Ahead of the curve

One could say that our town is SUPER patriotic and can't wait for the actual 4th of July, or that June is just a cheaper month to book fireworks, bands and fire engines. Whatever the reason, this past weekend was the big 4th here in the burg. Once you get used to celebrating early it isn't a big deal. Plus, if you plan well like we did this year, you can do it twice! Friday night was the fireworks here in town. We are lucky enough to have a house where you can see them from the second story windows. You miss a little of the low action, but there are no bugs, no crowds and it is nice and cool. This was the first year Otto has been old enough to stay up. He was very excited. We started out in the library but soon moved to our bed for a better view. Eric has some audio of the whole experience I will get him to share. Otto didn't stop talking the whole time, he was so excited. He stayed up until 10 which is really late for him since he is normally asleep no later than 8:30. He did well staying up late, we could have done without him waking up at 5:55 the next morning. That wouldn't have been as bad if Mette hadn't been up from 2:30 until almost 5 talking in complete sentences, telling us the names of all the animals she knows, the sounds they make and demanding food. She drank and entire container of yogurt before we finally got her back to sleep. But on to more fun stuff... like the boy watching his first fireworks.

Saturday morning is the parade. It is a HUGE parade with every band anywhere close to here marching in it along with many, many local floats and cars. There is much candy thrown for the kids and limited shady spots so we, along with many others, go out on Friday night and put out chairs. For the past three years we have scored a nice spot in the shade very close to the house. I think one of the reasons Otto woke up so early was he was really excited to go to the parade. I can't blame him, it is a lot of fun.

Waiting for it all to begin....
Just the people watching before anything really started was fun for them.
With the closed off streets they get to run around which helps pass the time.
There are big old planes that fly over head and Mette was sure to point them out to everyone. Not that you could miss them, they are VERY loud.
Otto was concerned that if you didn't eat all the candy as it was thrown to you, it would go away. We managed to convince him he could take it home, but some had to be taste tested. Of course.
It took Mette a while to figure out that what people were throwing was candy, but once she did, she was ON it!

Sitting back relaxing waiting for more candy.

The girl and her daddy.

Too cute!

Daddy with the fancy shots.

Just because the day wasn't exciting enough, after naptime we went downtown for the opening of the new bookstore. It is in the building where my old restaurant was which is a bit sentimental for me I will admit. My restaurant was one of three businesses that made up what is now the first floor of the bookstore. It was originally one big hardware store and later made into three smaller units so this is actually taking the building back towards it's original purpose. Originally it did not have the large atrium, but it looks amazing. Complete with a skylight and natural light flooding the main level. You can also see the first escalator in our county in the back. Trust me, that has been the talk of the town for months! While anything that isn't the ever charming Bleu Plate Cafe will always be a bit sad, I have to admit that I couldn't have asked for it to turn into a cleaner brighter space. And one where people will be in and out of all day long. Much better this than a lawyer's office which can happen here on Market Street sadly. I have a lot more pictures of the bookstore but I am saving them for a separate post. They really did a great job of maintaining the integrity of what I consider to be one of the best buildings downtown. I realize I might be biased but it really is an anchor to the town. There were many mixed emotions about bringing a big (the bookstore is now run by Barnes and Noble) store to our independent downtown, but as a former small business owner, I think this will only do good things for the town. In fact just last night we went for a walk with the kids after dinner and it was so much fun to have a place that was open where we could browse around and kill some time. There were lots more people out walking than we normally see, lets hope this helps bring more traffic downtown.

Here is a photo of Mette and I standing where booth #6 was. For those who remember the Bleu Plate, you will know how important the booths were.
Added bonus, I am sporting a new dress made by me. Pretty cute huh!

