My first Norwex Party!

As many of you know, but some might not, I have signed up to be an Independent Sales Consultant for Norwex Enviro Products. Norwex offers a way to improve your quality of life by cleaning without chemicals. I would love to give more information to anyone interested, so please, drop me an e-mail! I can do home parties, and if you live too far away from me to do a party in person, we can set up a webcam party!

I had my first show yesterday and while there is a lot I still need to learn and modify, I think it went okay. Here I am with my first hostess, Erin, and my display table.

Ellie

Little Ellie is about to turn ONE!! Her birthday is 6 months to the day after Alex's. Lisa and Russ had a party for her on Saturday and, even though my batteries were trying to poop out on me, I was able to get a few snaps.

It was a big party with their family members from both sides, our crew of 4 and the Rouses. We had a yummy lunch, opened the plethora of gifts then devoured cupcakes. The cupcakes, by the way, were made and decorated by Lisa and her mom. They did a fab job, as you can see.

Ellie really digs kids.

Biju on the couch with Russ' niece and our boys.

Ellie opening her gifts, with help from Mommy and Daddy.

Alex really enjoyed Ellie's gifts, as did the rest of the little ones at the party!

Mmm! Don' tyou just want to grab one??

I love lavender oil!

I think I've talked a little bit about how much I love my essential oils before. If I haven't, I should have.
Lavender oil is great for burns. Ajay got a little blister on the Fourth of July and when we got home we put some oil on it. A couple days later, Biju got a pretty bad burn on his thumb while setting off the rest of our fireworks, and I put the lavender oil on it. It never blistered up.
My newest experience with lavender is with hiccups!! I recently had a bad case of hiccups and they had returned multiple times in one day. I read that smelling peppermint stopped some peoples hiccups in no time flat. I grabbed my "Candy Cane" bottle - it's a blend of peppermint, spearmint and a few other oils. I think being a blend was a problem, because it didn't work for me. I guess I needed pure peppermint. So I found another remedy, which was the lavender. I applied a couple of drops to my stomach, right beneath the breastbone and I did not hiccup even once the rest of the day!! I was amazed. I almost look forward to getting the hiccups again so I can test it to see if I get the same results.

Here's one for the "poll" - Have you ever used essential oils?
A. Yes, quite often
B. Occassionally
C. Nope, never used any oils

Random

Right now the boys are playing with their firetrucks and other fire gear so I'll take this opportunity to write up a post. I've been trying to post at least once a week and I slacked off last week, so now we get to play catch up and you'll get a lot of random bits and pieces.

A friend had a baby about 7 weeks back, and I finally got to meet the little guy a few days ago. I made up a pair of athletic-sock baby leg-warmers for him (his daddy is a soccer coach, so I figured the athletic socks were fitting), and crocheted a little bear buddy for him to cuddle.



Ajay still has those cute kid mispronunciations, and he says "cumstable" for "comfortable" - I think he looked quite cumstable where I found him sleeping the other night. He likes to fall asleep in front of his door, but he typically doesn't drag out all the works. Maybe he was cold?? The second picture was where he fell asleep yesterday afternoon.



The storm did a lot of damage, as previously stated, and we'll have to replace the roofs on the garage and house, and the siding on the house, too. In preparation of doing all that work, we had a team come in to trim a tree that had been leaning up against the roof of our garage. Ajay wanted to stay outside the whole time they were here, but as they ran into a few snags and were here about 10 hours (instead of 4), he had to come in for part of the day. He was quite upset at being inside.

Before, and almost after. I didn't get a shot of the tree once they were finished.

Ajay had his breakfast and morning snack outside while watching the men work

The boys have discovered the MP3 player. I loaded some of Ajay's favorite songs on there and I enjoy watching/listening to him with the earphones in. I'm sure it won't be so cute when he's a teenager, ha!

I tried to make some cornstarch clay the other day and it didn't turn out. I then used the last of the cornstach, mixed it with equal parts water, and made up goop. As expected, it was a hit.

