Kona's favorite shady spot

Not just a man's best friend...

Kindergarten!

Lots of excitement around out our house this morning. Sela got up early and started working on Rollin's back-to-school breakfast. Rollin was running around the house like a bucking bronco ready to burst out of his holding cage. There was no anxiety or nerves for this kid, just pure enthusiasm for a new adventure.


Sela's Diner delivers once again! The girls really had fun making Rollin feel special.


Waiting for the bus.

We all took him to the bus, and rushed to the school to watch him get off. I wondered how the girls would do, knowing they would see all their friends as well. They did okay. Some of their friends thought they were staying and got very excited, so I think that was a little bit hard for Sela. I felt a little twinge of sadness for sure.


Rollin was still excited after the quick bus ride!

Nina, on the other hand, couldn't care less, which is actually so surprising to me. I think she is really ready to learn and last year, though positive on so many levels, was pretty chaotic in the classroom. I am also quickly realizing just how much she is looking forward to having one-on-one time. I know we have a lot of together time. We've stayed home a lot this summer, actually. We play together, work together, and see A LOT Of each other. However, I'm pretty busy running the household, cleaning, cooking, reading, organizing, planning, playing tennis, taking care of Evan, etc, etc. So homeschool this year will provide the environment where I have to sit down and put everything else aside and focus on teaching my girls. This will be different and I really think this is what little Nina is craving right now.


They wait forever against the wall while the parents wave and take pictures. Rollin was oblivious for awhile, talking and playing with Bryson, ready to get on with it, or so I thought. I was talking to some friends when I heard a little "Bye, Mommy!" I turned around and saw Rollin waving and then they were off.

Bye, Mommy!

After we left the school, we went to a friend's house to visit with other families who are also homeschooling. I enjoyed chatting with them and listening to their thoughts. Then I took the girls to get their pedicures. There were actually tons of people there so there wasn't even time for me to get one and still get back to the bus to meet Rollin at 12:30. Now I know where all the moms go on the first day of school! The girls were happy and whatever solemnness they/I may have felt in the morning quickly passed.

The bus was super late dropping off the boys and as soon as Rollin and his best little buddy, Bryson, got off, they headed straight to the blackberry bushes with barely so much as a nod to us. They must have been starving because they ate like they hadn't seen food in days!



Evan had a check-up this afternoon. Nina came with me. She is my little doctor in training. She always loved to accompany me to see my midwives. Dr. Candace asks a lot of questions and Nina so desperately wants Evan to do well, as if it is some kind of test that will determine his success in life. She re-phrases everything Candace tells him to do if he doesn't perform and tries to coax him along. She hid behind the table when he got one shot, even though he never even so much as whimpers. He didn't even turn his head from my phone to look at his leg. Dr. Candace has the touch, for sure! One funny moment was when Dr. Candace asked Evan if she was a girl or boy and he quickly replied "Horsee!" If you spend any time with Evan, you will quickly realize he is obsessed with horses. Obsessed. He could ride that stick pony for hours a day.

And that was our day. Family dinner together and our first attempt at an earlier bedtime. Tomorrow the girls have some good friends coming over for the afternoon and Sela gets to go to PE at school. Hooray!

Here we go!

We love our neighborhood school. We love the families, the kids have great friends, we have been happy with the teachers. But this past year, I started to entertain the idea of homeschooling...again. I talked to most of the people I know who homeschool, and then spent the summer studying up on the different approaches, curriculum options, etc. There are stacks of books all over the house, dozens of homeschool websites up on my computer, and online shopping carts with orders waiting to be placed. I have learned so much. So much that even if in the end we didn't homeschool, I would still incorporate much of what I learned into our life.

This week the kids received their teacher assignments, and the phone was ringing off the hook with friends checking who was in whose class. I started to feel a bit panicky. I felt a little bit of that excited adrenalin that comes with back to school. I started to watch the girls closer. I tried to listen to Sela as she spoke with her friends on the phone. I checked in with them over and over and over again to make sure this is what they wanted. They never wavered. Especially Nina. She is so excited. And she is my little social butterfly.

The decision came down to a few things. I desperately want freedom from the constraints of the school calendar. Winter is long in the Northwest, and I want to be able to get away. We want to spend more time in Kauai and I want my kids to see their cousins in Texas for more than just a week or two. I want to take field trips locally on a whim. I don't want homework to fill our evenings. And I am extremely excited about the academics, and the opportunities for hands-on learning. Oh my gosh, we are going to have so much fun learning together. I can hardly wait!! And this may be selfish, but I want to really "be" with my kids this year. The years are flying by and even if it's just for a year, I want to make it count. I know what's ahead when the kids are a couple years older, how busy it gets. I have many friends there already. So I'm stealing my kids back this year, and it's going to be great!

