Work

Things are fine; not too busy at the moment. My two big, long-term projects that I’ve already committed to are on hold, temporarily. The reason sucks: the baby of the editor in charge is very, very ill and undergoing some seriously heavy treatment. Naturally, the editor doesn’t have much time or energy to spare for work. It’s completely understandable. I’m just hoping her baby will be all right.

In the meantime, I’m working on some odd jobs—helping out another DE with some tasks to take some of the burden off her. I’ve been spending time researching photos and reformatting tables. Yes, kind of boring, but also no stress.

I’m also working on a novel development job and it’s turning out to be both educational and rewarding. I think I’m making useful suggestions and my client is happy so far. A little job that disappeared last fall has resurfaced. And I hear that my uncle was pleased with my recent monograph edit. I think I have a strategy guide starting up soon, too.

Lucas

My dear Lucas’s eighth birthday is in less than three weeks! We went kind of all out last year throwing him a super-cool Aliens & Robots birthday party here at our home. We built robots, did crafts, played games, ate alien foods and had an alien birthday cake. The boys all dressed in costumes and it rocked.

This year, the theme Lucas came up with was just too challenging. I tried and tried to figure out a way to do a Secret Agent birthday party for 8-year-olds, but just couldn’t get around the fact that they have NO CONTEXT for spies or secret agents at all—no James Bond, no Cold War, no “Mission Impossible.” No explosions or weapons or special high-tech gadgets (kids are already living in The Future) or grappling hooks or lasers. In a moment of desperation I asked Lucas if he might like to have his party elsewhere, like at a fun place that does birthday parties. He instantly jumped at the idea of Sunrise Rollerland and roller-skating. No hesitation. Really? I used to skate there as a kid in the late ’70s and early ’80s. “Yes, mom! That would be SO COOL!” You don’t have to tell me twice. I booked the party there for May 1st, his birthday.

I am not at all thrilled about the roller-rink pizza that will be served, but they won’t let me bring food. I admit there is a part of me that feels like it’s a cop-out to buy the party (GOOD mommies make birthday cakes , right? Oh. That’s MY script?), but I am also somewhat relieved not to have all that busyness to worry about in the next two weeks.  We made our invitations and sent them out yesterday. The only other thing I have to do is make goodie bags for the party guests.

Asher

Oh Asher! He is so very, very 3 right now. Asher is determined, bold, assertive, demanding, outrageous, talkative, charming, precocious, HUNGRY, and picky. This child knows what he wants at every moment. He is happy and playful, and he uses language beautifully to tell you exactly what he thinks (watch out).

This is not to say that his pronunciation is perfect. In fact, it’s still quite babyish, which I admit I adore. I was so sad when he learned to say “please” with the l sound in there. Some of my favorites are:

binkit (blanket)

stabdabdies (strawberries—this one is on the way out)

beenana (bananna)

Bye, my fends (friends)!

kick-kick, (which is becoming click-click, his name for his pushing Red Flyer wagon)

I need some Mama time. You need some Baby time.

Asher went potty in the toilet four times yesterday; that’s a monumental accomplishment for him (us). He’s finally starting to get the hang of it.

Last Friday, before this most recent rainstorm, we all took off on a little day trip to Amador county to see what we could see. We were finally all feeling mostly healthy after our sequential colds (which I didn’t dwell on much this week because we were all home together and taking life pretty easy anyway). The day was gorgeous and we had so much fun.

We started out at one of our favorite local spots: Chaw’se Indian Grinding Rock, near Volcano and Pine Grove, California just 8 miles east of Jackson. It’s a lovely, well-maintained state historic park with an educational center and the largest bedrock grinding stone in North America. This is where Miwok people ground their acorns for centuries. The wildflowers were dressed to impress and I enjoyed them very much.

I didn’t know manzanita trees flowered like this:

We had a yummy picnic and then hiked the short loop trail through the woods. Asher is such a trooper when we’re hiking small trails like this. He really likes it when we all stay together, though! Of course, Lucas likes to rush ahead.

Then we ventured on to the Black Chasm, which was only another 10 minutes’ drive up the road. We paid for the tour into the cavern, which is pretty damned spectacular. I had to carry Asher in our Ergo on my front and feel my way down the slippery, wet staircase into the cavern. It was exciting and a bit scary, but we all did it! Lucas was very brave. Because of carrying Asher, I didn’t bring my camera into the cave—it would have been just too much to manage. I’m sad not to have any pictures, but I can tell you that it was so beautiful and very well lighted. This cave has a great display of helictites, which are very rare and weird and formed from hydrostatic pressure. (If you go to the website, you can see pictures and even a short video.)

