Dane's Vacation

Dane's at Grandma and Grandpa Doughty's this week. I drove him up on Friday, meeting them about halfway. We had a nice lunch together at Cracker Barrel, then loaded Dane's stuff into their car, said goodbye, and headed off in different directions.

When I was packing him, we talked about what he wanted to take to keep him occupied. When Deanna goes, she takes lots of crafts, projects she wants to work on, books, etc. Dane opted for his baseball stuff and a window art crafts book that included the paints.

"That's all you want to take?" I asked, shocked at how little and wondering if he'd get bored.

"That's all I need, Mom," he responded. "After all, they have cable and computer games, and I'm going to visit with Grandma and Grandpa. I want to make sure I'm not too busy to visit."

I mentally ran through the list: swimming trunks, books, baseball, crafts, cable TV, computer games . . . I guess he'll keep himself occupied.

He called Friday night to tell us goodnight.

"Mom," he said to me, "I want to call every night and talk to EVERYONE. I want to know what each of you did ALL day and I want to tell you everything I did."

"We'll try, Son, but it's Grandma and Grandpa's long distance bill and I'm not sure it's fair to them if you talk to everyone. We'll see."

Don came up with the perfect solution. When Dane calls, he puts everyone on the phone at once. We have four handsets - two in the kitchen (so if the primary one is not in its cradle, we can still answer the phone), one in the den, and one in the living room. Each of us get an extension and listen while he tells us everything he did ALL DAY LONG! The children seem to be interested, which shocks me, but they even ask him questions like what he had for lunch and what games he's playing on the computer.

So, anyway, he called Saturday night before he went to bed.

"What did you do today, Son," I asked him.

"Well, first, I got up and made my bed . . ." I won't bore you with ALL the details, but he enumerated a pretty impressive list of accomplishments, including weeding Grandma's garden, visiting with her on the deck, playing baseball with Grandpa, working in the greenhouse with Grandpa preparing plants for next year, playing a new computer game, and a trip to a Nursery in Ohio where he bought a water plant.

"And, Mama, Grandpa has 17 different varieties of colius' and we're rooting them for me to bring home. And I found a succulent on the edge of the pond and Grandpa said I could dig it up and take it home 'cause he has a lot of them. And they have fennel and Grandma says it's out of control and she needs to dig some of it up and get rid of it, so she said I could take some home, but I have to have your permission first. And the water plant I bought has beautiful flowers." He was a little excited.

Deanna and I laughed about it afterward.

"Dane's done a whole week's worth of activities in one day," I told her. "If that had been you, you'd have done one of those things a day and made that stretch through the whole week."

Our conversation with Dane last night was similar. Grandma and Grandpa had taken him out for seafood and he had shrimp scampi (his absolute favorite). He's having a wonderful time and taking advantage of every minute with his grandparents.

Deanna was missing him terribly on Saturday. She called him and asked him to come home. He had only been gone a few hours, but the house is awfully quiet without him.

Daelyn will be having his time with them alone in two weeks. If she thinks the house is quiet now, she'll be shocked at how quiet it gets without Daelyn.

Pickling Season

Wow, has it ever been a long time since I've posted. It seems I don't have time to do Blogging AND Facebook. But we've had a wonderful summer so far.

I've continued to Can and have tried my hand at making pickles. I actually picked 10 cucumbers from my garden today. I find it necessary to make pickles about every third day. The only problem is I'm running out of jars.

Don's family owned a pickle factory when my mother-in-law was young and she still has the recipe for the Dreher Pickle. She e-mailed it to me so I could try my hand at them. I made a whole bucket full, but we didn't like them real well. They were very salty and didn't have much garlic or dill taste, although they were Kosher Dills.

I've doctored them up a little and we like them far better. The problem is that the recipe was for a ton of pickles, so I had to try and modify it for just a couple dozen. Apparently, I didn't get all the quantities quite right.

I did find a recipe on YouTube that I've been using and we LOVE it! It uses red pepper flakes and makes a very zesty pickle. I've made mostly sandwich slices (and I've added sugar to some and made bread and butter pickles) but Dane requested hamburger chips, also, so I've made two jars of them. I've decided to try to pick for the next week or so when they're still babies and try my hand at baby dills . . . right after I finish with the 30 or so I've already picked this week.