Every Memorial Day we meet at the local cemetery to put flowers on the graves of Glen's grandparents, great-grandparents, and a few other of Glen's relatives. This year, for the first time, we also had Adam's grave to visit.
Today (June 2nd) is one year since Adam passed away. I don't even know what to say about that. We miss you Adam. I cried a lot at Andrew's wedding a month ago and the tears were mostly because I was thinking of Adam and David and Jackie. I know he will have a chance to be married in the next life, but it still made me emotional to think that we would not have a wedding for him here.
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| Dad and Mom P with Beth, Glen, Alan, David, and Jackie |
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| Grandpa and Grandma with Maddie, Megan, Michael, Alicia, Daniel, and Alex |
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| Adding flowers to Adam's grave |
Memorial Day was also the day I picked the first strawberry from our little patch. It was small but super sweet. We've since gotten 2 handfuls more. I need to plant more plants.
Friday May 31st:
May 31st and June 1st brought us to our first ever dance recital for Hannah. Until last fall, she had never before expressed an interest in dancing. Since January she's been taking a teen/adult beginning ballet class and has really loved it. The recital was a presentation of The Red Shoes. I have to admit that I was afraid I would be bored stiff since Hannah's dance was only 3-4 minutes but the whole show was 2 1/2 hours. I'm glad to say that I was wrong and I really enjoyed the recital--the little kids numbers were adorable. Hannah's number was called "Thunder."
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| Chelsea, Hannah, Dustin, Erin, and Mallory |
June 1st:
I have never been to a Reno Aces ballgame before. Glen and the boys have gone for Scout Night a few times. Well, Saturday night it was the Northern Nevada Dairyman's night and they (David and Alan) were kind enough to share some tickets with us to the game against the Tucson Padres. Hannah was at her recital, so it was just Glen, Alex, and me.
David (and Cowabunga and 2 others) threw out the first pitch (did you know that there are more than 1 first pitch? not going to games, I didn't know that)--and we missed it because we were running about 5 minutes late. :(
We left during the 7th inning stretch right after singing Take Me Out to the Ball Game. At that point, the Padres were 2 runs ahead, but I needed to drive home while I was still awake. Turns out the Aces scored 2 runs in the bottom of the 7th and they had to have a 10th inning--where the Padres scored 2 runs and the Aces didn't. So, final score: Padres 8 and Aces 6. But it was really fun.
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| Cowabunga winning the tricycle race against the Aces mascot Archie (who can't be seen) |
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| sliding into 3rd |
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| Beth, Alex, and Glen at the game |
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I've been experimenting lately. I had read that if you put your bananas in a bag, they will last longer. I decided to give it a try. The first photo is from 5-16, the first day of the experiment. The second photo was taken 12 days later on 5-28. (2 of the bananas aren't in the 2nd photo because they were eaten) Anyway, as you can see, putting your bananas in a bag really lengthens the ripening time so you can buy a lot and then have them ripen at various intervals.
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| day 1 |
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| day 12 |
I recently tried 2 cleaning ideas I found on pinterest. One I really liked and one didn't work for me.
Hand soap:
The one I liked was making my own foaming hand soap. It's really rich and creamy. The pin is from:
http://www.littlehouseliving.com/homemade-foaming-hand-soap.html
The ingredients are simple:
a foaming soap bottle (reuse one you've already bought)
1 part liquid castile soap (which I ordered from amazon)
3 parts water
and, if you want, 5-10 drops of some essential oil. I used melaluca oil (tea tree oil) for its anti-microbial properties
A 32 oz bottle that costs $13.82 will make 128 oz (1 gal) of foaming soap ($.11/oz). You can buy a foaming soap refill at $4.17 for 32 oz which would be $16.68 for a gallon. So, it'll save you a little bit of money if you normally buy foaming soap refills.
However, I usually just buy regular liquid soap and make my own foaming soap refill (1 part soap to 3 parts water). Walmart has 56 oz of softsoap refill for $4.88, which will make about 224 oz of foaming refill, so that's just $.02/oz. Cheaper for sure.
But I like the castile soap recipe better. It was so thick and creamy that I was thinking of using 1 part soap to 4 parts water next time (making it $.09/oz).
Bleach alternative:
The next experiment was to make a bleach alternative for my white mattress pad covers that were covered in yellow splotches. It uses lemon juice, hydrogen peroxide, and water:
http://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/2012/10/a-natural-bleach-alternative.html
I can't use bleach because my well water has minerals in it that wind up putting brown spots on my laundry when I use bleach, so I thought I'd give this method a try. Though it worked for Jill, it didn't work for me. The splotches were less splotchy, but the mattress pad covers didn't get white. :(
It's not the first thing I've tried that worked for Jill that didn't work for me. The underarm stain remover that she has on her site is another example of a fail for me but not for her.
We are so excited for summer! Only 5 more school days!
I've been making foaming hand soap like this for about a year now. I don't measure my castile soap, just put a glug in, but my guess is that I use closer to a 1:6 ratio. Maybe I'm wrong.
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