Family togetherness week

Well we had are annual "family meeting/reunion" this week and it sure was a busy one. We had meetings on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. All the guys went golfing on Thursday afternoon and on Friday the kids went to the Homeless Families Foundation to serve the kids White Castles. Then we were at the zoo for the evening. The kids, well I guess I should say Julianne, enjoyed the Homeless Families Foundation. Julianne was in charge of giving the kids cookies and Nathan handed out plates. Mallory for some reason was not into it and just hung onto me or her aunt. The kids at the center really enjoyed us coming to their school and I heard several comments saying that it was the the best day ever and that they loved White Castle. I talked to a couple of kids that said they did not like WC but they really liked the chicken rings we served and the cookie. Either way it was fun and it was great to get the kids out in the community. Here are some pictures of the event.





My friend Jessica just dropped off my share of the CSA for this week. Well actually I think it is the entire share since she is going out of town. I think she left me the entire share but I have still not heard from her so I am not sure if it is or not. Either way it is a lot of veggies. We have two heads of romaine and a green leaf lettuce, six heads of kohlrabi, two zucchini and some green onions. I really have no idea what to do with the kohlrabi but my friend Jessica has already experimented so I am going to use her Asian salad recipe and make that. I guess the kohlrabi is a type of cabbage so I can use it in the Asian salad.


Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-visiting with my entire extended family
-getting out in the community to do some service
- Nathan saying his favorite part of the day was sharing ice cream with me

Not much going on

There has not been too much interesting activity going on in this household lately. I am also in a blog funk. There has been a lot of "what are we going to do today?" going on. Most of the days have consisted of either going to work out and then swimming, going to the library, hanging out with friends, and mostly just hanging around the house and enjoying the summer. The kids have been on each other nerves lately more and I guess it is because of the extra time together. The past two Monday have been crazy with Julianne 's extra emotional outbreaks and the girls just fighting with each other. The other days have been better. We had to remind the kids of the rules of the house and the rules with each other. So there have been extra consequences given out lately and lots of time-outs and kids up in their rooms. I am guessing that it is because of the change in the routines since they are not in school anymore. The girls have been sleeping together in Mallory's room since school was out. They used to sleep in Mallory's room together on the weekends but since there are not any school days they have been together ever since school was out. So that has been nice for them to reconnect at night and they seem to not fight while they are in their room together.

I have also been working on a quilt. This will be my second official quilt and hopefully I will be able to finish this one. The last one is mostly quilted and just needs to be finished. However, it needs some seem striping in order to get the puckers out of it before it can be finished and I am so over working on it I don't even have the desire to finish it. So I have abandoned that one for over 7 years and now I am finally able to move on. I know that my sewing skills are much better now and my knowledge of quilting has grown over the past 7 years. So we will see. The one I am going to work on is Amy Lotus Brick Path Quilt which was a free download off of Amy Bulter's website. It seems pretty easy and I can quilt in the ditch so that will help me out tremendously. However with any large quilt project there are a lot of cutting steps. I have to cut out 196 "bricks" and I have already done 130 plus so I am almost there. I had to order new fabric and the back so I was waiting for those to arrive for me to finished cutting. I finally got the fabric yesterday so I am going to work on it tonight.


Here are all the fabric choices I am using for the quilt

This is the backing.



This is Nathan trying to blow bubbles. Kids really just do not get it that you have to hold the stick away from the mouth and not spit into the middle. I tried to keep telling him that but he forgets. It is a cute picture and that I why I like it.

This is our neighbors dog. Mallory and Nathan go over to see it almost everyday. I just heard Mallory say, "Molly's out." So they run over to the next yard and pet Molly. Mallory and Nathan are great with the dog. Julianne is still getting used to it and it depends on the day if she likes Molly or not.

Some outdoor playing.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-emerging from of my nasty mood for the past week.
-seeing Julianne's progression in her reading skills
-shopping for Father's Day

Our first CSA share

Well we just got our first portion from a CSA, community supported agriculture, co-opt that my friend and I are sharing. We get a portion of the crops each week from now until the end of the growing season. This week we received some green onions, strawberries and peas. So we have already eaten the strawberries and half of the peas, and I put half of the green onions in our salad. It will be good for me to participate in this since I seem to get stuck eating the same food, especially veggies. We used the peas in my tortilla pasta dish that does not call for peas but I added them in. I am a person who goes by the book or follows the recipe and is not really willing or creative enough to deter from it or add to it. So this will be good to try new veggies and to add them into my dishes. It will also be good for the kids to see us buying from a local farmer and supporting a good cause.

The first few days of summer have been busy and somewhat long. We had a few issues on Tuesday with "what are we doing today" but today was better. The girls played better today, yesterday they were yelling at each other and not playing with each other. So it was a better day. I have a few ideas of one day road trips that we will take so that will be fun and we tried to go to the strawberry patch but it was closed for strawberry picking. So I will just take it one day at a time and see how it goes.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Support local agriculture
-getting better sleep
-not having my heal hurt right now, I think I have a heal spur and I have been on ibuprofen the last few days

Weekend retreat

Well we just got back from our short, too short, weekend retreat. D and I drove the kids to Mimi's house and headed to a local state park for some rest and relaxation. There were no TV's, no phones, no cell phone reception, just a lot of lounging around and enjoying the local scenery. We even had to use the Inn's public phone. When was the last time you used a public phone. It actually cost 50 cents now. I brought a quarter with use and was astonished that it cost 50 cents for local calls. Too funny. Mimi ended up not being local, even though it was within the same area code. So we did not have enough money and ended up making a collect call. She was a little taken back when she got a collect call from us. I think she was actually worried but we reassured her that everything was OK we just did not have cell phone reception. We also did a zip line tour and had a lot of fun. It was scary at first being within the trees on a platform and zipping down the cable. I did have several moments that I thought that this could possible break and I could fall down but that fear subsided after the first couple of zips. D and I got to reconnect, spend some quality time together, and to relax so it was terrific. We played Yahtzee, Backgammon and made a 500 piece puzzle.

The kids had a ton of fun at Mimi's and it was nice to have them back. Julianne ended school on Thursday so it was a nice time to get away and to have the kids go somewhere else other than our house. On Thursday we had our neighborhood end of the school year party. The kids had fun in the slip and slide and the sprinkler and the moms got to relax and enjoy some adult beverages.


These are from Julianne's school party


These are from our neighborhood party

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-being able to take short mini vacations with my husband
-having Mimi there to take care of the kids. She is great!
-seeing deer, other animals, hearing birds, crickets and other natural noises
-not having anything to do