kefir kefir

we all scream for purple kefir. This is the song that Abby was singing as I was making her a kefir smoothie the other day. I absolutley love it that my kids think plain yogurt, kombucha and kefir are yummy! Abby usually drinks a kefir smoothie every day, she tires of it after a while and then a few days go by and she will request one again. Here is what I put in ours: raw milk kefir, coconut oil, 2 egg yolks, 1 banana and frozen blueberries.
I am in the process right now of converting some of our milk kefir grains into water kefir grains to try my hand at water kefir soda. We are loving our ginger kombucha and I thought it would be fun to try another healthy fun fizzy drink.

Toads and animal fairies

The other night we were out in the backyard and I heard a toad singing a song. Abby decided to look down in the window well to see if it was there, the same spot we found the other one, and it was. She was so so excited to have another toad to play with. Man does she ever love those things. She played and played and played with it.

After a few days of playing with it she left it in a closed cooler ( I didn't know- if I had I would have explained that the toad would die!). I have a feeling she was afraid the neighbor was going to take it, because the neighbor kept asking Abby when she was going to release it and kept reminding her to release it in her yard. That night an animal fairy let the toad out of the cooler so that it would not suffocate and die. The animal fairy left Abby a note and a few wooden animals for her doll house. Abby was really sad when she woke up and found out the toad was gone, she was also pretty angry at the fairy but after awhile she realized she would have been much sadder if she woke up and found her toad dead. She looks forward to finding another toad soon. I hope one comes to our yard.

Trusts and Living Wills

For the past few weeks Shawn and I have been discussing topics that I would rather sweep under the rug. It started with me bringing up life insurance for myself. We have it for Shawn but not me and after talking to some friends I realized that we really do need it for me. Not only because I would want Shawn to be able to take off a good chunk of time from work to help the kids acclimate to life without me, but also because we would still want to be able to homeschool and have someone here to help with that. This then led to the discussion about us never doing a living will. I have really avoided this because it just seems so morbid and how do we decide who would be the best person to raise our children if we were gone? UGH! Well, we finally made the decision so at least that part is done. Now we need to fill out the paper work and get it signed. I am still in the process of filling out my life insurance paperwork and now we have decided to get a trust. We really want to make sure that if we do both die at the same time the person who has agreed to raise our kids will be able to do that and not have to work. Oh such fun things we need to do.
Here is a cute picture that will make me smile after reading about not so fun topics.

API Picnic

When Abby was just a babe I got involved in the local API group and have since regularly attended playgroups and other activities. I have met so many wonderful people from this group and some of them have become part of our family. A really great bonus to this is that quite a few of my friends that I met through this group are also homeschooling so our kids have been able to grow up together and they know each other very well. Some are like siblings. So when a bunch of the API kids started kindergarten last year it wasn't too weird for my daughter because she knew at lesat 5 kids that weren't going to school, like herself. Over the last year I have sorta strayed from the group due to conflict between my daughter and other kids, the group seeming too mainstream as well as us getting more involved in homeschooling groups; but I realized I missed the group. Now that the weather is so great here we started going back to our regular weekly park playgroup and have begun going to a spin-off playgroup as well. It has been really nice to be back! Last weekend a bunch of people from the API group went camping and we joined them for the day on Saturday for the annual picnic. Here are a few pictures. I am so grateful for community!

Caterpillar

A caterpillar came home in one of the bags with Shawn and Abby from their camping trip. Abby decided she wanted to keep it so we made it a home. She is so so excited about it and can't wait to see what happens. She kept thanking me and it made me realize all too often I say no to her about this sort of thing. I just get all creeped out about keeping the insects/amphibians in a cage and part of it is that I don't know what to do with them once they are in the cage. What do we feed them, can she play with them, should she be able to carry the cage around etc etc. Well I guess I need to let my worries go and let her experiment more with them. Here's to letting her be a kid!

Joe got a haircut

I decided to get Joe's hair cut very short. He looks cute but so grown up.
Speaking of grown up I am just amazed at how fast he is growing and how much he is talking. He talks all day and finally decided he would say Abby and so he yells Abby's name constantly. His favorite is ABBY ABBBBBBYYYY, where is ABBBYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?

Camping Trip

Shawn decided he wanted to take Abby camping on his day off last week. With Shawn's weird schedule and Abby not at school it is rally nice to be able to do things like this on a whim. Abby was so excited and talked about it all week. Shawn decided to take Joe with (I am still in a lot of pain so need to try and take it easy)and I met them later in the day and then Joe and I headed home in the evening. We had a really nice time. We spent the afternoon hanging out at the site and playing at the beach. After we left, Shawn and Abby went for a hike, went fishing and then had a fire and roasted marshmallows.

Waking up.




Abby built a log cabin.


The fam in Abby's log cabin.