Friday, September 30, 2011

Watch out - we can now post videos!!

For those that haven't discovered this via a recent email or through facebook, we now have a camera that takes videos. We are grateful for a "hand-me-down" camera, the only payment required being to share plenty of cute pictures and videos. Here's a recent one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmRTzYEds_Q

Some things are clearly not changing around here - Alida still adores Kali and vice versa.

Some things are changing - Alida got her first tooth a few days before her 6 month birthday and another one is following. Gone will soon be the toothless smiles and her mommy has mixed feelings about that! Someone is growing up TOO fast!!

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Where was she when I was in eighth grade?

Kali wrote a poem today:

The sun is first, shining and bright
Then there is mercury, hot with its light
Venus is hotter, but next on the chain
Earth is the only one with Africa or Maine.
Mars comes next, with caverns below
There is an asteroid belt, escapes seem to glow
Then there is Jupiter with its big, red spot
And Saturn, which doesn't seem to have a dot.
Far out Uranus, how little we know!
Then there is Neptune with winds; how fast they blow!
Poor little Pluto, he just seems to moan
We'd call him a planet, if only we'd known.

I believe she is going to take after her father in the poetry realm!!! I am still scarred by my "C" received for my 8th grade poem written about my cat Pepper.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

September news

Most days the thought "I want to put this on the blog" goes through my mind at least once. And then by the next day I can't remember what that inspiration that flashed through me was. That feels like how life is in our household right now. I'm soaking in a lot of it, but it also seems to be going so so fast! (and half the time I sit down to write and then get interrupted, as in this case, and don't get back to it for hours or days...)

So I'm now at the end of the day rather than the beginning and bed is calling louder than most other things. Just to mention a few of the things that haven't left my mind since earlier today:

Kali is now not sure what she likes more - art or math. This would be a big switch in our household. While Jason was feeding Alida the other day, he suggested she might write an essay while he was busy. She did. About art. It reads:

"Art: Probubly the eseist school subjact for most tiaps
Panit Draw Colur Stamp Cut n Tape Skalpt
Can be Framd
Can be done with pen marcr craon paper pensul leaf sesors stik grass
Looks like this (sorry I can't easily show the pictures)."

Her spelling is still not fabulous, I can actually understand it now (a big change in the last few weeks) and it is cute to see her enjoying communicating through written words - sometimes.

Alida's big news is that she has been working hard on something and it has paid off. A TOOTH!! As of this morning the first one has cut through on the bottom. I'm hoping very much that her desire to bite and chew on me lessens now that the bugger has cut through. We'll see!

The big news for Kali and Alida is that Daddy has completed the swing set and they are both very pleased. Kali and Jason just went out for a little night swing ride. I think Kali would swing a dozen times a day if there weren't other things that took her away from the swing set - like playdates, home school co-op days, books that beg to be read, stuffed animals that need their harnesses changed, cookies that want to be baked, games that are fun to play, etc...

And Jason and I are just trying to keep up with and soak up our growing girls and our growing farmette. The most recent canning project was my all time favorite one - grape juice (liquid gold is often how I refer to it). I feel so rich as I watch the deep purple liquid flow out of the steamer. FUN! The next canning project will be tomorrow night - following up on Jason's chicken butchering evening a few days back. I keep thinking we are almost done and then I bring in enough basil for pesto, enough green beans for several days of fresh eating, enough tomatoes and peppers for another batch of sauce... There are butternut waiting to be harvested and a few final watermelon in the patch. And we have been eating lots of sweet potatoes in various forms (partially due to the fact that Jason half cooked some of them in an attempt to cure them in a room with a space heater).

While Jason was washing sweet potatoes down by the garden, I took in and enjoyed some of the lingering color in Nora's garden. I can't always sort out all my emotions about the many things that have transpired in our 6 years on Fruit Farm Lane, but the enduring and overarching emotion at many moments right now is gratitude. And a big bundle of the gratitude I feel goes to Nora. So we enter a new week and one in which both Jason and I will celebrate another year of life - what a year it has been!!

Friday, September 9, 2011

It just keeps giving...

I'm sure it comes as no surprise to any of our faithful, or even not so faithful, readers that I'm typing this to the sound of two canners busy at work! Just when I thought the garden was slowing up, Jason came in with three baskets of green beans. There are 7 pints of dilly beans in one canner and 7 quarts of green beans in the other (and three bags of snipped green beans in the fridge). But that isn't the food processing project I'm feeling most pleased about today. When we were out putting the chickens in last evening, I noted that our rhubarb plants looked fabulous, and in need of a trim! And we had peaches that were also needing to be used. I wondered (after having recently been given some tasty strawberry rhubarb jam) if I could find a recipe for peach rhubarb jam. I did. I made it. It's yummy and pretty!

I'm still feeling a little bit in awe that we have peach trees growing right outside our house, that grew from seed, and that are showering upon us delicious peaches. We have eaten lots, canned some, frozen some, made peach jam with some, and shared some. How fun!!

In other news, Alida is getting around these days. She likes to flop from her front to her back to her front and pivot around and is starting to make significant progress towards mobility this way! She is also discovering the joy of grasping something and then letting go, just for fun. Pick up, drop, pick up, drop, and on goes the game. She also enjoys banging her heel on the floor when she is laying down (nice percussion instrument that she has discovered) and shaking her toys to make them rattle. I couldn't contain my laughter today when we were laying together in bed and she discovered my fingers. I was holding my hand above her head and she got very interested. She grabbed a finger and shook my hand. No sound. She let go. She stared at my hand, grabbed again and shook. This "toy" was not working as she expected. She probably went through the routine a half dozen times or so. It's so, so fun watching her discover and figure out her world.

ps. Update on a previous blog post - Jason not only won a blue ribbon at the fair, he got a check in the mail today from the Rockingham County Fair Association...for $1.50. :)