Patsy took this picture of a Fawn Lily in a park where we took her and 2 cousins.  After we got home, we spent a bit of time identifying it, using books and the internet.  She photographed other flowers, too, and we’ve identified 3 so far.  She seems to be showing in interest in both flowers and photography.  Those would both be good, frugal, useful hobbies for her to pursue, I think, so I want to encourage her.

I was able to capture this photo of her in a field of Camas flowers.  There were many, many of these flowers growing wild.

Jake spent a bit of time throwing rocks into a small stream at the extremely large park we went to. Patsy waded, but it was too cold for Jake.   This park  had several play-sets, a baseball diamond, a track for some kind of derby-car or other kind of racing, and trails criss-crossing  and surrounding it.  We were using up some time in a fun way while waiting for Ja’Ana and cousin Alissa to attend a church youth event.

I air-dried some gluten-free bread that we found when my sister and I organized the freezers on Tuesday.  After it was dry, I was in a big hurry to get crumbs because I was cleaning frantically to get ready for a house showing.  I just put the bread into a Ziplock and pounded it with my meat mallet.  The first bag got holes punched into it–not from the spiky part of the mallet, but from the dry bread itself.  So, I just transferred it into another bag, and was done in a jiffy.

I cooked every chance I got this week and was able to eat at home most of the time, using the pre-cooked food when I was in a hurry. I packed my lunch for work. We took one picnic with us one time during a showing.  Good thing, too.  Those people stayed at our house for about 2-1/2 hours, so we would have either been forced into eating out or would have been very hungry.  We don’t want to discourage anyone from looking!  While we were waiting for them to leave, I was able to work on my crocheted dish cloth I am making from some cotton yarn I found when cleaning and sorting.

I dug up about 10 raspberry plants and put them in a pot with compost.  My aunt has offered to keep them at her house under her automatic sprinkler while we are in transition.  This will be enough for a nice raspberry patch where ever we end up, and they will multiply over time.   There is also a little chive plant in a tiny pot that will hopefully make it, too.

I used many frozen items from our freezers and many items from my storage to make meals.  We bought Tillamook cheese for  $5.49/2 lbs. several times.  We bought butter for $1.99/lb last week, several times, as well.  Milk was 99c/1/2 gallon last week, so we got a few of those, too.  I bought lettuce in large packages from Cash and Carry today, a large bottle of ranch dressing and some lunchmeat. I used a $10/off $50 at Safeway and got produce, laundry soap, and a few other things.

We used the library more than usual the last couple of weeks.  It is  a handy, free place to go when the house is being shown.

The transmission has gone out on one of our cars.  Our mechanic friend is looking for a used one, which will help with the cost.  In the meanwhile, boy am I glad Patsy and I cleaned the Camry up so well last week!  I’m double glad my nephew fixed it up so it runs.  It is much more pleasant to drive than it was.  She really got into the project on one of these very warm days we have been having and washed it.  I’m sure it doesn’t know what hit it after being neglected for so long:)

This past week, I had that horrible cold/thing everyone has been getting around here.  On Friday, Patsy didn’t feel well, either.  We went to the library and got some movies for her to watch.  We also made great use of the free tissues we were given last fall.  You may notice the box is very crushed, but they still work fine.  She’s pretty well done with it.  I, however, am still coughing a lot after 12 days of this.  Hmmmm…..Maybe I should watch more movies????   The Road to Avonlea dvd’s  are a tv show that was made years ago, using the setting of the Anne of Green Gables stories.  She enjoyed them, and Gilligan is always a favorite around here.

Patsy and I spent quite a bit of time cleaning up our old Toyota Camry. My nephew, Steven, just put it back into working order.  He put a new door on it.  The old one had been crunched a while back and you could only get in by leaning across the passenger seat and reaching over and opening it from the inside.  That got to be quite inconvenient.  Then, the axle needed replacing, and finally, it’s battery went dead one too many times.  We didn’t run it for several months.  When Steven offered to fix it, we were very grateful.  It has been a great car for us, and still runs!  We would love for one of the older girls to learn to drive and use it.  J isn’t quite old enough, but Lovana is, and J soon will be.

It has almost 300,000 miles on it, and where I say it looks better, I’m not sure it will ever look super good ever again.   It’s as clean as we can get it without shampooing it.  We vacuumed it out at a do-it-yourself station at a car wash.  We used $3 in quarters.  I took some disinfectant wipes with us and we wiped and wiped.  There was even some mold growing in places, so we got that, too.  I was very grateful to have it, since our van was being fixed and I wanted to go somewhere!

A good friend fixed the van.  He did it for free, as he does for us, and we are thankful.  The shifting lever in the column was not shifting properly and would not go into “park” correctly, sometimes causing the van to start rolling backwards when we thought it was parked.  It only took a couple of times for us to put that on the top of the list!!!

We went to the whale-watching center at Depoe Bay.  We didn’t see any whales, but had a good trip to the beach.  The center is free and they have lots of information and viewing stations to look out for whales.

We went camping for a few more days, went to the zoo, the mall, the library, and the beach during spring break, mostly while getting out of the house so they could show it.  It was nice to do something different than sort, pre-pack, clean and scrub, etc.  So far, there have been 31 families/couples/people through the house.  It’s been on the market for a little over a week.  We don’t have an offer, yet, but feel encouraged with all of the interest.  I know this will all pay off in the end.  We tried to use coupons, get deals, share food, used gift cards, and whatever else we could do to save money during all of this running around, but it was still somewhat expensive.  Camping was actually the most economical, since we took our food with us, and got to stay there are cook it, for the most part, during the 2nd little part of the camping trip when we went back up there.

We looked at and photographed wildflowers wherever we went.

While cleaning, I was able to find a couple of home-school books that I will use for Ja’Ana now. She had finished up a couple of things a few weeks ago. She hasn’t been doing very much school lately, with all of the other things we have been doing, but I wrote out a pretty hefty 2-week schedule for her, so she can get back on track and caught up. I also had time to work with her on math during the first part of camping, before she went on her mission trip.  So, she’s set, and no money out for new things right now.

I weeded my herb raised bed.  It is right by the house, and is handy to use when cooking.  I might as well enjoy it while I still have it, and everything I make a little nicer can only help with selling the house.