Summer in the City

We have been in a state of limbo as we are bearing down on our closing date and so far have not seen the inside of the house we have lined up to rent. The tenants were supposed to be out by the end of June but they decided to squat in the house and now we are waiting for their court date for eviction. We are hoping they will leave before it comes to that though. Because of all of this its been hard to pack to move because we don't know when we are moving. This has left me feeling lost and bored as I am not sure what to do with myself in the daytime. We are about 60 percent packed and I can't work on a projects like I normally would as most things I need are harder to get to now. Every day I ask my husband to stalk the rental house to see if there has been any change.  I have been rendering lard and canning bone broth in an effort to clean out our freezer so I can defrost it. Still these types of kitchen jobs don't leave me feeling very productive or prepared.

We have been having a good time lately hanging out with friends. I feel sad as for so long it seemed that I had a hard time making friends here but now that we are preparing to leave I realize that there are a lot of people that I care about and that I want to stay connected too. I have this bucket list hanging on the fridge that I call our Summer curriculum. On it are things like, catch a tadpole, roll down a grassy hill, cook smores, or take a walk in the dark and look at the stars. We have been ticking things off in a consistent sort of way and it makes me feel like I at least have something to focus on.

I combed my littlest girls hair and for some reason it would stay up in a goofy way. She liked it and called it her unicorn hair. The toys are limited these days as most are packed into the garage. I should start taking notes of the things they ask for to keep tabs on what we really use and need. I am nervous we are not going to have enough furniture in our rental house.  At the same time also nervous we will loose the skills we have learned from our small house. how to be mostly minimalist, keeping only what we love or need. I have concerned visions in my head of rooms overflowing with toys as we won't feel so pressured to purge due to lack of space.

I am glad that it is summer though, as summer is easy to be in limbo. I don't feel guilty for falling off the wagon of my expectations for rhythm and routine. The freedom to wake each day and take it as it comes has been nice. I have been enjoying feeling like I can decide to do fun things last minute. I don't know why I didn't feel that way before but something about selling this house has helped me to let go.

The Last Few Weeks of Winter

March is for playing indoors while it rains or is windy outside. We often look out the window and think it looks nice then go out to find it is still quite chilly. 

Right now, once a month we paint. I think we really could do it more, and next year when my oldest gets to be in first grade we will try to do it once a week. For now though, this is about all I can muster.

It is a fun activity that lasts about 10 minutes and I spend 3 times that cleaning and setting up.

We are just experiencing color on paper. I have to remind them to wash their brushes before they dip in color. I feel productive when we complete this activity.

We have all these fun toys. In my head they seem super useful and beautiful. I made these gauze sheets for them to use for tents a couple of years ago and they often forget they have them. 

Sometimes I think that I should pass them on to other kids who would use them. Then my kids pull them out and surprise me by setting them up and really making a day of it. I thought this was fun as they really got into the house play in their fort. 

And yes my boy is still in his jammies. Sometimes its not worth fighting him. I guess he just likes his comfort. 

Cozy late winter days. 

Winter Days

We have kept ourselves busy and winter is rushing by. We are warming up and the garden is on our minds. Already we are starting to spend hours on end outside and the kids are getting dirty again and needing a bath every single night. We have spent a good part of our winter this year pairing down what we own. We live in a very small house compared to what other people might think appropriate for a family of five. I am coming to understand that I can be happier in my home if I have less stuff. Not only does it give me more time as I don't have to maintain so much but my closets look clean and I feel less overwhelmed. I have been contemplating becoming a minimalist. When I really look at the way we live and have lived we are almost there anyway. We are not big consumers and we don't spend much money on possessions. We rarely buy new clothing for ourselves and if I need to shop for clothes I have taken to the local thrift store because they have some amazing stuff (we can thank the limited number of second hand stores in our wealthy neighborhoods for that). I bought most of our Christmas gifts second hand if they were not homemade and we don't own much stuff in order to survive our close quarters. Recently I have found a couple of articles to be very inspiring to me and they got me started on making hard decisions about some of our possessions in the past few weeks. You can see them here and here. I guess all that I need to do now is except that I am going to be a minimalist and move on forward with it.

As I scroll through these pictures I can see that we already have very carefully chosen the items in our home and most of what is left after my de-cluttering makes my heart sing. You can see that my kids have stayed busy and they are often creating beautiful messes. I took some photos of my kids room. They all share it and today I went through and put all of their clothes into that one dresser. My boy's clothes were in cubes in the small closet and I thought I would have to get rid of a lot to fit it all into one drawer per child. I was pleasantly surprised when almost everything fit with room to spare.

I love it when my kids are helpers and I am trying to relax and just let them do what they want to help. I was busy with something else in the house and they got interested in dishes. When I came into the kitchen I found them on chairs and in their underpants washing away. They did a good job and they soaked the floor.

