And a little bit on life...

Lately, I have been a lump. Not completely. I work on Sundays and if I get 15 minutes at a time to sit down to myself it is a blessing... because usually I am jumping up to help #1 with math, #2 with reading, and #3 get a snack, sometimes within writing the same two sentence email... but for voluntary activity, this girl gets a failing grade.

For a while I was walking every morning. My neighbor and I had been walking a 2.5 mile route for about 2 months when things started getting hairy and stressed in our relationship. Which is fine... relationships wax and wane, but what I didn't like about it is I stopped walking. I really feel I need that extra person to get me going on any sort of physical routine. I have no motivation myself.

My main issue is, before this last two years, I have never needed anyone to help me get my butt up out of my house and move. Never. Maybe it was hitting 30 (6 mos ago), maybe it was #3 becoming super toddler (very likely actually), maybe it was the change in the weather with our bleak and cold summer, maybe it was homeschooling 3 kiddos. Maybe it is just the fact that I think about being active and don't actually do it. lol... I plan, and then don't act. But this year, I haven't even gardened. I planted things... and then let them do their own thing. I even mowed my pathway... I didn't weed it... I mowed it. I didn't even plant beans after my peas had died.

Nothing has changed... not even my pants size. I don't see that being true for many more years however. I can't imagine that being sedentary is good for anyone. But I am not 'sedentary'... I do things... just not active things.

I have always been a big "Earth Gym" kinda girl... the kind that takes lots of walks, that gardens in the sunlight, that likes good shoes so she can run in the rain.... but maybe I just need to get a gym membership or something.

Thoughts?

Mini Pizzas

We decided not to do pizza every Friday. See, if my family ate anything but cheese on their pizza, it would help. But they don't... and I don't think anyone needs a day where they eat nothing but cheese and refined flour for a full meal each week. lol... I on the other hand, am the one who piles on the veggies. I even put boccoli on my pizza sometimes when it is fresh from the farm. I thought for a while that the kids would follow my example and try new things each week with their pizzas... but alas, four months of pizza Friday and we were still doing cheese pizzas with occasional olives. So we have moved it to a monthly thing... or whenever we get a hankering for a comfort food in front of a Netflix. ;)

I did make pizza night a bit more fun however. I bought mini pizza pans from a local kitchen store and each person now gets to make their own mini pizza. It's pretty cool... esp for the two older kiddos that get to do the whole process of kneading out the dough and getting it on the pan before baking. They loved it!

Our most popular spot

This is the current most popular spot in the backyard. Braced on the fence, I think the animals feel very safe here, with the neighbor children on the other side of the fence, and my children a full garden bed away. The kids have been cutting off sunflower heads and putting them in the feeders. They have been a HUGE hit with the local critters. (Notice the little chickadee on top of the feeder... watching me.)

Squirrels and birds alike love this treat of fall.

Even two kinds of chickadees at one time will visit this feeder. I had a Nuthatch in the shot, but before I could focus, it flew away, not to return in that photo shoot.

It is pretty neat to watch the hustle and bustle that goes on back there. It happens to be just in front (and across the yard) from out sliding glass door... so when we see antics like the squirrel above upside down eating, we are able to get a good shot, right away.

This second it looks like the sunflower head needs to be replaced. The whole thing is pretty empty now.

Sad day in the hen house

Iris, our dear Araucana, was found dead this morning. There are really no clues as to why. The other Araucana we have looks healthy. Cyan is pretty traumatised. Poor sweet thing found Iris dead on the ground of the coop when she was going out to collect eggs. We blessed her with a little prayer type ceremony and then let her go.

Livingroom Revamp

We have been having some serious storage issues. Our garage is packed full... the 'can't find anything' kind of packed. This is odd for me. I don't normally do that... oh yes, there will be a big basket or bag around here and there stuffed with stuff I wasn't sure what to do with 10 minutes before friends arrived or somesuch, but not like this. This isn't stuff I should get rid of. It isn't stuff that isn't great. It is stuff that we literally had NO room to store. Homeschool stuff, supplies for art, stuffed animals that the kids love but wont fit in their room. Things like that. It may have something to do with there being 5 of us in a 900sq ft house.

I will consider this the "before" shot. Even though it was easily two years ago. But my living room has pretty much looked like this for the last two years. More cluttered at times, but like this.

