summer fun

took the boys to san francisco for the weekend

exploratorium...

of course, the trees outside the exploratorium...

first train...

first bus...

first chinatown...
first dim sum... (ok, didn't get a good picture until they descimated the food!)

cable cars, fisherman's wharf, lots of walking and we had a blast!

Last Days of Summer

We are down to the last week of summer vacation here, and I have to say I am sad to see them go back to school. I know a lot of parents can't wait to get back to the routine and structure of school days, not to mention that the kids are occupied most of the day! But, I like my kids with me. I love watching them explore and create and seeing their little minds expand.

We went to my parents last week and they spent the entire time outside. Riding bikes. On lizard hunts. Exploring. Climbing trees. Occasionally, posing for mom and the camera. But they never asked to even turn on the TV.

Beach Dreaming

It's been over 105 degrees for the past week and right now I'm dreaming of being at the beach with the boys!

I found these pictures when they were little...I can't believe how fast they have grown up.

Skate Park

The city recently built a skate park by our house. The boys wanted to go check it out the other day, so I naively thought, "Sure. Let's ride our bikes over and leave the skate boards at home until we know what we are dealing with." In other words, mommy is not ready for this. And I don't want to go to the hospital today.

Turns out it is for bikes and skate boards. All at the same time. Adults. Teenagers. Kids. Chaos.

My little one, who is barely six and just lost his first tooth (I want the rest to come out of their own accord) decides to take one of the bigger ramps on. (He is also on a bike that is slightly too large for him...)


Yes, that is a bandanna across his face...well, actually it's a napkin...



He's almost up...

...not enough speed...I stayed and watched from the sidelines, but a very nice teenager was immediately their and helped him get his bike out.

Boys make moms nervous. It's their job. And they are good at it. Unfortunately, my job is to let them.

and that's why they wear helmets!

Birthday Projects

Last week was my mom's 70th birthday! You would never know it form looking at her or even spending a day with her. This woman has more energy than I know what to do with!

The boys and I went down and spent Easter break with them and helped her get a few things done. We installed her vegetable garden which this year is a mix of raised beds, container and straw bales.

We sanded down and oiled her badly dilapidated porch swings.

Papa took the boys fishing. (Which gave mom and me a nice day to be with each other.)

And Ryan got a new dog.

Ok, so this last one wasn't exactly a birthday project for mom - but it did get rid of one of the dogs currently living at her house. Which makes her very happy!

Photos

My nephew came over for Thanksgiving and brought his camera! He has started a photography business and I absolutely love it when he comes over...now I just need to actually get some prints to replace the ones that have been on my wall for over five years...

Boys

Boys are different than girls. I have said that to my boys many times, but I apparently it is more than skin deep.You see, my boys are BOYS. No piece of furniture is safe while they are around. Cushions and pillows are used as weapons, or even better - turned into forts. Comforters, pillows and other assorted soft things, turn into a "safe" landing spot from jumping off of the ledge above their closet. (Doesn't seem to matter that we have wood floors, the pillows will slip out from under them and they will crack their skulls open...)

I have a large mud hole that is growing in the middle of what little lawn I have left. They could have chosen a dirt part of the yard to "dig their new fort." They consistently try to take their playhouse apart, or add on to it, or scale it's heights...

For the most part, I understand and try not to set too many limits on their creativity and imagination, but sometimes I just don't get it. For example, why do they insist on entering and exiting the car from the windows?

Last night, we went to the park. We don't do it very often, because quite frankly they have a park in their back yard. However, I couldn't see any reason not to go, so there we were. I thought I could get a little reading done...yeah, not so much. Every time I looked up they were scaling the play structure from another vantage point in which it was not meant to be scaled. They were urging each other on to new heights and on to new danger. Several times, I heard myself yelling "stop that - I will not be going to the hospital tonight!!!"

The other parents just looked at me like I was was the worst mom ever, as their children were happily being pushed on the swings or going down the little kiddie practice slides...just wait! Some of you had boys. One day, you too will have to take them to the hospital!

Preservation

I spent most of Sunday making strawberry jam. I stopped by the fruit stand next to my house after church, and they had day-old strawberries - a huge box for $8. Score!!! Although after completely filling up my big pot - I started to wonder if this was such a good idea.

I also made strawberry ice cream and dried the rest of them for use in other goodies. It's kind of disheartening however, when three full trays in the dehydrator, only make a very small child's bowl of dried fruit!

And since I already had the dehydrator going, Max and I made some plum fruit leather. The way everything gets eaten so quickly around here, make me wonder how people with large family can preserve enough stuff to actually make it through the winter. And we don't really even have winter here! We live in a valley where we grow food year round. The farmer's market never closes and they are still harvesting strawberries. I would have to be preserving everyday, all day long to store up enough stuff to keep my kids from just devouring everything in site!

