Ostara

We had a great Ostara this year.  It was our first time celebrating with others and it was a nice change.  I have been taking classes through Lyceum of Trees which have been wonderful.  The group hosts regular Sabbats and Esbats that are open and often kid-friendly.  We were a little late getting to the party as G also had a birthday party to attend for one of his friends.  So, we missed the egg dying with natural dyes (boo) but everyone was so sweet and reset an egg hunt for my kids.   Here they are hunting for eggs.

I love this last one.  E figured out pretty quick that the eggs had CANDY inside.  Forget this gathering for fun stuff.  He had to stop right then, empty his pockets and start eating immediately.   And since big M couldn't eat the candy and G just wasn't as interested as his younger, sugar addicted brother, E made a right haul.  Below is the haul.  Yeah, we had to drag him away.  Guess what his favorite holiday is now?

Our friend Gina and her kids  loaned us some books, so we read the story of the Rabbit in the moon.  After eating some candy, we enjoyed the potluck.  Mmmm, yummy food!
Then, with a slight break in the rain, the Lyceum elders conducted the Ostara ritual.  We held our eggs and thought of something good we wanted to bring into our lives. Ostara is about the coming spring full of growth, potential, things taking root.  This is literal as we watch plants start growing again, but also figurative as we begin thinking of new projects and areas of our lives we want to improve.  So we held  our wishes in our eggs and promised to take them into ourselves as we ate the eggs.  I'm bad at describing it, but it was beautiful, I promise.  :-)
At home, we talked some about the newness that Spring provides.  I love Spring.  I love watching the flowers start to bloom.  I adore trees in bloom!  We have sung "Popcorn Popping" about a million times. More or less.  And I am thinking about the garden.  I planted some kale, spinach and kolrabi.  I am waiting for the new moon when I will plant the rest of my seeds. I'm running a little late, but better late than never I guess.  Those seeds will hang out in the greenhouse until the temperatures rise a bit and the rain stops pelting so hard on a near daily basis.
Anyway, Yay! for spring.  May all the good you are hoping for take healthy root in your life, and may the warming sun give you strength in your endeavors.

Here they come

The catalogs have started to descend upon us.
Since the first one arrived on Saturday, the boys have fought over it back and forth. Now the second one is here. If you don't count Nova's catalog that comes earlier in the year. I'm sure its the beginning of the flood.
I hear chants of "an' I wan' ______". Or, "Mom, come look at this!" Yes, I already looked at the catalog dear. And no, I don't need to look at every item 15 more times just to verify that it is a wonder of a toy. Yes, I'm sure it would be lots of fun and entertainment. But, in concert with the 15 million toys we already own, and the complete inventory of that catalog that you also want, I sincerely doubt it would ever get touched. Much less remembered.
I have contemplated for weeks now dumping all they toys that get scattered and ignored, or even the ones which reside quietly in the closet upstairs. So quiet in fact I'm not sure the boys remember they own them. What if I just had one very teeny box of toys in the whole house? I imagine they would really and truly play with those toys. Or continue to play with the cushions and blankets and pots and pans and boxes they find lying around. Well, lying around because they played with them this morning and no one picked them up.
I do have a kitchen toy ban. Meaning no toys in the kitchen. I consider it a hazard to have small toys underfoot when I'm carrying hot dishes and knives! And every evening after dinner all the living room toys have to be back in their bins. We do pretty well all things considered. But I wonder what our living room would look like if I could spend that evening time folding the laundry that has taken up permanent residence on the black chair instead of hovering over the toy and kitchen cleanup. And would there be fewer squabbles if the living room and bedroom and stairs and hallway and closets were not littered with toys. One thing I learned in my degree program was that, in setting up an environment for early childhood, less is more. Children get overwhelmed by too many choices. Leaving open space and just a few toy selections leads to children playing more actively and with more focus.
So why can't I just bite the bullet and do it? One big box (or 5) and one big shove out the door. Really, that's it, right? And I know that with Christmas coming, it's not likely people will give the gift of cleaning out the toy stash. I'm guessing it's going to be more of an add-to-it proposition.
In fact, I'm getting ready to make up the boys' wish lists. Because I'm crazy. And I'm their mom. And Christmas is for fun, right?
I am trying to not be too bad though. I am going to ask that they boys receive the minimum number of toys. Yes, it's fun to open lots of packages, but I'd rather they associate Christmas with being with family and feeling that good feeling than think it's all about the loot. That way, too, I can feel good about buying one quality toy that will last rather than lots of cheaper toys that will wind up in a land fill before next Christmas is even considered.
The other thing we plan to do is Christmas for a family. We have done this in years past and it's so much fun! We find out about a family that may need a little extra help this year and gather up a box full of things we think they would enjoy. Our energy of buying and wrapping and doing gets thrown outside of ourselves. We then drop off the box at the house, knock and run. No one ever knows it was us. We never got around to doing it last year. The difference we noticed was pronounced. The years we have done a secret Christmas there has been a lot more joy in giving. Last year there was just a whole lot more "gimme's" and "I didn't get's". It was sad. So, this year, definitely going back to that tradition!
So, if you get less from us this year, know that our resources probably went to a family that needed it. And it went to teaching our children that Christmas is about service and doing and giving to others. We will still have lots of love left for you when we get together. Maybe even more because of the small stack of brightly wrapped gifts. 'K?

