{this moment} it's a milkshake, not a coffee!

{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. as inspired by soulemama.

black and white wednesday

elements of self: the mask

i contemplated what sort of mask i would don for this photo for many days. i have read other women's posts about their masks and i see many of the same tendencies in myself. i hide behind many things. certainly my children. i think this is common for many of us mothers. i hide behind excuses....my house is not clean enough to invite friends over, i have not done enough today to chalk the rest of the day up to spontaneous fun with my children, and on and on.

ultimately, i chose these funky glasses to symbolize my mask. i used to always have a funky accessory to hide behind when i went out. something that diverted the attention from the me underneath. i used to wear lots more jewelry, i had many pairs of spiffy glasses, a fun hat, anything that would draw the focus and keep people from seeing the real me. maybe i felt like i wasn't fun enough. maybe i needed to jazz it up a bit so i felt that people wanted to be around me.

a friend of mine recently told me that i am serious. that has hit me hard. i don't want to be serious. i want to be fun, sparkly, spontaneous and full of life! though i don't wear all the accouterments that i once did and am pleased that i do not feel the need to hide behind these disguises, i think i need to bring a bit of that back. perhaps rather than hiding the real, *serious* me, i was helping the spunky fun me to come to the surface.
thanks again to shakti mama for prompting all this introspection. there is much more going on inside this head. i am still working with getting those thoughts to appear here in this space. ;)

old friends

missing you, friends.

xoxoxoxo

art on demand

sienna has a voracious appetite for crafts and art projects. she demands a new project almost daily. lately she has caught me off guard and unprepared more often than not.
yesterday when she started asking for a project and i did not have one in mind, i pulled out this basket of collage papers i have been working on. inspired by this interview at the artful parent and armed with a stack of magazines i had been saving for ages, i have been cutting, clipping, and collecting pretty papers for my basket.

we haven't done collages in a long time. i used to do lots of them myself, but that was ages and ages ago.
i always save thin, sturdy cardboard from the back of pads of paper, calendar inserts, etc. we used these a base for our creations.

though i was initially resistant to the demands of my children's artistic needs during my otherwise *productive* time, i found myself thoroughly enjoying the project. this is usually the case, eh? long after they had left the table and run off to engage in play, i was still working on my piece and having a blast.

when our afternoon outing fell through, i even got adventurous and broke out the glitter i came across during a recent craft organization spree (more on that later).
i must admit, this craft glitter makes me a bit nervous. i once knew a gal who had a little red dot on the white of her eye where she had had a piece of glitter removed by laser. we all know how this stuff travels and how virtually impossible it is not to get it on one's face, so i try to be cautious and wash up when we are finished. i must have ingrained my nervousness in my unsuspecting daughter because she was complaining of having something in her eye as soon as i broke out the jar of glitter. she had me wash my hands and check her sweet little eye for sparkles four times before we were finished.

i have been without fairy dust (cosmetic glitter that is very, very fine) for far too long now. i think perhaps we will go and find some and use this in our craft projects too.here are her finished works:
closeup of one of her pieces:jasper's works:he mostly just enjoyed finding the animals and pretty scenes and commenting on them all. he did draw a cage around his monkey which i initially felt sad about. he told me the cage was to keep the monkey safe from the people.

and mine:speaking of the artful parent, she did a great post on papers that she likes to keep around for her child's art activities. in another post, she also talked about how she plans and prepares for the activities she will offer her child. i know i have oodles of projects bookmarked, mostly from your lovely blogs, so i feel really silly when i can't come up with anything on the spot. i intend to get more organized and be ready for her the next time! i feel blessed to have a child that entertains and challenges my creative side.

how about you? what do you pull out when your child asks for a craft and you haven't planned anything? do you collage? what are your favorite materials?

i see you

and now you see me. spurred on by the beautiful maureen over at twig and toadstool and by the inspiration she took from shakti mama's challenge, i am taking a bold step for myself and sharing the real me. here i am in the middle of the night when i should be sleeping but am instead delving into blog world.
these next two are taken at the end of a very long sweaty, challenging day with the kiddos. not a time i would normally turn the camera on myself!
i found it most interesting that while i couldn't bear the above photos in color, i found them tolerable in sepia. otherwise, they are unedited and raw. i was determined to get a shot of me that i would be comfortable with in color.
so here i am, working on accepting my beauty rather than dwelling on my flaws.

