Our newest addition

We are always suckers for animals who need homes..This is Lucky, our new duck. She is the sole survivor of something that goes bump in the night.
Out here on the land you either make it through the first night or you don't. 

Lucky made it - so that's a good sign.

The smoke today. Almost 700,000 acres burning in California

107 Degrees F

Today was ridiculous. We closed up all the windows at 3 a.m. and tried to keep the house cool as we watched the temperature rise to 107 degrees!! The kids and I picked black raspberries and made a cobbler for dessert. Our neighbor even picked us up some vanilla ice cream on his way home from town.
So the kids and I said a big thank you to Mother Earth for giving us all these berries. We had planned on canning berry jam all day. But when we awoke at 6:15 (thank you horrible rooster) it was already 80 - not 52 like it was the previous morn.

 So the canning idea got dumped, as did most other plans. 

And we had a great berry cobbler!

The Black Raspberry Cobbler!!

Getting red-I for Reggae

Here we are getting ready for Reggae Rising!!

Today my little fairy picked berries in her new purple fairy
costume...my kids are getting all their festival garb together!

Hotter

now it is 104 degrees!!!!!!!!!!

Way too hot!

This is how I keep the baby occupied so that I can do things in the
kitchen!! The others are in the pool - the temperature went from 95
to 101 degrees from 11:45 to 12:15! I am lying on the linoleum right
now. Ughhh!

Summer

It was hot out yesterday, and the kids played outside for most of it.
Here's my daughter wearing her sea anemone costume from her spring
ballet performance, eating a peach.

Met her on Mommy's space!

My daughter -like others I am sure, likes to repeat the stories that she hears the grownups saying to each other. My husband recently became reconnected with his oldest daughter , and my little girl was telling someone "And Papa met her on," and then her eyes got huge, and she twirled around shouting "Mommy's Space!" She meant MySpace.....

Every moment of the day makes her smile, I hope that never stops happening.

My new kitchen!!

Weather in Northern Cali

The fog seems to be keeping the smoke out of our valley the past few days. Today rainclouds even moved in! We will see what it's like in the morning. 

We are packing up for some camping fun this summer. The kids are all excited. There's something so special about summertime, and spending this summer watching these kids race around brings me right back to my childhood. 

I remember eating popsicles at dusk at the top of our tree house. With the misquitos. And catching fire flies once it was dark. Huge parades and a place called Playland in Rye N.Y.

These kids will have their own memories, they won't be in 110 + humidity ones, that's for sure! Yes, folks that's a thick wool sweater he has on.

 

Ok, only of interest to mom's....

Ok, even better then the needle-felt pressure foot I found last month is this link to new exciting quick easy meals for the kids!

 I can't believe I never thought to check out what the websites bellonging to my favorite magazines? Mothering's pretty great, next I'll check out Hip Mama! Here I come Ariel...

Could of been worse.

Well, today started with a trip to the DMV. As crazy as that can be, we managed to get through it rather quickly. Then off to the grocery store, again without incident. BTW- my son asked the clerk with all the facial piercings at the store.."How you do that, how you get that on you nose?" In his little sing-song voice it was pretty funny.

- So I headed to the gas station where it's $4.79 a gallon.Then started the long drive home. 

Papa called and asked for burritos for himself and the girls. I wondered why he couldn't just cook lunch, but whatever, I ran over to the taco truck, then grabbed myself a blended mocha for the drive. The baby fell asleep, we were all happy.
Then the car started choking, as if all the smoke was making him sick too. And then nothing. So I called AAA, but we don't all fit in their rig! They towed the car and the Mechanic's son came and got us. (Thanks L-!) So we walked around for a few hours until my wonderful mechanic fixed my car ( new fuel pump) and I finally made it home. 

Exhausted and near tears, I dreadfully pulled up to my home (you never know the state of things when you've been gone all day), where I was greeted with a bouquet of daisy's, and discovered that my husband had painted (finally) the kitchen!!!!! And that was part of the reason he couldn't make lunch. 

And.... I LOVE THE COLOR!!

