Day 2 of 6

~Highlight of the Day: Giving Threadless.com shirts to my dad and brother (late birthday presents) ~

I have so much stuff. . . and it's all in the living room and dining room. Unfortunately in order to pack it all I need to unpack it first. And that means looking through all the middle school and high school stuff. . . not to mention elementary school. And then there's the painstaking task of deciding what to keep and what to get rid of. Soccer trophies from 11 years ago? Gone. Plant project from 5 years ago. . . couldn't quite part with it.

For all those who are familiar with Doctor Who. . . my sister's Halloween costume this year:

It's going to be absolutely terrifying.

And for those of you who have no idea what that is, or why it's the scariest thing ever:

SVU!

~ Highlight of the Day: Talking to Grandma about mum festivals :) ~

Well, Ben is officially a freshman. We checked him in, fretted over him enough to be embarrassing, ate at the cafeteria he'll be eating at for the next 8 months, and then went on our way!

Southern Virginia University is a small but cool campus. There are some really old buildings with interiors that resemble the beast's mansion (from Beauty and the Beast), and a huge statue of a knight out front. Can you get much better?

(The College Freshman in his natural environment)

After dropping Ben off we drove back up to Baltimore and decided to catch a movie with our free evening. . . We didn't have much to choose from so we settled with Hope Springs. It's got good people in it, including Steve Carrol, so it should at least be funny, right?

So wrong. I'm not sure what audience they were going for, but it was just awkward, inappropriate, and way boring. So we left in the middle to see if there was anything better. . . all we could find was Paranorman. Also really odd. Humorous, yes. Sophisticated or appropriate for small children, no. It was better than old people talking about sex though, so we stuck with it.

I think I'll just take action and violence next time around. . . 

Packing

~ Highlight of the Day: Seeing my family! ~

It's been a lovely day. I slept in (as much as you can with a 5:40am habit and needing to use the restroom. . . ), sat on the porch while eating breakfast, packed to the Of Monsters and Men radio on Pandora, went on a field trip to a huge estate, gave away almost all my food, and showed my family the gardens.

I am always amazed at how much clothes weigh. As predicted, I'm totally pushing the 50 lb limit.

I took one last walk through the forest to the production greenhouses  (in all honesty I may walk this tomorrow, but I may not, so I'm playing it on the safe side).

My garden (now Maddie, Becca, and Sara's :) is still an overrun mess, but there are significantly less weeds then there used to be! It's still got a good month or two to spit out some veggies :)

We drove past all sorts of old ruins today - I want old ruins in my backyard. . .

All in all it's been a pretty good almost-last-day. I still have a few goodbyes to say tomorrow (sad ones . . . not that I've had any particularly happy goodbyes :), and after that we're off to Virginia!

New York, New York

~ Highlight of the Day: Terrace pizza and chocolate mousse cake. ~

My family is not entirely plant minded. Everyone mows, to some extent, my mom weeds when she has time, and my sister likes plants but is convinced she kills them. I have no idea what my brothers think of it all, and my dad likes a good looking yard, but is allergic to stuff outside, like grass. So gardens have never really been on our lists-of-things-to-do-on-vacation, or even locally.

Being here at Longwood is totally different. We take all sorts of field trips to gardens, like they're the most important attraction around (because they are the most important attractions around :) and actually enjoy it all quite thoroughly. Today we drove to New York City, not to see the Statue of Liberty, or Time Square, or Broadway, but to see the High Line.

This is the place that has the odd cement planks for the floor, with the cool transition from path to flower bed. I've seen it on Pinterest so many times, but I didn't know it was taken here!

They had the coolest water feature - it was just a section of the path with grates on either side of it. On one side water came up to run across the path to the other grate, where it fell underneath and (I'm assuming) is pumped back up to the other side. How perfect for a hot summer day? It's just enough water to get your feet wet and splash around a bit in, but not enough to really cause any safety issues. You could walk across it with shoes on and stay dry. It's just brilliant. I loved it. Just look at that adorable little kid getting his feet wet!

