Fourth of July fun!

So a few days before the fourth Leiella informed us all that July 4th was Teresa's birthday. She was all excited about it and because Teresa seems so real to her, and she truly loves this doll I thought I'd go along with it. :) So the morning of the fourth I made the usually birthday pancakes for Teresa, who apparently was turning four. 

Then Leiella and I stopped at a craft store, on our way to the grocery store, and bought Teresa a couple new outfits. :) When we got home Leiella wrapped them up and waited for the perfect time to surprise Teresa with her birthday gift. It was cute.

All dressed up in a new dress! :) Happy 4th birthday Teresa!

In the afternoon we headed to a good friends house to celebrate. The kids had a blast!

We took off before dark to head back home. We didn't want to go to the fireworks show everyone else was going to because we just don't like the crowds. Plus Ryder really doesn't like being on the roads late on holidays because people often have a little too much to drink, don't realize it, and drive. Thanksgiving is suppose to be the worst holiday for that! Booze and turkey makes for tired dangerous drivers. Any ways home we went...

Daisy in the dark.

We are pretty lucky because the neighbors at the end of the street put on an amazing and really big fireworks show. I absolutely hate spending money on fireworks, just feels like blowing money up in the sky, ha ha! So it's nice that the kids can still experience a fun show without dealing with huge crowds or buy them ourselves. :) We started out by siting on the side of the road across from our house.

But I got the idea of sitting in this field with a straight view down our road. We took blankets and drinks and lots of bug spray. ;)  

Beautiful views behind us, fireworks in front of us. Perfect. Don't know why we've never done this in years past!

There were of course a lot of mosquitos, it's just that time of year. Blanket forts come in handy for that. ;)

Having a blast!

Seriously adorable.

Love this crew! No one else I'd rather spend time with on this planet. :)

Silly one eyed photo bomb. 

I love that this kid truly likes the fireworks now. When he was little he would just cling to me in terror! For years. But the last few he's really seemed to enjoy himself. :)

She definitely enjoyed the show. ;) There were some really big fireworks!

Fourth of July snuggles!!!

It was another wonderful holiday spent with the ones I love. We stayed up way late and for once we all actually slept in until about 8 am. Never use to happen, no matter how late we stayed up some little one was going to be awake around 6 am at the latest. It's nice to go into this phase of older little kids. ;)

Nothing like beating the heat at the river.

No better way to beat the heat than a trip down to the river after dinner. No matter what I do my house generally feels like a sauna by evening time. Nothing better than the refreshing breeze off the river and the cool water to wade around in. Sweaty house or cool river in the evening… no contest! These pictures are from a trip down there with some good friends. Ira happened to be at a sleep over and I was missing him something fierce! I kept getting that sinking stomach missing kid feeling, which is never good next to bodies of water. I just don't feel complete when one of my kids is else where and it really sets me on edge! 

But enough of that back to our beautiful river spot!

Cooling off and having some fun. :)

River beauty.

Hot dogs agree, river is best! :)

This man loves to fish!

Awesome river find. :)

Some times the beauty down here is breath taking! This picture hardly does it justice.

I just love this house on the hill. :)

The moon is on the rise!

Eye candy… ;)

Time for some more garden pictures. :)

The garden is flourishing! So far we have harvested strawberries, raspberries, cherries, service berries, salmon berries, chard, kale, peas, calendula, and lavender. And lots of flower bouquets! :) Looking forward to pears, plums, apples, currents, squash, beans, cucumber, beets, and garlic. I have some newly planted gooseberry, elderberry, and jostaberry, but I'm not sure if those will fruit this year. I also have some thimbleberry volunteers that planted themselves. ;) I snagged some purslane from the community garden (they were just weeding it out!) and planted it up front. Hope it grows, it's fun to munch on. Love being able to walk out into my yard and forage. 

Let's eat!

