Homemade Extracts

Sep11

Every other weekend we get together with four other families who all live in the same 20-mile, rural region and we have a “work party.” In an admittedly sexist division of labor usually the men work on the large, house-building type project and the women work together on a cooking project or some other type of project, while also taking care of the children and preparing lunch and dinner for the whole crew (our families together total over 20 people and so it is actually a lot of work to feed that many people for an entire day!). I could write a long post about the many wonderful things we’ve gained from this work party experience, but it will have to wait for another day. We just celebrated our one year anniversary and it has been amazing what a positive influence the work party experience has been on the lives of everyone in our family.

During the last work party at our own house during which the men worked on Mark’s greenhouse project, the women gathered in my kitchen to make a variety of homemade extracts. Our main goal was to make vanilla extract to be ready for the holiday season, but we also made orange and lemon extract, mint extract, and flavored vinegar.

We bought our vanilla beans from Amazon. They were $25 at the time there for 1/2 lbs (about 50 beans), which was much better than the $9 per 3 beans from the bulk spice company (looks like the same ones are $27 now). They were pliable and easy to work with.

I followed the general ideas from these two websites about how to make your own extracts, but took the even lazier approach and decided to make the extract right in the vodka bottle! My share of the beans was about 11 beans. I slit them all lengthwise, separated the sides a bit with my fingers and dropped them into a 1.75 liter bottle of 80 proof vodka. Voila! It started to turn a lovely golden color almost right away and then deepened to a dark brown. We’ve tasted it and it tastes like…vanilla! I’m continuing to let it steep though, since there are conflicting reports about whether to let it sit for 6 weeks or 6 months.

Think we’ll have enough vanilla to last us a while?!

For the lemon and orange extracts I used about a 1/2 cup of peel and 1 c. of vodka. I loosely based it on the recipe from this site. We did the mint extract the same way. I used mint from my yard.

We also experimented with flavored vinegar based on information from this handout. I used strawberries in apple cider vinegar. I plan to use it for salad dressing, but haven’t tried it yet. It retained a lovely red color!

Extracts all lined up while freshly made (see how much lighter the vanilla was on the first day?)

And here are the work party women after a full day of extract-making!

I really value these friendships and what we’ve created together!–

Amazon affiliate link included above.

Kansas City Adventure

Aug4

This post is my final post in my CAPPA re-cap series.

In addition to going to the CAPPA conference while in Kansas City, we did several other things for family fun—some with only marginal fun-success. Looking back at our trip, I see that we had good times, did fun things, and overall had a successful trip. While we there it felt a lot more stressful and much less fun. Why? Mostly because we had to do a ton of driving and most of our plans each day got messed up in some way—turning on the wrong roads over and over again, getting to the store when it was closed, etc., etc.

Kids went swimming in the (green, murky) hotel pool every night and loved it!

On Friday afternoon we went to Kaleidoscope a free kid’s art center offered by Hallmark. I lost track of the boys (they were with Mark and my mom), but had tons of fun watching Alaina step right up to work on a project. She was serious about it!

I love these curls, this sweet neck, and these powerful shoulders.

Can you possibly guess what noise she is making in this picture as she instructs me to acquire additional paintbrushes for her?

Okay, too many pictures of this same scene, but I just loved seeing her be so big, serious, and into this painting project.

There was a free dinosaur exhibit at Crown Center also (the same mall where the art room was).

On Sunday, we went to the American Girl store in Overland Park.

Alaina was very entranced by this stroller.

Figured out how to push two dolls in stroller AND pull two dolls in wagon!

After buying a set of Bitty Twins, we headed out to lunch with my brother, his fiancé, and my sister and her husband (who I’d never met before!). Alaina enjoyed eating the gravy off of Daddy’s chicken fried steak.

On Monday, we went to the Legoland Discovery Center, which was our only reason for staying over an extra day past conference’s end. I tried really, really hard not to remain preoccupied with the fact that it cost SIXTY-FIVE dollars to go to this place.

My annoyance at the cost was mediated by seeing Lann’s hands in these two pictures.

