August Work and then Play

August was jam-packed with what felt like more work than play.  Here is Will off to work as "King of the School" as Lucy tells people.  He is really enjoying his new position and we are hopefully riding the tail end of the learning curve as we adjust to Will being gone more.

This King has another kingdom to run when he gets home, and he will be the first to admit that behind every great King is a marvelous Queen.  Ahem, ahem.  Here he is below changing the breaks on his Queen's chariot.

He also put in a new royal bathtub for the princesses.

Finally, he installed a built in dresser in our bedroom to save on space.  Our upstairs is actually built into the roof and has dead space in the walls where the roof slopes down.  There are three more "dead spaces" in our upstairs that I am excited to create more built ins as time and money permit.  Here is Will below prepping the space for the dresser.  First, he cut a whole in the wall in our closet between the studs to make sure there were no hidden skeletons.

We were relieved to find out it was empty.  We found two pennies, one from 1981 and another from 1995 so the wall hadn't been closed up as long as we had thought.  Next we had to move the new dresser up the stairs.  This was the most difficult part of the entire project and I prayed fervently as my brother helped Will get the solid oak furniture up our narrow and winding stairs.  I kept promising them that they would never have to bring it back down!

The dresser made it up with only a couple of nicks on the wall and some sore muscles for Will and John.  It fit quite nicely into the wall, so that was a huge relief!  We designed the dresser through the mail and over the phone with an Amish furniture producer in Indiana who had never seen the space himself.

Below is the before and after.  If you look really close, you will notice that my toe is finally better!  From the fourth of July (when the before picture was taken) to Labor Day it was badly infected despite various efforts to help heal it.  After the last official holiday salute to summer, it is finally better.  But I digress.  

Will is very thorough in his demolition and installation but has a hard time remembering the clean up.  He didn't tarp anything when he cut into the wall - which was a double layer of plaster and drywall - and as a result every stitch of fabric in our room had to be washed - all of our bedding, and every piece of clothing we own.  After I got over my anger about the work Will had created for me, it became a really good way for us to weed through a ton of clothes to donate when the question came down to not, "Will I ever wear this again," but, "Do I really want to wash this?"

The most exciting project we worked on this past month was for our new educational poster business.  We had our first shipment of posters come in and were faced with the job of collating 7,000 pieces of paper into 1,000 poster sets.  We hired my teenage brother and sister to help collate and my parents came along and volunteered their time to the cause.  It took two solid days and several serious paper cuts, but we got the job done.  Lucy and Emma had fun helping as well - their job was to put caps on the mailing tubes.  Only mild panic set in when I realized that they were capping ALL of the tubes and we had to go through each and every one of them to find out which had posters in them already and which ones did not.  Minor set backs!  We are feeling very fortunate for the over sized garage and good weather to house our assembly line and inventory.

By the end of August we were feeling quite burned out and forced ourselves to make some time for relaxing.  Fortunately, our time spent in the garden is fun for us.  Below is a picture of our garden this past month, the rhubarb bed we planted this summer, and our peach tree.

Below are the sunflowers Lucy and Emma planted this past spring.  They really make the garden beautiful and the girls are so proud of them.  Next year they want to plant even taller ones!

Lucy got a little creative the other day when she found herself in the garden with lots to harvest but no basket on hand.

August's harvest included a dozen peaches from our peach tree, the last of the season's blueberries, pounds and pounds of green beans, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes and pears.  Oh, and of course eggs.

I suffer from a disorder that sees baked good and other processed foods whenever I look at fresh produce.  I wish I could just eat the produce unprocessed and be satisfied, but my mind immediately wanders to the pancakes and muffins fresh blueberries will make, the cheesecake and oven-puffed pancakes and sauces the pears will enhance, the three bean salad and dilly beans the green beans were made for and of course the peach cobbler God clearly intended peaches to be used for.  Not to mention the zucchini that should only be eaten in muffins, the kale that can only be eaten as chips and the plums for plum buckle.  Oh, and I almost forgot about the luscious strawberry rhubarb cobbler!  If I could just get over this disorder, then maybe I could lose these last 15 pounds!  Below is a picture of the blueberry pancakes and muffins, ginger pear cheesecake (heaven!) and a mason jar of my first batch of freshly brewed kambucha (a fermented sweet tea drink stocked full with beneficial probiotics).

