Wow, what a hectic week it’s been! We have a lone apple tree in our backyard that gives us over 200 apples every year – so this week has been rife with cutting apples and creating yummy apple butter – next up is Apple Pie Jam, and our grape vine is fully loaded and ready to pick as well, so I’ll also be busy this week with that, and with making Wine from the grapes as well as Apple Wine from any apples I don’t use for Apple Butter and Jam!

I wish the weather would cooperate, though, we had some great ‘cool’ days followed by massive rain (compliments of Hannah), so now we’re into some extra humid days…since we don’t have central air (just a couple of window units in the living room), it tends to get quite steamy working in the kitchen – add standing next to a hot stove over a pot of hot/boiling ‘stuff’, and it’s major…but I look at it as a way to flush the impurities out of my system without actually going to an official ‘steam room’…heh, heh!!

Princess Nagger had another great week in school -didn’t lose any of her blocks! WooHoo! She also has been talking non-stop about her Computer Lab that her class does 3 days a week…apparently they use ‘Imagination Station’ and she loves it…of course her only complaint was that she’s not allowed to add any icons to the desktop, which she does here at home on her own computer. She loves playing games and solving puzzles via PBS, Nickelodeon and Sprout – it’s fun to watch her ‘at work’, she’s very impressive with her accomplishments! 😉

She did mention, however, that one of her ‘assignments’ in her Computer Lab class had to be done over – because she didn’t complete before its time ran out – the reason? Because, as she said: “The music was so good, I was doing this the whole time” as she demonstrated her bopping to the music… Yes, my daughter sure loves music!! But luckily she still had time to complete her assignment (by hitting the ‘replay’ button) before class was over, so she didn’t get marked down for an incomplete…

I’m finding some of my verbiage that I use with her is coming back to ‘haunt’ me – the other day she said, in all seriousness, “I would like to have a conversation.” She is also displaying my hubby’s ‘literal’ side – as they went to pick up our take out dinner (bless my hubby for feeling sorry for me for ‘cooking’ apples all week and getting us dinner last night so I wouldn’t have to cook ‘real’ food!) she saw a sign on a store that read “Open 24 hours”…she said it was too bad they were only open 24 hours, they’d probably be closed on the way back if it’s been 24 hours.

I have to be very careful how I converse with both my hubby and daughter, though, because they are ‘literal’… My daughter will correct anyone who refers to the 101 Dalmatians as ‘A hundred and one Dalmatians’ and in a corrective tone of voice will say “It’s not ‘A‘ hundred and one Dalmatians, it’s ONE hundred and one Dalmatians!”

Needless to say I refer to my daughter as a constant source of entertainment…I’m going to miss these days when she hits the teenager mode!! LOL!!

Our thoughts and prayers are with those in Texas having to deal with Hurricane Ike…we’ve been watching the progress like hawks all week, as we have friends that live in Louisiana – they luckily live further North in the state, so they’ve not been in the crux of all the storms over the years, just wind/rain damage.

They lucked out with Katrina as they had 25 trees come down on their property all around their house, but not one landed on the house. With Gustav they also experienced lots of wind and rain, and had luckily taken down a bunch more trees on their property so they avoided any major damage to their home…but weren’t looking forward to where Ike may ultimately hit, they’re a bit tired of the wind and rain to be sure!

They currently have no power (again), so it’ll be another week or so before I find out how they fared this time. It seems that Gustav’s change in status (in that it didn’t become ‘the storm of the century’ like expected) made people more apt to disregard the warnings about Ike…I certainly can’t say that I blame them, I imagine I would have had the same notion to ‘hunker down’ and ride it out…though with hurricanes you just never know – better to be safe than sorry! God speed to all in Texas during this horrific time!