Summer is here!

Today we went to our pool for the first time this year. I was planning on continuing to homeschool throughout the summer. But I have really been feeling that the kids (and I) need a break. We need some time to just laze around. Go to the pool, read easy books, watch some movies, visit grandparents, just be bored! So today I called off school for the summer and we grabbed the towels and some snacks and headed off to the pool. We had the place to ourselves for the first hour. Then we were joined by a couple of other families...enough kids for a good game of Marco Polo. There were only a few of mishaps: T floated off into the deep end and had to be rescued by the lifeguard (she was wearing a life vest so she was safe, just scared), J got in over her head and got tired and had to be rescued by the lifeguard (again, more scared than anything else), and a minor potty incident with C (I will spare you the details...but it involved a shower and a complete wardrobe change while we were there!) Yes, it was a relaxing day at the pool, kid style.





Happy Summer!

Belly ring

My daughter called me into her bedroom this morning to show me this:
I asked her where on earth she saw something like that. She replied, "I made it up myself!" Great. My daughter independently came up with the idea of a belly ring. I've always said that I'm going to be in trouble when C is a teenager. I think I may already be in trouble.
At least this time she just used magnets.

Simple Pleasures

I love it when my kids find things to amuse themselves that don't require any store-bought toys. Especially when they end up creating something beautiful. My husband recently trimmed our cherry tree out front. We ended up with a bunch of green sticks and twigs of various sizes. Perfect for a nine year old boy with a knife in his pocket.


A miniature wooden flower from M to me. I love that boy!

Mint and Lemons

A woman that works for my husband brought us some chocolate mint sprigs from her garden recently. So a few days ago I decided to try to do something with them. I really wasn't sure what they would be best for. I didn't want to make mint sauce out of them since they were the "chocolate" variety. I found a few recipes online that looked wonderful! Mint chocolate torte, chocolate mint juleps, chocolate mint ice cream. Unfortunately, I didn't have the right ingredients on hand for any of those. I did have a bunch of lemons, though. So the kids and I decided to make some fresh chocolate mint lemonade. It sounded good at the time.

It turned out pretty good.
And we tried to make some mint ice cubes. Some blended, some whole leaves.


Those did not turn out good. Especially the blended ones! Bad idea! :)

The best thing that came out of the kitchen that day, however, was from the lemon peels. After we made the lemonade we had a bunch of leftover peels.

Rather than just throwing them away or composting them I decided to try to make candied lemon peels. They were a hit! First I had to carefully slice all the pith off.

Then I boiled the peels for about 5 minutes in water. Then I boiled them in a sugar solution for about 30 minutes. Finally, I dusted them with more granulated sugar. I saved the sugar solution which had become a lemon syrup. It turned out pretty yummy.
Another fun afternoon in the kitchen!

Memorial Day

It's starting to become our Memorial Day tradition. A local park, a paddle around the lake, and a cook-out. This year it was especially fun because T is old enough to go out on the canoe and the older ones are getting to the point where they can actually help paddle instead of just play at it.

A quiet, shallow little inlet of the lake gave us a perfect opportunity to observe water lilies up close.

Daddy and the girls.
We pulled over to an old abandoned dock and the kids got out to stretch their legs. We swaped passengers for the return trip.

Cook-out!


Happy Memorial Day!

Jam...finally.

I put up some jam today. Not a huge deal. But I've been feeling kind of overwhelmed with all the day-to-day tasks of taking care of a house and four kids and keeping up with the homeschooling. I've been feeling like I don't have enough time to do any of the extras. I'm slowly trying to get back on top of things and making jam is a small step in the right direction.

One batch mashed up.

One batch done!

I got two batches done today. Two more tomorrow (hopefully). Then, if we are lucky, we will get another trip to the strawberry fields. And several more batches to come.

Strawberry picking

Last year, after reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I became much more aware of how my family eats and the seasonality of our food. It was the first time that I made an attempt at getting our food locally and in season, and then processing it somehow so we could enjoy it the rest of the year. I started small, with strawberries. My family loves strawberry jam and it is something I know how to make. I thought that I could at least make all our own jam for the year with strawberries that we picked ourselves when they were in season here (not Florida or California or somewhere in the southern hemisphere). But I quickly realized that I had absolutely no idea how much jam we actually ate in a year. So I took a wild guess and made up our jam. Well, it only lasted until about October! Then we were stuck buying jam again. Oh well, I thought. I'll do better next year now that I know.

Well it's next year now. We have been picking three times and I have yet to make a single jar of jam. Because I haven't wanted to buy strawberries out of season, we haven't had them for a long time. Now that we have them again, the kids are devouring them before I can do anything with them! And I'm starting to get a little panicked! This is Memorial Day weekend. There is a possibility that our local fields could get "picked out" before I get to them again. Hopefully we will get at least one more visit to the fields before all the strawberries are gone for the year.

Here are two of my workers busily picking (and eating) their way through the strawberry field on our first visit there this year.
My girls and some of our friends that went with us.

M with his prize strawberry.

J just starting to pick.

C with a carton that never seemed to get any fuller even though she was picking just as steadily as the others.

T before she discovered that there were strawberries on those plants.
Apparently I forgot to take any pictures of all the berries we picked. Oh well. Next time.

Have a great weekend!