at 7:19 a.m. this morning the phone rang. it was the post office in our small little town (since the general store closed down last summer, the post office and the methodist church are the only thing in town next to several houses).

10,000 honeybees were waiting for us and i don't think they wanted to wait until our normal 3:30 pm delivery time to get them out of their office. kenny and rowan hopped in the car and went to pick them up.

it certainly is that time of year again...the time to dig in the dirt and enjoy the mess. warm temperatures and sunny skies have been dominating the cloudy weather lately. i can't wait for this book to come out next month. i plan on finding some fun stuff to do outside all summer long!

kenny's been wanting to plant trees for a while now, so we spent yesterday evening planting three new fruit trees in our yard. our orchard trees are old and produce maybe a pear once a year or so. there are three diseased trees, so we're cutting those down and we replaced them with three healthy, brand new cherry trees (2) and a peach tree.

we've been planning out our vegetable garden. if you remember from last year, we had many a critter problem (including our very own beloved chickens!), so the first order of business is to dig a trench and put up a fence. a small one, but a fence nonetheless.  no broccoli or pole bean will go in the ground until that fence is up. we're getting a little nutty this year: we're going to do a few rows of corn and maybe some potatoes, sweet potatoes and soybeans! i'm hoping to really can a bunch of tomatoes and beans and pickles this year.

go celebrate this fine earth we've been given to cultivate! get your hands in the dirt and get dirty and muddy today! happy earth day!

please join me in wishing our beloved chickens a happy birthday today! a year ago on this date, it was frigid...20 degrees and windy and we bundled up and headed west to pick up a small box of squeaky chicks. today, not one of those chickens would be able to fit into that small little box.

we've lost only two chickens in one year, and that is remarkable. the other day, rowan asked me, "will the 14th and the 15th chicken that got taken by the hawk and run over by the car turn one this week too?" and then sawyer asked if we stay with jesus forever in heaven when we die, and then the conversation got way too complicated and difficult for me to continue on a 3- and 4-year-old level, so i quickly changed the subject and decided it was lunchtime at 10:30.

any way...

we celebrated today with homemade BBQ sauce over baked chicken (ha! get it?!), rice, and green beans. we have cupcakes to eat and share with the chickens tomorrow. they love leftovers, those chickens!

last week, when serina and i were sitting in crawling traffic inside the liberty tubes (who knew that there was a wikipedia source for the liberty tubes?!), we chatted about the struggle of Everywoman in america today: the desire to raise goats and sheep.

fortunately, we are of one mind on this issue (well, she more than i, but i'm getting there), so we were able to talk up our dreams and encourage each other that it was within reach. and that's where my problem begins.

i don't know if it was the culture in which i was raised, or the culture in which i started to make my own adult decisions, but at one point along those lines, i realized that i love to consume. new things. bright, shiny things that make my life so much easier, faster, and stress-free. and then recently, since meeting kenny at least, i became aware that that isn't necessarily a good thing. especially when you are a professing follower of Christ.

so then kenny and i began daydreaming one day over our sunday morning fairly-traded coffee at the bagel warehouse about moving out to the country and raising not only a family, but animals. that can help us live more simply. fast foward 6 years, and here we are: acreage, 3 boys, chickens, honeybees, enough grass to pasture several more animals, and a barn (that needs a bit of a fixin') to house more animals. we are in the position to live an incredibly simple life, eating our own (chicken) eggs, drinking our own (cow or goat) milk, shearing our own sheep, and working good and hard to make this life possible. we have enough land to garden organically, put up jars and cans of fruit and vegetables, we even have a small orchard of fruit trees (that do need some pruning, but could probably produce fruit again some day). we have a huge laundry line out back and i only air-dry a fraction of our laundry in the spring and summer.

so why do i still feel the need (or desire?) to go to Target, Sams, Barnes and Noble, and Giant Eagle (local grocery chain) to provide almost everything that we can grow/provide ourselves? we have this simple life in reach, and yet i push it away and still want to buy, buy, buy!

and not only that, i want to look good doing it. not me, per say, because i've already landed the man of my dreams...but my home. i want a pristine home, bursting with spring flowers, summer bounty, autumn foliage, and serene scenes of winter. our current chickens are free-range and they've torn up the base around most of our trees, and they dig up all the flower beds, not to mention they leave their droppings everywhere, including the front porch.

