Valentine's Special

Good old Valentine's Day....the day that society says should be full of love. When in reality, that's not really how life works. However, this year it turned out to be lovely and special. Not a shower of love but definitely not normal either. Ben surprised me by taking me on a lunch date. 

Levi and Noah each made this special Valentine at Tara's house:

 Levi brought home a sack full of Valentine's from his preschool friends.

 The boys got valentine's in the mail from grandpa and grandma Schrag and my parents left valentine gifts on the kitchen table.
Noah had a school music program on Valentine's evening and Ben had basektball games to ref. But he left me a surprise: a bed of flowers and chocolate.  Whoa - what a surprise!

 After a quick dinner, the boys and I were off to the program. It was cute as can be and the kids did a great job!

I gave Ben a hand-colored note of love. I enjoyed coloring it and thankfully, he truly appreciated the effort I put into it. It's even tacked up near his dresser in our bedroom.
 It was a day full of love, indeed.

Valentines

Valentines week brought a flurry of activity to our house. 

 For the Valentines that the boys are giving to their friends, I used a template I found online.  I just had to print some sheets, cut them out and then have the boys sign their names and thread the glow sticks through.

Easy enough that neither of the boys complained once! Now that's progress compared to previous years!

 Next up were treat bags for Noah's Valentines Party at school. I snagged a few ideas off Pinterest and thankfully, they were simple enough for the three of us to work on together.

 The boys were excited to help and we had a great time with it.

 

Thank goodness there are only 20 kids in Noah's class. I wrapped up the project after the boys went to bed. Dip, sprinkle, repeat. 

 I don't think I've ever had so much pink and red in my house at one time. It was kind of fun, but also made me feel a bit dizzy.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Treasure land

Living here, on the same farm where previous generations have lived before me is humbling and strikes a serious chord of curiosity inside me. Ever since my childhood I have been discovering this farm. While playing in the trees as a child, I would find pieces of metal, remains of fences, bones from animals that used to live here. While keeping myself busy in the shed, I would find old tools, old doors, old equipment. 

 All of these things were new and intriguing to me then and still are.  However, now I'm an adult. I'm aware that this land wasn't always my families land. At some point before any Mennonites showed up here, this land belonged to a tribe of Native Americans. I don't know who, but I'm interested to learn more about that. To know more about not just what I find on the land, but the story of the land itself.

Often I consider the farm a treasure land. I like rusty things. I like wood that's weathered and worn. And lucky for me, I've got a fierce pirate living in my house to keep watch.

 We have fun poking around outside. Walking, just to see what we'll find. I never know what will catch his attention.

 This rusty metal seed sign is a treasure in my eyes; a piece of junk metal to others. I have hope for this sign to look better...we'll see.

 Where pigs once lived, today I found the brown and pokey remains of a weed. Isn't the detail amazing? Sometimes seeing God's creation in the bleak days of winter makes me realize just how many details there are to appreciate.

 Some of the treasures on the farm require squinting your eyes. You know what I mean, when you squint your eyes things sometimes look like they might sparkle, right? Well, just recently this old and small skid steer, a John Deere 60, was brought back to life. The farmers have used it for hours to make two building usable again. I remember the 60 from my childhood and I thought it was huge and powerful. But when you compare it to the yellow JD skid steer behind it the size difference is laughable. Times change, equipment gets bigger, but the irony is that sometimes you just can't live without the old stuff.

 I love this shed. I'm not kidding. And I know that sounds crazy, especially because I'm generally freaked out when I'm in there. Weird, huh?

 My intrigue/love of antiques and old stuff comes from this shed. I've always been drawn to cans like this:

 not to mention the old doors, equipment and whatever else that's stashed in there. It is a treasure trove. My kind of treasure land.

The usual

I work four days a week. Fridays I'm home. I try to use Fridays to spend time with Levi, but also get things done at home. Sometimes finding that balance is easier than others. Usually, Levi occupies himself while I clean bathrooms and do other chores around the house. But today he helped me! He scrubbed the bath tub which, for someone as short as Levi, is a full-body workout. This is how tired he was after scrubbing most of the tub:

 Then he decided it would be more fun to take photos of me cleaning the bathroom. There were two of the back of my head and one where I was turning away from the camera. But for this one he asked me to look at him. It took a while, but he finally snapped the photo - not too shabby Levi.

