Bobby's Sunday Summary (On Monday)

Sorry this is a bit late.  We are on vacation starting last Friday and I didn't really think anyone would mind too much if it were a day late.  This one will also be a bit of a media heavy one.  This is because Alice has been having all kinds of fun learning new things and playing with her cousin.  She went swimming, played with blocks, and had a box race.  Expect more soon.



[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2008/BoxRace.flv[/flv]

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2008/FirstBuildingBlocks.flv[/flv]

When two is easier than one...

Alice's cousin Will came over to play for a few hours this afternoon. Alice followed him around and tried to play with EXACTLY the same thing he was playing with at all times, but Will was content to move on to another toy every time. Alice relentlessly pursues this little boy and tries to do everything he does. It's her M.O. for Will. It gets her to try new things. This time, she climbed up into our big squishy chair all by herself just to sit next to him (that's no small effort!).

They played together in the backyard for an hour with very little input from me. Very little. I had some delightfully personal time to video chat with Rachel. That friend-time was especially important because I wasn't able to attend much of Enrichment Night tonight with my ward due to frantically finishing some Family History Center stuff before we leave tomorrow morning. Speaking of which, I should probably go to bed instead of posting to the blog...will 6 hours of sleep be enough for 9 hours of car-plane-car time with the babe?

Ha ha haaaaaaaaaaa! Not even close. It's a good thing I'm going on vacation right afterwards :)

CSA share June 24th

I think I'll give up trying to take pictures of each share. With the Family History Center thing going on and work picking up and a large trip out of town looming in the extremely near future, I just haven't managed to pull out the camera.

1 pint gooseberries (new to me! pretty sour.)

1/2 pint sour cherries (just threw them in the pile with the others)

1/4# salad mix

12" branch of lemon balm (how the HECK do I use this?!)

12" branch of oregano (is it heresy to dry it before I use it??)

2 Walla Walla onions

I'm not entirely sure what I'll be doing with all of this before Friday morning when we leave. I may dehydrate the herbs and onions. Probably eat the gooseberries fresh.

Cherry pickin' Take 2

I went cherry-pickin' again this morning and it was TONS better. I went with a friend. I knew (better) where I was going. There were more ripe berries than before. So, after a pleasant and cool morning talking family and politics and all sorts of things, I had a pile of pie cherries to take home. Well worth the effort.

Later, as I was putting are not-so-snazzy-but-certainly-appreciated cherry stoner to use, Alice was stuffing her mouth full of sour cherries. She started by taking one or two from the bowl of newly pitted cherries, but I would empty it every so often into a quart jar and she'd have to wait for me to pit more. It didn't take much of this to convince her she should take all she could while she could. A whole fistful of cherries started making its way to her cherry-stained face, but I redirected it to the quart jar. She liked the new game and actually started "helping" me fill jars.

"One for me, one for the jar"

Alice was also eager to "help" me prepare dinner. I gave her the task of scooping some spices out of the jar and aiming for the pot. Even with me to stabilize her hands, not one of her attempts actually seasoned the pot. The table, the floor, her shirt, and her shoes all smell delightful.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week was a busy one.  We took a lot of pictures and movies too so this entry has more pictures and movies than words.  Last Sunday was Father’s Day.  Susan and Alice got me some grasshopper cookies.  I was feeling rather generous and I let Alice have some while we watched a movie, which is a very rare occurrence for Alice.

You can see the chocolate on her face.

After that Susan took this fun movie of a horsy ride.

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2008/Horsy_Ride.flv[/flv]

And she played with a ball

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2008/Playing_Ball.flv[/flv]

We also got a little swimming pool this week from a friend in our ward.

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2008/Swimming5.flv[/flv]

We also canned some pie cherries and pickled beets.

