sweet peas

Oh man. We have so many sweet peas! The kids came out tonight and were sincerely helpful. Both of them could pick the peas off and put them in the bag. When we dumped the two gallons of sweet peas into this white bowl we found a few with Elsie bites out of them, but I suppose that was helpful too. Quality control.

Tonight Rory froze some of the peas after shelling them. And I made a batch of sweet pea pickles. The recipe looked awesome and it was worth a try. I'll know how those turned out in a day or two. We still have a gallon of sweet peas left in the fridge. Good thing we love them so much!

healthy hives

Saturday morning I went out and checked on my hives. And both are looking awesome. The second hive had looked a little weak just seven days earlier but they both were thriving. I brought the camera again and wanted to get pictures as close as possible. My gloves were sticky so I ended up taking my gloves off, which I find to be pretty hard core. :)

Ironically, I did not get stung (I haven't been stung once yet! And I've been out at least six or seven times.) but I did get bit on my hands by two mosquitoes. I was so annoyed. But those mosquitoes are so thick in the woods...I was grateful to have all of my bee gear on, just to keep the mosquitoes at bay.

This time I was just checking on the bees, making sure the ants had gone away, checking to see how full the frames were and guessing when I'll need to add another box. So once I decided everything looked healthy I just stood for a long time and watched the bees. I would watch one bee and follow just that one, watching it's pattern, trying to figure out what it was working on. It was so fascinating.

This week both hives are looking healthy. I can't say it loud enough: I love keeping bees. I would wish this experience on everyone.

what a weekend

During our three day weekend we attended five parties. It was pretty awesome. And just for the record, it may be a while before I can eat another brat or hot dog. I just need a bit of time and a few green salads...

This may require a post of it's own, but Ruby had a chocolate birthday party on Sunday. It was epic. And since it was during nap time, Elsie stayed with my parents and had a long, sweet slumber.

We had root beer floats with neighbors on Friday morning, and were invited to a family gathering for our neighbors across the way. I played more bean bag toss, drank more coke and ate more peanut butter rice krispie bars this weekend than I'd care to admit. But it was a great weekend.

Happy Fourth of July!

My mom and dad came this morning to celebrate The Fourth with us. First we went to our neighbor's house who had invited the neighborhood over for root beer floats at 9:30 in the morning. Ivar thought he was in heaven eating ice cream that early in the morning! Then we drove to Cannon Falls for the parade.

It was a great parade with lots of fire trucks and tractors and beauty queens. Elsie liked to wave at all of the girls in convertibles waving to her and clapped when a float played music. My mom told me that at one point she had a dill pickle in one hand, her sandwich in the other but needed to clap. So she stuck her pickle under her arm pit and clapped and said, "Yay!"

But she did not like the loud sirens or truck honks. Loud noises are scary for her, so it was nice she had a grandma nearby to take her for a quiet walk.

They came back after a while and we finished our picnic lunch and the parade.

Butt-Yah!

For months now Elsie has been saying a phrase that I have not been able to figure out. When driving in the car she'll just yell out, "Butt-Yah!" If we're at home telling Rory about our day she'll add in happily, "Butt-Yah!"

I have been so confused, similar to how I felt every time Ivar would yell, "Sockie BooBoo!" when he was this age. It clearly means something. And I have had to work so hard to crack the code. But I did it. I've finally figured out what Butt-Yah means.

It means, "park." Butt-yah is the way Elsie says that little one syllable word. I have no idea how she got there, but I'm certain I'm right. I'll ask her, "Elsie, do you want to go to the park?" "Butt-yah!" Or, "Elsie, tell daddy where we went today." "Butt-yah!" And when we're driving around and she sees any sort of jungle gym out her window she'll let us know what she sees, "Butt-yah!" It's a happy word.

My next mission is to figure out how she has gotten from park to butt-yah. I'll keep you posted.

our first wiener roast

What joy. We had a whole lot of relatives to our house tonight for a wiener roast. My whole lifetime is filled with wiener roasts at my Aunt Louie's or Grandma B's farms. But tonight we hosted our very first (of many I hope)! It makes for simple menu planning and there is no hot dog better than a skin on dog cooked on a stick over the fire. My Uncle Don is so prepared he has a battery-operated rotating stick for perfectly even marshmallows and hot dogs. He commented that his nephew got it for him and he thought it was a joke, but as it turns out this rotating roasting stick really works well.

The family gathering was to celebrate my cousins Richard and Karen and their kids who are in Minnesota for a week of vacation. The time together with everyone was awesome and left me with a heavy ache in my heart, missing my Aunt Jan and my Grandma B so, so much. The night was lovely and fun and it was just so wonderful to all be together, but the ache feels just as deep and true as those good feelings. Those two would have loved tonight. Everyone played hard, ate good food and reconnected. It was the best.

These two were particularly wonderful. Ivar and Kevin are kindred spirits. Kevin is four years older than Ivar and lives in Seattle, but the two just seem to click. You  might remember the two of them from three years ago (the last time they saw each other) when Kevin taught Ivar "Soooo big!" and then signed them up for the talent show at our family reunion:

Well they've still go it. They played up in Ivar's room for much of the night. When I went up to take their picture I said, "Kevin, go by Ivar and his trains and I'll take your picture." And the two of them were so appalled by the idea of a staged shot. Kevin said, "but I'm actually not playing trains." And Ivar added, "mom, he's playing over there and I'm over here." It was as if they were in total agreement that a staged picture would be disingenuous. So instead I had to catch them in action which wasn't hard because they were together all night long.