   The other thing we do on Fridays is go to Bethesda for drinks at Lincoln Perk and to visit my grandma. Levi, almost without fail, gets a Hot Chocolate Freeze, I get a mocha. Today we even got a cookie!

Then we (usually in a rush because we stay at Bethesda too long) go down the street to the library for story hour. Laura, the librarian, always reads several stories to the kids and then has a fun project for them to create. It's so good to spend time in a library on a weekly basis, good for me and for Levi.

 And our time in town is usually capped off with a trip to the grocery store.

Then home again home again jiggety jig.
I treasure this routine. I know that after school ends in May, I'll never again have regular one-on-one time with Levi like I have right now.

Love it

I signed up to get emails from One Kings Lane, I think they claim to offer designer stuff at a good price. Well, most times I delete the emails without even looking at what they have for sale that day. Sometimes I open them and scroll through what's being offered but almost always find their "good price" to be a very high price. 

But one day, this wire photo/memento holder was for sale for less than $20.

I had recently been annoyed with how cluttered and messy the front of our fridge was. Plus, each year in January I take the stack of photo Christmas cards we received that year and trim away everything but the photo(s). Usually, I tape them together in some sort of a collage so we can enjoy lots of smiling faces on our fridge all year round. But, looking at my fridge I wasn't sure I had room for any of the Christmas card photos. Then lo and behold, here came this cute wire thing to hang on the wall - and I knew just where I'd put it. I bought this thing after thinking about for less than a minute - if only I could do that with some shoe purchases I need to make!

 I was worried that the heart detail would be too cutesy for me, but it's not. I like to see our family and friends surrounded by hearts. It's been a functional addition to our kitchen but also a meaningful one.

This is embarrassing

A year ago I would have told you that I didn't really like cats. Seriously. I rolled my eyes at people who put photos of cats on their blogs and I half-listened to people tell cat stories. But now I seem to have become one of them. We put more energy then we should into the cats on the farm. We keep telling ourselves that "they're just farm cats." But it doesn't matter. They look at you and meow at you and what is a person supposed to do?  So today we reached an embarrassingly high level of care for our kitten. 

She climbed up an enormous tree:

She's in this photo, I promise, I'm just showing how big the tree is. She meowed up there almost all afternoon. 

So we called up Kyle Funk to see if he'd bring his bucket truck over to help us out. I cannot believe we called Kyle about this.  I felt so embarrassed that he took time out of his evening to do this. He said it was no trouble, but after a full day of work I'm sure he could think of other things to do with his time. 

 And, just like that, Kyle Funk to the rescue!!

 The boys each took a turn holding the kitten and then we put her back in the garage where she lives. Hopefully she'll never decide to climb so high in a tree again. I've already told myself that she'd just have to stay there or come down on her own if she does....but we'll see if that actually happens.

It's embarrassing, but true. Pets, even "farm cats", certainly have proven to me that they can wiggle themselves into your life

Food

Food, what a boring title for a blog post. But, I'm writing this late on Sunday night and that's what all the pictures in this post are of - food.  No points for creativity for me, oh well.

Recently, Benjamin bought a five pound bag of gummy bears. We have lots of gummy bears in our house. 

 Lately, I've challenged myself to bake with yeast. I'm guessing that prior to two weeks ago I hadn't used yeast for at least fifteen years. Pathetic, I know. But in that time I became fearful of yeast. Unsure of what to do with it, uneasy about how it all worked. So, two weeks ago I baked oatmeal bread and while it tasted just fine it was dense. Really dense. I mixed too much flour in and it didn't rise very well. So on Saturday I tried the same recipe again with much better results. I was much more careful about the flour and while these loaves of bread are not perfect (not by a long shot) they are a huge improvement. They're pretty much the size of a loaf of bread - my first attempt was half as tall as these - and they are much less dense.  Ahhh....the sense of accomplishment and the empowerment to keep trying.

 And then Sunday we got together with friends for a Superbowl party and I snapped a few shots of the delicious spread of food we laid out. Shredded beef sandwiches, chips, fruit, veggies,

 pretzel bites with dipping sauces,

 and tons of sweets too.  It was awesome eating and fun visiting.