we seem to have been swallowed up in this deck project. it's a huge project and kenny is a one-man worker. he had help the first day for two hours setting up the thingy-ma-jig that holds the deck to the house. (i know the actual word, but it's 8:29, i've been up since 5:00 this morning, and it's escaping me at the moment.) i actually helped him one day by laying the decking and putting in all the screws.* i have to finish that up eventually and will once the railing is in place.

our yard is suffering. the garden needs to be weeded, the grass needs to be cut. but we're keeping our head above water until it's finished. and it will be very soon. hopefully this weekend. hopefully.

this is the first big project where i was able to actually help out. since having kids, i do a lot of cheerleading on the sidelines of these projects. it feels good to get back at it and actually help out when adam naps and the job doesn't require a whole lot of muscle.

sorry, no pictures (mom!). i have taken a few, but the pictures don't do justice to the deck. i'll take some real pictures once it's completely finished.

so besides the deck work we've been busy entertaining the boys to keep them out of the construction area. last night, kenny found them a frog. rowan loved it. sawyer wasn't so sure. he didn't want to touch the thing, but he was very excited about trying to feed it a worm. after noticing me take a few pictures of the frog in rowan's hands, sawyer demanded i take a picture of his little "wormy." the picture below makes it look more like a cut on his finger, but really, that's the worm. and the camera actually focused on sawyer's sweet face rather than the worm. smart camera.

and what is a week or so without a picture of one of the girls? look! they're beginning to grow their crowns!!! they'll be 10 weeks old on monday.









*i worded that purposefully to make it sound as though i layed all the decking myself. i wanted you all to think i was some strong, do-it-yourself-er. but really, kenny brought each piece up to the deck and helped me with a crowbar to get the wood to lay flat. all i did was screw each piece into place. so it wasn't really a lie. and most of you won't even be reading this...so most of you will think i did do something really important in the building of this deck. besides keeping the boys from falling off of it. which really is the most important in the grand scheme of things. that and building it to make it sturdy and safe. and believe me, it's sturdy.

i am amazed daily at how smart our kids are. at such a young age! i'm convinced it's because their "filters" aren't set up yet. they hear and pay attention to everything.

two days ago, sawyer woke up with a runny nose. we have no tissues in the house. when i noticed his runny nose, i muttered something about "being out of tissues, so i'll just use toilet paper." i thought rowan was busy eating his raisin bran (yeah, we have kids that pick out raisin bran for their breakfast cereal. but that's only because i tell them to pick their favorites from the shelf on MY eye-level and to ignore the shelf at THEIR eye-level. even i can outsmart the grocery store!).

fast forward to our trip to the grocery store. i picked up what we needed and as always, i ask rowan if there is anything else we need. his answer: "tissues, mommy!"

flabberghasted by his memory, i applaud him outloud for remembering that small detail (well, small to me any way)...and forget to pick up the tissues. this is a very common occurance anymore. i am extremely forgetful since having kids. please don't mention "pregnancy brain" - i've heard it a million times.

fast forward to yesterday morning. rowan awakes with sawyer's runny nose and a low-grade fever. so does adam. three runny noses and two low-grade fevers. rowan is the only one that is bothered by this. for the first time in months, rowan takes a nap - he falls asleep of his own accord during their quiet time and wakes up inconsolable. kenny tries to help:

rowan: my nose is running! again!
kenny: that's okay...we'll just go get a tissue.
rowan (in that the-world-is-going-to-end voice): but mommy forgot to get them at the store! (more dramatic crying)

poor little guy. i think maybe he's over it today. although we DID go buy some tissues. and a natural vitamin C booster smoothie drink for all of us (i woke up with it this morning. kenny's bound to tomorrow).

today is the first day of summer! which means the end of the Spring Reading Thing. here is my original post on the books i planned to read. i got through a few of them completely and some of them part-way. i think that's pretty good for a slow-reader who has a million other things to do in her spare time (like every other participant, i'm sure).

i'm already knee-deep in my two other challenges (posted here and here). the boys and i picked up five books from the library the other day and we've read 4 of them a few times through already. rowan's favorite is a book called Farmer Will. we've read it about 54 times already. :)

here is my "Spring Reading Thing" wrap-up:

• What was the best book you read this spring?