It was pure joy to be all together. Relatives are the best. It left me ready to plan a big family reunion with the whole clan. Maybe 2015...

scheduled spontaneity

As we drove away from the strawberry patch on Saturday morning, Rory asked if I wanted to take a country drive with the kids. I was thrilled. Rory has been wanting to show me a small town he had recently driven through telling me many times how stunning that area was. So we started driving. I had the camera in my hand and took some pictures out the window as we drove. And sometimes we stopped and got out to take a picture or two.

And all the while our kids ate strawberries.

While driving home we stopped in a small town for burgers. Our meal was awesome and the day was pretty near perfect. The kids were in great moods and we were too. It felt like we were completely on vacation, except that we were within 30 minutes of our home. It was just that great of a morning.

It was during lunch that Rory commented that he had figured something out about us. We have sort of a constant struggle with spontaneity versus scheduling. I tend to want more spontaneity in my life, whereas Rory is a bit more calculated. Often I'll say, "let's go to Ikea!" And then he'll say, "Now? And I'll say, "Yes!" And he'll say, "It's 4:30. It will be 5:30 when we get there and Elsie goes to bed at 6:30. We won't get home until 7:30 or 8. The kids will fall apart long before we get home." And I'll say, "Why do you never want to do anything fun? Ever?" And he'll say, "I just don't want to go to Ikea tonight. Maybe we could go earlier in the day on Friday." And I'll say, "I wish you were more spontaneous." (end scene.)

So I nearly gave him a high five when he remarked that he thinks spontaneity happens when we schedule things. In other words, if we schedule more activities, more outings the spontaneity will follow. As it happens, Saturday morning was wide open until 1:00. We had planned to go strawberry picking, but what we did after that time was spontaneous.

I think this is going to work for us. I think we cracked the code.

I mean, it's not perfectly spontaneous to schedule ones spontaneity. One might even remark that they sort of cancel each other out. Oxymorons, I believe. But this is marriage and marriage is all about give and take and better understanding how the other operates and this solution does feel like a pretty equal mix of both of our personalities. And based on the awesomeness that was Saturday, I'll take it.

I'd end this post there, but there is one other factor that is harder to plan. And it's this: it seems that some days are destined to be awesome and other days are destined to be...not awesome. Have you experienced this before? Saturday was a day where nothing could go wrong. And it didn't. It just kept getting better. The day was bliss. But we've lived other days that we just can't get a break. Nothing goes right. Moods are sour and never turn better. Unplanned things come and thwart the day and no matter what, you can't really get your train back on track. We've had enough of these days to know that you can't really fight it. Sometimes on these sour days, I think it might just be best to go home and call it a day.

I don't believe there is a solution to remedying these rough days, other than recognizing that they happen too. That you can't force a magic morning, but you can fully enjoy it when it comes along. And on Saturday it did come along, in the form of scheduled spontaneity.

strawberry pie

Elsie had us up real nice and early on Saturday morning encouraging us to seize the day. So we did! With our sleepy eyes and some of us still in pajamas, we loaded into the car to go and pick strawberries.

We went to Silkey Gardens, our favorite place to pick for our third year in a row. I was almost nine months pregnant the first time I came, pictured here. And then last year we came in the evening with two kids contained in strollers. No strollers this year!

The picture above might lead you to believe that Elsie was a helpful picker. And actually, she was a tremendous picker and an equally skilled eater. I nearly begged the woman at the end to please charge us more because we definitely ate more than our share while picking, but instead she just took a picture of Elsie's face. The evidence was there, but the owner didn't seem to mind a bit.

Ivar was a great picker and at one point he stood up tall as if struck by the best idea of his life and screamed, "Oh I know! We can make strawberry pie!!!" Nearly every picker in the field looked up to see if he had been yelling the good idea to them. He was so loud, and so excited.

And so that's what we did. On Sunday, while Elsie was napping Ivar and I made a strawberry pie. It was my Aunt Louie's recipe and it was delicious. The recipe was easy peasy, but took a bit of time because Ivar could eat the strawberries as quickly as I could cut the stems off. He was delighted the whole time, and I started to wonder if he didn't believe this was the first strawberry pie ever made. Like it was his own genius, original idea.

But no matter whose original idea the strawberry pie was, it was for sure genius. We sat at the picnic table and ate the whole pie, just the four of us. At one point Rory said, "Ivar, you want more?" And Ivar stuck out his tummy and said, "No, because I might get a big tummy ache!"

Afterwards Rory said, "I don't know if this is just the sugar talking, but this is one of my favorite moments ever since we moved here."

And then, last night after the kids went to bed we turned the last of the strawberries in to strawberry jam. We were looking for recipes that used raw honey as the sweetener, but we needed a special kind of pectin and other ingredients that we didn't have in the cupboard. So we went with the original recipe: four cups of strawberries to seven cups of sugar. That's right: seven. People. That is insane. I actually think I got diabetes just by measuring out the sugar. But I'll tell you what. It tastes delicious. And is going to make for one mighty fine pbj.

I wanted to make freezer jam so we could skip the canning, but Rory wouldn't have it. So together we canned eight half pints of jam. It made for a sweet late night date night in the kitchen.

So strawberry weekend was a success.

Elsie can't say strawberry. She says, "blaa blaa" while sort of rolling her tongue. It's hilarious and not even close to strawberry. But we all know what she means so it's effective. I'm pretty positive she is about to say in the picture below, "Mo Blaa Blaa peas!"