometimes I just ignore them.

And now back to the meme. Here are the rules.

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.

2. Share five random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog.

3. Share the five top places on your “want to see or want to see again” list.

4. Tag a minimum of five random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment in their blog.

2. Share five random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog.

*My uncle use to call me "Blue Eyes" and so did the rest of his family when I was a kid. My uncle was German-English and owned a ranch we used to go to every Sunday for dinner. The story goes that he thought my eyes were going to be blue when he saw me as a baby, and despite the fact that they ended up brown, the nickname stuck. Maybe he was just able to see the future and into the eyes of my own children.

*My best childhood memories are of his farm. There were chickens we fed, cows we milked, horses we'd often ride, ducks we'd chase, and dogs and cats that were the foundation of his alarm system. There were also numerous pecan trees for snacking on and a vegetable garden. My cousins and I use to secretly build fires and forts and played hide-and-seek among the mesquite trees. We'd also go swimming in the pond when I wasn't too grossed out by the fish and algae living in it.

*I don't eat salad. I am generally very picky about which veggies I eat and how. I will only eat carrots in soup, and spinach in sandwiches.

* Between fourth and seventh grade, I went to three different elementary schools and two different middle schools in three different states.

* I have over 30 cousins I almost never see.

* And because the first two weren't quite random, here is a sixth. I married my high school sweetheart who I met when I was 16 and he was 18 in my AP Spanish class. We have been together for almost 13 years and married for 7.

3. Share the five top places on your “want to see or want to see again” list.

*Yosemite National Park because I never get tired of its beauty.

*Illinois because during the brief time I lived there, I never once made it to Chicago.

*Yucatan Peninsula and other interior parts of Mexico.

*Spain

*Italy

4. Tag a minimum of five random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment in their blog.

1001 Petals

Veronica on the Verge

Miguelina

HalfMama

Mommy off the Record

Taxes, Cars, and Life Changes

Things I have been up to these last couple of weeks

1. Doing our taxes because we KNOW we have some money coming back from good Uncle Sam, and we needs the money.

2. Planning our move, because as much as we love Austin and the people, my husband can do without the heat and mosquitoes, and I can do without him complaining about them. I can deal, but to be fair, I am not as much of an outdoor person as he is. We are moving back to the SF Bay Area and renting our little home here. Sad.

3. I have started tutoring students at two different schools at the end of their school day four days a week, which makes it kind of a crazy schedule for us since The Dada teaches in the morning, comes home watches kids while I leave and tutor, and then I come home and we trade so that he can go and teach again at night. CRAZY! I wonder if my kids will ever appreciate how much we struggled to have one parent home with them at all times. They are going to have to get used to having grandma watch them for at least part of the day when they are not in school from now on. Grandma is scared with good reason, and I am thinking we will have to find someone to help grandma out.

4. We searched and bought a car with a loan from Grandpa. Thank You Grandpa! You see, our previous car was a Toyota Previa, and we loved it except that now it rattles like you have a couple of jackhammers following you around wherever you go, the radio is busted, and the AC is also not functioning which is needed for reasons of survival here, and for the impending drive we will have to make across the desert to get to Cali in the early summer. My boy is sad to be giving up this old car, since he has not yet gotten to the stage where he is worried about what his parents are driving. The older boy wanted a truck, and he could not be made to understand that it is illegal to have little boys flying out of the back of pick-up trucks. We stayed loyal to Toyota and bought a Sienna. Buying this car made me think of all the cars we had growing up: a bright yellow with brown stripes Gremlin ( who made this car anyway?), beat up Toyota pick up that I frequently rode in the back of, a brown Pinto that was once riding on only two wheels because a drunk driver was trying to push us off the rode in it and sadly met its end when another drunk driver collided with it months later. I LOATHE drunk drivers!

What cars were you forced to ride in growing up?