it started so innocently. i never owned a sewing machine until i married kenny. kenny built amazing costumes for a few shows and actors in his theatre day, so it was only natural that he owned a machine. it began collecting dust when he met me since i took up all of his time. then a dear friend of mine in our previous church gave me her portable (not built-into-a-table) sewing machine when her eyesight started going. we are owners of two really cool, really old machines.

fast forward to 2004, when i start to blog and read blogs. the bloggers that i read tend to be crafters, into earth-keeping, getting-back-to-simplicity, homemakers, and foodies. i've been inspired over the years to do more of what i love: cook, mend, grow (plants and humans!), and use my hands to make things. by choice, i like needlework. then i remembered these two old machines in our basement: untouched, except for a santa costume at christmas for a "pagaent-with-a-santa" we did at church. on monday, i brought up the portable one after finally realizing i could possibly throw together a pair of pants from an old tshirt...like this pattern that serina posted at her blog. except we donated all of our old tshirts when we moved.

then i remembered that old, ugly t-shirt that kenny will not get rid of. i had to beg (BEG!) my husband for his favorite old t-shirt. it's one that has sentimental value to both of us, but it's just so ugly. he was wearing it the first time i laid eyes on him:
i asked him yesterday, "did you think you were all hot and hip in that tie-dyed, striped shirt?" and he answered, "did you think i was?" i just laughed and walked away. look at those holes! i was relieved when he told me i could use it, and it brought me much joy tearing into it with scissors.

our lovely machine:

a view of the (CUTE!) back:

this morning, we (rowan, adam, kenny, and i) walked outside while the fog still rose above our trees. the chickens were already out, grazing (we forgot to lock them up last night...i guess we got lucky as there are still 15 of them), waiting for some water.

we watered them, then passed through the garden, finding a few tomatoes not quite ripe enough to pick. perhaps tomorrow. next stop was the blueberry bush. rowan and i picked about 2 dozen berries for their oatmeal. rowan couldn't wait to show sawyer his four berries he picked. we then walked inside to see if sawyer had stirred awake. he was, in fact, walking down the stairs and his first question? "where's rowan?" he's not used to waking to an empty room. rowan walked into the kitchen, showed him his (crushed) berries, and they were instantly ready for breakfast.

we hadn't been to our home church in a while. last week we were actually there, but i was nursery duty, so the boys and i hung out in the warm nursery, growing tired really quickly of toys that are too young for the older two, waiting to see if other kids would show. i've been thinking about how to introduce "the pew" to the older boys...and perhaps to adam. this is a concept that frightens me: there are people who look at you when your child makes noise in every church, including ours. today, we opted for the nursery while kenny and i sat in church without them. they were happy - more kids and graham crackers this week!

a sunny drive home from church...the humidty was high. we decided it was beach day again. adam got a good afternoon nap while kenny made chick pea curry for our lunch. we left as soon as he woke up.

coincidentally, there were people from our old church there - it was CoA's family day at the beach area of the park - our new favorite Sunday afternoon hangout. it was nice chatting with old friends.

the boys love the water. adam can throw sand like the best of them, and enjoys just sitting and piling sand in and out of buckets. this week, he got up several times and walked around the sand, to the water. this made for a very relaxing sunday afternoon for kenny and i. we sat on the beach, took the occassional stroll through the lake with a boy or two, then snacked in the shade. the sun was perfect, the water warm enough, and the boys were so happy to be there. it made them so happy that we decided to build our own sand beach and dig our own lake, right off the deck.

i'm just kidding.

rain clouds gathered as we drove off nearing bedtime. it was the perfect way to keep a sabbath: resting, playing, no work whatsoever.

we're ready for a new day; a new week.

it was a dark, thick-with-fog-kind-of morning: perfect for sleeping in! after a late night sharing munchies, fabulous red wine, and microbrews with old friends (on our deck!) we were blessed with three boys who slept in until 7:15!  as we crawled into bed at 12:05 this morning, i was so worried about how tired i would be at our normal 6:03 a.m. wake up call from adam. it was a pleasant surprise that we awoke before the boys did and just waited in bed for them to wake up. at 7:15, sawyer came tromping in demanding some cuddle time on our bed. three minutes later, adam began talking in his crib no doubt waking up rowan who stumbled into our room rubbing his eyes. i went to get adam and we all snuggled in bed for a glorious 10 minutes before descending upon our morning in typical fashion: first stop, the coffee pot to fill with black gold; then milk in cups for the boys while we clamored around getting cereal bowls filled and bananas cut up. kenny and i chatted about what we were going to tackle on our "project plan" list of yard work. we decided to scrap the work and instead found a new place to hang out with the trees and birds of the wild.