Above ground, they had a flume and we hunted for crystals in the sands. Asher made friends with a little boy who lives there named Kit.

We stopped at a lovely winery after our exertions, where the kids ran around in a safe picnic/game area. The wines were pretty nice and we came away with three bottles. Mmm.

Our adventure culminated with a walk through Sutter Creek and dinner. Asher was asleep as soon as we climbed into the car. Such a great day!

More photos from that lovely day at the very end of March at the Effie Yeaw Nature Center preserve.

I don’t know what this tree is, but it has pretty red chains of blossoms.

He is so brave and adventuresome now. His eighth birthday is only three weeks away.

A Zen moment, relaxing and watching the American River drifting by.

Aren’t they stunning? Tiny white stars twinkle on this vine. I couldn’t get enough of these darlings.

Sometimes the brightest colors of the day are found closest to the ground!

Climbing and chilling on a fallen tree. They both bravely walked along this giant (Asher held my hand while doing so).

I’m behind in my blogging. My experiences and photos are stacking up and waiting in line to be showed and kept here. I think this secretly means that life is full these days.

We took this lovely walk on the first day of the kids’ Spring Break. Lucas had a morning class about bird-watching at Effie Yeaw Nature Center in Carmichael, and when Asher and I arrived to pick him up, we all walked through the preserve along the American River for a while. (Somehow I managed to get Asher only half dressed this day.) The day was overcast but comfortable and the preserve was glorious in every way.

Glory in the green, green grass, particularly inviting for this little “lello” bunny.

Glory in the purple vinca major (AKA periwinkle), which is not a California native plant but has naturalized. (I love it.)

Glory in the group of deer we patiently watched while they grazed, especially this mama and fawn.

Glory in the tiny pink wildflowers, only an inch or so tall, and in the great oak trees.

Glory in boys being free, courageous, goofy, and happy in wild places.

My heart swells when I see my children in places like this, where we are safe and comfortable, and free to ramble on down the trail, or to pause to savor a vista or follow the erratic flight of a butterfly. I love coming here because we are guaranteed to see and hear wildlife, no matter the season. And I love how I feel when I’m here with my family—like maybe for once I’m doing something JUST RIGHT, that maybe I’ve found a perfect moment of happy calm for them and for me. I love the great big sky, whatever its color, and the intricacies of the natural world—the turn of a leaf, the texture of the bark, the smell of the air.

This nature walk was so tremendous, I’m going to post more pictures in a “Part 2.” I can’t help it. They make me feel tranquil.

OK, I am happy to admit this week of Spring Break is turning out to be really great. My husband is on vacation, so we are all together. I’m enjoying everyone’s company. This is not to say that every moment is stress-free, but family life is easier when two parents are around to mediate squabbles, entertain, converse with, fetch, help with runny noses, and feed us all. Ian and I can kind of tag-team and that’s a sanity saver. I love being able to reach out and touch him whenever I want to, to know he’s got my back or an eye on the children when I am otherwise occupied with editing or some other task.

Useful, fun projects are getting done around here, too, like planting flowers and our first vegetables of the spring/summer growing season, and fixing broken gates. It’s lovely to be outdoors in this gorgeous, comfortable weather! Short sleeves for Ian and Lucas and me. Asher’s a bit more bundled in long sleeves and sweat pants because of his cold.

Today I spent several productive, happy hours filling my wheel barrow full of gorgeous mulch from my friends Zindelo and Jeanne and spreading it in my backyard flowerbeds. It was nice and easy work on a cool day with a satisfying result. I also planted pansies and petunias in areas where the sprinklers overspray. Putting new plants in my yard is easy; making sure they all have a source of water they’ll desperately need in the hot Sacramento summers is the hard part.

The other day, when my back was sore, Ian planted for me: 3 Spanish lavenders, 3 azaleas, 2 geraniums, 1 blueberry bush, 1 magnolia tree, 1 lilac, and 1 orange-flowering perennial whose name I forget. It’s supposed to bloom almost year-round.

Ian and I have even had two lovely dates this week, which gives us time to refresh and reengage with each other. It’s good to remember why we got into this family business in the first place: because we LIKE each other and want to be together. Last night we got to see Elvis Costello play at the Mondavi Center in Davis. He was solo, and the music was terrific. I didn’t enjoy everything he played, but most of it. A good mix of old and new tunes.

Even as I’m enjoying my time at home this week, my mind is turning outward to summer activities. I’m starting to explore some summer camp options for Lucas. I am excited to learn that the Discovery Museum has two summer camps for 7/8-year-olds, on the topics of general science and space exploration. I think he’ll eat them up. I’ve carefully broached the subject of the Magic Circle Theatre summer production (you know, without letting on how FREAKING AWESOME it would be for me to see Lucas joyfully performing onstage). He’s interested. I’ll probably ask him a few more times before signing him up—to let him think about it a bit first.