i would love to see more of YOU! won't you join us?

road trip sanity

or how i kept mine. :) there have been oodles of posts around the blogosphere this summer on traveling with kids. some of these ideas came from various sources, the specifics of which i can't really say. just good advice i read that stuck with me (i always link to specific projects when applicable).
first up, i made a lap desk for each child. i kept them hidden until we left so they were a novel and exciting part of our departure. i used this tutorial. matt made the tops from some scraps at work. i stuffed them with wool batting. they were so quick and easy to whip up. well worth the effort!

i also made a folder for each of them with drawing paper, cardstock, stickers, and some other art supplies that were new to them (or old ones that were forgotten). this alone kept them busy for HOURS! sienna worked on cards for all the loved ones she would be seeing.
some other things that saved us:

*books on cd checked out from the library. sienna had been asking for *little house in the big woods* for some time now. i found a copy at our local branch and she listened to the whole thing through at least twice.


*music, also checked out from the library. jasper's favorite was this billy jonas. i may not be able to hear that one again for a while. ;)

*library books. i chose paperback books that looked like they had already seen a few road trips. i am very particular about books my kids read so i chose carefully. i included some picture books with lots of nature photos. i was excited to find *mary wore a red dress* and *stone soup* as those have been recent circle and story time favorites (thanks gigi!).

*i printed out some travel bingo cards. you can find lots of these available on the web for free. we didn't play bingo so much as they just looked for all the things on the cards. good short term distraction. worked particularly well when we were in towns on smaller roads and off the highway.

*beeswax modeling. we have a little basket with a lid that holds our beeswax. i have found that beeswax works well in the car as you can heat it up on the dash and it is nice and malleable for the littles. make sure all the pieces go back in the basket when you are finished! just sayin'.

*valerian super calm. yep, drug 'em. i hope to never travel with my children without this elixir! really helps them come to their happy place when they are feeling restless. i give it to them a little while before bedtime. we are also big fans of *calms forte for kids*.

*healthy snacks. i was not as on top of it as i had planned to be since my allergies were in overdrive the day we left, preventing me from preparing our cooler of goodies. so, we relied on the dried goods that i had already packed (thank goodness!). a staple for us these days is nut butter on corn thins. this makes a nice alternative to a pb & j and gluten-free mommy can eat them too.

still being used at home today!

*i limit my kids sugar intake while traveling (um, i do this all the time, but still). sure, we eat fresh and dried fruit, but that is the extent of it. any other treats that may be with us are packed away and they don't have juice. i find that keeping still while strapped to a hard plastic seat is hard enough without the added intensity of a sugar rush. ;)

*stopping at national parks along the way. we took the opportunity to soak up some nature when we could. let the kids run and breathe some fresh air and the next leg of the trip goes much smoother.

*this book is really helpful. i had seen it and didn't want to spend the money on it. a couple of days later i found an edition that is a few years old for 10 cents at the thrift store so i picked it up. since my copy was outdated, i looked ahead and researched the places in our path before we left to make sure they were still there. i found it helpful and will buy the current edition the next time we are planning a trip.
*keeping the kids comfortable. each of them had a small blanket and a little pillow. i arranged things on the floor boards in front of them so that their lap desks could be flipped over and they could rest their feet on the cushions. nobody wants to have dangling legs for countless hours! i have found that they both really appreciate this and it greatly helps their comfort level.

my mom pointed out how different it is to travel with kids these days. when i was little, we didn't have car seats (gasp!) so we were free to lie down and move about to a certain extent. i remember how fun it was to make a pallet in the floorboards. good times.

another tip i read that i took to heart was packing a separate bag for the hotel stop. we split our trip into two days so we stopped and spent the night. we tried to take advantage of the time the kids were sleeping to get some miles behind us so it was late when we pulled into our resting place. we had two sleeping kids to carry up to our room and i was so grateful that i had one bag to grab with our pjs, the next days clothes, and our toiletries all together. simplify! i love it. we also bring granola and a box of rice milk with us for hotel room breakfasts.