I'm not complaining that my kids are good eaters...just thinking how hard it would be to grow and preserve enough food to live on...and they aren't even teenagers yet!!

My kids LOVE pickles. Actually, I'm not sure that word in strong enough. They will go through a huge jar from Sam's Club in a week if I let them. So, I picked up a couple bags of cucumbers and made pickles too. Knowing my kids, this wont last long, so maybe I should pick up some more...

I didn't make my own pickling liquid, but picked up a packet at the store. not sure it was such a good idea, since when I mixed it all together, it was this bright yellow color that completely stained my sink...

End of Summer

Last weekend was over 100 degrees. I didn't think it would be the last weekend of summer, since summer tends to last around here until Thanksgiving. We decided to go up to the lake and go fishing. Well, the fish weren't anywhere around, but the lake was awesome!

First Day of School

So, I realize that I'm pretty late on these pictures, but I just haven't been in the mood to be on the computer lately...But here are pictures of the first day of school.

Ryan made it to second grade!!

Max started kindergarten...He's in afternoon kindergarten which means he has to eat lunch before he goes to school.

So, I told him we would go to a special lunch...he picked Target. He decided he wanted pizza and a slushy. The differences between my boys are huge! Ryan picks teppan yaki, and Max picks Target - go figure!

Slow Food

I am a big fan of the slow food movement. After all, I absolutely love food. Well, good food. I can fore go eating if my only choices are fast food. (Which is really not good for me or the people around me.) There have been many a night where something like crackers have been dinner because nothing else in the house was good.

But back to the slow food movement. It's an organization dedicated to preserving traditional food. I can get on board with that! Additionally, they believe that the best way to preserve traditional breeds that are going extinct is to get people to eat them. Sounds counter intuitive, yet increase demand and supply will increase.

I have bought Heritage Turkeys for Thanksgiving in the past. In fact, one Thanksgiving I cooked a heritage turkey, a traditional turkey and a wild turkey so we could taste-test them side by side. Let me tell you, that heritage turkey made me a believer. It actually had flavor and texture, and you know - that turkey could still actually have sex (well before they killed it for us).

I would raise heritage breed turkeys and chickens if it wasn't for that whole plucking thing. I've already done it and it does not hold good memories for me. It might be different now that I am an adult and it would feed me and my children...hhhmmm

However, one of my problems is that I am impatient. This too might be an understatement, but there it is. It's not that I don't cook from scratch; most everything I do cook is from scratch. I can whip up a fresh tomato sauce in slightly more time than it takes to open a can, but most of my meals in the past 8 years (since I got pregnant the first time), have been of the 30 minute variety. A few of them go longer, but really it's all about getting a good dinner on the table as fast as possible.

Again, this is not to say, that they are not fresh - just fast.

As we are getting home from the conciliatory ice cream after stitches this morning, my sister tells me that we have a ton of eggplant. My eggplants are planted in the strip between my driveway and my neighbors yard and she normally parks on that side of the driveway. So, apparently it was time to make eggplant Parmesan.

This is not a quick dish. This takes slicing eggplant, draining in salt, dredging, frying, baking, making tomato sauce...Today it was even slower since halfway through I realized we were out of pasta.

Completely out.

No pasta of any kind in the house.

I really don't understand how this is possible, but it happened.

I used to make my own pasta in college and this was hands down every one's favorite dish of mine. There is nothing like fresh pasta. And surprisingly, it is extremely easy albeit extremely messy to do.

The dough takes about 3 minutes. I figured the boys would help roll it and cut it in my pasta machine - no problem. Except the pasta machine that I haven't used since college, doesn't really cut the dough. More of an imprint really.

So, now I have been cooking for almost 2 hours. And we have pasta looking type stuff. More of sheets with spaghetti imprints and globs of dough. We put it in the boiling water, waited about a minute and drained it. I threw on the eggplant, a little extra sauce and served the boys. Ryan said it was the best meal he had ever eaten and could I make this every night? Max said yum, but halfway through decided he didn't like the purple skin; but he ate everything else as long as it wasn't purple.

The good point of all this is that our meal completely came out of my garden! This made me so happy and willing to take the time to do this. (I also made another one to put in the freezer.) Everything except the oil and the flour - I grew!

Lately, I have been feeling frustrated and sad regarding my gardening capabilities. I have thought that if my family was dependent on me and my garden for food - we'd be starving. But tonight, tonight we had tomatoes, garlic, onions, basil, oregano, eggplant, eggs and an old pasta machine for the most unbelievable pasta ever!!! This was slow food. And it was good.

