Christmas Lights

What is it about Christmas lights that makes everything seem better? We were so excited to get our lights up this year that we barely set foot inside the house upon our return from the holiday travel. We worked on them throughout the weekend, and despite periodic foul moods, Anna and I were always cheered by seeing the lights go up (Blake loves them too, but I don't think he enjoys the process quite as much, given that he's always the one on the ladder). Tonight, while driving into town, Anna excitedly pointed out each house with lights, exclaiming every five seconds "Look at that one, Mommy!!" I love that she (and I) can get so excited about something so simple.

Anna took this one. I found it long after she took it and wondered when she managed to sneak away with the camera.

Just a little bit happy. She made me take more than a dozen pictures of her with these deer.

This is a favorite spot of mine at our new place...the corner of the front porch.

Almost done...from Anna's perspective.

We started our indoor decorating this weekend too, with garland on bannisters, the mantel and the sideboard. Candles, snowflakes, reindeer, pinecones, bulbs, and miniature trees are carefully placed and are now just waiting for the Christmas tree to outshine them all. We're going on Saturday to cut down our Frasier Fir, and I hope we can find a really big one this year now that we have tall ceilings to accommodate one. I'm feeling a little regretful that we didn't get our tree this weekend - historically we've waited until the week after Thanksgiving, but I think we need to change that tradition next year. I can't wait until Saturday.

Thanksgiving 2011

The last 7 days, no, the last two or three weeks, are such a blur. We have had so much going on, emotionally, physically, and on our calendars. A friend of mine joked last week that I need a graph just to sort out what I'm actually reacting to and where my feelings are coming from. While I'm a jumble of big feelings, the good thing about it all is that I haven't had much time to focus on one thing before the next thing comes along and demands my attention. And, the other very good thing is the time of year. Thanksgiving inspired a more intentional gratitude practice this month, which always lightens even the heaviest load.

I have zero photos to share from the last two weeks, but I have a few words to remind myself of all that I have to be thankful for, both big and small, on this holiday:

• My daily gratitude practice over the last few weeks seemed to follow three themes: family, health, and friends. The specifics varied, but the importance of these three things shined through.
• In the last week, I've spent time with friends, both old and not-so-old and connected with some who I haven't spoken with in ages. I am so grateful for the friendships that have spanned decades and lasted despite time and distance apart. I am also grateful for the more recent friendships that I know will span the decades to come.
• I'm grateful for my husband who, among so many other things, supports me in nurturing these friendships, even if it means his second night alone in three days, because I'm going to the same movie (again) with another friend.
• I'm grateful for the smiling, most-often sweet, very sensitive girl who has graced our lives with her presence. I'm also grateful for all that she teaches me, especially the lessons I need to learn most (like how to live more in the present).
• I'm grateful that Anna can see every single one of her grandparents within a day of each other without too much driving and no flying.
• I'm grateful that Blake and I have parents who are there for us, both as parents and as friends.
• I'm grateful for my health...that it allows me to run long distances and Spin for an hour and carry Anna and move my body.
• I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to say good-bye to my grandma before she passed away.
• I'm grateful that I have so many wonderful life experiences to look forward to, that I DON'T know what I'm going to be when I "grow up," that I haven't reached my destination.
• I'm grateful that there are so many good, happy things happening for people all around me.
• I'm grateful for our good fortune, our ability to live and grow in our new home, to travel and experience new things.
• I'm grateful for our warm home filled with luxuries like electricity and plumbing and clean water and the sunrise that we see each morning from our kitchen window.
• I'm grateful for books and movies.
• I'm grateful for good food, wine, and beer.
• I'm grateful for the weeks to come, the excitement and anticipation and magic of the holidays with a child.

With Thanksgiving behind us, we are in full holiday preparation and celebration mode - we have our first event at the club next weekend, where Santa will make an appearance. When we arrived home this afternoon after four days away, we promptly dropped our bags inside and began decorating the exterior of the house with Christmas lights. It's that time of year.

Welcome to the Country

The following are lessons recently learned about living in the country:

1) Do not leave bird seed in your garage. When the weather gets cold, mice will find it and stash away piles of it in your UGG boots, so that one morning you are completely surprised to find a boot-full of seeds while on your way to swimming lessons.