The Mommy Manual, hands down.

• What book could you have done without? 

unfortunately, i think i'm the only one who didn't enjoy The Thirteenth Tale. all the reviews i've read of it so far have been extremely positive and i just wasn't impressed.

i also wasn't as impressed as i thought i would be with The Liturgy of Motherhood. i think i wanted more on the "motherhood" part and less on the "liturgy" lessons. i was hoping for a clever weaving of the seasonal liturgies into the busy and somewhat chaotic life of mothering (especially mothering young children). i thought it did too much liturgical teaching and not much life application.

• Did you try out a new author this spring? If so, which one, and will you be reading that author again?

yes. i'd read Flannery O'Connor already, but every other book was written by an author i hadn't previously read. i'd love to read Marilynne Robinson's Gilead after reading Housekeeping for the Spring Reading Thing.

• If there were books you didn't finish, tell us why. Did you run out of time? Realize those books weren't worth it?

i'm still reading Five Quarters of the Orange, The Contented Life, and Sacred Rythms. i just haven't had the time to finish them! but I'm enjoying them a lot. the latter two are non-fiction works and i want to savor them. i could rush through them to "finish" them but i'm enjoying them too much to rush them.

• Did you come across a book or two on other participants' lists that you're planning to add to your own to-be-read pile? Which ones?

katrina mentioned sacred parenting and i'm hoping to pick up a copy of that. and everyone seems to really love lisa samson. so i might pick up one of her books to read eventually.

• What did you learn -- about anything -- through this challenge? Maybe you learned something about yourself or your reading style, maybe you learned not to pick so many nonfiction books for a challenge, maybe you learned something from a book you read. Whatever it is, share!

from the mommy manual: "by the time a child is ready to enter school (kindergarten) it is already determined what kind of adult they're going to be." wow. that's why they call these years the "heavy investment" years.

• What was the best part of the Spring Reading Thing?

 i really liked reading all the reviews and lists of other participants.

• Would you be interested in participating in another reading challenge this fall?

absolutely! and i hope some of my blog readers will join in on the fun!

yesterday started out innocently enough. and then kenny decided it was demo-day. but this is a good thing as it means our deck will be up and ready to offer hospitality on by way of mojitos or coffees (or sippy cups with milk) in no time at all.

for today, i'll post a few "before" pictures. tomorrow perhaps some "during" pictures...and hopefully within the next few weeks, some "after" pictures.

the current "stoop/deck" that doesn't work so well for more than one person to sit on:

but it includes the boys!

it's monday morning. the boys and i are waiting for adam to wake up from his morning nap (his longest nap of the day!) and then we're headed to the library to sign up with the library summer reading club.

and then i found this (left) fun little book challenge (complete with an amazon gift certificate prize!) at a great blog. i'm looking forward to a few lazy afternoons on a blanket in the back yard with the boys...a few rainy days on a blanket in the living room...and many new adventures and stories shared. won't you join in?

i want to wish all the dads in my life a very happy father's day. we had a fantastic day except for the...devastation.

here is another picture from the series of photos i took in the garden JUST LAST NIGHT (by the way, that's mud on adam's rear in the previous post...not chicken poop. there seemed to have been a bit of confusion amongst some of my readers - ha!). this is a photo of the row of lettuce and broccoli (the broccoli is toward the back...all you can see is big, beautiful leafy greens). they were my favorite plants in the garden: a blue-ish green leaf; thick stalks and growing up as well as out.
 

this photo is 10 minutes old. taken just 25 hours after the photo above. the lettuce in the front is gone...the lettuce in the middle is mowed, and the broccoli? sticks. broken sticks. the gorgeous leaves now being digested in the belly or bellies of the three groundhogs that live in our yard.



