Tidbits from two weeks!

That infamous 2 week mark is approaching where I get overwhelmed by the thought of scrapbook catch up. So here I am while the girls enjoy homeschool afternoon, Jason is in the gardens and I've got one stew in the crockpot heating and a second soup on the stove simmering for our small group gathering tonight around the fire ring. 

The (many) pictures here will show the glorious, colorful, productive, fun, celebratory, sweet, wonderful and photo-worthy moments of these last 2 weeks. Not included are various ones of us taking our turns melting down and falling apart, illness complicating schedules and heightening anxiety, relationship work that feels fruitful or frustrating or both, and so much more. So here's one small slice of life's much more complicated and flavorful pie!

March 28 - FINALLY we got a Bear care day again!! And what fun we had catching up on all the ways he is growing and changing SO fast! Some favorites:

Concentrating on "tap tap"

Knocking down our towers (he's been good at this for awhile)!
He's also been good at melting us into puddles with his smiles!!!

His open mouthed crawl is pretty adorable too! He got to be a big helper on this particular Thursday by joining me to hide Easter eggs for Alida and Terah and some of their friends. He didn't give away any hiding spots AND he was pleased to get to play to his heart's content with the eggs following the conclusion of the hunt! While Kali was in class and the rest of us enjoyed a walk or playdate with friends (including the aforementioned hunt), Jason worked hard finishing up the potato trenching. Yes, he did it all by himself this year and we are so very grateful!

March 29 -31 - We were eager to have the ground prepped for potatoes as we were headed to PA for a long-awaited trip to be with some of Jason's family (for a belated Christmas and right on time Easter celebration - Chreaster for the second time since Kali's birthday party with said theme). We enjoyed a variety of traditions blended together (e.g. hunting for Christmas stockings!). There were indoor and outdoor games enjoyed by the young and old(er). Two highlights for me included a tour of the forsythia fort by one of my nieces and getting to meet and snuggle and savor time with my newest grand nephew.

Another highlight (which I'm realizing right now took place on the eve of April Fool's Day) was our final pitstop on the way home where the girls and I delighted in finding an overripe banana to buy for Jason from the convenience store. We even broke it in half to do our best to simulate his recent dream, except in this instance he had not forgotten his wallet and we were able to pay for the banana! We also bought a pizza (unrelated to his dream and related to our rumbling tummies)!!

April 1 - Well, this is always kinda a big day in our home - I think it might be one of the favorite or at least most celebrated holiday's of the year. There was a lot happening and it was not all related to our family gardening day. It's actually quite shocking that we got the potatoes planted, the biochar pit filled back up with duff from the remnants of the brush pile, the onions AND the parsley planted. While we were busy outside, there were chicks hatching inside and Grandma was busy working on dinner for her stuffed animals! I don't think Grandma finished her to do list that day (as some items may have been added to it) and I found some to do's in the seed potato sack that I also didn't manage to fit into the day.

It was not a joke that 3 snakes (2 males fighting over who was going to get to reproduce with a female) kept showing up right where we were in the gardens and had some of us a little skittish. You'd think they would have been too busy to pay much attention to us but I did get a little too close one time and one of the smaller males came after me trying to be very scary looking (in all fairness, I did back away!).

We had a good hatch that day but our one green egg that showed up in the incubator did not hatch sadly. 

We also have no intentions of hatching the T. Rex. eggs Kali's collected from the breeder pens that evening.

My mom threatened that we would not get dinner if we didn't behave that day while they were out and about. We didn't cause any serious damage but I can't promise we stayed out of their home entirely or that those 120 plastic Easter eggs we have didn't come in handy in making their bed a little bumpier than usual. Thankfully, in the end, she took pity on us and did feed us a very interesting dinner!

We had dessert first - cupcakes, lollipops and pudding!*

And we topped off our evening with meatloaf and fries!*

What a silly bunch!

*food served: meatloaf and mashed potato "cupcakes," jello salad "pudding," and brussels sprout "lollipops" followed by chocolate rice krispie treat "meatloaf" and apple "fries"

April 2 - With most of our tricks and jokes out of our systems, we enjoyed a day with plenty of chick adoring fit into all the cracks!! Jason got our tomatoes, hot peppers, flowers and sea oats (from our summer vacation to Michigan) started and Alida had her skills assessment as a kick off for the soccer season (ready or not, here it comes).

