Summer Berry Picking

We've done a lot of berry picking this summer.  In our yard (strawberries and blueberries), the wild berries near by (blackberries, thimble berries, salmon berries and huckleberries), and at nearby you-pick farms(strawberries, raspberries and blueberries).   I'd love to say we have a ton of berries stored in the freezer for use year round, but we just eat them too fast and only have a couple pounds of blueberries. Everything else has been eaten.

We did have one traumatic hornet experience at a blueberry farm in Bellevue (Mercer Slough).  Allie got stung and started crying.  She didn't know why she was hurt and couldn't explain it.  While I was trying to get to Allie my nephew got stung and ran to me crying, grabbing my legs so I couldn't get to Allie.  I finally figured out what was going on but didn't realize that the hornets were on the attack.  Floyd and my brother then stormed in grabbed the kids and ran out screaming, "Go, go, go."  Allie and my nephew each got stung two times a piece, and Floyd got stung five times.  Selena and I were lucky to get away unscathed. Fortunately no one had any serious reactions.

The frustrating part was when we reported the nest to the people running the farm they said there wasn't anything they could do.  If they had set up signs and warned people to not go near the nest then the people we saw a half hour later could have avoided getting stung.  Apparently my mom also talked to some people who had got stung their a week prior.  

Blueberries at Mountain View Blueberry Farm

Wild Blackberries

Summer Golfing

Floyd's not-so-secret plot is to get the girls into golfing so he can golf more.  It is possible to take them both to the driving range with just one parent, but it is easier if we all go as a family.  The fear of them walking into someone's back swing or swinging while their sibling is nearby is still a worry.

They both received golf clubs as birthday presents.  Selena got hers for her 5th birthday, Allie got her's for her 4th.  Selena was pressuring Allie to ask for one because Selena was tired of sharing.  Both were used sets found at Play It Again Sports.  Allie's bag happened to come with a golf glove, so of course Selena needed one as well and she had some leftover birthday gift money from Nana that she used to go and get one.

After having gone to the driving range a handful of times throughout the last couple years, we all went as a family out to Battle Creek Golf Course and played their par three course.  I was a bit worried if Allie would be able to make it through the whole course without getting tired but she loved it.  She pretty much ran the course: swing, hit, run.  By the last hole both her and Selena were hitting the ball a decent distance and Selena was starting to get the hang of pace on the putts.  Selena was getting 12's on some holes, but she said it was kind of hard to keep track.

Christian Based Counselor In Tacoma

My friend Josh Lennox recently opened up a counseling (marriage and individual) office in Tacoma, Washington.  He wrote this interesting post about the purpose of marriage from a Christian perspective.  So for anyone who might be looking for a therapist you should check him out.  :)

My girls have been drawing

I have found a site that has great drawing videos.  You can read about it more on my other blog.

by Allie

by Selena

Reading Rules

I came across this post  about what your reading rules reveal about your personality and thought it would be fun to share my reading rules.

- If a book doesn't catch me after 50-100 pages it is okay to stop.  There are too many good books to read to waste time on one that isn't.

- I remove dust jackets and toss them.  They are superfluous and just get in the way.

- I like books to look well read.  I don't mind if they get bent, dropped in water, etc.  But I don't write in books, it just never has occurred to me to do so.

- My favorite book form is oversize paperbacks.  For big, heavy, long books I prefer ebooks (which I read on a Nook Color or my phone a Samsung Note 2).  Otherwise I can't decide if I prefer electronic or hard copy.  Maybe if I had an eink reader I would prefer ebooks in all cases?

- I do not like to fold the corner of a page to mark it, mostly because when you get a whole bunch of folded pages they might get unfolded or refolded and then you might get a mistaken mark and that is just annoying. But if I can't find a scrap of paper to slip into the book, and I don't have anywhere to set it down open, then I will fold the page, but mostly I just lay the book down with the book open to the page I am at.  I hardly ever use a real bookmark.  My husband thinks it is hilarious to pull my bookmarks, and my kids often pick up my books and the bookmarks fall out.  I do spend a frequent amount of time searching through the book to find my place.

- I like to pick my books based on my currently feeling.  Usually alternating between fantasy, historical fiction and non-fiction, with some classics and general fiction thrown in.  Overall I tend not to read the same genre for more than two books in a row, unless I am reading a series.

- When I am picking out a book I tend to rely on word of mouth, or searching for books on a certain topic (especially biographies and historical fiction).  I rely pretty heavily on Librarything.com's "Will you like it" feature to help me decide.  It is pretty spot on.  Only once have I noticed where it was really wrong when it said that I would not like a book that I really did.  (Where'd  You Go Bernadette).

- I have to record my book on Librarything and Goodreads when I start reading it and then rate it when I am finished.  I rarely write a real review, though it seems like Facebook is trying to make me, since my entries are automatically posted to Facebook and people end up asking me what I thought.  I am trying to be okay with just jotting down a few thoughts, but I feel like if I am going to write a review, it should be a real thoughtful one that takes me more time then I have.

- I don't like to read many reviews ahead of time because I think they will sway my thoughts too much.  Especially bad reviews. If someone points out something annoying about the plot or writing style it will drive me nuts when I read it.   But I do read the reviews after I finish.  I like to see if other people had the same thoughts as me--kind of a virtual book discussion.

- I love to reread books.  Sometimes I want to read a book that I know will be fantastic.  I don't have the best memory when it comes to stories so I can reread my favorite books a couple years later and it is almost like reading it for the first time.  I have read Jurassic Park five times, Gone With the Wind three, and almost all of Dave Duncan's books at least twice.  I have read the Hunter's Haunt and the Man of Word Series three or four times.