YiaYia noodles *edited*

As I mentioned in my earlier post, we have been in need of some pick-me-ups around here lately. Last night for dinner I made yiayia noodles, local broccoli and salad with local greens. I would like to think that the local veggies did something to offset all the browned butter we ate with the noodles. For those who don't have Greek relatives, yiayia is Greek for grandmother and the noodles are the ultimate comfort food. They are as simple as it gets. Cook regular old spaghetti, brown a bunch of butter, grate a bunch of yiayia cheese, layer and enjoy. I used a Pyrex dish, make a layer of the noodles, cover them with butter, add some cheese and repeat. Make sure you get all the good brown bits with the butter, wouldn't want to waste them! As for yiayia cheese, it is sort of like Parmesan. It comes is a large softball sized ball and the label is in Greek which doesn't help me at all. I will find out more about it and report back. If I were going to suggest a substitute, I would recommend Percorino Romano, or Parm if that is what you have. The great thing about yiayia cheese is it doesn't melt which adds a bit of texture, but we are talking about butter, pasta and cheese, really you can't go wrong.

****So our real Yiayia has given me the scoop. The cheese is Mitzithra and the dish is called Makronada. So there you have it, now, what are you making for dinner?******

As you can see, this meal is a huge hit with all members of the family.








Otto had three helpings of broccoli and cauliflower in addition to a whole plate of noodles. I forgot to mention the local cauliflower because he ate all of it, including the pieces from my plate.





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Exhaustion

This week has been a long one here in the burg. Since last Friday we have been swimming in a sea of three year old angst. Being three is hard, much harder than two in my opinion. This is based solely on the actions and mood of a certain three year old I know. There has been much loss of sleep and many headaches over stress of "what to do" but we are moving forward. This is surely a phases and with luck a short one. At some point the children will be grown and gone and I will look back on these days as the glory days. At least that is what I am telling myself a lot lately.
Despite his "angry young man" syndrome as it has been called with previous members of my family, Otto has been acquiring some new skills. With all the watching of soccer in the house due to the World Cup, he has seen great improvement in his game. He is getting much better at dribbling and his throw-in's are looking great. He also is quite the goalie. Along with soccer there have been many games of catch and the boy can actually catch the ball!
Mette who is showing great athletic ability already can hit the ball with the bat and as soon as a ball is loose she goes running after it yelling "I got it, I got it!". Speaking of language, the girl is on fire. She strings words together like it is nothing,
I got it
I want it
I need it
I eat
I need go night night
I go outside too
I too (meaning anything you are doing, she wants to do it too)

There is a definite Mettecentric slant to all of her sentences, but that is understandable. She also really likes the *no more monkeys jumping on the bed* song and shakes her hand at you and says "no mo monkey" a lot. Her vocabulary is amazing. Pretty much she can get her point across and she picks up words like it is nothing.

So while it has been a long week, they are still continuing to be entertaining. I however am way behind on sleep, cooking, cleaning and sewing. Right now though sleep is going to trump all, I all off to fall asleep reading.

Good night, more stories later.


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Painting

Two weeks ago at Belinda's house we discovered that Mette loves to paint. I haven't done much painting with the kids at home because last time I tried all Mette wanted to do was eat the paint. Since learning she now actually paints and doesn't eat it I was anxious to try again at home. We were out of washable paint so this morning we walked downtown to the art store and stocked up on new paint and brushes. It was a huge hit!








Mette managed to get an equal amount of paint on her body and paper.





At 11:00 this morning she got a bath.





I just finished scrubbing the pink out of the tub.


The whole process was a lot of fun and I know we will be doing it a lot this summer. Next time i am going to fill up the baby pool first so I can just scrub her off in the pool.

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Pie

A few weeks ago we had some friends over for dinner and I made a lemon meringue pie for dessert. It was the best looking one I have ever made. Being that it was also very tasty, it didn't last long. Then Eric went away on business and I felt the need to rearrange all the furniture. Oh how I love rearranging! Because while very determined, I am not capable of moving couches up and down multiple flights of stairs, some help was enlisted. Rachel's kind husband Nathan came and helped with the grunt work. In return, I made him a lemon meringue pie. We were both quite happy with the deal.



Farm fresh eggs make for the most amazing lemon curd you could ever want. And help support my theory of pie actually being quite good for you. Protein, vitamin C etc....





I am pleased to say the couch from the living room is now upstairs in our new library(!!!) since Otto and Mette are now sharing a room. The couch we had in the playroom on the third floor is now in the living room. We need a rug for the library, and to finish unpacking all the books we have in boxes that have been patiently awaiting this day and I need to make pillow covers for the couch downstairs but it looks amazing.
The kids sharing a room is also going really well. Otto loves having her in his room and they are both sleeping as well as they were before. Success!


