why, why, why??

First the peppermint Joe Joe's and now this. Trader Joe's, listen up, you are KILLING me!

a little like childbirth

Enduring the fickle weather during April/May in the Northwest is similar to how I feel about the final moments of childbirth. Early this week, the weather was flat out depressing. When I was near tears after Zig brought me home a salad from Chipotle and they forgot to include the salad dressing, and I got into bed at 7:30 without eating a bite, I knew I just might be reaching my limit. I'm not usually that dramatic, at least I hope not! On Wednesday, I really felt like, I cannot take this another day. I am getting on a plane to I don't care where as long as it's sunny. If Zig ever wanted to convince me to move, Wednesday would have been the day.

But then came Thursday. The sun beamed in my window as I was waking up. I think I said a prayer of gratitude right there half asleep under the covers. The skies were clear. I loaded up the jogging stroller and Rollin's bike and as soon as we dropped the girls off at the bus, we headed to the trail. We rode to Bothell, a fun route Lisa and I took last week. I promised Rollin we could feed the ducks, stop by Hillcrest bakery which is right off the trail in downtown Bothell, and hit the park on our way back. We had a great time and I all but forgot about how miserable I had felt on Wednesday. I was living in paradise again. The air was sweetly scented with all the fragrant lilacs, the birds were singing, the baby ducks and geese are waddling all over the place, and people were cheerful.

Friday was more of the same. So warm that Rollin and Nina put their bathing suits on to have a water balloon fight. Evan played in the dirt and practiced navigating the stairs on the patio. We sat in the rocker together and picked all sorts of bouquets for the house. The windows were open and we enjoyed coconut sorbet for a snack and fish tacos for dinner.

So the sunny weather is much like a new baby. Just when I thought I couldn't take it anymore, my miracle arrived. I can handle so much more when the sun is shining. And my feelings of despair on Wednesday are all but forgotten. Stop the moving truck. Spring is back from its weeklong vacation and not a moment too soon!

Happy Saturday

from Nina (and Evan)

little yogis

Eric finished the little workout room in the barn recently and ever since the kids have been dying to do "exercises." Here they are trying some yoga moves. They really love all the animal names for the poses. Everytime a new pose comes up, they all say it looks so easy and then they struggle to hold the pose. It's pretty fun to watch them try so hard though.












Namaste

Green Papaya Salad with Shrimp

I order a Green Papaya Salad everytime we eat at a Thai restaurant and I always eat every last bite. I LOVE this salad. I tried to re-create this dish once before and it was a miserable failure, but this time I found a loose recipe to follow, and with some tweaking it turned out very pretty close to the salad I love. The trick is finding an unripe green papaya. The one I found could have been crunchier and greener (less ripe), but it's all they had at PCC so I went ahead.



Here is the recipe I used from Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express:

Cook a dozen or so shrimp in oil. Meanwhile, combine a tablespoon of brown sugar, juice of a lime, garlic clove, a tablespoon of fish or soy sauce, one half teaspoon chile flakes and some peeled ginger in a blender or food processor and puree. Grate a peeled and seeded green papaya (not one the size of a football) and two carrots. Toss with shrimp (I used baby shrimp), sliced fresh tomatoes and dressing. Season to taste, and top with chopped peanuts. Yum!

Evan is ONE!

What a year! And a fast one at that! We love our little Evan like crazy and we totally celebrate the day this precious child joined our family! He has brought so much joy that just thinking about it makes my heart swell. He is so adored.

I debated having a bunch of friends over to celebrate his birthday, but at the end opted for just our little family. And it was wonderful. We took turns going around the table saying the things we love about Evan and everyone kept wanting another turn and another turn. So much to love. One of the things everyone loves is the way Evan starts bobbing his head everytime we turn the music on in the kitchen. Sometimes he gets going so much I'm afraid he might pull something. But I guess that doesn't happen to babies, thankfully!

For dinner we had a new soup recipe I tried several weeks ago that I remember Evan loving...Sengalese Peanut Soup. It's incredible and I will post the recipe this week. Evan ate so much I was afraid he might not be interested in cake. Sela helped make his little cake. We made a Tropical Carrot Cake. Oh man. Let's not kid ourselves, what could possibly be better than a spicy carrot cake with coconut, pineapple, macadamia nuts and ginger?! We put little pieces of champagne mangoes all around Evan's cake...he loves mangos just like his mama. I had to wrap the leftover cake up fast after Zig and I ate ours or we would have both eaten ourselves into a sugar coma!

There are way too many pictures, but I wanted to include a bunch for the grandmas so they can feel like they were almost here.

Happy 1st Birthday, Evan! Sweet baby, you are so dear to us.


a quick shot on the way out the door for church


wow, this sure looks like A LOT of children!



Such a happy day!

Sengalese Peanut Soup..that's kale and sweet potatoes in there. yum.

hmm, what the heck is this?



Evan ate lots of the mangos, a bit of frosting and then started a game of throwing the cake on the floor.

oh boy do these girls love their baby brother!

smoochies..I can never have enough!



all done.


lucky dog

Jay Jay

Sela found a baby Blue Jay yesterday in the brush struggling to fly. She rescued "Jay Jay" and last night their babysitter, Kiwi, helped them find some worms to feed him. Oh boy did they get a kick out of having the little bird open wide for a worm! He actually flew up on the table in the sunroom this morning so he seems to be getting stronger. They're going to move him to the greenhouse and hopefully release him tonight or tomorrow.