Where have I been??

There was David Gray and Ray Lamontagne

There was coffee with a view...

There was a Drive in Movie...

There was swimming...

There was building...

There were picnics and music
in the gardens...

There was tomato canning!

There were great eats...

There were train rides...

There were naked cowboys...

We went to New York...major goal for trip

was to see the Intrepid which we gratefully

did it was incredible!

There have been S'mores

There was blueberry picking

There was some porch reading...

(not nearly enough of this)

There were camps...

There were visits from Dear friends

There were celebratory tea parties...

There were Lego exhibits

And Museums...

Jack Johnson...and concerts...

Boated with friends...

B and I Relayed and she sang...

Bandanas for Relay...

4th of July spent watching things crash...

E and one of the things that crashed

love us some figure 8!!


So as you can see life has been full. Very full!! In a good way but I must say I might have just packed a little too much into my days this summer. Just a tiny bit...she says laughing...

But this summer brought beach time, and I am so in love with the beach that I didn't say no and still feel like I didn't get enough in. Not enough wasting away by the water for me ever!! We got to wander with friends. We got to giggle a lot!! We got to hear a lot of live music in case you forget it is important to support live music so go out and see bands and cheer and say thank you for sharing yourself. We got to reconnect with family. We got to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We took advantage of what our local farmers have worked so hard to produce and our freezer is thankfully stocked for the winter ahead. Encourage farmers to farm food!! Find your local farmer's market every place has one somewhere. Go out and buy! You can't beat fresh picked produce for dinner! And many markets have happy chicken's eggs, and healthy farmed meats! Right there on your doorstep! No excuses. Hook up with a CSA or a u-pick and fill up your pantries and freezers! I canned for the first time this year and am looking forward to more next year. We read LOTS!!! We dined on the porch. We swam. We watched the world go by.

And now we get ready for the beginning of another school year and getting back into our schedule. I have read several articles lately about how September should be the New Year. How everything feels fresh and goals get set. How the scent of fall makes you want to turn inward and begin to make change. I love this time of year although it makes me a bit sad that my time with my girls gets to be less. Our adventures get more spread out as my work schedule and their school schedule do not always mesh. But FALL!! Oh how I love fall!!

I have had a goal every summer to have a dinner party with friends and have yet to achieve it...hmmm maybe fall??? Harvest party? Yeah I haven't been busy enough!

Hope everyone enjoyed their season and are all ready for the "New Year"!

La Serenata

What I wouldn't give to be ducking into La Serenata right now. With the promise of an awesome coffee and gorgeous Italian food. I dream about their lasagna! The building makes me happy with it's ancient stonework and nooks and crannies. It also has these fantastic stained glass windows. It was one of the first places I went to in Roscrea (Tipperary, Ireland). I had gone to visit John's family for the first time and he took me there for tea...at the time it wasn't Italian but still lovely and yummy...we called it the Restaurant of the Shaking Table because John in his nervousness of seeing me again after a couple of years apart bounced his leg the whole time causing the table to vibrate and the milk to slosh and the tea to tremble...and before we went over this year someone had told us it had closed down. I was saddened...so many memories so much foodie love...but thankfully they were mistaken and we got to sneak in and have a few meals and coffees. Bronwyn the pasta girl loved it. Ella like wandering around pretending she was in a castle. And John and I just soaked in all the memories and pretended we were young again and there weren't two cute little girls calling us Mom and Dad.

MIA

Creepy face and hands Ella did in the nails!

She shrieked when she started pedalling and the bones appeared!

Bronwyn during the twister...

The rock wall...

B checks out the scales...

With much arm twisting (yeah right) the girls got me to eat at Seva
this is my yam fries, grilled veggie w/goat cheese wrap and

black bean chili...coupled with homemade lemonade...woo hoo!!

Ella figures out how the light switch works...

Our favorite store and mandatory stop...

B in a hurry to get inside the museum...

Ok so if you have been thinking I was MIA...you were ( I am sad to say) correct. My old laptop had decided to begin the dying process, screen first. The Irishman very kindly hooked it up to an old monitor we had, which occupies almost half the kitchen table I might add, so I could at least keep checking on all things important, you know email, facebook, and grocery ordering...but sitting out there on hard chairs in the cold was not really enticing...I did a lot of reading in my break!! So I missed being here, unable to load photos to the old laptop for fear of losing them I was quieted. And oh the things we have been up to and into since! But the biggest and most recent was Friday's visit to Ann Arbor. It was an all girl event as we left the Irishman home to use power tools and oddly get a sunburn on the back of his baldy little head... I was a little worried without his back up. I mean I had a Trader Joe's run to make and thinking with the ladies sometimes doesn't happen really well. Especially when you are trying to think of every single thing you might want from there for the next few months, we sadly do not have a store near us and it is a 2 hr. event to get to that one! Plus, I have been in physical therapy for a bad shoulder...so this could have been a bad day out...but just when you doubt and think this will take a miracle, you realize that your kids are really awesome! I mean truly I couldn't have hoped for anything to have been any better. And you had better be sitting down for this one...Ella LISTENED the first time she was told not the 8th! It was a miraculous outing! And Bronwyn mommy-ed me the whole day. She carried things and checked on me and fretted...she is way older than me for sure! I am also amazed that given a choice my ladies pick the greatest places to eat! They were insistent we eat at Seva (a vegetarian restaurant) and that we get something to eat later at Whole Foods... and to think they were torn between Seva and Jersualem Gardens (middle eastern food)...I love that about them!! We also got a visit to Peaceable Kingdom in which has great little toys and good Kitsch...we also got a quick trip to ultra cool Crazy Wisdom for a candle and incense restock! We had a couple of hours play time at the museum before exhaustion began to hit but the lovelies handled my shopping extravaganza really well. And of course I followed through with the Whole Foods feeding that I had promised. We had such a great day. And in the car on the way home they were completely slappy but in a giggly way...I love giggles and gibberish!