 Lucy has been very helpful these days.  In the below right picture, she stocked the toilet paper in the downstairs bathroom for me.  It reminded me of a quote by George S. Patton that says, "Never tell people how to do things.  Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity."

In the above middle picture Lucy is helping me babysit a friend of our's baby.  She absolutely loves helping me with babies and is looking forward to the day when she is old enough to go babysitting on her own.  The left bottom picture above is of Emma putting her finger in the ringlet of curls cascading from Lucy's forehead.  At least someone looked good in the humid weather we had this past month!

I bought some beads and string on clearance at the local craft store this past month.  Lucy and Emma were excited to try their hand at jewelry making and did an amazing job.  Lucy made patterns all on her own and Emma was able to string the tiny beads with no problem.  It was fun for me to sit back and watch their little minds creating.

It has also been fun to sit back with my feet up in the yard and watch them play.  This is possible a bit more now that Lucy has learned to swing herself this summer and fortunately Emma is content to do "belly swings" as she calls it and use her feet to kick off and swing herself.  Here they are below laying on a blanket, watching the clouds go by.  Lucy has been interested in clouds and the proper names of them so we are learning all about cumulus, stratus, cirrus and nimbus clouds with help from some library books.

 Lucy told Will the other day after she came inside from an afternoon of running around the yard barefoot, "Dad, I think I have your feet."  When Will asked why, she responded with, "Because they are dirty."

Thank goodness for the little girls in our life to help us balance out all of our hard work with giggles, play and someone to help me eat all of the baked goods!

Emma at 28 Months

Emma is definitely working the two vibe now, and gets a kick out of holding up her thumb and pointer finger to tell people she is two.  This two year old is not held back by age or height, and I am constantly putting her feet back on the ground.

I will support her in other dreams, but climbing is not one I plan on encouraging at this age.  As you can see, Mt. Counter holds some of the best views of snacks in the house.

Fortunately, she has other interests besides climbing.  She has definitely taken a liking to our summer harvest, and enjoys watching all of our various produce as it grows.  Pears...

 ...blueberries...

...and peaches.

Not that she really eats them.  She is more of a Cheerios and meat kind of girl, which seems to be working for her.  She has grown almost two clothing sizes this summer and we even had to buy her some new summer jammies this past month as she had outgrown all of her other ones.  Here she is below, proudly modeling new-to-her Dora jammies that we so luckily found at our local children's resale shop.  We were on a mission to find her Dora jammies that matched Lucy's coveted nightgown and would you believe it that we found one, mid-season, in her size?  The only thing better would be if there had been two, as if I wash them, I have to wash and dry them between when she wakes up and when she goes to bed, as she refuses to sleep in anything else now.

And lately, I will dress her in anything she wants if it will ensure a smooth transition into sleep.  I'm not sure what kind of phase is happening with her right now, but she takes forever to fall asleep.  We've tried moving the nap times, eliminating naps, and moving bed times but unless we skip her nap all together and deal with a cranky girl for the last five hours of the day, she doesn't go to bed before 10:00 p.m. most nights.  It is getting really old, especially since on the days that we try eliminating the naps we can't drive anywhere in the car after 3 p.m. or she will fall asleep and not go to bed until midnight.  So you can see why I've taken so many pictures of her sleeping this month.  It is a big deal.

We went for an evening walk the other day in the hopes of tiring out Emma who happened to have taken a nap that day.  It had just finished raining, and you could hear the water rushing in the storm drains.  Emma went to investigate closer and ended up having a conversation with the "Man in Hole" as she is now referring to it.

The conversation went like this:
Emma: "Who in there?"
Man in Hole: "Who in there?"
Emma: "Who IN there?"
Man in Hole "Who IN there?"
Emma: "WHO. IN. THERE."
Man in Hole: "WHO. IN. THERE."
Emma:  "Mom, there a Man in Hole.  I not like that man."

