Little things....

The mountains on the other side of the bay.  It was very hard to see these mountains during the first couple days I was here, but in the morning, the sun comes up from behind them and they look so beautiful.

Mrs. Schmidt grinding the grain.  And no, this is not normal procedure.  Normally, the boys would do all the grinding, but we were trying to get it done quickly.

December 28^th

Poor little Jason got hives this morning. I noticed when I sat down to feed him that he had a spot like a bug bite on each cheek close to his nose. They looked very similar to mosquito bites. A little later he was scratching his legs and arms. This got my attention, and I called JoHannah's attention to it. We both thought that he must have had ants in his bed. It looked like they'd eaten him up. These ants are all over the place. They seem similar to sugar ants, but they bite. If we leave food uncovered, or not well covered, on the table for too long, they get into it, and are all over the place. She called her parents, and Josh and Jeremy examined him too. A few minutes later, bumps had appeared all over his legs and arms, and we could see that it wasn't ant bites at all, and Mr. Schmidt soon realized it was hives. I thought that I had Benadryll in my bag, but I didn't. Mr. S. couldn't find any either. Jeremy had been looking for some tape in the drawers that the first-aid supplies are kept in, and I had been looking for the Benadryll in them at the same time and had seen a bottle of allergy relief pills there. We gave Jason one, and put anti-itch cream on his legs, and though he was a grump, the itching seemed to have diminished greatly. He is asleep now in his bed.

I am typing this on the kitchen floor, because Mr. Schmidt has one of the generators running, but it isn't powerful enough to provide electricity to the house. Instead, it's hooked up to an extension cord, and a power strip is plugged into that. So, my computer is plugged in in the kitchen along with two others, and as I don't have anything pressing to do at the moment, and want to conserve my battery for when the generator's not running, I'm writing this now.

The boys are grinding grain with a manual grain mill. When they have enough flour ground, Jo and I will make bread, and hopefully cinnamon rolls too. JoHannah and Mrs. Schmidt are seated at the other end of the kitchen table going over a story that JoHannah is writing for the Vision Forum essay contest. I entered it a couple weeks ago, and mentioned that when we were talking about writing. Mrs. Schmidt looked it up online, and I think that I and whoever else has entered it just got some serious competition. I haven't read it yet, but I saw a few bits and pieces of JoHannah's other stories, and they look good. I'll be very interested to read this one.

December 29^th

Jason is back to normal now, but the medicine we gave him made him really sleepy, and he slept most of yesterday, and was very grouchy the rest of the time. Poor little guy, he felt so sick he didn't even want to eat. Right now though (12:35) he's happily playing in the walker after gobbling his lunch.

     Yesterday JoHannah and I made bread.  This is the second time.  I had never made bread by hand until I came here.  Since there isn't any electricity, we had to grind the flour by hand.  We all (JoHannah, the boys, Mrs. Schmidt and I) took turns grinding.  Mrs. Schmidt seemed to really get a kick out of seeing how fast she could grind.  It was kind of funny watching her.  I snapped a few photos so we'd be able to remember it.