the twins

 When Rollin and Nina are getting along they like to be called "the twins." Last Sunday morning, they were working on a sticker book before church and when I looked at them, it dawned on me that they really do look like twins! They are the closest in age at 2yrs & 3 months apart. They weigh the same. Nina is a little bit taller right now, but Rollin is catching up! I'm glad I got these pictures of "the twins," because shortly after, a sticker war erupted and they de-twinned each other for the day. Love at home.

proud of himself

Just make sure you don't have your volume up too high...Evan is trying so hard to talk these days, and as you will see, he is his own biggest fan. Thanks for the laughs tonight, little buddy.  I love you!

rhubarb...again

I took another stab at the enormous rhubarb supply today and made some muffins for a mid-afternoon snack. They were fantastic. I love that they weren't too sweet and they weren't low fat. The only changes I made were using all spelt flour and I threw in a few strawberries because I found a couple more big bags in the freezer!  Our strawberry patch looks promising right now...lots of little flowers. We're keeping our fingers crossed for another huge crop this summer. Strawberries are the gift that keeps giving. We've been using them all year. No one will eat store bought jam anymore!



One stalk down, dozens more to go!

a little spring feast

As I was driving the carpool on Tuesday, I heard on NPR that the first Copper River Salmon of the season had arrived on an Alaska Airlines flight. The first 45 lb salmon went to several local chefs and they all prepared the salmon their signature way. My mouth was watering listening to this little foodie discussion about how best to serve the fish, and I have been thinking of the salmon for the past four days. Copper River Salmon is so special because it has more fat and oil because of the difficult swim up the Copper River, or something like that. I just know it tastes incredible. Anyway, Zig, lucky sucker, had what he described as one of his "best restaurant meals ever" at place called Bis on Main this week. Usually the only comments he makes about restaurant food is that he hates it, even at great restaurants. But of course this week he had the Copper River salmon. He beat me to it.  He began describing how amazing it was to me on Thursday evening and then I think he started to feel bad as he looked at the stove and saw a few sad little tortellini still left  in the pot. It had been one of those busy days, and the tortellini meal is always a last resort. I do not love pasta of any sort, but the kids do.

Anyway, today I had such a nice day. I cleaned out the refrigerator which is strangely immensely satisfying. Then I headed out to get some salmon assuming it had to have hit the stores by now. I started dreaming up a spring feast and was so excited to find asparagus, cherries, snap peas, and all sorts of spring goodies. I filled that newly emptied fridge right back up!

Zig and Rollin harvested the rhubarb while I was gone. They hauled wheel barrels full of the leaves to the compost and left me with a nice HUGE basket of rhubarb stalks.


Do you see what I see?

And a rhubarb dance...


There were no pressing demands on my time today so I chopped up fruits and veggies and put them in containers so I can be prepared for another busy week. Veggies get eaten so much quicker when they are washed and ready to go. Not to mention speeding up the lunch making rush in the mornings. Man, I can't wait till summer!

Zig is leaving town early tomorrow for a meeting so we had our Sunday dinner tonight so we could enjoy it together...and so  I could show him that my salmon kicks Bis on Main's tail :)  I prepared the salmon very simply with a few spices, lemon, and butter. Rather than cooking the whole fish at once and risking some parts getting too done with others are still undercooked, I cut the fillet into squares, something we did in a cooking class once, and I was able to keep each piece moist and yummy. We also had roasted asparagus and broccolini (baby broccoli), Sea salt roasted Fingerling potatoes with rosemary, and a mixed green salad with cherries, walnuts and feta with a cherry balsamic vinaigrette. Sela made a strawberry rhubarb spelt crisp which was voted best yet by everyone. She took my suggestion and used 1/4 of the sugar the recipe called for and it was perfect and plenty sweet. Some recipes are so over the top on the sugar! We served it with Vanilla Bean Hemp Ice cream.  It's amazing how good such simply prepared food can taste when it's all in season and at the peak of freshness. The fish was like butter, creamy and divine.

 




I love having a buddy in the kitchen! Well, I always have a buddy, but this one helps rather than chucks dishes off the counter, rearranges cabinets, etc. Evan was napping, so we were enjoying listening to Adele and cooking in peace.


Nina is the dessert queen.

