Welcome to the world, baby boy!

I spent most of yesterday supporting my friends A&S as they labored through the birth of their first baby. I'm so grateful to have been part of their miracle :)

The baby is positively adorable, and the new mom and dad are doing well.

I feel so blessed to do this work with parents. It's such an honor to share in a couple's pregnancy and birth.

did I say love/hate?

about my gym?

I think I'll have to take it back. The fact that it includes membership to the pool makes it totally love/love right now. School hasn't been out for an entire week yet, but I think we've already gotten our money's worth for the year. OK, maybe not quite. But still, we're all having a blast.

Ethan's been a little fish for a while now, but it seems like he's becoming a stronger swimmer every day. He's perfectly content to do the waterslides 50 times in a row, and still begs for "one more slide" when it's time to leave. Noah loves playing the "jumping game", where he leaps with wild abandon from the edge of the pool into our waiting arms. He's getting braver with getting his face wet, and is becoming more comfortable doing supported floating on both his back and belly. He loves the beach-entry side of the pool with it's sprinklers, where we can hang out and splash and watch his brother slide. We've caught up with friends that we haven't seen for months, as well as been able to hang out with friends from school, etc.

I'll have to brave the splashes and bring my camera down to the pool for a few minutes.

All in all, yay for the pool!

i have sons. and a husband who is still a big kid himself.

Sunday morning I'm heading out for a yoga class, leaving the rest of my family hanging out in the back yard.

I return, feeling all happy and supple and blissed out, and what do I find? Why, the Murray Grand Prix has been constructed in our woods. In this case, I think pictures are worth waaay more than a hundred words.

and a close up, because this project is so deserving...

Of course, it's been too miserably hot for them to do too much playing with it. I mean, the boys were fairly wiped out after hauling the rocks around to build the darn thing. But they sure were proud of their handi-work. I'm envisioning many "Piston Cups" being held in our future.

He did what in his cup?

eensie weensie teeny tiny creepy crawlie

My eagle eyed 3 year old spotted this guy in one of my rosemary plants yesterday. This little critter was so tiny, you can't really appreciate his size from the photo - he may have been an inch long, probably less. Noah wasn't sure what it was, and asked, "What's this thing, Mama?". I finally figured out what he was talking about (took a bit longer for my older eyes to spy the mantis among the rosemary stalks) and told him it was a baby praying mantis. He ran off to get his dad and brother to see the baby "commander" -- no idea how he ended up with that one. Ethan ran around the corner of the house asking, "What in the world is Noah talking about?" Despite the nomenclature confusion, we were all spell-bound by this tiny creature. It was so tiny and delicate, and hopped around in the rosemary bush for our admiration.

my yoga date with Kevin...

Our gym. I have a love/hate relationship with it. In general, I'm inherently against the idea of having to *go* somewhere to get exercise, especially when you live in such a beautiful place with tons of outdoor recreation possibilities. But, Kevin and I finally reconciled with the fact that, at this stage in our lives, we not only need reliable, indoor exercise opportunities, but need the childcare aspect of a gym even more.

It costs an arm and a leg, but it is fairly cool. I don't have a lot to compare it with, as far as actual facilities go. But their childcare area is awesome, the staff is caring and attentive, they have two locations, indoor pools for winter swimming, and a really sweet outdoor pool complex that we've gotten to enjoy twice already this summer.

Anyway, this post isn't supposed to be an ad for how wonderful our gym is. Mainly, I'm still glowing from my afternoon rendevous with my husband. No -- get your mind out of the gutter -- it was totally "G" rated. We met up at the ACAC for a lunch time yoga class. It was K's first go at yoga ever, and my first time back in a looong time. The class was great in terms of range and pace, and I left feeling like a happy, loopy, walking rubberband.

So, yay for ACAC, and yay for yoga. I'd love to make this a regular Monday habit, but that may not be in the cards for K's schedule. We'll see how it goes...

*gasp*

It's the first week, and I'm slacking already.

I know, I never promised to post everyday. But that was kind of my unspoken intention.

My last post was Thursday's, which was a special day, even outside of my musings about my hammock chair: May 29th is the day (nine years ago) that Kevin and I got married.