2) When you realize you have mice in your garage or sleeping in your boots, immediately put mouse traps out. Otherwise, a few weeks later, you will find this in the morning when you go into your daughters room...on her tall dresser where there is absolutely no food for them to eat, and you will be absolutely mortified:

3) Know that if there is a mouse all the way upstairs where there is no food, there must be more, even if you have found no mouse poop anywhere else in your house to date. Just go ahead and put the traps everywhere, because when you finally have an entire morning to deep clean your pantry and lazy susan, you will find a few turds here and there, and even some at the top of the basement stairs.

4) When you place the traps, don't put too much peanut butter on them and be sure to follow the instructions, otherwise, you will just feed the mice and keep them coming back for more. It only took us one night to realize this mistake.

5a) If you are up for four hours in the night with a daughter who has a stomach ache and you hear a trap snap, leave it until the morning unless someone wants to walk outside in their PJ's to get rid of it.

5b) When you realize at 3am that your husband put the dead mouse in the kitchen garbage instead (am I the only one grossed out by this?) AND that he put the dead mouse he found the day before when you were not at home in the same garbage bag, and that said garbage bag is still in the kitchen, yell profanities and be sure he knows that it is NOT OK to keep a dead mouse in the house. Leave children unattended and lie to the child about what you are doing if necessary to take it outside in the event that only one parent is home.

6) Do not let your husband put a garbage bag with two dead mice on the driveway outside of your garage at 3am. When you go outside the next day with your daughter and your sister, you will find a ripped open garbage bag on your driveway, and next to it you will find a dead mouse still in a trap, which you will have to pick up and dispose of. Calmly call your husband and remind him that dead rodents attract all kinds of other animals, and garbage bags with those dead rodents need to be put inside of a scavanger-proof garbage bin.

7) Thank your husband for doing the dirty work. Thank you, Blake...I really don't like mice in my house, dead or alive.

Grandma Lower

Grandma Lower at her 80th birthday party last year.

As I sat down at the computer tonight having not blogged since Tuesday, I struggled with what to post. My grandma, my mom's mom, passed away last night. And, while I don't feel I can write much about it here, it also didn't feel right to post about anything else.

I am grateful that I was able to get back home on Wednesday to say good-bye and tell her that I love her. She's at peace now, I know. This is how I want to remember her, smiling and happy. 

She was always overjoyed to see her grandkids and her great grandkids. 

Dairy-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies are, seriously, almost exactly like my mom's, which are my absolute favorite chocolate chip cookies. Blake even gave them a nod, and he's a picky dessert eater. They really only required a minor changes from my mom's recipe, which was originally derived from Better Homes and Gardens well over thirty years ago. Her recipe is no longer in print (the recipe in my edition of the cookbook isn't as good). Enjoy!

Dairy-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 Cup palm oil shortening (we use Spectrum Organic Vegetable Shortening, which has no soy)
1 Cup sugar (we use cane, but granulated is fine)
1/2 Cup packed brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1 tsp baking soda
2 Cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1, 12 oz package DARK chocolate chips (we use 365 Brand 70% cocoa chocolate chips...they have no dairy; however, they do have a small amount of soy lecithin, which often is tolerable for those with soy sensitivities).

*My mom's original recipe called for semi-sweet chocolate chips and Crisco shortening (which is soy-based), rather than butter.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl, cream shortening and sugars with an electric or stand mixer until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. In a separate bowl, sift together dry ingredients. Gradually add dry ingredients to wet ingredients, mixing together as much of flour as you can with the mixer. Stir in remaining flour if needed. Add chocolate chips and stir until combined.

Drop dough by rounded teaspoons onto an ungreased baking sheet. Bake in 375 degree oven for 8 to 10 minutes or until edges are JUST lightly browned. (My mom always takes hers out before they look done...they are so much better this way, so be sure to check them at 8 minutes). Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool. Makes about 4 dozen cookies.

Think the cookies have enough chocolate?

Weekend Visit

Kyle, Lisa, Ellie, and Josie came to visit us this weekend. The delivery of Willie, the pig, was a good excuse to get together (we now have 1/2 of a pig in our freezer), but we don't really need an excuse for beer (or gimlet) drinking, kite flying by the bonfire, game-playing, eating, and catching up with family. It was so much fun that Anna and I both snuggled up for a two hour nap on Sunday after lunch. We're looking forward to the next time already.