Tomorrow we’re going on a ramble all together. We may head to Sutter Creek and see what we can see, or perhaps up to Placerville or Nevada City. Really, it doesn’t matter much. My eyes crave new sights. So long as there is one winery to stop at, I’ll be happy, as I am right now.

No doubt about it. Ours was a bounteous, Easter-filled weekend.

We hosted a wonderful gathering of friends on Saturday—one of our famous, all-day brunches. Our home was warmed by many dear ones and terrific food. We had an egg hunt for the kiddos and lots of chill time for the grown ups.

Sunday morning, on Easter, we woke very early to find the Easter bunny had come to our house and nibbled up almost all of the carrots we left out for him. He left us flowers and strawberries, and baskets of goodies for Lucas and Asher.

The Bunny also brought fun Easter books for the boys. The Easter Egg by Jan Brett for Asher, and The Story of the Butterfly Children by Sibylle von Olfers for Lucas. We love both of these author/illustrators very much! And we’d highly recommend either of these books to other children.

The baskets contained small toys, like needle-felted chicks inside colorful wet-felted Easter eggs. Asher received a wonderful wooden family of four bunnies with three bushes for them to play among. He got wrist ribbons for when he needs to fly like a bird or a butterfly, or perhaps even a yellow dragon. And there were some soy crayon “rocks,” but I think they look a lot like jelly beans.

Lucas received a big-boy felting needle with an egg-shaped handle, a wooden biplane model kit, a super-fancy stone egg, and some springtime note cards, in case he would like to write to his friends, whom he has been missing while on spring break.

We had a wonderful breakfast at VoVo and DiDi’s house, visited with Auntie Kelly and Matt and hunted even more eggs! Grandma had Easter baskets for them there, too.

We hunted again later in the day at RoRo and Nana’s house. (That’s a lot of egg hunts for two small boys, but they enjoyed each of them.) By the end of the day, Asher was hunting eggs like he’d been doing it every day of his life! He was dropping very few by the end. Lucas and Asher each got another book (can’t wait to read Stuart Little with Lucas) and more candy there. Two tiny babies were there, Alice and Travis. (And Asher hardly recognized them as humans.)

By the afternoon, the cold had turned to heavy rain showers and we were glad to get home, safe and snug that night. It was a marvelous two-day holiday for us and we are still enjoying our new goodies. Alas, Asher isn’t too keen on eating the hard-boiled eggs.

We are expecting about 30 friends to come tomorrow and celebrate Easter with a day-long brunch. I can’t wait to see their smiling faces! Today has been for Easter projects. Banana bread is baking in the oven right now and making the whole house smell divine.

Ian and I are going to make a bunch of food:

• Barbecued salmon fillet
• Vegetarian quinoa with roasted red and yellow peppers and shallots
• Vegetarian butternut squash casserole
• Banana bread
• Pumpkin bread with tiny chocolate chips
• Chicken apple sausages
• Big bowl of fruit
• And maybe hot cross buns, if I have time …

We decorated and hung felt eggs today on our (somewhat neglected) ficus tree. These were made with crummy, 20¢ craft felt and scrap pieces of 100% wool felt. The boys were quite taken with the stars, so they focused on creating eggs with stars. Asher really loved using the scissors!

We’ve been dying Easter eggs too. We had to compromise. The boys wanted to use the pearlescent commercial dye kit that Grandma gave them. The eggs were both easy to color and are also quite beautiful, in lovely pastel shades.

I, on the other hand, was hankering to do some natural dying again, like we did in 2008. I’ve seen some gorgeous eggs online and in one of our craft books that use leaves and flowers to make a negative image on the egg. We did the yellow and red onion skin dyes today, and this is what we came up with. Not quite a perfect result, but two of them look really great. We’re supposed to shine them up with oil.

The dark brown eggs were dyed with the red onion skins. Three of them didn’t get the leaf technique. The lightest egg was dyed just by wrapping the boiled yellow onion skins around the egg and leaving it overnight. If we have time tonight, we’ll do some with red cabbage and hopefully make some pretty blue eggs, too.

OK. Gotta run to the grocery store! Happy Easter!

Inspired by SouleMama {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Sometimes we take rambling neighborhood walks. Mostly I don’t bring the camera along because although I love it, it’s heavy. But on this gorgeous day last week I just had to! I wanted to get some photos of our neighbor’s spectacular tulips that completely line her whole front yard. At first the kids acted like it was a grueling forced march, but they cheered up before too long.