overall, i think they did great. there were only a couple of times when they really got antsy. mostly sienna would tire of her seat belt. the adults might have had a harder time, especially daddy. funny (not really) that the instant he would grumble they would start complaining. how quickly we forget that they are all about the modeling. my method was to distract. talk about random things, look for interesting things outside the window, and just be silly!

what about you? any favorite tricks for road travel that you'd like to share?

one small change- our csa

at the beginning of the year, i joined in with one small change, making a small change each month to reduce our impact on this beautiful planet. though we have continued with this challenge, i found that keeping with the time line and keeping up with posting were my two biggest downfalls. as a family, there are already a few areas that we have agreed to target. as we tackle one and it begins to feel habitual, we move on to another area. though we have not necessarily made these accomplishments within a month, we continue to move forward and are changing our habits for the better.

so i will continue to share, just not in a timely fashion, or necessarily in order. this was one of our earlier accomplishments. we finally joined a csa! we have been talking about buying a share from a farm to get a weekly box of produce for several years now, but the chunk of money upfront has previously held us back.

our first box! i swear those were the most delicious strawberries ever to cross my lips.

last year, my dear friend, emily, posted about her kids working and playing at their csa farm. i was intrigued. i wanted this kind of experience for my children. my kids already love their vegetables and have some experience gardening, but i wanted them to spend time on a farm this summer and connect in a new way to the foods that nourish our bodies each day.

washing purple viking potatoes.

turns out, full sun farm offers work shares. for a reduced price, we agreed to spend a designated amount of hours pitching in at the farm. perfect!

we have been out twice now. the first time, sienna blew me away. she worked so hard and refused to stop! she dug carrots and onions and helped with the beets. jasper has a very low threshold when it comes to the heat, so we retreated to the barn to help with washing and sorting. sienna was having no part of that and asked to go back down to the fields! off she went with maggie and the other farmers to harvest flowers, wielding clippers and all. upon her return she continued to pitch in by washing squash and zucchini. on the way home, i asked her what her favorite part of the day was. she quickly replied that it was when she was harvesting the carrots because that's when she worked the hardest. that's my girl.
we returned to the farm yesterday. sienna put in another hard day's work. meanwhile, jasper feasted the entire time. i started the morning picking green beans and then headed up to the barn. that little guy ate his weight in green beans and cherry tomatoes. i swear he was munching most of the time we were there!
i feel so blessed to be able to share this with my children. it has been priceless. to say they have a deeper connection to where their food comes from is putting it mildly. sienna asks questions of the farmers regarding the foods we get in our box. *we got rainbow chard this week. will you show me where that grows?* and *the corn was yummy! can i help pick the corn today?* yesterday she was so excited to tell me how you clean onions. *you don't use water mommy!*
they love picking our box up at the farmer's market, too. we usually know what will be in it and they are waiting to dive in. they have been known to eat an entire bunch of carrots and a pint of sugar peas before we get home! when we came home with corn last week, they insisted i cook it for them immediately.thank you alex, vanessa, nick, megan, and maggie! the farm is beautiful and we are enjoying working with you. getting everyone out of bed and out the door so early in the morning and my burning thighs today from squatting half the day make me appreciate all the hard work you do for us that much more.

black and white wednesday

my black and white post today is a little different.

one regular feature of the reunion is the chinese auction. still not sure why it has that name, but there you have it. it is essentially a combination of a raffle and an auction. each item on the table has it's own hat. you buy tickets and place them in the hats of the items that you wish to win. there is then a drawing for each individual item.

this year we won this lovely collage. aunt mary so lovingly puts this together each year and it is coveted by many. i was struck by the impact that it had on sienna as we scanned the table. she asked lots of questions about who was in those pictures.

pictured are humbert and anna, mama and papa (center left and my kids great, great grandparents), and the eleven children with their spouses. as mentioned before, there are six living and the oldest is 100.

an incredible gift! i feel blessed that our children have this bit of memento of their ancestry.

blackberries for sal

saturday we went blackberry picking. now, i know that there are blackberries a plenty that we could have foraged on trails or by the roadside perhaps. however, these beauties we harvested from a certified organic farm run by the sweetest couple and they were only $2 a pound! there were several rows of thornless bushes so the littles were able to have their fill of picking without fear of being pricked.

the kids brought their own beloved bolga baskets. sienna dubbed jasper *lil sal* right away as his basket never had more than three berries in it because he quickly ate them all! jasper was quite fond of the moniker and insisted that we only call him sal for the rest of the adventure.

