Brothers

Sit back my dear brother,
this poem is all true.
Sometimes I think,
you belong in a zoo.

Not as an employee,
but rather a member.
How would you stay warm,
in the month of December?

I'm sure you'd be fine,
you have plenty of gas.
You'd quickly learn,
how to eat dirty old grass.

All those kids,
in amazement would stare.
Why does that monkey,
have almost no hair?

I'm sure you'd make lots,
of friends at the zoo.
Walking around bare foot,
through piles of pooh.

Look at the bright side,
dear brother of mine.
The zoo is a great place,
where you'll prosper and shine.
 - www.anitapoems.com

Vegan-ish

I signed up to do an online 30 Day Vegan workshop. 

It started Monday, and while it's tough making everything from scratch, I'm enjoying trying new recipes.

The rest of the family "gets" to eat the new things I make.

I'm not going overboard, and if I want a glass of milk I will have one--it's just a month of trying new things and trying to be aware of what we are eating.  This would be a lot easier if it were further along in the summer, and I had better access to fresh produce from the garden or farmer's markets.

Monday night we had squash and apple soup, which I have made other times, especially in the fall.  The nice thing about some of this is that Cash can eat it, too.  There's nothing processed or overly advanced for his little tummy.

The Green Smoothie I have been having for breakfast is not my favorite.  Cash had applesauce while I slugged down the drink.  It is supposed to be made with kale and several fruits, but I didn't have kale so I used spinach I had frozen from last year's garden. 

It turned out a little too spinachy. 

If a person didn't know better, they would look for tadpoles swimming around in the jar.

Hiking

We love getting outside on these sunny days.

Cash is right at home in the backpack.

Above the lake we walked around, an eagle watched us.  Or it looked for fish.  We'll never know.

Tyler: Track Star

Track Day at the school is sooo exciting!  Lots of kids from area schools, and preschoolers are invited, too.

Lining up to do a tennis ball throw

Tyler and BFF Wyatt

No busy day is complete without a few tears.  First Tyler dropped a shot put on his toe, and then he wasn't ready to run. 

Luckily by the time the race actually started, he was all healed up.  He got 2nd place in the 25 meter run.  Wyatt got 1st!

Just Beachy

My friend Moe and I took the boys over to Seeley Lake yesterday.  We have had an unbelievable May, with temperatures in the 70s and 80s.  It felt so good to sit on the beach and play in the sand.

Cash enjoyed his first time to the lake.  He sampled some sand and pebbles, and liked looking around at the water and mountains.

We all got our first mosquito bites of the season.  Good thing we got that over with!

We felt a little guilty that we were having such a great time on a Tuesday afternoon in May. 

The lake and beach were all ours.  

On this day

Today's holiday lets me appreciate my own mother (Hi Mom! Love You!),

and lets me be appreciated as a mom myself.

I get to realize how lucky I am to be the momma to these two monkeys.

Since none of us really wanted to make a huge meal or clean up afterwards, I opted for a pizza.  But I made sure my dessert was going to be out of this world. 

I made Dundee Arms Inn Bumble Berry Pie from the Pie cookbook that mom gave me several years ago.  It had strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and rhubarb.

This was my first rhubarb pie of the year, and we all thought it was a good one.

Good enough to have a piece for breakfast I think.



Cash *6 months*

My sweet little boy is now 6 months old.  He is settling down in a lot of ways, sleeping better, eating purees really well, and drinking like a pro from a bottle.  His sleeping is getting better, and that's all I can ask for...anything is better than what it was.

Cash likes exploring the world with his mouth.  Today I discovered him sucking on a hairy eyeball.  It was a sticky toy of Tyler's that had been rolling around on the carpet since Halloween.  It is much cleaner now!

"somebody forgot to put the ice cream in here"

He's also sitting by himself really well, which makes it very easy to set him down and do something for 15 minutes. 

I remember thinking about Tyler "I love this age" every time he became a month older.  I'm loving this age of Cash, he is starting to get his personality and he and Tyler really "play" sometimes.



workin' on popping his 4th tooth

House Hunting Follies

Our trip to Wyoming was only 3 1/2 days long, but in that time span I sat in my car far more than I ever want to again.  I guess I could sit in my car for a long time again if we were going on a trip, not going back and forth between towns and looking for addresses and slowing down and stopping and backing up and turning around all hours of the day. 

It is amazing how many different types of homes there are in the world.  We kept finding the perfect house, but in a terrible area, or a perfect area with a shab-tastic house.  Shawn and I enjoyed being alone together without kids (Thank You to Shawn's parents!!); we enjoyed eating non-frantic dinners, watched what we wanted in the hotel, and talked more than we have in quite a while.

There were some doozies we checked out:

Rental unit in Byron, WY. 
Perfect for the short-term!
(not really--it had no appliances and smelled like an old closet.)

This part of Wyoming has tons of plants. 
As in Sugar Beet plants, Natural Gas plants...

A typical home in the town of Lovell or Byron. 
The little planter has a sign saying "Byron yard of the week."  It doesn't take much to impress some people I guess.

This house was up on a hill, had a great view and seemed very spacious...

But the 30 foot deep concrete cistern that was 40 feet from the house was probably not going to work with two small children. (It held reserve water for a downslope cannery)
 NEXT!

This road was nice and quiet.

There was even a friendly farmer plowing his field

And the house for sale was pretty nice.  Considering the other places we looked at, it had privacy and some character to the yard.

But the irrigation ditch in the side yard worries me. 
We would have to fence it off or teach the boys how to swim lickety-split.
Who knows what will happen, but this may be the place we hang our hats!