Added a feature

If you look over to your right, you'll see a little bit of text that says, "My Music". If you click on the title(s) (more to follow!) you can download songs recorded by me. (They are in the public domain, the songs are, the recordings really aren't.)

(almost) Wordless Wednesday

Comments are below each photo.


Believe it or not, this was just in somebody's back yard.



Poulnabrone Dolmen

Parnabinnia Wedge Tomb
We accidentally ran across this. The kids didn't want to get out. You could walk right up to it and touch the stones. It was right off the road. I actually could have crawled up inside it had I wanted to. There was such an eerie feeling around this tomb that I got sort of close, took a few pictures, briefly touched the stones, said a quick prayer, and hightailed it back to the Delta Flyer (aka our Ford Galaxy minivan).




Leaving Ireland at sunrise.

And we have diagnosis!

Mononucleosis

Turns out it's not a bunch of random illnesses but the same thing.

Chances are we all have it. But immunity lasts a lifetime.

Hopefully the kids are through the worst of it.

Malaise is one of the last symptoms and that is what Sweet Benny and the Artist are feeling.

We got a prescription for some throat spray and some chocolates from the chemist (aka pharmacy).

It will be a weekend of lying around, watching tv, and hopefully catching up on some light housework.

Interesting article

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/13/mothers.internet.addiction/index.html

our beloved Mimi

My husband's dear grandmother passed away today. She was in no pain and just surrounded by family saying the rosary while she fell asleep.

She will be missed all over the world.

sick again and again and again...

I got really sick yesterday all of a sudden. We had taken the train to home ed group and on the way back I felt so bad that I just cried on the train, cried at the station, and really broke down in the car. Today I went to the doctor to get blood tests to figure out why I can't stay well. The tiny Goddess keeps coming up to me and saying, "Mommy sick" and "Mommy cried in the car." and piling her blankets on me. (This is huge since she doesn't like to share her blankets.)

All this illness (two months of off and on illness) is really bringing me down emotionally.

My husband is a little sick too.

Please hold us in the light.

Blogs I Love

In no particular order, I am going to discuss these. (NO particular order, y'all!)

First off, By Sun and Candlelight is one that I check in the morning and if there is a new post I am pleased all day. I first skim the post to see what it's about (not much time online in the morning) then I come back later when I have time to savor it. And savor it I do. I have gotten so many ideas from Dawn that I can't even list them. So much wisdom in her blog. I love her cheerful attitude and her deep love for her family and her overflowing faith. I am a convert to her file crate system (although I am not so good at keeping up with it). So far it is the only "system" for home ed organization that I keep coming back to.

This blog is the reason that I now put my nature observations here for you to see. In fact Dawn's style of blogging is sort of how I model my own blogging on. I love that she is so down to earth and honest. She often talks about how she blogs the good and happy things about her life and that's my intention here.

(Whoa! Huge rook at the neighbor's birdfeeder! Darn! Flew away before I could get a picture. I wonder if the fact that seeing a rook gives me a sound in my head is a sort of synesthesia type reaction? )

I love this blog so much that when I didn't have internet here in Wales and was very homesick for America I would download pages from her blog onto my desktop when I would go out for my weekly computer time (wifi at a local restaurant/hotel/pub) and chew on them when I got home. When I was at the end of my pregnancy with Miss Mousie, I went through and read the whole thing. It helped distract from the pain.

So, there we go. I hope you enjoy Dawn's blog as much as I do. I have begun commenting here and there and once she even responded to my comment in a post. I felt a little bit famous for a minute there.

Thank you very much, Dawn, for all the time you put into your lovely blog and for permission for me to jabber about it here.

More bird pictures...

There were a ton of Rooks in Ireland. I mean a lot. They were tamer than my Welsh rooks also, so I got the amazing picture you see above. Their beaks look like wood to me. I would so love to touch the outside of one of them. I'd also like to hear them tap their beaks on the ground, on trees, on a drum. Do they do that? Is that weird that I wonder these things? (Don't answer that.)


Here is a surprise we saw. First we drove by and spotted this beautiful creature, then we turned around and pulled over so I could get a better look. (I got stung by nettles on my lower back, but it was so worth it!)











Baby cries now, more later!

Vacation musings

In advance, I want to apologize for the ramblyness of this post. I have had a lot of time for thinking lately being too ill to do too much else and then being on vacation in the vibrating greenness of Ireland. I have pictures and posts to follow soon on the following subjects:

Books I have read (I'm making a list)
Rooks
Jackdaws
various pictures of flowers
sights, sounds, and smells of Ireland
knitting
change in our homeschooling (less is going to have to be more)

I have a lot on my mind, a lot of thoughts jumbled up together that I want to share. Some will be here, some will be on facebook, and some will be in my uber private online journal.

I did kiss the Blarney Stone.

Can you tell?

Wordless Wednesday

no poo on hold

I have too much going on to deal with my itchy head right now. Suffice it to say, the salt does not help. I'm breaking out the nasty coal tar shampoo tonight.

On other fronts, some funniness:

The tiny Goddess, being super excited about the Eating in the Living Room Because Daddy's Not Home started running in circles around the sheet we had lain on the floor chanting, "Run, -aster, -aster!"

I handed Miss Mousie the remote while I took the (not so) tiny Goddess upstairs and she put it on the Welsh language tv channel. What's super cool is I understood two little phrases, da iawn (fine, ok) and nos da (goodnight).

I also have my firefox browser set to Welsh. Why? Because when I installed the updates I thought I was so cool. So now I can say tab, new, window, bookmark, cancel, and ok in Welsh. Well, say is an overstatement, I can read them in Welsh. My pronunciation is so bad that I have to translate back into English for Welsh speakers.

I got a call from my Stitch and Bitch buddies. They had gotten my email saying why I wasn't going to be there and they wanted to check on me.

Community.

It's a good thing.

not much we can do

My Grandmother-in-law is feeling poorly. Not expected to live much longer. Please remember the family in your thoughts/prayers.

Jumping on the no poo bandwagon....

As in no shampoo. Here is a quick how-to, and here is an NPR piece on it. (How I miss Day to Day!!!) I have done this before with great sucess when I lived in California (and had glorious long hair, kissed golden by the sun). I didn't water down my apple cider vinegar, and I put the baking soda on dry. It really really worked.

Did not do so well in Indiana. I had to switch to either Head and Shoulders or Coal Tar shampoo (I varied which one I used). I kept doing the apple cider vinegar rinse, but otherwise I had to use shampoo.

Now here I am in Wales and unless I use the nasty coal tar shampoo, I itch like crazy. I have tried the baking soda and cider vinegar thing but it doesn't seem to work like it did in San Diego. Today I'm back to itching like crazy and I have to wash my hair (even though it looks clean). I am out of cider vinegar, so I'll use lemon juice. Since it doesn't seem to rinse out as well as I'd like, I'm going to use plain salt instead of baking soda.

I know you are all on the edge of your seats now.

I'll keep you posted.