For a summertime treat, I gave the boys a popsicle. Complete with High Fructose Corn Syrup, sugar and Red Dye 40. Yuck, yuck, yuck! Next time, we'll look a little more closely at the ingredient list.

Are you there?

I'm curious to know how many people are swinging by my blog to check in on the family. I've changed the "buttons" below to show A, B and C. From time to time, I'll include a vote on my posts. All you'll have to do to cast your vote is click. You won't have to sign in, leave a name, or do anything special. Just click.
If you ARE interested in commenting, please do! I'd love to know what you're thinking. To leave a comment, click on the # Comments (found above the A, B and C). You will then see a box to type your comment in. Under the box it reads "Comment as:" with a drop down box. You can just click on "Anonymous" or "Name/URL" - don't let the URL confuse you, all you'll have to do is type your name (and ignore the box that will ask for a URL) and click continue. Then just click on "post comment." Simple as that!
I hope to hear from a lot more of you in my future posts!
As for today's vote...

How often do you check in on the family?
A: Once every day
B: Once a week
C: Once a month or longer
I'm only allowed three boxes, so if you check in at a different interval than listed, please, leave a comment!

Mother Nature can be cruel

A big storm blew through last night that spit out hail the size of golfballs and bigger. We suffered quite a bit of damage. Hail damage on both cars, a broken windshield on the van, broken siding on the house, a shattered bulb on the backside of the house, pieces of shingles laying around (who knows whats been done to the roof, we haven't gone up yet).... and a demolished garden. I think the only thing that may come out of the garden now will be onions, and possibly corn. I'm quite shocked that the corn stalks are still standing! There are no leaves left on our pepper plants, tho, and few on the tomato plants. From what I saw last night, the spaghetti squash was all broken up. The vine that carried the lone growing squash had been detatched, and the squash had dents and chips taken out of it. Such a sad sight. The scenery last night looked like mazto ball soup with lots of herbs. Biju couldn't get to sleep last night because he kept thinking about deductables and how we're going to fix everything. He said he'll probably be the guy falling asleep at work today, his second day back. At least he's off again tomorrow so he can take the boys and I to our hair appointments, since I think it'd be illegal for me to drive the van (I need to look at the van to see where the shatter marks are).

____

The boys and I just went outside to take some more pictures. We visited our neighbors a couple houses down who were already busy cleaning up the fallen leaves. Their son was over helping and he'd already gone onto their roof. He says their roof is done for.

Here are pics from last night and this morning:

Out the front door during the hailstorm; Out the back door

The broken light; the broken windshield

As damaging as it was, it was still pretty to look at

The patch with what used to be our green beans and spaghetti squash plants

Tomato plants; Eggplant plants

Pepper plants; Corn stalks

Hail dents in the soil

The demolished zucchini plants; A close up of a zuke - looks like the ice got hungry!