lets take a closer look at the lack of broccoli in our garden:



they've also munched on our beans and cucumbers.

i know you are all shaking your heads as you read this thinking, "why haven't you gotten that fence we ALL told you to put up as soon as humanly possible?" why didn't we listen to all your advice? because...because...we have no excuse. we're still researching the most effective and cost-efficient (that's my new phrase) fence. and our garden is being eaten from under our noses by the burly little hogs that i have no sympathy for anymore.

another reason we haven't put up a fence yet is because the previous owner, who still lives near us, swears up and down she never needed a fence. they grew tomatoes and other veggies and never had a fence. we believed her. now we're not so sure.

i'll leave you with an image from happier times earlier today. what a great dad kenny is: he hardly got a chance to use his father's day present (a 30-year anniversary edition shakespeare ugly stick, for those readers who are also fishers) today since the two older boys seemed to want to do all the fishing. after the fishing, we ate our grilled burgers and then swam in the lake. all three boys are fishes. we couldn't get them out of the water.



HAPPY FATHER'S DAY, DADS!

since i post a lot about the gardens and gardening that we have, i get asked a lot, "how do you garden with three little boys?" first, a disclaimer: our gardening isn't extravagant. remember those perrenial gardens i post a lot about? they're mostly weeds with a few gorgeous flowers here and there. we just don't have time to weed those beds. at least not this year. we do put time into the vegetable garden.  the day we put in the garden, we worked while adam napped. the older two boys love to help us, or walk around the yard making sure all the chickens are still alive (rowan especially), or play in the sandbox. so it's easy to work with them. it wasn't so easy with a baby who wanted to be held constantly. but recently, he's learned to crawl, has taken a few steps and all he wants to do is be on the ground moving around himself.

so before baths tonight, we decided to do a bit of weeding and watering since it hadn't rained in a few days. we also spread some straw around the tomato plants and caged the rest of them. we continue to harvest leaves from the lettuce bed nearly every night for salad. the leaves seem to grow overnight from a harvesting. everything else is still growing, getting flowers or small buds of fruit.

here's our little helper. he "weeded" (or picked newly sprouted lima plants - oops!):


...and was very helpful chasing the chickens out of the garden:


and for the record...i'm the only one around here that doesn't go outside without shoes. i slip on my crocs every time i leave the house. the chickens are everywhere. and so is their poop. nobody seems to mind this but me. i love those chickens. i don't love their excrement.

my grammy makes her pie crust with oil. i usually use butter in my pie crusts, but this recipe is VERY easy. if you're afraid of making pie crusts and resort to the store-bought ones, i urge you to at least try this one. it's so very simple. and it tastes really good with this particular pie.

CRUST:
2 cups flour
1/2 cup canola oil
3 T. cold water
Roll out between 2 sheets of wax paper.  Remove top sheet and flip onto the pie dish.  Carefully remove the other sheet and work dough into dish to fit.
Bake at 450 for 7 to 9 minutes.  Remove and cool.

FILLING:
1 cup crushed berries
3 tbls. cornstarch
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
In a saucepan mix sugar and cornstarch. Gradually stir in water and crushed berries stirring constantly until mixture thickens and boils. Boil and stir one minute.  Put aside to cool. 

When crust and mixture have cooled place whole strawberries (de-stemmed, and point-up) all around the inside of the pie crust then pour the mixture on top. Chill for about three hours.  After chilld, I added another layer of whole berries around the inside of the perimeter of the crust.

Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

Apparently, this recipe is good with raspberries as well. I think that's pure decadence, and since our berry farm has black, yellow, and red raspberries as well, I just might have to try it!

thanks to grammy for the very easy and very delicious strawberry pie recipe. the older boys helped me while adam napped and we all ate it for dessert last night while celebrating father's day with my parents. mmmm mmmm, good! mom and i picked a few more pounds of strawberries this morning (as soon as the farm opened!) and rowan and sawyer just helped me clean and de-stem them for freezing. i'm looking forward to the fresh taste of strawberries in december. or january.

me: "rowan, father's day is on sunday - what special thing should we do for daddy?"
rowan: "um...i think we should get him a present."
me: "that's a good idea. what do you have in mind?"
rowan: "um, i think he needs....a new car!"
(and he's never seen a episode of the price is right in his life!)

later that day...after me suggesting we buy daddy a new fishing pole...

me: "so rowan, would you like to go fishing with daddy this weekend?"
rowan: "yes! can sawyer come?"
me: "yes, but you'll need to share your fishing pole with him."
rowan: "okay. but not with adam."
me: "i can stay home with adam while daddy takes you fishing."
rowan: "no, i think adam should come with us to go fishing."
me: "okay. then can i come along with you guys?"
rowan: "no. you can stay home. you can stay home and make dinner."

i guess i know my place.

until recently, i was one of the ones stating that "christian fiction" is an oxymoron. i felt it was in the same category as "christian music" or "christian television." 

but i was wrong.  lauren winner came to our church for a weekend retreat/workshop a little over a eyar ago, and she suggested authors and books in the "christian" category of fiction. i've read a few and i can safely say that there is such a thing as a great work of christian fiction.

i found a blog holding something called the "christy challenge" based on this year's awards given to christian books - non-fiction and fiction.

here is the definition of the challenge. join in!

_____________
i am also about 50% of the way through my list of books for the spring reading thing, which is due to "close" on the last day of spring - this month! yikes! the warm weather keeps me from reading too much (as do three buys little boys!), but i will report on the books i'm reading and almost finished with at the end of the challenge.

adam turned 1 on sunday. he took his first steps the day before. his first babbling-word is "dadadadada" and tonight, we realized that his first words or phrase is "chick chick chick..." we took our dinner scraps out to the coop this evening, calling "here chick chick chick" like we do all the time. when we got to the coop, he dove down from my arms which is his way of saying, "get me down! i want to be on the GROUND!" i walked him around and he kept saying, "chick chick chick!" going to where the chickens were walking around. over and over.

the chickens win over "mama."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

i've been searching for a pick-your-own berry farm since we moved here. obviously i didn't look hard enough since there is a MASSIVE strawberry and raspberry farm a 5 minute drive away from us. FIVE MINUTES AWAY! and i've been looking in counties surrounding us, not realizing there were acres and acres of beautiful berries right under our noses!

so, right before dinner tonight, we packed the boys up in the van and within five minutes (did i mention that this farm was veryclose to our home?) we were smack dab in the middle of a gorgeous berry farm with cow fields, a few barns, and farmhouses speckled around us.

we had four containers and between kenny and i and the two older boys, we brought home approximately 5 pounds of berries for $7.16. the fields were packed with bright and dark red berries. i was worried about the crop since a friend wrote about a recent trip to a pick-your-own field in a neighboring county and it was slim pickings due to late frosts. we have two huge containers of fresh berries in the fridge. we'll probably consume them by tomorrow or the next day, but we're going back in a few days to get more berries for dehydrating and freezing for winter.

so...hit me with your best strawberry recipes. i have a good strawberry bread recipe, but any muffins, pies, crumbles, crisps, dried fruit recipes...send them on over!

it's what i found after leaving them alone for just two minutes...

yes, the boxes of christmas decorations and the easter baskets with empty easter eggs are still sitting in the corner in our living room. for shame.

this is a great article in yesterday's pittsburgh post gazette.

since bringing our chickens home as baby chicks, we wondered how easy it would be to raise them from such a young age. it's so very easy, as i alluded to earlier. so kenny and i have had a few conversations lately about raising broiler chickens as chicks, and then processing them ourselves for our freezer at the ripe old age of around 9 weeks old.