Of course I had picked out the color weeks earlier, but you just never know till you see it.

So the end of the story is...
The burritos I had bought for lunch became dinner, and now everyone's
asleep. Ahhhh........

California Wildfires

Mornings here are super smokey these days. There are more wildfires
then the firefighters can keep up with, lots of people are
volunteering to help, and everyone is doing the best they can. We
feel like we are safe this time....

Our newest addition

This is STORMY!! He is our newest little mouser. We are so happy to
have him, and he seems pretty happy too!

What to do with summer time colds?

Well, summer has arrived with the worst cold our family has received in a very long time. One by one my kids were down for the count. First blue eyes, then my sweet little man, now the baby...stuffy, fever, sleeping all day for days now. I'm almost out of quiet projects to do. Worse my love left this morning to drive his eldest back home. Everyone misses her already. So it's stay at home and get better week here on the Ranch. I hope no parrots hatch right now. Even though everyone is sleeping, they are not doing it at the same time (of course) and so I am tending to my littles all day and all night long. 

We have gotten our big chores done for the day. All the animals are fed and the kids will soon have dinner and hop in the bath. Hopefully the baby will sleep for over an hour at some point, and then I can get something done. Dishes...I am always washing dishes.

My newest project is learning photoshop and trying to create my own fabric here at the Spoonflower site. 

In my spare time of course. 

When I am not washing dishes.

The smoke outside is not helping our colds either. I can hear the Cal-fire crews working hard all around us. I think I will bring them some brownies when they return. I am so glad they are here protecting us. 

Happy Solstice!!!

Summer keeps us busy.

Summer is finally here!!
I have been so busy lately. 

Cleaning out my clutter, 

Getting a new kitty - Storm. Thank you Farm Store!! 

Preparing my daughter for her first lost tooth. 

Most importantly we have been preparing for my husbands eldest daughter to come visit for the first time. She'd been here a few days now. Her visit was near perfect. She is of course, amazing. We all loved her instantly. So we have been taking her all over our small county. We saw the redwoods and the ocean. We rode our ponies. Last night we saw a huge lightning storm. Unfortunately there are close to 40 small fires near us right now. Luckily nothing is too close. But watching a summer thunderstorm in the mountains is crazy!! The lightning felt like it was striking all around us. The thunder let us know it wasn't too close as it roared through the valley 10 seconds later.

She's only here one more day and we are just going to relax and enjoy her company. Next time she comes to visit we will explore more things up here.

The little ones must of driven her crazy. They were so excited and they have needed to be interacting with her constantly. We will all be sad until she returns for Reggae Rising 2008!!!!!!

Parenting Advice

For the most part I don't care what anyone thinks about me, but watch out when it comes to judging my parenting skills!! Strangers that is - I can take friends comments much better. I think really, it's one of my core values...if someone isn't hurting someone else, then really, why do you care?
Here's what I am leading up to and venting about. We went to a beautiful outdoor festival a few weeks ago. I actually had all the kids presentable and sun screened ahead of time. That's my new trick.
Sunscreen before we leave- it's much easier then driving to your adventure and then trying to apply sunscreen as your kid writhes around trying to get away from your grip and over to whatever all the other kids are doing.

Anyhow, we had been there maybe five minutes when this woman taps my shoulder, and points to the baby in my front pack. 

"He's sun burnt" She says very mater-of-factly.

"No, he's not" I say (WHY OH WHY AM I NOT CAPABLE OF JUST SAYING THANK-YOU?!)

Because I know that he has sunscreen on and there is no possible way he's burnt already. I am also think that perhaps his shorts have ridden up and his little legs are rubbing on the front pack. I'm sure that's what is causing the 'sun-burn'

"Well," she tells me "I pushed on the sunburn and it turned white and went back to pink. That's what sunburns do" 

Like I didn't know that-how stupid do I really look?

How dare she have the audacity to touch my baby - that's what told her. And I turned away quickly. And then I felt bad, because truly she had been trying to help. She just crossed the line. My line. The one that I created, and need to stop drawing.