Other things Emma has been chatting about this past month include:
-"It's not fair!"
-Emma: "Lucy's licking my face!"  Will:  "Why'd you put flavor all over it?"
-Emma, when asked if the food tastes good or is too hot: "It's not too bad."
-Emma, after FINALLY doing what I asked her to do: "Mama, you happy now?"
-Stated before viciously grabbing an object from her sister: "Actually, that's mine."
-"No poop talk at the table!"  Emma proudly yells this at every meal.

This little chatter box has also fabricated her first lie.  Lucy was complaining that Emma took her gum.  I found Emma hiding at the bottom of the steps to our backdoor with a half-opened piece of gum.  Needless to say she tried to convince me that she did not open the gum.  She just opened the top part.

And yes, I still have a "baby talk" accent when I talk to Emma.  I can't help it, she still looks just like the little baby we brought home from the hospital almost two and a half years ago.  Maybe once she loses her chubby cheeks I can talk normal to her?

Emma is getting less and less cuddly, and so I have to soak up her cuddles when she gives them to me now.  Usually it is in the middle of the night when she sneaks into my bed, but I will take what I can get.  I love to ask her, "Who loves you Emma?"  This past month she changed up her usual response with, "This lady" while pointing to me.  She will also tell me during our bedtime routine snuggles, "I'm kicking you out of my bed.  I need water."  To which I will respond, "You are trading in snuggles with me for water?"  And Emma heartlessly responds, "Yup, get out."  Here is my grown up baby girl taking a picture of ants at Story Time.  What a widdle cutie.

July: Buckets, Berries, Bugs and everything in Between

July officially started our summer vacation.  With Will's new job we are left with a third of the amount of time to enjoy our bucket list of summer fun.  An entire month of vacation is still nothing to shake a stick at, giving us plenty of time still for beach days, long walks and bike rides, time spent with friends, activities with the kids, projects around the house and lots of good food and gardening.  Here is Lucy below, kicking off our stay-cation in the comfort of our own backyard.

Turns out, maybe we shouldn't have kicked off our vacation so hard.  Two days into our "trip", my toe got severely infected and I ended up having an emergency surgery.  It was so unplanned the girls and Will were with me at the doctor's office.  Will was a bit stressed out, trying to hold three disturbed girls but we went out for ice cream after, as I couldn't feel my foot yet and well, ice cream is my comfort food.  Silver lining of this bummer of a way to kick off summer is the doctor was able to save my toenail.  Unfortunately, this knocked beach days, long walks and bike rides completely out of our summer bucket list o' fun.  Here is my family below, taking good care of me.  Of special note is the inset picture of Will vacuuming.  I took a picture so that I could treasure the vision for always.  Will does many, many things but vacuuming is usually not one of them!

We finally made it to the cemetery to plant flowers at Luke's grave as well as Will's Grandpa Timmerman and my Grandma and Grandpa Hines' graves.  We were torn between feelings of guilt for getting there a month later than usual while trying to remind ourselves that we should not feel guilty for living our lives.  We know Luke doesn't care, but it hurts to realize that life continues to move on to the point that we are too busy for such a small gesture, especially when there aren't many gestures we can do these days for our firstborn.  It is what it is though, and we planted our annual flowers and enjoyed a picnic lunch.

We enjoyed a laid back fourth of July at my friend Bonnie's house.  The girls swam with their friends Emily and Kayla and enjoyed their first, firsthand experience with fireworks.  Notice Lucy wearing sunglasses as her own safety precaution.  I think it did help them with their fear of fireworks and a great time was had by all.

Will and I celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary on July 10th.  Here we are below on our wedding day.  It's hard to believe it's almost been a decade and as cliche as it sounds, time sure does fly when you are having fun.  I feel so fortunate to have found and married my best friend and soul mate.  We have been through so much in these nine years of marriage from joys to heartbreaks and everything in between.  My dreams would be nothing without Will in them, and he is an integral part of my hopes and dreams for the future.  Who knew nine years ago that we would have three beautiful children, eleven chickens, several thousand bees and a couple of green thumbs?  I certainly didn't, but I am happy to say that this is better than I could have ever dreamed.  I also wish that I knew then what I know now - I would have registered for drastically different things... pickling crocks, a dehydrator, yogurt maker, worm bin... you get the idea.