we eat a lot of chicken, and it would be so much nicer to know just where are chicken was grown, fed, and killed in a "chickene" fashion ("chickene", pronounced "chick-EEn" is my word-equivilent to "humane." chickens aren't humans, so you can't use that word to describe a "nice" chicken killing). what better way than to raise and process them ourselves?

but then there's that small problem of actually killing the chicken. i've heard of a few local farm families that'll do it for you for a small price (cheaper than buying chickens in the grocery!). and you can watch and learn for future use.

fortunately, the chickens running around freely in our yard right now aren't broilers (unless one of them turns out to be a rooster!). so they're safe from the knife. they'll provide us with free-range eggs, and companionship. next year we'll make the decision whether or not to bring home a few dozen broiler chicks.

geez. my bon jovi-loving-10th-grade self wouldn't believe just what i've become in my adult years.

no more plants eaten again today. a quick post as it's been a long evening, already!

a picture of the coop that kenny designed and built. it sits behind our barn. that's the egg collecting door on the right. hopefully, we'll be able to figure out how to get free-range chickens to lay their eggs in their nest boxes, and not around the yard. our country neighbors just laugh and shake their heads at us. :)
 

one of our araucanas. this one is very fond of jumping up on people. it did it for the first time the other night to a friends who was visiting for the day with this family, and then again tonight on my mom. it's quite disconcerting. i'm thinking it's a compliment since we're suspecting this chicken to be the top of the pecking order.


a golden buff, walking merrily along.


tonight, we harvested our first leaves from some heirloom lettuce seeds given to us by my friend serina. the leaves are still small, but it's time to thin, and they're so deliciuos at this stage - packed full of flavor (and vitamins!).

our summer vegetable garden was growing by leaps and bounds. and then...just like THAT...90% of our beans disappeared. we noticed a few of the leaves chopped off on monday, and by tuesday morning, we had ten left of the forty-some plants that had grown to three inches tall.

yesterday, we noticed one of our beautiful broccoli plants was eaten to a stalk...and then i stumbled upon something else growing in our garden: a nest of five itty, bitty baby bunnies. they must be one or two days old now, and they sit nestled under our three strongest lima bean plants. *sigh*

what do i do with my need-to-save-the-baby-bunnies heart, and my newfound love of all things gardening and growing our own food? folks out here would tell us to drown the babes without thinking twice...they're mama could be the culprit of our missing beans plants! however, we've spotted three groundhogs on the premises over the past few days, and they're more likely to eat beans and broccoli than rabbits. apparently. and we couldn't care less for the groundhogs.

kenny sprinkled cayenne powder over most of the plants last night, and nothing disappeared overnight. so the bunnies are staying put for now. until we give in and decide we are growing food, not bunnies.

in other farming news...does anyone have any experience growing rhubarb? i picked some up at our local farm stand a few weeks ago and made rhubarb sauce, which i love. kenny never had it before. i guess it's a taste that one needs to acquire? i'd like to grow it...but don't want to wait years and years to harvest. does anyone know if i could get a splitting from a plant and would it transplant well for a harvest as early as next year?

* THURSDAY MORNING UPDATE: the baby bunnies are gone as of this morning. it looks as though the mother took them to a safer place...or the neighbor's cat had a really nice breakfast. *

it's the spring/summer edition of smithical. after several technical difficulties over the weekend, i believe we're finally re-launched! we still have a few minor kinks to work out, but they really are minor, so we're back...minor glitches and all.

more later, but we enjoyed some spring thunderstorms driving home in the car from a pig roast last night. yes, that's what they do here in the country for big parties...pig roasts and corn mazes. okay, we didn't have a corn maze, but the pig roast was fantastic. the boys enjoyed looking at the pig roasting (rowan: "i saw his teeth!") and they even enjoyed the shredded pork (sawyer: "i ate pig tonight!").

thanks to the tip from jack in the comments section way back on this post, i was well aware of the fact that i was missing out on a live performance by martin sexton. but we had a great time celebrating the 40th birthday of a good friend. one of these days i will drag kenny to see martin sexton.

enjoy this day of rest.