school days

a season of life has ended and a new one begun. i made my first school lunch today.

as i cut the veggies and portioned out its dip, i felt a little tug on my heart.

my boy made a big step in independence. today was the first day of kindergarten. full day kindergarten. i have had the honor of spending the majority of his waking moments in his company and loved almost all of them! his passion for discovery has inspired me to find so much joy in learning about life together. his creativity is amazing, his sensitivity has helped me verbalize my own thoughts more clearly, and he is seriously so very funny!

it feels like a big moment to pass this baton (a seven hour chunk of his day) over to another teacher. while this might seem dramatic, my biggest fear is that i will get his leftovers. the exhausted moments, the meltdowns will be saved for me, while his best energy will be spent with other people.

at the same time, we are thrilled to have a school that we love, within walking distance (he can practically see home from his classroom window!), and have more resources for his learning and development! we are excited to join the school as a family and participate in his learning together.

it helped that he has been very excited to start school. he was up and dressed with plenty of time to play with claire before the banana split breakfast (with yogurt instead of ice cream and warm berries as the sauce). i thought it would be a fun way to begin the year with a special breakfast, but the joke was on me. i forgot my kids have never had a banana split and had no idea what i was talking about. claire asked if it would taste like her spit. maybe this weekend we'll have to have real banana splits!

claire packed a backpack, jackson wore his "X-ray vision" glasses (old sunglasses with missing lenses), and we walked to school.

he had a great day. he remembered a few kids names, thinks his teacher is nice, and had "the shortest recess EVER!".

but, he loved his lunch!! he asked if i could make him veggies and dip again tomorrow.

Pizza Farm

i don't know much about Wisconsin, but now i know one of their best kept secrets!
Pizza Farm.
they don't have a website, they don't even advertise. they don't really need to; word gets around. its a working farm, growing wheat, corn, veggies galore, cows, goats, chickens. on tuesday nights in the summer they make pizzas in a wood fired brick oven right on the farm, using ingredients grown right on the farm!
fantastic combos like: italian sausage, kalamata olives, green olives, mozzarella, onions and tomatoes. a killer veggie including beets and eggplant!
a friend found this sweet little video that my kids love watching
we've been talking about taking the hour and forty minute drive to visit the farm, but the idea of that drive AFTER the feast (and more importantly after bedtime) with my two kids sounded terrible. so we decided to camp. our good friend shirley agreed to drive a few of us in her RV and the dinner date became a vacation!
tuesday morning we piled in the RV and tried to keep the kiddos from bouncing off the walls as we otherwise rode in climate controlled luxury. we drove to a beautiful campsite right on lake Pepin, had a little lunch and swam in the unnaturally warm water. it was hot, teetering around 100F! we were so grateful to have a ginormous tree shading out entire campsite. after setting up tents, having a little lunch and taking a dip in the unnaturally warm water, we set off to check out the little town of Stockholm. we spent an hour in the cutest little gallery and came out with a bargain find, already giving us plenty of laughs!



a little ice cream, a little window shopping, train spotting, herb spotting, so much fun with friends, you wouldn't know we were skipping a nap!




we made our way past corn and soybean fields, truly in the middle of nowhere, just a few minutes after the farm opened. we weren't alone - we were order number 73!
it was easy to pass the time waiting for our pizza, wandering around the farm, checking out the animals, feeding lambsquarters to the lambs, having some for ourselves, watching the pizza making, and finding a nice shady spot to picnic. a trip to the Bran Can, a bucket toilet system i had read about in the Urban Homestead - cover your business with a cup of bran - the cleanest, nicest smelling outhouse i have ever been inside, complete with running water for the sink.
the kids were starting to loose steam, so by the time the pizza was ready they were literally running circles around our blanket. i didn't exactly savor the pizza i was so aware of the kiddos, but even with my distracted attention, i found it to be delicious!








