Monday, June 30, 2014

Everyday Miracles

Weekly counting of my blessings:

Knowing my kids are in great hands and enjoying their summer to the fullest when I have to leave them every day to take Ari to camp.

Kale from my garden – even in the off-season.

Mom and Dad’s day off at the lake with great friends.  We went wake surfing and tubing like kids all morning.

So this is what relaxation feels like.  No one whined or needed to go potty – not once!  Thanks to my awesome sisters who watched our kids for us.

Reliving our youth at the waterpark in celebration of Jake’s 40th birthday.  Happy birthday baby!

Jake’s birthday Caramel Apple cake – as requested!

Harvest of the day.  Watermelon and apples galore.

Sweetest cantaloupe ever from the garden.

They like us!  They really like us!  Taylor Farms apple butter and apple sauce is getting shouts on Facebook.

Finding golden heirloom tomatoes we didn’t even remember planting.

Neighbor trade.  Apple butter for apple pie filling.  Gotta love good neighbors.

Pretty little artist creating pretty little things.

An invitation to be a vendor the famous Gilbert Farmers Market. 

Little mermaid.

Watching her do her very best.  Seeing her confidence soar as it is rewarded.

My Ari… beautiful inside and out.

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Memorial Day Partay

One might assume that I look for every excuse to have a party.  They might be on to me. 

This May, we had the best weather ever.  I wanted to make sure that we got outside and soaked it up.  Throw on Jake’s famous BBQ and whip up a couple patriotic desserts, and you have a recipe for a backyard Memorial Day party.  I love to watch my littles playing wildly with their friends, and to watch Ari do as she pleases as well… which in this case meant sneaking handfuls of tortilla chips from the buffet table before it was time for dinner.

We throw parties often, but they are not fancy.   We eat on bare picnic tables, play on old school pipe playgrounds, ride bikes and scooters around the lawn without a second thought, eat Mulberries off the trees, and chat about life while the kids make best friends/adversaries/best friends anew.  When we depart each other’s company, we do so missing shoes and hats; covered in sidewalk chalk dust, stickiness, dirt and bug bites; and with our kids unable to discern friends from family.  Of course, I think those kinds of things are lovely.  All except the bug bites.

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Thursday, June 26, 2014

Everyday Miracles

Our miracles:

Remembering a beautiful Easter with my family.

Liam’s face as he was about to blow out the two candles on his Goodnight Moon cake.

Celebrating Liam’s birthday for the second time – this time on his real day – with bona fide CafĂ© du Monde beignets in Disneyland.

Feeling as carefree as a seven year old with no shoes on, soaring 50 feet in the air.

Watching my kids’ faces as we ride rides together. 

Being reminded over and over by her smile that we truly were in the happiest place on Earth.

Homegrown, organic, non-GMO corn from Taylor Farms.

An ingenious swimming solution for Ari. 

Homemade, organic applesauce from our bountiful apple tree.

Putting our Taylor Farms applesauce and apple butter into grateful hands and turning it into our little side business.

My sweet and sassy family.

Our dreamy sunflower garden.

Night swimming.

Watching Bella proudly claim 2nd place out of 8 in her first swim meet ever.  It was breaststroke, and she pulled it off one handed.

Ari in the Upsee!  Wow.  Just wow.

Already seeing improvements from daily Conductive Ed therapy camp.

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Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Girls Weekend

Jake and Gabe got to go to the Fathers & Sons campout.  The women (and Liam) stayed home to begin a tradition of breaking rules… nothing major, but you have to start somewhere!  They got to eat ice cream before dinner, get filthy by laying on the sidewalk, wear full makeup for no reason at all, skip their shower, run through sprinklers in their clothes, stay up late, and eat Little Ceasar’s pizza for dinner (gasp!).  Jake said I went too far with the last one, and that ordering Little Ceasar’s was inexcusable.

I don’t know if all our shenanigans made up for the fact that they didn’t get to go camping, but we did our best!

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Favorite Mother’s Day Tradition

I love Mother’s Day.  Is that okay to admit?  It’s one day out of the year when my kids actually want to please me just for the sake of making me happy.  No hopes for gain, no fear of revoked screen time, no sibling rivalry… they do it just to see me light up with appreciation.  So simple.  Wouldn’t it be grand if every day was like that?  Maybe… or maybe it’s the fact that it only happens once a year that makes so special and novel.

I love how everyone is in on it.  Dad, the teachers… all co-conspirators in making my day awesome.  My birthday doesn’t get the quite same royal treatment, because it falls during the summer and the three kids’ teachers probably weren’t planning for that.  I got some pretty sweet swag – a beautiful necklace and a bracelet from Sonya Renee (my favorite jewelry designer).  For me, though, I’m not all about the gifts.  My favorite part about it is receiving the little surveys and handwritten letters.  I know, I’m so corny that I sound like I’m full of it.  But I swear it’s true.  What could possibly beat a letter from your son demanding in all caps that you share the Swiss Chard from the garden?  Or reading that your daughter writes “My mom laughs when I fart” and “I love my mom because she takes car of me”?  Nothing, I tell you!  Ari and Liam even made their own notes, and Ari did her own survey by selecting from multiple choice options that Gabe and Bella gave her.