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proving she is part of the family

mette just looked at a Ferrari flag on a book and said "Ferrari". She fits in well.

CSA

I have many times mentioned how important good, local, organic food is to me. It is important for many reasons. First, it just tastes better, a lot better. Plus, I don't need fancy studies telling me that chemicals may not be good for me, my body, my growing children's bodies or the earth where they will live, and their children and so, and so on, to know that isn't a good idea. Then there is the economy factor, when we buy food directly from local farmers that money is going right back into our community, not into the pockets of Big Ag Business. And that makes me smile. Any dollar I can take from them, I will. I am sure that if we did some kind of crazy break down of the money we spend buying local organic food versus cheap food at the grocery store you would find that we are missing a vacation a year but when later in life we are not all sick with cancer, diabetes and countless other diseases we don't even know about yet I am sure we will all be glad at the choices we made. Don't get me wrong, I understand how privileged and lucky we are to be able to make the decision to buy organic. I am disgusted by how the food system works in this country, good healthy food should be a right, not a privilege and I am grateful for our situation every meal I make.

There are less expensive options to eating healthy and supporting local farmers and one is joining a CSA (more here). They usually require money upfront which can be hard for families, but I know the farmers we work with would be willing to take payments if it meant getting good food to more families. Small family farms understand, it's not they are raking in the dough, sadly. In addition more and more families are growing their own food. Including people in cities who are taking over abandoned lots and coming up with amazing drip systems to grow food in small spaces. (more awesomeness here) It is a long time coming but with any luck we will in our life time see a food revolution. It has to happen for the health of our country. People deserve better than what they are getting now.
Like I said, we try hard to support as many local avenues as possible and we have a small, emphasis on small as we have a tiny yard, garden ourselves. Mainly our garden is a way to teach the children how growing food works. A process every person should understand. For the past few years we have split two shares, equalling one full share, of two local CSA's. Mainly because choosing just ONE farm is hard. This year one of the farms we are getting food from is one I dealt with a lot when I had the restaurant and I have to say I am glad to be back with them again. Imagine in your mind every feel good, soft fuzzy mood that comes to mind when you picture a small organic farm and that is Tewksbury Grace Farm. This past monday they invited all the CSA members out for a meet and greet which was wonderful

You can see them here on YouTube:

Monday evening was a perfect summer night. Mette and Otto each took off exploring the rows of food. There were snow peas, shelling peas, black raspberries and strawberries all ripe for the picking which everyone enjoyed.

The barn in the background was built by the farmers in 2004 out of local reclaimed wood.

Mette making herself at home.

It was very hard to get Otto to stop picking the raspberries. I know what we will be doing a lot of later this summer when the berries are ripe at the cabin!

Hiking down to the shitake grove.

Notice I am holding three cups, they were also serving milkshakes made with homemade ice cream made with local raw milk and fresh berries. They were very tasty.

I found one!!

This is pretty much how I felt too.

I wish everyone ate this way.

I wish everyone cared as much about the people who grow their food as Johnny and Leah care about the food they grow for us.

I wish I could solve the world's problems.

For now I will work hard on teaching my children how important all of this is and supporting the men, women and children who work hard to keep us healthy and strong.

Mette's turn

She has yet to discover the water.





Until now. We weren't sure if she was going to like it.


That was silly.


Bring it on.


Making new friends.





Addicted to summer water fun.





As you can see, it was a wonderful weekend. Sunday we got on the road early and hit IKEA for some good Scandinavia fun. The small people were fairly good on way home and seemed happy to be home.
Eric and I had a particularly romantic night with a large white cat who was so happy we were home he settled himself between us in the bed and commanded control of all covers and the ability to roll over. At one point we all three had our heads on pillows and Schmelig was stretched out clear past my knees.
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More!

After nap time we hit the cupcake store to get some sugar to burn off at the park. Yum!


Are you surprised my kids found the water?


The ever brave and fun aunt Shannon.





A very happy boy contemplating his next move.










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