We feel grateful to my dad for his continued (and VERY optional) help with morning chores and when Luca comes over he always wants to find and say hi to Grandpa Herb and Grandma Sarah.

April 3 - Alida's eagerly anticipated bonus birthday did not quite go as planned. One of the goals was making memories and we definitely did that, if not the expected ones! The day started out fun. Alida was VERY sore from her soccer practice the evening before but we thought was fine otherwise. We had a fun wet picnic at the arboretum, enjoying take out from the Little Grill (thanks to a bday present for me from my parents) and then watching the baby Great Horned Owls for a long time (and I could have stayed longer). As we left there, Alida started to fade and faded quickly. We got some necessary soccer shopping done before nixing the rest of our plans for home and snuggles!

We couldn't see the real owls very well, but we had our own cute little owl!

Alida and I snuggled up and before long were both asleep and only got in on the very tail end of what appears to be a very magnificent double rainbow from all of Jason's pictures!

April 4 - The cold traveled quickly from Alida to Terah and was a big bummer and changed plans AGAIN for our times with others. Sigh!! It was a good impetus for finally making a large batch of elderberry syrup from dried berries I had been looking at and doing nothing about for years. And Terah felt good enough for chick adoration!

April 5 - Before I headed to town to do the weekly errands and Jason took off for Oak Spring Garden Foundation to teach a two day chicken workshop, we plowed through some things on the farm in the morning. We really do make one amazing team! We got the pigs moved to their spring/summer/fall pasture pen system and then seeded oats, sugar snaps, beets, cilantro, lettuce, dill, and collards (all in less than 2 hours - thanks to all the soil healing work that has taken place over many years!). Historically, preparing the soil took many many hours and now there is sometimes not more than a few minutes of prep! We were working too fast to take any pictures...

Jason was hosted in a very fancy guest house at OSGF, overlooking Bunny Mellon's main house garden. I believe he was much more comfortable in the chicken coop and had a lovely (if exhausting) time talking chickens with other interested persons for two days!

April 6 - While Jason's talked chickens, the girls and I enjoyed a day at home Saturday and did the annual mustard run pull (my magnolia now has a nice layer of mustard-mulch) followed by enjoying Kali's delicious homemade tomato soup topped with maybe the only winter cress I'll get around to sautéing and toasted cheese sandwiches. 

A few views from Jason's location:

April 7 - I was the only one that stayed put today! The girls took off for NY to take in the eclipse (in its totality!) and Jason traveled back home to me after the conclusion of his workshop. I always feel so grateful when my loved ones are on the road and get where they are intending to go safely!

April 8 - Our Monday family work day was a J+J work day this week and I learned to mow (with the corded mower!). We also did some of the first work in the seed cage for the SARE grant. AND we enjoyed the solar eclipse in the afternoon before I had my first doula meeting with a new family I'm working with. A monumental day all around! The kids got to enjoy the total darkness and were all glad they went, even though there wasn't much of a break in the clouds there!

The pigs were more interested in their slop than donning the eclipse glasses!

I enjoyed my first spinach salad with violets AND red buds while taking peeks up at the moon covering the sun!

April 9 and 10 - the last two days have been a hodge podge of odds and ends for me and Jason - we need those kinds of days regularly, even if they don't pay the bills. The girls returned home VERY tired and we are contending with an additional bug-souvenir from the travels. Another sigh! So let's end this post on a very sweet and cute note. Google photos was feeding Kali a few pictures recently that reminded me very much of ones I'm taking now, but with smaller versions of the same people. I guess we've been enjoying little chickens for a long time now! 

Welcomed our dash back and we have a teenager in the house again!!

One thing I did not include in my last update was what Terah, Jason and I were working on during her solo time with us on Sunday, March 17th. After being inspired during our North Carolina trip, we were working on frames for paper making for Alida's birthday! In case Alida happened to look at the blog, we didn't want to give away the surprise early. It was a joint effort with my mom cutting up sheets and finding a used blender, the younger girls shredding lots of old financial documents and then most importantly Terah and Jason taking the lead on the frame making. Here Terah is holding the package. What remains is now trying it all out and making some paper! That will have to wait until this next flurry of travel is behind us and the soccer season is underway. But we are ready whenever a nice block of time shows up for such an activity! 

