celebrating spring

We had an awesome family day yesterday. It was glorious here in Minnesota, with lots of melting snow. We celebrated Mimi's birthday and springtime and family.

We went for a springtime walk that led us down an icy path that was very wet. No one was wearing the right footwear and it was pretty hilarious. A memory to be sure.

One of my very favorite parts of marrying into the Groves family was that this meant I also married into the Frick family (my mother-in-law Marlene's side of the clan). The Frick's live out in Colorado and Uncle Larry (Marlene's brother) is one of Ivar's favorite people to talk about. He made a big impression when they met. Uncle Larry and Aunt Judy are missionaries who travel all over the world encouraging pastors. They are pure inspiration to me. You can read about their work here.

So when our families gather we have a Frick n' Groves good time. We'll say things like, "it's time for another Frick n' Groves family reunion." Or "a Frick n' Groves birthday party." And it's always hilarious to me. And it always will be.

Lisa made her sugar cookies that always impress. This season: apple blossoms. She's amazing!

And Mimi gave Elsie a little outfit from Hawaii. You'll have to wait until summer for a picture from the front, but until then, here is a little tease. Elsie rocks the tub top with her toddler belly.

names for the kittens

We have had a lot of suggestions for naming our kittens. At the tree tapping party we had a bowl set out where everyone could suggest their own ideas. There were lots of fun names to choose from: my grandpa's names Phil and Johnny (to go with Velma and Verna...who is now Vernon), Ellie and Mittens, Spot and Kellie, Maple and Pancake, Tiger and Spot, Ida and Stella, Murph the Smurf and my personal favorites: Kelly and Sharin. 

And for a while Marlene and Margaret were in the mix, named after our awesome moms. But last week I had to take the kittens to the vet because one of their eyes wasn't opening due to an infection. And there I was told that one of them is definitely a boy and the other is likely a boy. 

Ivar was with me and they asked what the kittens names were. I told the vet we hadn't decided, so she recorded Kitten #1 and Kitten #2. And when I asked Ivar what he thought we should name them, he said his suggestions for the umpteenth time. The names he hasn't wavered from since the cats were born: Thomas and Percy. Named after his favorite trains in the world.

So ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have settled on their names. Enjoy some sweet, hungry meows from Thomas and Percy.

kittens- 2 weeks old from Becca Groves on Vimeo.

little signs of springtime

These pictures were taken two weeks ago, but I really want to get this day documented. Because it was the quintessential happy spring day, one where you could feel everything coming back to life again. It was a Wednesday and the sun was out and Rory decided to tap the first two trees. It was the day when I brought the kids out in the garage and was surprised by two teeny kittens that had just been born.

Ivar was still napping during the tree tapping, so Elsie got undivided mom and dad time. Which always feels special when the second born gets a little parent time all by herself.

And then that night, after we put the kids to bed we started our garden. Our former neighbor, Alison, graciously gave Rory her grow lights so that we can start our seeds even when there is snow on the ground. We got our seeds out of the bottom drawer of the fridge and started making a plan.

I mixed up some muddy soil to spoon into the egg cartons and the smell of dirt made us so happy. It smelled like spring. It smelled like that snow might actually melt away one day.

We ended the night watching Downton Abbey and rehashed the day: It started with ECFE, it included tree tapping and baby kittens. And it concluded with planting seeds for our garden. Springtime, new life, and hope in warmer weather was running through our veins. It was a day we won't soon forget.

And now, two weeks later, our little garden is growing in mighty ways. And the kittens have opened their eyes. And the sap is flowing. God put all these little wonders all around us, and I'm trying to keep my eyes wide open so I don't miss a thing.

love in the animal kingdom

Vernon, our orange cat, is the most faithful, loyal father. He is so protective of Velma and the kittens. You usually have to get past him to get to her and the kittens. And they all cozy up together each night. Just look at this picture. It's like they're snuggling up on the couch getting ready to start a movie.

I had assumed that the male cat would be off on new adventures when the kittens were born, but not Vernon. He's a sweet picture of a present, participating dad. :)

a tree tapping party

A week ago, Rory sent out an evite to family and friends who had shown interest in our maple syrup making last year. We were hopeful a dozen or so could make it. On Saturday we had forty people, 23 kids and 17 adults, to our house to help place the taps, feed the chickens, name the kittens and eat lots of pancakes.

Rory explained how to identify maple trees in the middle of winter and showed how we insert the taps and collect the sap. And he built an evaporator and had a fire going all morning to show how we boil down the sap. My dad was in charge of fire safety and thought that we had to wait for those pans to boil down before we could eat pancakes. Hilarious. It was just water...we don't have enough sap yet.

It was cold, with a high of 23. But it was sunny. So we told everyone to dress for success and then I set up lots of tables inside so we could fill up on pancakes, sausage, hot chocolate and coffee. My sister-in-law ran the kitchen and flipped many a pancake. Thank you Lisa!