This is what our homeschool stuff had come to. Two little shelves, stuffed in next to the coat rack, jam packed full with 'stuff'.

These shelves came to me in a moment of fate. I had walked in to the furniture consignment shop one hour after these were dropped off and cleaned up. I bought both, and within the next day (how long it took to pick them up) there were three people interested, and one even asked to be on a 'wait list' just in case I bailed on the deal. They are mine. lol...

It makes the whole room look smaller, which isn't great in our tiny house, but it also makes it look warm and cozy. And I hope a bit more organized day to day.

The other area of our living room that really needed work was the area that the homeschool stuff had been in. It has always looked kinda cluttery and not very nice. So I decided while I was taking on new shelves, to take that on as well. I put paper up of all of the picture frames I had to see if I could get them set up in a nice mosaic pattern.

This is what I ended up with:

Honestly, I LOVE this. It looks great. I didn't think I would when I put them up, and it took forever to get the mix right... but I love it now. I am waiting on some 5X5 pictures to be printed and then I will have the whole set all together.

Our homeschool stuff fits perfectly on one of the shelves, and this sweet little green shelf brings some warm color to this side of the livingroom, tying it in to the other side with the purple coatrack.

I am really enjoying the livingroom at the moment. :)

A little plug for the farmers market

The best vote, is your local farmers market to buy organics, or 'used no pesticide' produce. ;)

Honestly, there are some brands in the store that still hold high ideals. Organic Valley is one. They are an amazing company that is really trying to hold local food ideals. None of their food is shipped more than 300 miles from their factories. They process mostly local food from small(er) farms... and they highly support sustainable agriculture.

Earth Bound Organics is another one. They are based in CA, but they started out as a very small farm, and have tried to maintain these ideals as much as they can. They are organic, grown in the USA, and pay their workers a living wage.

The ones I would never purchase are Stonyfield Farms, or Brown Cow (owned by Stonyfield Farm). Them and companies like them are the reason why people have started to use the terms "Locavore" and "Beyond Organic". The huge organic companies are removing pesticide from our planet... which is wonderful. But the lives of the animals making your cheese and eggs are no different than the lives of the 'conventional' cow or chicken (meaning downright barbaric). The miles of single variety produce that they grow (and when I saw miles, I mean many hundreds of miles) creates an issue with mono-cropping.

For more info, here are some links:

Who Owns What?

The Battle for the Soul of the Organic Market

Apple... Tree

Sometimes we think that our actions really don't effect our children.

The wonderful breakfast I woke up to the other day.

Alex made me a triple decker PP&J, Cyan set me up with peaches, applesauce, and grapes. And Alex made me some spiced cider with the cider we made the day before.

It was all placed on a tray, set up with candles and a vase of flowers on a clean table. Logan had been fed, all I needed to do was eat. It was completely sweet.

Making Apple Cider

Here is a link to the slide show of us making apple cider with my dad.

We made 5 gallons, and 4 of them are in the bottom of my freezer for later this winter when we get a hankering for hot spiced cider.

Yummy treat

Whole wheat crackers, fresh cucumber from the farm, brie, my tomato sauce, and some sunflower sprouts that a market lady gave me last Sunday.

What a yummy treat!

Taste of Heaven

Omgoodness. If there was such a thing as a taste of heaven, this would be it.

First, I got about 4 lbs tomatoes out of the garden. I started out with the ripest ones and they made the best flavor. I cut them into quarters and put them in a roasting pan with a one inch side. Then I slathered them in olive oil, drizzled balsalmic vinegar over them, and added salt and pepper liberally. I tossed the whole thing with an entire head of pressed Carpathian Garlic, and put it in a 375* oven for 45 minutes. After it was done, I put the whole thing (including the juices) in my blender and 'processed' it until it was super super smooth. Then I added 1 tea of 21 Seasoning Saulte from Trader Joe's (I was in a hurry, or I would have used fresh herbs from the garden, and I almost am glad I was due to the end result). I could eat this stuff with a spoon. Seriously.

I got the idea and recipe from Delicious Wisdom. She has some amazing ideas for whole foods cooking. Some of them I can even mix with my locavore ideals and make some seriously good (and good for you) food.

Food has lately created such a conversation in my head. I can't quite seem to have it come out right in type yet. I have a passion about food that I can only slightly understand myself. Michael Pollan has a similar passion, and puts it so much better into words than I can describe. His last rule in In Defence of Food he writes:

"Cook and, if you can, plant a garden.