Cherry pickin'

Picking cherries is no fun. Pitting them is no fun. Canning them is sweaty, meticulous work. I drove 90 minutes round trip, picked almost 4 pounds of cherries in 30 minutes, pitted and canned them in 2 hours and ended up with only 4 half-filled pints of pie cherries.  I'm mad and embarrassed that so much effort went in to so little finished product, but then I'm almost giddy looking at those few jars of beautifully canned cherries.

I'm not entirely convinced it's worth it, but I'm not giving up just yet. I just don't believe in quitting after one try. Monday morning, I give it another shot. This time I'll have a friend with me. This time I'll know where to pick. This time I'll look for a ladder.

 

 

CSA share June 17th

Sorry this is sooooooo late getting posted. I was a little disappointed in this week's share so there was very little enthusiasm to post it. Our spring this year has been extremely wet. It has delayed planting, stunted growth, and/or slaughtered untold numbers of early crops that must be replanted.
And the strawberries are still sour.

1 pint strawberries

1 scant pint snap peas

1/4# salad mix

Fun in St. Louis

We were in St. Louis last weekend. Bobby was working at the temple while Alice and I got to play around town. We visited a park where Alice wistfully watched a father and son throw a tennis ball back and forth. She kept shouting, "Ba, ba, ba!" as if calling it's name would summon the precious toy to her outstretched hands.

We walked along the paved trail where she found many treasures:

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2008/NatureWalk.flv[/flv]

Then I sat her down for a little photo shoot. This one is Bobby's favorite:

We found a grocery store and I decided to pick up some tasty surprises for Father's Day. Alice likes pushing the grocery cart. You'd think it would take longer to shop when a 1-year-old is in charge of the cart, but she's actually a very enthusiastic motor. She just doesn't stop. And she doesn't steer. I jerkily maneuver her enthusiasm up and down the aisles. No time to look at new products or ponder the value of impulse buys. List items only! She actually makes grocery shopping more efficient. Here's a clip:

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2008/CartPusher.flv[/flv]

Bobby's Sunday Summary (by Susan)

Hi, this is Susan. It's Father's Day today, so Bobby will be digesting his 5 pieces of pie (the men in our ward receive an "all you can possibly consider eating, and more" pie fest every Father's Day) while I write his Sunday Summary.

First, this week was a little exciting. Alice got a hands-on tour of the Yahoo! facility where Bobby works. She saw Bobby's huge computer screen and signed "baby", which I had interpreted at the time to mean she wanted to watch the Signing Time movie that has lots of babies in it...thinking back, though, I wonder if she perceived the special relationship between Bobby and his technology.

His recent project at work has been quite fun. He's even doing research/reading at home for it. Bobby has also been spending a lot of time backing up our hard drive onto our off-site server. It's caused a few headaches, but it's finally done and we're happy about it.

Bobby and I have been spending more quality time together in the evenings ever since we discovered Hulu. We've been watching Sliders, The Pretender, and periodically venturing into other curiosities like The Incredible Hulk and Remington Steele. The TV shows themselves are terrible, so we have fun poking at plots, dialog, special effects, hairdos, etc.. Sometimes the show actually spurs a serious conversation about important issues. Sometimes.

Alice loves playing with Bobby. She has a special kind of squeal/scream that she only makes in the presence of her father. She'll give him hugs and kisses whenever he just mentions the word and they chase each other around the house every night they think of it. Alice has learned all sorts of things from him, too. Here are a few examples from just this week:

1. Foot Five---this is where you give someone "five" but with your feet. The two of you just slap the bottoms of your feet together. A little odd, yes, but she finds it quite entertaining. She tries to give "foot tens", too.

2. Pillow rides---Alice straddles a pillow and Bobby flies her all over the place.

3. Flashlight operations---yup, Bobby wants her to be prepared. See the movie below. She can find the flashlight, pull it out, and turn it on...and off...on...off...on...off...

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2008/FlashlightFlicker.flv[/flv]

4. Folding her arms---Bobby has always been clear/obvious about folding his arms and bowing his head for prayers at our house. Sometimes he even asks Alice to do the same, but she never really caught on...until this week. She surprised us both a couple nights ago when we all sat down to eat dinner. She folded her arms and looked at Bobby, waiting. We realized we hadn't yet said a prayer for the food and that's what she was waiting for. Wow.

