family reunion day #3
family reunion day #2
I remember when I was a little girl husking corn at my Grandma's farm. Everyone stopped to help and as we sat in our circle we'd talk and laugh. One time a little field mouse ran up my grandpa's pant leg. He caught it mid way up and then I don't remember what happened...
Anyway, I was having these happy flash backs as a whole new generation gathered in a circle to husk dozens of ears of sweet corn for the wiener roast we had last Tuesday night.
My cousin Dan was in town and so was my brother, so we gathered all of the Minnesota relatives to celebrate our awesome family. It was super sweet to watch our kids play together. It just doesn't seem that long ago that we were the kids tromping through chicken coops looking for our own fun.
The night was precious and ended in a big game of kick ball. Family is my favorite.
family reunion day #1
Family reunions are just the best. I love them more than anything else. My brother and his family flew last Sunday night for a full week of family togetherness. (It had been a whole year since we had all been together which was way too long.) This reunion started out with a picnic at Annika's house and a big water fight. Dad had bought 400 water balloons for the grandkids so guess who the adults decided should receive all of those water balloons? Dad! I got this video and if you turn it up you can hear my dad laugh/panting. It's pretty awesome.
water balloons from Becca Groves on Vimeo.
family vacation time
I remember at the beginning of the summer feeling panicked that we weren't going anywhere. I saw pictures of other people's vacations and felt that super sting of internet-related jealousy. Well I had to wait a few months, but these past two weeks I got my fill of going somewhere! Our two major summer outings happened to land back to back and it has been a full, awesome, wonderful two weeks of summer vacation.
I have been sorting through my pictures from August and cannot get over how many pictures I have taken. And I want to get caught up on this blog...so if you'll let me, I'd like to just take a few posts to share the stories and pictures of our two weeks of family togetherness. It might be overkill, but these pictures hold some very happy memories.
Like the time we were so desperate for Elsie to stay happy in her car seat that we handed her the bag of cheddar popcorn. A mess that seemed very much worth it at the time...
our organic garden
I'm all for keeping it real on this blog, and I'm about to do just that. Our garden is abundant this year in cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes and sweet peas. And depending on how I take the pictures, you might just think our garden is well tended. And it sort of is. It gets watered. It was planted. You know, the basics.
But it turns out there is a lot going on at this little hobby farm. And weeding just never seems to be at the top of the list. Which means that our garden is also abundant in weeds. As in, they are out of control.
Tonight we will have 40 relatives here to visit our little farm. The farming relatives. The ones who all have huge gardens and green thumbs and years and years of expertise. And we're going to have to show them our weeds. I have this feeling some of these relatives might just grab a pair of gloves and start pulling. Which would be awesome and embarrassing at the same time.
So as long as the farming relatives get to see the true state of our garden, I thought I'd share it with you too.
So there it is. Our dirty laundry. Or in this case, our weedy garden.
the best meal of the year
Behold the Fried Green Tomato.
I am pretty sure it is my favorite food to eat. I thought about that fact long and hard as I ate them this year. I thought through the christmas menu, the thanksgiving menu, compared it against my favorite soup, even against a caprese salad. And I decided that the Fried Green Tomato wins for top favorite.
And I think I know why: you can only have a Fried Green Tomato for a few weeks of the year. It is a seasonal food, available nowhere unless there are green tomatoes growing.
Not to mention the dipping sauce. A kicked up mayonnaise with extra vinegar. Salivating as I type. I wrote about the dipping sauce back in 2011. And you might remember last year when I paired the food with the movie, which was pretty much as awesome as I had imagined it would be.
While we ate our Strawberry Pie back in June, Rory and I were talking about how delicious the pie was, partly because we picked those very berries, and partly because those berries were perfectly ripe. You can order a slice of strawberry pie any day of the year at Bakers Square, but you're not going to get a pie like the one we ate at the end of June. You have to wait until the end of June to have a strawberry pie that good.
So we decided to only have strawberry pie at the end of June. And a peach pie only in July. And homemade blueberry cobbler with homemade ice cream in August. We got all excited about having one special sweet treat each month of the year, depending on what is in season. (I've googled some mid-winter sweets...custard pie, banana cream, honey pie...just you wait!) And to not eat that treat any other time of the year.
Because food tastes better when it's in season. That should be obvious. But maybe part of the goodness is in anticipating that food all year long. Like my Fried Green Tomatoes.
more jesus
Each night when Elsie goes to sleep we will read three books and then I'll ask her if she wants to snuggle. She always does and it means she turns her body and rests her head under my chin as we rock back and forth and I sing Jesus Loves Me.
Tonight as a stalling tactic, she kept calling out during the song, "More Jesus!" So I sang Jesus Loves the Little Children. And she kept on, "More Jesus! More Jesus!"
I mean, honestly, what is a mother to do?
So I kept on, "Jesus, Jesus there's just something about that name. Master, Savior, Jesus..." and on, "Tis so Sweet to Trust in Jesus...Jesus, Jesus how I trust Him!" and on, "What a Friend we have in Jesus, All our Sins and Griefs to Bear..." And at this point it became a game for me too. A good ol' church-girl challenge. I went through camp songs, hymns, and church liturgy.
It was a really precious moment and a moment I am sure will now be repeated, now that Elsie knows the magic words that will keep me in her room, holding her close, rocking her back and forth, back and forth.
