Lots of pictures

It is so nice to be sitting at my computer, at my desk, at home, connected to the internet! Some people talk about how great it is to take a step back from social media... Not me. I missed it every day we didn't have it. 

But no internet did have its advantages. We've made a lot of progress settling in here. Mostly cleaning (indoors and out), but now we're starting to slow down and enjoy our new place. 

Here are a few pictures. (One day I'll get back to writing about parenting, but for now I'm consumed by the yard - and so are the kids, which means I'm not actually doing all that much parenting)

The first weeded garden bed.  

The other garden beds still look like this. Pretty, but totally out of control. 

Here is a little weeded patch with tomatoes planted by Auntie M.

And raspberry bushes. The kids spend a good part of their day snacking off the raspberry bushes, especially now that we've figured out they are a wild variety and are ripe when they are deep purple, not bright red. 

This space was thick with dead branches, but an hour with the clippers (I now love clippers and would be happy to clip away all day) and we made a little "house" for the kids. My mom sent us the hammock 10 years ago, and we never had a place to hang it (no yard and/or no trees). Usually I get rid of such unused, random things, but somehow this was overlooked. I think it made its way into the camping box, where it was safe in our hopes of camping again one day.  

The craft porch. Glitter, paint, spilled water, a million tiny pieces of cut up paper... I don't care. They can make whatever kind of mess they want and only half clean it up. During the day I look past the mess at the view, at night I simply close the door. 

And the night sky. I can always count on a night sky for calm and perspective. 

This moment: Ice Cream

From Soulemama: A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

A clean coop

It's hard to blog with no internet. But we should have it by the end of the week, so I'm hoping to get back into my normal routine of wasting away in front of the computer screen into the wee hours every night, and then regretting it bitterly at 5 am when Alexandra wakes up. 

But in the meantime, I thought you might like an update on the chicken coop.  Three hours with a pitch fork, shovel, broom, and putty knife, and the coop is CLEAN. Fresh straw and pine shavings and a sun-dried mud pit make for happy chickens. I think they even like me now. They used to run away whenever I was near, but now they ignore me. I don't think I'll be carrying them around anytime soon (or ever, if I can help it), but we're making progress. 

Katherine and Clara have started naming the chickens. The names seem to change regularly, but as of yesterday they were: Dora, Dora, Golden Egg, Golden Egg, Speckled, and Best Chicken in the World. They have also started claiming specific chickens to be their "very own". I'm sure it's just a matter of time before they start fighting over who belongs to whom. 

One of the Doras

One of the Golden Eggs

Cleaning a Chicken Coop?

We inherited six chickens when we moved, and while I don't know anything about chickens, I'm pretty sure the coop needs a good cleaning.

If you have chickens, I'd love to hear how you clean your coop, how often, with what, etc. I need details; "Use pine shavings" is a little too general. For example, do you rake or shovel out the coop? Where do you put the used (what do you even call it? Bedding?) Can you dump it in the woods? Compost it? What do you use to clean the floor/walls? I've heard about vinegar/lavender/citrus concoctions... does anyone have a brand or recipe for this? What about the outside section of the coop? Any suggestions for the mud pit it has become?

Please advise!

How (not) to move with kids

1. Avoid going to Home Depot with children at lunchtime, especially if it means driving an hour each way.

2. Don't wait until moving day to begin packing. 

3. Remember that small children still need to eat and sleep regularly. 

4. Cry when you realize how much "stuff" you have. 

5. Treat yourself to coffee and chocolate croissants as necessary.

And plan on your kids needing clean, dry clothes at some point during the move.

Moving Day

Last week was filled with heavy rains, a leaky roof and flooded basement, a power outage, closing on what is now our house(!), and the beginning of moving chaos.

We love our new (very old) farmhouse, but there is so much work to do - fun work like gardening, feeding chickens, and exploring our new space, and not so fun work like clearing away cobwebs and packing. 