To take part in the intricate and endlessly interesting processes of providing for our sustenance is the surest way to escape the culture of fast food and the values implicit in it: that food should be fast, cheap, and easy; that food is a product of industry, not nature; that food is fuel, not a form of communion, with other people as well as with other species - with nature."

My start of this blog was to show the things I did in the kitchen and garden. When I started it, I was not yet a home schooler, or a guitar player, or even a sing pushing mother of three as I put in my intro-line. But I was a passionate cook, and an avid inner-city gardener. I even planted peas under the deck of my first apartment with my husband long before Cyan was born. They grew up through the railings of the deck and drove my landlord crazy every time he had to mow. Food, what goes into it and what I do with it, has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. I decided I was a vegetarian when I was 9 and kept that food faith until I was 23 years old. I have endless papers I wrote in college about nutrition and nutritional intuitiveness (which was my big thing back then)... even diet and it's links with ADHD (in 1999 it wasn't near the common knowledge it is today). Passion almost doesn't cover it... 'life long obsession' would be more accurate.

I have never before been able to afford the wealth of food I now have at my fingertips. Between the garden, the farm, and the farmers market, I now have whatever I need in the best form you can imagine, pretty much whenever I want. My kids are eating more good food, my husband is eating more good food... and those of you who actually know my husband that is really saying something, and I am passionately enjoying it more than ever... I really can't discribe it. It is just an amazing feeling for me to be able to create something like this sauce from food I never put any cash money into at all. Oh, I put worth into it... planting, watering, weeding, wondering if I was going to beat the frost so that these little beauties graced my table and not my compost... but it seems like nothing compared to the taste of summers bounty I have saved now in my freezer waiting for a midwinter taste explosion on the perfect piece of pizza or perfectly cooked pasta.

Now all I need to do is jar it up and market it... right?

Grateful for tomatoes, among other things.

It has been a hard week with Alex. He is really starting to talk back and argue a lot... and for me, that is just about the worst thing he could do. Everything is either a debate, or an argument, or a sassy word play because I pronounced something differently than dad did last night, or said it differently enough that he has the room to argue. Yeah... pretty much drives me crazy. But, very honestly, no more than he did when I only saw him 1/4 of his day. So I consider this a good sign that we will adjust to him being home the rest of the way, and have good weeks eventually.

So today, I am forcefully grateful for my beautiful pre-teen son. He is wonderful as a student when he isn't being my argumentative son. He does what he is asked, he enjoys getting things right and because I am able to give him a lot of my time, he is moving through his curriculum (esp English and Math) about three times as fast as a normal 7th grader. Which is just great!

I am grateful.

I am also grateful for this one. She isn't being as tough as she was a few weeks ago. Which probably means she isn't bored anymore... but wow. If you saw a 'day in the life of Val' right now, you would be amazed at what we get done in a day. lol... I know I am.

Just for example, I will write about my day today. I woke up at 5:45am. I had sniffles, and so in blowing my nose, I woke the littlest, who wanted to nurse. Don came home while we were snuggling after nursing at 6:25am. He needed to go to sleep right away because he needed to be back to work at noon, so I got up out of bed with Little and made the kids oatmeal, who came to the smell of food like flies to honey. The picture above was taken as I sent her back to bed because, as much as I love to see her loving that blanket I made her, she needs to have clothes on to eat oatmeal. Strange. ;)

Then we got started on chores. It is now about 7:45am.

Eggs collected, chickens and rabbits fed, teeth brushed, breakfast eaten, and clean clothes donned, we get our school day going about 8:45am. They get their daily work done while I blanch 5lbs of sugar snap peas for stir fries sometime this winter. I get 6 quarts of them done and run to my local Starbucks after reading Katie's favorite fall things (Pumpkin Spice Latte... it was calling to me!).

When I get home and regather my children (I didn't even wear shoes to go get coffee... I just dashed there and back through the drive through with the Little) we got started on Math-U-See for Cyan. She finished a whole lesson today in about 20 minutes... that is 4 pages of work and a video clip that is 9 minutes. My kids are really good at math. Esp when it is taught well (love Math-U-See).

After Math is English. This took a while because I had to send Alex to his room for attitude, but he finished quickly working on his own while I gave Cyan her first Spelling Test and we were all done by 11 and ready for a break.