The Miniville part was cool (so was the “4-D” movie). Alaina developed a fever and conked out in the Ergo most of the time we were there (this is an example of one of the kinds of thing that made the trip trend towards the stressful, rather than pleasant).

On the five hour drive home, I spent much of the time nursing feverish Alaina in the car seat like this. My mom reports that antics like this are part of what caused her to eventually have back surgery! Notice my strategically placed iPad so that I can read books and send emails while contorted.

Luckily, we have a fabulous set of Bitty Twins to ease our sorrows.

You can pick any combo of Twins you want. Mine has the curly hair, Alaina’s has the straight hair. I like both of them and have trouble letting her play with them. Perhaps they need to live with just me for a little while longer.

Can you tell that I’m on a three week break from teaching? I’m possessed with blog post ideas and trying to keep this flurry of posting activity somewhat restrained via post scheduling so I don’t overwhelm my readers!

(It’s over now, so there’s no point in retroactive complaining/stressing about how the school session ended DURING our trip, and so I actually graded final exams in the car on the way to the conference and stayed up until 1:00 on Saturday night entering final grades for my online class so I could then be “off” for the rest of our trip. If anyone wants to compliment me on my skillful managing of my life that enables me to meet all these needs during one trip–my own need for continuing ed and birth peep networking, my kids’ need to go to Legoland, the needs of my 30 students for prompt grading and attention/teaching, my mom’s need to visit her other kids, and my feverish baby’s need for carseat nursing, I’ll accept them. Instead of beating myself up for the parts that didn’t go well and for crabby episodes and bad directions, I think I’ll take a couple of minutes to feel impressed at how I managed to do it!)

Marriage thoughts

Jul25

Today is our fourteenth wedding anniversary. Last year I shared some married musings in my rainy wedding post and I have a couple of related thoughts to share this year too. As I noted last year, I personally don’t experience my marriage as being hard work or difficult. Though I do understand that this is not everyone’s experience, I have a lot of difficulty understanding or appreciating comments that I see repeated in various Facebook-type locations that come from the, “love is a choice that you make every day” angle. Really?!?! I have trouble getting on board with that, because it sounds like if you don’t make the “love” choice, the alternative is just naturally disliking or not enjoying your spouse? My love for my husband feels similar to the love I feel for my children—it is a constant, it is not choice based. It is deep, abiding, and embedded. It doesn’t feel optional, which is what the word “choice” makes it sound like to me. If you choose to love your family, you can also choose not to love them on a daily basis. This doesn’t reflect my own experience in my relationship or my mothering.

At the beginning of this month, a Facebook friend shared a long quote about marriage from a Christian relationship book that seemed to come from this love is a choice philosophy. I did like this part of what she shared: “There are no lessons to be learned when a husband dominates his wife. There are no inspiring examples to emulate when a wife manipulates a husband. But love unlocks the spiritual secrets of the universe. Love blows open eternity and showers its raindrops on us.” (Perhaps I identify because of that rainy wedding of ours!) When I read this book excerpt and the subsequent comments about marriage being the “hardest work of your life” or a “constant challenge” or about how spouses and ourselves can be so “hard to love,” I shared this with her: today [July 1] is my husband’s 35th birthday, the 18th I’ve spent with him. I’ve never found him hard to love and I’ve never found our marriage to be hard work or our relationship a challenge. Quite the contrary in fact—he’s my safe haven and my soft place to land. Now, parenting I find to be a challenge! And, parenting compatibly together is also sometimes hard. But marriage. Marriage is sweet, comfortable, and home.

I then added: not to say that I don’t understand or appreciate that marriage is a struggle/hard/challenge for some couples. I know that it is and I admire the effort and commitment they put into a strong relationship. I just wanted to offer a different experience 🙂 I wish the same for you one day!

And, then when my parents’ celebrated their 38th anniversary two weeks ago, I thought it was high time I asked my mom about this whole “hard work” angle. This is what she said: “Not at all! It’s a union of like-minded, harmonious people. It has always felt absolutely right to me. I’m where I’m supposed to be, with a man I love completely! He’s my best friend. It’s not effortless, but it comes naturally to us!”

