Delighted

One of the great things about sewing is that it is a gift for both me and for the person I end up giving whatever I've sewn too.  I love the time I get in front of the sewing machine, playing with the fabric that is destined for one certain person, and just smile at the thought of how much they are (hopefully!) going to enjoy their new creation.  For Valentine's Day, I had a bit of camo fabric left for one particular gentleman and while camo and V-day do not necessarily go together, the big fat smile on his face of love and adoration when he got his new robe was definitely in the spirit of the day:

Since Valentine's Day, he has decided it is actually not a robe, but a cloak.  With his iPod tucked into the little camo pocket, he goes outside, grabs the sunflower stalks, and pretends he's Darth Otter.  I would say he is quite delighted with the whole new getup. 

Baby It's Cold Outside

Last week this time, it was -20 outside with the windchill.  Our gardens looked like this:


















While it was freezing outside, Smoosh and I were happily curled up inside doing what we love to do best this time of year; starting to plan out this year's garden.  Smoosh is at the perfect age of enjoying everything there is about gardening - he loves going through the seed catalogs with me, he loves talking about which plants we should grow, and he even loves have a part in helping me clean up the downstairs "grow room" to start planting some of our seeds for the year.  Otter went through this age and now sporadically will jump in and out of the garden conversations.  Beans will get more excited once she actually is able to see flowers and feel the warm air on her little cheekers.  Squeaks just enjoys undoing whatever it is we are doing at the moment, including dumping dirt onto a clean floor, removing seeds from where she thinks we have "hidden them" (in the dirt), etc.  But Smoosh, ahh, Smoosh is right where I am; he can dream it and imagine it and warms up just thinking about it.  One night, he came into the room around 8:30 (an hour past his bedtime!) but I was very happy to let him crawl into bed and look through the pile of seed catalogs I was already purusing.  For 1/2 hour, he quietly thumbed back and forth through the pages, every once in awhile saying "oh, look at dat" or "I didn't know you could grow dat stuff," even an occasional "hmmm, I wonder what dat tastes like."  I don't mind staying up way past a bed time if it includes happily chasing down the dream of this year's garden.

The next day we pulled the catalogs out again and this time actually started the planning.  There are the garden square plots that get printed up and names of plants penciled in, erased, and penciled in again at least 10 times before we can actually plant anything in May.  Smoosh has very definite opinions about what should be planted where and he loves to point at the different boxes and flipping the pages to determine where the plants will be going.  This is a process that will be repeated several times over before the plants are there.

Smoosh and I even pull out the seed packets that have been patiently waiting for us.  We pull out each one, rewrite how many seeds there are, which ones we have, and record the times for seeding, transplanting, and harvesting; as if we do not know by now how long each one will take....we then gently tuck in the container of seeds and tell them we will be back in a few weeks to start planting.

Valentine's Day

Our house makes a big hurrah of Valentine's Day, if for nothing else than it is another reason to create fun things, decorate the table and house in fun ways, and do fun things together.  Everyone had a few Valentine's Day books to read about:









Then there was the preparation of a fun cake and Valentine's Day meal.  The girls were very adamant in having a large role in preparing the food for V-Day meal.  Squeaks helped with baking the cake;

Dark picture, but just needed to show that Ellie had to be a part of the cake making too.

Ooohh yeah, got to make sure the batter taste correct (side note, nice thing about having our own chickens and eggs not even 2 hours old, you don't really worry that much about things like Salmonella....it just doesn't have a chance to grow and makes licking batter such a less death-defying adventure!).

Beans had been planning the meal for Valentine's Day for the past week.  Let me tell you, a lot of thought went into the menu; Macaroni and Cheese and Hot Dogs.  She put a lot of planning into everything for Valentine's Day.  She spent over a week creating bookmarks for her class and just about everyone else she knew.  The night before, she laid out her Valentine's Day outfit complete with matching heart socks.  She reminded Joe and I quite a few times to get all of the ingredients for dinner so she could cook it.  Quite adorable.  

Both girls helped set the table, full of hearts.

One of the cutest things to watch was the excitement Smoosh had over the whole affair.  When we were doing his Valentine's for his class, he would say for each one "I hope so and so likes the card I am giving dem.  I hope I get a card from dem too."  Then, when he came home on Valentine's Day, he was absolutely thrilled with his box of goodies and cards from everyone in the class.  Otter and Beans played into his enthusiasm for him - they are great older siblings....most of the time....

All-in-all, another fun day had by everyone...even Otter who is so quickly outgrowing this type of stuff but thankfully does not mind "pretending" to enjoy it all with the rest of us.

Ice Cream Sandwiches

As part of our snizow dizay, we made some yummylicious ice cream sandwiches.  Yummy.  Squeakers made sure to do everything just as diligently as the others; right down to making sure the utensils were properly "cleaned."

