Currently {link up}

The deal: Use our themes or use your own - just let us know what is 'currently' going on with you! Be sure to stop by and say hello to the other bloggers linking up - especially to my amazing co-host at Harvesting Kale.

This week's themes: feeling, questioning, longing, watching, moving

We have been Feeling the sun on our skin. Yard days are upon us and I doubt we'll spend too much time inside until Fall. Last weekend I got a few plants plugged into the dirt (the beginnings of a pumpkin patch, cucumber/sunflower vineyard, and tomatoes)... and this weekend I hope to do a bunch more. If just one plant would thrive and go apeshit bearing fruit this summer I'll feel all accomplished, like the awesome worm and vegetable farmer I am in my heart.  

Otto has been Questioning just everything really. And then making like Napoleon Dynamite faces. Uhhhhhhhhhhhh. Are we really in this phase already? And glum pouting, people. Glum-faced pouting! You don't realize when you're a kid that your parents want to just glum-faced pout right back at you. Or it would feel so awesome to just...


I have been Longing for a grown-up getaway. Maybe if I put this out to the universe we'll stumble upon a winning powerball ticket or something. I just want like 2 days in a row where I don't have to move my body for anything other than waving a towel boy over to refill my margarita. Not. Gonna. Happen.

What shows are you guys Watching? Rob and I watch Mad Men, but that's over for the season. And I can't tear myself away from True Tori. But that's about it. I'd love to get super into a show and marathon through past seasons but just, no idea what's good. Downton Abbey?

Loretta has been Moving to the music. Baby girl was born to rock and starting in July we're going to start her in ballet and Otto in karate. Yay! Anyways, dance parties with these kids are epic. Otto's moves are very much ninja-inspired. And Loretta dances with her whole heart and soul. She can copy almost any dance step and her new best moves are a little hip swivel and this thing she does where she looks over her shoulder, holds the pose, then swivels and looks over her other shoulder, then holds the pose. It's very Vogue ;)

That was this week and here are next week's themes:
snapping, checking, learning, dropping, saving 

"eat the french fry"

Ahhh, three day weekends are just what it's all about. We really should have more of them in all our lives.

Yesterday I got to spend a couple of solo hours with Loretta in the morning, running errands, and another couple of solo hours with her in the afternoon while the boys went to a Memorial Day party (that overlapped Loretta's nap).

We set up the wooden train tracks and set our one motorized train on the path - Loretta completely ignores the rest of the train cars, it's "Duncan" or nothing. It's funny how she plays trains so differently from Otto. She found a little plastic french fry and every time Duncan the train came around the corner she laid that little fry on the tracks and said, "eat the french fry." He'd power through, pushing the french fry a few inches before it fell off the track in front of him. Then he'd go around the big loop again and in the mean time Loretta would gather her french fry and wait for him to get close.

We fed that french fry to Duncan about 30 times in a row yesterday. Every single time she laughed. It was just fantastic.

At night, when she usually chooses a stuffed animal or a baby to bring to her crib, last night she chose a wooden Thomas train (Duncan had mysteriously disappeared on a high shelf by bedtime). Her heart is gold.

Currently {link up}

The deal: Use our themes or use your own - just let us know what is 'currently' going on with you! Be sure to stop by and say hello to the other bloggers linking up - especially to my amazing co-host at Harvesting Kale.

This week's themes: writing, visiting, learning, wanting, loving

I have been Writing lists of all the things I want to get done each day, week, month, lifetime. Summer seems to be the season where you schedule multiple huge events out months in advance. This summer we have Rob going on 2 week-plus international math conference trips, which means mama's gonna be winging it at home, yipes. We have weddings and friends visiting and and a micro vacay of our own. I'm so excited for all of it but gulp. My comfort place is routine so it's a little overwhelming to think of all the things we have to do and get done in order to do the things, plus normal life stuff like 4 kids birthday parties in the next 3 weeks. My lists have lists! 

Loretta has been Visiting with us more and more. She tells us about her day, what makes her happy (mostly snacks and tutus), what we need to do IMMEDIATELY to make her happy at any given moment (almost always it's: let her strip naked, then give her a snack and a tutu). Visiting with this little miss is about the best, funniest, most delightful thing.

Otto has been Learning about life on the prairie. We're onto book 2 of the Little House series. My challenge has been editing out the racism as I go (it's like wow bad) and Otto's challenge has been imagining life as a settler. He was talking about it with a girl at school, I guess, and he told me that what they came up with was that life back then was so hard that, "first the moms break their legs, then the dads break their legs, then the moms break their legs again, and the kids were just barfing everywhere." So yeah, I don't know what to make of that explanation except yuck and haha.

We have been Wanting to get our garden started but tomato starts are slower-growing than I'd ever realized. This weekend we're going to haul in some good soil and transplant the first set of starts, some store-bought, and I may just straight up sow some seeds. Yippee!

Last night I was Loving my little birthday celebration dinner. We went out for sushi (noodles for the kiddos - and it's freaking cute that Otto calls the sushi place a "noodle shop" because of Kung Fu Panda) and came home to cake the boys had made and even presents, including a medley of heirloom organic non-gmo garden seeds (when a ma-a-a-an loves a woman, he knows exactly what kinds of garden seeds will make her smile) that I can't wait to figure out what to do with.

That was this week and here are next week's themes:
feeling, questioning, longing, watching, moving 

worms, composting, awesome

On Saturday we spent some time in the yard and set up our Worm Factory 360 with 250 red wigglers; a bedding full of coconut fiber, shred newspaper, crumbled pumice, and garden soil; and the first of many food scraps which will become the first of our monthly super rich garden compost harvests - starting in about 90 days. I'm so excited to finally have our worms and the "fancy" system all set up and on our back porch. At first, I had placed it behind the house, but as I read the (unexpectedly long and also unexpectedly interesting) "how-to" book that came with the composter, I realized the back of the house gets too much sun and the shady porch is the place for our worms to get their grub on. 

Adventures in worm keeping has been thrilling so far. Even though I know they probably don't love it, I can't stop checking on them every day, raking back the top layers of food scraps and bedding to make sure they're happily wiggling away below the surface. This is how I found out that they love melon rinds more than carrots or edamame shells. The system will eventually get stacked pretty tall, you add a box at a time as the feeding boxes fill with scraps. Eventually the box on the bottom is compost, ready to harvest, then that box gets emptied and moved to the top and the cycle continues indefinitely.  

As the composting continues I'm excited to see if it's as easy as it sounds to maintain. Keeping the moisture and temperature levels in the right range and making sure the worms have a steady food supply seem to be all there is to it. In a temperate climate like Oregon, I think that's going to be super manageable. 

Last night after dinner Rob threw away the leftover avocado and I like yelled at him, "Rob! Worms!" I looked at him all exasperated and he looked at me like the woman I have become, ha... An awesome lady with cool interests, obviously.

I'm looking forward to getting more serious about gardening and really putting some time and muscle into the back yard. We started 3 types of heirloom tomato from seed and will transplant the first set of starts into the garden probably this weekend. The kids are happy as clams outside and able to help out a bit, run around a bit, and just be dirty and sweaty the way kids should be. It's therapeutic to spend time out there, doing physical work and getting a little Vitamin D, wearing yourself out physically and calming your mind while you get hands on with the earth.