Roman Holiday

My Little Blue Berries...

Yes, we're traitors.  We left town on the biggest weekend of the year for DeWitt.  We skipped the Ox Roast and headed north to Paradise, MI for the Blueberry Festival instead!  Growing up, this was a treasured event, and I've missed it a lot the last few years.  So this year, since I had no obligations to be in the parade or at the market, I packed up the family wagon and we headed north!

We ate blueberry pie, blueberry muffins, watched jugglers, and strolled through the tents.  It was a wonderful little break from our hectic few weeks around here.  Closing the store was a big decision, but we've all been very happy since the doors closed on July 26th.  But that's just the beginning of the hard work.  It's slowly wrapping up, and we're settling in to our old routine. 

I'm starting to feel more like my old self again, and I'm getting fleeting moments of clarity as I remember what it was like before the shop opened!  I didn't just have a clean house - it was organized!  The kids were happier and calmer.  We had fun activities every day.  Dinner was on the table when Andy walked through the door.  The gardens were well kept.  (Not the weedy mess they've become.)  I was able to knit and sew when I wanted.  And I blogged almost everyday, not every 6 months.  I think that once school starts, we'll settle back into our old routine and be back to normal around here.  But in the meantime, during this state of transition, the blueberry filled weekend was just what we needed!

In fact, we're headed back north again tomorrow.  Attie stayed up there for the week with Grandma & Grandpa, so we'll go spend a few days camping and making s'mores, then head back home to gear up for the school year. 

Ahhhh..... the comfort of getting back to the exciting mundane!

A Mother's Growing Pains...

Our kindergartener is almost a first grader.  Today we went to watch our darling little girl "graduate" from her first year of traditional school.  And I cried.  It was heartwrenching and wonderful all at the same time.  How does my firstborn go from this:

to this:

in the blink of an eye?  I am so proud of Attie.  No matter what she tries to do, where she goes, or who she spends time with, she always remains "Attie".  She is spunky, funny, bright, beautiful, and tenacious.  I know she is going to go far and do wonderful things.  I just wish she would slow down a little bit.  It's going too fast for her mama to handle!  She reads at about a 3rd grade level, can add and subract like nobody's business, and has an artistic streak a mile long.  And when she grows up she wants to be a doctor-artist-mommy.  Because 'that's her best thing'.  She has a neverending supply of hugs and a smile that lights up the world. 

Congratulations, baby girl!  You're almost a first grader now!

Picnic in the Park

Don't you just want to squeeze those cheeks?  Andrew is growing up so quickly, and I'm not taking pictures as frequently as I need to in order to remember what he looked like as a little one.  I can't believe he'll be 2 already in just two months. 

We spent a lovely Monday morning and lunch hour at the park last week, and I remembered the camera for a change.  These poor kids!  It just seems like life is one big rat-race lately, and I haven't had a chance to do much of the fun stuff with them.  Dad, on the other hand, has been able to do more, but I decided to say the heck with the real world and deadlines one morning and go play!  Nothing like a picnic to put the spring back in your step!

I thoroughly enjoyed stealing these few moments to just soak it all in.  They grow up so fast, and these days it's hard to remember to take the time out of our busy lives to just stop and appreciate the stage they are in.  Sometimes you have to tell the world to wait.  I'm really glad I did! 

A Chance to Win!!!

MODA U has a new quilt kit out for those who participate in the MODA University program.  It's the beautiful quilt pattern featuring the new "A Little Romance" fabric collection by April Cornell.  It's absolutely gorgeous!

Here's what I am going to do with one of the kits I've been able to purchase from MODA...

As you all know, I am participating in the 60 mile walk for breast cancer, The 3-Day, through the Susan G. Komen Foundation.  I will be walking 20 miles each day over the course of the three days of August 10th, 11th, and 12th.  I had wanted to hold a quilt raffle to help raise the $2200 needed to participate, but alas, there is no time!  In Michigan, there is a 4-6 week time frame to obtain a raffle license to hold a local raffle event.  So instead I am going another route in order to save time!  I have to have the money raised by August 1st, so that will be the deadline to enter...

Enter into what, you ask? 

I am going to make this gorgeous quilt to be given away to whomever wins the drawing I will be holding!  Each time someone makes a $25 donation their name will be entered into the hat.  On August 1st, I will have a cancer survivor draw the winning name and I will post it here (and of course contact them personally to let them know they have won)!