When I think back to that day, the things that first come to mind are the brilliant, cloudless blue skies that we enjoyed, as well as total, humbling gratitude. We were so thankful to be surrounded by so many of our friends and family that came to share in our celebration. It was truly a magical day, in many different ways, large and small.




The past nine years have passed in a contradiction of time. From one perpective, it seems to have truly flown, a blur of time with random milestones erratically marking the way. Other times, it seems to be a miracle that it's only been nine years. Nine years to build the life that we share together, our family, our home. To think of everything we've done in that time, evolving and stretching and growing into the people that we are today ... well honestly, nine years just doesn't seem long enough to have done it all. Not to mention the gestation, birth, and nurturing of our two young boys. All those minuscule details merging together to paint the picture of our lives would surely fill more than nine years, wouldn't they?

In any case, it's been a journey that I'm honored to walk and I'm grateful to have my husband beside me. I look forward to the adventures that lay before us still.

a quiet spot...

My hammock chair, hung in a corner of our front porch. There are a couple of reasons why I love sitting there. First and foremost, it usually takes the kids a while to find me, so if they come looking for me, I get a few additional moments of peace ;) It looks out over our flowerbeds, which are an ongoing labor of love. I'll have to do a before and after picture of the beds one day soon.

Tucked away in the chair, gently swinging, I can watch the salamanders sunning themselves on the sidewalk, hear the birds singing in the woods (I saw a glorious pair of red-headed woodpeckers the other day ... the were stunning!), and enjoy the bees buzzing among the flowers. It's my favorite place to retreat to with a book.

Notice that I'm not mentioning enjoying my cup of tea in the hammock chair. Being as graceless as I am, it's quite a challenge to get into the chair, mug in hand, without wearing half of it's contents. Not so fun.

green thumb?

So, I've always been a free-spirit kind of gardener -- and after a few years of a lot of misses and a hand-ful of hits, I've finally figured out a few things. My biggest lesson is that I'm a huge fan of raised beds -- especially in the land of clay riddled soil.

This year, Kevin built some delightful "lincoln log" raised beds to contain my veggie garden. The best part is that materials were free -- built from fallen trees in our woods. And heaven knows, Kevin loves any excuse he can find to play lumberjack. Once we managed to fill them up with all kinds of lovely brown goodness, I was ready to plant. We got some seedlings in (huge thanks to the Tevendale family for more tomato and pepper plants than I could shake a stick at!), and we scrambled to get the deer fence up before those rascals destroyed our hard work. We started a few things from seed as well, and now they're coming up. No one really likes them, but we had to plant some radish seeds. They mature so dang quickly, and they're so fun for the boys to pick. Maybe Kevin and I will acquire that taste this spring, 'cause it looks like we'll have plenty. Tomatos, cukes, beans and peas, zucchini, melon, peppers and pumpkins -- and Noah insisted on planting a row of corn.

All in all, not a "small" project -- but a simple pleasure indeed. The boys delight in running to see how things have grown each day. I'm looking forward them discovering the first ripened cherry tomato, the first pea ready for picking...

i'll start off with a post...

that will reveal to the world the extent of my dorkiness.

I hate plastic shopping bags -- especially the crappy ones from the grocery store that fall apart before you even get home, so there's no chance you can use them again. I've been using cloth grocery bags for a while now, but haven't been diligent about it. It's really taken a commitment to the habit to get into a routine of keeping them in the car, and taking them into the store with me every time.

I'm finally to the point where it's only a rare occasion that I'm stuck at the store without a bag of my own tucked under my arm. Can I tell you how happy it makes me to see the tidy row of cloth bags in the back of my van? Filled to the brim with groceries, standing nice and tall -- no flopping over and no apples rolling around helter-skelter. And I can carry two bags on each shoulder and manage to get all the groceries into the house in one trip. Now, that's what I call progress. Not to mention all the eco-friendly ramifications. I think I read somewhere that it costs $.17 to recycle one plastic grocery bag. Yikes.

because, you know, it's the truth...

It's the small things that really count -- that really make a day memorable, or bring a smile to your face, or make you excited about getting out of bed in the morning.

So, here's to the little things!