We will be busy this next week. I'll be back with updates and pictures next week, and maybe even a tutorial on how not to carry out a move with three small children. #1 Do not take three small children to Home Depot at lunchtime, no matter how anxious you are to get outlet covers.

Giveaway - one day left

As promised, here is a picture of our Easy Canvas print that arrived today (sorry about the poor lighting - thunderstorms and only one lamp here). It turned out really well - I love this picture of our favorite family spot.

Only one day left to enter the giveaway they are hosting. Enter here and you will automatically receive a 60% off coupon and perhaps win an 8x10 canvas of your favorite picture!

Recipe: Lemon Scones

A few weeks ago I attended a pot luck dinner and the theme was British Food. When given a choice of what to contribute to a meal, I almost always opt for dessert. So I made lemon scones. They turned out quite well. I got the recipe from Taste of Home, but used the peel from a whole lemon, not just a teaspoon, and made mine thicker than 1/2 inch. Here is the recipe:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup suger
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
   1/2 cup cold butter
•  1/2 cup buttermilk
• Grated peel from entire lemon
• Sugar
•  
• Mix dry ingredients, cut in butter (I kneed it in until it is like coarse sand), add buttermilk and lemon peel.  Gently kneed six times, form into ball and place on greased baking sheet. Pat into circle about 1 inch thick. Cut wedges (but not all the way through) and sprinkle lightly with sugar. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes.
  

Serve with tea and enjoy while learning R.

This moment: Strollers

From Soulemama: A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Giveaway!

I'm not really a picture person - most of the time I forget the camera, or if I bring it I forget to take pictures. The few pictures I do take pictures either end up on this blog or in some cyber folder and only get looked at about a week before Christmas in our holiday card creation frenzy. I like the idea of printing out pictures and placing them in frames around the house, or even better, in neatly organized albums, but I don't think I've printed a picture in at least 3 years...

So when Easy Canvas Prints offered to print a picture on a canvas for us, I jumped on it. I'm waiting for it to arrive (any day now!) and I will post a picture of it when it does. They are also hosting a giveaway for an 8" by 10" canvas print, and all entrants will receive a 60% off coupon for Easy Canvas Prints. You can enter here! a Rafflecopter giveaway

Share this giveaway on Facebook! 

Father's Day Hike

We had a lovely day. The girls woke up early so I was able to take them to get a surprise donut breakfast for Dave while he slept in. When we returned, we arranged the gift basket (filled with chocolate) on the table, along with the donuts and painting the girls had made for Father’s Day. Dave was happily surprised and we all enjoyed breakfast before heading out for a family hike. We chose a trail we had heard was great for kids – not too long or too difficult, with great views at the end. We brought a picnic lunch and ate it in a shelter overlooking a lake with beautiful mountain views. All three kids – especially Alexandra – enjoyed the climb. We spent the rest of the afternoon reading books and painting. Then early dinner and early kiddo bedtime. A perfect day to celebrate Father’s Day.

Doesn’t that sounds lovely? You may even be thinking, wow, they pulled that day off seamlessly! They have got it down.

Well. That is one version of our lovely Father’s Day. But I want to keep this space real, so here is that same story with reality woven in.

We had a lovely day. Alexandra woke up screaming at 5:30 am, as she does every day (we have no idea why), which in turn woke up Katherine and Clara. Last night I recklessly promised Katherine that she and I could get up early and go - just the two of us - to get donuts for a special Father’s Day breakfast. So when Katherine realized Clara was also awake and expecting to be included in the impending outing, she threw herself into a tantrum (“You said I could go alone with you, you said! That’s not fair! Clara will ruin it, she’ll fuss all the way up the hill, she can’t even walk all the way to the donut store!”) I’m pretty sure the neighbors could hear the chaos, so there is no way Dave slept through it, but luckily he opted to ignore it and stay in bed so as not to ruin our “surprise” breakfast plan. And Katherine eventually accepted my reckless consolation offer to take her on a different, even better special outing later in the day. So off we all went to get breakfast, minus the coffee, because I have not figured out how to safely carry two hot coffees while walking three small children through town. 