A visit from Mr. Bambisk

Last evening, we had an unexpected visitor. Shortly after Biju left to run an errand, my doorbell rang. Alex and I opened the door and saw a young boy, about Ajay's age, standing on our front porch. He looked quite similar to our elder child so I invited him in. He was immediately on his best behavior. Since Ajay had disappeared I thought this young boy would like to stay the night in Ajay's bed. I told him that he could use the restroom and put on Ajay's pajamas that were laying across the foot of Ajay's bed. He seemed concerned and asked if I thought Ajay would mind him wearing his pjs and sleeping in his bed. I told him I didn't think Ajay would mind. He pulled out his cell phone from mid-air, it seemed, and rang up Ajay, just to be sure. He then called his mommy and daddy to ask permission to have a sleepover. Permission was granted.
He asked me my name, so I told him I was Mrs. J, and that this young child with me was Ajay's younger brother, Alex. I then asked what his name was, and was told Bambisk. I explained to young Mr. Bambisk that I needed to get Alex into his pajamas and nurse him then put him to bed and when I was done with that, I could read him two of Ajay's stories. While I was nursing Alex, I asked Mr. Bambisk to do something that Ajay sometimes helps with, which is finding Alex's binkies under the crib. He politely obliged and even offered to rinse the binkies off. He also came back with a chip that he said he and Ajay were sharing. Apparently, Ajay had come back while I was in Alex's bedroom. After I got Alex down to bed, Mr. Bambisk and I headed to Ajays bedroom, where Mr. Bambisk asked why Ajay used a nightlight. I explained it was to reassure Ajay that there were no monsters in his room. I went on to say that Ajay slept with a buddy and a handkerchief, and that the handkerchief was magical - whenever Ajay slept with it, it made him disappear so any monsters he may think are in the room could not see him.
My vision and hearing were a little off last night and I couldn't see Ajay, nor hear him, but Mr. Bambisk was quite certain Ajay was with us. Therefore, Ajay joined us in washing our faces and brushing our teeth - Mr. B helped Ajay out by wiping his face off and holding his toothbrush for him. We read the two stories, then made room on the big pillow on the floor for everyone to pray. We then gave both boys their hugs and kisses goodnight.
It was Mr. Bambisk who woke first this morning and came out to the living room to greet us. According to Mr. B, Ajay was opening his curtains. I was happy that the boys were able to sleep in harmony the whole night.
Mr. Bambisk plans to stay with us for quite awhile but assures us he has asked his parents for permission. Biju and I told him that surely his parents would miss him, so we've invited them to come for a visit anytime they please. Mr. Bambisk is quite the pleasant young fellow, and we hope that many of you will have the chance to meet him.

Our growing garden

These plants are getting big!! Our corn has tasseled out, but they still seem a bit short to me. Our zucchini plants are as tall as Ajay and super wide. We were able to get our first zuke today, I can't wait to eat it! I'll probably slice it up and saute it in a bit of olive oil. Yum! We also got two green beans off the vine. Very odd since there are NO other beans, not even baby beans, growing. Lots of flowers, but no beans. I guess we're just getting a little preview of whats to come. The tomato plants are riddled with blight (I'm not sure, exactly, what that is, but from what I've read, it seems like spores, fungus, all that nasty gunk. Not good for the plant!). In the pictures you'll be able to see all the yellow leaves w/ black spots. After the photos were taken, I went out and pruned off all the nasty leaves. The one plant is now looking quite bare. I went back out today and found more yellow leaves. I made up a baking soda/liquid soap/oil/water mixture as suggested on one of my favorite sites (http://littlehouseinthesuburbs.com/2009/06/early-blight-catches-tomato.html) and sprayed the two tomato plants, and hit just about everything else to be on the safe side. The tomato plants have had a few blooms, but haven't started growing any 'maters, yet. The pepper plants, which have been blooming for over a month now, have yet to drop any fruit, either! Biju's hot pepper plant is gone. I think a critter got to it as it was laying on top of the soil w/ signs of being gnawed on. The peas are completely gone, as in it doesn't even look like we ever had anything growing in their spot. The onion tops are looking a bit thin, but hopefully they're getting nice and fat underground. The eggplants are getting big and I noticed one bloom starting (on the smallest of the 4 plants, if you can believe it! I guess size doesn't matter). We have several blooms on our spaghetti squash plant, which is taking over more than its fair share of land. I can see a couple of bulbous squash starting, so I can't wait to see what we get! Enough rambling, here are the photos of our garden from a couple days ago:

The corn - not so tall, but tasseling, which I'm guessing means it will start growing corn soon? (and in the background, Alex is being scolded, yet again, for tromping through the garden)

Biju's poor, dead hot pepper plant, then the 4 pepper plants that are filling out, just not giving peppers:

Our eggplants:

Look at all that blight :( See how that one is taller than Biju when lifted up? They're too tall and heavy for the "cages" they're in, and the plants are bending back down towards the ground.

One of our zukes plants, and the zucchini we picked today!

Ajay (none-too-thrilled) next to the spaghetti squash, with the bush beans behind, then a close up of the blooming beans: