Odds and Ends

First of all, our China-traveling man has returned, safe and sound, and a couple days early. Woo-hoo!! We manage just fine when he has to travel for work, but we're always so glad to have him home again!
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Here's a funny view of summertime life at our house. Lily is whirling and dancing to a CD of Irish music that she's really been enjoying lately. Often, when there's dancin' to be done, the boys join in too. But in THIS picture, it's kind of funny to see that Lily's dancing, Henry's spinning as fast as he can on the sit-n-spin, and Gregory is pegging people with foam darts.
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Gregory demonstrates one of the many ways that a swing can be enjoyed. This picture was taken several days ago, and we haven't seen the sunshine since. It's been cool, overcast, and intermittently rainy. Happily, the kids don't mind riding bikes in a drizzle, and they delight in zipping through puddles.


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Next, Henry is demonstrating that he's a genuine Mears Kid ... lining his toy cars up in rows. I've heard that lining things up in rows is a red flag for certain developmental delays or abnormalities, but at OUR house, it's just an indication that the hospital didn't accidentally give us the wrong baby.
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Here, Henry models his FAVORITE new diaper, which he actually filched from his tiny baby cousin Miles. I was making diapers for Miles, and Henry started adamantly insisting that this particular diaper was "NOT Baby Miles's diaper. It for Henry! It babyHenry's diaper!" He carried it around and tried many times to make me agree with him that it wasn't for Miles. He's funny at times like that ... he says, "You say 'OK Henry. I do that.'" I consulted with Auntie Margaret about this particular safety-green diaper, and she agreed that one of Henry's other diapers would be a fine substitute for Miles, who has not yet decided on a favorite diaper. I guess you can't fault him on his taste. That is one eye-catching, stylish piece of underwear.
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And last, but not least. Does anyone like cherry tomatoes? Because ... um ... we have some. Actually, that particular pile was turned into tomato puree this afternoon, and canned along with many pints of diced full-size tomatoes. But if you want cherry tomatoes, just wait a couple days, and we can set you up with waaaaaaaaaaay more of them than you can eat.

Gregory Dances Up a Storm

Remember this high-flying guy? Gregory got happy feet again today, and he really wanted me to take pictures of him dancing. Here you go! Pictures of a leaping, twisting, bouncing man-in-motion, to brighten your day. Strangely, not ten minutes after I finished taking these pictures, the owner of Lily's old ballet studio called up to ask if Gregory was ready to come study with her yet. She had seen his lively spark and interest in dancing way back when Lily was taking ballet, but at that time he was too wiggly/disruptive to endure a whole 1-hour weekly lesson. I am not entirely sure he is less wiggly these days, but maybe we'll give it a try.

Gregory takes up photography

Gregory went on a photography spree around the house last evening. He has improved dramatically since his last photo shoot, about 18 months back. Here is a collection of some of his best shots. First, we have a close-up of a real-lemon bottle.

Next, a really pretty portrait of Lily (who was posing and cooperating with the photographer).

And a shot of Henry squeezing half a lime over his nearly-empty plate of pad thai.

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The all-important family computer (complete with messy desk).

Next we have a very nice view of the decorative drawer pulls in the kitchen.

Mommy's beloved coffee pot.

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Cute shot of cute baby brother.

A short-person's view of the ocean of apple butter.

Henry's lime, clutched in pad-thai-covered baby hands.

A Spicy, Saucy, Corny Post About Last Week

Busy, busy, busy! It's late summer "on the farm", and we're doing a lot of canning and preserving as the garden and fruit trees start sharing generously with us. Tuesday was Salsa Day. Dad and I made 22 pints of wonderful homegrown salsa, using baskets and bags full of just-picked tomatoes, peppers, and tomatilloes. Hooray for homemade salsa!






Wednesday was Apple Butter Day, starting bright and early with picking two full bushels of Whitney crabapples from Mom and Dad's front yard tree. Then the kids amused themselves admirably ALL DAY LONG while the grownups cut, trimmed, pared, cooked, stirred, seasoned, jarred, and processed no fewer than 40 jars (of various sizes) of apple butter. It is SO YUMMY!














That brings us to Thursday, which was CORN DAY (it deserves all caps, trust me). We picked, shucked, blanched, cut kernels, bagged and froze 4 full wheelbarrows of sweet corn throughout one long, very hardworking day. Aunt Betty and Uncle Duane came to help, which is the only reason we got so much done. By the end of the day, we had put away 147 bags (2 cups each) of sweet corn kernels. If you check the math on that, it amounts to ... brace yourself ... 18.375 GALLONS of corn kernels. It tastes so good. We're going to enjoy that all winter long! If you're wondering why anyone would ever put away that much corn, consider that we haven't had a good sweet corn harvest for 3 years due to weather, illness, events, and new babies that have interfered with the successful growing and tending of the corn.