My boy is into pirates from time to time and he recently decided he was going to build a pirate ship. He rounded up the supplies and cut some of it out. He made the mast all by himself and tried to make the ship. When he found it very hard for his little hands and muscles to cut the cardboard he came to me and asked me to help. He told me what shapes to cut and where to put the tape. Honestly I had no idea what I was building I just followed his requests and when it was all done I was a little shocked to see the perfectly formed pirate ship. He had visualized the ship in space and converted it into two dimensions in his head in order to give me the instructions to cut and tape, and put it into 3D. What a guy.

Birthday Bonanza

On the heels of the New Year we have another birthday. This time it was the youngest turning 3. She is learning all about the birthday spirit from her older sister, who has been obsessed with her own birthday from the time she was 2. 

After all the Holiday extravaganzas we played it simple with some cupcakes. She requested them and normally I would have gone to the fancy cupcake shop down the street but I was feeling tired so I just bought some from the grocery store. 

The birthday table is always fascinating. This girl is going to be my gift spoiler for sure. She already knew what was in some of the presents because she went snooping in my room and found them early. She also snuck into some of them on the table and peeked into the wrapping. She just can't contain her excitement I guess. 

We went to Target to spend some gift cards that Auntie sent us. The girls were so excited to pick out what they wanted. They picked out these boats, which were not in the toy section but in the home decor section. At first I was happy, then surprised, then unsure as I didn't know if they would be safe for kids as toys. After a close inspection I decided that they were built well enough ans let them get them.

She wanted macaroni and cheese for her birthday but I was still in lazy mode after the Holidays so we just went out to a kid friendly restaurant and had fun. I didn't even offer her the party option as I just wanted it to be an easy birthday. She had a great time and got just what she wanted to eat. 

Cotton candy birthday fun. 

Back home for the most important part of the day...gifts, cupcakes, and ice cream

I got her a dolly too. She needed a soft stuffed doll as her sister has two. 

Her special time before the cake. Her birthday story is the shortest as she is the youngest. 

It can get serious around here fast.

What a honey.

She got some wonderful gifts. 

We had a very happy 3rd birthday for our wild child. She is silly, spunky, animated, intense, loud, wiggly, and smart with an amazing memory. Happy Birthday to my littlest one!

In The Smokey Sun of Summer

When we were gone on our trip the air in the city we live started to fill with smoke from all of the forest fires. We also had a real dust storm come through like the dust bowl days. When we got back the air was thick with smoke and our windows were covered with dust. The past few summers now have always brought smoke for a week or so making outdoor activities less than pleasant but this year was very, very, bad. The forest fires in our state burned and we were put in a state of emergency. 

We became confined indoors for weeks and weeks.

We looked out the windows at the red sky and wished we could go outside and play.

So instead we busied ourselves with fun things to do inside, like sewing a kindergarten apron (for me). I didn't have a pattern so I made it up. I might try again next summer if the smoke is bad again.

I like to bring flowers inside as much as I am able to all spring, summer, and fall. For the month of August it was almost the only thing I had linking me to the summer sun. 

During it all my garden kept going strong. I would duck outside once a day to feed the chickens and collect the produce. We caned a lot of pickles and I learned a lot about cucumbers.

I got more tomatoes than ever this year. The ones you see here are from a German heirloom that produced more than I could keep up with. Many fell to the earth and rotted. The ones I could process made strange pink salsas and garden sauce. 

We lacto fermented.

These flowers grow 8 feet tall out in my garden. Every one asks me what they are, but I don't know. I should figure it out and commit it to my garden encyclopedia memory.  I love them until they topple over with weight from the blooms. They might make me invest in some sort of garden system to hold them up. 

I painted a chalkboard wall earlier in the summer. I love how I can just dump my brain on there and not have to remember things, or search for them in my planner. It looked better in the house than we expected too. When I was trying to decide if I should do it I looked at all my options. I finally went with the quart of premixed black chalkboard paint you can get at any large big box store for around ten dollars. In the end I decided I wanted to go with traditional black as any other color might make my kids think that chalk was for all the walls. We keep it simple around here.

Play is hard work.

The red sky. It was interesting and overwhelming at the same time. We ended up putting our storm windows on in August to try to keep some of the smoke out. It was like there was no escaping it. Of course it was the worst outside but we could smell it in the house too. It was nice to go to places like the mall, but then it made it hard to come home. For the first time I found myself wishing I lived in a newer home with less cracks and leaks to let the smoke in.

I collected and dried a lot of Calendula. I made salves from my herbs in the garden and crafted a bunch of things for year two of Kindergarten for my boy (because with Waldorf you do two years). We stayed busy and dreamed of rain. I wanted the cool weather of fall to come and wash the smoke away. Lets hope for a wet winter and a better summer next year so we can go outside and play.