The past three days

I finished Hadley’s overalls!

She does not like them… they are a bit big and hot, but they should be perfect for fall.  She did humor me and wear them for a little while on Thursday.  This was the last day of tennis camp for Drew and Phoebe.

This was the wettest camp session they have ever had (in the last 35 years!) and the final day was again inside, thankfully they had a big gym to use that day.  Drew took home camp champ for his group this year, things like that always make a mama proud.  I really liked how his coach said Drew was not necessarily the best player in the group, but he always tried his hardest and cheered others on.

We spent the rest of that rainy afternoon home making good things to eat.   I tried this recipe (minus the brown sugar… it was plenty sweet with just the honey… and I added in ground flax and dried cherries) The kids liked helping me push in a few chocolate chips as it was cooling.  It was really cute to watch them sneak a few and to think I was not watching.

Today we had a beautiful sunny day and we decided to go down to the farmers market.  We gave the kids a 10$ bill and told them they needed to buy a vegetable for all of us for dinner (one that they would in fact eat themselves) and then they could split the money after that and spend it however they liked.

They chose broccoli and the man even had Drew calculate the change.. 7$.  Drew quickly figured out they each had 3.50$ left to spend. They chose to buy cupcakes for themselves and then save the rest.

Then we were off to the nature center for their family day.  We arrived just in time to learn about raptors from a woman from wings of wonder.

It has been a great weekend so far.  Tomorrow there is an ice cream social at the community sailing center and also something called ‘log cabin days’ out at the old mission lighthouse.  We are definitely keeping busy with all of these great things to do here in our little community.

We are back!

We have been back for ten days now, but I have not really felt home until a few days ago. There were many things to be done, laundry, grocery shopping, taxes, and spring homeschool planning. Now, I finally feel home, it is all done! (and today we even sorted through everything in the basement!– this is something I have been wanting to do for years!) We also made a very fun dinner tonight as a family, fajitas with homemade tortillas. Yum!

We are all full and sitting by the fire now. It is great to be home!

New Years Eve

We had a rough start today. Andy was supposed to have a big treekeeper delivery today so he was up at the warehouse. Drew had a sledding and swimming party with his swim team from 11-3. Both he and Phoebe were very excited about going to it. I knew it was going to be difficult– getting everyone ready for cold weather play– packing a lunch— and then getting everyone ready to swim– and then getting them home. You should have seen the load of STUFF I had to pack into the car. Sleds, winter gear, lunch, towels, goggles (swim and ski mind you) and I just knew Haddie was going to have her weekly huge poo blowout while we were there — so diapers and a change of clothes for her was necessary. It was absurd. And even though I dressed Haddie in about ten layers the wind was still too cold for babies so she was very upset — and since I could not see the kids from the car I did not feel too comfortable leaving them there to sled while I tried to warm up Haddie (plus the families we were hoping to see were not there) so Drew and Phoebe were pretty bummed to have to leave the sledding hill early.
Once it was time to swim it was better– Hadley was happy to be inside and warm and both Drew and Phoebe had a lot of fun in the pool.

Then when it was time to go I somehow wrangled everything into the back of my car (including all three kids) and we came home. Phew. And all the while Andy was waiting for this big shipment that never came! Seems something happened to the truck and hopefully it will now come on Saturday.
I was planning on cooking a real dinner but instead I was happy to be able to open a few cans of soup and say ‘voilà!’.
But we did do chocolate fondue. Our new, new years eve tradition. It was yummy.

Plate licking yummy

Haddie really wanted to dip her pretzle in too

Next year baby. Now I am sitting by the fire with my sleeping babe. I really should go unload the car but I am not going to. I think I will save it for next year.

elderberry syrup

Today was beautiful.  We played outside, raked leaves and made
elderberry syrup– just in case the flu comes our way we will be
prepared.  Here is info on elderberry syrup and flu

Here is the recipe

The recipe is:

• 1/2 cup dried (or 1 cup fresh or frozen) elderberries
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 5 cloves
• 1 TBSP freshly grated ginger
• 2 cups water
• 1 cup wild, local honey

Put everything except the honey in a saucepan, cover and bring to a
boil, then turn it down to a simmer and cover again.  Let it simmer
until the liquid is reduced by one-half (which takes 20-30 minutes).

Pour the liquid over a strainer into a bowl and mash down the
elderberries to get more of the good juice out.

Add the honey to the juice and stir.  They say it can be stored in a
closed jar in the fridge for up to a couple weeks (although on other
sites they've said months).

As a preventative take 1 TBSP/day, and when sick you can take up to 1
TBSP/hour.

It
is very yummy!  No pictures again today… I'll try for some tomorrow! 
But maybe you noticed I changed the blog a bit… that happens to be
the Austin, Tx cityscape — I might need to get used to looking at
it… hmmm

And I am playing with new features like links and videos– so high tech!