I do feel like I had an excellent relationship model. My parents are super cute and they like each other a lot and always have. They argue about things sometimes and have the occasional bump, but I’ve never seen them working hard at being married, only delighting in it. Maybe I’m just getting hung up on semantics, but I just have a personal pet peeve about that descriptor and I don’t know that it is the best message to give to people approaching their own marriages. I think about birth, of course: yes, sometimes we give the, “it is hard work, but you can do it and it is SO worth it” message about giving birth and maybe it is the same with the marriage message, but I like to share a, “birth is an awesome, empowering miracle and I hope you love it” opinion and I like to offer other couples the same sentiment about marriage.

And, because I can’t think of anywhere else to put it and yet I want to share, here is a picture of the totally awesome, totally homemade German chocolate cake I made for Mark for his birthday this month. In 14 years of marriage and 18 birthdays with him, I’ve never made him a real one before. I’ve done mixes and canned frosting, but I don’t like coconut. This year I decided to make a homemade one (with add-your-own-coconut-to-the-icing-if-that’s-your-thing) and it was unbelievable. It had 7 eggs in it, weirdly–4 in the icing and 3 in the cake. Who knew?!

Another Pinterest Day!

Jul14

Yesterday we had another Pinterest Day. It was so exhausting that I’m going to not do another one for a couple of weeks! Alaina has been incredibly whiny and demanding and getting into everything all the time, often destroying things—so, it is really difficult to do fun stuff with the other kids, when someone else is complaining on my hip and sticking her hand down my shirt to twist my nipples half the time. So, our Pinterest projects of awesomeness were shaded by an overlay of intense crabbiness on my part. Boo! 😦 We expanded the definition to include “stuff we want to make” too. So, for lunch we had the best ever grilled cheese sandwiches that we just created, not from Pinterest. Mine had sautéed organic spinach and mushrooms added to the top of organic mozzarella and provolone all on (totally non-organic) french bread. Yummy, yum, yum!

Also, from our own heads we decided to make caramel apples using super delightful little Kraft caramel bits and organic apples from the food co-op:

Can you tell which one we made last?

After lunch the boys were excited to try these microwave chocolate chip cookies that looked super simple and easy. However, results were poor and I didn’t even both trying to make the pictures look better using Instagram. We made Zander’s first and since it still look squishy after the allotted time, we roasted the heck out of it and it was crunchy and burned on the bottom. The choco chips turned into powdery relics (that were kind of tasty). Lann deemed his a, “mega sugar bomb” and left it abandoned on the table. We didn’t put enough butter in his, I guess, because it was just loose crumbles.

We tried again with mine and it was no better.

My assessment is that this was about as tasty and texturally appealing as leaving a small bowl of egg, flour, and sugar on your dashboard on a hot day. Epic fail all around!

Pinterest Day dinner was vastly more successful: a cheesy, wild rice and spinach casserole and “crispy roast potatoes.” The potatoes called for “duck fat,” which is not one of my personal kitchen staples, so I used olive oil. I also sliced them in the food processor rather than into chunks.

Verdict: totally delicious.

The casserole was a modified version of this recipe. I added spinach and didn’t use chicken (or any of the veggies called for, other than dried, minced onion and garlic). Mark and I enjoyed it, the kids didn’t really.

Nice glass of strawberry wine to help me recover from Pinterest Day adventures with Alaina!

We’ve actually had other Pinterest Days in between the first one and this one. On the fourth of July I made several things, including homemade Payday bars that I was absurdly pleased with:

Definite win with these! Next time I’ll just stir the peanuts in though rather than layering them on the bottom on the top, where they had a tendency to pop out and roll away.

Pinterest Day!

