July 5, 2008

Opening Landon's birthday present.	Ina Sue stayed home with Landon Sunday morning.  He has a really bad rash on his arms & legs and acted pretty miserable this morning.  Ina Sue thinks it is chicken pox but I feel pretty sure that it is not.  I think it is a case of poison ivy, but we cannot figure out where he would have gotten in contact with it...  Since I needed to teach Sunday school I took Carolina Sue with me to church.  Ina Sue had put a pot roast in the oven along with new potatoes and carrots.  She also fixed us a delicious cucumber salad.  I invited Hendrick over to eat dinner with us.  We all got good naps in the afternoon then went to church in the evening.  Uncle Howard had a good talk on "Christian Attitudes in the Time of Elections".
Out for an evening walk.	Monday was Landon's 2nd birthday.  Unfortunately, his arms, hands, legs & feet are covered with nasty looking welts and rash.  He even has some blisters in his mouth.  I'm beginning to think it is not poison ivy.  Amazingly, he is acting pretty good about it.  He doesn't seem to be itching terribly.  I made us breakfast of "Mommy Eggs" (scrambled with sausage, veggies & cheese) to eat with toasted bagles.  Ina Sue started the laundry and I headed off to work.  Ina Sue called me around dinner time in a real panic.  It seems she had washed my new suit pants in her normal pants load and when they came out they were horribly shrunken and misshapen.  She was pretty sick but I told her not to worry.  It was nothing we couldn't recover from.
Mommy helps blow out the candles.	For supper she fixed us Mexican squash stir-fry. Delicious!  I took the children out for a walk while Ina Sue finished putting away the clothes.  After we got back we had a little party for Landon's birthday.  Homemade pistachio icecream with chocolate cupcakes.  We gave him a toy that makes different animal sounds and a plastic bat & ball.  He seemed pretty happy.
Opening his present	Tuesday was the first day of July.  Unbelievable that June is already gone.  I went in to work and spent most of the day on service calls.  The last call of the day involved running two network cables under an old office building.  Very dirty and hot!  Not fun at all!  Ina Sue started a batch of 7-day sweet pickles and canned another 8 quarts of potatoes.  She also did some sewing and misc. odds & ends.  Landon is still looking like Job but seems remarkably happy.  For supper we had grilled chicken breasts, herbed rice, cucumber salad and fresh tomatoes.  After supper we re-arranged our freezers and boxed up all the corn that we processed last week.  I pulled a bunch of weeds in the garden while Ina Sue scrubbed some more potatoes.  It got dark while I was trying to pick over our bean patch.
Helping wash cucumbers for Mommy.	I got up at 6:00 on Wednesday and finished picking over the beans.  My main goal was to pick a lot of the smaller more immature beans to make dilly beans with.  I got just about a whole bucket.  I didn't have time to make the pickles so I put them in the fridge and went on in to work.  Ina Sue canned another 4 quarts of potatoes for a total of 20 quarts.  We may end up doing some more if it seems our potatoes we saved are starting to spoil.  I met Ina Sue in Bamberg at 12:15.  She had a baby doctor appointment so I took the children with me to do some shopping.
"Reading" a book to Landon	We met back with Ina Sue at Taco Bell and had lunch then went over to the courthouse to apply for passports. (we do not have plans of skipping country but want to be ready when the need arises)  In the process of filling out the forms the lady asked me if I realized that my drivers license was expired.  I certainly did not.   I had evidently been driving on an expired license since my birthday in February.   Thankfully when I went down to the DOT office they allowed me to renew with no penalty or extra tests.  Armed with my current license we went back to the courthouse and finished the application.  The rest of the family went home for naps and I went back to work.  We had supper of left-overs then went to prayer meeting in the evening.  Dale Bange led the discussion on "The Church at Smyrna".  On the way home we stopped at Myrons to help Jane with some computer issues.  They fed us a delicious snack for frozen fruit sluch and ice cream.  After we got home I worked until about 2:00am making & canning dilly beans.  Made 8 pints.
Watching fireworks with Andys	I had a very long day on Thursday.  Spent all the morning and most of the afternoon putting in a video surveillance system for a local business.  In the later afternoon I did some service calls in Allendale then came back to the shop and did some housecleaning, changed out lightbulbs and did accounting work until 2:00am.  I didn't mind working late too much because we are looking forward to having the day off tomorrow for the 4'th.  Ina Sue spent the day doing misc. work around the house, washing windows, doing laundry etc.  In the evening she caught up our finances in Quicken then worked on some scrapbooking.  She is just about finished with Landon's baby book.  She is trying to make a scrapbook for each of our children covering their first year.  NOTE:  We have finally self diagnosed Landon's ailment as "Hand, Foot & Mouth Disease".  It seems that it is very contagious but thankfully he is starting to look better.  We hope he didn't infect any others.
Slicing cukes for sweet pickles	Friday was a very enjoyable day.  Ina Sue let me sleep in until almost 8:30 while she kept the children and made breakfast.  Then I got down to mowing.  Finished the mowing by around dinner time then worked for quite a while pulling up pecan trees.  The pecan season was very good last fall and our big pecan tree in the back yard produced prolifically (not good nuts)  Unfortunately the nuts that we missed raking up have been taking root and coming up as small trees.  It seems to be an unending battle pulling them up out of our pine straw and shrubbery areas.  They are really hard to pull up too.  Ina Sue cleaned the house.
Our crepe myrtles are really pretty now.	We had been planning to have company over for the evening but since we found out that Landon's condition was contagious the other families backed out.  It actually worked out OK because Ina Sue was feeling really tired by the evening.   We had stroganoff sandwiches and corn-on-the-cob for supper then around 7:30 we went down to Andy's for dessert.  We took homemade ice cream and they provided bars and watermelon.  After we ate and visited we drove up to Bamberg to see the fireworks.  They were very good.  I was quite impressed with the small town display.  The grand finale was especially impressive.  The children loved them.  Home to bed with some very tired children.
	I felt like I had a hangover on Saturday.  I don't think I've ever actually had a hangover but I can imagine this would be how they feel... :)  I had a headache that seemed to hit me every time I stood up.  We drove in to Barnwell mid-morning to pick up some stuff from the shop and from Walmart.  Stopped at Country Cupboard to pick up some meat, cheese & supplies.  When we got home I laid down for much of the afternoon.  Ina Sue also rested but did sweep off the porches.  We had fresh corn for supper.  Ina Sue worked up some tomatoes to put in the freezer to process for juice at a later date.  I studied my Sunday school lesson for a while then we went to bed in good time.