The book is here!

Our copy of 1000 Steampunk Creations arrived today.

The proud little boy, holding his copy of the book:



He says that someday he would like to meet the little girl whose picture is on the page with his, "because she looks so cool!"

Ula's 22nd Birthday Slide Show

Ula's birthday is actually in 3 days, but I just finished making this slideshow and wanted to share it right away.

Life does have a soundtrack, and for most of my pregnancy with Ula, the theme song was "Kooks" by David Bowie.



For the month that I spent in the hospital, between my water breaking (3 months early) and Ula being born, I had a cassette "Walkman" with only two cassettes, The Cure and The Kinks.




HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ULA!!!

Some Kingsley Critters

The raccoons have been particularly good photo subjects this year. This one taught me a valuable lesson about never setting down food outside. I only left those rice cakes unattended for a moment.





This young raccoon was not the least bit scared of people. It was out in the middle of the day during the public archaeology day, expecting the tourists to feed it.

Here it is licking an ice cube that was thrown to it:







Blaze and I were playing around in the barn, when we noticed birds flying in and out of the open back window.



We discovered these baby birds living in a hole in the wall:



Tortoise eggs:

Kingsley Plantation Public Archaeology Day 2011

Yesterday was Public Archaeology Day at Kingsley:



The poster was slightly inaccurate, but close. I think it's the fifth year, not third, that Dr. Davidson has taken field school students to Kingsley, and it was D.H. who gave the talk about the sugar mill at 1:00p.m., but all the rest was correct.

If any of you has looked at the pictures from last year, you will see how much progress the students made this year on the well behind the slave cabins.



One thing that is very impressive, is that they have uncovered some of the 200 year old wood that supported the well (you can see two pieces sticking out of the floor in the center of the hole). Things rot quickly in Florida. Wood that touched the ground in my garden disappeared, back into the earth amazingly quickly, so I was really surprised to see wood this old, especially some place where it would have been wet.

D.H. explaining how they knew where to look for some of the buildings that are no longer standing on the plantation.



I'm sorry about the sound quality on this. The constant breeze, made the hot temperature almost bearable, but it interferes with the microphone on my camera.



D.H. telling the crowd about the pig buried under the sugar mill floor.



Students, hard at work in the sugar mill:



D.H. showing a child's clay marble that was found in the "fill" that was used to cover the sugar mill:



A piece of rusted chain in the sugar mill. The students will be working to uncover this and find out if it is attached to anything.



Putting the kids to work:



Working on the floor of a mystery building:


Screening the dirt from the mystery building:



A very old, burned stump. Not exactly what she was looking for. She had hoped to find some of the burned remains of pre-Kingsley slave cabins. She got the burned part right.



Blaze learning to have a gentle touch with the scoop:



And to trim tree roots:



Time to go home. The students covering the holes, so they can go home for the rest of the weekend:

End of the School Year Celebration

Last night was the elementary and middle school graduation at the school where I work. All of the elementary children made display boards of the work they were proud of.

Each child was able to decorate their board however they chose, so we had a wide variety of very beautiful, colorful boards. Because they are so good at covering large areas quickly, the block-shaped beeswax crayons got a lot of use for this project.





Blaze's board:



The high school seniors got in one last prank, while everyone was distracted by the younger children:

Pineapple-Coconut Slaw

We had this variation on cole slaw at the Sweet Tomatoes Salad Bar recently. I was a little skeptical about it at first, but when I tried it, I liked it so well that I wanted to make it myself. It's not easy to get Blaze to eat vegetables, but he liked this, especially after he was the one to make it.

Pineapple-Cocnut Slaw


Dressing:

1/2 Cup mayonnaise

2 Tablespoons pineapple juice (drained from the crushed pineapple

1/2 teaspoon white sugar


In a small bowl, combine the mayonnaise, pineapple juice, and sugar. Stir until smooth.




Salad:

1 10-ounce package of angel hair cole slaw cabbage or about 5 heaping cups of finely shredded, fresh cabbage

3/4 Cup shredded coconut

1 8-ounce can of crushed pineapple, drained

Dressing



Combine the cabbage, coconut, pineapple, and dressing in a large bowl. Stir until all the cabbage is coated in dressing. Chill over night for best flavor.





The day we made this, we had had guests until much later than I planned and Blaze was very tired when we finally had a chance to cook. The recipe is so simple, though, that he was able to do it while only half awake. The next morning he got up and told me, "I had a dream that I made cole slaw."

Memorial Day at Little Talbot Island State Park

Blaze had been begging all week to go back to the beach, so that was what we did for Memorial Day. We went earlier in the day this time, so we were able to stay longer, before I started getting pink (even with 85 SPF sunscreen), but Blaze still didn't want to leave. The sun doesn't affect him like it does me, and he would happily stay in the water all day.





Our history lessons may be affecting sandcastle design, it looks sort of Mesopotamian.





This was the first time we really got the homemade kite in the air. It wobbles, which means it needs a longer tail, but it does fly.