we've been spending the majority of our days on the outside of the house lately. it feels great to not need a coat, and to roam the yard again without heavy boots and deep snow keeping us from walking easily.

maybe it's because this yard has so much more foliage and life beneath the ground than our old yard did...but this year again, i'm surprised (by joy, of course) at the new buds forming on the otherwise dead-looking tree branches, and the bright green shoots sticking up out of the earth after a long hibernation. even though we're expecting it, it's always surprising that life returns after such a long, cold, dead winter.

i spent the day in the city on saturday. my friend serina and i (and her 5-month-old son, asher!) headed out bright and early to the salvation army fabric fair. we didn't realize just how nuts the fair actually is until we tried to maneuver our way through the crowds. i tried two or three times to browse through the patterns/book table, but the ladies wouldn't budge. these women meant business. we did score on some great new fabirc (cheap!) but made our way through as carefully as we could without getting hurt. :)

that afternoon, i met kenny and the boys (and my mom) at our old church for the shape note workshop i was so excited about. it was a lot of fun to sing in a group again (i rarely get this opportunity anymore since i'm not the singer in the family), and it was interesting learning a bit more about it. but kenny and i made the same observation about the actual singing: at this point, we'd much rather listen to it sung (by those who sing it a lot!) than to sing it ourselves. there was a huge need to pay attention to the line of music that you'd sing, and i honestly can't remember actually hearing the music being sung because i was too intent on getting the notes right. so i keep listening to the pieces from the Awake My Soul web site to get my fix.

in the warmth of the afternoon sun on sunday, we labored in the garden. now i know that this is (an example of) the type of work that God requires us to abstain from on the 7th day of the week...but seriously, is it work when it's so enjoyable? when it's all you've been wanting to do for the past three months of frozen temperatures? because it felt great to see the ground again, and to see the garden getting ready to be a bed of growth again. the boys helped us with their garden tools while adam napped. we breathed in the earth, the sun, the tractor diesel fumes....  if there is one thing i'd like to do away with, it's the tractor diesel. i wish there were such a thing as an affordable, green tractor that would make all the rest of our organic gardening and earth-keeping worth it. perhaps one day, the barn will be fixed up enough to house a few goats and sheep. because they're the perfect earth-friendly tractors around.

AND...we lost another chicken today. it was one of the black and white ones (silver laced wyandottes) - the ones i call george washington (they look just like him!). we believe she was hit by a car as she was lying, wings sprawled, in our rock/shrub garden. we're not sure it was a natural landing that put her there, or if someone put here there after doing the damage. she's had a proper burial and yes, we told the boys. and this after we were just telling someone how we've never lost a chicken to traffic, even though they freely walk in the street on a daily basis (cars normally slow down, honk, or stop). this puts our daily egg count down to about 10-11. thank goodness for friends who readily take eggs off our hands.

we recently got ourselves into a lot of trouble, kenny and i. we made the big mistake of purchasing two packages of playmobil knights and swords for rowan and sawyer's easter baskets. 

it was a bit of an embarrassment when they kept calling the swords, "pokey things" and kept asking what to do with the shields, and wondering just why they needed "metal" armor on top of their clothes. we made an even bigger mistake by then getting the take-along playmobil castle complete with 84 more knights, 115 swords and shields, and one horse.  when they opened this up, the questions kept coming: "what does this pokey thing do?" "why does this man have a feather in his helmet?" "is it cold out? is that why they need these big hats to cover their faces?" "why do they have to protect the castle?" "what princess?" "what bad guy?"

i think it's time to introduce our 3- and 4-year-old boys to knights in shining armors, princesses-in-distress, and real-life heros like st. george. fortunately, we celebrate this day on the 23rd of this month. i just found a half price copy of St. George and the Dragon (even though it's a fictitious story of the actual St. George, who I'm learning is not actually British!), but i'm hoping it will enhance their castle-play at the very least.

are there any other recommendations for knights and castle and medieval stories for young children who don't know that a sword isn't really an inch tall and made of plastic?

when i first came across the web site for the movie Awake My Soul, i was struck. kenny sent it to me just two nights ago, and i still can't get that music to leave my head. i scoured the web site for further information on this "shape note singing" and almost mysterious, however historical, hymnal, the Sacred Harp. i then scoured the internet for further information on this type of singing, this type of worship. i love this artist's vision of shape note singing.