The other thing I didn't mention in the last update was the excitement building for Tala's arrival that Monday. After a short stint in DC, she joined us for a visit and got to be part of Alida's birthday celebrations!! How special! Tala arrived with all of us out in the gardens, but it wasn't long before the four of them were back inside, deep into their Dutch Blitz tournament!! No one was complaining about getting out of the large weeding job of the day! Jason stuck at the spinach thinning much of the day, which would have been more fun if there were more spinach plants to weed around. We'll enjoy what's there... Those first spinach salads of the year are always out of this world - especially when topped with fresh violets!

I continue to love Mondays and spending the majority of that day each week outside. Right now the brilliant spring colors are a pretty big boost to my spirits. The first broody mama hen with her chicks doesn't hurt anything either!! 

We were all around the table again for our Monday evening Tangly Woods' meal - Mom treating us to one of her feasts! Smiles all around!!

A complication of the week was some roaming sniffles and not feeling great for various ones of us. Not something we wanted to contend with. It didn't interrupt Luca's time with us and I was eager for some catch up time as we had missed some of our times together recently. He's such a big boy now - communicating in full sentences and overflowing with ideas!

The week included lots of hugs and snuggles, Rook and Dutch Blitz games, walk/talks, and just savoring being together. As I type this, Tala is starting her first long flight back home (it's hard to believe the visit came and went already). 

It just so happened that Alida's birthday week also coincided with her turn to have Mommy and Daddy all to herself for a few hours. She did share the time with the pigs and the chicks. 

Sunday was a gorgeous day for an outdoor fire complete with pizzas pockets, s'mores and good friends. The breeze moving the smoke all around was the only unwelcome part of the afternoon!

On the eve of Alida's birth, we enjoyed a family work day with lots of spring activities - cleaning out chicken coops, mulching and weeding (oh, so much weeding available!). Feeding pigs weeds makes weeding more fun and doing it together also makes it more fun. Alida was occupied a good part of the day making and decorating her bday cake with Grandma. She's got a knack for it!! We enjoyed the cake that evening with a birthday celebration upstairs.

The report from Alida was that this March 26th anniversary of the day of her birth was a fun and good day! Yay!! That means the day was a success. There were games...

There were yummy meals all together... (she picked delicious menus of homemade quiches and homemade pasta and bread)

There was an excited little sister who fashioned her own party hat...

There were friends, including Luca who reminded us often that it was, "Alida birthday!" 

There was dancing...

AND there were fun presents! She had no idea her big sister would take her request for an axolotl seriously!

Meet Lottie!

We'll have some additional birthday celebrations next week to mark adding a teenager back into our mix. It felt like we shifted gears pretty quickly after her birthday to saying our goodbyes (for now) to Tala. The girls enjoyed some last games while Jason and I went to town (for him to meet with our architect friend and an engineer about the pavilion and I took care of Bear so the adults in the meeting could concentrate). It was high time we got reacquainted. Thankfully it didn't take long!!

And I got to take in someone's new mobility - you would think my mouth would be the one hanging open but he seems pretty pleased with himself too! Currently his mouth is closed and he is sacked out on my front!!

The girls had to say their goodbyes first and then Tala and I took a few hours to stroll through and sit at the JMU arboretum before I took her to the bus stop. These are not easy goodbyes!!

We did manage to add some amusement to our photo taking...

And we savored the many kinds of daffodils AND seeing some baby great horned owls way up in a tree. I'm feeling grateful for the memory of that time together as Tala heads back over the ocean!

On the home front, we are itching to get to the spring planting. Looking at the calendar from last year makes me feel horribly behind, but Jason reminds me that we aren't. That said, he was eager to get started on the potato trenches. He's picking up seed potato today and we'll see if a fresh start on seed potatoes nets us more taters in our digging later this summer. We'll hopefully get those in, along with onions, shallots, beets, lettuce, parsley and cilantro within the next week or two. It's also time to get the tomatoes and flowers started inside. All of a sudden the growing season is upon us, ready or not! It was a timely time for Jason to hear this song on the radio and share it with me! I'm a tad obsessed with it currently, so I'll share it here for anyone that wants to listen to a very sweet love song! Enjoy Dylan LeBlanc's Let it Rain! Until next time...