More Jesus!
july at the grovestead
But it also meant I went a whole week without blogging! Which is a very rare occurrence for me.
This month flew by and I have a whole lot of posts still left in my head so I thought I'd close this month with a bit of a photo dump. We're in full on summertime here at the grovestead. Lots of animals, flowers, produce, sunshine and weeds. Our chickens are growing, our children are growing, and our garden is growing.
It's a happy season and we're happily soaking it all in.
overheard
Elsie has started calling me, "BahKah." I've tried to tell her that I am her mama a few times, and then I heard Ivar tell her this, "Elsie, only oldults call her Becca. Are you an oldult? No. We are kids. So we call her Mama. Can you say Mama?" Elsie looked right at him and said, "BahKah."
We have been listening to an old VBS cd in the car and one of the songs says, "I'm fired up for Jesus!" Ivar asked me what fired up means. I told him, "Well, when you're fired up it means you want to tell everyone. When you're fired up for Jesus it means you want everyone to know that you love him so much." Ivar told me, "Oh. I'm fired up for these chips. Mama, you should tell all the people that I just love these chips!"
***
And I put these up on facebook, but I don't ever print out facebook like I print my blog...so it's not really a great place to write my kid's quotes. But since I print out my blog, I'll record them here:
Ivar just put on his spiderman glasses from McDonalds and said, "When I put these on I am going to be very grumpy and pretend that I am not hilarious."
Ivar just said, "mom, you remember that movie of the little lamp that was jump, jump, jumping and it smooshed a letter? I want to watch that one again sometime. Maybe we can get it at the library." (he was talking about the little scene that shows before every Pixar movie.)
Ivar during his bath: "And mom, don't get any wetness on my hair. Because then it will grow and remember I got it cut yesterday?"
We were given a children's picnic table and the kids are thrilled. Ivar told me, "now me and Elsie will sit at this little table and the oldults will sit at the big table!" I think that makes me and Rory oldults.
Ivar just said, "Remember when we went to the zoo yesterday and we got a rememberingship so we can go again and again and again?"
Last night Ivar and I were struggling to get his tight pajama shirt on. He said, "It won't go on! Because it is for small-year-olds, and I'm three-years-old!"
the rice county fair
After Elsie's birthday party we decided to go to the Rice County Fair. Our friend Kandi was competing in the Karaoke competition and had made it into the finals. Obviously we had to go and watch! And we're so glad we did. She took home the gold, or in this case, a whole lot of fair bucks! When she started singing the guy behind us said, "well, here's the winner!" She was awesome.
And of all the rides to choose from our kids chose the big slide. Ivar loved it and would do it again in a heartbeat. Elsie held her breath most of the way down and let out a whimper when we got to the end. It might have been just a little bit too big for her:
elsie slide from Becca Groves on Vimeo.
Then we went and saw all of the animals went home when everyone was still happy. A great night at the fair!
Elsie turns two!
Saturday Elsie turned two. It was two years ago that my delivery doctor said "it's a girl!" and I let out a sob-cry of happiness like I'd never sob-cried before. This girl overtook my heart in an instant.
This past week I hemmed and hawed over what to do for Elsie's birthday. I was sick with a cold, not feeling like a party planner. And as my mom, sister Annika and sis-in-law Lisa will tell you, I changed the party plans every single day. Every other day we were going to a splash pad. The days in between we would celebrate here at our place.
In the end, we had the party here. And without planning it, the party became a garden party. Picking food from the garden, getting it ready to eat for the birthday lunch.
Sonna found the carrots and decided to pick some of them. Rory commented that he probably would have given them a few more weeks, but since Sonna had them proudly in her hand, this was a great day to pick a few. :)
Josie, Mara and Sonna picked sweet peas and then shelled all of them! We cooked them for lunch and they were delicious. At one point all of the kids were shelling peas together. Lisa told me, "there's your party game!"
Jack is 17 and he is awesome. When he saw the eggs in the coop he asked permission to go fry them up. I think this is what happens when you're a 17-year-old growing guy. You see protein and you just have to eat it. Like right now. I was so happy he was so excited to eat our eggs!
And then there's Zina. Zina brought a box of bee keeping gear that her husband had used decades ago...including this hat! (I'll write more about that another day.) Zina saw the flowers on our pumpkins and got so excited to fry them up. She went to work in the kitchen and I'm here to say that I would eat a plate full of these fried pumpkin flowers any day. The flower is sort of sweet and soft. Can't explain it, but they were awesome. And Zina was so, so happy to be making them. She went back for more flowers after her first batch. What a joy!
Mostly this party was awesome because it was so good to be together. I think this shot of my mom and sister sums that up nicely. And this picture has been added as one of my favorite pics of all time. We'll get this one framed asap.
And then there is Kyle and Lisa. Lisa biked here for the party. No kidding. Probably thirty miles. She made it to the outside of town and then called her pit crew to drive her in for the last bit. But if it hadn't been so windy she would have pulled up our lane on her bicycle!
Love this family shot. And especially love that my brother will be here in a few weeks so we can get him in the next family shot!
We had another wiener roast and mom made her chicken salad. And mostly we ate from the garden: lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, peas, pumpkin flowers and two tiny yellow tomatoes.
We wrapped up with cupcakes and presents and got to enjoy the sweetness of Elsie. She seemed so glad and grateful. I don't know how to explain it. She just seemed so happy to be celebrated. She was delightful. It was a super special second birthday.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)