The Close of Summer

It's almost summer's end and already many of my friends' children are headed back to (or are already in) school. This will be such a different school year for us as my oldest is about to enter full day kindergarten.

KINDERGARTEN.

I really thought that I was okay with this. After all, my babies had been in day care for part of their infant lives. They have had babysitters and grandparents watching them. They were left overnight before they were one so my husband and I could get away for our anniversary. Even when he started preschool we were all excited to see Chandler head to his little class.

Now ... well. It's different. Does anyone else agree with me?

Going to full day kindergarten is going to break up our little gang. For five years we've taken mid-morning walks, exploring the natural world, making up stories and having pretend adventures. We've lounged at the coffee shop, chatting over our cups of hot coffee and cocoa respectively. We ran around like crazy people at the almost-empty zoo on Tuesdays, making animal calls and pretending we could talk with the animals. I suppose it wasn't really pretending since some of them spoke back to us. No more pre-school skating at the roller rink together. No more story time at the library.



Strangely, my keyboard is wet while I'm typing this. Hang on while I get a paper towel...

I guess what I'm trying to say is that kindergarten is breaking up my family! There, I said it. Stupid all day kindergarten that my son is so incredibly excited about. Dumb kindergarten that I couldn't possibly compete with on any level here at our boring house. Stupid time. Stupid growing up.

Clearly I have yet to grow up.

It will be very different this fall, with just my daughter and I bumming around town. She missed her brother terribly when he went off to preschool and that was just for two days a week. She'll be in preschool this fall as well and doesn't really want to go. Would I be a bad mother if I held her back a year?

Oh, I would? Dang.

September will come and we'll be a party of two instead of a party of three. I supposed us girls will just have to drop big brother off at school and drown our sorrows in a good cup of cocoa. Yes, that's it. We'll stick together, even if it's only for one more year.

On the path...

I say Hello, Hello, Hello...

Back when I was in high school I convinced my parents to become a host home for three weeks to a short-term exchange student. I was actually always pushing them out of their comfort zone, which they ended up enjoying. They told me this later, but I always assumed they would be up for all that stuff. It seemed perfectly fine to me.

They're probably thinking, "What if this child is not well-behaved? What if she has conflicts with the family members? What if she gets sick?" I'm thinking, "Awesome." That's about it.

She was incredible. A girl I keep in touch with to this day. We LOVED her and still LOVE her. Capitals. Well, one week we decided to take her to Kings Island for a day of eating too much sugar and riding crazy rides. She was always trying to practice her diction and had problems with the letter H. So we taught her the Beatles song, Hello. Aaaaaand we sang it the. entire. day. How irritating could we be at 15? Well it turns out, I was right. It was awesome.


So that was a super long story to say hello again to you. I am so very sorry that I stayed away so long. I really missed this little spot here. I always look forward to post-Christmas quiet and I am always hit with a super busy schedule mid-January. That starts my busy time for work and with the rounds of layoffs that happened last year, I was busier than usual.


Unfortunately I had to put a lot of crafting and blogging on hold in order to keep my priorities in check. I missed keeping up, but I knew I was doing the right thing. I sailed through the busiest time I have had in a long time without tears, breakdowns and everyone somehow had clean underwear. Good, no?

We have truly been enjoying our play room. This used to be a guest bedroom and one day, while my husband and I sat in our living room among piles upon piles of toys, books, crayons and picking plastic dinosaurs out from underneath our bums, we realized something. We needed to take back our living room. Besides, when our parents visit, we usually end up letting them have our room anyway. Our house is not a hotbed of overnight visitor activity.

So we took out the dresser and bed and put in shelving. I even made some fab fabric bins from this tutorial. Now it is a room full of organized chaos and lots and lots of fun!

I ended up finding a sweet children's table from craigslist.com of all places. It's my virtual garage sale, I love it. I don't know about your neighborhood, but I believe that my neighborhood is the best place for garage sales. So, when it's not garage sale season, I like to surf craigslist.



We do so many crafts on this table. We can also have a great place for Chutes and Ladder, Hi-Ho Cherrio, and other games.

Baking was still going on and instead of cookies this year, we had copious amounts of chocolate cupcakes for Easter:

I mean, haven't you heard of the Easter cupcake? No? Urm, well.

We did have fun this winter and welcomed spring with open arms!

We're back. I hope you had a great year so far. Stay on that path!

When the Day Sucks ... Make Soup

This week was a hard one on me and subsequently, our family. Things have changed quite a bit at work, making my schedule very hectic and very stressful. Fortunately, I work from home. Unfortunately, I work from home. So my family felt the pressure and stress right along with me.

Friday was a particularly difficult day. I had stayed up until 2AM the night before working under a tight deadline. The next morning, we found out that the babysitter was up the previous night with the stomach flu (we're happy to report that she is doing much better). I had a major deadline and tried to keep up with phone calls, spreadsheets and mind-boggling details while trying to corral my toddlers and being sleep-deprived to boot.