Jun22

Last Friday, my oldest son suggested that we have a “Pinterest Day–all the stuff we do today comes from Pinterest!” So, I said okay and we had an overall delightful day. It was not without some pain (details + photo to follow) and it was shockingly exhausting too. We decided to keep up the trend perhaps on each Friday. It is so easy to pin-it-and-forget-it, or to pin things that you have no intention of ever doing (I joke that I need a separate board titled, “things I like to pretend I’m going to do some day). I also got Instagram on my phone finally and so in this post you will also be treated to random, not very skillful edits of the pictures of our various projects…

The boys were super excited and took some pictures of themselves while waiting for me to get ready:

Zander chose first and we made these peanut butter cheerio treats. We used organic chocolate o’s from Big Lots, rather than the called for PB Cheerios. We also used giant, ridiculous marshmallows also from Big Lots rather than the mini mallows called for:

They were pretty delicious.

Lann chose to make these homemade “Cheez-Its.”

The results were clearly a case for which this meme was created:

I’d put the dough in the fridge between waxed paper and the paper somehow melted/fused into the dough. It was almost impossible to roll out–not to mention took FOREVER to scrape away all of the melted in waxed paper. I guess we added too much water–it went from crumbles to sticky very suddenly. I thought chilling it would solve the issue, but I probably should have just added more flour.

It was too sticky to cut before baking, so I cut them afterward. They were not crunchy, but guess what, they were delicious. We ate them all up and Mark didn’t even get to try one!

Then, we decided to make homemade shrinky dinks using hard-to-find #6 plastic. We located some minimal amounts from cracker/cookie packages and the boys had fun making their designs while Alaina tried to snag all the permanent marks and rip their lids off:

They sort of really worked…

Then, Pinterest Day devolved into PAINterest day when after getting up from naptime, Alaina accidentally stabbed me full-force in the wide open eye with a corner of one of the shrinky dinks.

It was horrible. I thought I might be permanently damaged. I thought I would probably have to go to the doctor. I thought my eyeball was possibly punctured. It burned, it watered. I couldn’t open it. It felt like it had a chunk of gravel stuck in it. By the next morning though it was down to feeling a little sandy/gritty and by that night it was totally back to normal. What a relief!

Despite my suffering, the fun had to go on and we made these utterly fabulous potatoes to have with dinner:
They tasted like good fried potatoes, only they were baked. After the painstaking slicing of the potatoes into thin slices (which Mark then informed me I could have done with the food processor rather than by hand), I sprinkled them with 3TB olive oil, 1TB of italian seasoning, and 1ts of salt. I also sprinkled them with Parmesan cheese and they baked for probably over 40 minutes. Very delicious. We’re having them again tonight. Official Pinterest win!

I also need a pinboard titled, “Nutella in ALL THE THINGS!” Couldn’t resist making at least one Nutella recipe–these weird little cookies:

Only three ingredients: 1 cup Nutella, 1 c. flour, and one egg. They turned out pretty dry, but quite delicious and we quickly scarfed them all down. We made them again the next day and I used half the flour thinking I was a genius and they were super floppy, greasy, and kind of gross flat cookies then.

We continued with a carb-heavy dinner and made these supposedly delightful 30 minute dinner rolls:

They were so-so. Tasted lots more like biscuits or a quick bread even though they used yeast. I make good bread already, so I really shouldn’t have experimented and should have stuck with my existing, delightful recipe that is plenty easy and turns out tastier.

On Father’s Day we continued our pinteresting lives by making homemade Reese’s eggs:

I used melted Ghiradelli chocolate chips for the outside. Some milk chocolate, some dark chocolate. In case you can’t tell from the picture, they were totally awesome. Will definitely make again. They were pretty fast too.

So, now, here is it Friday again! And…despite the eye-incident from PAINterest day, we decided to give it another go. An abbreviated version today since the boys went to see the Wizard of Oz at the theater in town with my parents and are there now (and Alaina is napping and this post is taking me WAY longer to write than it should, especially because no one really cares!!!)