The 5 of us again

My parents brought M back in time for 4th of July. He was excited to be home, and his brothers gave him a very warm welcome.
Since my dad loves berries and picking berries, we took advantage of the berry festival being held at Smith Berry Barn on the 4th. We picked lots of berries, ate lots of berries, sampled treats from their gift shop, and enjoyed the festival. There were 2 bands who took turns playing. G loved getting out on the lawn and dancing it up. A couple had brought 2 of their Alpaca's and yarn from them. I resisted the urge to buy any. *Round of Applause!* But it did make me want to live in the country even more. Alpaca's are amazing and sweet animals!
That night, we sat out with our neighbors and enjoyed a wonderful fireworks display put on by C and J, our neighbor. C and G had a lot of fun buying lots of fireworks. I can't remember just how many we had, but it was lots! I'll post a picture as soon as I get it off the camera.
Mom and dad headed home Saturday night. We had fun with them. I bet it's a bit quiet at their house now! M is adjusting to being home. G is adjusting to not being the #1 kid around too. It's hard all around, let's face it.
The meat market called today, too. I ordered a side of beef awhile ago, and it seems my name has made it to the top of the list. I guess I need to have some people out for dinner in an attempt to clear enough space in the deep freeze for roughly 220# of meat! Sign up below? I'm excited though, it should work out to just around $2.50/lb for local, grass fed beef, cut and wrapped to order. How cool is that? It should save me a small fortune, really.
I also am heading out next week, I think, to pick berries. I'll dry and jam most of it. Probably won't freeze a whole lot. LOL And, I'm intending to spend some time preserving veggies this year. I want to can green beans, salsa, lots of pickles, ketchup, and all kinds of dried stuff. I got the dehydrator re-screened, and I'm excited to use it. The kids like dried stuff, it takes up almost no space, and I don't have to watch it like a hawk while it's drying. Perfect.
Oh, and the Hogwarts stuff. So, we were rather surprised. M really didn't catch on the fact that it was pretend. But he was really excited about it. But C felt we needed to tell him, so this morning we did. I told him he still needed to do the work, and he was even more impressed that mom had gone to all this work. But by this afternoon, when I finally got him to sit down and do the first 2 assignments, he threw a fit. Only over the writing one though. So he pitched a fit on the couch about how it was pointless, and boring, and stupid, and not even real. I am proud of myself for keeping my temper. After he was done ranting, he headed over and wrote down one more word combination, cleaned up the mess from planting ginger, and went outside to play. Crazy kid. Or could that be crazy mom too?

Hundred Dollar Holiday

This is something I'm mulling over in my brain. What if we stopped spending money on making Christmas a commercial event? What if my kids stopped establishing toy hordes every holiday? What if I could just relax and enjoy Christmas with the people I love most?
We would still travel. I love seeing family for Christmas and I believe that is what Christmas is all about. But I think I'd like to spend more time serving others in memory of the service that The Christ gave during his ministry.
I don't want to stop spending altogether. I just don't want to spend all my money on stuff that I don't know if people will really like or not. If I buy food for a nice meal to serve, toiletries for a woman's shelter, warm clothes for needy kids, the money is still going into the economy. Just in a different way. Could I teach my children by example that love is giving of oneself and not of the latest toy/gadget fad?
Really, I think we do a very good job already. There is always room for improvement. I guess I am just putting this out there so when I decide to really do this, our entire family doesn't get shocked around November LOL. We generally get the kids a pass to the zoo for a present. I like to make things for family members. I am committed to buying more locally made items for gifts this coming year.
I like the idea of giving my children (and my spouse!) a "date day" for a gift. They each get one full day of just me. I'm considering that. I like it for birthdays too. I recently read the book, Hundred Dollar Holidays: The Case For a More Joyful Christmas by Bill McKibben. Here is a site that is dedicated to the idea. Food for thought.

Snow--Yay!

My boys have been wanting snow ever since the last heat wave of summer. We got lots of it during our Idaho trip. I decided to put all the snow pictures together.

Imagine a grandpa's suprise and delight when his grandsons beg to shovel snow! Here they are out in the dark, all bundled up and having a great time in the snow. Grandpa has a shovel on hand for everyone, so there were no conflicts there--phew! They actually did a fairly good job too.