that music is so...haunting? spiritual? weird? freakish? beautiful? intriguing? i still can't find a good description for it. i almost told kenny that i wanted to up and take a long drive into the heart of the south to find a sacred harp singing group or church so we could experience first-hand this singing.

fortunately, kenny and i have the opportunity to attend a shape note singing workshop next weekend. i'm STOKED.

i hope we have the opportunity to see the film very soon, however it doesn't exist at netflix, and it doesn't seem to be on the local PBS schedule anytime soon (anyone reading this have a copy we could borrow?).

i'll report back on our experience. if anyone else reading this has shape note (or sacred harp) singing experience, please chime in!

i wanted to come on here and post about our easter sunday, our easter weekend, our day of eggs and week of leftover ham to come.

but i got nothing.

don't get me wrong, the boys looked stunning in their (1/2-size-too-small for them) double breasted suits and ties, dinner was a lovely time blessed with friends and family, candy-in-baskets abounded, and we even survived strep throat (rowan did). i even have some pictures to prove how lovely our easter weekend was.

but i probably won't post them just yet.

Easter Sunday is one of the most incredible days of the Christian calendar. growing up, i remember this day to be special and happy, with lots of "He is Risens!" being passed around, and a more fancy dinner to follow the Sunday morning church service. i remember Good Friday services consisting of 7 different ministers delivering sermons on the "7 last words of Christ." yes, that's SEVEN sermons in one evening. and of course, i remember easter baskest and jelly beans (i'm still addicted to jellybeans!)

but it wasn't until college when i attended a very artsy (read: there was liturgical dance!) tenebrae service that i realized the sombre or maudlin or HOLY nature of Holy Week. and then after college, falling in love with liturgical worship...going through Lent and Holy Week with Christ, and experiencing Easter on a whole new level of joy.

this past week was a busy one. our little small-town church is going through a season of change. it might be a brief season, it might stretch out into months or years of change. who knows? so a few of the members, including kenny, had a lot of big jobs to accomplish before each of the services on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. and i was worried about getting the house cleaned and food prepared for our Easter Sunday dinner. it should have been one of the more minor things on my mind, or on my heart. i should have been exerting my mary spirit and squelching my martha one. ;) i wish i could say that my easter week was contemplative and focused.

or focused correctly.

i love hosting meals, and i love gatherings with friends and family. i did prepare easter baskets and we dyed easter eggs with the boys. and i do think these are important parts of these big holidays: it's fun to share traditions, and see how others' traditions are alike or different. Sunday's Easter service was beautiful and joyful and I was able to worship and be joyful in the spirit of the resurrection (even while wrestling with a 20-month-old during communion, and trying to quiet the tears of a 4-year-old after the 3-year-old kicked him in the nose at the back of the church...but Jesus loves the little children, so I don't think he really minded the noise).

but i just hope that next year, next Easter, the next time we observe the reason why we are followers of Jesus, i want to be focused more on the cross and the empty tomb, and less on the dust on our piano.

we've gone straight from never-ending snow to never-ending rain. which means it's at least above freezing, so i really can't complain.

but it's not been warm. we've only been making it into the high 30s and mid 40s at best our local weathermen are really trying to push us into spring with forecasts in the 50s. we're nowhere near.

but, the longer days, and the never-ending rain is doing something. there are green shoots in our flowerbeds, there is a light greenish hue (albeit splotchy) coming back to the grass and...the ladies started a-layin' again!

My brother recently posted about the things that are always in his fridge. It wasn't a meme, but i'm going to give it a go as well. And now he can have an opportunity to harp on something that I have in our fridge like I did with his diet coke. :)

So...what is usually always in our fridge/freezer:

4 gallons of milk delivered each week. It's hormone-free, but not organic. It's a price thing.
Mayonnaise. Except we're currently out. But it's Kenny's favorite. For sandwiches and fries.
Yogurt. A lunch-staple for three boys who don't share with their momma.
A big ol' chunk of cheddar cheese. Adam and Sawyer prefer the extra sharp.
Endameme. (freezer) Rowan and Sawyer beg for this. It's such an easy snack, but they love eating it alongside of macaroni and cheese. It's a dinner we have at least once every other week. Usually on nights when a babysitter is coming and Kenny and I are eating out! I'd love to grow it in our garden...it's all over the corn fields here in late summer!
6 empty mason jars, no lids. (freezer) the perfect glass for an icy cold beer or water on those hot days.