back at the campsite, the kids were way overtired, hot and sweaty. one friend helped jackson take a cold shower while i began putting claire to bed.
one of my first glimpses of claire's temperament was on the night she was born. it was winter, and like a good mama, i had her swaddled, but she would not stop screaming. not until i unwrapped her and let her sleep in just a diaper. in the minnesota winter. she knew what she wanted, and it was to sleep coo.
so lying in the hot and steamy tent with a screaming claire brought back memories.
jackson joined us after a little popcorn with the ladies. he, on the other hand, could sleep in a sauna (and since his bedroom has the worst air circulation, he often does) but he is super sensitive to noise. i sang songs, told Beyond stories, prayed, talked about our special day, but nothing was helping them settle down, in fact, their differences were clashing like cymbals.
i left them for a few minutes to gather my bearings and get some water, heading to the RV to consult my friends who were in the middle of a game of sequence. "i don't know what to do!", i exclaimed and jessie replied, "claire is running out of the tent, should i go get her?"
let's just say Shirley got her way and we all ended up sleeping in the RV. we turned off all the lights and claire was asleep in a few minutes. jackson, the social little night owl that he is, managed to stay awake for an hour of back rubbing before exhaustion overcame him.
this was a perfect example of my village raising my children with me!
so to my community, THANK YOU!!! i really couldn't do it without you. i would have packed the kids up in the car and drove back home just to have a few hours of sleep in their own bed if it weren't for you.
most of the time i love being with my children, but times like this are so draining. they take from me so much of my energy. and time! it was close to 2 hours of bedtime. i was really looking forward to that evening of hanging out with my friends. it is hard not to feel resentful.
claire was awake at 6:30. we wandered the beach, spotted two bald eagles, a heron, a few geese, an old school playground (you know, the kind that really provide challenges) and a friendly neighbor who offered me a cup of coffee. the resentfulness slips away with those sweet hours with my girly. i am reminded that she isn't trying to make my life miserable. she is trying to figure out what her dad has learned; when the party is going strong and you are ready to go to bed, its okay to say goodnight, excuse yourself from the group politely, and go to bed.


we passed a sign and i laughed: "danger mosquitoes". yeah, yeah, that's what they say. in 7 years i haven't found them to be bigger or more in number than base camp at Beyond (where my ankles were constantly bitten). i have thought that Minnesotans talk about the mosquito and the winters like Seattleites talk about the rain. apparently in Wisconson, the mosquitoes really are vicious! i thought i just had camping eyes that were taking more time than usual to deflate. i came home with 7 bites on one foot, 5 on the other, 3 on my neck and 13 on my forehead!!! if i had painted my face blue i could have tried out for the Avatar sequel.

the rest of the gang woke up, we made wonderful breakfast sandwiches, broke camp, headed for home. for naps. memories made.



i learned three things:
1. here in the midwest, it might be best to camp in spring or fall, but not summer
2. i want to be a camping family, but we will probably need to wait until our kids sleep well at home.
3. trip #2 to the Pizza Farm will be a date without the kids!

spring strawberries

there is not much better than fresh strawberries, right off the vine. or fresh strawberries with yogurt and granola. or fresh strawberries and ice cream.
we had a wonderful day morning at a farm with friends, picking berries, feeding chickens, tasting herbs that were growing all over the place, and (of course) playing an episode of "mama-baby"









we ended up making strawberry jam (my first go at jam) and found this recipe to be really easy and so naturally sweet! the next morning we intended to have strawberry parfaits for breakfast, but we had used up all the strawberries in jam making. blueberry parfaits were excellent as well, especially with a fresh batch of our favorite granola!

NYC

nearly seven years ago we tied the knot. our honeymoon was brief, but sweet,a mere two days at a B&B, after which we both had to return to work. we promised ourselves that we would have a series of minimoons for the rest of our marriage, rather than be disappointed that our first was so short.
we finally got away!
our good friends, chris and jess, have lived in NYC for six years. our desire to go visit them has been great, but there has always been something holding us back - not enough money, no time off, too late in the pregnancy, small baby who doesn't sleep, baby to old to make it fun, two babies,.....
when we found out our friends were finally moving back to the midwest (!!!) we knew we had to make a visit happen, even if i went alone (which had a delightful sound to it!). we had also hoped to have a little family vacation to celebrate the end of self-employment. we settled on a little family weekend away to Duluth and a minimoon to NYC!
did i mention we had never left our children for more than two nights and one day? we did get to Lutzen, just hubby and i, last summer for a weekend, but i didn't consider that a minimoon since he was working and our time together was dependent upon other people's schedule. i worried a little about our kids that weekend, but more for the suffering of our friends who were waking up with claire at O-Dark thirty.
this trip was free of worry, knowing the kids would be happy as clams with their grandparents!
this was a vacation!
it was about being together, uninterrupted conversations, eating really good food, exploring all day, dressing up and not having to worry about greasy fingers, seeing a Broadway musical the night before it wins the Tony, observing styles that will not reach us until next year, not eating dinner before 8pm every night, having dessert from the Chocolate Room every night (yes, we did), "man games" between chris and steve, crazy good food, interesting archetechture, ...
it was what we had hoped it to be!

sweet violet

as much as i love cooking and baking, and hand made, home grown, fresh-from-the-garden, locally made, i am really new to the preserving thing.
i just learned how to can a few years ago and LOVE it! each year we will can more than the last!
i finally broke down and made jam. not like i needed convincing, i like jam and to find jam without all the crap means it is probably cheaper to make my own. i just haven't done it.
until this week when our friend sent us the link to a recipe for violet jam. as soon as jackson saw the post he started rattling off all the spots where he has seen violets blooming. i had to hold him back until we had the necessary ingredients - not many, but for one who has never made jam, i didn't have pectin on hand.
we gathered, we measured and even without the blender (i forgot it had broken) it still turned out beautifully and tasted so sweet!