8 months

Miss Cassie Lou you are 8 months old today!  Full of smiles and giggles you are sweet as can be, wee one!  Your sisters adore you and so do your parents.  You are strong, lively and excited to be a part of things, unless it's nap time - then, you love snuggling down with your special blanket and nuk in your crib.  Exploring different foods intrigues you and yet you still consistently dislike all fruits and prefer olives, corn, pickles, rice cakes, crackers and all meats.  I've learned to skip purees with you - who needs those anyway!?  :)  You are showing signs of movement, although no real excitement to push yourself along.  You enjoy sliding around in circles on your belly or moving yourself backwards...and often getting stuck under chairs.  So from your perspective, it seems inconvenient to move  - that's okay with us, take your time, little one. :)  Each day is a gift with you - we're thankful you've made our family five.

 Play time at the garden with a wee friend!  I'd love to have these two regularly play together, but sadly we are a few states apart.  

We had a fun visit in June at a garden picnic.

 Cassie's smile overflows into a little wiggle and hugging herself.  Just can't contain the joy!

Yummy spinach - fresh from the garden!

garden bounty

We are picking veggies from our garden by the pounds!  

The girls have carrots coming in - even the small ones are rejoiced over and gobbled up!  :) 

Summer Solstice

We continued our tradition of holding a summer solstice celebration at the community garden with our neighbors.  The evening began with a delicious potluck and good conversation and ended with a rollicking dance around the maypole!

Raw Asparagus!

Eliza Wren is our snacker.  Meals continue to be laborious, but if you mention a snack this little one is right there with you to gobble it up.  Our community garden is great place for snacks and as always, Eliza Wren is an enthusiastic participant.  Raw asparagus as a snack - woohoo, bring it on!

I stopped her after five stocks this size - we needed some for dinner! :)

snow play with friends

This week we played and went sledding on the hill beside our community garden.

Eliza Wren and Jack loved rolling in the snow!

Sledding with Adelle!

My older girls and I made our family in snowmen late one afternoon this week :)

They greeted Erik when he came home from work!

Meredith and Adelle in their snow igloo

(photo credit to Adelle's mom, Kate)

happy spring!

 Gardening season is beginning!  Hallelujah!! Though the temps are still chilly, we are forging ahead and embracing the earth again.  It's been a long, long winter.  Our friends, and new gardening buddies the Bo-Jo family, prepped the garden beds with Erik last weekend.  We'll be sharing plots this year to use space most efficiently, and hope to have a full spring, summer and autumn crop.

Youngest Bo-Jo surveying the garden.

This sweet gal is loving the freedom of playing outside again and quickly edging into toddlerhood!

Catching up on November (round one)

Hi Friends!  Sorry it's been a long 20 days since I last posted.  This month is speeding by (as well as this year!), and I'm scrambling to fit everything in.  As usual, life is full of moments with these two girls of ours and the daily joys and challenges.  At the moment, they are both sleeping peacefully and I'm LOVING the quiet... and free time. :)  Here are a few shots from the past few weeks...

Erik found Eliza Wren exploring in early November...

What are your bets - walking by Christmas or the New Year?  Mama isn't a fan...

 Meredith is loving any kind of "projects" of her own (yes, she's heard that word around here pretty often...).  And, she's been into rainbows lately - she drew a circular rainbow, and add some extra pink, of course!

 Then, she asked me how to write each letter of her name.  

I'm pretty excited about her letters - they are readable!

Romping with one of her best buds at the garden :)

 Chillin' at the garden while everyone else cleans up and preps for the long winter.

Garden Update

Our garden plot at the community garden (across the street from our home!) is growing along fabulously!  We are harvesting salad greens everyday now, as well as radishes and onions.  And, we've been taking advantage of the garden's communal plots of delicious asparagus - so yummy!

Garden Gurus  

Outside!

This past weekend brought us our first spring weather!  

It was absolutely gorgeous, so we were able to have lots of outdoor time.

Erik made a wonderful start on our community garden plot.  

Our plot wasn't used last year, so it has a lot of ground covering weeds on it. :-p 

Meredith and her best pal, Leah enjoyed running along the paths together Sunday afternoon.

 Love getting shots of these girlies together :)

Behind...

Things always seem to be behind...

I am always behind schedule.

That juicy tomato is always hiding behind a large leaf.

Mosquitoes are always behind things ready to pounce when you pass.

But behind it all...

There's great satisfaction in knowing that the tomatoes and oregano in my pizza came from our garden.

There's great fun in watching Meredith discover those hidden tomatoes and pop them in her mouth.

There's great joy in learning how to work the land, grow our food, and see how God is using our garden to teach and grow our family.

Enjoy, these pictures from behind our house.

Look closely in the picture above, and you'll see some rare green beans hanging out.

Always great to have a volunteer cantaloupe in our garden.

(They come up every year from our compost.)

Kale - a great addition to morning smoothies.  

You wouldn't think, but talk about packing a vitamin punch!

The rooftop garden with melons, cucumbers and squash galore.

Jane's flower patch from whence cometh the means to bring color and freshness to our table.

Summer Eats

We've been overflowing with produce this past weekend and week.  This is what's been happening in our kitchen:

Peaches!  Jane picked up a bushel of peaches from our favorite farm, Ray's Greenhouse north of Philadelphia.  

This weekend we made: peach and blueberry cobbler, pickled peaches, peach salsa, peach smoothies, peach sauce for salmon, peach sorbet and we froze 5 quarts of peaches.

 Our tomatoes are coming in steadily and we've been making some tomato sauce as well as using them in a variety of ways for meals.

 Homemade quiche

 with raw milk, raw milk cheese, farm fresh eggs, homegrown kale and tomatoes!

Jane tried her hand at homemade butter this week with our raw milk cream.  

We enjoyed it throughout the weekend on scones and pancakes :)

This girl is a butter lover!