5. Sharing can be fun---Alice takes imaginary food out of Bobby's shirt pocket and eats it. Then she shares it with her Daddy.

Happy Father's Day, Bobby! Alice and I are certainly glad you're a dad.

CSA share June 10th

2 pints strawberries

1 pint snap peas

1/2 # spicy mustard greens

1 small head of red romaine lettuce

I don't have a picture today because I STILL haven't recharged my camera batteries. We ate all the snap peas for dinner (Alice crunched on a couple on the way home from our CSA pickup site). The strawberries were in poor shape and still quite sour. I've been a little disheartened by the sour strawberries this year. Are all homegrown strawberries like that?

The lettuce is amazing, though. Yesterday I chopped up the head, washed the pieces and spun them dry, then totally forgot about them until this afternoon when I wanted to use the salad spinner for something else. Oops! Store-bought lettuce would have turned into soggy tissue paper by now, but my CSA lettuce bits were only slightly limp. Fresh makes a difference! And it saves my tail.

The key to my happiness

Projects! I need them. I crave them. Things to work on at home, outside, at church, in the community, and everywhere else. Not just work to do, but a focused project with a start and finish, with much to learn along the way. Without a project or two, I feel sad and listless. With a fresh project ahead of me, I feel empowered and productive.

I think this is one way to balance my planning/detail-oriented personality with the flexible/spontaneous lifestyle of parenthood. Projects are a little more flexible. There's always something productive to do in the moments when Alice requires less of my attention. Alice comes with me to work on some projects so it adds something new and fun into our day. For example, we bike down to the hardware store to pick up parts for our rain barrels. Alice enjoys the leisurely outing and I get something fun done, too. Here are few projects I'm working on now:

• Backyard veggie gardening (a job made easier by those raised beds)


• Patching mortar on our exterior brick walls (to keep the ants out)


• Building rain barrels (materials are ready, now I need to assemble)


• Planning/Directing MAM monthly meetings


• Sometimes planning the weekly dinner menu counts as a project. If I look for new recipes and try new ingredients/methods, then it's a project.

And I've got a few projects in the works for my travels out west this summer. Just a few things I will do with my mom and my sister. It's fun to work together and accomplish something significant.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

As usual Susan has explained a lot of what happened this week already on the blog so instead of repeating it every week I think we should just assume that it happened and that this may not be a full summary of the weeks events.  I will try and fill in anything that she may have missed.

This week at work we started planning a new project.  It seems like an interesting project but the first half of the week was entirely spent inside a conference room going over the requirements, trying to understand them and turn them into a plan as to how we were going to accomplish them.  I like the people I work with but being in a room with them for four days is just way too much.  On Friday we decided that we were going to stop planning and start building something.

Yesterday we went to a garden party hosted by one of the permanent families in the ward.  I don’t know if we told you this before or not, but because the majority of people in our ward are students some of the permanent families in the ward wanted to try and get to know the rest of better, because it is likely that we are going to be around a bit longer then the other ones.  It is always a little odd when we go to these parties, because just like we just became the “student” couple with the most time here in the ward.  We are also the youngest couple in the permanent group.  The next youngest has been married 10 years and has 3 kids, with a fourth one to arrive in the next week or two.

First week of June...

...1997 Bobby and I meet for the first time

...2001 We kind of start dating...sort of

...2003 We arrive in Urbana, IL

...2006 I defend my thesis

...2007 We bless our baby girl in church

...2008 We become the "senior student family" in our ward

Let me explain that last one. Our ward/church is largely composed of young families that move into the area for grad school. Now that the Palmers have moved to Ohio, Bobby and I are the student family that has been here the longest. But not really, because we're not students anymore, so it's a funny feeling.