Since my birthday was last week, my mom brought my traditional bunny cake, the birthday cake I have had every year of my life. And then she had the most brilliant idea to cut the cake and eat it outside (no chocolate crumbs in my carpet!) Genius, mom.

The chickens were fed all morning. Some kids got the cracked corn through the fence and to the chickens. Others just dumped dixie cups of chicken food at their own feet.

The chickens seemed to like all the attention. They even cooperated in the spirit of the day by laying eggs for everyone to see.

The morning was awesome. Rory took groups out to the grove to tap trees, the chickens were fed plenty by every kid that walked by, we had a kitten naming contest (results to come), maple syrup cross words and word finds and fed a lot of people in our sunny room with the sunshine pouring in. Rory and I have lots of ideas like Tree Tapping Day, different times of the year when we can have people out to be a part of what we're up to. This first event set a great precedent.

lately I've been...

watching the snow melt like it's my job.

visiting preschools and deciding not to enroll Ivar next year. we'll do ecfe again and wait until he's four.

celebrating the release of Rory's latest weather software: Live Hail Reports.

picking our very first netflix subscriptions: downton abbey and trekkies.

cutting my kids' hair for the first (and last) time. called my high chair set-up the mini marshmallow barber shop. bribery is alive and well.

remembering to take my vitamins. i've started taking them with chocolate milk. because I never forget to take my chocolate milk.

writing notes not to forget garbage day. we forgot last week. is there anything more deflating than missing garbage day?!!

visiting the kittens multiple times a day. they are darling.

singing Let it Go every time my kids get their drippy noses and dirty fingers close to our brand new couch. holding my breath for the day I find pen and marker on the new chair.

hearing myself say aloud, "if everyone could just push in their chairs after each meal, it would help so much..." and then looking in every corner of our kitchen for my mom. because she always used to say that. and now I do too.

surprise kittens!

On Monday Rory told me to stop feeding the cats so much...they were getting fat. And then we looked closer and decided that Velma might actually be pregnant. We talked about how fun it would be to have kittens. And hoped that later this spring we might have a litter.

Well. This afternoon, three days after this conversation, we bundled the kids up to go tap a few of our maple trees. I stepped into the garage and heard teeny little meows. I looked in the cat bed and nearly fell over.

Rory said I ran in the house repeating a high pitched, "Kittens! Kittens!" until he finally came out to see why I was going crazy. Turns out, I wasn't feeding the cats too much. Velma was just great with kittens.

At the moment there are only two. I'm not sure if more come later or not. Turns out I don't know a whole lot about cat birth. But I did know enough about birth to give Velma some water and food and then some space.

We let the kids watch for a while before we stopped using the garage door. And now I just pop my head out every few hours to make sure everyone is still okay. The last time I checked I found the cats together in the bed. Vernon with his paw lovingly on Velma. They're so sweet!

ECFE

I joined Early Childhood Family Education this semester after a friend invited me to join the class she and her daughters were a part of. I was unsure at first because I had tried ECFE before. Ivar was only two months old, and I found myself bundling us up in the middle of winter to join other sleep deprived mothers. It is an awesome concept, but the room we met it had no actual seating, just low riding beach chairs, the kind that keep you two inches off the ground. I remember really struggling to get down that low while holding Ivar, and not being skilled enough at nursing to really work the "under the blanket" feeding while sitting on the floor with no boppy or arm rests. I remember my back hurt, Ivar's mood was hit or miss and I felt judged for not having Ivar sleep in bed with us (that's not an ECFE thing...just the particular mix of mom's in my class).

So I dropped out after a few weeks. It was just too exhausting.

But this time around I hit the jackpot. Not only do they have adult size chairs, but I landed in a group of mom's that I admire and respect. No one is trying to say the right thing. In fact, there are almost always a few tears shed. I call it my favorite coffee-date/play-date/therapy-session of my week.

We start out playing with our kids and this is a bit hilarious. Ivar always goes for this train. Always. And that's fine. Except that there is always a fun craft table set up with some creative thing to make. And no matter what I say to entice Ivar towards the glitter and glue fun, he will not leave his train. The teacher told me once, "Mom's can make a craft without their kid if they want..." But I have my pride you know.

Then we have circle time and read a story. And then the mom's go into another room for coffee and a parenting lesson/conversation while the kids play some more. Elsie is in another room for sibling care the whole time, and loves it in there. They feed her cheerios the entire time and if I say "we're going to ecfe!" she'll tell me, "Crakah!"

All this to say, if you're a mom looking for other mom's, try ecfe. It's not always going to be a good fit. But if you hit the jackpot you'll be so glad you tried it out.

take ten

My Aunt Louie is the queen of cleaning games. Her sewing room at her house is infamous for being a bit untidy. It's her dumping ground and the room that gets the door closed when company comes over. But when she's ready to hit it she sets a timer and tries to Beat The Clock. She'll work like crazy on one counter or table top for say, fifteen minutes, getting it cleared before the timer buzzes.

