This weekend was a wonderful Josh's birthday time. We arrived in Strasburg, Lancaster County before nightfall, but ensconced in a misty fog. [Even though the forecast was no moisture.] By the time we actually got to our campsite it was dark. The campground did have post lights for each campsite, which came in handy.

We weren't set up in record time, but it wasn't forever either. Since it was a rainy weekend we decided to put up the awning, even if we weren't really going to be outside, it would protect the door some. We forgot we still have to fix the legs and braces since they aren't working very well. We than had dinner, got settled in, and then packed ourselves back into the car.

We were off to find a Wal-Mart. We were only on the road for maybe a half hour when Gary asks if I remembered the heater. No, I forgot it. Since we definitely needed one for this weekend, we had to go buy one. While settling in, I found an electric cord for RVs that we never used or opened. So, we returned it and bought the heater and a few other things, without having to put out any money.

Sometime in the night the rain and wind picked up. The children thought that 4:00 AM was a good time to get up. We didn't think so. Gary on one end, me on the other, each with a kid. We got a little more sleep.


Saturday came with the predicted rain. We made our way to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. It houses many train cars and engines, a few of which you can get on and look through.


We had a bathroom emergency, a fit and some screaming, but mostly cooperative children and good memories.

At the museum store, we bought Josh a wooden train whistle that enjoys hearing. And Gary was tickled pink, or black in his case, to receive with the purchase, a little wallet size card that has the different train whistle signals. For example when a train approaches a public at grade crossing (or simply put, a street crossing) it blows a long, long, short, and a sustained long signal.


Here are varies photos I took of our day at the museum.

And here's the birthday boy marching down the isle of a passenger train car.

The sun actually came out by the time we were done in the museum. While we ate lunch in the car, we could enjoy the sunshine for a bit.

We decided to take a ride on the Strasburg Railroad after lunch. It's a twenty minute ride through farmlands and then twenty minutes back.

It was a nice ride, and Ellie and Josh enjoyed it.

After our ride and while waiting to get a video of the train coming into the station, the clouds poured down the rain and winds blew sideways for 20 minutes. But it stopped the train came in and I got my footage. We made our way back to the car and as we got in the rain started again.

Sometime during the night there was a loud crash. With more agility than I knew Gary possessed, he jumped over me and out of bed. [He is on the outside edge of the slide out bed.] We both looked around, not so easy for me with no corrective lenses, and saw nothing that would have made such a noise. He checked outside. With what sight I did have without my glasses, I noticed the sky. The sky, which I shouldn't see if the awning is out. Gary looked up and saw no awning, save for two ends of the poles. The wind had picked up overnight and yanked the braces from their brackets and flung the awning onto the roof of the camper. We decided to just put the awning away and went back to bed.

Again the children were up early and again they were separated, so adults could get more sleep.

Today was beautiful and frigid. The heater was working nonstop. We lazed around the camper for the day. When we decided to pack up the kids had fun running around outside.

While driving home, we came across many more buggies than we had seen all weekend. Sunday is visiting day for the Amish. I wanted to get pictures but was more compelled to respect their wishes of not having photos taken of themselves.

We had a nice drive home across the countryside of PA. Gary and I used to do a lot of driving around the countryside before we were married. It was nice to do some country driving, especially to the soft snoring of sleeping children.

Choo-Choos here we come

Even with the forecast of a rainy weekend, we are going camping.

Monday is Josh's birthday so we are headed to Strasburg, PA for some train adventures.

In Sickness

I was in pain all day yesterday. My stomach was revolting the no food thing, but also revolted when it was confronted with food. The lemonade did nothing, but endear itself to me less and less. By the afternoon, my mouth would let none of it pass.

Gary and I had decided to end the diet at dinner, but I couldn't even wait that long. I made some squash soup and had some by 3:30. I actually thought that I would feel better. But I was so mistaken.