That's not to say that we don't have our issues.  It's amazing how after nine years we can still find new ways to irritate each other while holding strong to the things that have always driven the other person nuts.  Will has recently proclaimed that I put too many things on edge.  As in objects, not people!  He took a picture the other day to illustrate what he has been trying to tell me for months.  Below is a plate I set on the counter, apparently much like I set many things on horizontal surfaces.  I swear I do not do this consciously or even purposely to irritate him.  I also will admit I have no idea WHY I do it either, but until the photographed proof, I had been aggressively denying any such claims of living too close to the edge.  His least favorite is when he finds his school iPad balancing precariously from the top edge of the piano.

Despite my bum foot, I have been quite the socialite this past month while my dear husband stayed home to tend the children and the chickens.  A longtime friend of mine is back in the country after a year-long stint in Japan, so we celebrated her homecoming and a belated birthday with a fancy tea at a five star hotel by my house.  I've never experienced anything quite like it and it was definitely something I would like to do again!  Imagine me trying to explain this to a client that evening as I kept burping champagne.  No, really, I don't normally drink champagne at two in the afternoon.

I went to the Michigan Lavender Festival with my sister-in-law kid-free, as the girls were sick.  I took advantage of my free-as-a-bird status, and I enjoyed dropping in on several different classes about making your own body care products as well as how to grow and harvest lavender.  That same weekend I also got to go with my sister on an all day excursion to Lansing to visit our aunt.  It was the longest time I have been away from the girls since my bout with MRSA last winter.  It was super refreshing, and when I came home from Lansing, this is what I found at the table:

Two giant mason jars for my fermenting projects!  I have been looking for these for quite some time.  It was a nice surprise and it definitely made me happy to be home to a family who knows me so well (I fully realize that fermenting jars are not your run of the mill homecoming presents).  Thankfully I had arrived home with completely recharged batteries, as the girls were then sick for the next two weeks, passing fevers and coughs back and forth to each other like a ping-pong ball.  We missed lots of social gatherings and activities and at one point Lucy overheard me say, "Great, there goes our weekend" after I took her temperature and it read 102 - again.  Lucy looked up at me with the saddest eyes and said, "I'm sorry mom, you can just leave me home alone so I don't ruin your weekend anymore."  I swear it felt like a knife went straight through my heart at that point and I instantly dropped to my knees and became the most devoted mother you ever did see.  Fortunately, we found ways to occupy ourselves while we were on quarantine. 

Lucy caught a lot of bugs - literally and figuratively!  She got a Little Tikes bug box and net for her birthday and it has been the most used toy of the year.  She has a routine this month where she gets up with Will in the morning to let the chickens out and then they pick berries and catch bugs together before breakfast.  Every evening before bed we let the bugs go free.  I couldn't believe the dragonfly that our neighbor caught for Lucy the other day.  It was beautiful and let Lucy hold it for quite some time before it flew away.  Hopefully Lucy did not give it her fever.  The picture on the right is of Lucy holding a small black toad and the center picture is of Lucy with her most frequent catch - a cricket.

The berries were amazing this month.  The strawberries were finished the first week in July just in time for the raspberries, blackberries and blueberries to come out in full force.  Lucy is an efficient berry-eater, and Emma is an efficient berry-waster.  Emma doesn't care for berries, but loves picking them and feeding "bad" ones to the chickens as well as accidentally knocking over the berry bowl.  So as long as I didn't mind the bowl being knocked over multiple times, and I kept Emma from feeding the berries to the chickens, Emma still resulted in larger yields than Lucy would bring home.  Which is why you always assign the berry picking to the one who doesn't like berries.

We had enough berries for breakfast every morning, multiple berry desserts as well as yummy blackberry syrup (a.k.a. ice cream topping) and blackberry jam.  Will actually made our year's worth of blackberry jam himself since I was laid up with my foot and berries do not keep too long.  I am trying to focus on gratitude, however I am kicking myself (with my good foot) for not making sure Will deseeded the berries before making the jam.  I really, really am trying not to complain because if Will didn't make the jam, there wouldn't have been jam this year, but now there will be seeds in my jam for a whole year!  It's a rough life I lead.

Relaxing doesn't come easy to Will and I and so maybe the bum foot and the coughing, contagious kids is what we needed.  Here are the girls below, showing examples of the many forts they built this past month.

We also did artwork outside in attempt to keep my floors clean.  I was feeling quite satisfied with my parenting at this point, and we all know the fall from grace is fast and hard.  When I set the camera down, the paint really hit the canvas.  In retrospect, I should have given them both the SAME colors.  When one realized the other had different colors than SHE did, paint started flinging and by the time it was over the neighbors had heard a decibel of my voice that I wasn't even aware I had.  Also, there is no doubt that the neighbors also know both girls middle names now too.

I hosed everything down, including the girls which helped me feel better and hung their dripping paintings on the wire trellis for our apple trees.  At this point I was back to feeling semi in control and life moved on.  I have added painting with two kids to the same list as letting two kids push the mini shopping carts around Trader Joe's.  Some things are just not meant to happen with more than one kid at the same time.

Our garden is definitely enjoying the wet summer we are having.  Below is the asparagus bed Will planted for me, as well as one of the chickens who so generously donated the rich fertilizer to start our new garden bed off on the right foot.

  

We love our chickens for many reasons and wonderful, organic fertilizer is a definite plus.  Anything we plant in aged chicken poop does remarkably well.  Unfortunately, we forgot to amend the soil in our existing garden beds and I think it may be to blame for the poor performance of our lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers.  Either that or those plants just don't like the wet and cool summer we are having.  Our pole beans, cabbage, basil, parsley, dill, garlic, potatoes, beets and carrots are doing very well as is our rhubarb.  Our rhubarb has been so successful in fact, that we have planted another bed of that this past month. One of our goals is to have as many perennial crops as possible that are native to the area and require little to no work once planted.  Rhubarb, asparagus, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, pears and peaches all seem to enjoy the micro climate that is our yard and should come back year after year with little to no effort on our part.

Lucy planted the sunflower in the above left hand picture from a seed in the spring.  The top right is of a peach on our peach tree, bottom left a pear and bottom right an apple.  The peach and pear trees are looking very healthy and should have quite a bit of produce to harvest.  Our apple trees that we are trellising along the west wall of our garage seem like they are struggling.  They each contain only a handful of apples and seem to be fighting off diseases and insects.  Time will tell if these trees will make it as a permanent crop in our yard, but in the meantime I feel like I owe it to them to read up on the plights of apple trees.

Lucy and Emma had more bonding time this month, as they shared each other's germs.  I would like to say that although both of them know exactly when, where and how to push each other's buttons they did play rather nice this month.  It might have helped that usually one was down and out with a fever.

Thank goodness there are 31 days in July.  We managed to have fun the last week of this month with both kids finally healthy and my toe healed enough for me to wear shoes again.  The girls have gone to a special summer Story Time at our library called Outdoor Explorers most Mondays this summer and have really enjoyed being outside and learning about nature.  The girls loved the fact that Will got to come with us, as usually Story Time is on school days only.

The girls also are taking a kids yoga class in a friend's backyard this summer.  It has been a great experience, and even better that both girls can take the same class.  I wasn't sure how Emma would do as she is the youngest in the class, but she takes it very seriously and is proud to be with the big kids.  Some of you may have seen the picture I posted of Emma on Facebook the other day in the top left picture.  I came across Emma sitting in the corner with her eyes shut and when I asked her if she was okay, she replied, "Yup.  I doing yoga!"

We also have spent lots of time with friends at parties, parks, ice cream parlors and bowling alleys.  Emily, Kayla, Arjun, Juhee, Grace, William, Katherine, Killian, Chloe, Aeden, Ethan, Ian, James and Lucas have all helped make our summer special.

Finally, we went to the zoo this past week and were able to fulfill our bucket list there before the sky dumped buckets of water on us.  We were able to ride the train, see the polar bear exhibit (but no polar bears were sighted, just seals and otters), flamingos, lions and monkeys as well as find a tent to eat our picnic under while guarding our food from the peacocks.

We have had many a car ride home this past month that ended like the below picture.  So, despite our setbacks, we were still able to live it up enough to exhaust our kids and keep Will and I from going too crazy!