we took our time getting dressed and packed a few snacks, camera, binoculars...we were off by 9:45 a.m.

the hiking center we found had a great little welcome center with a classroom, bathrooms, and an office stocked with all the pamphlets you could ever dream of about the wilds. the two older boys trail-blazed for us, finding all the bridges to cross over and any flowers in on the sides of the path. here, they are demonstrating....well...they are demonstrating nothing. they're just fabulous, crazy boys:


we did find a passive wetlands treatment center that was supposed to have tadpoles and frogs, but we saw none. nor did we see the rattlesnake that was said to live in the park. the boys did discover their first cattail:
 

on the way back to the car, the boys were lagging behind, so i reached deep into the backpack and found a hershey bar. i broke off of few pieces and gave them to the boys telling them they needed some energy to walk back to the car.

it's so funny what we, as parents, remember of a particular activity or outing...watching your kids discover and find, run and be crazy. we think that they'll remember the cool cattail they felt, or the crazy red flower they discovered.

at bedtime or sometime during dinner, kenny or i always ask the boys what their favorite part of the day was. tonight's question was answered enthusiastically by rowan, "i liked it when we ate energy! i need some more"

and finally...deck pictures! the photos don't do it justice. but that just means you have to come out and enjoy it yourself! you can see the before pictures here of our 3x7 foot "deck" (which we would have kept for a few years if it wasn't falling apart making me nervous everytime the boys ran up and down). here are the after photos...16x16 square of outside heaven:







i plan to landscape flowers and green shrubs around the base either in the fall or early spring. but right now, we're already getting started planning next year's vegetable garden!

i never posted about adam's first birthday (almost 2 months ago!), here are pictures of his "day of birth" and one of his first birthday. after three kids, it's still incredible and amazing to me to see their growth and development in the first year of life! he's been walking from room to room for about a week now. he was taking steps here and there for a while now, and then all of a sudden decided that this week was a good one to begin walking. he won't stop walking.

adam's hospital photo (24 hours old)...and going home (2 days old):


well, okay - he's 13 months old in this photo! it was taken on rowan's birthday:


a picture of rowan's 4th birthday cake. it's a design copied from Family Fun magazine - a great family magazine given to us from our friend Heather.


a few weeks ago, my brother (andrew) visited with his wife and daughter ramona. we met them at church down in the city. this is how sawyer, our free spirit, warmed up to his cousin. he loves to dance. and he has a very unique dance that he only does when he's happy or excited about something. here, he demonstrates for ramona:


and here, ramona's got the dance moves down:


after church, we headed over to a local outdoor merry-go-round and had lunch. the kids enjoyed two rides thanks to pop-pop! merry-go-rounds are rowan and sawyer's favorites:


"we all fall down!"

our garden continues to be munched on by a particular small, grey rodent of sorts...some things are surviving, but i'm afraid that our pole beans will not produce beans this year. the lima bean plants look really good, however, as do the green pepper, celery, and one lone cucumber plant. and our tomatoes? they're going crazy. i'm afriad all the green globes that are forming will turn red on the same day and i'm going to have to can and make salsa within a 24-hour time slot. yikes! at least the boys will eat the cherry tomatoes off the plants.

i've been following (but not participating in, sadly) a great project/blog called One Local Summer. the jist of the project is to make one meal a week of all local ingredients. if you haven't already done so, go to your farmer's markets and get some locally grown fruit and vegetables. you may even be able to find baked goods made from locally grown flours/grains. the other night, we had steamed green beans from the garden of kenny's colleague. they were so sweet and delicious, i'm sure they would have been great raw. i'm afraid it's what we're missing in our own garden, thanks to mr. groundhog (did you notice, in that list of groundhog characteristics that a groundhog is "is a herbivore, or vegetarian, eating a wide variety of wild plants, clover and alfalfa, and garden vegetables if available.)

tonight's dinner is the closest i've come yet:
grilled chicken with homamde BBQ sauce (made with local honey)
corn on the cob (grown in slippery rock)
green beans (grown in slippery rock)

the only thing not "local" is the chicken. hopefully by next year, we'll be eating locally-grown, preferably pasture-raised, chicken and beef. and pork. and the occasional lamb. and turkey.

