catch up

Today was Matt's birthday and the kids and I had a little celebration for him, complete with a special ice cream cake from Baskin-Robbins. We gave him a hat he had been wanting for the rain and had fun eating cake and ice cream.



We finished reading The Secret Garden and really enjoyed it. It inspired some more gardening and Samuel wants to take a class to learn to speak Yorkshire. He was quite taken with the character Dickon and has been going out to learn how to charm the animals. He came running in from his garden today to tell me that the plants like him!

Two books we have enjoyed lately are A Cobweb Christmas by Shirley Climo and Would You Rather by John Birningham. We really loved A Cobweb Christmas, which is the story of how spiders (with some help from Kris Kringle) created tinsel for Christmas trees. And Would You Rather is a great conversation-er book. The kids and I had a lot of fun one night talking about whether we would rather learn to ride a pig or a goat or go up a tree with an elf or...you get the idea. It is a lot of fun. And right on time, too! We were in need of a little fun and connection.

Samuel wanted some litmus paper and we found some at Omsi the last time we went. He has been concocting something in the back yard and keeps checking the pH level of it. We tested vinegar, lemon juice, soap, baking soda, water and different combinations of all of these.

Let's see, we are spending our time playing indoors and out these days. Samuel has his indoor PE class at the indoor soccer place and his riding lessons. One round of art classes is over and I have yet to sign them up for more. We went to see a children's concert through the Oregon Symphony which was enjoyable, although Samuel was disappointed they didn't play the entire composition of Peter and the Wolf and instead played different selections from different songs.

The kids have several games going right now with different locations throughout the house and in the backyard. Dinosaurs, firefighters, one with the power ranger figures living in a playmobil castle and something to do with robots? And of course, the Grinch and Sam-I-Am game, which is on-again-off-again and for now is on-again.

It goes something like this, "Wanna play?"
"Yeah, what?"
"Firefighter game..." and the receiver knows all that this entails.
"Yes!" or "No!" depending.
Sometimes there is bargaining like, "Ok, the t-rexes can be good!" or "Ok, I won't make grumpy kitty part of that game."

This goes on throughout the day and they move between games and past games and sometimes they play together and sometimes they play alone and sometimes they play first together and then alone or first alone and then together or first dinosaurs and then into the Grinch game and sometimes they stop and watch The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat with the Grinch and sometimes they watch Green Eggs and Ham with Sam-I-Am. Either way, the best games seem to be late at night, right when I am thinking we really ought to be going to bed...



This is a one person space craft. Check out the leaves from our prodigious Oak!

Hey, I knit a hat in a day!

I did. I can hardly believe it. AND! I like the hat and can wear it. This week I made my hat, finished up Eva's poncho (with fringe!) and found out how to lengthen a sweater I finished last month. Now I am working on a scarf to go with the hat (I don't usually do scarves because they go on and on and on...) and truth be known I am sort of avoiding the sweater with the two new skeins of yarn I bought this week specifically to lengthen it. To lengthen the sweater requires cutting it and this is something I have never done. To cut into knitting requires a sort of boldness and trust in your skills. I am almost there. No pictures of the poncho yet. I will try and take some tomorrow! And the hat too. Oh and I nearly forgot I finished a hat for Eva as well. Fun.

Recently overheard in our house...

"Hey Samuel, do you want to play?" [Eva]
"No. Not unless the t-rexes can be evil."[Samuel]
"No thank you."[Eva]

"Momma, I make everything into babies because I just love babies!" [Eva]

"We aren't getting any more toys out until I have a chance to vacuum!"[Samuel]

"Momma! Look!"[Eva]



"Isn't she fancy..."[Eva]



"Do you like my sculpture?"[Eva], "Do you like my volcano?"[Samuel]



"Momma! Look at me!"

fennel

There was fennel in my produce basket this week. I am not keen on fennel and I wondered what I would do with it. Would I simply leave it in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks until mold grew on it and then take it out to the compost pile? Would I try a recipe and then freeze the part I didn't like and leave it there for months until I cleaned out the freezer again...Eva found a use for the fennel that was, I believe, far more rewarding for us and the fennel. She used it to line her dinosaur nest and deposited her dinosaur eggs in it.



Eva building her nest with the fennel. The dinosaur eggs (roasted pumpkin seeds from Halloween, of which there is an enormous amount...)



The dinosaur nest with eggs, a stegosaurus nest to be exact.



"I never thought I could be a real dinosaur mother..." she said with awe and satisfaction!



Eva's own photo of the nest and the remains of the fennel (still enough, I suppose, to sit it out in the refrigerator for a while, unless I make a bold move and put it directly in the compost pile tonight! Any fennel fans out there, we have some extra!)

Boo!

Samuel as Darth Vader and Eva as a princess.



Samuel dressed up his pumpkin as Darth Vader also. The candle lights shone through the helmet. Very striking!



Eva's princess pumpkin and my spider pumpkin



Candy! Eva's bag became too heavy for her and I ended up carrying it for her half way through. She stopped trick-or-treating eventually and said she had enough candy and had me carry her the rest of the way. Samuel opted to try for a little more candy...And the funny part is that somewhere along the way someone gave Samuel a bag of Doritos and this bag, out of everything, became the coveted prize of the evening! Who knew?

frost

Wow! we had a frost last night. Wasn't I just talking about fall? The kids got out their hammers and went out to break up what ice they could find. The swimming pool water didn't freeze but the water in the sand box did. Samuel wants to put out little containers tonight filled with water so he has a lot of ice to break up tomorrow morning. This is one of the really fun parts of cold weather and the kids get up each morning to check on the ice!

seasons

What I like about the change of seasons is that they come on slowly. You notice small changes. Like one week there is no longer any zucchini in the produce basket. It begins to rain in earnest. They send green tomatoes and some cabbage and carrots show up and potatoes every week. Suddenly you need to find out what to do with two heads of broccoli and not six zucchini. Both go well with parmesan. The basil is gone but the marjoram still thrives. Thyme will last through winter, as will rosemary. I wonder why I haven't used any thyme for months except in tea and remember the cilantro- gone. No more swallows. Juncos appear. Geese circle 'round our neighborhood again. A bush out front turns red and the blueberry bushes turn red and orange and the oak across the street is glorious. Eva asks why I froze all of the berries and I point out they aren't growing anymore. Where did they go? Remember when the bushes were heavy with berries and we grabbed handfuls every time we went out front, every time we went anywhere in the car.

And then all of sudden it is fall. Our oak is bright red. Our maple is bright yellow. Driving down the street is a symphony of color. The next season is here! You are in it, in the process of the season. No longer wondering when fall will be here, remembering what that feels like, what that smells like. How the trees turn red and yellow and orange. But what RED and YELLOW and ORANGE. Nothing is like seeing it now, again, for the first time. The colors dulled in memory. Wondering about whether the rainfall determines the trees' colors like Grandma Spangler said. Knowing you can't double check, ever, if it was yellow in the rain or red. That is the other thing I like about the change of seasons. All of a sudden you are not in between two seasons, hot and cold, green and red, tomatoes and cabbage. You are in one and not the other. And then it starts again. Just when you are in one and not the other, you're moving into the next. No more persimmons. No more pomegranates. Satsumas! But that is for another time. In another month or two. For now, it is fall.