This significant threshold, this momentous occasion, this strange rite of passage does not entirely apply to us. I'm a little sad about that, actually. I don't yet understand why.

Freezer Jam with Toddlers

Friday morning was my turn to host the babies playgroup for my Mothers and More group. About half of the babies that come to this group also have older siblings, so I thought it might be fun to make some freezer jam with the older kids. I had every intention of collecting my own locally-grown, organic strawberries at the peak of freshness and flavor. Not possible this year. The weather was against me. It's been raining hard almost constantly for a week and not one of the U-Pick strawberry patches was willing to let unprofessionals mess up their strawberry-laden mud fields. Disappointing, but I can't really blame them.

The jam-making itself went really well. There were two 3 year olds and one 8 year old. A very manageable crowd. The kids pulled off the green leaves, I cut off the stems, we used a food processor to "crush" the berries, and the kids got to measure out the sugar and pour in the instant pectin. Voila! No cooking, no smooshing, and lots of enthusiasm from the kids. Each step in the activity was short enough that it kept their attention. One 3 year old asked, "Why are you making jam? You know you can buy jam at the store?" I explained that I liked the taste of this jam much better than store jam and she quietly examined me with a puzzled look on her face.

They liked the jam, but they liked the orange juice better. Oh well, more for me :)

CSA share June 3rd

The picture isn't great because our REAL camera's batteries ran out of juice and I didn't want to go rummaging for the charger while those two pints of strawberries just sat around waiting for me to take their picture. Those babies were calling my name the second I smelled them. So the picture was taken from Bobby's cell phone. Not bad. You even get a peek at Alice's chunky legs and my Mom-hands. I'm actually quite happy with the way my hands look. They're just like I remember my mom's hands looking when I was young...kinda boney and veiny. Working hands.

2# rhubarb

1/2 # salad mix

2 pints strawberries

1 small bunch garlic chives

We're eating the berries fresh (Alice is addicted!), the salad mix is as bold as ever, and this batch of rhubarb may be frozen for later use...maybe for October when it's almost cool enough to use the oven again. Is rhubarb any good on the grill?

Alice snippets

Fun snippets about Alice recently:

• She's just started using her eyebrows in her facial expressions. I never noticed their immobility until they became mobile. Alice was standing in front of the bathroom mirror this morning and I handed her something odd. She furrowed her brow, stuck out some pouty lips and said, "Huuuh?" Then she saw her expression in the mirror and flashed a squinty grin at herself.


• She chased a swarm of gnats in our backyard this morning.


• Silverware is an important part of a balanced breakfast.


• A good, soft tickle can get her to freeze for two whole minutes. Her teeny weeny goosebumps feel like leathery skin.


• I was holding a baby (this babe was almost as large as Alice herself, but clearly younger) on my lap yesterday when Alice came over and started to fuss, signing that she wanted to sit on my lap. I figured she was jealous (we've had a few hands-on lessons in sharing recently) so I handed back the baby and pulled Alice onto my lap. Alice burst into tears as soon as she was settled and she reached out for the baby. What a surprise to me! Alice wanted to sit WITH the baby ON my lap. So that's what we did. She smiled at him, pointed to him, made the sign for baby, and they checked out each other's toes.


• High pitched sounds cause her cry. Whistles, especially. Other kids yelling/crying cause her to cry. I get the feeling her transition into the nursery at church (at the end of this summer) may be a little difficult.

Farmer Bob

This is my farmer, Bob Brackett, at the Urbana Farmer's Market last Saturday. The newspaper took this photo, not me. I'm still too shy to talk to the man.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

Nothing too terribly new and exciting happened this week that Susan didn’t already write about on the blog.  We think Alice is going through a growth spurt.  She has been sleeping and eating a lot lately, not to mention that she has shot up half an inch in the past little while.  She has also started to have a bit more of an independent streak to her.  She very much wants to feed herself and is constantly trying and failing to get dressed by herself.  Happily, she is still willing to accept our help, and not too terribly upset when she cannot do it herself.