One of the great things about where I used to work was that we had a very talented, very awesome in house photographer and he was always up to taking pictures of my kids if I asked. I was going through old pictures this evening and I came across my first photoshoot with C. She couldn’t have been more than a few months old at the time.
As the person typically taking the pictures in our family, there really aren’t many of me with the kids, so I was happy to have stumbled upon these. 🙂
The other morning I woke up and the house was cold. We hadn’t switched over to heat yet, and the temperature had dropped dramatically overnight. As I laid in bed under my warm covers, my cold nose peaking above, I thought of our farmhouse.
When C was two and Big E was six months old we moved into a small farmhouse in late October. It didn’t take us long to realize that the house was a beast to keep warm. Our electric bills were through the roof during winter, as we had to rely on baseboard and portable heaters. To top it off, most of the house was set to just a few breakers, so you couldn’t run more than one heater at a time. So, we ran one in the kids’ room and every morning, Tim and I woke up freezing. I’d hurry downstairs to the bathroom and turn on the hot shower to warm up. After my shower, I’d shiver in our basement kitchen with the oven running to warm it up a bit. When I think back to the farmhouse, my first and most powerful memory is of how cold we were all the time!!
My kids still speak of the farmhouse with nostalgic sentimentality, and in their memories, nothing compares with its beauty and space. (It was neither beautiful nor spacious.) But I am pleased their memories there were good ones.
I often wonder who lives there now. How do they manage the cold, or the stinkbug infestations, or the unnatural slope of the master bedroom? I have to say, I’m just glad it isn’t us!
A few weeks a year I get in the mood to cook. It isn’t anything I plan, I just get this overwhelming urge to cook or bake practically every recipe I come across. My cooking marathon will last a few weeks and then I’ll lose interest for months on end.
Well apparently this round started yesterday, so for the next week or so I’ll be spending much more time in the kitchen.
Yesterday it was a new chicken recipe and homemade apple sauce for dinner followed by a caramel apple dessert made with our fresh apples. Today I made pumpkin scones.
It’s unfortunate this desire is only temporary, but at least we will feast like kings for a few weeks. 🙂
Have I mentioned that I’ve been editing a lot lately? Well I have. My editing work ebbs and flows, but the past few weeks have been particularly intense. Because of that, I have felt a little distanced from the family, locked away with the computer. It was extra special to get to go to the zoo yesterday and today I wanted to squeeze some more fun in with the kids in case the schedule picks up again.
So today we attended two shopping center trick or treat events and went to an orchard to buy a bushel of apples.
I’ve really enjoyed the extra smiles over the past few days!
We waited until last night to tell the kids that we would be going to the zoo today. And to make it even better, most of their cousins would be there too! The kids got very excited (except Baby E, who was convinced he might get eaten.)
We spent over four hours at the zoo with 15 kids eleven years old and younger. No one got lost and no one got eaten, so I call that a successful outing! We did a lot of walking and we saw a good number of animals. The kids got to see a lion pee and that was definitely a highlight.
The kids were exhausted by the time we got home and bedtime came easily. I took a ton of pictures, but I’m really tired this evening too. Hopefully tomorrow I can post some. 🙂
I spent some time this afternoon looking at Halloween costumes for the kids. C has outgrown most of her dress up clothes. I can always fall back on superheroes for the boys, so they really aren’t a concern.
As I was browsing amazon, I came across a really cute prairie girl outfit and the thought struck me that maybe C would like to dress up as Laura Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie. I did a quick search and found a boys’ outfit too, so if he wanted to be, Big E could be Almonzo. Boom! Perfectly dorky, perfectly splendid homeschool-kid-halloween costumes!
I brought up the images for the kids to see and they were immediately on board.
“But who am I going to be?” asked Baby E. Good question. Most of the characters in the books are girls.
“You could be the dog, Jack!” C answered.
“No.” Baby E replied.
“You could be a horse. There were lots of horses in the books!”
“No,” he responded. “I know!! I want to be Green Noah!!!”
Now, if the dog in the Little House on the Prairie books is an obscure literary reference for a Halloween costume, Green Noah takes the cake. I mentioned recently that we were reading a book called “The Children of Green Knowe.” (spoilers ahead!) In the book, the main character is visiting his great-grandmother who has a rambling English garden filled with bushes trimmed to be different animals. There’s a deer, a peacock, a squirrel, and more. But the most sinister is “Green Noah.” Green Noah was a tree that many years ago had been shaped into the figure of Noah (to guide and watch over the animals) but it was eventually cursed by an angry Gypsy woman, and because of that no one trimmed it any more, and it became overgrown and scary and one day it uproots itself and tries to attack the main character of the story. Thankfully it is struck by lightning and in the end Green Noah ends up as firewood.
So… that’s who Baby E wants to be… Green Noah… an angry, overgrown tree statue that attacks people and gets struck by lightning. This is the costume he picked out…
PS- we haven’t settle on anything definite yet.
October 2016
This afternoon I had the opportunity to visit my old workplace. A friend of mine that works there has taken a new job and the office was throwing her a going away party. It was wonderful to get the opportunity to spend time with her and so many others.
On my way home I decided to take a detour. I had seen ads for a used bookstore, and as I love books, and as their facebook page seemed promising, I decided to check it out.
When I was living in NYC, one of my favorite places to go was the Strand bookstore. Located near Union Square, Strand is the largest bookstore I’ve ever been to, with miles of books. They had an annex location as well, which happened to be near my first apartment. It was hard for me to pass either location without going in, browsing, and buying books.
When I stepped into the bookstore today, for just a moment I felt transported back to Strand. It was not nearly as large, but was very big and had the distinctive smell of old books. Housed in a warehouse, there were countless aisles. I wandered around, getting lost among the shelves, reading titles, and dragging my fingers along the spines. If I had had time, I would have spent hours there, but I didn’t. I settled on one book for the kids, with a promise to myself to visit again when I have the time to really enjoy it.
I made my way home and back to the kids and we ended our evening reading their new book.
eatingwithsavages 