Winter

Testing. This is a test post from the Blogsy app on my iPad.

This is the beautiful view of my back yard. I think I've absorbed all the beauty now and it would be fine with me if it melted now.

 

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Slippy Slides & Spinach

On Memorial Day we planted what I think will be our last plantings (until fall plantings). Here's the tally of things we've planted:

• several varieties of lettuces - we've been enjoying them for close to two weeks!
• spinach: came in spotty, but it seems we're getting a decent harvest
• peas: dismal failure = replaced with more beans
• pole beans
• sweet corn (about 7 inches tall already!)
• cucumbers
• squash
• rainbow chard
• cantalope
• brussel sprouts (had to try them! they're so pretty)
• popcorn (not coming in too well at all)
• tomatoes
• onions (we lost quite a few and had to do a replacement planting)
• carrots (another dismal failure: we did a second planting on Monday with some new advice and hopefully better results)
• peppers
• basil
• red & white striped beets
• sweet potatoes
• regular potatoes: they're HUGE!

It's been so rewarding to eat our lettuce and to share it with our friends & neighbors! I can't wait for the rest of the harvests.

The other addition to the garden scene is the slippy slide. For a mere $40 at Target, this thing is going to provide endless summer entertainment. Will & Willa already had a 'fail or fun' game going on and Cam digs it, too.  To add to the water fun, Ev got out an old water tank. This tank was the original "pool party" for Larisa and her siblings when they were growing up on the farm. Now it's fun for another generation: the Fu-lympics were a featured event in our afternoon gardening session. If only I'd gotten in a few laps to train for the Pig this weekend!

Gardening tip of the day: We are putting crushed egg shells around and in the tomato and pepper plants. Both of these are fast growing plants that strip vital nutrients from the soil. The calcium carbonite in the egg shell is one of the nutrients the plants need.

30 Day Challenge

In my 'other life' at Coe, I'm leading a summer development program called "13 Things to Think About."
The first post in the program introduced a quick TEDtalk by Matt Cutts, Google Engineer. Matt talks about trying something for just 30 days. Check out Matt's short talk HERE.  My 30 day challenge for May is to stop eating after 8:30PM.

On the surface, I thought this sounded sort of cheap for a 30-day challenge. But when I stop to think about it, I think it's a good starter for me. It's about improving my over all health. It may seem like a small thing, but this will be a big deal for me. I'm a terrible snacker. I snack when I'm not even hungry. The kids have a "night-time" snack between 7:30-8, and I snack along. Then I tend to have another snack close to my 'night-time' between 10-11. Sometimes, in my moments of insomnia, I'll snack around 2am.  I've read many times that it's good to give your digestive system a nice long break every night. Mine rarely gets any break!

I'm certainly not off to an impressive start (I am committing to this on May 7 - so I'll have to carry on my 30 days in to June!). No more night-snacks - starting NOW.

Building the Biosphere

Biosphere coming together!

Willa's class is studying life systems. As part of the study, Willa was tasked with building a biosphere to study and document for the next few weeks. Via Pinterest, we found some great directions (HERE, then follow the links).

Our first task was collecting three empty 2 liter bottles. Willa and Cam canvassed the neighborhood - thanks to our neighbors Larry & Jeannette for the mini-ecosystem home!

I was deep into mulching and taking care of baby hostas, so this project was really a Jamey-Willa-Cam project. They made a trip to PetCo for guppies, snails and crickets. Willa harvested earth worms from my hosta-transplanting locations and Cam collected brown leaves and rocks.

The biosphere has been at school now for almost a week. Within the first day, two guppies died. But we put in four guppies with the assumption that there might be a tragic beginning to life. Willa reported on Friday that the snails were eating the fish carcasses and she'd found the leftover bones floating in the pond. Circle of life in action!

The class is also monitoring a small pool of tadpoles and their most exciting recent addition was crayfish. Willa is quite excited to be in the group hosting only one of two crayfish in the class! I've heard there are plans to try to get the crayfish to mate. I haven't asked her how they're going to go about this task yet.

Snails moving in.

Closing it the biosphere.

Waiting for Rainbows

Another beautiful Sunday on the farm. We've been collecting newspaper and grass clippings in an attempt to mulch down our rows and avoid so much weeding. I think we need bigger yards!

In addition to mulching, we did a bit more planting. More carrots and rainbow swiss chard went in tonight. It was so exciting to see itty bitty green leaves popping up through the soil! The beginnings of our delicious salads. Can't wait till these are big enough to cut off and put on our plates!

Will and Willa took over watering duties: rather than fill buckets and carry them to the far side of the plot, they decided to fill the wheel barrow, wheel it over, and fill the buckets from that. It may have sounded good in theory, but I'm not sure it was so great in practice. They did succeed in getting themselves completely soaked. We're still looking for the best solution to watering: the far side of our plot is too far away from the spout to run a hose. Unfortunately, this is where we planted things that like a lot of water.

We topped off the evening on the porch again. Last weekend was a fishing weekend for Jamey. He came back with lots of fresh walleye, so tonight was fish taco night. Larisa and I fried up the fish, squashed a couple of avocados and opened up a bottle of Riesling. It was also Iowa Valley Food Coop delivery week, so I had some fresh spinach and greens, but this meal would have been SO much better with our own fresh greens and cilantro! Soon!

Let the Growing Begin!

