A Birthday Weekend to Remember

After six years of working to inspire a love of the outdoors, all Maya wanted to do this birthday is go camping. Hooray! She loves bug hunting, long hikes, and sleeping in a tent; mission accomplished.

Of course, this year that means fulfilling her birthday wish while sporting the curvy, less-than-ergonomically-designed figure of a woman in her 36th week of pregnancy!

Hiking boots are tough to tie when you don't bend in the middle anymore!

 Off we went to the scenic (but conveniently located near metro physicians) Interstate State Park. The views were spectacular, the hikes were relatively brief (we kept to two 1.5 mile trails), though the elevation changes are a little more challenging than most Minnesota parks.

A much needed rest.

 Elle kept finding caterpillars around the trails. Each time she would let it roam around her arms while exclaiming, "He really, really loves me. I will keep him for ever." Inevitably, it would drop into the foliage after a bit.

Maya lead the way, marveling at the river, at the geological marvel of the potholes (an uninspiring name for some amazingly carved rocks), and took every unexpected moment of the day with grace and sweetness beyond her six years.

What, mom isn't up to a 1.5 mile hike back to the campsite? Let's eat at this convenient Taylor's Falls malt shop! What, mom isn't exactly overjoyed to sleep in a tent crammed in with a bunch of other campers when she'll need to, um, answer natures call every hour or so? No problem, let's set up the tent in the back yard!

In between our two hikes, we rested. Maya spent her time writing a book about how the Cat in the Hat got started.

 We didn't even get pictures of our impromptu paddle on Lake Johanna today or the morning spent snagging minnows with Maya's new bug net and swimming with friends. Let birthday week begin! With three days of "last week of school" festivities and a Saturday morning finale with a group of her friends, this should be one to remember.

Back at home we fulfilled the wish for S'mores.

And Elle fed Snowflake some chips.

She shared some with dad too.

Mom brought presents out to the tent this morning.

Maya donned her fancy new sunhat and set about reading her new Spiderman Comic book. The girl is infatuated with Spiderman!

Kites, Ducks, & Dirt

Clearly, we are making the most of these spring days!

Did the Bunny Bring the Sun?

This morning's outdoor Easter egg hunt was everything they had hoped for!

Yesterday's egg coloring and nest-making project was a fun family event too!

At our house, for obvious reasons, Happy Easter is synonymous with Happy Spring. The bunny, the brightly colored eggs, the crafts, and the backyard hunt are all celebrations of rebirth and the sense of renewal that comes each spring.

No wonder, then, that Maya greeted this sunny morning (nearly before the sun rose) with the certainty that the Easter Bunny's best gift was the sun. We haven't seen it for two weeks, truly.

So today we can earnestly celebrate spring, good health, and all the bright shiny hopes this summer will bring. We'll do all of that at the Minnesota Zoo with the Animal Babies exhibit and our first  new bottle of sunscreen.

Happy Spring!

Happy Valentine's Day

From our little love bugs! Check out Grandma's handywork!

Love not War

While my own thoughts remain focused in Tahrir Square, Egypt, where the remarkable and beautifully peaceful protests have suddenly devolved into violence, the girls have turned their attention to the Love Bugs.

These fairy tale visitors are leaving the girls lovely little feel good notes, making Valentine's day less a holiday about romantic love and more a spirited celebration of love and kindness in general. Both girls have been asking if the Love Bugs will ever come back, and they are thrilled by the little visitors' return.

Certainly the sweet treats that accompany each note help increase their popularity. And the glittery footprints that appear in the dollhouse from time to time the kids interested.

Maya has converted one room and the balcony of the dollhouse into the Love Bugs house.

It's a fun distraction from the news, and it comes just in time. For a week I've been listening to public radio with Maya, helping her understand how brave it is that University students organized shifts to protect their library from looters, why the peaceful protectors joined hands to protect the Egyptian museum and hauled would-be looters to soldiers in order to keep chaos from breaking out.

This sudden, disheartening violence has forced me to turn off the audio saga of the Egyptian people. Now that the stories are too difficult to share with my little news enthusiast, I'm relegated to reading bits and pieces when I have time.

Still, I'm hoping for safety, peace, and freedom for the Egyptian people as quickly as they can attain it. I only wish there was some simple way I could help them with a bit of construction paper, glitter, and candy.