Here Otter, let me show you how to do it.  Obviously there is not enough filling in there.

Ok, where is everyone when it is clean up time?

Snizzzowww Dddiiizzaaayy!

How we spent our snow day:

Cheering on the doggies to plow their way through snow that was higher than them...and to keep trudging so they would get off the deck before they did their business on the snow-buried deck..

...watching "The New Scandanivan Cooking" on Create; which Smoosh in particular enjoyed and wanted to know which dishes we could try right away.  He and Otter both sat there going "ooohhh, that looks good, I wouldn't have thought to add that..." 

...getting our hair did by the littlest one...

...learning the joy of finding a match for a sock from the endless pile of mismatched socks...

...making ice cream sandwiches (more later on these!)...

...creating chair mazes to crawl up, under, and through...

...legoing!! I don't think that is a word, but sounds good to me....

...roasting red peppers for some delicious roasted red pepper soup...

..playing games of "where's dat?"...

...greco-roman wrestling with the boys (well, duh, what else is a 2-year-old supposed to do?  she even went and put on Smoosh's undies because the boys had their shirts off while wrestling and taking the onesie off just left her too bare, good thing the undies took care of that problem)...

...a little cleaning...don't want to get too serious about that venture...

...and, of course, enjoying the snow!  Can you find Otter?

Oh!!  There he is!!!

Checking the Chicken Ladies

A blizzard is headed our way!!  I'm pretty excited.  Squeaks and I still did our normal routine this morning of checking on the chicken ladies and feeding them some extra yummies.  First, we got all of our scrapes from dinner last night.  I also had some leftover orzo pesto that bombed last week.  The chicken ladies tend to be less discriminating in their taste for my cooking than some of the other creatures I tend to.  The snow is too high for Squeaks to walk through, so she always gets the royal treatment in her sled.

Here we come chicken ladies!

Squeaks is loaded up with the failed side dish and scraps from last night.  Calli provides the security detail for our treacherous walk to the coop.

Whatch' ya got for us?!?!?

Yup, looks like they like it......

.....in fact, it looks like they liked it more than anyone else did last week.

YYYuuummm leftover sweet potato enchilada!  All over the beak - need a napkin?

Patiently waiting for us to be done with those silly chickens and out playing with her. 

We closed up their window because they will be getting snow in the coop and I have a feeling those chickens don't like the snow as much as Squeaks and I do!!!

Arborteum Exploring

For a few weeks now, I have promised the kiddos next door that we would all go to the arboretum so they too could join us on adventures of finding turkey tracks and watching birds and all the other excitement that goes with walking around in the woods in the dead of winter.  Today, we finally all got to go and do it!  The van filled quickly with 6 snugly bodies and we were off.

Storytime!  Preadventures - all the explorers getting ready for the adventure by an exuberant reading of Strega Nona.

  In the car, they were given the run down of how, once we are out of the van, we are no longer kids but explorers.  Explorers don't scream, they stay semi-close by, and use everything the correct way (ie binoculars are for looking at birds, not for swinging to hit the nearest explorer with).  But, being explorers, everyone already knew this.  We all got our snow gear on because there was a fresh layer of snow we would have to trudge through.  Unfortunately, one of the explorers did not have a jacket....hhhmmm...the lead of this expedition definitely lost some demerit points for that one.  Thankfully, one of the older explorers shared his jacket with the littlest one.

Squeaker's snowmobile and borrowed winter gear.

The best part about a large exploring party is that the work of corralling the smaller explorers can be spread out!  Everyone was eager to do their part pulling the smallest explorer along, even if that excitement lasted for a few seconds.  There was always another explorer ready to grab the reins of her sled and pull.

This is no small feat to pull her along,
there was some deep snow to go through.

Have you ever seen such lovely snowbunny explorers?

The wiser explorers also helped reminding the more amateur explorers that yelling and screaming had a tendency to scare off the birds, even if their new finding or discovery in the woods was just so darn exciting that it seemed like it required yelling to share, it probably would be better to just whisper it loudly.  I am not quite sure that our youngest explorers have yet found their whispering voice, so there were lots of reminders. Good thing we still spotted a few birds:)

Look at the dedication of that one in the background, on her knees to see the bird!  Thank goodness for snow pants!

Are those the turkeys we have been tracking?!?!?

Aaahhh there is one of the elusive turkeys....

 


















Overall, another successful trip to the arboretum; we spotted 2 hawks and a flock of turkeys moving very fast through the snow covered prairie.  We had the great joy of having new explorers with us who hopefully will come back again with us for other adventures.  Best part of all is the heavy-duty sleeping that certain explorers are about to enjoy right now.

Great fun had by all:)