Minis

It struck me as hilarious when the kids put on our tennis shoes this morning.  The way their jeans just covered over the top made it look like they might just have gigantic feet.  And then I looked at them and saw little mini people.  Maybe not mini people of Josh and I, but little people that are already grown up in some way.

Snipped again

Viv's neck is a bit on the shorter side.  As soon as her hair grows beyond her chin I find myself asking how her head is attatched  (my mind sees one of those barbie's that the head fell of then you just jam in back on to the neck stump).  It is probably my vanity more than hers that makes me keep her hair in a bob, yet is suits her.  It has been a few weeks that I have been wanting to get the length back up but too lazy to just get the scissors.  Today I hacked it.  Last time we bobbed I tried layering it a bit to see if the curl at the bottom would make it curl under - not so- her hair is like her personality, a bit crazy.  So this time I gave her a bit of an A-line stack, which is my favorite hair cut on me and will stay out of her way more for the activities she does. She's a cutie and loved the attention of getting a hair-cut, she could care less what her hair actually looks like.

What a ham! as soon as a camera is near she strikes the craziest poses and looks goofy cute.  

Resurgence

To begin with, we have recently signed up for an at home deliver of veggies and other organic products.  Yes, you can order everything on the internet and be a complete shut in if you like.  I don't have to go to the grocery store anymore and I love it!  Two hours of my life restored.  Now if my kids want to throw a fit we can do it in the privacy of my own home and I don't have to get overstimulated with advertising for crap.  I love it.  The kids love it too.  It is like Christmas every friday - and the gift keeps on giving because it becomes their dinner!  Again, I love the whole concept.

Furthermore, I love the concept of getting local and organic foods.  For some weird reason, the grocery stores around here are rather fickle and don't have good selections of either meat or produce.  Now I know I am getting both from a fresh source. With the whole deal I also get to choice other organic-type products that I probably otherwise would not try.  Online they are on sale so I order some without walking down the perceived over priced 'organics' isle at the grocery store.  It has been super pleasant and we have made some crazy good finds, such as today's lunch:

These little nuggets are delicious!   They are not chicken, which in the land of chicken nuggets is actually a relief.  I have had an over reactive gag reflex recently with meat products - and even the idea of commercial chicken nuggets makes me nauseous.  You know that one bad nugget with the 'other' stuff in it. Gag.  These little guys are smooth!  They are made of fugiprotien - basically mushrooms - but the texture is as beautiful as the best homemade chicken pot pie.   They were delicious and I was mad I gave most of them to the kids.  The next box is all for me.


I find in this tale of day a few resurgent patterns of my youth that made me even think it worthy to post (besides spreading the word to meat eaters about Quorn).

One - the return to home delivery.  When I grew up we had milk delivered to our back porch.  By the time I came around we got the regular gallons that you would by in the store, but I vaguely remember that we did once set out our used bottles and the were traded out and returned full of milk.

Two -  When I was going through the finicky teen years I had a bad experience with beef that made me a psedu-vegetarian for awhile.  My mother was extremely patient and accommodating.  I insisted that it was medical - I would barf and be bulimic if all she served me was meat.  Yet, with this recent resurgence of hyper-sensitive gag reflexes I find myself cutting the teen me some slack.  I have always liked vegetable products better - the first time I ate a veggie-burger at Hard Rock I thought I had gone to heaven. Now the Quorn stuff.  I start to wonder if at some point my body gets overloaded with byproducts of animal products and puts on the gag breaks.  It is a crazy thought - but it creeps up on me even while reading fiction to my kids at night (we have been reading Jungle Book and I gag each time Mowgli makes a kill and eats it and moves on...could he really eat it raw and stomach it?).

Three - the feeling that with the turning of the seasons and finally have a fall again that there are some comforting parts of my past that are surging to the top again.  It is strange and invigorating.  Inside of me I am somewhat ageless and yet trapped in a 'time' that is constructed of my current life status.  Thus to feel more of the old me in the present time is....interesting.  I like it.  Just like the kids like opening up groceries; there is something fresh and nourishing inside.  I'm not a vegetarian but stomach a bit more of my past than I have let myself do in a while.

Squirrel

As it is officially fall, we have been having fun watching the squirrels go crazy getting the winter wares stored, and we had some fun mimicking them.  This is how each of my children looks with four grapes in their mouth:

If he weren't smiling you wouldn't guess there was anything unusual about his cheeks

Yes, the are still packed with grapes.

Not quite as well endowed in the cheek department.