"we set our hopes high so that we can grow wings and learn to fly."
 - i have no idea who coined that phrase

**PHOTO UPDATE** - i don't know how i managed to forget the highlight of sawyer's afternoon yesterday - the boat ride! our friends, dave and sharon (the parents of "big adam" and sophia), have a canoe and dave and kenny took the older boys "out for a paddle" towards the end of the day. sawyer has since instructed me to go to walmart and buy us a boat. photo attached below...

a few pictures of our day sunning, grilling, fishing, swimming... is there a way to make the summer last well into november, and then let it be cold for thanksgiving and christmas, and then have the spring and summer start the first of january until the following november? (if you tell me that's how it is in florida or georgia...since i know some of my  readers live there, we'll be planning our early retirement in one of those states, i promise. except you're going to have to do something about the palmetto bugs before our arrival).

we enjoyed dinner with my dad and some friends on our deck saturday...but the pictures didn't turn out. one of these days, i will post official deck pictures, since it is completely finished now.

we met some friends at a local state park yesterday. rowan and sawyer and their friend "big adam" (as opposed to their baby brother adam) roasting marshmallows:
 

"big adam" caught a small-mouth bass...kenny's de-hooking it for him:


rowan caught a sunny:


this is rowan holding sawyer's fish. sawyer reeled him in and then dropped the pole and ran away. he thought the fish was going to eat him. oh, the mind of an almost-three-year-old:


sawyer only posed for me once his fish was back in the water. proud little guy:


adam, posing as if he's the bathign suit cover model. what a little ham!


the canoe ride:


it was a bit chilly for a july day, but we enjoyed it nonetheless.
bring back the dog days, please!!!

i don't think it's a coincidence that since my last post about having moved to the "unknown countryside," that beautiful things have happened.

i made a roast turkey for dinner on tuesday (remember? it was on my monday menu planning list!) and our house was filled with that familiar culinary smell of late-november. for the first time in i-don't-know-how-many-years, however, it did not make me long for the cooler days of the fall, the golden colors on the trees, and the promise of christmas right around the corner.

we've been enjoying the hot days at the pool with the boys so much that it's all we want to do. and you can't go swimming under a hot sun in november. and despite our bad luck with the ground hog in our garden, we are enjoying fresh flowers EVERY DAY from my zinnia row, along with parsley and rosemary as fragrant fillers in our bouquets. the tomato plants are tall and bursting with tons of green fruit, some starting to turn orange; and our pole beans have been strung up on poles to show growth! you can't enjoy the fruits of a fresh harvest in november...unless i can/freeze/build a greenhouse (which is hopefully in our not-too-distant future as well!).

and it's not that we couldn't enjoy these things elsewhere...it's just that its what we've got here now, and didn't have at "our old house."

i'm extremely sentimental. i still get really nostalgic for our old neighborhood and our old house. i get REALLY sentimental about our previous church. when you have deep roots somewhere, it's hard to uproot and leave them exposed. but i'm also getting really attached to our new home. this is the only place adam knows as home. and our parents are going to retire here with us (well, across the street...but that's a whole 'nother blog post!).

so now i have more to add to the what i love list...taking away some more "power" from the what i miss list.

 

april 18th of this year was our one year anniversary of moving into the home of our dreams, on the lot of our dreams, at a fairly early age. we couldn't be more thankful for such a fun thing to celebrate without an actual party-celebration (we were brand new chicken parents on april 18th, having picked them up at the hatchery just two days previous!).

when we first moved here, i was sad a lot. i cried a lot. it probably had something to do with the fact that i was 33 weeks pregnant, had a baby, and went through my third bout of the "baby blues" post adam's birth. i thought it was because we had made the wrong decision moving to the country. away from the city. away from people we loved. away from people in general! i was given the "it takes you about a year to settle in properly" advice from several people and i found comfort in that. i knew that in a year, i'd feel more settled. i'd feel more like this was my home, and not just a place we were "trying out" for a few years.

after a year, i feel settled...and not so settled. i think it's because i will always have a bit of "the city" pulsing through my veins. i'll miss the city-smog smell when i have nothing but fresh air to breathe. i'll long for sidewalks and "block parties" when i can't even see my neighbors' house from my front yard. i speak only for myself because the boys don't know any difference (rowan can recognize a picture of our old house, but he wouldn't recognize it if we drove past it), and kenny is totally at home here (i won't go past the garage once it's dark out. we've got woods all around us, and bigger-critters still make me nervous).

and it's not that i don't consider this to be my home...it's just i think it's going to take me a lot longer than a year to truly feel settled. because i get giddy when we have a trip planned into "the city."

i have a list in my mind of what i miss the most, or what i don't like about country-living and one of what i love about living here, and what i don't miss at all of city/suburb-life. ironically, the "pros" of living here outweigh anything negative.

what i miss

• taking walks. tonight, we took a walk through our yard, and through a 6-acre field near us, up a steep, country road (speed limit is 35? 40?). we didn't pass one person. i miss our old neighborhood for walking and chatting with neighbors; spending time in the playground behind our house, talking to neighbors, other parents, new neighbors. being able to push the stroller without "four-wheeling" it.
• a sense of community. mabye it's because we had great neighbors in the city. or maybe it's because all our friends and family were within a 15 minute drive. we had and incredible church family (who won't let us go, thank goodness!) that we got to see weekly.
  