Dinner at our house. :)

I found a great local place to buy grass fed humanly raised beef. Love supporting a small time local farmer and it's a better price than grass fed beef from the store, can't beat that! It's about 40 minutes away so I'm buying a month supply at a time, but I'd like to switch over to going in on a whole cow with someone else and buying a half a cow to store away in the deep freeze, makes it even cheaper that way and less running around but more money up front.

When I make meat loaf it's more of a veggie meat loaf. ;) I add in finely chopped carrot, onion, and celery. Sometimes I add in some chives and garlic. A couple eggs, and some flax and almond meal. Oats in a normal add in and I'm sure it would be good but half of us can't eat oats. So we go with grain free.

Add in your seasonings of choice...

And mash it by hand! My kid's favorite part, ha ha! We like to really get into our food prep. ;)

Leiella's personalized touch.

Warming up some spaghetti squash that I cooked prior. I often cook huge batches of different types of squash and then prep and store in the fridge so I can quickly and easily add them to a meal. We eat a lot of squash. Good thing we all like it. ;)

Garlic green beans.

Roasted cauliflower, which is like my favorite ever right now! I use coconut oil liberally (avocado oil is good as well) and season with sea salt, black pepper and nutritional yeast (which makes them seem kind of cheesy). Bake on high around 425 until nice and roasted. I love the crispy bits.

And there you go, dinner is served. :)

My kids love cooking with me and so they take turns on who helps with what. The boys can pretty much make breakfast for everyone on their own now, with little supervision. Our breakfasts usually consist of eggs in some form or another, so not too difficult. I swear some day I'm going to make a cookbook just covering the many different ways you can include eggs in your breakfast. ;) I'm currently working towards them being able to take turns making dinner on their own so I can get a break every once and a while. ;) For now I'm enjoying teaching them how to cook from scratch and eat wholesome healthy meals that fit our family's needs. They are so excited when we get to use something from the garden in our meals, I just love how excited they get telling their daddy what part of the meal is from our garden, or the community garden. Summer cooking is fun! Except for the heat. That parts not fun. ;) Lots of salads and out door grilling, sounds good this time of year! We've been having a heat wave, for a Washingtonian at least, so meal prep lately has been a little less enjoyable. Frankly all house work is miserable in the heat! My house is suffering a bit. ;)

Busy summer life

Lots of random happenings! Summer is in full swing!!!

My flower bed at the community garden. :) It's coming along nicely. We also help with the veggies and last week we were able to bring home quite a bit of lettuce and some beautiful rainbow chard. So awesome.

Gleaned from the yard. :)

So Banden and Ira have been asking to take their bunk bed down for a while now. Ira was always just making a bed on the floor or sneaking into Banden's bed and never wanted to sleep on the top any more. Neither did Banden. I think it's because they like to talk late into the night. ;) Banden had a full size mattress though and it was just too big to have two beds on the floor in that little room. Well our sweet neighbor friends offered us a nice twin mattress the other day and that very same day their daddy offered to take their bunk bed apart. Because he's an awesome daddy. If you notice in the picture he hasn't even changed out of his work clothes yet, after working a ten hour shift plus a two hour commute. The boys were so excited!

Helping their hard working daddy because they are good sons. :)

Two very happy boys. We will get bed frames in there soon, talking Ryder into making bed frames with underneath storage. :) But for now they are comfy cozy and very pleased. If you've noticed we live a very simple life and are now living very close to debt free (besides our mortgage) because of it. Sometimes it's hard to not want bigger and better or something a little more fancy/current but boy does it feel good to live without crushing debt. I know because we've been there. We are trying very hard now to live within our means, to save as much as possible (for those inventible times when Ryder gets laid off) and to be totally okay with second hand stuff. :) If I can get something for free, and thus essential save the money I would have spent on that item I am one happy girl. Ryder calls me the queen of thrifty. He gets a total kick out of all my enthusiastic ideas for saving money and cutting spending. He's more of the spender (although he's good at saving too when he sets his mind to it), I'm generally the saver/do with-outer so together we balance each other out. ;) 

