green the church

while aug was at gymnastics camp today (9-12) i went to a local farm and bought 10 lbs of sour cherries, pitted, cleaned, and right off the truck from michigan. it isn't local per se but it is local-esque. plus for some reason i feel the best cherries come from michigan, though i have no proof of such inkling. im going to make preserves, a pie, and dry some because if you have been on my friends list for any length of time you will know i greatly desire to pretty much live off of dried cherries.

i keep trying new bread recipes. the first one was only white in the recipe so i did half whole wheat/half white AP flour and it was excellent but a little dense. maybe next time ill just add more yeast? i've heard good things about dough enhancers. bandwagon here i come! today im trying out a rolled oat bread that if successful ill add to my food blog. ill update this with photos when it is done.

and now for some random photos


two of my three favorite people


beet on the brat. beet on the brat. beet on the brat with a baseball bat.


at the fountains at easton


we love our brains


good morning olive


& last but certainly not least michelle and i went to sharon woods park to see the new memorial bench there in beatrix's name. it was heavy times

getting radical

augustine started gymnastics camp today. it goes 3 hours per day for one week. the other option was 45 minutes once per week for 3 months or something like that. i dont think olive would really be interested in sitting still for 45 minutes watching auggie do fun stuff so the 3 hour option, wherein you drop the child off and come back when they are done, is the route we're going. today he had a good time though just from what i saw, about 30 minutes of it before i left, i was underwhelmed with their staff. it was clear that all of the other kids (all girls ill add, what the heck?) had taken some sort of class before this one. augustine had not. so when the teacher said "okay everybody let's get into a straddle position and stretch!" and all the other kids popped down with their legs out while auggie looked bemused i think she should have shown him what she was talking about. nope. she just went on stretching with the group while auggie looked back and forth from the girls around him to me and to the instructor then back to me as if to say "what the heck did you sign me up for!?" whatever. maybe im reading into it too much (yes) but i hate seeing my child confused or feeling left out. the class was not above him developmentally it was just little stuff like that that the instructor could have remedied but instead ignored. maybe she thought he was just being defiant?

gosh i have so much to say about the topic of gardening but no time to sit and hash out REAL entries and thoughts these days. just imagine me researching and reading as much as i can in every second of my free time. i cannot condense is all but how about i just do some quick snippets and links? that's pretty much all i can muster.

- Vertical Gardens - 20x the yield, 5% the water

- I want to go to the 2008 Community Garden Conference (i also am thinking of hitting up the conservatory for grant money for the justice gardens. they are really really into this sort of thing)

- Freedom Gardens - I got lost in this site all day in between typing reports. some eye candy from them:




the following video is from an offshoot of the above freedom gardens (path to freedom)


oh yeah...

- Food Shed Planet is trying to sign up 2,000,000 home gardens in their database by the end of this year. it's exciting to see it grow!

- Why yes, I would like to move in here

dork

on a scale of 1-10 how much of a dork did i feel like, sitting alone at the park and no one showed up for the garden club meeting: 6

im not trying to bust anyone/call anyone out but dang it i felt emo afterward. i had a pity party with some ice cream and it's all good now.

party like a rock star!

sweet sassy molassy i'm home alone! david took the kids to go see horton hears a who at the dollar movie theatre. i'm going to party like a rock star! oh wait, i mean bake muffins for church tomorrow & transcribe some reports. yeah that...

just another day at the office

spiritualized - ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space

trials & Words

my friend chris had a very strong Word for david and i last week. for those not familiar with what a "Word" is basically, at least in this context, i am meaning that the person received a sentence or single word it could even be a mental picture that they feel God is telling them to tell or describe to a specific person or persons. in this case the Word was "...that the trials you guys are experiencing in life right now are bringing about a permanent sort of change that will benefit your marriage and parenthood forever."

and this is where i burst into tears

i have hesitated to speak about these trials for fear that somehow these trials would somehow be translated to you the reader, including our families and close friends who would no doubt want to speak with us which would lead to too many redundantly reassuring conversations, that the trials were in our marriage. it is difficult to explain (and chris hit this on the head very well in our back and forth emails about his Word so i will just a copy/paste here) that "sometimes life just caves in on us and we happen to be married at the time that the cave-in happens. You know? Life is hard sometimes and being married can bring a tension into our marriages that isn't ABOUT a marriage, its about the life-season. The tension is SHARED because we are married. This is where the opportunity for God to grow us and establish us comes in."