After work comes play! Here they are with their wonderful snowman. G and M made sure he had all kinds of interesting features. I think Grandpa had a lot of fun with it too--can you tell?

In my parents' town is a park with a great sledding hill. After the snows that came a few days after Christmas, this is how PapaCoyote, C, M, G, UncleD and AuntH and L spent the afternoon. They had so much fun!

M with UncleD on a sled being pushed by Papa

G and Dad getting ready for the plunge

Of course, then there's the back-up-the-hill bit. Good thing Papa is willing to help.

Fun trip!

We had a great trip down to see family. First stop was GramRe and PaR's house. The tradition there is for grandkids small enough to still be lifted to "Say Hi to the Birds." This is E's first. He doesn't look all that excited about it. When he gets older, he'll be just like the other kids, screaming for Grandpa and the birds as soon as they come in the house.

C in the middle with his sister, J and is dad. They are very goofy. And very fun.

After Christmas at C's parent's house, we went to Papa and Mama Coyote's. My brother and his fabulous wife have produced the world's cutest little girl. G and L had so much fun playing together, and we had a blast watching them. It was pure entertainment. Both of them are potty-learning right now, so they each had their potties set up in the living room. It was like dueling potties. Whenever one would head over, the other would go too just to be social I guess. I think it helped, they both stayed dry! I have pictures, but I don't think I'll post them. If you're family and want a copy, let me know. ;)

GrandmaJ has a living room with lots of cushions. Sometimes they are on the couches, but they seem to prefer this:

E got sick while we were down, darn it. He rested pretty peacefully in PapaCoyote's arms while I packed stuff up to get ready to head home.

The trip home was eventful only becuase it was so smooth! With E's cold and the older boys showing signs of coming down with it, I was seriously debating waiting in Idaho another day. But then, that would have turned into waiting till Monday with the storms coming through. E was happy enough Wednesday afternoon we decided to chance it. Since C is in Asia for business, his mom and sister drove home with us. Aren't they wonderful? Anyway, we all expected to be stopping about ever hour at least to tend to the baby's needs and were ready to stay in a hotel for the night if need be. Were we ever shocked when we made it halfway without stopping! Then just a couple of stops after that! We left at 8:30ish and were in the front door of the house and car unloaded by 6pm!! We even stopped at Whole Foods for dinner and groceries. I honestly thought we'd be lucky to make it home by 8pm or so.
Of course we did this because E slept so much in the car. He made up for it last night. He's asleep again in my lap now. I guess we have to learn about night and day again. Oh well, we're home and I'll work on it when he feels better. For now, I'm going to take advantage of him sleeping. By sleeping...

Christmas is coming....Aaaack!

So, once again, I've ignored my rational voice that says to start Christmas preparations early. It is now mid-December and I am just now starting. Granted, I have few excuses I can whip out. New baby? Sick baby? A husband who was going to leave town for two weeks and mom and mom-in-law were going to be here the whole time to help with kids while I prepped and packed like crazy? Yes all of those. But still, if I had started back in July, like my rational voice said, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Yeah, poor rational voice.
What would also help is if I didn't have this compulsive need to craft things for Christmas. Yes, I could go to the mall and find all kinds of things for my loved ones. But then I think how much more meaningful it would be if I made something. This year, I'm buying more than I usually do. If you are one of those getting a purchased gift, please don't hate me. It just means that your yarn or fabric will have to wait for next year. Maybe I'll stack it up at the top of the pile and it will be ready by July! Yay!

One of the things that does seem like it will get done (well 2 things) are the crowns I'm making for kid1 and kid2. I was actually searching for a hat pattern, and came across this. I just had to make it. One for each of course. But it's pretty fast work. And it's not plastic, not made in China, no lead, and doesn't have small pieces to worry about in the next few months as E gets bigger. Just felted wool. And 2 of course for obvious reasons. I'm making them out of grey wool and if I get them done and have spare time, I'll stitch on some felt or polar fleece "jewels" to make it look a bit fancier.


I moved some stuff around in the living room (well scooted the couch over after getting a rubbermaid box out to the garage) and decided that an entry way bench would be ideal. After searching around on the net, I found this adorable bench from Ikea. Great price, perfect size et al. The next thought through my little brain was "wait, it would be so like my kids for M to convince G to get inside on some pretense, then close the lid and sit on it. And feel immensely proud of himself. Then wonder why I am yelling like I want to rip his head off." On to look at more benches. This seemed like a much more logical choice. Small cubbies so everyone has their own and too small to fit anyone inside. Does this say more about my kids or my parenting abilities? Please say kids. A friend of mine says that 3 kids is where you officially cross the line from "normal" size family to large--where you consider things like whether or not kids will lock siblings in furniture you are contemplating purchasing. What fun.

