Estate Sales, Canning, and Other Interesting Pastimes.

I somehow did not take very many pictures this past week. My apologies. 

1.) Estate Sale

A couple days ago, my husband asked his boss if he could show up late for work. "Sure" she said. "Ok, before you say yes" he said, "it's so I can buy a Whataburger nickel coffee mug at an estate sale." He had seen the sale advertised online, and four of the mugs were in the pictures of what was on offer. 

She laughed, but still said yes, so we loaded up the kids the next morning and drove to a random house in a "well established" neighborhood. 

I hadn't realized how seriously people take estate sales. We were there at opening and there were already cars lined up on both sides of the street. We had to park nearly at the end of the block. 

Crowded as it was, there we still made some pretty good finds. Probably my favorite were these paper dolls...

A jumble of costumes from all the sets. 

Circa 1962. They were in a bag mixed up with other sets from the 1980s, nearly all Barbie themed (the one that wasn't was Mickey and Minnie Mouse). I almost want to frame the cardboard envelope thing, it's just so very fabulous. Little girl spent hours playing with them once we got them home. 

We also found some fun vintage fabric, a "food saver" vacuum sealer, a pressure canner, and a full-sized ironing board (we've been using my tiny table top one from college for the past eight years. I'm very excited we have an actual one now). Little Boy spent his own money on a chess set, and has been playing with it non stop since. 

Chris managed to score all four of the coffee mugs. He was greeted with applause when he got to work, and proudly drank out of one this morning. 

2.) Berry, Berry Much 

I may have overcommitted myself with a purchase.

Our local mom and pop produce market had insane deals on berries -- 3 pallets (a large box with about 16 regular sized boxes) of raspberries for $6, and a single pallet of strawberries  (8 1lb boxes in that one) was $7. 

Dear reader, I did not realize how much berry that really was until I got them home. After making a batch of jam, freezing at least two or three pounds, and giving about a pallet and a half away, I still have a box of the things in my fridge, slowly getting moldy. The strawberries are worse; I've got about three boxes of them I've got to hurry up and do something with. 

At least I got some of them stored away, so I think it was technically worth the purchase at this point even if the rest go bad, but the sheer volume was truly insane. 

3.) A Lesson Learned Late

Other than sheer volume, health issues stemming from poor life choices have kept me from staying ahead of the tsunami of berries. 

Wednesday night, I decided to drink some wine while I relaxed with my husband. Not much, two small glasses, but evidently that combined with being on my feet all day dealing with the berry-pocolypse and not drinking water was enough to give me a headache and body aches. Not enough to take me entirely out of commission, but enough that I was uncomfortable all day.

That was yesterday. Today, that has morphed into something a lot more... explosive. Evidently I gave a hit to my immune system at the exact wrong moment and now I've got a rip roaring stomach flu. 

So. I learned a valuable lesson about the importance of hydration and the effects of alcohol on the human body and immune system. 

Don't do drugs, kids. 

4.) Birthday 

On to a more cheerful subject -- we had a birthday early this week! Bitty Baby isn't quite so Bitty anymore. 

We had grandparents and cousins over for dinner, cake, and ice cream and there was lots of playing and general merriment. We don't have quite enough table space for a group of that size, but we managed by putting the grownups at the table and the kids on a picnic blanket in the living room. 

The highlight of the whole thing for me was seeing Little Girl, one of the girl cousins, and Bitty Baby having an impromptu dress up tea party while we finished dinner. I'm really enjoying being around little girls- after growing up with all boys, it's still a definite novelty factor for me. 

5.) A New Challenge 

We'll be homeschooling next year. 

I don't want to get into details in order to respect the privacy of the child involved, but we've had a rough last few months at the school and there's been some weird political infighting and power trips at the district level that have filtered down. My kiddo was denied his transfer for next year (interestingly enough, we just found out, not in accordance with the school policy that was laid out in the letter denying said transfer) and though we could fight it, I don't really want my kids in a place that doesn't want them, led by someone at the highest level who dislikes my husband (LONG story there). 

The end result is that, for the next year at least, we'll be keeping the kids at home. I'm nervous about it: I grew up homeschooled and moved in those circles and I've seen it work out both really well and really poorly. I think I know what I need to do for my kids to do well, but I also know it's possible to fail at doing those things. 

It is kind of fun looking through curriculum and thinking about what we'll do next year. We know a lot of other families that homeschool, so it's not like I'll be totally on my own either. I'm hoping to do "field trips" fairly often, and there's cool stuff to do in the area that'll lend itself well to that. 

But...yeah. My emergency homeschool activation plan is going into effect rather suddenly. Prayers as we make the change are very much appreciated. 

And that's what's fit to print.