Then came lunch. Black beans seasoned with tomatoes, cilantro, and onions that I made the other day for burritos (recipe post coming soon). Homemade pico de gallo, cheese, and chips on cafeteria trays. (See the peas ready to freeze behind them?)

Then we started in on Biology. We had a couple of black beans sprout when I was soaking them the other day, so I put them in a jar with some water and they are sprouting even more with little roots sticking out now. We have been drawing them for biology, and talking about the different parts as they come out.

After that, I put little Logan down for his nap. Art class is no place for the baby. As much as he would like it. We studied Van Gogh today in art. His techniques with texture specifically. Both kids were completely intrigued.

Right now I have a set of tomatoes in the oven with this gentle guide in mind to make some sauce for this winter. I dumped a bunch of pressed Carpathian Garlic in there... Alex said they were way too spicy. I hope they calm down after being baked for an hour and a half.

When Logan wakes from nap we are going to pick pears from my Aunts tree, and then I will be coming home and get them ready to can tomorrow. Then I have to make dinner, and bed will be soon after. It has been a long day.

But what a blessing to be able to do all of these things. I am grateful for my stamina. I am grateful for the help my children give me. I am grateful for my healthy body in which to put all of these wonderful foods that others could be allergic to. I am grateful for the sun that has been shinning, although coldly for the last three weeks after such a bleakly gray summer. I am grateful for my life. It is busy... crazy busy... but there is a lot of beauty there.

Market work

Working the market has been interesting. People in Seattle are dedicated enough to eating organic that they just don’t think about the price… but wow. Our stuff is SPENDY. $2.50/lb for potatoes (damned good potatoes which are COMPLETELY worth it, but until you spend the money to try them, who would know?) $1.50/lb for the biggest cauliflower you have ever seen (and they are pretty and delicious too) but that means spending $6 for a cauliflower that is three times bigger than you really wanted, and then of course, $4/lb for the best green beans and peas you have ever tasted. What it means to be beyond organic is pretty amazing. The industrial organics can sell the ¼ of their stock (which are probably the ones that don’t quite fit into the mainstream idea of what the veggie is supposed to look like….) And they sell them to soup companies that want to claim ‘organic’ and still have plenty for every single whole sale order they have. We don’t have that luxury. We have to sell the 5lbers, right along with the 2lbers that we know everyone will buy.

Anyway… it has been interesting.

Yesterday I came home with a big box of food from the farm. I had one huge cauliflower, a 2lb bag of green sugar snap peas, 5 cukes, two bunches leeks, 5 onions, 4lbs potatoes, a bunch of carrots, a bunch of red chard, two tiny romenesca, two bunches cilantro, one bunch dill, one bunch mint, and a half lb wild Chantalle mushrooms. At the end of the day, the guy next door to us at the market traded for two half pints of fresh local ice cream, (one of which will be gracing my kids bellies after lunch), another neighbor traded for some bone broth for me and some fresh cows cream cheese which Hannah took home. And yet another neighbor traded for pastries for a snack. And on top of all of that, I got sent home with an entire case of sunflowers that we had left over, and wouldn't last until the Tuesday Market, which Cyan graced all of our neighbors with bouquets before we ate dinner.

This is an abnormal weekend. I normally get about half this much... but even so... I got paid on top of that (considering the time I spend and how long it takes to get there, my wages work out to under $7 an hour), but when you count all of the trades/veggies from the farm on top of it, well, it is a really good deal. I feel strange when people complain about jobs like this. I feel as though I have a special advantage as I can get as much as I want for my family for a week… and I guess when you are a single gal, the appeal of a weeks worth of veggies isn’t that high because you don’t need near as many of them. The veggies and trades I got were worth quite a bit more than I got paid in cash. I work my menu for the week around what we have at the market. This means that we have had potato-leek soup twice in the last two weeks and I am going to make it again this week. It means that I have peas the entire season, and by now, my kids are sick of them and I am forced to freeze whatever we are bringing home. But it also means that nothing has ever sat anywhere (no truck, fridge, box or shelf) for more than a day. I don't know... maybe I am weird... but that just has to be good for you.

Local living can be easy.

It isn't always. But in September, local living is easy. Farmers markets are packed to the brim with ways to get everything you need, from fish, veggies and fruits for dinner, to toys for Christmas, and flowers for your dining room table, along with other necessities like soap and fresh baked bread. The amount of local bounty I see go past my stand every Sunday just amazes me! I got a lot of my things local before. But I had no idea how much was out there, processed or grown within 200 miles of my house is everything I need from home baked pies to fresh peanuts from just over the mountains.

