Green(ish) Challenge 3 Wrap-up

It's Monday. And I have used the drier about twice as much as I did last week, so I am counting this one as a fail-- not an epic fail, just not a success. 12 loads of laundry, 5 of them dried in the drier. The problems that I had mostly focused around the weather, which was a bit unpredictable this week-- one day I was overly cautious, another day I wasn't cautious enough.

I'll keep hanging it up whenever the weather permits-- I find laundry much less burdensome if I can spread it out, so I try to do that whenever I can. This was a bad week for laundry... a bad week for exercise (no idea why) and a sad week in general (the loss of our friend). So we'll start over again. I think we have a decent routine going, and that's half the battle.

This week we are getting ready for a trip to the beach, when we will have our fourth green challenge of the summer... bringing our cloth diapers along on vacation.We're going to use mostly hybrid diapers-- here's hoping this goes well.

Things that did go well this weekend:
We picked strawberries with some friends and had a lovely time. All the berries have been eaten, frozen, or cooked. Rachel and I made no-sugar freezer jam from this recipe and it came out really well, if you like tart jam (we do-- and Rachel ate it up with no comments about it not being sweet enough).  I saw in the comments that some added small volumes of sugar or honey to this to sweeten it just a bit. It set really well (much better than other freezer jams I have made-- the extra pectin and the slow cooling seem to help).  I also made this cake for the 4th-- we haven't tried it yet but it looks really good. I was going to use blueberries and strawberries together but didn't get out the blueberries and therefore forgot them.

They look good from this angle. You can't see just how many under-ripe berries came home with us. But they were tasty anyway!

Kale Chips: prepared with Adam. Note to self, do not let Adam add the salt next time.
Continued good use of CSA share, despite some menu changes (and my ILs had us over for dinner last night). We have eaten everything or will be eating it tonight (except for a few beets...which are going to my dad who is, frankly, way more fond of beets than any of us).

Eight Months of Beautiful Baby

It's about 7:30 in the morning and I have done a load of laundry and hung it on the line-- so we are off to a better start today. An extremely early start, thank you all children working together in tandem. I weeded a little, too. The big kids have read another chapter of Harry Potter. We're going to have a "blitz clean" and then head out to pick some strawberries-- yum.

Last night's dinner was a hit and made good use of our CSA share: honey-balsamic chicken with roasted carrots and onion, salad with roasted beets and a dab of goat cheese, and 5-minute bread.

Today marks 8 months of being a family of five. Sam is in his glory-- he is round and happy and the most mellow little guy I have ever known.

He did a sort of creeping army crawl maneuver this morning and got himself about 4" forward.

backwards scooching, soon to be a thing of the past.

He doesn't much care for solid foods, but will eat a few bites before devoting himself to trying to get a hold of the spoon. He likes to gnaw on a big piece of whatever we are having.

 

He is a thoughtful little guy. He tries really hard to do some simple signs, like all done and more. He's not quite there yet.

He ran his first 10K.... well, actually that was me, he just watched.

Milestones omitted from baby book: first time upending cat's water dish over own head.

His favorite game: the big kids ask if he wants his foot kissed, and he holds it out and giggles. We have to make regular stops when we are out to kiss his feet. Not that we spoil our baby or anything.

He is basically the baby of awesome. Where did all that time go?

Who will win, me or the laundry? And the garden, early July.

I love this rose. I would never have picked it out myself (I worry about killing anything as fragile as a hybrid rose-- my benign neglect plus the Maine winter is not a good combination for something delicate), but it was already in our garden when we moved here. And despite me just cutting back dead growth, doing some erratic weeding and tossing some compost in its direction periodically-- it has done pretty well.

This has not been a banner week for our clothesline challenge. Wednesday I waited for the thunderstorms that never came. Yesterday I got the laundry started very early... and it got rained on. It dried, but it took all day and now I am behind. Our family just got home from the funeral of a friend from church, and everyone is sad and the sky looks alternately sunny and ominous. The drier is going right now and I am okay with that.

Finishing our CSA share is going well this week. The taco salad we made last night was delicious and the kids ate large handfuls of kale chips. We make them like Smitten Kitchen. It really makes me unreasonably happy to watch them eat a dark leafy green.

The garden is mostly looking good. This week we staked the tomatoes and fertilized the pepper plants. They look a little better but are still small. The green basil is doing well but the purple basil is not. All of the tomatoes have flowers and the yellow cherry tomatoes have set fruit.

None of the pictures I took of the little sunflowers and zinnias came out well, but they are up and thriving. The little cilantro plants are also up, and I need to seed another row of those, since they don't last very long. In a few weeks it will be time to plant seeds for the fall garden-- this will be the first time we've tried that.

The back of the yard does really well with benign neglect.

Reading with Rachel, and a little challenge fail.

this is what the weather channel has on the agenda for today.  

Sam is on antibiotics for an ear infection. I'll just leave it at that. I have to wash diapers and I need them dry quickly, so I am going to have to cheat and use the drier. I was hoping to wash a small load of diapers yesterday to avoid this, but we had an unexpected errand in the afternoon and I just couldn't manage it. Oh well. Our real goal here is to make small changes, slowly, that we can maintain, and we're doing decently with that. 

I did do a big combined load with clothes for everyone yesterday, though, and I think taking that kind of approach is helpful with this challenge. I will say that I am the world's least pickiest laundry-doer (well, other than a college student). I sort by temp only and other than my freaky wash routine for the diapers, I am laid back about what goes with what.

multitasker like mama.

Rachel loves to read, and in the last year or so I have really been enjoying reading old favorites, as well as new books with her. I love reading children's and young adult lit, and have checked out a number of my favorites to "pre-read" to see if Rachel might be ready for them. Sometimes she is; sometimes not. These are some of the books we've enjoyed reading and talking about recently.

A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quintet)
One of my all time favorite books. I have been trying it with Rachel for about a year now. She was capable of reading it, but just not interested until a few months ago, when one of the librarians at the BPL suggested it for a book club. We haven't tried the next one yet, but maybe this summer. "It was a little scary."

The Cabinet of Wonders: The Kronos Chronicles: Book I (Kronos Chronicles Trilogy)
A gift from Rachel's godmother that we both loved. This is a fascinating story-- now we are on to Book 2. Petra is a strong heroine and I love her tin spider.

Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself
Lots of discussion about Hitler after reading this one."There was a lot of drama in this one, with Sally making up stories that she thought were true but turned out not to be. Sally is very good at thinking up games to play with her friends."

Cherry Ames Flight Nurse: Book 5 (Bk. 5)
I loved these books when I was a little girl-- we used to check them out from the library when we were visiting my grandmother. Rachel is admittedly not as interested in these as I am, but she has been reading the ones I picked up at the library booksale, as well as one that used to belong to her great-aunt. Like Nancy Drew only she's a cute nurse who has adventures, solves mysteries, and goes out on tame dates with nice boys. Cruise Nurse was fun too.

The Capture (Guardians of Ga'hoole, Book 1)
Another godmother gift. Excellent owl story. "It's very adventurous, and Soren is very courageous. I love the songs."