Kyle wowed us with his kite-flying capabilities.

I don't think this picture does justice to just how high Kyle flew this kite.

All the girls took turns flying...and I think they were all pretty excited!

Kyle brought the slot cars out on Sunday morning.

First Snow

It doesn't take much snow to make our little girl very excited about making snow angels.

Random Anna Tidbits

Anna ate black kalamata olives with her oatmeal for breakfast last week. This week she had salami with her french toast.

You'll often hear her start a sentence with "The fact is..." or "The question is..." or "The problem is..."

She likes almost anything that is blue, dark blue to be exact.

Anna loves to "shop" in catalogues. It's that time of year, and without any encouragement on my part, she's found the stacks that are arriving already, and she started finding all the blue things inside (balls included).

She has friends that come to visit often, such as blue macaw, jelly bean, penguin, and skeleton. They eat with us, take baths with us, and learn to fly with us.

Anna goes to bed with 5-10 animals on any given night, often carefully arranged for comfort (hers and theirs). By the time morning rolls around, almost all of them have been chucked onto the floor.

Anna has fallen out of her bed twice now, AND there are bed rails on the bed. I'm not sure how one gets all the way to the foot of the bed (in the opposite corner) and falls through the small space that's left between the rail and the footboard. Often I find her smashed up against the rails when I check on her before I go to bed at night.

At lunch last week...
Anna, matter-of-factly: "I spilled water. Crap!"
Me: Chuckle as I watch Anna's knowing smile.

The other night Anna slept with a broom stick in her room. It's a recent flying prop, of course. When she padded down the hall in the morning way too early and stood in our doorway, we still managed a laugh, because the broomstick sticking out from under her tiny silhouette was just too adorable.

Up until recently, Anna had all but dropped her naps. She was going to bed around 7 or 7:30 and sleeping until 7am. Then something shifted - just in time for daylight savings, she started waking at 6am. Three days last week, I found her curled up on her bedroom floor, surrounded by a sea of books and stuffed animals. I do wish she'd do that this week. She woke at 5:30am today.

Anna rarely says "I love you" these days, rather she's graduated to "Love ya," something I didn't really expect until maybe the teenage years. Where'd that come from?

Sightings

While we've seen deer within minutes of our house, until this week they were never in our own backyard. Yesterday one brave one even approached our hammock on our back patio. I wasn't quick enough to get a photo before he turned around to head back into the field.

Dairy-Free Pancake Recipe

Daddy makes pancakes almost every weekend. We made just a few changes to transform this Food Network pancake recipe into our own dairy-free version. Here's how we do it:

1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
optional: 1 Tbs grape seed oil
3 Tbsp brown sugar
1 1/2 cups rice milk (a little more or less depending on how thick you like them)
Fresh fruit (blueberries, raspberries, diced peaches)
Coconut oil for cooking

In a mixing bowl, whisk together dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together all other ingredients (other than fruit). Combine wet and dry ingredients, and let them rest for up to two hours (we rarely let it rest for more than 30 minutes, though...who has that much time to wait in the morning?).

Heat griddle. Melt enough coconut oil to coat the bottom of griddle (we actually cook ours on our iron skillet). Pour ladle-full of pancake mixture onto griddle. Sprinkle fruit onto pancake. Flip pancakes when little bubbles break on the surface.

Daddy topped his with frozen raspberries this morning.

We serve with real maple syrup or homemade strawberry sauce as well as peanut, almond, or sunflower butter for a little added protein.

Sunrise

The time before dawn at our place this week.

Any thoughts on which one I should use for my new blog header?

Found

Good things come from deep cleaning and organizing! My mom called yesterday with the amazing news that she unearthed my collection of Strawberry Shortcake dolls from my childhood. Frankly, we were both surprised. For as often as Mo D cleans out, I didn't think anything would be undiscovered in her basement.

I am so happy to have these relics, both for me and for Anna. Anna enjoyed playing with them today and quickly declared her favorite as "the one with the darker skin." She gave me back all the rest that she wasn't so fond of, especially Purple Pie Man. I don't know if I ever had a favorite...did you?

Can you believe they still smell? Wonder what they did back in the eighties to make that stuff stick!?

