The problem when you blog sporatically is...

You can't remember what it was you were going to write.  A few times I thought, 'hey, I got to remember this to write about' and no, nope, can't remember it. Although it's a joke here to even pretend that I can remember anything. If there was a herb, spice or drug I could take to return my memory I would. As it is.. they didn't work.

So here's a brief synopsis of what we've been up to, so the grandparents know what we do way over here on the other end of the world....

The kids started swim lessons at the Y. Monday and Wednesdays were there for hours. The swim lessons themselves are only an hour but by the time you add the change and shower afterwards and the fact that we're allowed to use the open swim time before and after swimclass, then, yes, we are there the better part of the afternoon.
Of the 4, Kayla is the sinking stone. Joey and Sonia have now had 4 other swim classes and can do more than sink. However...  they still haven't passed the first "non-swimmer" category, so all 3 are in the same class. JM would be also, except the age cut off for the class was 6. He's 4 so he's in the 3-5 year old sink like stone class. They give them cutesy names like "poliwog" except.. last I checked polliwog can swim. They could have given it the name "rock" and you graduate to "wood stick" and finally can become "boat"

Anyway.. that's were we'll be again this afternoon. Last class (Monday) I came inches from running over a boy who came sprinting out in front of me from 2 parked cars. My heart still races thinking about it. Seriously.  His brother ran out from 2 other cars and stopped part way and ran back, which probably was a saving grace since I was going really slow watching him for sudden suicide running boy moves when his brother streaked out 2 cars closer to me.  In a surprise to me, the mom didn't scream at me for almost running her kid over. She said he knew better. Well.. yeah. I sure he does.  But it wouldn't hurt to remind him. I'm sure if I hit him, she'd blame me. I sometime think I want one of those cop-type dash cameras for times such as these. I have a tech-heavy hubby. I might look into it seriously. It'd be priceless in a lawsuit. (paranoid, anyone?)

So in my other paranoid areas... our vegetable garden is doing well. The potatoes have been quite an experiment.  We'd learned as a kid that you take the parts of potato, cut it up and toss it in the ground and it makes new potatoes.  Larry, on the other hand, worked on a potato farm as a kid so he saw some of this in action.  Anyway.. I had some potatoes past their prime and let the kids plant them. A few months ago. And we had potato plants and then I read about growing potatoes and the book said not to use grocery potatoes because they can have growth inhibitor.. but I think that must be the expensive potatoes, because the cheap ones I buy seem to sprout on the car ride home....

Anyway.. the plants died. (Larry could never remember how the farmer killed the vines, but apparently they will die on their own) and as I was digging out the done producing broccoli that was next to it, a few potatoes were unearthed. Yesterday Larry dug out the rest. Or, at least what he could find. And this is what we have:

And some really deformed ones

There were 4 types of potatoes we planted. The cheap-sprout-in-days ones did best. The yellow gold ones, did ok. The red ones didn't do terrific, and the potato plant larry bought from the store did pretty poorly also. I think. It's hard to tell which those potatoes were.

The patch was this tiny spot between the broccoli and eggplant. The dead leaves there are the broccoli leaves as I was clearing out the spent broccoli plants.

And if you're looking for zucchini, I have it. Check out these 2 plants. They're the size of a VW at this point. The mass of green just beyond the orange homedepot bucket is them. They have given us more Zucchini that I know what to do with. I've given it away to friends, neighbors and the postmaster who gives me the coupons that are left over from the ones that get mailed (that's a whole other topic). We've had Zucchini casserole, fried zucchini, zucchini bread, zucchini diced and added to pretty much anything and... zucchini brownies. Believe it or not, they're pretty good. Not knock your socks off great, but good. Better than not bad for something that's somewhat healthy.

So.. the postman thing...
Because the horrible people stole our packages, I no longer leave them for our mailguy. I bring them to our post office. I've gotten to know them fairly well. And with the trying to coupon thing hobby I've developed, I wondered.... "I wonder if they get extras of the ones that get mailed?"   So I asked them.  The first time (ok, first 3 times) they thought I was insane. But now they offer them to me when I come on the day they come out and I bring them veggies. I had brought brownies back in the early days, but they didn't turn out that great, being from a box mix and getting overcooked and all.. so they prefer veggies. And wouldntcha know, I have those.

So.. I guess I need to get moving. I hear the tell tale whine coming from a child that another is bothering them. I don't know at what age they need to learn to work stuff out on their own. I think it's a great skill to have, but it seems that more I try to let them work it out, the worse they act. *sigh* Parenting- not for the faint at heart.  I thought the newborn/toddler stage was bad. But honestly they got along better then. Now it's the day long epic battle of which kid is in the other kids' room ... seriously. Wars are fought over territories. This is no exception. Despite they all belong the the Dad and Mom's domain colony.. not to worry, I think if I reverted us to communist state, they'd still find something to fight over- like who was breathing the other person's air.  Gotta love human nature.