Chores and Allowance

Dave and I have been mulling over the whole chore-allowance subject for a few years now.  My girls are very helpful around the house, and we have wanted them to have specific responsibilities they are in charge of.  We have also mulled around the idea of an allowance or commission.  On one hand I think my kiddos should help around the house, no matter what.  They live here, they contribute to the mess, and we are here to serve each other.  But we also want to teach them about money and an allowance is a great way to begin to do that.

So, we have a chore chart.  At the end of the week they will get a nickel for every chore completed.  These include making their beds, helping with the laundry (folding and putting away clothes), helping in the kitchen, clearing their dishes from the table, emptying the silverware from the dishwasher, and cleaning up their toys before dinner.  HC also has to wipe the table and counters.

Both girls are very eager to help and get stickers for their chart, and I like the extra incentive it gives them.  Since the girls have no need of money, I have been talking to them about what they can do with all the money they earn at the end of the week.  This morning I went onto World Vision's website and showed them a bunch of videos about how they can use their money.  They can buy a chicken, or some ducks, they can buy a family some seeds, or help a child go to school.  I thought this was a great way to get them involved and most of the gifts would be attainable in a few weeks, if the girls pool their money together.  SO far both of them have decided on World Vision's clean water campaign.  We'll see how long it takes us to make that $20.

After a Long Silence

It’s been 7 months since my last post, and of course there have been lots of reasons for that.  I am not sure that I want to go into all of it at this time.  But I am sure as I become more and more comfortable posting there will be more and more thoughts that come out.  I do feel like I have a lot to say and a lot that is stuck inside of me that is bursting and to come out.  But these days things seem to come out like a slow trickle. 

Enough about that.  We’ll save it for another day.

Here are some things we have been up to since June.

July

Celebrating True’s first birthday. 

A trip up to OH to visit my grandparents, and introduce True to his only living great-grandfather.

August

Sending Hadleigh Claire off for her first day of kindergarten.

September

The girls started ballet and we painted and rearranged our bedroom with the help of my bff Erica. 

October

Halloween and pumpkins

November

Celebrated Annelise’s 4^th birthday.  We took her to see the musical Cinderella and it was a  memorable experience.

Spent Thanksgiving on a wonderful little island beach.

December

Took the girls to see the Nutcracker

Celebrated Christmas here and then took a quick trip to TN to visit with Dave’s family.

January

Lots of fun things seem to be in store for us in 2012.

The Cuz Gets Married

At the end of May we journeyed up to TN to celebrate Jon and Leigha's wedding.  The girls love their cousins, Jon, Josh and Jacob, and their cousins are super sweet to them them.  Now the girls finally have a girl cousin and they are super excited about it.  

All of us gals ended up matching in our black and white dresses, which was quite by accident, but I am sure it made for great pictures.

Fourth Year of Strawberries

About a month ago we trekked out to a farm not too far away for some yummy strawberry picking.  This was actually our fourth year at this particular place, and we managed to pick our usual two buckets.  True was on my back this year, as opposed to inside my tummy, so I came away with different aches and pains. And then the following night, Dave and I made our first batch of strawberry jam.  I gave jam making a whirl last spring for the first time, and quickly became obsessed.  We go through jam quickly at this house, so after the strawberry batch, I made peach, and plum and triple berry.  We opened our last jar the week before we went picking, so I went through an entire year without having to buy jam.  Sweet!

I think we were successful with our strawberry jam this year, and I am looking forward to making peach and plum in the coming weeks.  Random side note: as I was taking these pictures of the girls this crazy lady kept jumping into the picture and trying to tell the girls how to stand...you can only imagine their reaction to that, but it did make for an eventful picture taking moment.

Risotto

I love risotto.  I also love gnocchi.  A few winters ago we planned to go to Prague with our buds Jim and Kristen.  The morning we were to leave it dumped 18 inches on us and we had to cancel our trip.  Instead we bummed around our little place in Hensctal, ate some spicy, BB (butt-burning) chili, rode sleds, and ate at our favorite Oriental restaurant.  The next morning we decided to go to Lucerne, Switzerland, which was much closer than Prague and we could drive there for one night.  That night it was raining and cold, and after walking around all day we stopped for dinner at this little Italian restaurant.  The first thing they served us was a bubbly aperitif.  I usually do not like bubbly alcohol drinks, but it made me warm inside and it was a perfect start to our dinner.  I ordered gnocchi and I cannot think of gnocchi without thinking of that night.  It was a great night.

The nice thing about risotto is I can actually make it, unlike gnocchi, which I will leave to the professionals.  So here is a wonderful recipe from P-dub.  I did not use wine in this, and I added my own variation of veggies.  It was WONDERFUL!

