a wonderland

It's 1:15 and Ivar just walked into the kitchen, shuffling his feet, looking at the floor and said, "It's been a long day."

Oh baby has it ever. It has been quite the long week, too.

I've had almost a full week of isolation here at the grovestead. Rory was in San Diego the first part of the week while we stayed put because of Ivar's pink eye, and now the weather has cancelled everything the second half of the week. Yesterday when I found out my morning Bible study was cancelled (my first social outing all week!) I had to come up with a Plan B fast. So I drove myself to Menards, got a gallon of paint and nail putty and decided to paint the livingroom. A good project that is keeping me sane.

The snow is beautiful. The wind has blown the field so that it looks like white caps rolling on the hills. And that is Rory walking out to his office. Not to go and work there, but to get the step ladder for my sudden livingroom painting project. He's a good man. At one point while wading through the snow he yelled back, "It's up to my belly button!" And it was. The drifts back there are amazing.

And now we're trying to make something of this day. I called my dad mid morning and he said, "I'm sitting  here under the palm trees talking to your cousin Karen." So I got to talk to Karen for a long time, which was awesome. Then she handed the phone back to dad and he said, "did you call for something?" And I replied, "Just basic human interaction."

But we're gonna make it. And we're gonna have a really nice living room at the end of all this!

Elsie Bah!

+Elsie has started playing with a dolly. She calls her, "Baby!" And today I played with Elsie and Baby and we had the sweetest time. I fed Baby some pretend food we just got at Ikea. Elsie watched me amazed and laughed at Baby eating watermelon. And then she'd look at me sideways and slowly fed Baby some watermelon too. I could see the dots connecting inside her head as we kept playing pretend. What joy.

+Elsie begins every sentence with a determined, "No." I'll ask, "Elsie, would you like some apple?" And she'll respond, "No." But seconds later in a panic she'll cry out, "Apple!" And it goes on like this for all waking hours of the day.

+She speaks in lots of sounds. Rory commented that she only really says B words. Bah Bah for bottle, Ba for ball, Baa for bath, Bu for book. But she also says Dadoo for Cat and Chicken. I am fluent in Elsie Bah.

+Elsie is extreme. Her joy is so joyful. Her happy is delightful. Her frustrated is furious. Her anger is hot. Her nose always has a booger and her chin is always wet. But her sweetness is tender. Her determination is powerful. Her love is palpable. And her laugh will slay you. She is the best.

forts in the living room

Lately we've been big into forts. And to be totally honest, fort construction is one of my best gifts. I honed this craft over the course of my entire childhood, creating fortresses on the clothesline with my best friend Jennifer. Now I have kids to build them for, and let's just say they lucked out with getting me as their skilled fort-building mama. 

This round I discovered a new trick up my sleeve: use bottom bed sheets for the walls of your fort. The elastic holds secure around the chairs and can be tucked under the feet of the chair. It's so handy. If that doesn't make any sense to you, go build yourself a fort in your living room (go, do it) and come back and tell me how awesome those bottom sheets are. Also helpful: pony tail holders work wonders for keeping the roof attached to the chairs. 

I used to love playing in forts once they were built. But now I find a good magazine inside a fort is the perfect combination.

high on vitamin d

The weather these past two days was cause for celebration. Ivar has pink eye and so we're home bound. But with weather like today and yesterday, we were able to get outside and it was awesome. We did lots of stuff...

...like shovel snow from one pile into another.

And Elsie gave stroller rides to a very willing Velma, the cat.

Each kid spent a whole lot of time in the baby swing, dragging their feet on the snow.

And then we had a picnic lunch with ham, cheese and apples. It was Ivar's idea and I was thrilled. Picnics are my favorite and now I know they are Ivar's too.

And finally, when it was time to come back inside after two hours of play and a picnic, Elsie had a canary. She was livid. She did not want to come in, even though her hands were red and raw. She kept shoving her boots into my belly yelling, "Boo! Boo!" Which meant, put these back on you fun killer. I actually had thought while we were outside that parenting outdoors feels like cheating. The kids were so busy doing their own things, I was so happy to be out in the sun. But when we came back in and Elsie was so furious and Ivar was crying because his socks got wet, then I knew I wasn't cheating. I was still the mom, working hard.

And now I will leave you with a video I like to call "The one where Ivar asks the cats if he can play."


winter cats from Becca Groves on Vimeo.

valentine's day

I just got off the phone with my mom telling me to get a blog post up. She misses her grandkids. So here we go. I think I have a few I can fire off. I believe I left off on Valentine's Day. I had a lovely post all about Rory and how recently he told me that he would be thrilled if I made Hamburger Helper once a week. He loves the stuff and is so excited when I make it. He even called it one of his love languages. This little-known-fact used to bother me. I felt I was above Hamburger Helper. But two kids later, Rory's love for Hamburger Helper is one of most endearing, wonderful parts about this easy-to-please Valentine of mine. 

We had a great Valentine's day. I followed in my mom's footsteps and had a heart supper. We had finger jello hearts, cupcakes from our favorite shop, and a heart pizza from Papa Murphy's. Anyone else get Papa Murphy's? When I picked up my pizza, there was palpable excitement in the store. My sister said her's was like this too. The manager was all happy telling everyone it was their busiest day of the year. I got swept up in the giddiness, and then got back into my car and remembered I had only been in a pizza shop on valentine's day. It was as if I had walked into some sort of unexpected christmas joy or something...