The omelet above? Eggs from my chickens (of course) with Pico De Gallo made from tomatoes from my garden, onions, garlic, and cilantro from the farm, and a token jalapeno pepper from the neighbors farm stand at the market.

The above is not 100% local. The organic, single ingredient pasta that I have come to depend on for my husbands dietary 'needs' comes from Italy... and the balsamic vinaigrette came from California, but the rest? The goat cheese, the tomatoes (my gardens only real produce this year), and the beautiful golden beets from the farm are all amazingly from within 40 miles of my house.

Sweet and Tangy Pasta Salad

1/4 lb golden beets (red beets will do, but I don't like the way they stain everything pink)

1 lb tomatoes (plum or cherry work best)

2/3 cup balsamic vinaigrette dressing (I use Paul Newman's)

4 oz soft goat cheese

1 lb rotini pasta (WW would work well here)

Directions:

Cook pasta until al dente. Drain and douse with cold water reduce sticking.

Steam beets until fork tender. Slice tomatoes into bite sizes.

Add in the cheese and dressing, saving veggies for last. Toss with veggies (feel free to add others too! Baby spinach would be good tossed in, as would a host of other greens).

Eat cold.

Serves 4

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A surprise in the garden! You remember that volunteer pumpkin that I was ranting about a few months ago? Well, it looks like we may actually get two jack-o-lantern pumpkins out of it!

Gardening is always a journey.

Chocolate Mousse

I found this recipe at Delicious Wisdom. It is intense! If you like dark chocolate, this is the mousse for you. I added an extra 1/4 cup of sweetener, because I just couldn't do the heavy dark chocolate without a bit more sweet, but it is stunningly rich and yummy for a whole food recipe.

On days the earth stood still...

I have been alive for a few. My mother even more. From the advent of modern television there have been a few days that the earth just stood still. The death of Kennedy, the assassination attempt of Reagan, the Challenger Explosion, and of course 9/11.

They are days where you will always remember where you were. It is burned in your mind, as good as a stamp on time. Even as a small child (I was only in 1st grade watching Challenger), I remember watching the explosion and then, slowly, watching my teacher crumble to her seat and start crying. I don't even remember her name. But that moment is welded into my memory because of the momentous thing that happened.

On 9/11, 7 years ago, I had a 2 month old sweet baby girl. She was a baby I had waited for my whole life. A child born out of love, into a home where I was secure and married to a wonderful man. Alex woke up early just like any day... at just turned 5 years old, he was the sweetest little boy, bent on every ritual I had created for each day. Every day he would ask to watch a Blue's Clues on video and eat his daily snack of a nutrition bar with some instant breakfast. While the tv was occupying my older child, I would try to recover from the 24 times a night Cyan would wake to nurse and wake myself up with a shower so I could go on with my day. I was just stepping into the shower when my sister called from the East Coast. Bleary eyed and annoyed that someone would call so early, I answered... only to hear her upset and saying that I needed to find a television. Even then, we didn't get cable tv and she knew it. I called my neighbor, who also had a baby girl at the time (8mos) and got her to unlock her door so we could turn on her cable. We sat on her futon and watched as the second plane hit the two towers with horror. I clutched Cyan to me, and cried. I have never seen anything so awful.

It is strange to think that television has brought us together in that way. It has seemed like television has done nothing to bring us together as groups of people. It rips apart the ways we have lived for hundreds of years; trading meals together for meals hastily eaten in front of the tv. It has deconstructed things like leisure time playing golf, or hiking, or muddy football with friends to nearly obsolete. But these moments of tragedy, we share as a country... as a world.

My thoughts and prayers to everyone in my coutry... in the world... today.

In Defense of Food

I am becoming a die hard Michael Pollan fan. He is a wonderful writer (as most journalists are), but the information he gives answers SO many questions!

In the book "In Defense of Food" he attaches on to something he only touched on in "The Omnivore's Dilemma"... What to actually eat.

Oh yes, you can look at a food pyramid or an FDA guideline, based on sketchy facts, and supported by the industrial food industry. But when you know enough not to trust that 100%... where do you look to know what to eat?