the trials are rooted in both of us being knee deep in the busiest life patch we've had in a long time, if not forever, especially him who is working as much as he can at Roll, going to school full time, planning awesomefest, being a full time parent and husband, and squeezing it upwards of 120 miles per week on his bicycle. at the same time i am working part time from home doing medical transcription, full time as a stay at home mom, maintaining a large garden, trying to get a garden club/justice garden initiative going, and then i thought it would be a good idea to join the church baking team. somewhere in there we have stretched ourselves to a nearly transparent level of thinness when it comes to quality time, instead we find ourselves trading off children or household duties or quiet time so one or the other can study/write/research/garden/cook/sleep. somehow i have added several feet of height with all the hats i'm wearing right now & i know david feels the same way.

the second part of the trial (not pretending there are only two though, just two main ones) is the inescapable intensity of raising two small children. it is just loud and chaotic and we are always going going going, and struggling with them at nap time, playing referee to their quarrels (and there are many!) and waking up too early, and yes certainly feeling blessed, delighted, and grateful for their presence but yes. stretched. they are the song of my heart, the apples of my eye but dang it we've had one date in over a year without them! (excluding funerals, memorials, and weddings) this is our own doing in many ways, we are homebodies. still, i like to complain about it though.

why yes this post does need all capital letters

the rabid x-files fan says: OH MY GOSH DAVID DUCHOVNY HAS A BLOG!


eta: so does JORGE GARCIA!! (hurley from Lost)





two best shows of all time. period.

4th of july wrap up

this weekend was kind of a bust. david had to work the entire weekend, including a longer-than-typical day on the actual 4th of july. like, what kind of boss does that? truly his boss cannot be blamed. really it was easton's fault for being opened and because their store is there, they also must be opened. rules schmules. as i was getting out of the bath and vigorously drying my hair with a towel i felt a huge POP and pulled a muscle in my neck. today was actually the first day since then that i've been able to turn my head fully to the right side. so anyways, i grilled a steak and went about my business as if it were any other day. when he came home we did end up going down the street to the clintonville fireworks. sadly we were unable to ride the bikes because well... i had no range in my neck and it just wouldn't have been safe. miraculously in the crowd of at least 1000 we found our friends heather and emily! olive was firmly planted in my arms sniffling for the first few minutes of the fireworks but was shortly thereafter standing and pointing at the explosions exclaiming "BOO!" (boom) with a happy grin. i was proud, though not surprised, at her bravery. augustine sat sucking his thumb clinging to david, in his typical timid fashion.

sunday morning at around 6 am augustine woke up screaming and screaming. apparently he had his first ear infection. so i gave him some tylenol for the pain and did a round of garlic/olive oil/mullein flower extract in his ear. david laid with him until he fell asleep and later he and olive went to church and i stayed home with him.

i realized sunday how little one on one time i spend with him and that made me very sad. for two years he was my only child and i spent all day/every day with him and we both loved it. not that i am ripping on olive, for surely she is the littlest of cupcakes in my heart, but it's just that i seriously lack time with just augustine. so he and i laid in my bed and had breakfast "a picnic in mommy's bed! YAH!", read books, pretended we were robots, and hid under the covers from david and olive when they came home. today i took him for a ride in the bike trailer just the two of us, when david got home from school. olive hated being left out, which made me feel guilty. oh the life of a mother. it's a trip

tomorrow our neighbors are moving and augustine is really sad. he plays together with their son every day. when i asked andrew to sit next to auggie to take a photo he said "come here little $hit". he is 4. O__o this is a stark contrast to my other neighbor jakin who, at 2 1/2 last week accepted jesus.









see that in his hand? i call that "the great distractor" because it glows in the dark and makes all kinds of cool lights when you hit the button. that way i'd have the excuse of "you already have something like that right there" when he asked for 389473874 light up toys that they sell at fireworks displays. it only half worked.






reading books in bed on sunday morning


a serious interview.

&



im posting this mostly just to prove that i exist in the photo archives of our fambly