But, I surprised the kids this morning with the “cookie dough popsicles I made and froze last night so they’d be ready for Pinterest Day today…

I used chocolate almond milk and mini chocolate chips and 1/3 cup of brown sugar and some vanilla. I shouldn’t have used the sugar, because they would have been sweet enough with it! I froze them in ice cube trays with toothpick sticks, so they were mini-popsicles/bite size.

Alaina was pleased with them too:

We also took a take two at the homemade Cheez-Its. They turned out different this time. I also did away with the waxed paper and the chilling and the rolling and just dropped them on the sheet with a spoon. Still delicious and still nothing like a cracker!

Pinterest Day was a really fun experience overall and I highly recommend it, because really, what is the point of pinning all that stuff if you just go back the next day and pin more and never actually DO any of it? (or even remember you pinned it!) I think this is our new Friday fun plan! 🙂

The Great Birth (of the Universe)

Jun19

I love it when someone writes with passion, heart, depth, and poetry about natural and scientific phenomena and as such greatly enjoyed an essay by Brian Swimme in the book Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminist Philosophy. As an educator and a homeschooling mother (as well as a former homeschooler myself), I also appreciated his telling observation that (formal) education is a major cause of the “lobotomy” of which he writes: “…by the time they are done training us as leaders for our major institutions, we have only a sliver of our original minds still operative. What sliver is left? …the sliver chiseled to perfection for controlling, for distancing, for calculating, and for dominating. The rest has been sacrificed in the surgery of patriarchal initiation” (p. 16).

Since most children spend 12 years minimum steeped in this educational culture, is it any wonder that we find ourselves in our current social and political conditions? This surgery of which Swimme speaks leads to a mechanical conception of the operations, functioning, and majesty of the universe, meant to be analyzed rather than marveled over.

Rather than a Big Bang, the birth of the universe is much more aptly described in terms of a Big Birth: “Not bombs, not explosions, not abhorrence…a birthing moment, the Great Birth. To miss the reality of birth in these scientific facts is to miss everything. It is to sit at the heavily laden table and starve. For here is a great moment in human consciousness. Now for the first time in all of human history we have empirical and theoretical evidence of a reality that has been celebrated by primal people for millennia…the mathematics of this initial, singularity of space/time are not enough. We require song and festival and chanting and ritual and every manner of art so that we can establish an original and felt relationship with the universe…our universe is quite clearly a great swelling birthing event, but why was this hidden from the very discoverers of the primeval birth? The further truth of the universe was closed to them, because central regions of the mind were closed…I am sensitive to the charge that poetry [like this] is just an ‘addendum’–that what are real are the empirical facts, while the rest is commentary. On the contrary, what is true is that this universe is a stupendous birth process, an engendering reality…” (p. 19).

This is the kind of theapoetics that makes me swoon! What would our world, our culture, the way in which we give birth, and the way in which women are treated look like if we grew up with a Great Birth rather than a Big Bang?

Swimme continues: “From a single fireball the galaxies and stars were all woven. Out of a single molten planet the hummingbirds and pterodactyls and gray whales were all woven. What could be more obvious than this all-pervasive fact of cosmic and terrestrial weaving? Our of a single group of microorganisms, the Krebs cycle was woven, the convoluted human brain was woven, the Pali Canon was woven, all part of the radiant tapestry of being. Show us this weaving? Why, it is impossible to point to anything that does not show it, for this creative, interlacing energy envelops us entirely. Our lives in truth are nothing less than a further unfurling of this primordial ordering activity…Women are beings who know from the inside out what it is like to weave the Earth into a new human being” (p. 21, emphasis mine).

So, if the patriarchal initiation of modern education doesn’t do the job, what should we teach our children? “We will teach our children at a young age the central truth of everything: that this universe has been weaving itself into a world of beauty for 15 billion years, that everything has been waiting for their arrival, for they have a crucial if unknown role to play in this great epic of being. We will teach that their destinies and the destinies of the oak trees and all the peoples of Earth are wrapped together. That the same creativity suffusing the universe suffuses all of us, too, and that together we as a community of beings will fashion something as stupendous as the galaxies” (p. 22).

I believe this is ecofeminism in practice.

Z is Six Already!

