On Friday afternoon, when I finally felt like I could ingest something, I really wanted Gingerale or 7-Up, but there was none around. I found a liter of Club Soda in the pantry and decided to experiment. First, I made a vanilla soda for myself, and my stomach was pleased. Here’s what I did:

Jen’s Vanilla Soda
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 teaspoons sugar
1 cup club soda

This morning, my stomach still not normal, I tried another recipe and liked this even better:

Jen’s Lemon Soda
1/3 cup concentrated lemon juice
3 Tablespoons sugar
2 cups club soda

There’s my stomach flu tonic for you–both of these calmed down my seething tummy and tasted fabulous, too. If you’re healthy and don’t need a flu tonic, just spoon a few scoops of ice-cream on top and have a delicious dessert drink.

Do you have any family recipes for easing the pain of the stomach flu? Please share, I have at least one more person to nurse through this.

TRAIN.
First, here’s one of my favorite pictures from my photofiles:

A little train depot we pass nearly every day had a surprise for us one fall afternoon last season. The regular train was on vacation, and this beautiful steam powered locomotive, called the Mount Emily Shay #1, was there to greet us. Built in 1923, she worked for 30 years on a logging railroad in southern Oregon, then spent some time in West Virginia running tourists on the Cass Scenic Railroad. The “lockie” has since been retired to the Oregon Historical Society, which leases #1 to the City of Prineville Railway to occasionally pull its Crooked River Dinner Train.

There’s the facts, and for you train lovers, you will appreciate the history. My kids appreciated the power and beauty up close.

GARDEN.
I spent yesterday in the garden with the kids at my side. It was a treasured time. After moving my plants in and out of the house for weeks, and waiting for the last frost to come and go, I decided the time was perfect for their new home. Turned out it was a day late. The night before, I left the plants in the garage. There was a mouse. It ate the tops off the cucumbers. The peas were munched. The pumpkins were stubs.

I transplanted what I could into the garden, and reseeded almost everything. I may not have enough days to make it to harvest before a fall frost, but I’m taking my chances. No matter the outcome, I love working with my kids in the garden.

My husband shared my pain over those lost seedling leaves. He found a Maine Coon Cat on Craigslist. Apparently this enormous (seriously, it’s like a dog) feline mouser is the thing to have, and there’s a free one in Springfield, Oregon. To further protect against critters, he’s out right now putting boards around the bottoms of the garden, and I’ll be joining him shortly to help place rocks around the garden base.

FRANCE.
I’m so excited to be hosting another French Exchange Student. Helen comes in July. Do you remember when we hosted Elise? My kids still talk about our time with her, and it’s an enriching experience that I highly recommend for every family. So, as we prepared for Elise, we are now preparing for Helen.

Getting her room cleared out is the number one priority. It currently holds several dozen boxes of …. stuff. I love having a pressing reason to get things cleaned up! I mean it.

After having Elise as our guest, I also realized that the French have a certain expectation about food. Like, it should be prepared at home, not acquired at the drive-up window or in a frozen cardboard box. So, I need to get my menu in order.

Finally, language lessons are always fun for me, so the kids and I will spend some more time with French lessons. But that’s not a huge concern, since I already figured out with Elise that these Europeans nearly always speak English better than we will ever speak their language.

As far as activities, we just plan on living our normal life. The expectation of this particular exchange group is to just have an immersion experience with an American family as they go about their day. I will certainly show her some highlights of Central Oregon, but I have no plans beyond that.

Do you want to host a French exchange student? If you live in Central Oregon, get ahold of me right away, because there are still a few students needing to be placed here immediately.

Technorati Tags: family, France, gardening, ranch, seedlings, French exchange student, steam engines, trains

1. Continental Airlines still serves meals.
2. I saw my great-great grandpa’s wood carvings of all the presidents (through Hoover) and they belong in a museum.
3. The St. Clair River is still brilliant blue.
4. I collected seashells and rocks along Lake Huron.
6. I remembered why I love the Great Lakes–just a feeling I get at the shore.
5. Six of us cousins stayed up talking ’til 3 a.m. one night. Who knew they were all terrified of my mom’s painting of a ragdoll, so much so that one cousin once slept in the bathtub at Grandma’s to avoid walking back up the stairs and passing the horrid thing.
7. Listening to my cousins speak at my Aunt Beth’s memorial was incredible.
8. My cousin Amy playing the bagpipes at the memorial was a tender moment.
9. My Uncle Marshall’s ham radio–an 83 year old trying to call Australia, but unable to remember how to make the connection; it was a mixture of hilarity and sadness.
10. Meeting the captain/builder of the Earth Voyager, the fastest sailboat on the Great Lakes, was a spontaneous moment. He’s getting the rig ready for the Port Huron to Mackinaw Island sailboat race.
11. I felt instantly at home when I was driving down I-94 out of Detroit and saw the giant tire.
12. I slept in a room full of ten thousand books–all murder mysteries. How I slept so soundly is the mystery. My Aunt Pat is a collector. She wants to add another room on their house just for her books.
13. Lunch at the River Crab in St. Clair was a treat, eating Atlantic Salmon while watching the freighters and sailboats pass by our window.
14. I wished a hundred times that my kids were with me so they could have met all their cousins.

That’s all I have time for–blessings on your weekend!

As I listened to a friend of mine speak this morning about attaining peace, I closed my eyes and imagined myself approaching the throne of God with every care in the world bulging in my arms. With each step, I laid something down. First, my big box of “school stuff” I bring home every night, from papers that need grading to literature books waiting for lesson plans to emerge. I took another step toward the throne and cast aside my cell phone with all its distractions and bad news. My house was dumped, my laundry, the future of my children, my finances, every anxious thought.

There are so many thoughts and fears that can crowd my mind. I have to be conscious of these words:

Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. John 14:27

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful. Colossians 3:15

Peace of Christ to you.