After a few breakdowns, we decided to get some doughnuts. Because, what else can you do when you're completely frazzled but go have a doughnut? With chocolate ganache? Then when we pulled into the library to rent a Pingu movie, we saw that they were closed for a furlough day. Urg. Much crying in the back of the car.

We all went stir-crazy, the littlest one fell down the wood stairs and I shut off my computer and hunkered down. Not knowing what to do with all the tears and frustration (all three of us), and the fact that we had nowhere to go, I decided we should make some soup.

I LOVE homemade chicken soup. I went to our freezer and got out a bunch of thighs, wings and drumsticks and went to work. The kids supervised, dumped in the chopped veggies as they were finished, measured out the spices, poured in the stock and started to perk up a bit. So did I.


While our soup was simmering, I got out this beloved cookbook:

We regularly watch Lidia Bastianich on our public television station and her show is it. I have done more recipes from Ms. Lidia than I ever would from a Food Network star. Sorry FN, I really like you, but this lady rocks.


One of my favorite things to make are her noodles with the three eggs (she rates her noodles in richness due to the amount of eggs). They are the perfect texture and taste for almost any dish. We just rolled out our dough, cut it into strips and put them in the soup about 10 minutes before serving.


The noodles were kind of thick, so you really don't need any fancy dough rollers. Just a good rolling pin and some muscle. The pizza cutter makes short work of cutting out all those strips. Upon reflection, I think I would have made these strips even smaller as they really puffed up in the soup.

So, when daddy finally got home and we had our soup, our day slowly started getting better.

On the path...

What We Did This Summer

Or to be more precise, What We Did Since the Last Post (A Sneak Peek):


So, it's been too long, eh? I think that in my absence, I've probably lost the few readers I had and for that, I apologize. Are you still there?

This summer has been wonderfully full and busy - so much so that I just now downloaded our summer photos from the cameras onto the computer. In late September. I know that's quite the norm for a lot of people, but for someone who's supposed to be a blogger, it's pretty shabby.

So, let's start with a recap of what we've been doing this summer, shall we? To start, we'll head over to the county fair where copious amounts of ice cream, hot dogs, popcorn and cotton candy were consumed (much to the delight of the kiddos):

Hubby and I were finally able to carve out some time to celebrate our anniversary (a month late but at least we celebrated). This B&B is so awesome, we just go because of the great rooms.

I wanted to live in this tub. I think I did. Directly from that weekend we celebrated at the annual Great Lakes Folk Fest like we do every year. Mainly, we stay at the dance tent and shake a leg or two and make a few friends in the process:

More sunny days at the family cottage where being lazy and eating a lot reigns supreme!

We also spent a lot of time fattening up the ducks on our local college campus. Because, you know, campus ducks need more people food.

We drove MANY miles in just a couple of weeks.

No, we don't try to suffocate our daughter, she does that herself and sleeps like a dream. The boy, on the other hand, stayed wide awake and hyper, to his parents' chagrin.

We stopped by to see the elk and see what they thought about the impending winter weather.

A lot of time was spent wandering up and down piers on one of the great lakes looking for birds, fish and making up names to imaginary yachts like "ComeonIwannalayya", "Stabin Cabin", and "College Fund". I prefer "Mortgage Part II".

Much time was spent gazing out across beautiful landscapes...


...exploring lighthouses...

...and hanging out under the Mackinac Bridge at Fort Michilimackinac. Say that 10 times fast. We had to pass the redcoat to get in (it was pretty easy considering his apparent boredom - no riots or gunfire to brighten his day).

Then on to explore a fur trader's camp:

The entire park was just wonderful. Channy spent most of the time insisting on watching and listening to a historical actor play the hammered dulcimer. I enjoyed watching a housewife make potatoes au gratin and apple cake in real dutch ovens and have her show me her (very real) stock of dried herbs and spices along with her very neat pantry. I really wanted to play too, but I think we were supposed to stay behind the ropes. Sigh.

During our travels, we also spent a lot of time checking out local libraries (a favorite past time). This one was our favorite:

Finally, we ended the season by going blueberry picking at the very end of it's season:
Good, GOOD times were had by all.

With all of that travel, I wasn't left with much time to craft, but I will report that I successfully completed a really cool hunting sock (complete with a secret message for good luck knitted down the side) that didn't fit my hubby's foot. A smidge too tight. Oh well.

Because we were traveling, I decided to whip up a great little carrying case. More on this to come.

Staying on the path...

Fooling Around

As the dog days heat up and September looms ahead (well, at least for those of you educators and parents of school-aged kids), we are just fooling around at our house. Some work gets done, for sure, but we are all enjoying the weather and gearing up for a fabulous week in northern Michigan on Lake Huron. Yippee!