May29

On Memorial Day weekend six years ago, this is what I looked like:

Polka dot bathing suit…never worn before or since… (date on picture is wrong, really taken the 28)

A couple of hours later, this is what I looked like:

Zander’s first nursing.

I can hardly believe that he is SIX already! I feel like my oldest kid should be six, not my second one! Zander is amazing. He is super funny—perhaps the funniest kid around—he is also brave and spontaneous and silly and witty and kind of wild. He is impulsive and smart, draws great pictures, and comes up with the most off-the-wall comments about life. He has a fabulous imagination that is always working overtime. He has a flair for the dramatic and a tendency towards the gruesome and macabre. He is a great brother—he is the most generous of my kids and is always looking out for his brother.

Zander’s birth story.

Couple of pictures to share of current Zander!

Drawing is one of his favorite activities!

Attitude!

Big enough to drive a go-kart himself!

I love this series of photos that sums up his feisty, imaginative spirit!

What’s this?!

Mysterious stranger in my living room…

A different look with wild hair now…

Oh! It’s really Zander! My Zander!

And birthday party fun!

Carefully constructed Star Wars cake for his birthday party–homemade orange frosting colored with natural dye, first-ever try at making layers, and ample toys to make up for many failings!

For Zander’s birthday party on Monday we dressed in our matching Creeper t-shirts (Minecraft)!

Yep, we’re a little geeky. Creeper shirts from thinkgeek.com

Polymer Clay Goddess Experiments

May13

A couple of months ago, I attempted to branch out from my usual style of polymer clay goddess figures (see past birth art posts). I’m not particularly satisfied with any of them, but I had this post saved in my drafts to share pictures of them anyway! I have some new translucent sculpey that I’ve been working with without very satisfactory results. It is stickier and meltier than regular sculpey, which makes it a challenge to work with. The figures don’t hold their shapes/poses as well while baking and the clay also folds into itself and sticks very firmly and it is hard to reposition/refigure things after having let it stick accidentally before you’re ready). Anyway, I tried to make this sort of “siren” (double-tailed mermaid) figure first and she’s all right:

I also tried a figure using only the translucent sculpey. She turned out looking like she should glow in the dark!

I also had a vision of making a sculpture with a small “offering bowl” in which you could place a crystal or something else. She kind of sagged over to one side in the oven though. She is my first figure with a face too!

So, I tried again. This one sits on her own (leaning back very far), but I burned her by mistake!

So, I tried one more time. This one I used gold pigment on and I don’t really like how she turned out either. Back to the drawing (sculpting) board, I guess. After this third attempt I kind of gave up on my vision and haven’t tried to make any more in this style again.

At the same time that I was experimenting with these figures, I also experimented with using a rubber stamp and pigment to make a flat disk of sculpey with the embossed sort of impression of my Goddess of Willendorf stamp on it. I then used that disk when I took a class in making a stained glass panel:

My panel is on the left and Mark’s is on the right:

Then, this past weekend I became ordained as a priestess (more about this later) and after that ceremony I decided to make another figure to add to my series. I’ve never made a standing figure before and she needs some work. I’m lukewarm about her–she didn’t turn out the way I’d envisioned and I need to experiment some more before I really add her to my series of 3-D journaling sculptures.

Book Review: To Err is Common

May7

To Err is Common
by Margot Terrence
Paperback: 340 pages
Publisher: Prisyon Publishing (November 21, 2011)
ISBN-13: 978-0983872207
http://www.toerriscommon.com

Reviewed by Molly Remer, Talk Birth

Written by a hospital Risk Manager, To Err is Common is a “truvel” that explores the ins and outs in the lives of the nurses at a large hospital and the various mistakes and medically negligent events that occur therein. Deemed a “truvel” because it is a novelization of true events, To Err is Common brings to startling and distressing life the reality that almost 200,000 patients die in American hospitals every year due to medical mistakes and hospital-acquired infections.

While overall a compelling narrative, the dialogue is somewhat stilted and feels wooden in its delivery and the characters do not feel particularly well-developed.

