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milo’s first bath (by amie).
I clean Milo’s cage about every two weeks. Noah holds Milo for me, and then Gabe helps me take everything out of the cage and empty the old bedding into the compost. He also keeps me company while I clean. The important part is the payment. Thankfully, I can take care of that! I have my own candy stash in my closet from Valentine’s and Christmas, so I can easily pick some candy and hand it to my brothers. They are quite satisfied with that! Yesterday we also gave Milo a bath. Did you know that you have to give guinea pigs baths? I didn’t! It was a quite fun…
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backpacking trip (by david).
I took Judah and Gabe backpacking in the northwest corner of our state this fall. We love the outdoors; the boys tolerate hiking. But none of us are campers. So this was an experiment in a two-day trek. I need these times away with any combination of my family to cut out distractions, make our worlds very small, and spend quantity time together. We pieced together gear we’ve collected over time and borrowed what we didn’t have. Judah and I wore true backpacking packs and Gabe wore a hydration pack. The key to hiking with kids (and adults) is lots of good “food” – breakfast bars, candy bars,…
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food reset.
If you’ve followed our blog for several years, you know I’m one for New Year’s resolutions. I love making them. I love talking about them with anyone who will listen. I love keeping my resolutions for a few weeks. I love attempting to regroup sometime around April when I realize that I’ve totally back-slidden. I love trying again. A big resolution for me at the end of December was to take back control of my eating habits. We tried to be as healthy as possible during our kitchen renovation, which lasted from end of May through the end of September, but we still ate a good many snack foods that…
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january.
Remember, the time of the year when the future appears like a blank sheet of paper a clean calendar, a new chance. On thick white snow you vow fresh footprints then watch them go with the wind’s hearty gust. Fill your glass. Here’s tae us. Promises made to be broken, made to last. – Jackie Kay
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2019: a year of abundance.
I sit here on a sunshiney Christmas afternoon in the peace of our screened back porch. We had a morning of abundance as four kids tore through the house and piled onto our bed at 6:30 a.m. (the appointed wake-up time), coffee was ground and brewed by bleary-eyed parents, grandparents arrived, gifts opened, lights twinkled, homemade cinnamon rolls devoured, and Christmas toys played with and built and read. The house was filled with laughter this morning. It’s a fitting way to celebrate a whole year of abundance. We’ve had some lean years, some exhausted years, some illness-filled years. And some just plain sad years. All of it makes the abundant…
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thanksgiving weekend 2019.
Thanksgiving weekend is one of my favorite parts of the year, and we’ve created some really fun family traditions of late. I’ll share them with you! The preparations Thanksgiving Day is deliciously slow, with morning hours cuddled up in pj’s. This year the cuddling included Milo. He is really just the cutest thing. David joked with me, “I don’t know who loves Milo more – you or Amie.” If you’re wondering, I think guinea pigs make the perfect pet. Well, I really think cats are the perfect pet . . . but sadly we can’t have them because several of us are very allergic. So we settle for a…
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fall in our neighborhood.
I sat curled up on the sofa this afternoon with a cup of decaf coffee, and was suddenly transfixed by the riot of color outside our window. Judah and Amie went on a walk with me to try and capture some of it. I love our neighborhood. I loved it over six years ago when we bought our house and moved in, and I love it even more today. It’s why David and I have gone to such great trouble to expand and renovate our house; we don’t want to live in any other neighborhood, or on any other street. We love the shady quiet of our street. We love…
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procrastination and the lack of a 2019 bookshelf.
This month I realized a disheartening truth about myself: I’m a procrastinator. It’s taken me quite some time to admit to it, since the picture of the Julie in my head is assuredly not the type of person who procrastinates. How could I be a procrastinator when I’m organized and Type A? Also how does it explain the fact that I don’t procrastinate on everything, just on some things? Three things I don’t procrastinate on are making decisions for our renovation, meal planning for the week, and tidying up the house. Three things I do procrastinate on: entering my expenditures in our budget app, helping Amie with her weekly IEW…
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milo.
Friends, we’ve had some pet drama in 2019. And there’s been so much else going on that I haven’t even updated the blog. Allow me to fill you in. First of all, one of the chickens, Scarlett, was attacked by a dog while David and I were in North Africa in June. Grandpa and Mum-Mum were heroes for comforting distraught children and bandaging the ugly-looking wound. Then Grandpa sent David and I a very detailed email about the experience which made us laugh until we cried. And Scarlett lived! When we got home from our Gentino reunion in the mountains in July, Amie’s beloved pet python, Luna, died. We woke…
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halloween 2019.
Gabe has struggled with allergies for years, so we took him to an ENT this fall, and they recommended that he get tested. On Halloween morning, of all mornings, we went for his skin test. Not a fun start to one of his favorite holidays. It was a little traumatic, and he had a couple pretty intense reactions, so they stopped the testing, gave him Benadryl, and told me that they’d have to do the rest through bloodwork. The huge bump on his back is from Bermuda grass. Go figure. He felt pretty miserable — his eyes even got all red and puffy. We went yesterday for his…