We are going to be ripping the carpet out of the bedrooms soon. It's on our list of things to save for. :) Once we do that we are re-arranging who goes where. Right now it's two kids to a room, but Leiella needs her own room soon, although she doesn't want one. :/ Poor only girl. So far she does not see the bonus in having your own room, she just sees that her brothers are basically going to have a sleep over party every night without her. Regardless it has to happen, so since the rooms are small and we will have three boys in a room we are going to trade our bigger room for one of the smaller rooms. So the boys will have the biggest bedroom in the house. We are waiting to make bed frames until then because if they don't want bunk-beds, which they don't, we well have to get very creative. Probably a trundle bed for two of the boys and a regular bed for the third. I don't mind having a smaller room, it's not like we hang out in there, plus it will force me to simplify even more. :)

My big ol' kitties. :) Just relaxing on a hot day. Our cats totally out weigh our dogs, ha ha!

I organized the kitchen some more. Cleaned off the top of the fridge and added baskets, looks so much better. Most de-clutter sites say to remove everything from your fridge to make it look cleaner, but I love my pictures, so they are staying. :) Even if it does look like a bit of a mess. 

I actually have drawers for my food storage containers! Before they were all tossed into a rubbermaid tub under the folding table. Such a mess. Love, love, love having drawers for them now. :)

Figuring out what flows in the new space.

Coffee station for the husband. So nice to be able to move this and the toaster to the back counter and have extra room around my stove now. :)

Back to potty training after a three year break. Harsh. ;) We are just starting, so he still wears diapers most of the time, but slowly transitioning into training pants. These training pants have a plastic liner on the inside… Where were these when I was potty training before! So cool. It's so adorable watching this little baby walking around with these big ol' undies, seriously so cute! Especially because they all have a picture on the bum, which for some reason makes it a whole lot cuter. ;) Plus every time he sits on the potty he says, "Yay!" and claps his hands over and over again with a big grin on his face. Cuteness overload.

So I got this crazy idea for the full size mattress and just went with it...

I'm sure it's a bit trashy but hey it's not on my front porch at least. ;) It's a reading nook! Or just an awesome place to lay and relax. I covered it with a water proof mattress cover and then a sheet. I got out an old canopy I still had stored away and hung it under the eaves of the house. I want to get some colorful outdoor pillows but for now I just threw some couch throw pillows down. It's sitting on a low wooden frame. I'm going to keep it out all summer long and store it away in the winter time. I want to add some out-door lighting along the eaves and maybe a few lights that dangle down, for a nice peaceful feel at night. So far everyone loves it. I didn't think Ryder would go for it, but he loves laying out there, getting some fresh air, after working in a toxic in door environment all day. So I'm happy that he's happy. :)

These boys also approve.

This picture is from Father's day. Much love to the best father all of us have ever known. It makes my heart so glad.

I find it hilarious that even with the bed on the ground Ira still tries to sleep as close to Banden as he can. :)

So to my husband and kids this is a fort. Sigh. ;) My husband got the opportunity to bring some scaffolding home, which is apparently super awesome, and he decided to set it up in the back yard for now so that the kids could have a fort of sorts. Not sure who's idea it was but they were all so excited about it. He actually made it pretty cool and the kids love it. I don't love looking at it from the kitchen window all that much, but it does make my heart happy to see my kids happy so all is well. :) Plus it was cute to see how excited Ryder was. We have since taken of the ladder because I didn't want littler kids having easy access to the top. My kids are total monkeys so they really didn't need a ladder. Now to keep them out of those super tall trees… :/ I wish I didn't mind them climbing, I did it all the time when I was a kid, but it totally freaks me out now! It's not so much the possibility of  broken limbs, those can heal, it's the possibility of a broken back or a cracked head that makes me turn to jelly when they ask to climb the trees. 