This year, instead of renewing our CSA membership, we're going on our own! Well, not on our own, exactly - just without an expert! We're doing a collective garden with our friends, the Bickels and our new friends the Rogers'. Larisa's parents have two acres just outside of town. They're no longer interested in maintaining their large garden themselves, so we're taking over.

So far - SO FUN!

March 30: it only took us about 30 minutes on a sunny Sunday afternoon to plant three long rows of potatoes. It's a week earlier than suggested, but we just couldn't wait to dig in.

April 6: Jamie, Larisa and I, along with our offspring headed out on the school's early out day to plant salad greens, spinach, peas and onions. We're planting in first-year garden area, so there were some clumps to contend with, but we rocked that dirt!

Unfortunately Jamie and her kids had to leave, but the other Jamey (with a Y) and Cam and J.P. showed up shortly after. Terri prepared us a delicious post-planting dinner: homemade pizza pockets, from-scratch sauce and an awesome salad. Larisa pulled out a bottle of wine and some interesting beers and we sat on the porch and feasted. It was such a beautiful evening - good food, good friends, good conversation, (mostly) good kids - I'm looking forward to more of these (and eventually feasting on our own bounty!).

Documenting a Good Day

I just started reading through a book (I was actually giving to my friend) called "The Happiness Project". I realize I've got a lot to be happy about, so I'm documenting my day (which just happened to be Easter).

7:00ish AM... with plans to attend 8am church, it seems a bit impossible that I was still lounging in bed at this time. There were a few cranky words between Jamey and me when he came up at 7:15 and asked if we were still going. But somehow we managed to pull it off. Arrived to find a seat inside, walking in just before the processional went down the aisle.

8-9:30ish... kids were relatively good in church (Cam loudly asked where the Easter Bunny was) and we stayed for donuts and coffee afterward.

Between 9 and noon, the kids found their Easter baskets, ate the heads off the bunnies, played with the sidewalk chalk and bubbles, we all ate delicious Maple Syrup french toast (recipe courtesy of my mom) and were ready for play. Jamey commented how going to 8am church really opened up our whole day for more things!

12:45-2:45PM - biking. Despite a really windy day, the sun was shining and we decided to head out on bikes. Had a great ride, stopped at the park by Bender Pool and had some play time before coming back.

Other afternoon activities: playing at St. Matt's playground, mowing the yard, baking up lasagna, spending an hour browsing through Barnes & Noble.

Finally, the kids got to use their new bubble bath and shower gels for clean up (never were they so excited to take their baths/showers!) and everyone was in bed. Jamey and I watched a DVD I'd rented on Saturday; "50/50" supposedly a bittersweet comedy with Seth Rogan and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I did laugh, but I also cried.

Longest Run EVER

6 miles in 57 minutes

Training for Ragnar. I'm not sure how I let myself get into this one: 12 women running 200 miles from Madison to Chicago in under 36 hours. Bring it on!

FreezeFest 2012

Last year, our friends, the Bickels had their first 'FreezeFest'. They decided the month of January was a good time to reflect on their spending habits as a family. During the month of January, 2011 the Bickel family put a self-imposed no-spending restriction in place. They liked the results, and this year asked if we'd wanted to join them. Sure! We decided FreezeFest 2012 would run from February 1-29. What does this mean for the Family Stro?

• no going out to eat. PERIOD. No after-church brunches, no Friday-night Tomaso pizza feasts, no Brewed Awakening coffee stops after Saturday morning basketball games
• no RedBox or Family video rentals, no early-show movie theatre trips
• no entertaining ourselves at Barnes & Noble with treats and a few books, or picking up the next chapter books for Willa and cooking mags for me at 1/2 Priced Books
• no lunches out or on the way back from the gym for Jamey
• no stops by Brewed for Monday Mocha (or Tuesday's latte or Wednesday's latte...) for me

We're in our third week and we've done pretty well. By far, it's had the most impact on Jamey and me. Jamey was typically eating out or picking up lunch 3-5 times a week prior to FreezeFest. A tray of sushi from the big HyVee or a Blimpie's sub on the way back from a noon workout were very common. Taco Tuesday at El Super Burrito was a standing date. For me, my theory of just one or maybe two coffees a week had lately turned into four-ish, or maybe five or six counting weekends. And by coffees, I mean the $4 cups consisting of a little coffee steamed up with lots of frothy milk, whip and syrups. 

Willa has expressed her dislike of Freezefest on several occasions, mostly when we've had to remind her why we aren't going out for pancakes after church or coffee after basketball. What I hope we're instilling in her with this little exercise (and ourselves) is that going out is a special treat and privilege. We'd become reliant on ordering a pizza or picking up meals from China Express on a night that seemed too busy or too tired to come up with our own meal. Now we're excited to remind ourselves what a nice treat it is to head to Tomaso's for a Detroit Deep Dish Mombo Combo.

I'm In!

The Pig is full. The Pigman Sprint Triathlon has already registered 900 participants. I'm one of them. Registration opened in December and filled within five weeks.

Let the training begin!

Music

It's time for a new workout playlist. This is the play list I've been running to since sometime last spring. I love it because:

• the acoustic version of "Babylon" by Sublime makes me feel like I'm going out for a run with some friends
• just when I'm getting a little tired, KOL pops on and kicks me up with "Genius"
• Charles Bradley gives me a cool down after a 5K, the Decemberists pick me back up and Mighty Mouse makes me feel like I could "float on" through the end of the workout.

+Missing:"Every Morning" by Keb 'Mo and  "Genius" by Kings of Leon