My twisting insides sent me to bed after Gary arrived home. [I stayed in bed for 10 hours.] This morning I had Cheeios. Lunch found me eating the soup again. I did notice that the pain, mercifully, did lessen after each meal, until finally I am typing pain free.

I am confident that it would take a serious event for me to try that diet again.

I will make one comment about the "smooth move" laxitive tea. It works. After my Wednesday experience, I doubt I will be trying the salt water colon cleanser anytime soon.

Tired Yet?

If you're like me and already tired of this cleansing diet, you might want to skip reading this post. My feelings won't be hurt.

Two more observations:

It would be far, far easier not to want to eat, if I was not preparing meals for Josh and Ellie.

A drink will never, ever be able to take the place of solid food.

Giving it another go?

Alright, I said to myself, you can do this.

Again, I am not eating, but drinking "lemonade." It's a far stretch to call it lemonade, by the way. I had breakfast at MOPS, because I knew that there would be yummy food there. I brought along my drink for after tasty food and have been partaking of untasty beverage since.

On Sunday, we had our friends over and J said that another of her friends did this cleansing thing, and had great results, nice skin, energy. That's what I'm hoping for, even if I sneak food a few times. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can!

I can also say that it would do my body better if all this extra water I'm drinking would head to my somewhat dry skin instead of my bladder.

There is just something to be said for chewing your food.

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On a completely different note, the kids and I ate our lunch in a fort on the living room floor. I loved making forts as a kid, and thought mine would too. Josh, not having the best balance and sense of propriety since only being two, nearly wrecked it a few times.

I'm not Cleansing!

Okay, my day's observations in chronological order.

There is not 4 TBSP of juice in the average lemon. I had to squeeze way more lemons than it called for.

I highly recommend taking Cayenne pepper tablets instead of putting the powder in the lemonade. Very nasty tasting. My first taste left me reeling and mixing a new batch with less Cayenne pepper. That still didn't work, but I drank half of it. A new batch with no Cayenne pepper isn't much better, just not burny.

The Cayenne pepper tablets are no better. Especially if taken at the end of drinking said beverage.

I want potato chips. I want chocolate. I want food! I do not want a glass of lemonade.

I had lasagna for dinner, along with too many potato chips. I felt a little sick with my food splurge. I also had M&Ms, popcorn, and two Carmel cremes.

I will not be continuing this "diet." If I ever try again, I need some serious resolve and a tongue with no taste buds.

Gary's experience has sent him to bed early with a serious headache and very sick to his stomach. But so far he is still resolved to follow through.

A Cleansing

Monday is the big day! For what, you ask? For the cleansing diet. I know you are on the edge of your seats just waiting to hear about it.

Gary heard about fasting to clean toxins from your body. The Master Cleanser was a suggestion. It involves lemons, pure maple syrup and Cayenne pepper. It is also known as the lemonade diet. It is designed to eliminate all sorts of toxins and yuck from within the body, with some help from laxative teas and a salt water drink. He read up on it, and I thought I'd give it a try also.

Ingredients (per glass:)
2 TBSP fresh squeezed lemon or lime juice (1/2 lemon)
2 TBSP pure maple syrup
1/10 tsp cayenne pepper (red) or to taste
water

Combine ingredients in glass (10 oz.) and fill with water.

So, we get to drink "lemonade" for ten days. I bought organic lemons and organic maple syrup. We have Cayenne pepper. It isn't a cheap diet.

Several concerns:
Can I not eat food for 10 days?
Will I like Cayenne pepper in my lemonade?
How exactly will the experience of eliminating all those toxins go?
How quickly and effectively does that salt water work?

Check in Monday night to see how's it's going.

If all this sounds fantastic to you, click here to see what you can get out of your system. [Or maybe wait 10 days first.]

