Good Things, May 2012

Is there anything quite as hopeful and happy as Memorial Day Weekend? Especially when the weather cooperates with 90's and sunshine, it's such a great reward for enduring a midwestern winter and spring, and it's such a great feeling to have the entirety of June, July, and August stretching out before us.

This weekend, we spent almost every possible second outdoors. I planted my window boxes (red geraniums, as always, plus a bunch of herbs that I will try not to kill before the 4th of July), Jason and I stained hundreds of shingles for the new garage and painted the exterior trim, and of course we ventured to the beach - two days in a row - to soak up the sun with family and friends, to come home sandy and tired, to splash in the freezing water (or go under, if you're Annie), to eat some traditional summer favorites. Good things abound, both this weekend and this month:

Jemma's wrote a list of some friends on the chalkboard . . .

 . . . and made me this sweet placemat for the Mother's Day Tea at preschool.

Making a fort for ponies in the front yard out of random materials on a lazy Saturday morning.

An impromptu walk on "The Secret Path" one afternoon after school.

Kite Festival in Grand Haven.

Jemma (high score!) at her end-of-year bowling party.

Jersey Junction to celebrate Annie's AWESOME performance at the elementary school talent show.

Homemade cherry pie.

Saturday night dinner outside.

Gymnastics at the beach.

Jumping waves and playing with my parents on a Sunday afternoon.

Blondies in the breeze on Memorial Day.

Traditional summer stop at Redamak's for burgers.

And Blue Moon ice cream at Sherman's on the way home.

March, Now

And so we've somehow passed the last two weeks or so, filling the not-so-wintry winter with board games, time with friends and family, silly dancing in the kitchen, making giant messes and cleaning them up again. Plus there was a kids-free trip to Chicago (and a very indulgent afternoon at the spa for me, plus too much eating and drinking to mention, though I will mention Girl & the Goat and most especially the green beans we had there, which I am attempting to recreate tonight, and I will also mention that the cocktail Jason had there tasted like my grandpa's pipe always smelled. Appropriately, it was called "Smoking Jacket," and it inspired me to drink a Manhattan later that night at the tiniest bar in the world called The Matchbox, and I blame our friends for all that ensued.)

The end of February looked like this:

(The desserts at Hot Chocolate also deserve a mention. We got the pecan pie solely based on the fact that the menu informed us that all pie crusts were made with bacon fat, and how could that not be the Best! Thing! Ever!? It pretty much was.)

Suddenly it's March, which means the traditional mobbing of Jersey Junction on March first, the day it re-opens for the season:

and, mysteriously, more snow today than we've seen in a couple of weeks. I left the house for yoga at 10:30 a.m., returned at noon, and promptly showered, changed into elastic-waistbanded clothes, and put on my under eye cream, so sure was I that I would not be leaving again. Jason and I spent the day readying our upstairs for the painter who is coming this week to transform the upstairs into Little Girl Sleeping Quarters and toting bags of giveaways and garbage out the door while the girls played some sort of elaborate Hawaiian wedding scenario that involved more clothes changes than I've seen before. Now I'm standing in the kitchen, drinking a Left Hand Milk Stout, perusing catalogs for lamps and rugs, listening to Iron & Wine, grateful for this low-key day and the piles of fresh, folded laundry on my bed, waiting to be put away.

Making a List, Checking it Twice

Popcorn: strung.
Pudding by the fireplace: eaten.
Christmas gifts: purchased and wrapped.
Christmas cards: addressed and mailed.
Granola: made and packaged.
Twinkling Christmas lights in a five-mile radius: viewed while drinking hot cocoa and listening to Perry Como in the car.
Polar Express: watched.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: sung in the bathtub.
Christmas Story: read.
Peanut butter fudge: made (and partially eaten).
Angel Tree gift and food pantry donation: dropped off.
Joy to the World: played on the piano by Annie.
Advent calendars: half-opened.
Nutcracker: fancily attended:

Girls After My Own Heart

Annie gets to check out a library book from school each week and at least half the time, she chooses a cookbook.  Last week, she chose some sort of Betty Crocker Fancy Party Treats and begged and pestered until I took her to the store for the necessary ingredients to make chocolate cupcakes in teacups with marshmallow frosting.

We finally made them on Sunday night and ate the last ones after dinner today, which was appropriate, because they looked like nothing so much as little cups of hot chocolate with insane amounts of sprinkles, and guess what it did today?

IT SNOWED.

So we switched up our tradition of having hot cocoa on the first day of snow and had hot-cocoa-looking-cupcakes-in-mugs instead.  I don't think they minded.

Jemma had the day off from school yesterday because of conferences, so she spent a chunk of the morning doing this

(and then spent the afternoon being a total whiner, just so we don't paint too cheerful a picture here).  Annie, on the other had, had the day off from school today, so we ran errands together and snuck in a stop at the bookstore, where I gave in happily to her request to purchase her own copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  It joins an ever-growing pile by the side of her bed, of which I am more than a little proud.

But maybe not as proud as when I catch this happening just before bedtime at night

or this

or this

on a Saturday afternoon.

After we'd been to Michael's this morning, and the bookstore and the grocery store, we had almost half an hour before we had to pick Jemma up from school.  And since we were juuuuuust across the parking lot from my new favorite store, I told Annie we were going to go in.  "It's beautiful," I said.  "You'll love it!"

Annie disagreed.  After learning that they didn't sell "things for kids," she insisted she was staying in the car.  I dragged her in, and we spent fifteen solid minutes oohing and ahhing over the obscene variety of gorgeous drawer pulls and the floor-to-ceiling display of embroidered kitchen towels.  We smelled every candle, touched every soft sweater, tried on sample Lolla hand cream, and chose imaginary Christmas gifts for nieces and grandmas and ourselves.  There is a gorgeous bed in the middle of the store, and just before we left, Annie looked at me and said, "I want to sleep in that bed and live in this store forever."

Things Jemma Says: Halloween Edition

To her preschool teacher at school today:  "I can't wait for today's tonight!"

One of my very favorite things about raising our kids in this house is the simple but real connection and community we have with our neighbors.  I love our traditions, annual Halloweenie Roast included.  I can't think of a much more quintessential Halloween than joining all our friends and neighbors to eat and drink together in costume, forcing the kids to pose for one massive, chaotic picture, and then spreading out to trick-or-treat in our neighborhood until it gets dark and the candy runs out.  I think my pink pegasus unicorn and my raven-haired witch had a great Halloween, today's tonight.