excerpt from the wonderfully sweet book *blueberries for sal*

it was a beautiful overcast morning and we were blessed with temperatures in the seventies....at least initially. the sun came out in spurts and heated things up a bit and jasper promptly melted. he has a very low threshold for the heat. in the hour before he gave out, sienna and i managed to pick 8 & 1/2 pounds. she was so proud of her colorful basket brimming with blackberry goodness!

i just love these berry stained faces!

when we returned home, *jamberry* was promptly brought out and has been a favorite for days now. such a sweet and simple book full of rhyming berry delight.

"quickberry! quackberry! pick me a blackberry! trainberry, trackberry, clickety-clackberry rumble and ramble in blackberry bramble billions of berries for blackberry jamble"

we made a crisp following a gluten free recipe i found online. i used less sugar than called for and i used coconut sugar (a recent find at our discount grocery) and it is still just way too sweet for my taste buds! most of it is still sitting in the fridge.

the next day we made blackberry sorbet and it was a much bigger hit! the kids loved being a part of the process but especially enjoyed the reward at the end of a long wait!

yes, i am crazy enough to serve my children sorbet in wine glasses.

mostly we just enjoy having fresh berries around to munch on. if we had more, i would make some jam though. my grandmother used to make blackberry jam...mmm-mmm!

hope you are enjoying the fruits of the season, too!

have you checked for ticks today?

photo credit here

i interrupt my regularly scheduled posting to bring you a friendly reminder about regular tick checks. i know, there is nothing regular about my posting, but i did have some other things i was going to share with you. frankly, they just aren't as important as making sure that if you live in an area with a tick population that you routinely check yourself and your kiddos for any unwanted visitors.

this morning, as we sat on a picnic blanket watching daddy's soccer game, i found a tick on sienna's head. we left the field immediately and headed home for proper removal as it had likely been on there for 24 hours. tick season is in full swing and i have not been doing my tick checks with the kids....tsk, tsk!

we live in an area where deer ticks are prevalent, however the ticks carrying lyme disease are fewer than the deer tick population in the northeast and other areas. lyme disease carriers are here though, i know first hand as my sister contracted lyme disease from a deer tick in these very mountains.

last week, i asked my friend joy if she checks her kids for ticks after they have been outside in the summer. being from the northeast where lyme disease is more prevalent, she shrugged her shoulders and said she didn't think it necessary here. we were standing in the same forested park where my sister contracted lyme disease!

that got me thinking that this is not something we talk about too much around here. if lyme disease is caught early, it can be controlled and usually healed. however, if diagnosis is late, symptoms can last for years and possibly a lifetime. that was the case with my sister.

she lives in alabama and was up here visiting my dad (i think she was 11) and attending a local camp. she was bitten by a tick, but it wasn't until many months later that she finally got a diagnosis. lyme disease is rare in alabama and the doctors that were treating her did not know to look for it. she has and still struggles with severe joint pain, arthritis, severe sleeplessness, chronic fatigue, short term memory loss and other issues that made her school work very challenging for her from that point on, amongst other things.

so, what can you do to avoid such a fate? check yourself and your children for ticks! perhaps you do not live in an area that has ticks at all, in which case you could have stopped reading this a while ago. ;) in the case that there are ticks where you live, you should routinely check for ticks when you have been outdoors in warm weather. we do this at the end of the day. ticks like warm, dark crevices. this is the second one that i have found on sienna and both were attached to her scalp in amongst her hair. i remember getting them in my belly button several times as a child. they also like the backs of knees, lower abdomen, and armpits, but will attach anywhere really.

if you get the tick off within 24-48 hours, risk of infection of ld is low. there are, of course, several other diseases that ticks carry and i am not versed on these.

there are many old wives tales about things to do to a tick to remove it.....do NOT do any of these!! they include burning the tick with a match and rubbing petroleum jelly on it to make it release (both of which i remember having done to me as a child). the truth of the matter is that these actions may cause the tick to salivate and regurgitate into the wound, potentially sending it's diseases into the victim's body. disgusting, eh?