And I'll end with this. I tried my hand a soap making! It was fun. We just used melt and pour soap from a great (fairly local) company, Brambleberry. Mailed straight to the house, because it was easier. We then added herbs and oils to it. They turned out great. Not thoroughly pleased with the ingredients in the melt and pour soap, but not brave enough to try the cold press yet. Cold press soaps use lye which can be a bit scary, especially if you have four kids and don't have a separate work space. But some day I'm going to make soap like this. http://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-to-make-cold-pressed-soap.html Much cleaner than the melt and pour. Although http://www.brambleberry.com did have better options than other places I researched. I used dried calendula and dried lavender from my yard. :) The soap on the top has this beautiful reddish color when light shines through it, so nice! They all smell wonderful, a nice light scent. Ryder and I really can't stand strong smells, and usually buy unscented soap because of this. So it was nice to be able to modulate the amount of fragrance in the soap. The only one that turned out too strong was the lavender one. We used dried lavender and the recipes called for lavender oil as well. Even though we halved the amount of oil used it was still too strong. If we make it again we will only use the dried lavender.

Well there you have it, all sorts of summer happenings!

Against all odds

Ryder and I recently celebrated another anniversary on June 4th. :)

21 years ago I met the love of my live in a nasty trailer, in a small town, that I happened to be in because I was trying to escape from my horrible home life. It didn't start out a very pretty love story. I was a lost and broken fifteen year old. Sad to my very core. Angry. This boy walked in with big beautiful eyes and a swagger. Full of attitude and himself.  There was something about him that spoke to me on such a deep level. I couldn't even fully understand it. I was hooked. Like a drug. Which isn't a good way to start anything. ;) Turns out that underneath all that swagger was a young and hurting man. Two very broken people trying to make things work. We had a very turbulent start and were on and off for the first few years, mostly off. He left me for a while and it broke my heart so bad that I didn't think I would ever get over it. Probably wouldn't have. But that time apart led to me coming around to loving myself and learning to value who I was, after hitting rock bottom. And I mean rock bottom, shattered to pieces, and slowly gluing myself back together again. I got onto my own two feet, moved away from that small town, got two jobs to support myself and after living in my car, and on the couches or floors of some very sweet souls that went out of their way to keep me afloat and off the streets I finally got my own studio apartment at nineteen. I was living in the same area as his mom, I had moved to be closer to his brother who I had tried to take care of since he was born. Whole different story. When I moved there Ryder was living in a different state and I didn't know if I would ever see him again. But turns out his mother eventually told him I was around and he dropped everything he had going on in that state and moved back. We slowly ended up getting back together, although I had my doubts at first on if it was the best choice for me or not. Mostly because his leaving the first time had hurt so bad. I wasn't sure I was strong enough or brave enough to open myself up again. There was no denying that I was still strongly attracted to him though. Thankfully this time around things were different, because I had started my road to recovery, healing myself from the hurts of my childhood and learning to love myself. Which we all know we need to love ourselves in order to truly love others. Ryder had grown and changed as well. That's not to say everything was smooth sailing, two very hurt people carry a lot of baggage and past hurts come up when you least expect it. But the nice thing about baggage is that you can slowly unpack if you want to. ;) It's been a long road with lots of ups and downs. But at the very core of it we love each other, and have clung to each other for strength in our darkest moments. We have built each other up and have accomplished together what I don't think we ever could have done alone. We are truly a team. When we got engaged we decided to change our last name together. To start all over with a fresh family tree. It's one of the best choices we've ever made. It truly felt like breaking the chains once and for all. 

Our wedding day 2005

This happened to be our tenth wedding anniversary. I look forward to what the next ten years hold for us. I truly feel so blessed to have this man by my side and I'm so glad that even in the rough spots we decided to cling together and grow instead of break apart. There is something that keeps Ryder and I tightly bound together against all odds and for that I am so truly thankful. He is my one and only and I'm still so madly in love with him. It's a deep love now, not the love of a broken teenager. A deep love that comes from all the things we've shared together, and from facing hard moments together and coming out on the other end, still together. Got to have those down to truly appreciate the ups. :)

Feeling the need

I'm feeling the need to let it go…

Poem by Safire Rose