Stephen and I have been married for 6 years. We had a great wedding with perfect weather. We’ve had many adventures and travels. We have 2 beautiful children. Life is great. I can’t imagine sharing it with anyone else. I love you Stephen. I can’t wait to see what other adventures are in store for us.
Before I had kids, I worked for the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Specially, I worked the Camp Invention program.
It’s been almost 5 years since I worked full time for camp. Now, I am busy raising my own little campers. Many days we have craft sticks, boxes, paper, markers, tape, scissors, glue, paper bags and more out in our house as the kids experiment and create.
Recently, Nick started wanting to build more “real” things from his designs. Some safety goggles were in order. Sally and Nick were both excited when they arrived.
Most of our toys are used as part of creations. They are rarely used for their intended purpose.
It’s awesome. It’s messy. It’s fun. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Stephen and I had a date night this evening. We attended a lecture at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History about bicycling by Jeff Mapes. After the lecture, Clyde opened the observatory. It’s always fun to see the sky through the 113 year old telescope.
After we finished up at the museum, we decided to try Sweetie Fry. Many other bloggers that I read have talked about this restaurant. They serve ice cream and fries. It’s a strange combination. Stephen got CHOC RASP MARM. It was chocolate ice cream with a raspberry marmalade swirl. I ordered the shoestring sweet potato fries with honey mustard dipping sauce. I thought the fries were good. They were cooked to order, so they were very hot. I will say that they were very salty. I would definitely order them without salt next time.
The place was fairly full of high school students. There were a few college and other folks represented too.
I’m not sure we’d go back on a regular basis. We really like Mitchell’s and find ourselves there the most often for ice cream. Fries are such a treat, we really don’t have them often at all.
It was fun to have a night out. It’s hard to believe we’re almost to our 6 year anniversary. So much has happened since we met. That’s a story for another day.
We have plans tomorrow evening, so we picked up our CSA in Beachwood today. There was quite a line when we arrived, but it moved quickly.
I love the colors this week!
Here’s what we were expecting:
I’m not sure what happened, but we ended up with eggs and spaghetti squash. We didn’t get broccoli. I can see the switch with broccoli and squash – but eggs? We also got lettuce, but I think that was a deliberate attempt at BLT ingredients.
I have two spaghetti squashes. I’m thinking about making it Italian style and serving it like spaghetti. I think everyone in the house will eat it like that (especially with cheese on it). The head of cabbage is pretty small. I think I’ll keep it a few days and then make some of my coleslaw.
We’ll be eating apples in our oatmeal. Also, I ordered a new dehydrator and I’m anxious to try fruit rolls, so some puree might be in order. These are really good paste tomatoes, so they’ll end up in sauce at some point. For now, the freezer will be their home, along with the heirloom tomatoes. We have an over abundance of tomatoes this year, but we aren’t getting them all at once, so it’s harder to make and can sauce.
The Pappy’s Pepper Butter is medium hot. I’m not a fan of hot things, but I’m determined to try this and a few other things that are on our shelf soon. My goal is to eat from our house as much as possible.
Delicious bacon never goes to waste around here. I didn’t get it in the freezer right away, so it’s thawing in the fridge. We’ll probably have it on Saturday or Sunday. I wasn’t expecting eggs and we have an overabundance. I’m going to gift a dozen to my mom since she’s helping with the kids tomorrow.
I don’t think I’ve ever tried this cheese, but there are very few that I don’t like. All of the peppers this week should be sweet (not hot!) and I’m happy about that.
We also got some mixed greens. This batch looks pretty good to me, so I’m going to have a big salad for lunch tomorrow. I’ve gotten away from lunch salads and need to get back to them since they are delicious.
We still have some beets from the other week, so I am going cook all of them all of them tonight or tomorrow. I’ll probably make a big batch of Harvard beets since we haven’t had them for a while. The lettuce looks very tasty and will be good in salads or maybe a BLT.
There’s 7 weeks left and I’m already getting sad that the season will be ending soon. It’s a good think there’s a winter program starting sometime in November.
Over the Labor Day holiday, we traveled to Michigan for an end of the summer family trip. While we were there, we had dinner with my cousin, Ed and his beautiful fiancé. It was so nice to meet Julia. We made her a welcome to the family care package with some of her favorite foods and it was fun.
The kids had a great time with them as well.
Stephen and I split two dishes, although one dish would have been plenty. We had the macaroni and cheese con pantalones. It was a bit spicy and extremely delicious. We also split a tasty sandwich called the Bueno Vista Social Club. I liked that their menu had a huge variety of items.
Their menu can be found at the website.
One of the definite highlights was their root beer menu. They have 28 different root beers. It was really fun. I had only had a couple of them before. I ended up choosing the Dang Butterscotch Root Beer. It really tasted just like those butterscotch hard candies.
The kids each received a kid’s menu along with a full 24 count box of crayons to help entertain them at the table. We didn’t let them keep the crayons, but we were impressed with the huge box of colors. It was such an improvement over the typical 4 color boxes.
We had a great evening out. I can’t wait to see Ed and Julia at Thanksgiving.
Two crabby kids and I picked up our CSA today. Nick just started preschool and has a shortened schedule for the first few days. Nick’s so excited that he’s exhausted and Sally didn’t have a nap. It was a rough day. Surprising, our pick up was smooth, but I knew better than to shop for anything at Whole Foods today.