But now I have flour over every surface of the kitchen and dining room...

Beach Last Week

I woke up one day last week and said we had to get out of the heat! It had been over a hundred for a while, so off to the beach for day we went...What an awesome day!

Summer Happenings

I haven’t been writing much lately, since we are in the throes of summer around here. I have started working, which is bittersweet…I’m very excited to have a job (and one that I just spent years in school for!), but it takes time away from the punks I call my children. These particular punks require constant supervision if I would like my house to continue to shelter us. A wonderful example is last week when my father was watching them in the pool, they managed to go around to the front of the house, open the gate, get one of the bikes, bring it into the back yard, hoist it into the pool (which is over 4 feet off the ground) and ride the bike in the pool. (They do have amazing creativity and team work!)

We have also been doing everything we can to not die from heat stroke. Right now it is 10 at night and it is 101 degrees outside. It’s starting to cool off from the 110 of earlier. I said chuck it all, and we went to the movies to use their air conditioning! However, the heat is awesome for drying laundry...it dries almost before I get back in the house!

Not only are we having a difficult time with the heat, my garden is sad and pathetic. I would like to blame it all on the heat, but the truth is…my garden has not done well from the very start this year. My third planting of beans has pretty much dried up – and I didn’t get a single bean from any of the plants. I have planted my zucchini, squash and cucumbers four times now and they all keep dying.

I have never had this problem before and I think it is my soil. I brought in many, many truckloads of compost from the city along with straw, horse manure, chicken coop clean outs, shredded paper, shredded leaves, worm castings…and everything is dying in these new beds. I have not picked a single pepper and my plants are barely surviving. Both the peppers and tomatoes have blossom end rot and something (not a tomato horn worm) is eating my tomato plants and marking up my tomatoes (on the good parts, away from the blossom end rot, the little suckers had to damage the edible parts).

The chickens ate my corn seedlings and my melon vines are the same size as when I planted them back in April. Needless to say, I am frustrated. If I had to survive off my garden, we would be starving right now! There is also the issue of hard work. I was really excited to see the fruits of my labors…Thank God for all the Farmer’s Markets around me so I can eat the fruits of other peoples work!

One of the other problems we encounter gardening in this valley is the intense heat. Instead of having one enormously long season from late March to mid November, we have two short seasons separated by a long, dry, HOT summer. The news said something about the next 30 days being over a 100 degrees…and plants just shut down. And really who could blame them, I don’t want to do anything in this heat either!

As much as I am frustrated with my food endeavors at the moment, I know I will keep trying and I am already starting to think of what I can plant this fall…In fact, I just harvested the tiny little seeds from my lettuces yesterday. As part of the seed to seed challenge, I let my lettuces go to seed instead of pulling them out when they bolted...and I now have lettuce to plant in a few months when I can go back outside in daylight hours.

However, I did get 6 eggs today! The teenage chickens are laying these tiny little things…very cute. And I’ve gotten a few of these tiny, paper-thin eggs that you can’t touch. I added some Oyster Shell to their diet so hopefully the shells will get a little harder.

Just to let you know that I am also counting my blessings in the midst of my complaining - We got to see the new Harry Potter movie today, I didn’t cook a single meal for any of the 15 thousand people in my house today, and my punks bring me so much joy it physically hurts to look at them sometimes! Of course, I’m watching them sleep as I type this when they are even more adorable and not getting into trouble! We had an awesome afternoon just the three of us.

Photos

My nephew Andrew came down for dinner tonight and brought his new camera gear. He is absolutely loving photography and took some awesome pictures of the boys and even my sister and me (especially considering we were up all night last night with the mama dog). He is starting his photography business and you can check out some of his other photos here. These are completely unedited, and very candid...

I am 10 years younger than my sister and 13 years younger than my brother. They had their kids when I was in high school, so I never expected to have children close to my siblings' children. Yet, my sister had a boy 10 years after her youngest (she was a little surprised) and I had Ryan a year and a half later; two years after that Max arrived. The boys are close and have been since birth. Janette and I were together at least once a week if not more often. I babysat for her when she went back to school when I was pregnant with Ryan and the grew up with each other. My sister moved in with us a few years ago during her divorce and lived with us for almost two years. Less than a year later they moved back in, due to breast cancer. I'm so glad the boys have each other. Most people assume they are brothers when we are all out together...I can't understand why!

Here's my sister and her youngest...My sister thinks she looks terrible, but I think she is looking amazing. Especially for being in the middle of chemo!

I'm never in front of the camera, so I get nervous, start laughing and then my eyes disappear...