- Full bookshelves are the most satisfying form of home decor.  I have a very hard time giving books away.

- I do not like reading more then one book at a time, though sometimes I will have a non-fiction and a fiction book I read at the same time.

Podcasts - My New Thing

It is very ironic, but up until a few months ago I did not own a smart phone.   Well, that is not completely true.  I did have a few smart phones, but they were all for testing my mobile apps and weren't actually linked to a phone plan, and thus could not make calls.  Mostly my lack of a phone was due to me being frugal, aka cheap.  I did have a prepaid cell phone, but I rarely knew where it was, or had it charged so in all practicality I did not have a cell phone and there were aspects about it that were nice.  Particularly not having to feel guilty when I was tapping at my phone instead of paying attention to the people around me.  (I went out to dinner tonight with my family and my sister and father were guilty of this, but I forgave them because they were playing my new Open Face Chinese Poker game which is really fun, and pretty addicting.)


So now I have a phone.  I got a Samsung Galaxy Note 2, which is gigantic, it is practically a tablet, and is often called a phablet.  I chose it because it has a huge battery removable/replacable battery that easily lasts all day and sometimes two, it has a micro sd card slot, and a decent camera. The stylus is kind of cool too.  I like it for the most part, but I cannot use it one-handed at all, and I think the camera on my husbands iPhone 5 is better even though on paper they should be the same.

The most exciting new thing I discovered and have used since getting my phone is podcasts.  I didn't really understand what podcasts were all about or when would be a good time to listen to them, but now I find them great to listen to while folding laundry, cleaning the house, or when driving in the car.

Whenever I talked to my sister, she would say, "I heard a story on NPR..." It made me want to listen to NPR, but since I rarely drive very far I was rarely able to catch more than parts of shows.  But NPR has podcasts of all their shows. I particularly like the Planet Money podcasts, and the TED Radio hour.  I have also listened to the Startup Success Podcast and Freakonomics Radio and I can use the podcast app (BeyondPod) to easily download the girls storynory.com stories.  It is all pretty cool.

Best Primal Breakfast Scramble Ever!

I've been perusing Mark's Daily Apple for quite a while now, and while I haven't adopted the Primal lifestyle, I think of doing so often, and I always eat as such for breakfast.

I used to eat eggs and a smoothie for breakfast, but I think I came to a tipping point in my ability to eat fried or scrambled eggs, and I just can't stomach them for breakfast anymore.  Eating grains for breakfast pretty much ruins my entire day, so I had to come up with something new, and this scramble was the result.  I think it is extremely tasty, and I haven't come across anything terribly similar in a restaurant, so I am going to take credit for it.

This batch usually makes enough for about 4 or 5 servings, and thus one batch can give me almost a week of breakfasts.  It refrigerates and reheats well.

Ingredients:
- 1 TBSP of butter
- 4 or 5 eggs
- 1lb of bulk mild Italian sausage - Try to find some that doesn't add weird, unpronounceable stuff to their spice list, or when I have accidentally thawed the wrong package I have been known to take regular ground pork and make my own italian sausage seasoning.
- 1 white sweet potato: You can use orange yams, or even potatoes, but in my experience they are too wet and make the scramble taste horrible.  You could potentially squeeze the moisture out, or use a potato ricer, but I have found that the white/light colored sweet potatoes do not have a lot of moisture in them and don't require any extra steps.
- 1 cup of diced fruit.  This is the secret ingredient!  Through the fall and winter I typically use one large apple.  In the summer I will use pears, peaches, or apricots.  I have even used blueberries, though it leaves the scramble an overall purple color.

Directions

• Grate the sweet potato.  
• Dice your fruit
• Add your butter to the frying pan and scramble your eggs.  I find the less I stir them the fluffier they are.  When they are done scrape them out of the pan and set aside.
• Add your Italian sausage to the pan and brown
• Add the grated sweet potato and stir for a few minutes till potatoes look limp
• Add the fruit and mix till fruit is warm.
• Add eggs and mix
• Remove from heat.
• Enjoy

Free MP3 Stories for Kids

Cross posting with a review I wrote on www.corvidapps.com

There is something quite satisfyingly old fashioned about listening to a story told by a talented storyteller.  It gives me imagined nostalgia for the oral tradition and a time when bards traveled the country, sharing their stories, or a time when families gathered around their radios.  Which is where the site Storynory comes into the picture.  While it is more tech in its delivery than a bard or a radio, its essence is still the oral tradition...

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Open Face Chinese Poker for Android and iOS

I'm taking a little tangent from developing kids apps and am developing an app for adults.  The game is Open Face Chinese Poker and right now there is no Android version, so I am trying to target that part of the market as soon as I can. 

I put up a new site, openfacechinesepoker.corvidapps.com, for the app and hopefully it will be worth all the hours I am spending on it. :)  

Numeracy and Language

I posted this the other day over on my Corvid Apps blog and figured I should cross post it here.

Does the English Language Hinder Our Numeracy
What if the language you speak either helps or hinders your number sense?  This thought occurred to me the other day after a series of events:

The first was my brother and I were watching our kids play.  His son, who is 2.5 was counting: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16.  He skipped 13.  Young children are often stumbling and skipping over numbers through the teens.  I commented that our numbers really don't make sense anyway.  When counting in Japanese it is very simple.  You say the words for one, two, three through ten, and then after that you say ten-one(11), ten-two(12), ten-three(13), ten-four(14), ten-five(15), ten-six(16), ten-seven(17), ten-eight(18), ten-nine(19), two-ten(20), two-ten-one(21), two-ten-two(22), etc.  Even when they write out numbers as words the characters follow the same pattern.  My point is, do Japanese speaking children stumble over the teens as much as English speaking children?

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