{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Inspired by SouleMama.

Snippets::little bits from hither and thither

Some bit-lets that’re not really worthy of a post to themselves, so why not just mish mash them all together like a blog goulash?  ;)

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Carter and Bunny spend a lot of time “together” with art.  There’s often squabbling, but their time together putting color to paper is usually the best they have.

Sometimes, on slow weekend mornings after breakfast has been eaten and cleaned up, I get to join them.  This morning we all painted fish.

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Last week we had a more normal February week, meaning it poured most of the time.  Late one afternoon as I was in the garage doing laundry, I looked up to see a rainbow ending in our neighbor’s backyard.  One thing about rain: rainbows.  We have yet to find the pot of gold, though.  :)

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Every night as I begin to prepare dinner, I fill one side of the sink with hot soapy water and light a candle.  It’s my little happy place ritual: the water helps me feel motivated to clean up after, since it’s so easy to swish plates around to rinse before loading the washer, and it’s harder to rationalize that old ‘it needs to soak’ bull if it’s been soaking while we eat.  The candle just makes me happy, and I figure if we have an earthquake, it’ll slip into the water and be extinguished. 

Yeah, I do think about these things.  I’m not paranoid about much, but I do respect fire, since it seems to like me.  Seriously – without making sure to be exhaustive, I can say I’ve been in two houses that were on fire, had a dryer fire (only lost the whites load of undershirts and socks with no damage beyond the old dryer), had my car incinerated from a grass fire under it… so I do enjoy candles, but with care.  :)

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Yesterday I went grocery shopping for the first time in 10 days.  I’m on a 9-10 day cycle, planning meals for as long as fresh produce can reasonably be held in a fridge before we’re living on canned veggies (blech)… and I am liking the reduced trips to the store—and reduced time spent telling my children to stop acting like they were just let out of cages after months of confinement.  It’s a lot of work getting all the food to a) fit in the cart and b) inside the house then c) put away.  After a while, I just left a bag with all cans on the kitchen floor, meaning to put it away ‘soon.’  I thought I put them away without noticing it (not hard to believe—I forget things all the time), since I found the bag empty as I was cleaning up after dinner, so I folded it and put it with the grocery bags.

This morning I laughed when I opened the fridge.

Cole helped me out by putting ‘away’ the cans.  He’s a good helper, huh?

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“Our” ducks are back!  It must be nearly spring… a breeding pair of mallards always stops off at our pool for anywhere from 1-4 days.  They paddle around and waddle to the flower beds to munch away at our plentiful snail population.  Crunch, crunch, quack.

{this moment::pajama day}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Inspired by SouleMama.

Somewhere, an old man is definitely snoring.

‘Cuz it has most definitely been raining here.

We’ve been cooped up a few days too many, so today when there was a bit of a lull, we suited up and headed outside for some puddle hopping.

Cole is going through a phase where he insists on shorts more than not, despite very unsummer-like conditions.  So, there you go.  Raincoat: check; rainboots: check; pants: nope!

Apparently water angels don’t work as well… but are fun anyway.

Well, look at that.  I guess you do get cold if you wear shorts in the rain.  Go figure!  ;)

It was time to go in and warm up with dry clothes and cocoa with the giant marshmallows.  That seemed to hit the spot, and we got some outside time so hopefully I can skip the worst kind of witching hour tonight – you know, the “they have WAY too much energy right about now” kind.  Fingers crossed!

Pssst!

I like to make a lot of things from scratch, cake included.  However, there are times when a box mix just needs to be relied upon for sanity, like the times when you have three kids and they all want to help with the cake.  Which would be most times lately.

If you are lucky enough to have one near you, run, don’t walk—okay, you know what?--drive, sensibly, but get thee to Trader Joe’s and feel free to buy their cake mix.  It is AWESOME.  No weird chemicals, no bad stuff: it truly has only what you’d use if you did pull out the measuring cups and spoons.  If I didn’t love Trader Joe’s so much, I might try to pass it off as my own, but instead I fully cop to using this.  They only stock a chocolate and yellow mix, and chocolate and white frosting mixes (never tried the white though), so it’s not like I’ll never make a cake from scratch, but these are some bona fide go to pantry items, if you ask me.

The only hard part is not eating it all like a piggy.  I finally had to own up to the fact that my tasty, tasty birthday cake was going to sing its siren song to me every night until I ate the whole thing, so I plopped it into the trash last night.  :)

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Inspired by SouleMama.

A Bit of Spring

Around here trees are starting to blossom (sorry, snowed in people).  Everywhere I walk and drive I see more varieties springing forth with their color, and I love it all.  I even love the acacias, as much as their pollen bothers me—who could begrudge a glorious tree covered with happy yellow blooms?  It doesn’t mean to make me sniffle.  Hate the pollen, not the flowers.  ;)

I love cutting a few branches and bringing their sweet smells inside, but the petals fall off so quickly, the enjoyment is fleeting.  For years I have wanted to make paper blossom branches, and yesterday seemed like as good a time as any to see if at least 2 out of 3 kids were old enough to enjoy the craft--I knew Bun would be down with it, of course.  I clipped a few smaller branches for my kids and two buddies who were coming to play, and one big mamajama for myself.

All 4 older kids did a great job with creating flowers out of tissue paper cut into about 1.5” squares.  I kept my ‘tree’ to one color, but the girls made some really pretty double blooms with both white and pink.  The boys’ branches were a little more sparse, as they really wanted to go play, and I’m not running a crafting sweatshop here (at least I wasn’t that day).  Time flew, and it was time for the playmates to go before we knew it.

I think I’ll move mine around a bit for the next couple of months… maybe putting little vday or easter decorations on it along the way.  Then, when it’s looking old and tired, into the green bin it’ll go.  :)

{this moment::late afternoon crafting}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Inspired by SouleMama.

Don’t Hate Us Because We’re Beautiful

I had to share this picture Carter drew at school yesterday of our family.  Carter has been a reluctant artist, being a perfectionist and unable to make his hands draw what his mind’s eye sees.  Recently, he’s finally decided to take a chance here and there and try to draw.  There are many frustrated groans and reams of crumpled paper… and, sometimes, tears.  He tries so hard, and it’s upsetting to him when he simply can’t make it work.  Incorporating a booboo into the work is still unthinkable.  I remember, early in parenthood, trying to contain waste, urging Bunny to not ‘use so much paper,’ but you know what?  Big deal.  Sure, it’d be nice if every piece lived up to its full potential, but, of course, creating is not always about results.

Yesterday as Carter gathered his belongings, he was nearly bursting with pride over this drawing of his family.  From left to right he drew Carter, Cole, Mama, Daddy, and Bunny.  I love that Carter is the tallest of us all, and that he placed me in the middle.  I also love that we’re bald, tunic wearing, and, *ahem*, very tanned.  ;)