On gardening

Our garden in Colorado this year consisted of a few lettuces, peas and some spinach thrown hellter-skelter in the garden bed in March while I held a baby in the other arm.  They grew well and were quite delicious even if not organized.  But after early June there wasn't much left as everything went to seed.  It was a hot summer in Colorado.  June saw temps in the low 100's.  Well if you know me, you know I love to have fresh veggies at hand.  When we arrived here five weeks ago the back yard was full of beautiful growing garden beds.  My in-laws enjoy a good garden as much as I do.  Things have started to end for the season though.  So we dug up a bed and added some more good soil and planted another crop.  Hooray for California and the LOOOOOOONG growing season.  I think I'm going to enjoy this gardening all year thing.

On being the new kids

Okay so you'll see me put on a good face about moving.  And most of the time I do feel that way.  But in all honesty being the new kid is hard some times, okay most of the time; at least in the begining.  You don't know anyone, you don't know where stuff is, you get sick, you get lost.  And you tell yourself: "relish in being a little bit lost and a little bit bored and a little bit lonely because in a few months it'll be in the past and you'll be so busy you won't have any down time."  You tell yourself it'll all be great and then you wait for it to happen.  Well yesterday, it really was great!   It was one of those days that makes me say 'yep this is going to be GREAT!  We're really going to like it here!'

Yesterday we spent six hours in the woods and fields of a local-ish park.  Once a week (or maybe twice if we can find the time)  Lillian will go play in the woods, all day; the little wild child.  We've found a group with two amazing leaders and a bunch of six and seven year olds who do just that.  They'll build forts out of sticks and leaves, learn how to build fires, whittle, play games, collect and learn the wild plants and critters, eat without washing their hands first, and learn bird calls, just to name a few.  Lillian is a hard sell on most things new.  But yesterday she didn't want to leave and she can't wait for next week.  One of the other moms at pick up said this is her litmus test for whether an activity is good or not:  how easy it is to drop off and how hard it is to pick up  (as in kiddos can't wait to get there and don't want to leave)  Too true mama!  I think we may have found some kindred spirits at last.

While Lillian was off romping in the woods Nonie, Eoghan and I had our own adventures.  We hiked in the woods too for about two hours.  Then we found a beautifully quite, sunny spot on a hill with a view and a play ground.  We made a 'garden' and 'cooked' food and read books and ate snacks while Eoghan practiced crawling and standing.  It was hard to leave when it was time to go get Lillian we were in just such a good spot.

Wishing you all a beautiful weekend.  I think we're off for an adventure in San Francisco.  I'll tell you all about it next week. 

Books

This family places a lot of value in books.  The wealth of knowledge they can offer has always seemed like such a treasure to me.  Our children seem to have adopted the same philosophy.  Eoghan has seemed to understand from the very start that books are well, neat!  He and I spent the first two weeks of his life in bed, per our midwife's recommendation.  Next to our bed was a built in bookshelf filled with books.  Eoghan would stare at it for ages.  I'm sure he didn't do it because he knew they were books (though I told him) but because of the beautiful colors and sizes of all the spines lined up in rows along the shelves.

We go to the library once a week and I spend a lot of time reading to the girls.  Eoghan was starting to feel left out and his fingers just can't manages the paper pages yet.  Thus we started getting him his own books at the library.  He loves them!

Art fair

 

We found a great little art fair in town.  Perhaps my favorite bit about the whole thing (aside from the food truck)was the 'chalk walk'.  Various artists bought space on a cordoned off street and had two days to create their masterpieces.  At the end of the street there was room for kids to get their own small square (pastels provided).  By the end of the weekend the street was absolutely awash in color.   Not to be passed over was the art.  My favorite artist by far was Nobe Art.  As you can imagine it wasn't appropriate to take pictures of the actual art but check out the web page.  Well worth it in my opinion.