Packing up a balloon

On any given weekend morning we see around ten hot air balloons.  We spend our early  mornings watching them fly over.  Occasionally they even land nearby. Our neighbor knocked early to tell us a balloon had landed down the street.  We got there in time for Lil to help squeeze the air out of this beautiful, brand new Cameron balloon.  I like Cameron balloons because I grew up near their shop in MI.

Book making

I know I've said this before but my children regularly amaze me.  Today it was my oldest making a magazine for the younger while she waited for the actual one to come in the mail.  They took turns reading it to each other.  The words were simple enough that they memorized them.  Lillian decided what it should say and asked how to spell the words.  I know its hard to tell but the middle picture says 'Kim and Carrots are climbing a mountain.'

From the garden

Having a garden is good for so many reasons.  Best of all is that I can't get the girls to stop eating veggies.  What is it about picking something out of your own garden?  I could buy a never ending supply of vegetables from the grocery and they wouldn't touch half of them.  But let them go crazy in the garden and there will be nary a leaf of tatsoi or a carrot left.  

Strawberries

Can't beat good scenery while berry picking.  Love those mountains.

We found a great organic u-pick berry patch called Berry Patch Farm. We're going back next week for sour cherries.  The strawberry rhubarb crumble that ensued was mouthwatering.

Sour Cherry Pancakes

I found myself up early this morning all on my own.  Imagine, a quite, early morning house just for me.  It was brilliant!  Wonder of wonders, Phil found our last bag of frozen sour cherries at the back of the freezer a couple days ago.  Those cherries, all defrosted in the the fridge begged to be used this morning.   As the title would suggest I used them to make pancakes.  I added some vanilla, a couple tablespoons of honey and a generous helping of cherries to our usual pancake recipe and then made cherry syrup to go on top.  The syrup consisted of berries and juice in a pan on the stove with some maple syrup thrown in for sweetness.  I've already had two plates but I may go have another.  If the kids don't get up soon they may miss out.

We're going on a worm hunt...

we're gonna catch a big one...

A couple weeks back with all the rain came a whole bunch of worms in puddles.  We had great fun walking around the neighborhood collecting worms out of those puddles.  We promptly put them in our raised planter boxes and let them get to work.

The accidental urban girl's Tuesday guide to thrifty and natural living

on Wednesday...(fell asleep with the kids last night)

We all know this but I'm just going to go ahead and say it again: The Library!  We go about once a month in the winter and much  more often in the summer.  When I calculate the  monetary benefit we receive from going to the library I get somewhere between $500 and $800 (depending on the calculator used).  I've belonged to libraries where if they didn't have a book I wanted they would order it for me.  But most libraries will do an interlibrary loan for you.  This is often free but never more than a dollar or two.  Mostly we just like to go and find what we find.  Kids books, craft books and cook books top the list of most common barrows.  But we've also been known to barrow anything from that newest popular read to books on tape and music CDs.  Most libraries also  have programs for children and adults.  We've belonged to libraries that had theater, lamas and chicken programs for children and interesting lectures on art and health for adults.   At the very least most libraries have reading hour for kids once or twice a week.