Her face is just too petite to accomodate much.

Entertaining us all by making 'grape juice press' with his hands.

Amazing that I caught this one 'grape escape.'

Time to open the totes -

before someone crashes my creative party!

Right now is one of those moments where I wish I was isolated in the world for the next 24 hours with just myself and this one train of thought.  I want to create this book!  In my head it is a masterpiece, or at least very interesting to me (and as publication would have it, there are several thousand others out there that have similar tastes as me).

You see, I have held on to all my personal journals since I started keeping one in the 3rd grade.  I was a very avid journal keeper - probably mostly for moments like these where the thoughts before bedtime behind burning eyes were dancing a furious jig.  When single - in my own room- in my own bed- governing my own time schedule - I could snatch pen and paper and extract those little dancing delights (or demons) from my head and let them live on the paper.

It must be a party in my basement.  All those journals with all those baby thoughts and pre-adolescent thoughts annoying and jamming around those teenage and college years.  Yep, I stopped the journal writing somewhere close to the time that I got married (lights out is determined as a collective).

But here is the genius - I have even gone so far as purchasing some of the material within the last year, for 'family history' purposes - to add to those prefunctory words the visual representation and a later perspective.  In short, I digitize my journals, slaps some authentic photos of yours truly with them (to represent the true akwardness of life as a young one) and then put in my NOW thoughts.  It is a journal about a journal-ish!

Ah, sure, it has been done before.  But won't it be fun to do the creating with reality from my own life?!  I dream bestseller.  I am content with thinking printed.  I think, ....I think I have enough motivation for it now.  I think,....I think it could pass for my master's thesis.  Depends.  But hey, what a gift to me this Christmas to actual start out this book that I have been thinking of for so many years?  I can print it for me as a gift from Josh ;).

Truth - this is just the easies manuscript for me to start with of the at least 4 solid ones that I keep throwing around in my noggin.  If I can just reproduce the creative part of me from before then I will have a framework for at least two others of the major thought books.

Well, it has been bliss to think of it now for a few minutes as the thought offsrping of uninterrupted homework ----ARGH!! There is Josh with his key at the door.  I tell you, these times slip way too fast out of my fingers, head, future......

Johnny Appleseed Festival

Toy demonstration - Faith loving a porcelian head doll.

Our town just gets more and more awesome the longer we live here!  This weekend we made sure to go to the quintessetial festival of the town - the Johnny Appleseed Festival.  Johnny is buried in a park here just off the river and they have a park around it that this past weekend was FULL of historical reinactments and tradesmens showing the crafts of Johnny's century.  I love seeing everyone in period clothing working with their hands!  We remembered a lot of the toys of our own (Josh and I's) childhood that we really fun and got some ideas for Christmas ;) this year.  

Faith loving a rag doll (gratefully she didn't grab the bone doll made of a large cow leg bone.)

Union soldier training -they were shooting their guns across the river.

Stoic fur trader - or buyer since he admitted to having bought most his furs from Indian Nations.

More authentic fur trader -pretty ecletic dudes.

Teaching Viv to play a handcrafted dulcimer.

Danny waiting patiently for the wood worker to string his bow which he decided to spend his heard earned chore money on and couldn't be happier with his choice.

Someone else making our chicken'n dumpling dinner.

Where they cooked our dinner.  AUTHENTIC!

Smithy making spoons right before our very eyes.

Colonial calvary playing on flutes and drums and shooting their guns.

Friday Food Fun

Friday I got my first door delivery of veggies/fruits from GreenBean Deliveries.  I ways happy, as where the kids, as you can see by their stellar apple smiles!  You can choose to get your produce as local grown, organic, or sustainably grown - and boy could we tell with the apples!  They tasted like the apples of my childhood - right from the tree!  That was just the start of our food fun on Friday.

For a long time Friday night has been pizza night for the family- it was born out of days when Josh used to work crazy and never be home and I was doing in-home-daycare and was exhausted by Friday and decided that my hard earned money would pay for a break on Friday night.  Well, although we love him, Papa Johns was recently voted out of our pocket book planning and we took to the 'new normal' -homemade!

Lucky the kids had been in a play-dough fettish all week long so when I gave them their real pizza dough to roll out they were awesome!  We used a Better Homes and Gardens recipe for the crust and it was YUMMY!  The girls stuck with traditional toppings but Danny and I went artizan on our pizza.  It was delicious and although a bit messier and more work than the take-out option, since Josh was home it was something special that we did together - Uh correction, something that we DO together.