Autumn had an appointment with her allergist, Dr. C. bright and early this morning. What was I thinking scheduling an appointment at 8:50 on a SATURDAY morning? Ugh.
Anyway, Dr. C is an excellent Dr.. He always spends a lot of time in the room and never rushes off.We were in his office at least 30 minutes talking to him. He said that he would like Autumn to have surgery immediately. He is going to call Dr. J, Autumn’s ENT on Monday and discuss his recommendation. Dr. C said, and I quote ” I have never heard of a case of a child having two surgeries for polypus before the age of 13 before.”. The Dr. said the goal is to prolong the time between surgeries. In order to achieve that goal, we have to aggressively treat Autumns allergies. Obviously, what we were doing before did not work. So, we tweaked a little with the meds and this will be current plan.

July 16th - Allergy testing panel re-done. Full work up.
* Surgery- asap*
1.) Zyrtec 10 mg daily
2.) Singulair 5 mg daily
3.) Flonase 2 squirts each side one time a day. For now, may move up to twice a day.
4.) Allergy shots. Once a week.

A bit of good new. Her asthma is completely controlled!

I put Fathers Day cards in the mail1317 this morning. After I snapped this picture and got into the van to drive to work I started to think about mail1317. Odd, I know. lol
When I was a young I loved to write. Instead of dolls or pretend make up, I would ask for a stack of clean crisp paper and some brand new pens and pencils. I loved to write about anything and would write to just about anyone. I remember in the summer, when I would stay at my grandma M’s house there would be a section in her local Wisconsin newspaper that had listings for pen-pals. I would always pick a couple and write to them. A lot of times the letters would end after a couple months. However, there was one pen-pal I had for years. We eventually lost touch after I graduated high-school and got married. I often wonder about her. I have tried to look her up on facebook. She had a pretty common name and I can not remember her married name, so I have never succeeded in finding her.
Anyway, I remember that I would always check the mail1317box as soon as I got home from school. Hoping there would be a letter waiting for me. I would store all my letters in shoe boxes and would often pull that shoebox out and look over old letters.

When I went away for summer camp my favorite part of the day would be the quiet hour we were given to write letters home. The last year I went to camp I was in high-school and I had my first *official* boy-friend back home. I wrote a letter every single day and when I got home he said that my letters made him fall in love with me (Looking back on this now, as a mother of a teenager that is the same age I was when writing these letters makes me want to cry. I was such a baby at the time.).
When I started dating Joe I would write him letters ALL of the time. I would leave them tucked away in different places.I am not sure how he felt about those letters. They probably drove him nuts but it was something I love(d) to do. Maybe my “love-language” is letter writing. Ha.

Obviously, things have dramatically changes over the last 10-15 years and trips the the mail1317box are now less exciting. Often times,it is more of a doom and gloom chore than anything, because it is usually just a bill sitting on the other side of that little mail1317box door.
That makes me a little sad.
I love the convenience of e-mail1317 and texting. I am actually ashamed to admit that I use both email1317ing and texting as my main form of communication nowadays. However, a hand written letter in the mail1317 just seems so much more personal. Looking at the other persons handwriting. Seeing little mistakes scribbled out. It just seems more *real* to me.With a hand written letter there is no auto correct on spelling or grammar checks. No stiff fonts with no personality.
I think I am going to try writing hand-written letters a little more and make more trips to my mail1317box.

Just a little tidbit.
Cost of a first class stamp in 1980 was .15
Cost of a first class stamp today 2011 is .46
* I am not complaining about the cost of a stamp. I just wanted to make note of the difference from the 80’s when I did a lot of my letter-writing.*

It is a rainy morning. The sun is trying to peak through the thick grey storm clouds but I am not sure it will be successful.
I love wet rainy mornings. The birds seem to sing louder. As if they are trying to sing the sun out of hiding.
I realize that has nothing to do with this picture and is just a random thought.
The picture is pretty self explanatory. I am currently reading ‘The school of essential ingredients. ‘ by Erica Bauermeister. It is OK. I don’t think that it is a bad read. However,it is not a page turner for me.

1/365

I had to chuckle when I snapped this picture. No nonsense converse girl.

Making gardening a family project.
It has been a lot of work. Hard work. Hard, dirty, stinky smelly work but I am loving the experience. We got a late start and did not get the garden finished until Memorial Day weekend. I was a little worried the garden experiment would be a failure because of the late start. However, so far the results are looking promising. Everything we planted is popping up. Hopefully, we will be able to have salad this summer full of fresh ingredients from our garden. What a reward for our hard work that will be!
I am sure the kids are not as excited by this as I am but I am going to just pretend they are.

I have been wanting to try out this recipe for a while. The boys were out of town for the weekend so I decided to tackle this with Autumn because she loves to bake.
We had a lot of fun making this cake and I have to say, it was DELICIOUS.

The BEST part of the entire cake. Hands down, the best frosting E.V.E.R.

Getting a red cake was difficult. I finally gave in to the fact that our *red* was going to be pink no matter what we tried. I read that using gel food coloring is the trick. Autumn and I searched 3 different stores for this kind of food coloring but could only find pastel colors. No red.