Just think, the kit alone for the quilt top and binding sells for $80.  Add in another 4.25 yards backing at around $26, and it's now up to $106 in value.  Throw in the batting and the professional quilting, with an average charge of $60, and this quilt is approximately a $170 investment to make it yourself (not to mention the time!). 

Want the quilt, but don't have time to make it?  Want to support an incredible cause?  Simply click here and be taken to my webpage for the 3-Day walk and make a $25 donation! 

Support a fellow crafter, blogger, and woman as she pounds the pavement to help eliminate this horrendous disease!  And if you enter more than once, increasing your odds of winning, and have your name drawn, there will be some extra pink goodies packed in with your quilt as a surprise!  Maybe some crafting tools, or some fabrics, or even perhaps some other needle arts treasures....  the possibilities are endless!

Won't you enter today?  I'm already piecing it together!

Joys of Life

This is a typical morning around here --

Notice they are all still in their pajamas?  They don't even wait until they are dressed to get outdoors and play!  Our kids love summer, no doubt about it.  After a morning of fresh air, or:

 

another typical rise & shine activity of the boogie session with the Sesame Street cd's, lunchtime usually brings on a case of this:

the afternoon snooze-time, still in those pajamas, and in a coma on the couch.  They lie where they fall sometimes.  Wow, do they play hard!

We've been trying really hard to make sure we get time with each kid individually, too, which can be really hard with four of them running around.  The other night, Aelin got to go to the store with me to help for a while, and then today Annika came to the Old Town Farmers Market with me to check that out.  One of our loyal vendors reminded me that it was taking place, as it only happens once a month to correspond with the Gallery Walk when all of the art galleries open their new shows.  Aelin did have a lot of fun at the store with me, carrying her little basket around "shopping" for yarn and goodies!  I wish I had the camera with me then.  Unfortunately I didn't.  But I did have it with me today, for a change!  Annika thoroughly enjoyed herself painting a hubcap at the market!

Of course Attie gets to go do things quite often without her siblings.  That's probably because of her age more than anything.  Being 5 has it's advantages for her as well as for mom & dad.  Andrew on the other hand, doesn't go quite so much.  He's going to get caught up this fall, though.  Attie will be in kindergarten every morning during the week, so there will only be three at home on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  But on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Aelin and Annika will be at preschool while Attie is at kindergarten, so he and I will have lots of one on one time together!  And by that time, he'll be just about 2, so it will be even more fun to watch him explore and learn. 

Not that anyone WANTS to know, but potty training twins can actually be accomplished.  Yay!  The girls are finally pull-up free during the day, and we couldn't be more thrilled.  They probably would've mastered it sooner if we weren't at such a busy point in our lives right now, but they still managed to do it only 2 months after turning 3.  We'll take it!  At least it didn't take until this fall, leaving us in a panic about the whole preschool thing!  So if you're going through it?  Take heart.  They'll get it.  Eventually.   Whether you do or not.  Because we didn't get it.  Sorry Andrew -- we still don't know what we're doing, so we hope you're like your sisters and figure it out for yourself!

An Illuminating Walk

The path was all lit up with luminaria bags, each one with a name written on it.  Each one a victim or a survivor of cancer.  The first lap around was difficult, bringing a lot of emotion to the surface.   When you are out there in the wee hours, and the path is quiet and peaceful, you can really appreciate the gravity of this great event. 

Julie, you did an incredible job putting this together!  I am so proud of you, as is everyone who took part in the Relay for Life.  The music, the games, the atmosphere, it was all incredible!  If you've never taken part in one of these Relay events in your area, you need to.  It's overwhelming!  And it has really inspired me even more to keep on walking, in every event every year.  I was feeling a little sluggish about the 3-Day walk in Chicago in August, but now I am even more enthusiastic and ready to walk!  I wish my parents had been able to be here in time for the survivors lap.  They would have been so impressed. 

This was just what I needed to really get me motivated.  Next year I will be much more involved than just raising a few dollars and walking a few laps.  This is one cause I want to champion in a much more active role.  Cancer runs rampant through my family, and I'm more determined than ever to do what I can to get rid of it. 

More photos out on flickr....

Make Way For Ducklings

While at the Food Co-op the other day, I was able to use the cell phone to take this photo:

Mama Duck and her babies were waddling along across the parking lot, cute as can be!  You can't tell from the photo, but there are actually 8 little ducklings surrounding her.  Here it is, cropped and enlarged:

It made a ho-hum ordinary trip become extra special.  They were so darn cute, and still had a little fuzz on them under their feathers!