• good food. we always joked about how we had the pick of the best indian and thai restaurants a few minutes' drive from our old house. we're saving a lot of money not eating there, but i'm missing them. AND...good grocery stores with decent hours of operation. organic, whole foods? gotta drive into the city for those.

what i love

• the space. i know it's ironic, but i love the space we have here. the rolling hills and valleys we see and run along every day. i love seeing the boys run and run...chasing fireflies, chickens, rabbits. and i don't have to yell constantly to keep them from running into the road.
  
• our house. it's a dream to be living in a house big enough to house your entire family for holidays. we had 17 here for a few days over christmas. i love to be able to offer hospitality to friends by offering a guest room, a meal. we did this in our old house, but we have room to do it more here. i love that this house has been sitting here on this land for over a hundred years.
  
• the quiet. it's so quiet here, that when a car drives by, it actually wakes you up. which makes it hard to sleep with the windows open.
• our chickens. i love those 15 cluckers running around our yard, free-range.
• our future. we have so many great conversations, kenny and i, about what we want to do here. what we want our boys to be able to do, to learn, to experience. it's not that we couldn't do that in our old place, it's just a different way of letting them experience the same things. we have the best of both worlds...living in the peaceful, quiet, big, starry sky boonies, and able to get into the culture of the city in under an hour.

i'm almost embarrassed to admit the things i miss, which make me feel unsettled. but as i look at the above lists, i know that my "pro" list will overcome the "cons" list in no time. maybe i'll include a blog post a year from now and i'll laugh that it ever took me so long to be settled into what is our home.

and maybe i'll be walking farther than the garage once nightfall hits.

(the beginning of the "moving" series starts in april, 2006)

it's been a while since i posted what we're having for dinner...so here's this week's menu!

monday: BBQ chicken breasts, baked rice, broccoli (baked rice recipe below)
tuesday: Roast turkey, mashed potatoes, petit pois
wednesday: egg salad sandwiches on homemade bread, salad, carrots and hummous
thursday: feta quiche with baby spinach salad
friday: Rockin' Moroccan Pita (recipe below)
saturday: pasta salad with bread
sunday: leftovers

*   *   *   *

Rockin' Moroccan Pitas
1 T. ground cumin
1 tsp. chili powder
1 lb. chicken breast, shredded
4 T. olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 cans chick peas, rinsed
3 green onions (from our garden!)
1 red bell pepper, diced
1/4 cup chopped parsley (from our garden!)
6 pita pockets
plain yogurt
salt and pepper to taste

Combine cumin and chili powder in a plastic bag. Add chicken and shake to coat. Heat 1 T. oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add chicken; cook 5 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink, stirring frequently. Take off heat, cool.
Combine remaining ingredients, mixing well. Stir in chicken. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Cut tops off pitas to pen. Divide chicken mixture among pitas. Top with yogurt (if desired...I recommend it!).

(And yes! Our boys eat this and love it - especially Adam!)

Baked Rice
(this is the only way kenny will eat white rice without a sauce.)
1 T. olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 cup long-grain white rice
2 cups chicken stock
1/4 tsp salt (optional)

Preheat oven to 350.
Heat oil and add onions. Cook, stirring, until softened.
Add (raw) rice until well-coated.
Add chicken stock and salt. Bring to a boil.
Transfer to casserole, cover and bake until rice is tender and stock is absorbed, 20-25 minutes.
Let stand, covered, 5 minutes before serving.