Asher has skills! I have mental pictures of 3-year-old Lucas balancing on these same rocks, wearing these same clothes. This is both astounding and comforting to me, somehow. Yes, I have been here—exactly here—before.

See what I mean? Could not miss the opportunity to view these girls up close!

This is our neighborhood beehive, in the (left) crack of this living tree. If it were a little higher up I might think we had found Pooh’s tree hive in the Hundred Acre Wood. I like watching the bees flying in and out on their busy errands.

Lucas at the Bird Tract Park—with obligatory found stick. “Don’t photograph me, Mom.” Hard to resist when the sunlight bounces off his hair like that.

And this? Self portrait.

Friday was the last day of school for my kiddos. They seem ready for a break and they get two weeks off for Easter. Lucas has a cold again, with a nasty, nasty cough. It’s slowing him down. We’ll call this photo “aftermath”—this is what happens when Asher is given a little bit of red, blue, and yellow play-dough and then Lucas comes along with a tad of green.

Saturday started with me needle-felting a (spectacular—if I do say so myself) wool Easter egg on the way to brunch in Davis with Mimi and G.G. She’s such an awesome cook. We enjoyed eggs with roasted zucchini and Jarlsburg cheese, blueberry muffins, small sausages that were a huge hit with Asher, roasted potatoes, fruit salad, toast with homemade jam, coffee, and apple juice. Didn’t pull out my camera, though.

The kiddos explored the beautiful yard a bit. Lucas climbed a tree. We watched birds feeding at the birdfeeders. We admired Mimi’s new ceramic sculptures; she’s building an underwater scene in a corner of her yard, complete with sea creatures and seaweed and, soon, mermaids. The kids threw the ball for Maggie Dog. I ended up giving my needle-felted egg to Mimi and G.G. for Easter. (Wish I had taken a photo of it! It had a bunny and flowers and grasses.)

Then we went to the Explorit Science Center. I’ve been wanting to take the kids there for a long time. It’s a pretty great place with all kinds of hands-on science for children. Unfortunately, it’s also in danger of closing due to budget problems. Like all the great, local places to take children:  Effie Yeaw Nature Center, Discovery Museum, etc. We played with centrifugal force, parachutes, topography, water and soil erosion, gears, paper buckyballs, animal life cycles, saw skins of all types, watched live black widows, cichlids, and tarantulas, and learned all sorts of nifty facts. Until Lucas was worn out and I had to go home to meet my father.

Back at home, I opened the mail and found a fat royalty check that was such a good surprise. Feeling great, I kissed my boys goodbye. Dad picked me up and took me to a play at the B Street Theater: Becky’s New Car. It was clever and often laugh-out-loud funny. Such a treat! Afterward, we went out to dinner at the Buckhorn Grill with Roger and Rosemary, longtime friends of my parents. Rose told me all about scrap-booking and making aprons, her one and only sewing pursuit. Roger flies remote-control airplanes. I wonder if retirement will be that much fun for me someday.

And for the boys left at home? Pizza, of course, and some movie about Little Red Riding Hood. I came home later that night and found that Ian had cleaned the playroom (Yay!) and was playing Half-Life. We retired and watched “Friends.” Great day, no question about it.

Sunday began with some much needed house-cleaning. I swept up about a pound of dirt from the floors. Ew! I just can’t keep up with the boys—they bring dirt and sand in constantly. And because it was Sunday and Daddy was home, some Lego fun was in order, of course.

Went out to lunch at Sunflower and ran into Lucas’s classmate’s family. We enjoyed letting the four children play and chase chickens while the four adults chatted. Asher works so hard to keep up and manages too pretty well! And it’s great watching how well Lucas gets along with his chums.

I dragged the family to the nursery where I got some flowers and found a dwarf citrus tree for my giant pot that Ian got me for Christmas. I wanted something that would look pretty all year and ended up with a red valencia orange tree. I was originally looking for a lemon tree, but couldn’t find any that were small enough. They all seemed to want to grow to at least 10 feet. The orange produces “tasty” fruits with deep, dark red flesh and few seeds, and purplish red to orange red skins. It’s supposed to be compact, nice looking, very ornamental, heavy bearing, and hold fruit well. I’m hoping it will do well in the pot, given the tag says it makes excellent indoor plant; “just clip to shape.” Yay for finding nursery gift certificates from 2004!

My wisteria is blooming like mad all over the back fence and to a height of about 20 feet into the air. It looks fantastic. Today I walked out there to listen to the bees; they’re making a huge racket. I caught pics of a honey bee and this big, fat guy taking advantage of the flowers. I really hope the wisteria still looks this beautiful next Saturday when we have friends over!