(Cell phone cameras don't have the greatest photo capabilities when it's click-n-go and you don't have time to adjust the settings.  Sorry about the photo quality!)

Talk about getting your nose out of joint!

Yep, again I was absent from the web for much longer than planned.  How does that saying go?  If you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans?  Anyway, in the last couple of weeks we've had all kinds of things come up that seem to keep me away from the computer.  The largest event being when Andrew broke his nose. 

Yes, you read that right!  My little darling boy broke his nose.  Jumping on the bed.  Then flying off the bed.  Having his fall broken by a wooden step stool.  Face first.  The very evening after I last posted anything online!  He's fine now, with no traces of black & blue marks or swelling, but he was not a pretty sight for a while.  And now I am really regretting not taking any photos of it.  He's never going to believe us when he gets older! 

Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to get the camera out to show you all of the outdoor progress I've made in the last two weeks, though.  Lots of planting, mulching, and vegetable-gardening going on around here.  Not to mention just lots of playing.  Maybe this time I will be able to stay current with my posting, but no promises to myself.  Seriously, everytime I say "I'm Back", I end up going another month without adding anything out here! I haven't even checked bloglines in weeks....  (sorry-- I'm really not ignoring anyone!  I miss the daily reads.  Anyone know how I can get more hours into my day?  Argh!)

I miss you all, and will hopefully be able to catch up soon...

Thank you, AfricanKelli!

A while ago, Kelli posted about her upcoming trip to Mozambique.  I clicked through from Autum's blog and read this entry and felt the tears well up almost instantly.  Can you imagine, an average of 100 children in each orphanage, all whom have lost parents to civil war or HIV?  Needless to say, as a mother I was pulled to join in.  No second thoughts.  In fact, I would have sent Kelli a couple hundred of goody bags by myself!  So the kids and I put together some bags to send to Kelli.  Now, mind you, they were supposed to reach her no later than May 18th.  Ummm, yeah.  Well, we all know how good I am (HA!) at doing anything before the last minute!  So, yesterday we headed off to the post office to overnight (you read that right:  OVERNIGHT!) a package to her.  Express Mail from DeWitt to Tempe is not cheap, but really?  I didn't care.  It's nothing compared to what these kids DON'T have.  I'd pay it in a heartbeat.  Because the fact that we can afford to ship something overnight is something we should be grateful for, not griping about.  Perspective....

Well, we do have enough stuff here for a lot more goody bags, but when I checked in on her site the night before last, put of the 1400 responses she had already recieved 280+ of them!  The kids really wanted to send some, so we put 15 of them in a box and shipped them off.  The remainder will be shipped to Kelli later this summer before she heads to South America on a similar trip. 

Our packages include a washcloth, bar of soap, bandaids, hair bands, chapstick, a toothbrush, toothpaste, pencil, crayons, gum, a postcard of Michigan, and a short letter with photo telling who we are and where we live.  It really doesn't seem like much at all.  It feels completely inadequate.  But hopefully it will make a small difference in a few children's day when they get it.  Thank you, Kelli, for inviting everyone to participate.  It's been good for our souls, and we can't wait to do it again.  Soon.  Please!  And once again, I am completely blown away at the power of the blogging community.  On many occasions I have seen a wave of human kindness come crashing across the screen.  Out here in blogland there is a real and tangible element of the human spirit's need to help others.  Why it isn't so visible in real life is beyond me.  But out here?  It will never cease to amaze me at how this community pulls together to lift up even one little member and give them just the boost they need.  It restores my faith in mankind each and every time....

A Toast: To New Beginnings...

At Andy's promotion ceremony, Colonel Fransisco joked that it's always nice to "bring your own platoon!"  Apparently some of the troops in the Roman Company were more at ease than others.  Perhaps some more formation drills are in order?  We celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary on the 5th of May, kicking off year seven with Andy's recognition of honors on the 6th of May and we've been rolling along ever since!  (In case you all are wondering why you have never seen a photo of me on the site, it's because I'm the only one in the family who even uses a camera at all, so I'm always behind the lens.  But this time, you can see my hot pink Hanna Anderssen clogs off to the side!  Yep, I really DO exist!)