*   *   *   *

for more weekly menus, check out Org Junkie every Monday!

kenny should really be the one writing this post, but he gave up blogging for Lent a while back and just never got back into it (actually, it was around the time sawyer was born, 2004, when he gave up on blogging).

he's the mastermind behind our next big project, which kicked off officially today: beekeeping.  we spent the morning making sweet and sour meatballs to take with us to the Pennsylvania State Beekeepers Association's Summer Picnic/Potluck. we were expecting there to be perhaps 10-15 folks there sharing our meatballs, perhaps a few bags of chips, some warm soda, and maybe a cake in the shape of a honeybee complete with "honey" icing while the beekeepers chatted about their hives.

fortunately, it was nothing of the sort. we were one of 50 families (maybe more)...totalling a few hundred people with hot dogs and a TON more food to share. there were activities for the kids (the boys made "kite" honeybees and tree-branch name plates) while kenny listened to a few of the experts talk about the recent bee colony collapses. he also got to "schmooze" or "network" with several beekeepers in our area (one lives just down the street!).

these beekepers know how to throw a family party.

they do get a bit corny with their "Honey Queen" contest where they nominate some floozy woman as the "Honey Queen" for a year. as i was passing her wearing her tiara and sash, i asked her just what she did to received this title (yes, okay, i was taking notes so I COULD BE THE NEXT HONEY QUEEN)...and i made the mistake of referring to her as the "queen bee." she corrected me immediately and told me that she wrote an essay on the health benefits of honey and the judges interviewed her. she said she won based on the combination of her interviewing/speaking skills and the uniqueness of her essay. i was hoping it was a baking contest so i at least had a chance for next year. but speaking skills? writing an essay? PUL-EASE.

our neighbors donated their old beekeeping equipment to us complete with bee suits for kenny and i and a little-itty-bitty child's suit for the boys. rowan and sawyer tried theirs on this morning.

i'm now really excited about this: the benefits of local honey (i mean, a few yards away local!), honeybees for our garden and our neighbors' gardens, and learning the incredibly complex ways of the honeybee are just a few of the things i'm excited about. we order our bees sometime in january and we'll receive them late spring, 2008.

this photo is not staged.

every so often, the three boys eventually migrate towards one another. a few minutes ago, i left adam with his new favorite toys (the little people garage and city-center). the older boys were painting with their new water colors. i went to the kitchen to start on lunch, heard the older two talking to adam and came out to find them showing him how to make the city-center street move. they later started playing peek-a-boo with him because they know that makes him howl with laughter.

even though they don't take up the majority of the day, moments like these make it worth the crazy chaos of having three boys so close in age!

i am a big wimp. yesterday, i tripped coming out our front step and skinned my knee in two places as well as bending my left big toe in such a way that makes it hard for me to put any weight on it at all. kenny was on his way home from work at the time and it was all i could do from crying in front of rowan and sawyer when it happened (they were happily swiming on their swings when they heard their mama yell, "OWWWW!"). so i laughed for 30 minutes untl kenny got home and then i collapsed like a baby in his arms.

okay, not really...but i was relieved when he walked in the door so that i could stop walking around and put my leg up.

that's not what makes me a big wimp. i'm a wimp because i am blogging about it! i need your attention! it's much better this morning. it's not bright red anymore, and the toe isn't throbbing. an advil before bed last night helped relieve the throbbing in the knee. rowan keeps asking "why can't we touch your scrape?" sawyer gasps each time he sees it (i have a hard time looking at wounds. my boys saw it before i got a good look at it yesterday and sawyer's gasp made me worry. now i know that he's inherited my fear of looking at wounds because it really wasn't THAT bad to look at).

please, pity me.
 

i find this news article amusing but mostly offensive.

i can't believe this was even an issue in political circles! do people want it to be illegal to breastfeed a child on a park bench, a mall bench, or even...a restaurant?

get over it people. if you're uncomfortable with it, it's your problem, not the breastfeeding mother/child's problem. you can leave...don't ban them to the restroom.

this is one of rowan's favorite phrases. sometimes he asks me the same question over and over throughout a day or a week, and after i've answered it a few times already and he asks again, i answer him with, "you tell me, rowan." to which he responds, "no, you tell ME!"

smart kiddo.

but i digress. this morning, the boys and i went out to let the chickens out of their coop, and as we walked closer to the coop, my heart sank. the flower boxes under the front windows were torn off and thrown about, the dirt inside dumped and flowers GONE. fortunately, i heard clucking sounds from inside the coop and none of the doors were open. i got their food and threw it about for them to feed. they seemed normal, but i know they experienced some terrifying moments last night....

my question is this (you tell ME!)...was it a raccoon or a bear? i've heard of the strength of a raccoon, but can they tear off nailed-in wooden boxes with one hand (they'd have to hold onto something else to reach the boxes wince they're not on ground level)? or could it be the famous bear we keep hearing about in our woods?

what do YOU think??

happy birthday rowan tucker!

four years ago today at 9:41 pm, you were born! you instantly brought a whole new meaning to the words "amazing and awesome," to your daddy and me. and you continue to makes us incredibly proud.

we love you to the moon and back!


love,
mommy and daddy