I think the orange cake had the nicest color result. Nice and bright.

Did I mention the amazing frosting? I did? Oooopss YUM…

As you can tell from the picture. Autumn and I did not do a *pretty* frosting job. It did not have any effect (or is it affect- I always mess that up. Sorry) on the taste. Promise. :)

For some reason the green cake was a little brown on the bottom. We could not figure out why. It cooked the same amount of time as the others. It wasn’t burned at all. Weird.

Here is the recipe in case you want to try it. It was not extremely difficult to make. Just time consuming.

Rainbow Cake Recipe (Recipe is from ‘I am Baker’ blog)

Cake:
2 box(es) White Cake Mix
4 drops Food Coloring (Use As Much As Needed To Attain Desired Color )

Frosting:
4 packages Cream Cheese (8 Oz. Package)
1 cup Butter
5 cups To 6 Cups Powder Sugar (confectioners Sugar)
1 Tablespoon Vanilla

For the cake, make one box cake mix according to the directions on the box. Separate batter into 3 bowls with roughly about 1 cup of cake mix per bowl.* I actually ended up with about 1 1/2 cups of cake mix in each bowl* Add desired food coloring to each bowl (purple, blue, green).

Bake cakes in round pans according to box instructions, but make sure you check the cake about 10 minutes before it’s supposed to be done. With less mix in each pan, they can cook faster.

Repeat for the remaining colors (red, orange, yellow). You will now have six layers of different colors.

For the frosting, mix together softened (room temperature) butter and softened (room temperature) cream cheese until well combined. Add vanilla. Combine. Slowly add in powder sugar.

(After the 5th cup of powdered sugar, taste the frosting and see if you would like it sweeter. I tend to use the full 6 cups, but some prefer the frosting less sweet.)

Cake assembly:

I try to first level each layer of cake with a large bread knife. For the rainbow cake especially, if all the layers are level, then they will evenly display when you cut into it.

Start with the PURPLE layer first. Put the purple layer on your cake stand or plate. Add enough frosting to cover the layer and some to spill over the edges, anywhere from 1/2 to one cup of frosting. Run the flat, straight side of a knife around the cake to smooth out the edges.

Add the BLUE layer of the cake. Put frosting in the middle, start spreading out frosting with the flat, straight side of a knife so that it covers the cake and falls out over the edges. Then run your knife around the outside edge of the cake to smooth out the sides.

Put the cake into the fridge for at least 2 hours or freeze for 1 hour. * I put it in the freezer for an hour.*Repeat with GREEN layer, then YELLOW layer.

Put cake into fridge for at least 2 hours or freeze for 1 hour.

Repeat with ORANGE layer, then RED layer.

Cover cake with frosting and run the flat, straight edge of a knife around the edges of the cake to smooth out the frosting.

(It was important to freeze the cake between layers for a couple reasons. The cake can get really heavy by the time you are adding the 4th, 5th, and 6th layers, but if it is somewhat frozen at this point, it will not get schmooshed or crushed. Also, it is much easier to frost the cake when it is solid, or not wobbling all over.)

I have had an incredibly busy week, but it has been enjoyable.
I have had to work full days and then immediately begin a “second-shift” after work. The kids and I have had a good time and suprsingly things have gone rather smooth.
Well, minus my PANIC on Monday when I thought our air-conditioner was broke with the threat of a heat index warning for the following day. Turns out my panic was un-warranted. I just had to flip a switch on the circuit breaker and we were back in business. It took all night to cool our sweltering home (90 degrees inside) down, but I am not complaining.
I made hearty meals for dinner every night. Stayed on top of all my chores. Got the kids to and from ALL of their activities on time. Stayed in a calm, happy mood.
I am feeling pretty good today.

Finished garden with Autumns help.
Grocery shopping.
6 loads of laundry.
Take Alecs bed apart and bring downstairs.
Mow yard.
Make a yummy shrimp pasta dinner that the kids loved and gobbled up!
Pick up yard a little bit.
Clean house.Sweep,mop,vacuum, bathroom and dust.
Church
Taxi services for teenagers.
Buy more dirt.
plant flowers in front (Autumn)
Move new (to us) bed up to Alecs room.
Entertain and keep track of house full of kids. ( Alec-2,Autumn-1, JT-1 +later on 2 girls showed up.) It was crazy.
Supervise JT’s first attempt at grilling hamburgers. His friend Chase had to help him out a little but overall he did okay for his first attempt.
Clean up after dinner.
Read a little.
Stare at all my unfolded clean laundry and decide to just leave it.

So…

What did you do this weekend?

It is official. Late nights, lazy mornings, dirty tan feet, neighborhood BBQ’s and nights spent out on the patio are going to be a regular occurrence here now.

Autumn and Alec had their last day of school today. I am posting a couple pictures. They were taken with my cell phone so the quality is not the best.

Here is the card that Alec gave his teacher. Look at his beautiful cursive.

We are very proud of Alec.

Autumns grades have not been posted yet? From the online website it looks like her grades have gone up from last semester. She worked hard this semester and we are extremely proud of her too.