Nina wrote me three cards today telling me how much she loves me and how she is so thankful I am homeschooling her this year. On a day when I was feeling a bit overwhelmed and even melancholy about not seeing all my friends as much this year, I felt such a reassurance that this is worth it. I sat on the bed with the girls talking and laughing for over an hour this evening. We made plans. We laughed like crazy. We talked about getting our back to (home) school pedicures tomorrow. I told Sela that Rollin, who will be going to Kindergarten at Hollywood Hill, requested pancakes from "Sela's Diner" for his special first day meal. And then I tucked the girls in. Our official start date for homeschool is September 6th.

Stay tuned!

Tennis Animals

I'm playing catch-up a bit...

Sela and Nina are participating in the Jet League at Gold Creek this summer. They practice all week and then play other clubs on Fridays. Nina is working so hard at getting her serves down. She's still so tiny so it takes every ounce of strength. She gets discouraged about that sometimes, but she is very determined. She won her first service game a few weeks ago and she was so excited.

Sela also had a great week at the University of Washington tennis camp. She went with the Banks kids and Jack Messmer. What a fun group! I think this might become a tradition with these kids. Nina will go next year, but she definitely enjoyed the car rides. And that's all I'll say about that :)




Hunter and Sela getting ready for Around the World. I used to love that game!




Awards at the end of the week.

It's hard to take photos at tennis matches when they're playing. It never feels the time is right. The girls had a match today at Central Park. Sela did awesome in singles and Nina had a close doubles match.



goofball

This match killed me...it was the semi-finals in a tournament on Mercer Island. Sela played the best I've seen her play (by far), and came up short at the end. She held it together till we got to the car, and then the tears flowed. It's one thing to get blown out, but close matches are really tough losses to handle, especially when you're young. I knew she was going to be crushed. I've been there. I was really so proud of her and her opponent did end up winning the tournament. I tried to just let her be sad for awhile, and then we talked about how lucky she is to have a body that even allows her to play tennis and run around, and how when you've done your best, there is nothing more you can do. Just move on. Then we went to Red Mango, and all was right in the world again.

I don't know about this watching tennis stuff though...it's tough.


Nina and her friend Audrey.

I've actually managed to play quite a bit of tennis myself this summer. Some days even more than once. I'm subbing in this group that has matches at 6:30am. It's such a good feeling to come out at 8 having played an hour and a half already. I also play late at night which works out great. Both hardly interfere with anything we have going on and on both ends the kids are usually in bed. I did get totally screwed by the USTA board and my rating was changed to a 5.0. This means I pretty much won't be able to play USTA League play from here on out since there are so few 5.0 players around here, and none at our club. I may petition to try and drop down to a 4.5, but who knows, I don't totally understand the procedure for determining ratings.  I do know there is still plenty of great competition at 4.5 and that's where I'd like to be. We'll see.

Summer Star

We find at least one bunny den every summer. The kids peek at the bunnies and have even held them, but we've never tried to keep them. The mother always comes back and the bunnies have all grown and left their nests. This year, however, Kona found a bunny den. Baby bunnies carry no scent to protect them from predators, but Kona must have seen movement or something. The kids were playing in Rollin's "workshop" beneath the trees and all of the sudden there was all sorts of commotion. The kids were screaming, Kona was scrambling, and Rollin came running across the yard cupping something in his hand. Kona ended up eating one of the babies, one escaped, and Rollin caught the third. Their nest was gone. The kids took great care of  "Summer Star" for 6 days. We did lots and lots of research on how to get this bunny strong enough to release into the wild. Sela woke at 4am to her alarm to feed. We talked to the pet store and they sent us home with some puppy milk to supplement. The bunny continued to grow, drink milk, eat alfalfa, and once we felt confident that he was at least 31/2 weeks old (the age we learned that cottontails are completely weaned and ready to head out on their own), the girls took him to an empty field with lots of brush and released him. They were a little sad, but more happy  because the the only place for a wild bunny is back in the wild, and they know this.






Sela and her friend, Lauren, feeding the bunny. They both love bunnies. Lauren came over several days in a row and they pretended they were college students working as animal rescue people. This was part of their job.


This is the field where the girls let Summer Star go.

Our other bunnies, Spotty and Oreo, are getting lots of playtime too. We even took them to a concert in the park a few weeks ago...on leashes. Oreo is a little temperamental, but Spotty is just the best, most docile bunny ever.

sunday morning

In the summertime, Sundays are the only day the kids are all clean all at once. And to get them to this state requires some pretty long soaking in the tub! I love the dirty little feet and faces all week long,  but it's also very nice to see them all cleaned up once in awhile.










A few minutes after church, we're back to this!

a garden bridal shower

We had a bridal shower here last week for Ali Fox. Lisa and Carrie (Ali's sister) put this shower together in record time and it turned out beautifully. Lisa's kitchen is being redone so we had the shower over here. I didn't get any really great pictures because we were pretty busy, but it was a beautiful day and all the details were gorgeous and the food delicious, of course. Sela, Nina, and Sam had fun being servers. My only contribution was the setting but Lisa and Carrie (and Dave!) hit a home-run with this lovely party!





Ali and her grandmother. Both adorable.




My favorite new (to me) food idea from their menu was the tiny grilled cheeses on skewers over the tomato soup. Isn't that cute?! I stole this picture from Carrie because  these were gone in a flash!


