My daily journal stopped, because I went to a women's retreat for the weekend, then came back and spent a few days going through a stomach flu and recovering. So now I'm back out of the habit of housecleaning, but would like to start that up again. A friend gave me a loaf of Amish Friendship Bread, and the starter. So I've gotten rid ...

August 15, 2007: Today I finally baked three loaves of Three-Flour Bread, but again it was a little over-baked, and I had put in too much whole wheat flour, so they came out rather hard. They taste pretty good, though. I spent most of the day researching and taking notes on the Hopi annual ceremony cycles. Fascinating. My friend, Hilary, and I ...

August 14, 2007: I spent a little over an hour cleaning again this morning. It was great, but afterwards I felt wiped out (the mopping usually does this). I noticed, though, that since I've started noticing dirt more, I have less tolerance for it, so throughout the day I did small cleaning jobs here and there as well. I should have baked ...

August 12, 2007: Today we ate slices of sourdough toast, but it is so sour-tasting (all that long rising) that we can only stomach it with jelly on top. Some breads just are a flop. I ended up disposing of the loaves, after several attempts at eating it. August 13, 2007: Today I meant to make some better bread, but my energy was low and I just ...

August 9, 2007: Today I was a little tired from all of yesterday's activities, but not too much. I registered the girls with their schools in the morning and we had karate class. I spent the afternoon sewing with my friend, Kathryn. For supper we had tostadas with lettuce and onion from our garden. Julia likes garden onions--we've noticed ...

August 8, 2007: Today my energy has finally returned! I ran errands in the morning, after I attempted making applesauce for our breakfast pancakes. It tasted delicious, if a little tart, but I really do need a food mill, so the rest is keeping in the fridge until I can get one. There was something wonderful about eating my own applesauce from our ...

August 8, 2007: Today I made Oven-Baked Apple Pancake for breakfast using the cooking apples. Everyone else seemed more interested in cereal and milk, and I ended up enjoying the apple pancake for breakfast, morning snack & lunch! Yummm... I had no energy again today. Still, we ran errands a couple of times and I did laundry. MOst of the day ...

August 6, 2007: Sean and I had stayed up so late after my busy day out with the kids that on Sunday (August 5), I was at-the-end-of-my-rope tired and just rested all afternoon after church. It's been raining hard every afternoon so the gardens are doing well. Today I had to run errands all morning. I felt a little bad about breaking down and ...

August 4, 2007: Today Sean needed me to take the kids out all day so he could concentrate with his work and meet his deadline. So we spent the day at a Santa's North Pole (a small kids theme park) and had a lot of fun and ate junk food. I had started the sourdough bread process and forgot to tend to it as soon as we returned, so I had to stay ...

August 3, 2007: Today my friend Kathryn came to help me sew (in exchange for tutoring her daughter this summer) and she brought me three dozen fresh eggs from her hens! The kids had just harvested fresh coriander seeds this morning (they enjoyed picking them) so I gave her a bag of them and a kefir grain, and promised her some produce ...