Yes, that is an entire trash barrel full of empty corn cobs. We processed A LOT of corn. Dad estimated it was over 800 cobs. In two previous pictures, Lily and Henry are gleefully helping to flatten out the vacuum-sealed bags of corn. That way they stack better in the freezer, take up less space, and defrost/cook faster when it's time to use them. But most importantly, it's FUN to pound on those bags to flatten them!

Summery Days

What nice days we've been having lately! It's been nice and warm ( high 70s or low 80s), and we've had nothing we HAD to go and do. Therefore, there's been a lot of high-quality summertime activity around here. At right, you can see an example of lounging. The splash pool was filled by a huge rain storm, and then warmed up to bath temp by the sun. Henry lounged around so peacefully for such a long time. It was wonderful!
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Next, we have Lily playing with flowers (surprise!). She was picking up the fallen blooms from that nice yellow snapdragon. And Henry being the Cuter Scooter in just his diaper (and why not?).
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And here's that cute little Gregory chalking at the edge of the garage. Not shown in this post (because the subjects are always moving at blur-inducing speeds) is the amazing and thrilling amount of bike-riding the two big kids have been doing. Lily has finally found the fun in bike-riding, and now there are two little bikes whizzzzzzzing all over the place at almost all times! As you can see, playing so hard wears some people out.

Our Fun Weekend

Annika and Ava came to visit this past weekend (they even brought their parents!!). Though I don't have many pictures to prove it, we had a lot of fun!!! The kids played and played and played and played. Plus, we went blueberry picking and to the Grand Rapids Public Museum. AND, we celebrated Annika's 6th birthday. We were truly too busy having fun to remember to snap the photos!
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These photos are of the kids enjoying some of the hands-on exhibits in the museum. On the left, they are all investigating a dollhouse in the dolls exhibit. On the right, Annika and Lily check out an absurdly tall bicycle. None of us could figure out how anyone would get going on a bike like that, or stop riding once you were finished. Or what would happen if you lost your balance and tipped over.

For Oliver

This candle is for Oliver Mastin, who died this past Monday, August 3. He was two days shy of his first birthday, and he died from a disease called SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy). Oliver's parents asked folks to participate in the effort to raise awareness of SMA; read their request here: Ollie's_Tale. Oliver was a beautiful, cheery, cherished, beloved boy, and we are all terribly sad for Neil and Bekka Mastin's loss.

Labor of Love, and Cornucopia

Someone dear to me loves apple pie (that would be Ray). My dad pointed out that one of the very old, wild-ish apple trees on the property had apples mostly ready for pie-making. Dad and I picked a whole bunch of them, and I set to work turning them into pie. As you can see, they were a FAIR BIT of work. I'm extremely happy to tell you that all those spots on them were NOT worm holes, but just some surface blemish. In all those apples, I only found one worm! But still, they're tiny little apples, and it took a lot of peeling and coring to accumulate enough apple slices to fill up a pie. But as you can see, I did it! There is even a little heart on top of the pie because ... I *heart* Ray.

And I'd like to point out that ANYONE can have a "horn of plenty". Bah. Old news. You know you're really living the good life when you have the DUMP TRUCK OF PLENTY. These are just a few things I found this evening in the garden. Today is the first day we've had tomatoes (plural) to harvest. Up to now, it's been one at a time, not even every day.

Have you ever seen such a thing?

Those are not berries or cherries... they are tomatoes. Tiny little tomatoes! They have a full, tangy tomato-ey taste, but they're weeeeeeeeee. Kinda cute, huh?

How does your garden grow?

It grows like absolutely, completely and totally CRAZY!! No, it's not an optical illusion; those tomatoes are WAY taller than Lily. They are covered in masses of green tomatoes, with the first few just starting to change color. If we have some warm weather in the next couple weeks, we will be floating in an ocean of tomatoes. Hooray!!

And does anyone like squash and pumpkins? Because we've got "a few". Currently, Lily's school science class pumpkin plant is in the lead for biggest pumpkin - it's already bigger than a basketball, and still green.

Lily's pumpkin plant is just a nifty little surprise/success story. In science class at school, in about April, the kids put some seeds into wet paper towels, and then in clear plastic bags to observe what happened to them as they sprouted. After that unit was over, they took home their "baggie gardens" with seeds which had sprawling roots sprouted, but no leaves. We didn't know what would happen if we put them into some soil, but we tried it. The bean seeds were a flop; we got strange stems with no leaves, and soon they just withered and died. But Lily's pumpkin seed grew extremely vigorously into a gorgeous plant ... that was MUCH too big, MUCH too early in the season. It's hard to keep squash plants indoors for very long; they really want room to spread out, as well as lots and lots of sunshine. Her plant was seriously overgrown and starting to die by the time the weather was warm enough to put it outside. But we got it out there and watered and fertilized it, and hoped for the best ... and now, it's the biggest plant out there by a wide margin, and has the biggest pumpkin by an even wider margin. And those big, tall marigolds you see mingling in there with the pumpkin plants? Those are Lily's science fair plants. Marigolds are great for pumpkin patches, since they discourage certain harmful insects.