Peach Knedliky! . . . sort of

So I have some Czechoslovakian heritage on my dad's mom's side, and because of this my family is familiar with, and rather fond of, a few Czech dishes. Our favorite by far is Peach Knedliky, or in other words, peach dumplings topped with sugar, browned butter, and cottage cheese! It's like having dessert for dinner, and it's the only meal we use our steak knives for, so naturally as young children my siblings and I learned to look forward to when peaches were in season.

Usually when trying out family recipes on my own I'm met with success, or something close enough to it to still taste right, but today was a different story. . .


I couldn't find the recipe in my book. . . which is odd, because I know I had to call Mom last time I made this, in Provo, and I should have written it down. But aparantly I didn't, so I asked her yesterday while we were on the phone. She listed off the ingredients from memory, and some approximate measurements. It was simple enough, so I repeated the ingredients, committed them to memory, and we went on with our conversation.


Today I get home from work, check my email, and decide I'm going to be culinarily ambitious. So I get out my flour and the shortening that's probably been in the cupboard above the stove since the DuPont's established Longwood, and started throwing things together. I thought I was doing pretty good, except I couldn't remember if she'd listed sugar or not. I figured sugar never hurts, tossed some in and started mixing. I came up with a beautiful, sweet dough that tasted an awful lot like pie dough. I don't think the recipe calls for sugar. . .

Not to be discouraged, I told myself "so it'll be sweeter than usual, how bad can that be?", and rolled it out anyway.

I then wrapped up my peach, pinched the seams, smoothed them out, and put it in a pot of boiling water. I had to call again and ask how long to boil it. . . who knew recipes were so important! :)

After about 46 minutes (it's supposed to be 50) of boiling, and boiling, and boiling, I finally gave up on waiting and called it good. Alas. The dough I made was more akin to pie dough than any Czech dumpling dough, and pie dough doesn't boil very well. I ended up with a lovely mash of peach and soggy crust.

It was ok. I'd say a little too rich for me, what with extra sugar and a buttery, flaky crust thing going on. But with enough cottage cheese I managed to finish it off :)

So there you have it. One failed attempt at Peach Knedliky. I will have to try again. Having the actual recipe may help . . .

Kids grow up fast. . . wait. never mind.

Sometimes my siblings mature while I'm gone for a semester. My sister gets her ears pierced, my brother's voice drops an octave, another brother decides he likes economics, they all develop a taste for dubstep. Getting to see the changes every four months is just part of being a college student. And yet other times I come back and they've . . . reverted to certain childhood fancies. Or, more accurately and most recently, latched onto a small bit of Kindergarten-esque entertainment. Over the past four months three of my four siblings (may I point out I only have one sister. . . ) have become avid My Little Pony fans.

 Yes, it's exactly what you're thinking:

Here's the problem. I could, potentially, be blamed/credited with this sudden equestrian infatuation. You see, it was the summer of '11 and we were exploring the strange new world of Netflix via my one-free-month trial, and we stumbled upon Doctor Who. A great new era of British Sci-fi comedy then commenced, and by the time I left for school in the fall we were all hopelessly addicted. The grueling effects of a new semester on my free time kept my addiction somewhat at bay, but back home the academic ease of (or poor attitude towards) high school, and the continuance of Netflix, allowed my sibling's dependence to grow. Having finished all five current seasons, my sister turned to YouTube. Eventually she discovered the brilliant, coincidental existence of the pony Doctor Whooves (pictured right), who's 'cutie mark' is an hourglass, and who so resembles the Doctor it verges on unbelievable. The rest is history. I must admit, I have watched an episode here and there, just to see what I've done to my siblings, and it may have the potential to grow on you. . . Maybe someday I will have little girls who love My Little Pony. Maybe by then my siblings will have outgrown it and moved on to bigger, better things. Or maybe they'll keep up their pony fancies and never quite give up that inner child. We'll just have to wait and see! In the meantime, I think I might watch another episode. . .