And my funny Valentine, while eating his pizza, kept telling me how he couldn't quite figure out how a place like Papa Murphy's broke on to the scene. Rory said, "Just think about it. After delivery was invented, why would anyone open up a pizza shop with unbaked pizza's? It seems backwards."

And those are the sort of sweet nothings my Valentine discusses over a romantic dinner with our children. :)

i love big, colorful, world market wall art

A few weeks ago we were walking through World Market with the kids. I saw this painting and was in love. For a while we had it in the living room, but it loses something when you look at it from afar. I love it up close. So I brought it up to our bedroom where, due to it's size, everything is up close...

World Market art seems to fit us well in this season of life. We have three big paintings in our house that add color and break up our bare walls. Obviously they're not originals. But that's why we can afford them. One day, when we are collecting large pieces of expensive art for our estate (I kid!) I will purchase lots of paintings from that gallery just outside of the Barnes and Noble in the Galleria. Anyone ever been in there?!! Have you seen the magical birch forests that look like blobs of rainbow paint up close, but when you step back you can see birch trees?!! Oh they're awesome. This painting from World Market sort of reminded me of that, but for thousands less.

(And just because I thought it was noteworthy... As I took the pictures of this new painting over our dresser, I also took a shot of all the clean clothes I washed on Monday that each evening we put back on the floor and each morning put back on the bed. If only someone would put it away!)

i love seed catalogs (and a review of our 2013 garden)

Right about the time Christmas cards started arriving in our mailbox, so did a smattering of seed catalogs. Mail doesn't get any better that the combination of both.

I love these catalogs. Similar to the way I used to pour over the toy section in the JC Penny catalog, I pour over heirloom tomatoes, a variety of beets that spans the rainbow and sweet corn.

Rory and I have gone on two dates this week (gasp!) and on both dates we spent most of our time talking about our 2014 garden. I even brought a seed catalog and a notebook in to the chinese restaurant last night and we sketched our game plan for the garden ahead while eating pot stickers.

Our 2013 garden was a pretty great success. We started with a lawn and ended up with awesome BLT's, lots of potatoes, sweet peas, eggplants, beans, onions, peppers and sweet corn. I'd consider that a success.

Here's my greatest gardening take away point (I think I've said it before...I'll probably say it again): gardening is all about trial and error. You try things. And some seeds, plants or methods of gardening work great, and others don't. So the next year you course correct and try something different. Sometimes you know why a crop didn't produce well, sometimes you don't.  I remember feeling pressure while planting our first garden to "do it right." And though there are rules in planting seeds that you should follow, there is also a whole lot of wait-and-see in gardening. So a girl like me needs to just relax. And then enjoy how amazing it is that we are planting teeny seeds that have life in them and will grow to produce food for us to eat!

Our garden in 2013 was basically strips on lawn that Rory rototilled up. Then he painstakingly went up and down each strip with a pitchfork and scooped the sod into the wheelbarrow. It took a long time. With each pitchfork he had to loosen the grass, shake the dirt off and dump it into the wheelbarrow. But he kept at it.

We planted berries in the front of the garden, in two patches running horizontally. We prepped one patch for blueberries, getting the soil to the right acidity level so we can plant blueberries this year.

Our only water spigot is way up on the side of the house. Which would be a pretty long way to drag a hose. So one Friday afternoon Rory ran an errand and come home with a trencher and proceeded to put down hose that would reach a second spigot out near the garden.

When he was done with that he built his own drip irrigation system out of pvc piping. Because in his words, "I'm not going to go out there every thirty minutes and move a sprinkler around. This is way easier." And of course in the long run it was easier. But watching him diligently drill holes every few inches down his pvc pipes didn't look super easy...

He used extra pvc to built a trellis for the sweet peas and for a while we protected our baby tomato plants with cement cylinders.

The potatoes were heaped with hay and for a while our garden was looking pretty impressive.

So much so that we had to put some fencing up to deter the animals. But my budget-happy husband only spent enough money to fence three sides of the garden. The plan was that we'd buy more fencing the next month when we had more money back in the "lawn-and-garden" category of  the budget. But that never happened, so we had a three sided fence all season. And actually not a lot of critters either. I think the animals haven't found us yet...

We were gone much of July and came back to a very overgrown, but wildly producing garden. This is the joy of gardening! Our first tomato was celebrated with much enthusiasm. Until Ivar tried a bite and threw it "far, far away."

And even better than the first red tomato, are the first fried green tomatoes. My absolute favorite. One of the biggest reasons I enjoy a vegetable garden. I think I made fried green tomatoes six or seven times last August and September.

This 2013 garden was largely Rory's venture. I wasn't really interested in helping out. But something has changed in me for 2014. I have been looking at canning books and working backwards: if I want to can this many quarts of tomato sauce, how many plants do we need this year? I have a sketch of our garden all figured out after our date tonight and I'm excited. And Rory is thrilled that I'm joining in.

And if I loose motivation, I will just look at this lovely picture and remind me: it is totally worth it. Because this BLT killed me. It was so good.

And now, if you'd like some seed catalogs to come to your mailbox, click on these links and fill out your address. It makes for happy, happy mail and makes for much easier garden planning. Burpee Catalog, Johnny's Catalog and Rare Seeds Catalog are my three favorite. And this site has links to 68 other free seed catalogs! (In case winter has got you down and you're needing A LOT of happy mail.)