The In-Between Week

This lull between Christmas and New Year's Day is such an important time for our family. It is a time to pause, to revel in the fun and goodies of the big traveling week before (and to dry out from them). It is a time to reflect on all we've done in 2010, and as always, a time to look ahead to the next year.

Last year I resolved to do less, namely less needless worry and less television. Though I generally waxed and waned on both counts, I'm fairly sure that on the whole, 2010 was a year of less. It had to be. We were too busy doing other things.

• We somehow squeezed in four camping trips; the most memorable one featured the Grand Canyon, while the most chaotic one involved the girls. 
• We took several vacations, two to cabins up north, one to a family-owned resort destination down south, south again for the big wedding weekend, and as always, one to the lake. 
• We spent uncountable hours on local beaches building sand castles, in local parks riding bikes and jogging, at Como Zoo, at the pool, and in neighboring backyards. 
• We've completed 33 books in the Magic Tree House Series (in addition to the gazillions of library books we've burned through), sending Maya off into the world of reading and giving Elliot a whole new story starter for her own creative jags.
• I've written 500 to 1,000 words per day most days, and even stumbled on a way to get paid for a tiny fraction of them.
• Joe stepped up his construction skills, playing a supporting role with the new deck and a starring one on the playhouse creation.
• With the kids, we attended a few shows at the Children's Theater. Without them, we took in Wicked and John Prine and a number of swanky dining experiences.
• Plus we've spent time each week Doing Good Together, one way or another.

Somehow, amid all this doing, we settled on the realization that one more little person was destined to join this leisurely hustle. One more round of newborn snuggles and sleepless nights, of toddler topples and first food splatters.

No fewer than two actual Santa's appeared for the girls this holiday.

Both were met with a barrage of detailed questions. Where's the North Pole, is Rudolph real? How do you get down the chimney? Luckily, one had a real beard and one did not, inspiring Maya to declare one the real Santa and the other a helper - the sort that rings the bells so that other kids have a warm place to stay on Christmas.

Before all of that begins, we have a few more items on the to-do list. Let's call them resolutions, enabled by a bountiful holiday and generous family.

• Joe plans to pass this niggling last exam, and rededicate himself to the guitar.
• Maya and Elle hope to learn piano, photography, ice skating, roller skating, big kid scooter-ing, and how to master the Wii.

• As for me, I homesteading again, hoping for new chickens in the spring, a loaf of bread a day (thanks to this popular book and a friend's inspiration), something tangible to show for my lovely new sewing machine, and a fully researched outline for a second draft of my nano book. Oh, and a print copy of at least the first two years of this blog.

Phew. All that, plus the baby. Well, we all know follow through can be a bit of a challenge for me. At the very least there will be a baby. And a baby blanket. Off I go to thread that machine and practice my first seam... if that's even how you say that!

Happy Holidays!

It's been a big year. From the Grand Canyon, to several trips into the wilderness, to adventures in our own backyard, we have filled up 2010.

So, um, I haven't had a lot of time to finish the Christmas card. It didn't arrive today, making it impossible for me to get them in the mail before we depart for holiday visiting.

Until the card can arrive (sadly, just in time for everyone to pack them away soundly with all of the other stale holiday trappings), here is my less than artful attempt to take holiday pictures of my own!

On to the Next Thing

NaNoWriMo is over! And I held up my end of the bargain: 50,000 words laying the foundation of a promising story just begging for additional research and edits. I'll get to that when the ache in my wrists subsides. I may have saved too many words for after the Thanksgiving visiting.

I'll post the few pictures I took this weekend,but for those of you still watching, I'll now be updating Growing! regularly once again.

Maya's new camera has some fun features!

My pies are getting less ugly all the time!

Our tree is up and decorated. Let the Christmas dance parties commence.

Happy Halloween!

We spent our day at Pinehaven Farms, visiting our chickens in their lovely new home. Shockingly, we recognized all four of them easily, even amid their new coop mates. I wouldn't have predicted that. Now we know, a chicken is not just a chicken.

They are definitely living the good life over there, amid a whole fleet of other animals. There were kittens scampering around, so tame the girls tried to take them home (this time I was firm... no making that mistake twice!).
After a brief battle over how many layers it might take to stave off hypothermia, we made the rounds in the neighborhood as well, wrapping up Halloween 2010.

For Maya's daytime costume, she wanted to go to the farm dressed as a real farmer... you know, just the boots and jeans and a normal shirt. Ha!