Here’s what we received:
apples, green beans
bell peppers, onions
cherry tomatoes, slicing tomatoes
yellow squash, bok choy
leaf lettuce
I’m so happy to see apples. We love apples in our house and I’ve been waiting for them to start showing up. Most of the local PYO is sparse this year. We’ll be enjoying them in oatmeal this week. The green beans will be a side dish for a meal tomorrow or Thursday.
I’m done with tomatoes, peppers and onions. We planted a community garden this year and our tomatoes are out of control – and I don’t like tomatoes. Actually, we’re ok on peppers since I didn’t pick them this year. We’ll be chopping and freezing them along with the onions. I love having local ones available throughout the winter. I’m mostly just freezing tomatoes right now. We have tons of sauce and I’m not sure what we’ll need next. I did make some great enchilada sauce this week. I don’t think I’ll ever buy store bought again.
One lonely squash will just get eaten in a stir fry with the bok choy and maybe some garlic and onion. Bok choy isn’t my favorite, but luckily Stephen likes the Asian flavors.
We’ll use the lettuce in salad. We might even have BLTs this week with some local bacon. I think everyone would like them as long as we hold the T for Sally and I.
I’m hoping for fewer tomatoes next week.
Nick started preschool today. He’s four and a half and will have one year of preschool before kindergarten. Nick’s been counting down the days until preschool for weeks. He has been super excited to start. He’s really super excited to not have to take naps, since he’ll be in school from 12-3PM. He’s also very interested in snack time.
I took a few obligatory photos outside of the school.
Today, he went for an hour and a half, tomorrow is 2 hrs. and then on Wednesday, he’ll go the full 3 hours. There’s no separation anxiety with him. He’s very used to being away from me for a few hours at a time. I think Sally will have the bigger adjustment. Today, she had a play date since siblings weren’t supposed to come. Hopefully, she’ll be in a good routine to nap while he’s at school by the end of the week.
While we were out of town for the Labor Day holiday, we found a Farmers’ Market to visit. This was the Fulton Street Market, the oldest and largest in Grand Rapids. It came recommended by my cousins who live near there. There’s a campaign going on to raise money for restrooms, but the port-a-jons are welcome whenever you are traveling with kids.
This pepper display was the most colorful stand at the whole market.
The kids enjoyed dancing. Nick looks like a chicken.
Sally was glad that she talked Stephen into a ride on his shoulders.
Markets that are under cover tend to be pretty nice. It’s a bit more community like since all of the stands are set up the same. We didn’t buy much since we were traveling, but it was sure fun to stop by.
We ended up with a fabulous granola bar that I wish I could duplicate, some jerky and a loaf of bread. It was a great way to start our Saturday.
While traveling last week, we ran across a “Little Free Library” I had never seen or heard of them before. Basically, any person or group can buy or build a box and make books available to others. There are over 2000 of these around the world. I was surprised to see one in the Cleveland area. I’ll have to go visit it.
The mission of the libraries is to promote literacy. We are very lucky in this area to have a great library system. Not all areas in the world have these services available.
I think this would be a great project for a preschool or church group. The possibilities are endless.
Here’s what the box we saw looked like. It was near a few shops and a parking lot in Michigan.
When you register a box, you get an official sign and number.
I’ve just started reading about the organization, but I really like the concept. I’m not sure my construction skills are up to the test. I’m reminded of some not so square boxes that I built for an 8th grade science fair. Maybe Nick will be better at making containers with Stephen.
We were back to our regular pick up this week at Mayfield High School. It’s the time of the year where there’s a changing of the guard with the truck staff. Today, we were greeted by Kirsten. It was nice to see her, but it was busy and we didn’t have time to chat. We can expect to see her at Mayfield for the rest of the season. That will be very nice.
Here’s an overview of what we received (minus the watermelon):
Here’s what we were expecting:
The green beans are dark and rich in color. I think I’ll pull a roast out of the freezer for Sunday and serve them as a side dish. I’m tired of tomato season. It’s nice that farmers are figuring out ways to grow them longer during the growing season using hoop houses and such, but I don’t really care for tomatoes and I’ve been spending my energy elsewhere, so I have tons of frozen tomatoes in the freezer for chili, soup and other dishes and I’m looking forward to the end of adding to it.
I froze the grapes from last week in hopes that we would get them again. I’m going to make grape sorbet or jam with them.
Onion and garlic is status quo at this point. They’ll end up in soup or fajitas this week.
I’ll probably use the carrot and leek in our tomato soup. Nick had fun making it last time, so I thought I’d let him cut up veggies for it again.
I’m going to roast the peppers and add them into a white sauce to serve over the pasta. It’s red pepper linguini, so that should mesh nicely.
I’ll be cooking the breakfast patties soon since we let them thaw when we were out this evening. I’m always at a loss for egg plant. I’ll probably roast it with onions, beets and other veggies tomorrow and see if something else inspires me.
The potatoes will go great with our roast. The lettuce will make a couple of good salads.
I’m glad to see that melon season isn’t quite over. This will be great to have around this weekend. It’s on the larger size, but I suspect it will be gone by Monday.
I’m hoping to cook at home a lot this weekend. We have lots of great looking stuff to use this week.