What's New, List-Style

• In-laws were here for the weekend. Projects we accomplished included: installing a new ceiling fan, wiring and installing new outdoor sconces, putting up shelves in the garage, building and staining a new windowbox, and putting the rest of the garden in. And by "we," I actually mean "my father-in-law," who did all but the garden work.
• About the garden: our efforts this year include lettuce, spinach, two types of cherry tomatoes, some romas, red and yellow peppers, eggplant, green beans, carrots, snap peas, shallots, and a windowbox full of herbs. We ate some of the lettuce in a salad for dinner tonight.
• Our second year as members of the Trillium Haven CSA began yesterday with the open house. We went, we brought pulled pork, we drummed, we ate, we played, we looked at fields, we sweated, we watched Jemma refuse to eat a single thing other than fruit, we left. Bring on the kale!
• We are going to Jamaica! In nine months! After two years in a row of February vacations in Florida that involved frost and wind and very little beach or pool time, we are stepping it up a notch and going a little farther south. There are nannies there. They do your laundry. I think it is going to be fairly awesome (in nine months).
• We turned our air conditioning on for the first time this year, and today it was so hot that we were playing in the sprinkler pool/running through a sprinkler/eating meals outside except for 1.5 hours in the middle of the day for quiet time. As long as it continues to be 88 and sunny, I'm determined to make it to the beach at least once this week!
• I fell last week while I was running (not ON anything, just tripped on my own self while running around the lake on the paved path I run at least three times a week) and got a horrible "bleeding boo-boo" on my knee. I put a hole in my new favorite running capris, and now I have a giant scab on my left knee, which Jemma must touch several times a day while asking, "Is it still crusty?"
• Jemma has her last Gymco class of the year tomorrow morning. I am sad! Gymnastics (first the parent-child participation class, then the three-year-old class that she transitioned into and cried about for the first few weeks) was really the very first activity that she and I did together outside of the house, and I can't believe that it's over, that she's moving on to preschool in the fall. Tomorrow, I get to go in the gym and watch her do all her "tricky moves" and take her picture and watch. She has already requested that I wear my hair in a ponytail.

That's it around here on May 24, 2010. Now I'm off to read The Book Thief in my air-conditioned bed and await my husband, who has promised to bring me something cold from Jersey Junction when he returns home tonight.

Spring Weekend

Since Jason doesn't usually work on Fridays (yay!), our weekends sort of start on Thursdays at 5:00, and this Thursday we spent the afternoon in Holland. The girls and I had official dental appointments in the early afternoon, so we just continued on to Holland afterwards to see my parents, who have just returned from a few weeks in Florida.

Though it wasn't quite officially Tulip Time yet, we were there at the perfect time: no crowds, but lots of tulips and even dutch dancers around Centennial Park. We wandered around downtown, in and out of the bookstore and The Peanut Store, smelling tulips, and playing hopscotch on the bricked sidewalks until Jason met us after he finished with work. We went out for dinner and then sat on the curb around the park to watch the girls in old-fashioned costumes and wooden shoes clomp around to tinny music from a loudspeaker. Annie and Jemma were by turns fascinated, obsessed with obtaining their own Dutch costumes, and very sleepy.

The last two days have been a blur. I snuck away for yoga, a pedicure, and a little errand-running yesterday morning while Annie was at school and Jason took Jemma biking. We created a virtual water park in our front yard yesterday afternoon, complete with sprinkler pool, water table, slide, sprinkler, and snacks, and I sat, still unshowered, and drank a beer and read a magazine while the neighborhood kids yelped and giggled through the water. It was perfect Friday afternoon warm-weather fun, and we wrapped it up with a quick, fun visit from Chris, Sarah and kids to eat hot dogs and ice cream sundaes before bedtime.

This morning (once the rain stopped), Jason and Patrick tilled new compost into the garden and fixed the fence around it, so Year Two of our garden adventure has begun. I bought lettuce and spinach from our CSA farm at the farmer's market today, and they're in the ground already; we'll plant carrots, green beans, snap peas, and some flowers from seed next week, and then add in some tomato, pepper, and cucumber plants around Memorial Day. We potted the herbs that returned this spring (sage, chives, thyme, and oregano) and hope to build a new window box for the sunny side of the house that will contain most of our herbs for this summer so we have more space in the actual garden. I know it's early, but I'm already dreaming of the glorious days mid-summer when I can gather most of what I need for dinner just by walking outside and stepping over the fence to gather what's growing alongside the house!

We grilled a whole chicken for dinner while the girls tired themselves out playing incredibly happily and independently outside, and just now the windows are open and the house smells like lilacs and rain, which is maybe the best combination of smells ever.

Eating Our Vegetables

Yesterday, with the help of Patrick's magical Dingo and to the delight of neighborhood children who enjoy large machinery, we ripped a scrubby tree out of the ground and cleared a plot of land next to our house for a garden.  (By "we," I mean Patrick.  The rest of us watched and took pictures.)  Heidi and I have been talking about doing this for a few days.  Look!  We actually did it.  We're going to grow lots and lots of herbs, plus a few favorite vegetables.

Then today, we headed to Trillium Haven Farm in Jenison for their member's welcome potluck.  Since, you know, we aren't going to have enough vegetables growing on the side of our house; we'll also be getting weekly shares from our CSA - things like eggplant and kale and sugar snap peas and summer squash and . . . wow.  At the potluck today, when I wasn't being amused by the random rooster ambling around crowing or trying to block out Annie's whining, I heard an experienced member speak of "cabbages the size of basketballs" and "the challenge of using 10 eggplants."  We're going to have a lot of vegetables.  Also, our kids don't really eat vegetables.  It's going to be an interesting, hopefully healthy summer.