so there...nothing earth-shattering. this used to be a question asked in a celebrity interview section of the LIVING section of the weekend paper. and i loved the "fridge-lists" that i felt matched the celebrity's personality. for instance, you'd probably be able to visualize the interviewee when they answered, "perrier, prawns, and pate" or "beer, mustard, and yesterday's primanti's leftovers."

so i'd love it if you, readers, either left me a comment with things always found in your fridge (we can limit it to 3-4 things if you want), or blog about it yourself and let me know that you've blogged it.

i've been neglecting this blog. the boys (and kenny) have been fighting small colds over the past 3-4 weeks...and i seem to have developed a knack for getting sinus troubles for the first time ever. not fun at all. it's a good thing i only have a handful of blog readers and i'm not paid for blog advertising. because once life gets busy, or filled with sick days, the blog is the first thing to be neglected.

is anyone else finding this st.-patrick's-day-during-holy-week a bit...well, off? this week is so full of big things...st. patrick's day today, the first day of spring on thursday, and then all of this smack dab in the middle of Holy Week! if it were up to me, st. patty's day would be a celebration in its own week, a few weeks later, we could celebrate the first day of spring (like we did last year) and then a few weeks after that, celebrate easter. it seems weird to have spring and st. patrick's day celebration during the somber Holy Week.

even though it is a holy week, we will still observe all of it:

• today is all about st. patrick! i'm making traditional corned beef (a recipe from my friend amy), boiled potatoes, carrots, and whiskey cake for dessert. the boys will have pistachio pudding (green!) with whipped cream and green sprinkles since the whiskey isn't cooked off on the cake (it's poured all over with melted butter!). i was just reading this interesting fact about the color of st. patrick. i prefer blue as none of us really have any green clothes. or orange clothes, if you're protestant. or conservative. or...dad? jonathan? help me out. why orange?

• thursday is the first day of spring and last year we made a big bunny cake (see link above). it took over the kitchen, and we're hosting an easter dinner on sunday, so i think something on a smaller scale would be better. i'm thinking easter-egg cupcakes or these cute birds nests?

• there are several church services this week, and it's nearly impossible to take 3 boys under the age of 4 to all of them without upsetting their sleeping schedules. especially since we're still recovering from daylight savings last week! i made the realization this week that our boys have never done an easter egg hunt. and...I have never done an easter egg hunt as a child. it's not my parents' fault. i think my church thought easter egg hunts were of the devil or something, so there was never an opportunity for us. my parents did hide our easter baskets on easter morning, though! and there is one at our church this week after the easter service, so they'll finally participate. here's the problem: i have a tendancy to be very competitive, and i'll want to dive into the church lawn and gather up as many eggs as i can possibly find and give them all to my boys. but the cute little kids in our church are their friends, and those kids' parents are our friends. so i'm not allowed to be competitive during this easter egg hunt. something about losing friends and minding my manners...you know. what adults are supposed to be like. i'm a little worried about my participation in our boys' involvement in organized sports.

happy st. patty's day! happy first day of spring. but most importantly...a blessed Easter to all of you!

i've got some great jokes for you. so next time you're in a joke-telling situation around the water cooler, at a playdate, or where-have-you, you'll be all set.

it all started last night at the dinner table:

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rowan: mommy, can you tell me a joke?
me: (i didn't even know he knew what a joke was) um....um..
kenny: i've got one! why did the skunk go to church?
rowan: (laughs hysterically)
kenny: i haven't gotten to the funny part yet.
rowan: oh. (still laughing)
kenny: to sit in his own pew!
rowan: (stops laughing...) (gotta love a 4-year-old's sense of humor). i've got a joke! why did the hurt bird go to church? to sit in a pew! (more laughter)
me: how about this one - why did the chicken cross the road?
rowan and sawyer: (laughs hysterically)
me: to get to the other side!
(no laughter)
sawyer: why did the bird cross the road? ha ha ha ha ha!
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so there you go...jokes to impress all your friends!