Slices of Life

As part of my husband's job he often runs all sorts of tests on soil samples.  One day a few weeks ago he knew we were home and he asked if the boys would like to learn a bit about what he does so we met up with him at the shop and he showed them one of the tests he does.  We started with a large bucket of soil. We dumped the soil into a pan and weighed it. Then we heated the soil up on a hot plate to cook all the water out of the soil.  We re-weighed the sample to see how much moisture had been trapped inside the sample. Once the soil was all dried we put the entire sample into the top tin of a series of stacking tin; each with a progressively smaller and smaller weave to catch the various sized particles of stone, sand, and clay. We put the lid on the stack and placed it into a machine that vibrates and shakes the stacks.  We set the timer and settled back to wait. Once the timer went off we had to weigh each individual tin of the s

I have stumbles upon many bloggers who participate in What's Up Wednesday and while I've always wanted to join in I am so awful about remembering to write my post.  This month I added it to my blogging calendar so I'd remember.   Here is the list of questions if you'd like to join in: Let's dive right in! What We're Eating This Week: Sunday:  We grilled chicken legs and served them with rice and Italian herb roasted zucchini Monday:  We had pot roast with roasted potatoes and peas Tuesday: We had BBQ pork ribs with couscous and Caesar salad Wednesday: We're having tacos with salad (or in my case taco salad) Thursday: We're planning on grilled kielbasa with egg noodles and corn Friday: Homemade macaroni and cheese with salad (though I will be reworking our favorite recipe to make it a bit lower in calories so I can enjoy it too) Saturday:  Baked fish, baked potatoes, and cole slaw with salad What I'm Rem

Thanks for stopping by and joining us again this week as we host another virtual refrigerator arts and crafts link up. Alec and I made some fabric covered terracotta pots last week.  We found some cute fabric scraps at the craft store and rolled our pots out on them getting the basic shape we needed to cut.  We cut out all three fabrics while we had the scissors out.   We made sure our fabric pieces fit and then began slowly coating the pots with some waterproof Modge Podge that said it was "for all materials." After we coated an area of the pot with Modge Podge we would pull the fabric tight over it and add another layer of Modge Podge on top of the fabirc; sealing it to the pot. We tried really hard to make sure we kept it wrinkle free. Once we had all the sides done we turned the pots upside down and coated the bottom of the pots with the Modge Podge before folding the fabric down around the edges, snipping any pieces of fabri

In this last month of school my boys found a lot of great books to read.  I know my middle son already told me that he plans on reading a lot of books over the summer but my other two boys are looking forward to taking a break from reading.  I don't mind since I know we read a lot. Here's a list of all the books my boys read this past month: Calendar Mysteries March Mischief--   In the third book of the Calendar mysteries series the kids dress up a statue in honor o St. Patrick's Day and it goes missing overnight.  The kids have to follow the clue to find out what happened and who's responsible. The Son of Neptune- - In the second book of the Heroes of Olympus, Percy wakes up with no memory and finds himself in the Roman Camp.  Teamed up with Hazel and Frank they head to Alaska to retrieve a missing artifact; encountering many monsters and giants along the way. Dr Brad has Gone Mad- - In this Weird School book AJ meets the school psychologist to see