She has played this game as long as I can remember, and even with no kids living at home, she still plays the game. It's a good one. And with that said, I'd like to dedicate this post to my Aunt Louie.

I've created a cleaning game of my own. It's called Take Ten. I mostly play it on my Clutter Counter. The counter top that serves as the catch all for EVERYTHING in our lives. In the deepest part of my heart I want this counter clear all the time. But it never is.

So I started playing this game, Take Ten. In one round I try to take and put away ten items as fast as I can. The ten items go quickly: a hair band, an envelope to throw away, reading materials to put together for a later time, a marker to put back in the junk drawer.

I only do ten items at a time. So the counter isn't overwhelming this way. Once I've made it to ten, I walk away, and will Take Ten the next time I'm passing through.

I was telling my sister about this game over the phone and how clever it is. She told me Aunt Louie would be proud. And then I confided in her, "Annika. I have been taking pictures of the clutter counter for days now, getting it ready for the "after" shot on my blog. But I can't keep up. I add ten as fast as I take ten." It gave us a hard laugh and we decided the only silver lining is that it isn't as bad as if I had never removed ten items at a time.

But I think I have sort of resolved that this counter top is the equivalent to Aunt Louie's sewing room. It's going to be a work-in-progress as long as we call this house our home. I'll still play my clever game, but when you come to my house and it's covered in random junk, you'll know at least I'm trying...

chili snow fort

I wrote about this on facebook and got lots of fun comments. And since all of our snow is melting into snowman snow I thought I'd tell this story on the blog. Because I can think of many, many friends who need to make this happen in their own lives.

When I was little we had a candlelight winter picnic with our next door neighbors. Jennifer, Betsy and I made an awesome snow fort surrounding the picnic table. We rolled big snow balls, stacked them four feet high, packed them into walls and placed candles on the top of the fort. Then our two families met at the snow fort in the dark for chili, hot chocolate and corn bread. My mom put a tablecloth down, we lit the candles and ate our supper sitting at the picnic table in snowpants, boots and mittens under the big dark sky.

It is one of my all-time favorite memories. A true picture of sweet friends, good food and creative parenting. And for me, it raises the bar for memory making. This memory didn't cost a whole lot. It didn't even require a ton of planning...but it took two mom's who had an eye for fun and creativity. Those are the eyes I want to have in my own mothering.

The real joy is that now we're trying to plan a remake. To get the crew pictured above out to the grovestead for more chili in a big snow fort. Wouldn't that be so awesome?!!

I ended my facebook post with this charge: So go. Roll that snow. Make that chili. Call up your neighbors. And make Minnesota proud! Because I think chili snow forts need to be as common to winter as hot chocolate.

minnesota spring break

Annika's girls had their spring break this past week. Poor, poor, Minnesota school kids! It barely hit zero when they were here. We got to have the girls stay with us for a few nights and it was delightful. Because these girls are delightful.

Mara got us outside the first morning. I didn't think we'd last as long as we did. But everyone seemed happy to be outside. That morning Svea had come to my bed and told me, "Aunt Becca, there were stars and now the sky is pink and purple. Do you want to come see it?!!" She was a sweet little alarm. And since it was 7:00, I couldn't complain.

I let Ivar and Svea nap together the first day. Which was adorable and futile. They came out of their room many times having to fill up their water bottles, and later having to to go potty, and later just because it was an absurd idea to have them nap together in the first place. But at least I got a cute picture. :)

We made a banner and Elsie got to use a marker for her first time. I believe her face sums up her great joy in this milestone moment. Unfortunately she now thinks she's too cool for crayons. But obviously she's a disaster waiting to happen with a marker in her hand.

Towards the end of their stay I was feeling at a loss of what to do next. I was really run down and we'd already had enough screen time. So I was thrilled when our slumberland truck showed up to deliver our couch and chair. And then, to my good fortune (and to the truck driver's terrible misfortune) the truck got stuck right there with front and rear wheels all stuck in snow banks. It took 90 minutes of digging, the use of mattresses under the tires and a tow truck to get it out. Neighbors were blocked from their homes. It was pretty epic. And for a mama looking for a diversion, it created the most exciting closing event I could have hoped for.

Here the kids wait for the great reveal, and then are the first to give the new couch its first sit.

I love these kids so much. When they were about to arrive Rory said, "You seem to be feeling much better. Are you well?" And I said I was just so excited for my nieces to come over. It was the same feeling when I was a little girl and was going to see my cousins. Just so, so excited. And a joy to be together. We talked a lot about this summer when Claire, Simon and Nellie are coming to Minnesota. We can't wait!!!