Oh, and further complicating Christmas prep is the cold we have all come down with. It's yucky. I felt awful last night, but a little better today. But that means that the food gifts I was planning to make today and tomorrow are further on hold. I mean, do I really want to cough and sneeze all over the gifts for the neighbors? I think not. Maybe I should work on Christmas cards instead. Only I forgot to buy them at Costco so I need to buy them somewhere-which means going out with my sick self and hyper-sick kids. Yuck again. And the printer and computer are no longer on speaking terms-which means no letter this year unless I forward it to C to print at work and hand-addressed envelopes. No biggie on that since I keep losing my address file. Hmm, a digital family Christmas card is starting to look mighty appealing. I can even say we are being environmentally friendly this year. There, you've been warned not to expect a paper card. You can thank me when there is one less card to deal with in January!

Fabulous Thanksgiving

G and his friend, N hugging. They are so cute together! He walked right up to her and offered a hug, which she accepted. They both laughed. Then we asked them to do it again so we could take pictures. They hugged and hugged for the longest time, well for 3 yos hopped up on turkey and chocolate pie LOL.


Our awesome friend, D. She loves my cooking and yelled at me when I tried to help her clean up. She's mine!!

I really meant to take pictures of the food. Really, I did. It was awesome! I was so busy worring that all would turn out and keeping E happy and fed, that I forgot until after we were eating pie. Oh well. But we had turkey with sausage stuffing, squash with vegetarian stuffing, separate dishes of each of the stuffingings, wild rice stuffing, yams, green beans, pan-dripping gravy, wheat rolls, GF rolls, cranberry sauce, tofu pumpkin pie, and tofu chocolate cheesecake. I'm still too stuffed to move much. I think I'll feel like this for a couple of days.

Thanksgiving is Coming!!!!

I love, love, love Thanksgiving. I love the food, I love having family and friends together, and I love to cook all the foods! I am so excited for tomorrow.

First of all, I let the kids play, play, play. Later they'll get to watch a movie. M has been helping me some too. I put E down to get some more bread cubes out of the oven. He loved looking at everything on the floor. Wouldn't you love to be the one to get to pick up before company comes tomorrow??

3 loaves of bread cubes. 2 left to go. Yes, we are only having 5 people, plus the 5 of us (that translates into 8 people who will be eating the food). But we love stuffing so much I have to make a ton. Otherwise there's not enough left over for everyone to have a big enough bowl the day after. Then I'd be in hot water. So, I make oodles.

Pie! One big pumpkin, one big chocolate. One small chocolate with M safe chocolate, one small pumpkin with no cinnamon for our friends' daughter.

E's new trick. He loves to stick out his tongue as far as it will go. Then laugh. Apparently this is the best trick ever. His brothers encourage it enthusiastically.

Halloween Pictures, and the tooth

GrandmaJ found this outfit during her Halloween shopping expeditions. It fit E perfectly. It says, "my little pumpkin" on the side.

Big brother holding him. It's so nice to have a big big brother. He's a huge help. You can see that the back of the playsuit says, "trick or treat" on the bum.

Swimmer Guy and Robert the Bruce in their Halloween splendor. G decided that the trick or treating business was great. After a few houses, he stops, looks in his bag and then back up to me with wonder in his eyes. "Him give me candy! I liiike this!"
And he figured out that everyone thought his costume was great so he showed it off at every house. When M told people he was Robert the Bruce, they just looked at him cross eyed. Then he'd say, "you know, King of Scotland?" and they'd just nod. G definately had the better candy bag to raid that night!

And the teeth. This was taken Sunday night. It looks pretty good now. Of course, it's also obvious from this picture that we will be talking to all our friends and our awesome dentist about orthodontists in the near future. Genetics suck!

Happy belated Easter

Grandma puts chocolate in Easter eggs. How cool is that? Grandma R was in town for a couple of weeks taking care of Aunt J. It was fun to get to spend more time with her. And they both came over for dinner. So much fun to share a good meal with people you love.

And then there was Easter afternoon. Where we tried to see how wet we could get. The street in front of our house is not graded very well in one spot. Right in front of our neighbor's driveway the water collects up to 6" or so. Then it eventually runs down to the grate in front of our driveway. The boys have a blast running through all the water. They also "help" it by running the lenth of street between the puddle and the grate, pushing the water towards the grate. They use shovels, feet, sticks, etc.. Sometimes they build dams with the neighbor kids. That's one I probably need a picture of too.

It's blurry, but I needed a picture to remind myself in my later years just how they got that much water inside the boots. After this, they proceeded into the garden for some good ol' mud time. When G finally came inside, his boots were completely full of water and so was every stitch of clothing. For not being absorbant, polar fleece pants can sure hold a heck of a lot of mud and water!