Little Ballerinas

The girls took ballet this year.  I signed them up late (October), but it was a sweet little program at a local church, and they could be in the same class.  They loved it, although at times I wonder if that is really Annelise's thing.  Hadleigh Claire loved every minute of it, and Annelise especially liked jumping from dot to dot and making faces in the mirrors.  She did pick up a few moves, and overall I think it boosted their confidence.  We missed their "big" recital, but still were able to dress up for the rehearsal, ballet buns and everything.  It took me an hour, lots of gel and hair spray and bobby pins to get their hair up.  I am hoping to get their hair a bit longer for their next rehearsal (next spring).

Victory Garden

We have a victory garden!  This is our third year with a vegetable garden and it looks like it is going to be a great year.  I am so thankful that we started this three years ago, and we have gotten a lot of practice and experience over the last couple of years.  We started small and keep growing it, so it has fun to see the garden evolve.

Dave and I read several gardening books this year and decided we wanted to give the square foot gardening method a try.  So far, so good.  I am still not exactly sure where my cucumbers and zucchinis are going to grow, but we will see how it all plays out.  We also decided to move the garden, so it now sits right outside our kitchen door.  This is a nice location for watering purposes, and it also helps me to remember to check for veggies and bugs that might kill the veggies!

Our neighbor had a bunch of granite stone sitting in his side yard, so Dave went and asked them if we could haul some away for them, and they agreed!  Insane!  So our garden is made out of granite and it looks lovely.  My only complaint is that I think we barely get 6 hours in its current location, so it seemed to take the veggies a little longer to get started, but now they all look great, and we haven't had to put any pesticides on it yet (of course we have organic pesticides).

We planted most everything from seeds, except those dern tomatoes.  I just cannot seem to grow a tomato from a seed.  We also bought the sweet potatoes, but I think next year I will grow those from seeds.

This year we have enjoyed spinach, which is already past its prime, romaine (and I am so happy with this variation).  We also planted basil, and have a huge rosemary bush in the front yard.  Yum!

Tri-colored Bush Beans (purple, yellow and green)

Edamame

Zucchini

Sugar Snap Peas (Holy Moly)

Red and Yellow Cherry Tomatoes

Beef Steak

Roma

Jalapenos and Tri-Colored Bell Peppers (yellow, orange and red)

Lemon Cucumbers and Persian Baby Cucumbers

Pumpkins and Sweet Potatoes

Poppies

Speckled Butter Beans

We have a wonderful, amazing produce stand near our house, and I swear by them.  If they say it is good, it is good.  If they don't have blueberries it means they are not good yet.  I have made a couple new finds this year because of them.  The first was baby Vidalia onions.  Holy Moly.  They are out of season now, so you'll have to remember to look for them next March/April.  I could have eaten one of those onions straight up.  The second thing I discovered was fresh English peas, which are amazing, and I still have one bag frozen int he fridge (OK, they were fresh and I bought several bags and froze them...so different than the bag of green giant peas I usually eat).  Last week I bought a bag of fresh speckled butter beans.

I usually only buy things that I know what to do with, but we LOVE beans and eat them often, so I thought I would figure it out.  It is actually hard to find a recipe that doesn't involve bacon or ham.  What is it about pigs and beans that go together?  Not sure, but it seems to me I would be ruining a really good cup of beans if I cover them up in bacon.

So I found this receipe off Myrecipes and we all enjoyed it.  I did not make their version of cornbread because I love my mom's recipe, and that worked just fine.  The girls devoured it, of course it helped that cornbread was on the top of it, but it really was pretty yummy.  This was our main dish.  Enjoy!

601

Six years and 600 posts ago we started this blog.  We actually started it so that our friends and family could track us as we traveled Europe.  That was a lifetime ago, it seems.  Our adventures are not over, but our travel has been slowed to a snail's pace.  It will never be what it was 6 years ago, but maybe we will pick it up a bit as the kiddos get older.

Our adventures used to include climbing on glaciers, driving on curvy roads to mountain tops, trying to communicate to people who do not speak English, learning new cultures, Army and German...now our adventures include trying to take care of three kiddos.  Yesterday I made it to the pool for the first time this summer with all three kiddos.  Not 5 minutes before we all jumped into the water, and HC was stung by a bee.  I had to hand True off to a stranger, and ask another mama (stranger) to watch Annelise, so I could take care of HC.  It was an adventure.  How can I do this?

And Dave is great about turning all of our adventures into funny stories...thank goodness for Dave.  Happy 601st post.