Breakfast was nice, everyone was happy with their donuts, and afterwards we managed to pack up and get out the door for a hike in a record 45 minutes. We made it to the trailhead and set out with energy and high spirits. Our pace was a bit slow due to Alexandra insisting on walking too, but who am I to discourage a 16-month-old from hiking, besides, what was the rush? But about a mile in we realized the 3 miles was going to take a lot longer than the “hour” estimated in the trail guide, and that it was already 11am, and, oh, we had left our picnic lunch in the car for after the hike, because surely we’d be back by noon. 

So I trudged on with the kids while Dave enjoyed a little trail run back to the car to get our lunch. He caught up to us just as we made it to the peak, and we enjoyed lunch with a scenic view overlooking the lake. Then it started to rain. It was kind of nice at first, we could hear it but not really feel it as we walked through the woods, but then it rained harder, and in the end we all got pretty wet. But still, our little hikers kept hiking, and there was only one quality Parenting101 moment when I *may* have thrown out an idle threat of abandonment (If you fall and twist your ankle we won't be able to carry you back to the car and we'll have no choice but to leave you here!) in an attempt to get Katherine to stop run-leaping down a steep, rocky section. The threat had no effect and Katherine did not fall and hurt herself.

We made it back to the car by 3pm. Crap! 3pm! We still had to do the grocery shopping and Katherine was expecting her special outing alone with me. I hastily made the grocery list in the car while Dave navigated through the downpour. Luckily the kids think the ultimate outing is accompanying me to the big grocery store (probably because we almost never take them), so grocery shopping doubled as our special outing.

And somehow, late in the afternoon, books were read, pictures were painted and dinner was made. All three kids asleep before 8pm.

It was a lovely day. We got up early, went for a hike, enjoyed a picnic, got the grocery shopping done. It was a very nice Father’s Day. But it was very real. We had to parent all day long.

This moment: Discovery

From Soulemama: A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Green Eggs and R

I tend not to appreciate computer technology. My life would be complete with TextEdit and Safari, and maybe Excel (since I do love a well organized spreadsheet), but I'm married to a Mac/Techie guy, so we have computers and software and stuff that I am *encouraged* to use. It's not that I can't figure out new programs, it's more that I don't particularly enjoy it. I think it has to do with impatience. The whole purpose of technology is that it can do what you want it to do better and faster than you ever could.  So when it doesn't just magically work, I get annoyed. And by annoyed I mean I whine and complain until I've worked myself into a state of total frustration, all the while cursing so-called technological "advances" (for example, "They can put a man on the moon but strikethrough on my blogging platform doesn't work! What is WRONG with this thing? WHY WON'T IT WORK??)*. I pretty much carry on until my techie steps in and solves the problem in order to stop the big noisy fuss. 

But it has come up that I need to use R, which is "a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics". You have to tell it what to do using commands in R code. No drop down menus, no point and click commands, no user-friendly interface. I've never really tried it, but I'm pretty sure I do not care for programming.

Being in that ever-elusive balance between career and motherhood, R has morphed into the Green Eggs and Ham of my existence, and I have become the yellow-cat-monster guy who insists on disliking it. 

But R keeps popping up all over the place, and this time my techie can't save me. So after some resistance (which, in my defense, was mostly due to time constraints) I finally gave it a try, accepting that I'd have to eat the Green Eggs and Ham.

And guess what -- I do like R! It combines logic and creativity, and if you are so inclined (and capable) you can even strive for elegance. Plus, it's not annoying like certain programs (ahem, Word) because the user tells it exactly what to do. In other words, it won't try to auto format your work against your will or (incorrectly) predict your bullet alignment preference.

What can you actually do with R, you ask? Well, you can look at your dessert intake per week and compare it to that of your husband and average Joe.

We see here that I eat more chocolate and more cake than David, but David eats far more ice cream than I do. Both Dave and I consume significantly more desserts per week than average Joe.