Like every year, we went to our special Mother’s Day place for dinner at 5 PM and sat at table 19.  Don’t even try to reserve it on that day at that time, if you happen to recognize it by the pictures.  I will say that my kids call it “Kelsey’s Chicken” although this isn’t the name of the restaurant.  We only eat here once a year.  It’s not that I only like it enough to visit once a year.  I like it a whole lot more than that; it’s the best patio in the valley if you ask me.  But going only on Mother’s Day helps me to recall the memories of Mothers Days past.  It’s like filing them all under the purple tab of the cluttered binder that is my mind.  And that’s how I feel about traditions in general.  I love them because they help me accomplish one of my cardinal goals as a mom: to remember and to remember with my whole heart, mind, and all five senses.  The repetition of a meaningful tradition helps me to do that.  And this is also the principal reason I blog.  You’ll see that my blog isn’t about winning Top Blog for this or that, replacing our income, or even teaching you how to garden/cook/bake/decorate/throw birthday parties (although that would be fun too!).  This blog is about remembering.  But I digress…

It was a great day, topped off by an even better evening.  All because of the five most important people in my life.

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Saturday, June 14, 2014

Everyday Miracles

Here are a few recent everyday miracles…

Going on a date night with Jake.  I remember once again why I love him.

Attending a Memorial Day picnic thrown by my sister.  It was good times.

Being proud (and grateful) to be an American.

Loving my crazy family… especially their brand of crazy.

Apricots that are abundant and as sweet as can be.

Picking my apricots in the beauty of this morning.

Baking Liam’s 2 year birthday cake with my sweet aproned helpers.

Apricot pie galore.  Jam, fruit leather, and (of course) smoothies galore as well.

Feeling inspired by my strong and determined little cheerleader.

Appreciating gifts of yellow summer squash from my next-door neighbors. 

Celebrating Liam’s 2nd birthday “Goodnight Moon” style.  It’s the book he loves most.

In awe and disbelief that my little girl just attended her first sleepover.

Cousins/best friends who think alike… or is that sisters-in-laws/best friends who think alike.

A boy who loves to read and loves to learn… at the pace of 2 million words in his 1st grade year. 

A little girl who is so proud to be graduating Kindergarten, while I’m feeling bittersweet about it.

Relief from an unbelievably hot afternoon.

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Easter

I have been working on putting this post together for way too long.  I’m going to let the photos do most of the talking, because there are a million of them, so this is the photo story of our Easter Sunday. 

All four kids woke up to baskets from the Easter Bunny.  They were nothing fancy – just plain old candy filled eggs, Peeps, and Cadbury eggs, but they loved them.  Hopefully they never find out that most of their friends get toys and video games and even electronics in their baskets.  I like to keep it simple whenever possible.  I did color coordinate them though.  I couldn’t help myself.

We got all dressed up for church, but Gabe woke up with a fever that carried over from the night before.  When it didn’t drop, I decided that it was far more considerate to stay home than show up with a febrile child, even if it did mean missing church on Easter.  Once he had his Ibuprofen, he was feeling well enough to participate in our little egg hunt.

Photo credit for our family pic (below) goes to my 9 year old neighbor, Leah.  I think she did a pretty good job, don’t you?

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When my kids hunt for Easter eggs, they are hunting specifically for their dyed hardboiled eggs.  For some reason, these colorful, overcooked beauties are the treasures of my kids’ Easter loot.  I think it’s because they are a challenge.  The plastic eggs are too easy.  They’re born in those baskets.  But the dyed eggs… those are scarce and require real effort, a keen eye, and a little sweat, thus increasing their value.

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This was Ari’s first Easter egg hunt that she hasn’t been carried.  She got to go where she pleased and the gain of the hunt was all to her own credit.  She was just as tickled as we were.

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Another first.  Baby Liam’s first Easter egg hunt.  Awwww.

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When she would find one in the grass, Ari would point to it and start kicking her legs excitedly.  Quick as a wink, I’d pick it up for her so she could put it in her basket, and move on to find more.

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As always, I photographed and Jake took video.  I would post the video, but I have no idea how to use his Windows phone, hence the play-by-play in photos.

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Tallying up their treasures.  This is quite the competitive game, you know.

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Liam was pretty darn pleased with himself.

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This is kind of my personal heaven.

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It’s a stand off over one hardboiled egg.  I told you it got competitive.

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So begins the annual feast of consisting purely of hardboiled eggs.  22 hardboiled eggs were consumed in one sitting by my family of 6.  I had three. 

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That evening, my sisters and their boyfriends came over for dinner.  I had an amazing time.  I think they did too.

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We ate Root Beer Glazed Ham, scalloped potatoes, deviled eggs, roasted green beans and asparagus, and coconut cake with white chocolate covered strawberries for dessert.  My sisters made me this gorgeous floral arrangement.  Being a sister to floral designers has its perks.

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Holidays are times to remember what values and which people are most precious to us.  I cherish holidays.  They are the pause button in the busy year.  They are the dog-eared pages on the story of our lives, one which flies by in what seems like only a couple days.