Trying to make some money

I was a vendor at a craft fair this weekend. I made chocolate candy. Chocolate covered pretzels and raisins, peanut butter cups, and assorted shaped candies, a few with peanuts. I used milk and dark chocolate, white, green and red candy melts. The white, green, and red candy melts did not have a very nice melted consistency. They were much, much harder to use than the chocolate ones, and I had a few messes.

I also put out my prints and note cards from last year, the ones that never sold. My note cards sold better than I hoped. Last year I had them in packs of four. This year I had them all laid out individually.

To my way of thinking, if I sold anything, I'd do better than last year. I made over $70.00. Unfortunately, none of it was profit. It just paid for all my costs. Overall I did not enjoy the candy making process and do not care to repeat it. Although I have no problem eating leftovers.

I did get some help with my photography. The vendor next to me gave me the names of several websites where I could print my stuff for whole sale prices. She also gave me pointers. And other bonus was a young woman came by interested in a print that would go over her mantle. She liked two of my prints and wanted to know if they could be printed that large.

I looked into it and found that, yes, they could be printed that large. Now just need to figure out how much to charge.

Another opportunity has come from my sister. She knows a cafe owner who would be interested in displaying my photography. And on the first Friday of every month cafes will feature an artist's work. He said he might be interested in featuring my work! How exciting is that! And, it's a little intimidating.

A Family Day

Our family went down to Philly today for the Phillies parade. We started walking to the train station around 9:30. We were going to drive, but my mom called and said traffic was backed up way down main street. We decided to walk. My dad had his hair cut and was driving down our street, so he gave us ride the rest of the way.

When we got in sight of the station, we couldn't believe our eyes. It was packed. There were people everywhere. A mass of people on the train platforms waiting for a train and a long line coming out of the station waiting to buy tickets.

Officials had been saying to take mass transit to the city for the parade but SEPTA was not prepared for the amount of people who actually did so. They couldn't meet the demand and ended up telling people to find other transportation to the city. [The news reported that approximately 400,000 people used the subway system, up from an average of 150,000 people, and the Regional Rail system was used by about 300,000 people, up from a normal 130,000 people.]

As people started taking the find-other-transportation advice, the lines thinned out considerably. Amazingly in about 5 minutes, more than half the people left. We were undecided about what to do. A train was sitting on the tracks, and a woman was exclaiming not so nicely and not using my choice of words, that they were told to disembark so that us Phillies paraders could get on and go downtown. [Gary said that for some trains Lansdale is the end of the line and this train was probably one of those trains.] I thought we should wait and see if SEPTA would let those of us still there on the train.

They did. We even got seats. We were on our way. I believe that although our train was not express, we didn't stop on the way down to center city. There just wasn't any room for anyone else.

The streets of Philadelphia were wall to wall people along the parade route. The only way we could sort of see was looking through a subway glass enclosure. Since people were not right in front of us, we could see the tip top of the parade floats.

After the parade went by, we made our way to Reading Terminal Market for lunch. I think many others did as well. We did find a food establishment without much of a line. And we had a place to sit and eat. Not that the kids did much of that.

We headed back to Market Street station and discovered that they weren't even letting passengers down on the platform to get on a train. I asked where trains were before they came here. Gary said 30th Street Station. So we took the subway (for free - they were just herding people on) to 30th St. and made our way to the fairly unpacked platform. We got seats on the first train that came by. It stopped once letting people on to stand and headed out of the city.

When we started making stops to let people off, the stops were way longer than necessary. At Elkins park we were sitting for about 30 min. As I was looking out the windows, for what else is there to do besides stare at other passengers, I noticed a police car coming toward the parking lot. Than another and another and another. All the policeman walked toward the train. In all I think there were 6 police cars. There was no explanation to us passengers, though. We just started up again and went on our way.

After a 2 hour train ride that should have taken 61 minutes, we were finally in Lansdale. [I looked at the schedule and on a normal Friday, the train leaves 30th street station at 3:13 and leaves Lansdale at 4:14.] Our train ride was a slightly longer.

But hey, we were on a train.