The kids and I have been playing our alphabet game and it varies from day to day. We shout out letter and see who can find them first. Or we hop through the whole alphabet. Or we only find the yellow letters, blue letters, etc. So fun! Next time it rains, we'll try out numbers. For the littlest one, we are just working on color recognition.

I hope you all are busy being creative out there. I am still sketching and just now started swatching for some very thick wool socks. (Yes, these are for you, honey.)

Stay on the path!

A Very Happy Birthday

This past weekend was very special in our house; little Ava turned two years old. What a precious little baby she was! She slept well, ate well and was very content to sit and observe. I can remember bringing her home from the hospital and just looking at her with glee; my very own live baby doll. A girl!


Now my little, sweet lump has turned into a little lady that knows what she wants and has an opinion about everything! Even though she insists on reading the books herself, taking toys away from her big brother and throwing tantrums willy-nilly, she is quick to say she's sorry, kiss any "owie", snuggle and play.


Happy birthday sweet Miss Ava. We love watching you grow, change and develop that firey personality.

Stay on the path...

Goodbyes Are Never Easy

Today is the last day my kids will be going to their daycare center. Completely and totally. We've pulled out our son during the time our daughter was born but they went back after a couple of months. We've also taken them down to just a couple of days when Mommy's job allowed for more free time during certain points of the year.


Now, however, we are going to just stay home - and while that is a celebration for me and my family, it is a point of sadness for some of the staff and directors for the center. Every time the director talks about it, she tears up and can't talk. She's known our babies since they were only two months old. It's been a tough decision, but in the end, I get to spend even more time with the kiddos and we think that's best.

So, to say our thanks to all those wonderful staff members who have all gone above and beyond to care for our sweet children, I've made some simple clutches from this book by Amy Karol. Of course, this can't be sufficient payment for nurturing and caregiving, but we wanted to say thanks somehow.

Tucked inside each clutch is a little individual note to each teacher along with a picture of the kids. All clipped together with some "love" (heart-shaped paper clips).


So this past week I have been preparing the house to be more organized for the morning babysitter as well as getting myself ready for some crafting fun with my kids in the afternoons (think paper plates, coffee filters, glue, paint, string and glitter...). Yahoo!

I don't want these years to slip by ... but they already are! I am sure one day I'll be helping my son tie his shoes or my daughter to do her button and I'll be at some graduation party, watching my little birds leave the nest...

I intend to enjoy every moment. Make sure you enjoy yours!

Staying on the path...

Happy Easter

From our house to yours: We hope you all had a happy Easter holiday...




Getting back on the path...

Mommy Guilt and Easy Toddler Aprons

I often struggle with Mommy-guilt. Don't we all? Am I paying enough attention to my kids? Am I paying too much attention? Are they learning enough? Do they feel loved enough? Are they getting a balanced meal at least once a day? Will they someday be telling their therapist about the time Mommy made them wear dirty pajamas because she didn't do the laundry? Am I doing ENOUGH? All the magazines tell us to give ourselves a break, but honestly ladies, I really think we're hardwired as moms to beat ourselves up from time to time. For those of you who never do, please send me a link to your blogs! I will need to read your personal guilt-free mantras when I get in these moods.

Anyway, these times always inspire me to do something really fun with my kids. Not out of guilt per se, but out of a need to have some fun and forget about my worries. So, I decided to have a cookie-making session one afternoon recently.

Nothing about that sounds particularly exciting but it was the BEST for my kids. They love to help out in the kitchen and my son will sometimes cry if he can't help me out (Frying wontons in hot oil? I don't think so.), but will be a busy bee when he can (Topping the pizza? Yes!). Now that he loves helping in the kitchen, his sister has to do it too. If she can't be all up in his business all the time, then she is not happy. This activity makes them both happy.

First, we donned our special toddler aprons for the occasion. They were both so proud and these were very easy and quick to make! I didn't have enough contrasting fabric for my son's apron so he had Thomas the Tank Engine on both sides and of course, he didn't mind.

They never stand this still for me, but I'd like to think that they were admiring the superb construction of their aprons. Or they were just being still for just a split second.

We made fairy cookies! You can find the recipe here, and please take a moment to read this blog. I love catching up on all of the crafty bits as well as all the exciting things happening on their farm.

So, Chandler was in charge of cutting the cookies. He is holding a plastic Zyliss salad knife. Doesn't cut the skin, but is strong enough for soft things like potatoes, lettuce, soft cheese and of course, cookie dough. See how carefully he holds the knife?

We are learning how important it is to be safe with a knife while you are using it in the kitchen. Once he cut a cookie, it was then passed off to his sister who took a lot of time and care to arrange each piece on the cookie sheet.

She would put one down, take a look, rearrange and then rearrange them again. I didn't touch them and into the oven they went. I can't say they turned out as good-looking as the recipe at Jelly Wares, but they were tasty!

On the path...