The sister-in-law made this garland. It was darling and only took her 15 hours ;)





Extra soda is one of the perks for the "staff."


I guess the servers are off duty.

Huckleberry Buckle

There is a big huckleberry bush right outside the boys' window. As I was putting Evan down for a nap last week I noticed it was loaded with little red berries. We decided it might be fun to see what we could make with the huckleberries. Sela and I got out a few cookbooks and looked for huckleberry recipes. We settled on Huckleberry Buckle from Rustic Fruit Desserts, one of my absolute favorite cookbooks, especially when using less common fruits. The recipe called for 2 1/2 cups of berries, which is a lot. It takes a long time to pick that many berries because they are so tiny.  I sent the kids out with little measuring cups to fill. On the first day we got about 3/4 cup, the second day Nina found another tree in the very back of our property and got 1 full cup, and Rollin and Sela finished us off this weekend with the final 3/4 cup. This was truly a combined effort which made it all the sweeter when we finally got to enjoy our dessert together on Sunday evening. We worked on this thing from Tuesday-Sunday! And man was it worth it. Such a special dessert. Beautiful to look at, moist, slightly tart with just enough sweetness.





I wish I would have taken a picture of the inside...it looked like polka-dotted bread! 

This dessert was so good, we decided it might be worth going on a hike and doing a little more foraging to round up some more berries!

Asian Chicken Salad

Here is the recipe for the salad I posted last week. 



Asian Chicken Salad 
(www.nourishedkitchen.com)

4 cups shredded cooked chicken (I used a Rotisserie chicken)
• 3 ribs celery, sliced thin
• 1/2 lb shredded napa cabbage (I used very thinly sliced red and green cabbage)
• 1/4 lb snow peas, trimmed and sliced thin
• 4 medium carrots, scraped and cut into matchsticks
• 1 bunch scallions, sliced thin
• 6 loosely packed cups mixed salad greens
• 2 tablespoons sesame seeds, optional
• ginger vinaigrette, as needed

Toss cooked chicken, sliced celery, shredded
cabbage, snow peas, carrots and scallions
together and plate over mixed salad greens.
Dress with sesame seeds and ginger vinaigrette.

Orange-Ginger Vinaigrette
juice of 1 orange
• 1 shallot, peeled and finely minced
• 1 1-inch knob ginger, peeled and grated
• 1 tbsp raw honey
• 1/2 cup unrefined extra virgin olive oil

*This is the recipe as written. I didn't serve mine on lettuce, just because I ran out of time to gather and wash the lettuce.  I also added diced yellow and red peppers and mandarin oranges. Obviously you can use whatever fresh veggies you like. I also used less chicken than the recipe called for and I may have added a little rice vinegar to the dressing to give it more of a kick. 

Peas & Potatoes

The garden is humming along keeping us quite busy. This is one of the reasons I haven't been blogging lately. That and the weather is pretty amazing right now. Definitely not the time to be sitting in front of a computer. In fact, I've sat down several times to blog and actually have a pretty big post in progress, but then I think of how I should really be picking the raspberries or attending to any number of other things beckoning my attention outside . There are definitely not enough hours in the day right now. But that's okay. However, I know the grandmothers are getting restless and anxious for some photos of their little lovelies, so here I sit on a gorgeous 70 degree sunny and breezy afternoon attempting a brief update.

A few weeks ago we had a big party with the leadership team from Zig's group. I was talking to someone about some of our gardening successes and failures (the party was outside so people were wandering around the garden). I mentioned how much work it was to grow and clean baby spinach and how it wasn't really worth it when you can get a huge, washed organic bag for $3 at Costco. Kale on the other hand, is a different story. I love that stuff and it stays so clean. Anyway, this man mentioned potatoes and said for how cheap they are, it seems like a waste to grow them as well. Probably true, but we do plant potatoes for several reasons. First, you can't get the variety at the grocery store that you can plant. Second, every time we have store bought potatoes sprout, Zig just buries them in the garden box where the potatoes go and they grow new potatoes. And finally, harvesting the potatoes is like a huge treasure hunt for the kids. Rollin spent a couple hours outside with Zig one night digging the potatoes up. He had a ball. So yea for potatoes!


Found another one!




Thank goodness we have a powerful hose to clean these guys up.

Proud of his spuds

Potato Leek Soup made with potatoes, garlic, and chives from the garden.


snap peas and snow peas







Asian Chicken Salad w/ snap peas from the garden (the kids loved this one)

Last Saturday, Zig was doing some work on the computer in his office and I was sitting on our bed reading. Rollin came in asked Zig if he would come outside with him. I knew Zig was trying to crank an important email out, so I was preparing myself to join him if Zig couldn't at that moment. Then Zig asked Rollin what he wanted to do and he replied, "Dad, I just want to walk around the yard with you and look at plants and stuff."  It was the sweetest little interchange. And then I heard Zig get up from his chair and off they went. Rollin loves his Dad so much and I really love seeing them enjoying many of the same things. He looks up to Zig so much.