This past weekend we held the first of our Farmer's Markets for the summer.  It was a resounding success!  The fact that the weather was wonderful alone made it a completely perfect event, even if everything else had fallen apart.  But we didn't have any major mishaps, and the vendors did VERY well in sales, while the community came out in full force to enjoy it all.  We had a musician, Ben Hassenger of the local group "Blue Jello" playing in the middle of the block, and he is wonderful I tell you.  I can't wait for "Life Is Good" to be released soon!  Great music....  Since the weather has been such a bugger around here this spring, there's not much yet available in the way of produce, but our vendors with annuals and perennials sold out and had to send for more stock twice!  And our favorite berry farmers, Felzke's, brought an extra special surprise this year for us:  eggs!  Fresh from under the hens!  They have 200 laying right now and another 200 that will be laying by the fall markets.  HEAVENLY!  Fresh eggs are a true treat, and we are so excited to have them at the market finally.  Since we will always have the first market be the same weekend as Mother's Day, we are going to do something special for moms every year.  This year we gave away free annuals to every mom who stopped by the information booth.  This is the scene on a table in my garage the night before at 11 pm:

Stuffing lobelia, pansies, petunias, marigolds, and impatiens into pastel colored cups with potting soil and tying them with ribbons....  The next day they were all lined up in our wagon and on the info booth table just waiting to go home with some lovely woman to be planted and cared for.  We didn't want to hand out carnations that would die in a vase in a week.  We thought it would be nice to have a more lasting bloom for Mom!  It was a big hit--everyone loved the idea, and we had just enough for everyone!  Thank you so much, Enchanting Farms!  We purchased the annuals from them, and they were very hardy and full of blooms already.

I have tons of photos to show from the market, but I think I'm going to just upload all of them to a flickr group and post a link when I have more time.  I am also going to get busy on the market website, too, getting it updated with more current photos and hopefully adding a few more features, but that too takes time and there doesn't seem to be enough hours in a day anymore!

In the meantime, we have also planted our gardens.  FINALLY!  I put flowers in one of the front beds, the other has a couple flats waiting to go in yet.  The veggie patch out back is planted!  We have cucumbers, green bell peppers, carrots, lettuce, zucchini, and watermelon in the main garden, and I have tomatoes, watermelon, cucumbers and lavender in containers on the deck.  It's an experiment; we'll see if it works or not! 

In related yet not related news:  Vermont Organics makes a line of yarns called O-Wool.  It's wonderful, by the way.  100% organic, and affordable.  In the shop I have the Balance line, and it's a 50-50 cotton and wool blend that has a heathered look to it.  Gorgeous, and so soft.  Perfect for summer and fall knits.  Anyway....  I spoke with Angela at the company the other day about a missing skein and some informational materials, and we got to talking about how it fits into the farmers market season.  I told her I even went so far as to put together a display in the shop for the market that included organic gardening books, organic cookbooks, kids' books, berry baskets, and the Balance yarns.  She was intrigued, and asked me to send her a photo of the display.  So, I did, and she has since emailed back that they are working on compiling these types of ideas to find a new way to market the yarns and that they loved the photo!  SO, our little market display may possibly go on to bigger and better things.  At least photographically, anyway.  I'm actually quite proud of that -- it means I'm actually starting to network with people and companies that are already making a difference but are also trying to find better ways to facilitate change.  This was never a written green promise or goal for me, but was always in the back of my mind.  I've been continually trying to think of a way to get a dialogue started with an established entity that has clout in order to perhaps do a little good on a larger scale.  I know this is only a photo that they asked for, but it's a small start and it gives me big hopes that someday I might be able to be one of those pioneers that really makes a difference.  Here's hoping!

Although, along those lines, and in keeping with my green promises and commitment to the farmers market, Kellie and I went to the kickoff meeting for the Michigan Farmers Market Association (MIFMA).  At that meeting, I registered not only the market, but myself as a market vendor, as charter members of the organization.  Dru Montri is heading up the project and is currently in France studying this very type of thing for her graduate program, but when she returns we are going to meet to discuss ways to get involved and make this organization a real source of strength and support for small farmers, vendors, and organics in Michigan.  So much was done to get it started, and now it will depend on that continued zest of the volunteers to keep it going and growing.  It's an amazing concept, and one that I am so excited to be a part of!  I know, I didn't need anything else on my plate, but this is something I am very passionate about and I'll gladly dump a few other projects just to have the privelege and honor of working with this group of dedicated and wonderful people. 

So, that's most of the events of the last couple of weeks.  There are others, but let's face it:  you can only post so much info at one time before your eyes go blurry!  My next post will hopefully have some pictures of the Roman Empire for a change, and get back on topic for a little while.  But then again, with the end of the school year coming up next week, it could be a bit before I get a chance to even post!  If I don't, at least you already know you will be seeing photos from the school picnic if nothing else...