Celebrations!

There has been much to celebrate lately: mothers, strawberries (Alida is consuming them as fast as they turn mostly red), ducklings, anniversaries, "spark squiggles," lambsquarter, baby bunnies, family who are also neighbors, squash that out grew our daughter, the gentle rain falling that has chased us all inside and has me playing yahtzee with the girls (and writing a blog post simultaneously)...

In the celebrations mentioned above there have also been some firsts, so let me go back and expand a little more on the above items (I'm sure none of you that read this regularly would think I could be this brief anyway). I will come back to this later though, as this is as far as I've gotten and it is beyond dinner time and one child had no nap today and the other got up at 6 a.m. at a sleepover so I better at least stay ahead of hungry bellies if we don't want things to go downhill.  So off to dump some things together to make some pumpkin pancakes and hopefully I'll get back to this later...

...Darkness has chased us inside, but I'm no less distracted.  Girls are scurrying around to get ready for an early Saturday soccer morning.  Getting us out the door at 7:30 a.m. is no small feat so we do as much as possible the night before. Alida is in her uniform and Kali working on it.  Alida is trying to be patient while Daddy fills the leaf bucket for the composting toilet and collects eggs.  She is probably the one most excited to enjoy the anniversary treat I made for Jason.  Yes, today marks 16 years since we tied the knot and we are so very happy that we did!

One of the highlights of our anniversary today was the 19 week visit from our midwife.  I must say how very much I'm enjoying this form of healthcare!  Alida and I were happily chopping up the first part of our trombone squash when she arrived.  We sat and chatted for a while until Jason came in from the onion patch and then continued the three of us until Kali arrived from her sleepover/birthday party.  Then we all got to hear Spark's strong and steady heartbeat (in the 160's).  He/she seems to be right on track and I'm enjoying an increase in what I've coined the "Spark squiggles."  They are not perceptible from the outside just yet but they are getting a little stronger and more frequent every day.

So about that aforementioned trombone squash: it's been sitting on our bar ever since harvest and not showing any signs of rotting.  Since winter squash was the one food that actually repulsed me in the first trimester, I've been slowly working to befriend it again (even the smell of the raw stuff was enough to turn my stomach).  Well, we realized that this weekend is the first of two main garden planting weekends and we wanted to plant seeds from the best trombone squash.  So the time was right!  But you really can only use so much at one time of a squash taller than your daughter!  So we used the bulb tonight to make pumpkin buttermilk quinoa oatmeal pancakes (completely made up and tasty!) and the rest is sitting on the counter waiting for me to be inspired.

So another fun experiment lately was drying lambsquarter!  We have a lot of it and we weed a lot out but all of us enjoy it steamed and in other things so I decided to put some up this year.  We've made our hot spinach dip with lambsquarter a few times now and there has yet to be leftovers.  I've weeded it out of the peas, beets, shallots, potato and onion patches as well as a few other random locations.  I'm trying to find new ways to store things, and drying was the favorite last year.  But would drying non-blanched lambsquarter work?  Well, it worked and I have a jar of lambsquarter powder.  Now what, you might be thinking, do you plan to do with it?  Not sure yet, but considering putting it in pasta (since I don't want liquid in my pasta but often end up with a lot of it when putting in cooked pureed greens).  I'll try to report later on as to whether this idea is a keeper or one for the compost.

[brief intermission: I'm now trying to write the blog while the family enjoys chocolate no bake cookies and Alida is chattering a mile a minute.  As she slurped her milk, she said, ""We thank the god for milk" and then after a brief pause noted "I mean cows."  Oh the things that come out of her mouth.]

Lastly, a quick reflection on Mother's Day this year: it was very special in a couple of ways.  I am kind of a strange one when it comes to holidays.  I have a strong inclination to go against the tide of our culture and there are many ways that I'm turned off by the mainstream approach to these "special days."  But, when it comes down to it, even if I state that I don't really care if we don't do anything, I can sometimes feel a little sad when nothing marks the day (and it seems that all my friends are posting pictures and status updates on facebook about the ways they celebrated and the things they were gifted and...).

This year, though, I was really feeling rather nonchalant about it.  We had fun plans to walk into town to have lunch with Emily and Jonas, which was a treat in and of itself.  And we had a day at home otherwise and time together as a family.  What more could I wish for?  Well, the night before Jason was gone and the girls seemed up to something.  Then in the morning they ran off whispering and came back to present me with a card from each of them.  What was so very sweet about it was that Kali took the initiative to remember the day and to get Alida in on the plan to surprise me.  I felt very loved by my gals!  And Spark has continued to shower me with little gifts on a daily basis as he/she calms my fears by making his/her presence known!

Our time with Emily and Jonas was also a highlight!  It is so very special to have family living right down the road who we like so very much!  Our times together feel so mutually beneficial.  The girls get to spend a lot of time in their home but it is a treat for Jason and I to join them.  We also got to meet the new members of their household!

The newest members of our household are also cute and fuzzy!  They were gifted to the girls by our neighbor and he showed up with them one morning before Kali had woken up.  So Jason woke her up that morning by delivering to her a bucket of ducklings - a nice surprise!  There is one Khaki Campbell duckling, one Gray Call duckling and one Muscovy duckling.  Thankfully they have integrated well with the chicks that we were brooding upstairs and it is mighty cute to see them all in a big pile together. Ok, this family needs to do what most of our feathered friends are doing...sleep!