The rest of the day we just spent hanging out together. I am working on creating a big art wall above both girls beds. This has been in the works (mentally) for over a year. I have most of their favorite work framed, but recently they've been creating some really cool pieces so we're going to try and incorporate their new big silk paintings. I took Nina's most recent silk painting to be framed this evening. Sela helped me choose from the framing options. It is the cutest guinea pig painting ever. I will have to get a picture of it to post. Like her little hippo that stares at me every day in the kitchen, this guinea pig is all Nina and so bright and fun.

Sela played some more tennis and spent the rest of the afternoon writing a newsletter about our week and she printed copies for us. Very fun to see the events of the week through her eyes. I love how she enjoys writing for fun. She's always got something in the works. Looking forward to another low key day tomorrow, well, after I make it through church alone with the four kids that is!

sing it, nina!

This little nugget had her choir concert tonight.What could be more entertaining than first graders singing and dancing? Nina loves to sing and had been diligently practicing her songs during the week, but the real fun, it seems,  is running around the gym afterward, playing on the playground, and posing for pictures with friends.



The kids at Hollywood Hill, along with the Artist in Residence for the year, all helped create this mural. This is a teeny tiny part of it. Every child submitted pictures and the artist then incorporated their drawings into this mural that the kids also painted. The scale of this thing is huge. I volunteered on this project, and there were times, especially with the younger kids, that I wondered how all these pieces were going to come together (every single student had a hand in the creation of this thing) and when I saw it today I was stunned. It is so fun, colorful, and represents the seasons as well as the joys of childhood in such a creative way. An ugly side of a huge building facing the playground was transformed into a work of art. Beautiful!




 Nina and friends after the concert.

Nina and Maisy

the playground after party

I'm thinking if Sela can hang like this, she may not need that wrap she's been sporting from a fall she took in tennis.

Not to be outdone, here's Rollin.


Good job, Nina!

Snoqualmie Valley Trail

I relish the fact that we have managed to keep our Saturdays free for yet another year.From the conversations I've been having with many friends lately, we are definitely in the minority! Sela does have her tennis team late in the afternoon, but it's a five minute drive and I never have to bring the other kids. I really enjoy just watching her play for an hour. It's a treat for me. She is starting to enjoy whipping up on the boys..I love it!

We had a gorgeous day on Saturday, despite the forecast of rain. We did a poll to see what the kids wanted to do as a family and bike ride won out. Of course there were a couple dissenters, as usual, but they reluctantly came along. Sometimes just getting on the road is the hardest part. Everyone loves to bike, but sometimes it's hard to pull away from things the kids get going on at home, which is understandable.



Zig took us to the Snoqualmie Valley Trail, and there was some grumbling about that too. Nina was really lobbying to ride to a farmer's market...presumably because the possibility of getting treats exists. But we headed to Duvall and hopped on this beautiful trail that runs along the Snoqualmie River adjacent to miles and miles of beautiful farmland. It was lush and beautiful and just a perfect trail for kids. We saw one of our friends on the trail and he said you can follow this trail to Idaho or something crazy like that. We didn't make it that far, but we had a great time and it just felt so rejuvenating to be together out in the fresh air with the sun shining.


Nina playing on the rope swing at a park along the route.



There are many pit-stops with kids.

Zig made some friends.

Evan is not a big fan of the Burley trailer, so as soon as he gets a taste of freedom, he's off!

Snacks...again.

Unfortunately, as we finally got all the gear loaded and bikes on, we realized it was near lunchtime and we hadn't packed food. Rather than stopping somewhere and wasting time (and increasing the chances of hitting rain), we quickly emptied the refrigerator. We had quite the variety of snacks, and the cold pizza was in high demand. 





We ended at the park near the river. We all started back to the car to load up and somehow Nina and Rollin did not see us turn into the parking lot. Still not sure how, but they got confused and booked it back down the trail. Meanwhile, Zig and I assumed thought they were dinking around nearby and we didn't look for them for about 10 minutes. We had no idea they were headed the opposite direction and back down the trail. They must have been flying because we had to go find them and Zig and I were totally out of breath trying to catch them. I kept asking bikers and runners we were passing if they had seen two little kids on bikes and everyone commented on how fast these two little bandits were going. When we got to them, they had just turned around and said they had been praying because they knew they were lost and Nina was almost in tears. Probably a good lesson for them to experience what it feels like to be lost, and we had a nice long chat about what to do should that happen again.

We played some tennis later in the evening and called it a night. Everyone was nice and tired. That's my kind of  Saturday!