Pinecones

My friend Emily and I love making lists. When I wanted to add to my Fall List, I asked her to share some of her fun ideas, because I knew there'd be many.

One of her list items was to take a walk in nature and pick up fallen pine cones to use for decorations at home. Last week Anna and I were outside doing a little work and a little play when she, unprompted, started collecting the pine cones scattered along our driveway. I mentioned taking them inside, and she came up with the brilliant idea to paint them. So we grabbed a bucket and piled them in. We could have filled handfuls of buckets - we have at least 20 pine trees lining our lengthy driveway, and all of them are shedding cones right now.

The next day we took them down to our art space and painted some (although she was quickly distracted by the blue tape and her macaw-making obsession). We placed our unpainted ones in mason jars, and they found themselves on a shelf in our kitchen that was in dire need of decor.

I LOVE these paints from Clementine Art - we've used them more than any other "green" paint. They have been great for nearly all our projects.

Halloween Bird-Style

I don't think I've emphasized enough how obsessed Anna is with birds, specifically blue macaws like the ones in the movie Rio. For months now, Anna has spent her time flying around the house, flapping her "wings," teaching us or her stuffed animals to fly. She builds blue macaws with her new Legos and her bristly blocks, draws blue macaws in her notebook with markers, and makes blue macaws out of colorful tape. It's not surprising that, months ago, Anna decided she wanted to be a blue macaw for Halloween. We struggled to find a costume at first. Mo D thankfully found a parrot costume at Target that we thought was a close second, but we were disappointed to find that her arm barely fit through one of the holes due to poor stitching. We continued our search and eventually discovered a handmade costume on Etsy, a true blue macaw. This was The One.

We ordered her costume on September 20th. It was supposed to be in our hands in three weeks, in plenty of time for trick or treating at Blake's office and for Halloween. The costume arrived just after noon today. I wasn't sweating, not at all. It would take too long to tell the entire story, and I don't need to write it here to remember it 20 years from now. Needless to say, it was a nerve-wracking wait.

I still cannot believe how patient Anna has been through it all, though. After waiting three weeks and expecting it to arrive "any day now," she waited another three weeks. Every day she asked about it, hopeful that it would arrive. There were multiple days we thought the costume was here (because the seller indicated that she'd shipped it out already), only to discover something else in the brown box on the front porch. I think she coped by looking at the picture of her costume online EVERYDAY. When it finally came today, she actually wanted to hide when I opened it. She told me she was just too excited to watch. Fortunately, it was everything she'd hoped for.

Anna doesn't often like to pose for pics, but she wanted her picture taken over and over again today.

For Anna, the costume is very exciting, but this year, the candy was pretty exciting, too. The preparations and anticipation are always part of the fun and have been going on for weeks. We painted pumpkins with Mo D, carved a blue macaw into a pumpkin, trick-or-treated at Blake's office, and practiced our candy-eating.

Thank goodness for Blake's pumpkin carving skills. This was tough! 

It's a very good thing we had a back-up costume for trick-or-treating at Blake's work. 

Any craft project ends in making blue macaws.

We walked our small neighborhood with our next door friends, Sophia and Rocco. Paul and Blake hung out by the fire Paul built in the front yard, enjoying their beers and handing out candy while Melissa and I walked the kids around to the few houses with lights on, many of which just left the candy on the front porch. It was plenty for Anna this year, although it was vastly different from my trick-or-treating days. I'm guessing she'll be venturing to more populated neighborhoods when she's older (which is what the families did who left their candy on the front porch).

The blue macaw, Snow White, and a very cute tiger. 

In flight.

Roar!

We were surprised Anna made it through, after waking at 6:15am and not napping. She was a mildly grumpy-seeming, bashful-feeling blue macaw while gathering sweets - she refused to say trick-or-treat or thank you; however, she would say "tweet tweet" occasionally. I think the best part for everyone was the candy-eating around the bonfire in the dark. We let Anna, just for this special occasion, have as much sweet stuff as she could stand (with the hope that she learns on her own how too much doesn't feel good), so she was in heaven. And when it came to handing out candy to the last few dressed up kids in the neighborhood, she was generous and chatty. It can't get much better than staying up way past bedtime, eating way too much candy, and hanging with friends through it all.

Candy by the bonfire.