Peter Rabbit

Upon seeing this little house in the Botanical Gardens, HC exclaimed, "Peter Rabbit!  I did not know that he lived here!"

Meeting Noah

A couple weeks ago I had the privilege of meeting my new nephew Noah John.  My bro and sis-in-law, Chris and Rubie came out for a week to visit us and they brought their 4 month old baby along with them (thankfully).

I had actually been hoping to take the kids back to Cali for a visit this winter, but several factors brought me quickly to my senses.  The first being that my parents are keeping an exchange student this year, so all four of us would have been squeezed into one room, and the second and most determining is that trying to take 3 kiddos under 5 on an airplane is insane.  I am sure it can be done, but it would have been at the expense of my sanity and maybe a few others too.  Fortunately I thought better of it, and so Chris and Rubie and Noah decided to come to us.  That meant they got to meet True, we got to meet Noah and Dave got in on the action too.

We had a sweet week of visiting and catching up, as it had been a year and a half since we had last seen each other.  The girls love their Uncle Chris and Auntie Rubie, and of course baby Noah was a super star!  While they were here we also took them to the Aquarium, to the Botanical Gardens and to Stone Mountain.  We also fit in a wonderful dinner out at our fav restaurant with only adults...thanks Lrod for babysitting!

The girls were super sad when they left, and Annelise asked why they can't live with us anymore.  And they have both gone back into our guest room and talked about how it smells like Uncle Chris and Auntie Rubie.  Sweet.  We miss them tons, but are hoping to meet up with them again in NYC next summer.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter a little late, and a little blurry.

Callaway Gardens

We have been busy...big breath.

In early April we took the fam down to Callaway Gardens for a fun weekend away.  This was our first time there as a family and it was beautiful weather and beautiful gardens.

We rented a little house outside the gardens, so we ended up just spending one full day there.  The rest of the time we spent puttering around the complex where the house was.  It had a little playground and a putt-putt course, and a pond with boats.

We also braved the fine cuisine of Pine Mountain...why is it that the food is usually LAME in these little towns?  Just a random side note, but a year ago Dave and I spent a weekend away in North Georgia.  There are tons of farms up there, beef farms, dairies, and other veggie farms, and those farmers drive all their stuff down to Atlanta to sell.  No one up there wants to eat fresh grass fed beef, and fresh eggs...this doesn't make any sense to me.  But, whatever.  It is always an adventure eating in small towns.

In Callaway we visited the Butterfly Garden, and the girls went nutso.  HC was wearing a flowered dress and there was a beautiful blue butterfly that landed on her tummy.  She was so excited.  Annelise, on the other hand, was batting the butterflies away, sweet Anna.

It is such a joy to spend time with my little family, and I always walk away feeling super blessed.  We are looking forward to another family vaca in the near future.

True is 9 Months

Sweet True is 9 months and this has been quite the month for him!  He is sitting up pretty well, when he has a mind to do it.  He is also a proficient roller/scootcher and can get almost anything.  He loves to show off his skills.  He is an expert at the pincher grasp and successfully feeds himself cheerios.  YEA!  He also loves dropping things, everything.  Food, toys, you name it, he drops it.  This might be his personality, or this might be a "boy" thing.  I hate saying things like that.  I mean, can't a girl like to drop things?  EIther way, it is different than the girls.  Whether that is because he is a boy, or because he is a different child I am not sure.

He is a great eater, as are all my children (we are blessed!), and devours anything that we put in front of him.  Although this last week he also got really sick on something and the poor little dude was puking up broccoli and sweet potato.  It was nast.  I stayed up with him a good portion of the night, and it was really heart breaking to have to hold him over the toilet.  How do you help a 9 month old?  The poor little guy did not know what hit him.  He recovered well, and I hope not to repeat that for a while.

True is full of funny faces and funny sounds.  He is constantly squeaking and squealing and screaming and screeching.  He is so ready to talk, and he has a lot to say.  He is always looking for the girls, so as soon as he wakes up/they wake up he wants to be near them.  Of course they feel the same way, which is really sweet to see.

Thank goodness we are making progress in the sleep department.  He is sleeping mostly through the night.  He will usually squeak around 1am.  I have no idea what the story is, but that is his time.  Usually he goes straight back to sleep, or sometimes he cries for a while.  It all depends, but for the most part we are leaving him to work it out.  His naps are becoming more reliable and life in general is getting better.  It is nice to have a nice baby, but this sleep thing was really throwing us for a loop.

He is a great road-tripper, so we are taking that to the bank and this summer I am taking the kiddos up to OH to visit their great-grandparents.  It is a 10 hour trip, so we will see how he does this summer, hopefully as well as he does these days.