what you should do, is carefully and slowly, using sharp tweezers, remove the tick at the injection spot. you do not want to pull on the body, you want to get the head and the little parts that are stuck inside your body all in one piece. you will have to pull hard as they are meant to hang on tight! when i pulled sienna's off her head, a little piece of her skin was still attached to the ticks mouth.

by the way, she could not feel the tick on her head and she said it did not hurt at all when i removed it. the first time she had one, she is actually the one that found it. she came to me and wanted me to feel this strange flap of skin she found. it was the tick's body as the tick holds on with his mouth and his body is free floating!

you can learn more about deer ticks and lyme disease here. there are more deer tick photos than most people would ever wish to see here.

thanks for reading! tomorrow we will talk about something more lighthearted, like blackberry picking (where she got the tick) or jasper's first sewing project. promise!

and just because i can't let that creepy tick picture be the only image you see here, i leave you with a pic of my dear little sister, heather, with sienna and i on our memorial day trip to visit her in birmingham.

reunion time

family reunion 2010

reunion time is a happy time, a family time, a heartfelt and forever time.
it is a time to cherish special thoughts of loved ones near and far.italians really know how to party! this was their 64th year holding this reunion. there was a *smaller* crowd this year at *only* 82 guests. there is a serious spread of food. a real challenge for this gluten-free gal!! no pictures as i tried not to look directly at the deliciousness.

i am thankful that we were able to share this with our children. it is such a rare sight these days to see family gathering like this. i love how important family is to them and that they work so hard to bring everyone together.

spanning the generations.
the youngest cousin, baby charlie, is just 6 months old. sienna spent as much time with him as possible. she is a serious baby lover.

of the original eleven, these are the six that remain. the eldest is 100!! matt's grandfather passed away years ago. these are his brothers and sisters, my children's great-great aunts and uncles. jasper had a particular fondness for uncle clem (bottom left). he would run for him and uncle clem would scoop him up and they would cuddle and pose for pics (no, i don't have any of them....yet).eight cousins with sienna being the only girl. she never seemed to mind.

one definite highlight of this trip was jasper's pottying success. he sports a bare bottom when we are home and he has not had a single accident that way. however, when you cover his bum with anything, he goes in it. (any suggestions there would be great!) with visiting grandparents who are apparently uncomfortable around sweet little three year old bottoms and traveling long distances in the car, we reverted back to diapers temporarily. sweet little guy didn't want to go in his diaper in the car and kept asking to go potty. several times matt whipped the car over and got him out and tried to teach him to pee outside (i thought this would be one of the first things little boys learned). problem was, he would get his little bottom exposed and be terribly distracted by all the wildflowers on the side of the road. he came back to the car with fistfuls of flowers for his sister and me but without having completed his mission. then, finally, mere miles from our destination, he did it, flowers and all! he was so darn proud, as was his sister who was impressed that he innately knew to *shake it* when he was done. ;)yay for jasper!

what's wrong with this picture?

remember, you can click to make it larger, if needed.

seriously.

oh, and did you see this story? patriotic banner, eh?

black and white wednesday: road trip edition

in the spirit of black and white wednesday, i am sharing a quick recap of our trip to matt's family reunion in pennsylvania in black and white. though it was a lot of time spent in the confines of a small car with two wee children, it was an incredibly rewarding experience.

driver dad on a mission.finding ways to amuse himself (and us!) on the long ride.story time at the hotel. 5 nights in two different hotels. so glad to be back in our own beds!

matt's dad's side of the family....all 25 of us.

matt's grandmother, great nanny rita. she is his mother's mother, so not a part of this reunion, but happens to live very close by so we ventured to visit her...twice.

rita is the children's only living great grandparent. such a treat it was to get to spend time with her!both sienna and jasper were so sweet and gentle with great nanny. sienna loved to walk beside her, supporting her with her own sweet hand. jasper would sit beside her and *pet* her arms.jasper had his first sparkler experience in aunt lynn's yard with poppa hum. at nearly the same age, four years ago, sienna marveled at her first sparklers in this very same place with poppa.the new river gorge national park in west virginia provided the perfect place to get out and explore on the journey back home.lots of writing and drawing helped to keep this gal occupied for much of the trip.

now to get all those bags unpacked and work on getting settled back in around here! i will share more (color) photos of our journey soon. hope you all enjoyed a lovely weekend yourselves. i will be popping in soon to see what you have been up to.