I made it!!!!!!!

After a horrid week of "friends" telling me all my failings in the world and diagnosing me as helplessly depressed and filling my email with ick...I made it to the end of my week!!!!!!!! And so much better it looks, as I will head out with these two who will help me celebrate (a day early) my Birthday! I get to go to Genji my favorite local establishment! And I think there may be a few more stops before they return me home so I can get ready for an early call tomorrow!!

Tomorrow (my birthday and thanksgiving to the rest of you) I head off to NYC with two lovely ladies who are ready to bring me out of my funk and explore and eat!! So the week took a much better turn. This is probably helped by my Birthday gift from my Scotch coach!!

Hope everyone has a very Happy Thanksgiving! I will I am sure! I will miss Mom's green beans and fruit salad but somehow I think I will get by ok! Don't lose sight that there are so many things to be grateful for! Mine this week are all the wonderful people (you know who you are) that took time to lift me up and remind me some people do not matter as much as others...Thank you folks!!!

Greens, Greens, and uh Greens!!

Top photo is today's CSA bounty...I am going to get good at my greens before this is over! Today we got collards, chard, spinach, leaf lettuce, kohlrabi, a few pea pods, and some broccoli. I have been surfing through veg web and have found some really great sounding recipes for the chard. One is Tuscan beans and chard which really sounds good to me today, not entirely sure why but it really does. (Plus I have a bean loving friend coming later so she might enjoy some with me!) I have finally felt like cooking and playing in the kitchen again. That used to be one of my favorite things to do on a "weekend" but for some reason I let work beat it out of me! Yesterday, I made loaves of lemon tea bread, two loaves of hand made white bread, a loaf of cottage dill bread (machine) I also did some lemony herb chicken some cheesy potatoes and some garlic and herb wheat noodles. I was on a lemon kick yesterday and was really happy to be herbing everything up with stuff from my yard!!! So here are two bread recipes for those interested...

Lemon Tea Bread

3/4 cup milk 1 Tblsp fine chopped lemon balm

1 tblsp fine chopped lemon thyme

1 tblsp grated lemon peel

2 cups flour 1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt 6 tblsp butter

1 cup sugar (I used 1/2 cup and it is lovely) 2 eggs

Cream butter and sugar and eggs and beat well.

Add dry ingredients and milk. Mix till just blended

Bake at 350 for 50 min.

Glaze: To the juice of 2 fresh lemons (I only had one and it was plenty) mix in just enough confectioners sugar to make a glaze consistency Pour over tea bread while it is still hot from oven.

Cottage Dill Bread

Put these in your machine according to your machine directions

1/2 cup lukewarm water

3/4 cup cottage cheese

1 tsp. salt

2 tblsp sugar

2 tblsp marg. or butter softened

3 1/4 cup flour

1 tblsp dry milk (if I do not have I leave this out with no noticeable effects)

1 tblsp dry minced onion

1 tblsp dill seed ( I used several sprigs of fresh dill from the garden)

1 1/4 tsp yeast

Use Setting 2

Other photos, 2nd is Artist Gwen Frostic's shop/printers. They print her hand carved designs onto all sorts of things and are so inexpensive! The shop itself is something to behold and has many trails behind! All her work was based in nature and is really nice. They maintain a website where you can order online and read about her!

3rd is the Pt. Betsie lighthouse. We were able to tour it and walk to the top for a fantastic view of Lake Michigan. Interesting stories and nice work in progress on it's restoration and very inexpensive to tour I think it was 6 dollars for two adults and two children. The beach nearby is great for rock hounds!!!

The last is our self portrait at Frankfort with another smaller lighthouse in the background. Another fantastic beach on Lake Michigan. More photos of the trip to come we still haven't gotten to show you the Drive in!!!

Home!!!!!!!!

Well we survived the attack on Chicago!! I truly felt like every other word out of my mouth was "Stop" "Don't touch that" "Come here"or the big one "Be quiet you are too loud!!" Sigh...but all in all it was good for the ladies to see their are cultures other than their own and that there is life outside our little town. Both of them were amazed by all the languages being spoken around them and Bronwyn even spent part of breakfast one morning counting in Spanish to a lovely couple from Argentina!! I must say the ladies adapted to the perks of city life quickly and Bronwyn even hailed a cab to dinner one evening. Ella even went up to the cue and opened the door to get in!! So truly public transport was their favorite part of the trip (they may say otherwise but I know the truth).

It was so very nice to sleep in my own bed last night! I am not good at sleeping in hotels! I just never seem to completely settle in and our hotel Hotel 71 in Chicago was lovely... I liked eating food that had seen vegetables... And the girls are hot to garden this year...so we spent today making room for our plantlings to poke through the still cold ground, although today felt balmy at 47 degrees!!

I am not thrilled to have plans before I go back to happyland (work). My friend is putting on a belly dance workshop and to be supportive to her and all her hard work I need to get myself up and presentable and go take a few classes before I have to come home and get ready for work! Ugh! Any other Saturday it would not seem so bad but I just want to wander around my house for a bit...lounge...relax...find my stuff for work!! Oh well sacrifices!!

Photos: top very very good oatmeal at corner cafe we ate at every morning. It had everything in it!!! Second: John and B at the Shedd Aquarium, she is looking so so big!! Third: Dolphin show Fourth: We did manage a carriage rid with Reebok the horse!