Blast from the Past

Too good not to share:



Yes, this is me as a little girl. Don't you love my hair style? ^^ Will have to get my scanner working to get better quality pictures, but no idea when I will get around to doing that.

Yum!

Last week, while I was at a go tournament, Tim baked chocolate chip cookies.



It was so nice to come home to the smell and taste of freshly baked cookies. Life is good!

First Seeds!

Today, I turned over yet another garden bed (up to three now), and Tara and I did the first sowing of the season. Very exciting!



We planted lettuce, chives, radishes, spinach, mesclun mix, and rainbow swiss chard. I love spring!



And Merritt, as you can see, your hope for Tara's hair colour came true ^^

Happy Spring

Flowers



Jane's driveway art



Spring is here!

Love Thursday

For a variety of reasons, today was a hard day for me, but I felt very supported when a good friend handed this to me.



It was just the uplifting thing I needed to get through the rest of the day. When she gave it, I held it in my hand for a while, relishing in the love behind this small token. I showed it to my kids and my friends, and they all admired it, or at least faked admiration very well.



I came home, and got out my deer necklace (thank you again, Jody!) and wore both my deer necklace and my love token the rest of the day. I am still wearing them, and basking in the love surrounding me.



May your lives be filled with love like ours is. Happy Love Thursday!

Gardening Bliss

Not much, but I managed to turn over one of my garden beds, getting it ready for planting. Woohoo! Now I need some rain and will plant peas and whatever else I feel like. Any ideas? Looking for spring plantings that can withstand frost.



Last year, there was a bit too much life happening, and gardening didn't. This year, it will!

P.S. Merritt, wrong guess on the hair colour, it is more... interesting than auburn ^^

Dino Dig

And totally unrelated teaser of the day 'What is Tara's new hair colour?'

Going to the Zoo!

We wanted to do something fun, and Tim came up with going to a zoo, since the little ones had never even been there. Time to rectify that!



We invited a few friends, and off to Boston we went.



The trip was pretty uneventful, the girls in the back amused themselves by waving at all the cars passing us.



They got more than thirty drivers to wave back at us. The only ones not waving back seemed to be the ones talking on cell phones while driving :p



They even waved at state troopers at a road construction site. The joys of pre-teen girls ^^



The zoo was not extremely big, but that enabled us to actually see all the animals, so that worked out well.



Will post more pictures later, time to enjoy the gorgeous weather and visit a friend with a new baby!

Picture of the Day

No time to post much, so just a teaser in preparation to my 'I took ten kids to the zoo, and we had a great time!' post.

Pictures of the Day

Make your own captions.



I don't want to even try to come up with good ones.



Let's just summarize it by 'Life is never boring around here.'

Meet Super Pony!

Rescuer of Robert!



I started the decorating, but the girls explained the errors of my way to me and took over. They are way more creative than I am ^^

The sourdough chocolate cake was surprisingly good, one would not know it had any sourdough. I was happy with how it turned out.

Sadly, most of Super Pony has been eaten by now.

Happiness Is Pancakes and Maple Syprup

This morning's breakfast:



Enjoyed by everyone



How could life get any better than this?



Happiness can be found in little things.



And I just baked a sourdough chocolate cake, making use of my trusty Robert.



I will decorate it tomorrow and we will eat it to celebrate Tuesday. (Can you tell I will accept any excuse to eat cake?)

But first, aikido, time to throw people ^^

Robert Lives!

Many years ago, I started Robert in my kitchen. We used to have a very close relationship, I would use him a few times each week. But life happened, and we drifted apart. I am not sure how long we had avoided each other, but it feels like it was at least two years. The last time I mentioned him on my blog was three years ago.

Every time, I opened the fridge, he would glare at me accusingly. I would avert my eyes, and pretend that I really wanted that piece of cheese, and never had noticed him.

Yesterday, I finally was ready to deal with him again. I took a deep breath, opened the fridge and got Robert out. I wasn't sure whether I dared to open the top, but I was brave and did it anyway.

Looked ok, even if he needed some mixing. He smelled ok too, very sour, but not moldy. My plan was to make sourdough crumpets from the King Arthur site, since it had as second part of the title 'How to resurrect a neglected starter.'