You can also track your enjoyment of R over time. I started out not enjoying it at all, but now enjoy it quite a bit. That dip in my enjoyment represents the day I spent trying to figure out why I couldn't get a factor command to work due to a colon where there should have been a comma. 

And the formatting possibilities... error bars, point size, x and y axis labels, color... Perhaps you'd like to see the same graph, but with a pink line? Here you go!

Say, I like R. I do! I would do it anytime... 

 *Please excuse the first world problem

This moment: Sand play

From Soulemama: A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Book: Emily's Balloon

Emily's Balloon, by Komako Sakai, is an old favorite that recently emerged from behind the bookshelf where it went unnoticed for the past year.

My mom bought this for Katherine before she was born, and my first thought was, "This story is sad!" I wasn't sure I wanted to read my children anything but beautiful, happy-ending books. But Katherine, and now Clara, love this book, and I have since changed my view on happy vs. not-so-perfectly-happy endings in children's literature.

Emily's Balloon is simply written, leaving plenty of space for a child to fill it in with his or her own thoughts. The artwork captures the joy of a young child with a beloved balloon.

This moment: dinner

From Soulemama: A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Work it out

Katherine and Clara sometimes fight. (I blame their bickering on my mom because I'm pretty sure she wished fighting daughters upon me hundreds of times when I was a kid and fought constantly with my sister.) I try not to get too involved in their disputes - they seem better able to work it out if they think no parent is around. But lately they've been having a hard time with the scooter. The problem is that Katherine has a scooter, Clara doesn't, Clara wants one, Katherine doesn't want to share. Going out to ride bikes usually dissolves into tears over the scooter pretty quickly.

Why not just buy another scooter? No way. I don't like the things to begin with and I'm all caught up in the House on the Prairie books in which Laura and Mary are content with corn cob dolls, so buying a second scooter when both girls already have bikes seems awfully excessive.

Anyway, at first I tried to help them negotiate some kind of reasonable arrangement, but  that failed miserably. So I switched my strategy to total indifference. "Work it out," I call over my shoulder as I walk away. 

After weeks of this problem, they finally figured it out. Today Katherine informed me,  "Mom, we decided only Alexandra can ride the scooter" (which she can't actually do because she is 1). "Oh? Is that because you can't figure out how to share it?" I asked. "Yes. No one gets to ride it. This way I don't have to share. " 

Homemade tree swing

Last week Katherine decided she was going to make a swing for the tree in our yard. At first I thought her plan was to make a little swing for her dolls, or maybe the fairies in the fairy house, but as she started gathering materials it became obvious she was going to build herself a swing. We're used to her making whatever it is that she wants but doesn't have - skis, scooters, a violin, flip flops. She usually fashions these things out of cardboard, paper, string, and tape. I assumed this swing would end up like that - kind of real, but mostly pretend. But half an hour later, we peeked in on her project and found this:

I'm not so sure about that middle rope, and Dave did check the knots later that night, but it appears to be sound. They love it and have already spent hours swinging on it. 

This swing reminds me that the less I am involved in their play, the more creative and resourceful they are.  

This moment: Tree swing

From Soulemama: A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Bakery Tour: Hunger Mountain Coop

While not a bakery, per se, ​the Hunger Mountain Coop has a nice deli with homemade muffins, cookies, scones, and bagels, as well as brownies, individual pieces of cake (flourless chocolate, gluten free, cheesecake) and other dessert treats. They also have a coffee and espresso, which is why they qualify for the Bakery Tour. Sometimes we'll head to the coop when we also want to pick up a few groceries or need more of a picnic than just a croissant. But beware the chocolate peanut butter malt balls. They may be hidden in a little basket in the bulk food section, but once you discover them, they magically find their way into your cart every time. There is no escaping them.

On our last visit we tried the chocolate frosted macaroons and a peanut butter cookie. The big girls generously shared with me one.single.crumb of their macaroons, but neither crumb had frosting on it, so I can't say whether it was any good. I should know by now to get my own when it comes to chocolate in this family.