Germany and the Museum of Idaho

We had a really fun and busy week this past week.  On Tuesday we went to Carey.  I needed to pick up my Bountiful Basket from my parent's house since they had picked it up for me since I was in Utah.  Also, my wonderful sister-in-law was going to tell my girls a little bit about Germany.  She had studied it in school, had a German foreign exchange student friend who helped her out, and got to spend 2 weeks in Germany learning a little more.  We had a German lunch of spaetzle and sausage with some yummy squash and broccoli.  I learned some new ways of cooking familiar vegetables and also how easy spaetzle is to make.  It was a lot of fun and I need to find some more people willing to do similar things with us.

Then, on Wednesday we joined some other families on a school sponsored trip to the Museum of Idaho in Idaho Falls.  They were having a display of WWII and I had been thinking of going, and we were just finishing up listening to the Diary of Anne Frank when I got the e-mail about the trip.  It was a bit of a drive, but the timing just seemed to work out for us.  It was a pretty cool Museum.  We got to see a lot of the weaponry from WWII along with a Jeep and an airplane.  They had a couple of flags from the period which only had 48 stars on them.  There were little plaques all over with interesting facts on them.  Taylor had a questionnaire that she had to read the plaques to find the answers to the questions.  They also had a room where they had memorabilia from the states.  There were propaganda posters, a ration book, a cookbook and a picture of Rosie the Riveter, among other things.  Michael enjoyed watching the film of the soldiers fighting, he thought some of the other stuff was cool, but that was his favorite.

Back at home we are starting to get ready for more cold weather.  We have been getting out the winter clothes and going through to see what still fits and what doesn't.  The other day we went out and picked all the tomatoes.  I will make green salsa out of most of the green ones.  I will probably let some ripen.  Can the red ones or make salsa out of them too, I'm not sure which.  I need to go out and harvest our cabbage still and finish pulling up the onions.  I have also been out trying to split wood.  I needed to relieve some stress, so I grabbed a splitting maul and started swinging.  I could really use some to show me a better form for swinging that thing, but in the meantime I am figuring things out on my own.  I know I'm not very strong and often the top of the log is all splinters before it actually splits, but it's a good workout and very stress relieving.  I know I could get someone to come and split it for me, or wait until Robert gets home, but truly, I love having something physical to do, even if I don't do it well.