While the truvel definitely has a moral about the laziness or apathy of some medical care practitioners, there is also a recognition of the human nature of mistakes. While some mistakes are due to negligence and involve unethical cover-ups, many are simply “honest” accidents with profoundly awful consequences.

To Err is Common confirmed some of my fears, perceptions, and lack of trust in the decision-making capacities, skills, and motivations of many in the medical profession. It is interesting and valuable reading for nursing school students or for anyone interested in process and practice of medical care.

—

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes.

300 Things

Mar23

Step out onto the Planet

Draw a circle a hundred feet round

Inside the circle are

300 things nobody understands, and, maybe

nobody’s ever really seen.

How many can you find?

–Lew Welch

I’ve almost finished reading the book Earth Prayers and the above is one of my favorites from the book. It was actually the first one I randomly opened to when I first got the book last year and then it jumped out at me again this week (when I finally got to it in sequential order).

I’ve had some exhausting days with Alaina lately. She’s getting four molars and is super whiny as well as just generally a “baby on wheels,” constantly wanting to move and grab and get and explore. I feel worn out—body, brain, and spirit. However, earlier this week, I went outside with her to play in the rain and I think I found some of those 300 things:

Noah's tree bloomed again!

Alaina specifically picked a spot on the deck where the rain was dripping through the gutter and stood under the drips experimenting with the feeling of getting dripped on.

Look at those great arm segments, as well as the little hands thinking about catching raindrops.

This is one of her faces that I most love--she does this fabulous little head-cocked-to-one-side-question-look that is ADORABLE!

Baby on wheels running in the rain! See that face? Those little feet?

Literally a baby on wheels now. I love watching her climb onto her little bike. It is a lot of work for short legs, but she does it.

Another one of her best faces--little squinchy, "eee" face!

A better look at that cute little squinched up "being bratty" face!

Hey! Mama has a face too!

Check out the baby curls. And, check out the "challenge" stand and also Z's defensive face...she is fond of wrecking just about everything they do lately.

Mama collapsed in toddler induced exhaustion on the floor. Then, I got jumped on. Her expression is that grating, "eeehhhh" sound that she is making that drills through my skull.

There are women who make things better…
simply by showing up.
There are women who make things happen.
There are women who make their way.
There are women who make a difference.
And women who make us smile.
There are women of wit and wisdom who –
through strength and courage –
make it through.
There are women who change the world everyday…
Women like you.

~ Lisa Young

Then, today, after feeling again like I was being drained in body, mind, and spirit and feeling frustrated, annoyed, and headachy (I swear the tone of voice she uses drills straight into my brain and saps my life force!), I went outside and took a 300 things walk with her. It was wonderful.

My favorite dogwood tree bloomed. I love how this one is shaped like a tree that should be in front of a Japanese temple.

After admiring this tree, I lamented how we don’t have any pretty redbud trees in our woods. Then, my 300 things eyes snapped like a magnet into the woods beyond this dogwood and lo and behold there WAS a redbud there. We walked down to it and I took a close up picture of one branch:

The profile! Look at the glee of being outside.

Earlier in the week I also mentioned how I didn’t have any violets and should dig some up to transplant from my mom’s house. Well, look what happens when you go on a 300 things walk? It turns out there are plenty of violets right next to our front porch.

This is one of my favorite pictures that I took on our walk.

Friendly hound. Earlier was licking butter off my skirt (Alaina is fond of eating straight butter)

Clouds!

Approaching priestess rocks in wood--I love this overlook.

Looking like most precious ragamuffin ever to be found standing on the rocks in the woods!

Love that I accidentally caught both the reaching, straining arm and the pointing, desirous finger!

Looking a little stormy. Have I mentioned how I love these woods?

I sat on the rocks and noticed a blue jay flying in the woods. I thought about how many things live their lives in these woods without anyone even noticing. I thought about how there was only one redbud on the whole hillside. Then, looked to my right and suddenly there was another redbud I had overlooked before. And, another blue jay flew above it…

How many can you find?