I put one cup of Robert in a measuring device, and added some sugar, salt, and baking soda. He doubled in size in am amazingly short time, which was encouraging.



Time to bake. I poured some of this mixture in a small frying pan and tried to make a crumpet. I had never made crumpets before, so I had no idea what I was doing, but how hard can it be, right? Well... this first one came out way too thin, I totally destroyed it while trying to flip and I ended up with some broken up pieces of something on my plate. I tried one bite and decided that I didn't really like the way it had turned out.



Next one, I put in a lot more batter, and surprisingly, that was all it took. This time I got a perfect crumpet, which actually tasted good too!



I had a few of those for breakfast, and spent the day to see whether any adverse effects would show up from using a starter which had been neglected for so long. They didn't, so I officially declare Robert being back to life, and ready to be fed as to bake sourdough bread soon.

Love Thursday

Love is baking cinnamon raisin bread for one's family.



I used to bake this at least twice a month, for homeschool meetings and LLL meetings, but life happened, and the meetings are elsewhere now. Somehow, I hadn't baked this bread for at least six months.

Last weekend, during the process of putting my life back together, I decided to bake this for family night. It was so nice to bake it again, and feel all the good energy and wonderful memories which are connected to this bread.

Happy Love Thursday! May your lives be filled with positive energy and love, like ours is.

Glorious Weather

Spring is sweeter after a LONG winter.



First visit to a play ground.



It felt so good to be outside again without freezing to death.



Being able to run around again without slipping on the snow and ice.



We brought roller skates and skate boards



Of course, my kids are perfectly happy to use the skate board park utilities without skate boards too.







Happy spring!

Window Seat

Spring time windows
Kittens watching curiously
Robins in the snow

Finally!

Dare I hope?



Splotches of colour in our front yard.



Could it be ...



mud season?

Skunk Fun

It was midnight, we had gotten to bed late, and I was in bed, half asleep after nursing Sylvia. She was snuggled up towards me, and life was good. Suddenly, I hear many kids running up the stairs, followed by all six of them, tumbling over each other, bursting into my room.

I half wake up, telling them to be very quiet, since Sylvia is asleep. They didn't give me much time to lecture them, since they all started talking at the same time 'A skunk!!!' 'Mama! There is a skunk!' 'In the living room!!!!' 'Really! A skunk!' 'It's inside!' 'I am NOT going down while a skunk is in there!' 'It is just sitting there, looking around!'



Me, being the fast thinking person I am, managed to get out a 'What?????', a few long and confused minutes later followed by 'Who let the skunk in?' and 'Who left the door open???' in the hope that the person who did so would be old enough to help deal with the skunk. The most important thing clearly was to assign blame, instead of solving the problem, right?

Of course, looking back, I should have asked them which of the skunks was inside, just to bide some time.

I hated the idea, but it looked like I actually would have to get out of my warm, cozy bed, and deal with the skunk. Although I was hoping it all was a bad dream, and it would be gone in the morning.

Finally the kids couldn't hold it in any longer. 'Do you know what day it is, mama?' 'Do you know????' Frankly, I really couldn't care less about which day it was, I just wanted the skunk to be gone and to go back to bed. Preferably without me having to risk getting close to it.

'It is April's Fools Day!' 'Happy April Fool's Day!' 'Haha!' 'We got you!' 'You fell for it!!!' 'We had made up excuses to tell you when you asked why we were downstairs too, but you never asked' 'I can't believe you didn't remember the date!'

Me '...'

The next day, I woke up to this on two of our bathroom doors. Yes, they newspapered them.



The joys of living with creative kids.

Sugaring

Right next to the place where we have our weekly homeschool meetings, someone was tapping from his maple trees. The kids enjoyed seeing how maple syrup looks before it has been boiled into maple syrup.



Useless fact of the day: it takes about thirty five gallons of sap to produce one gallon of maple syrup.



If you want to make your own, there are many resources on line.

Ten Robins in the Snow

Today, Tara told me she saw TEN robins in the snow. (Yes, snow, shut up already you guys in Florida!) Should I believe the robins proving that spring is here, or the snow, proving that it is not?



Tara made the picture. I saw about eight of the robins, nice to see them around again!