Mother's Day Weekend

Last weekend, the girls and I headed to the Seattle Art Museum to see the Nick Cave Exhibit.What a cool exhibit, especially for children. The materials and textures and color used to create this incredible art from recycled materials was really quite impressive. What a feast for the eyes! My only fear is that the girls might try to emulate Nick on a smaller scale and start saving all kinds of nicknacks and junk otherwise headed to the recycle bin or Goodwill! And I just finished some serious household purging...




Of course they liked this exhibit of a mouse standing on a man in his bed.

We couldn't take pictures of the Nick Cave works because it's the feature exhibition, but for anyone with kids in the Seattle area, it is so worth seeing!

Afterward, we just had to walk down to Pike Place Market for some donuts.


The week before Mother's Day, Sela would head to the computer using every spare minute she had. She would cover both she and the computer with a blanket and work on something very top secret. On Sunday evening, she gathered everyone in the living room and gave a little Mother's Day tribute and played her movie.  It included music, pictures, video, interviews. I was blown away. I do not know how to do what she did. We watched it several times and wow, what a labor of love! I was touched beyond words. 

Well, this photo is about ten seconds after we walked in the door from church, and the kids are in various stages of undress and silliness....Rollin somehow managed to do a complete outfit change...impressive. But these are the four little people who make this day so special for me. I don't need gifts or recognition on Mother's Day, although  I certainly appreciate all the sweet little homemade gifts created with such love and presented with so much excitement. Sela, Nina, Rollin, and Evan are my gifts today and every day.  I'm so happy to be sharing the best years of  my life with them. I love you little monkeys!!!

 And I'm so thankful for my own Mom who loves my kids like her own and is a constant support and example in my life. When I think of my mom, I think of her laugh.  I know she would drop everything at a moment's notice to help me or any of my siblings in any way, and she has many times. I know she would do anything in the world for me, and I've known that ever second of my 35 years on this earth. Now that is a mother worth celebrating. I love you, Mom!

And after this miserable Spring in Seattle, I'm truly regretting not joining you guys in Costa Rica this month. I think I'm beginning to mold here.

Cinco de Mayo

I'm a little late on this post, but we tried some new dishes for Cinco de Mayo. I love any excuse to make Mexican food and also to try new recipes, so even though the fact that the Mexicans defeated the French in a battle in the mid 1800s has little to do with us, I still like to celebrate. Plus, I practically grew up in Mexico, that should count for something. Zig was out of town this year on the 5th so it was just the kids and I (and Kona who scored on the leftovers). I made Chicken with Chilaquiles and Salsa Verde and also Jicama-Melon Salad. I had fun using my mandolin and making perfect little matchsticks out of the jicama. Those things make me so nervous even with the guard. I swear I'm going to slice a fingertip off one day! I thought about attempting homemade churros, but we had a busy day and I was lucky to get what I did on the table. The kids would have been so stoked had I made the churros, but I didn't, and luckily there's always next year!

  Chilaquiles



Jicama-Melon Salad (plus mangoes & minus the pomegranate seeds which are out of season but would have made the salad so pretty).

snacktime

Heidi Swanson's new cookbook, Super Natural Every Day, arrived a couple of weeks ago amidst a very jam packed string of days. I was dying to sit down with the cookbook and read every page. Her cookbooks are so beautiful and interesting. Finally I just quickly flipped through and the first recipe that caught my eye was the most unexpected combination. It was a coconut-kale salad, two of my favorite foods. I knew I had to make it right away, and it was so, so good. I've made it again and again. I don't even get to the adding the grains part...I just eat the roasted coconut/kale by the handfuls. It's a great snack!


chop kale..I used two varieties.

Get some unsweetened large flaked coconut

Toss together in a bowl with some tamari, sesame oil, and olive oil. (I used a little soyaki since I was out of sesame oil)

spread it out and roast at 350 until the coconut starts to brown and the kale begins to crisp.

From this point you can serve this mixed with a grain like farro or quinoa.....or not.

I got such a kick out of Evan gobbling this stuff up. Another lesson not to assume kids won't like certain foods!




Next up: white bean spread with rosemary and toasted almonds!

technically, it's spring

The rhubarb is growing like crazy. I think it would take living in the tundra to stop the rhubarb. We used the last of our strawberries from last spring and made a strawberry rhubarb crisp...definitely one of my favorites. Where other years we are eating outside by now, this year we are bundled up inside waiting for a real spring.I don't think we're going to have one, but I am going to eat like we are!