This is the question he tackles. The rules he gives are not based on scientific evidence, but by the thousands of years that people have survived without the current eating disorders of the 'Western Diet' and the diseases that go along with it.

The 'rules' are fairly simple, once you understand what is meant by them:

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

By "eat food", he means 'eat food that your great-great-grandmother would recognise'. There are not many industrial food products that would pass that test. Oatmeal? Corn meal? Yes. High fructose corn syrup? Go-gurt? Not so much.

"Not too much" is pretty self explanatory.

"Mostly plants" is the rule that is backed up by literally hundreds of years of meat being a side dish, or condiment instead of the main course and how our health has deteriorated from meat pushing the veggies right off our plates. This part also talks about the way our food chain has moved from 'leaves to seeds' and how this has effected every bit of that food chain, from the health of our meat cattle, to the health of our hearts.

Notice how he didn't go into vitamins, or 'nutrients' in his rules? In fact, in the book, he goes into those scientific specifics in great detail.... but not to the expense of the rules. You don't need to know how much more vitamin C is in your gardens romaine lettuce than the lettuce shipped from a thousand miles away to benefit from eating it. Taking food rules out of mom's kitchen and into the laboratory did more harm than good.

All in all, it is a light, if a bit scientific, read that has answered all sorts of questions I had about our culture and what the years of scientific nutrition study have done to our food habits. And, as with most of his books, In Defense of Food brings to the forefront a need to think about food differently. Bringing it from a place for overindulgence and nutrient specifics, to a cultural artery, so to speak.... to a place where eating is a relationship that will last a healthy lifetime.

Sad Day, but happy memories

Laura's service was Saturday. It was a long and beautiful day, with lots of lovely memories that were shared, and many moments of love and support for the whole family. After the service, the closest of us all went back to the lake house (where Laura grew up and where my Aunt and Uncle still live) and had a spreading ashes ceremony next to the lake. It was beautiful.

Here is that side of my family. There are a lot of cousins here. All but three of these people are 'cousins'. And only two then, by marriage. We have a lot of cousins. lol!

Here is a picture of Don, Ryan, and Brandon (Laura's Son) down by the lake before the ceremony.

And always, there is new life:

Here is sweet little Clover. She is just a year old and a dear friend of the family (Caplen's) daughter. She was delightful to watch with her big sister that night, running around with her sweet little diaper butt and big curious green/grey eyes. They both were a constant reminder that new life does happen, and that not all can be sad for long.

Cloud Berries

"Fruit and berries on strange planets either make you live or make you die. Therefore the point at which to start toying with them is when you're going to die if you don't. That way you stay ahead. The secret to healthy hitchhiking is to eat junk food."

--Ford Prefect, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Cloud berry time. These strange little buggers were ripe over a month ago last year... but this year, they are still tart and almost unripe... in September. Blackberries are doing the same thing. Mostly red still. We may get a few before the first frost, but the year has been so strange and the berries just have not caught up yet. I think we will have a drop in bird population around here because there are just not enough berries to feed all of the fledglings. We went and got a basket today though. Enough for a double batch of AnyBerry Streusel Bars with my newly made peach preserves.

I don't know if I will pick anymore this year. I may leave them for the birds.

How you know when your family has watched a lot of Sci-Fi movies?

When you are involved in a hit and run and while waiting for the officer to respond, your 7 year old daughter comes out with "Where the heck is he? Is he in another demention?"

That, and she dresses up like a borg in her free time:

Homeschool

The first day of school is upon us.

Capturing my boys

I have been walking around with my camera as a shield between me and the world lately. I really do love the thing.

We are starting school tomorrow. I am feeling great about that. I have everything ready for the kids and they are even a bit excited about having some sort of schedule again. lol...

Things are going better here. Life is intense right now, but not overly so, and the few things that I have to deal with could be much much worse, so I am coping, and doing alright tonight. Thank you all for your thoughts.

Here is sweet baby Logan.

My feet while I was swinging.

My beautiful big boy.

and an intense capture.

I was taking pictures of Logan swinging on the big kid swing for the first time and right as he was at the very top of the arc (about 4 ft up)... he fell head first towards the gravel. My ninja husband came in an caught him like the super-hero that he is. For the next hour, I totally had visions of an ER room visit to scrape the gravel out of my baby's face running through my head...

My sweet girly

“There is no such thing as the dark night of the spirit,

there is only the dark night of the ego.”

–Frances Vaughan