one

Happy birthday, Marie!  She is one year old!  We celebrated with a pumpkin extravaganza at the farm. Lots of Marie's friends came, ate cake, sang happy birthday, rolled around in the pumpkin patch, and generally had a grand celebratory day in honor of Marie's birth day.

Marie has been learning lots of new words lately. She now answers "what does the kitty say?" with "aaow" and "what does the doggie say?" with "woof woof". She picked up the latter while we were farm sitting last week and there was a dog. Some other words she says include touchdown (complete with raised arms), kitty, poop, mama, dada, toes, cow, moo, quack...

She also walks! She started taking steps a week or two ago, and yesterday took ~15 in a row. Watch out, Ginger kitty.

Here are some photos of her pumpkin birthday.  It is beautiful to be able to celebrate our precious daughter, and the whole year she has been with us. She is loved!

Our little pumpkin

What.. did you think we were joking about rolling around in the pumpkin patch?

They are all looking at the camera! Miracle! So many boys...

First cake in an overstimulated environment

Surfacing

Oh, hello! We are slowly surfacing from a beautiful, busy, and abundant summer. Marie's first. And how could I have let you miss almost the entire thing? Here is a quick flashback:

 

We helped my Grandma and Grandpa with their extreme garage sale in preparation of them moving.

 Lots and lots of canning... on the list (so far) is lots of dilly beans, dill pickles, peach jam (4 kinds!), canned peaches, canned pears, peach bourbon preserves, salsa verde... what am I forgetting?

 

 Marie's first hike on Mt. Rainier! It was a cold grey September day, but that mountain is gorgeous no matter the weather. Marie's the one wearing the bear hat (purchased in the gift shop when I realized I had optimistically only packed a sun hat for her).

 We had as many beach days we could fit in between everything else.  Not enough, that's for sure.

 Marie's first canoeing expedition, on Bead Lake near Joel's hometown. A secluded little lake in the hills, most of which was wasted on Marie. She wasn't too thrilled with us making her wear a life jacket, and also not letting her fall in the water.  It appeared she wanted a thrilling exciting day, while we had sought a simply subdued one.

 Caring for the garden (on the right, in April when it first opened).

 A family wedding! Beautiful and so well planned it was a delight to attend, and see some of Joel's family we don't see much (read: most of them since our wedding 6 years ago).

Lots and lots of swinging happened this summer. Lots. and lots more. Marie loves swinging! Good girl.  She is almost almost almost walking, picking up lots of things and holding them to her ear like a phone and saying "iowa" (she means hello, we're pretty sure), still sticking every new discovery into her mouth, and getting better and better at communicating. (Baby sign helps! She knows water and all done, and we're working on others).

So that's a bit of what we've been doing. How about you? Anyone newly pregnant? I'm sure you're out there.   School has now started for Joel in 2 out of 3 places, and we (well, Marie and I anyway) are looking forward to life settling down a bit and a decrease in travelling. Hopefully get Marie in some more swim lessons, catch up on dishes, that sort of thing.

Joel and I got married 6 years ago today. Congratulations us!  How different our life looked back then... hard to imagine there were nights in my life that weren't interrupted. I could sleep through the entire night and not wake up once! Whew that is what dreams are made of. Those oft-interrupted dreams. This baby is wonderful at many things, but not at sleeping.  We love her anyway. We'll keep her anyway. We'll defend and encourage and love her at all costs. And her first birthday is coming up this month! Stay tuned...

First parsnip harvest!

I'm so excited I can grow them! Did you know? All you have to do is sprinkle some seeds, be patient, and kabam! Parsnips!

Today's harvest

From the backyard...

Greens harvest: mustard Greens, blue scotch kale, chard, and a few peas

Herb harvest: black stemmed mint, greek oregano, sage, and lemon thyme

she's on a roll*

Marie finally learned how to roll over today! Once she realized she could do it, she proceeded to continue rolling over for the next twenty minutes. And since she can only turn from back to belly, she would cry and yell once she was on her belly. We'd flip her over again, and then, repeat. Over and over.. fun game, huh guys?

I am sure you have all seen babies roll over. So, in lieu of that video, I will instead post a photo to pull out on Marie's first dates:And one of her beautiful kissable face at sleepy peace (click on this one to see those gorgeous lashes close up):
In other news, I got a garden plot in the new Community Garden! Yay! We'll have access to them mid-April (they have to build the raised beds first). So I can start some seeds now and hope they grow. Any suggestions to heat seeds from below without buying anything?

*I apologize. That's the best pun I could come up with, and Joel isn't home.

Why you haven't heard from us

We have been taking advantage of summer!
*Aweing at North Cascades Highway
*Loving Washington State, our home
*Making strawberry wine to be ready about the same time the baby will be :-)
*Eating more and more and more vegetables from our CSA
*Camping. Lots.
*Beaching it
*Nesting

Have we mentioned we will never again complain about the weather here?

Our most recent acquisitions

Any suggestions?

Biggest Kitchen Table -- Food

I appreciate the comments on the last post regarding Living Deliberately and Money. So many of you comment on Facebook, I wonder if you realise I actually haven't been on facebook for over a year, and this is actually a post on our blog! But I do get and appreciate the comments, all the same.

I relate so much to D and T, who both related to how living a transplanted lifestyle makes simplifying life and belongings a lot more... easier? necessary? A little of both, I suppose. Moving to a different country is one of those things where you do begin to realise you are not defined by your possessions. We don't collect much unnecessary junk. We don't buy lots of things, because we realise we'll just have to get rid of most of it again when we leave here. Any spending decisions are truly intentional - is this worth shipping back to the states?

I love that T brought up her intentional choice not to have a TV. We're the same. I think it's been so good and I highly recommend not having one, at least for a while, especially at the beginning of a marriage. That is such a magnificent, underrated way to simplify life, begin to establish what is important to you, and think about spending your time intentionally instead of letting it get sucked away by the wires.
Biggest Kitchen Table -- Food
Today's discussion is on food. I am intimidated to start this blog post, because I want to keep it short, and food is probably the one subject I think the most about. There is so much to say! So I think I will focus on my accomplishments in this area in the past year or so, and my goals for the next year or so.

Things I am glad I've changed in the last year:

• I've begun growing! I have my two tomato plants, and lots of spinach. I planted lettuce but the aphids enjoyed those and as such I have had to abandon them. I'm doing it the good old fashioned way without chemicals.
  
• I've learned to like: mushrooms, tomatoes, plain yogurt, Greek yogurt, green olives, balsamic vinegar. (I know, I know, how could I not like those things before?)
  
• We make lots more homemade.
• I make our breakfast granola. I feel like this improves my day so much! I love doing this!
• Read Nourishing Traditions. I've started applying her ideas more to our cooking and eating. She really gives convincing arguments for fermentation, sprouting seeds/beans, etc.
• We cook mostly everything from scratch.
• We buy local a lot more, and are a lot more conscientious when it comes to this. It's fairly easy to do here, besides the issue of citrus. I definitely draw the line when it comes to foods from south africa or south america; that's pretty much the furthest away you get here. We can get everything we need from the UK or Spain at the furthest. Except limes.

Goals - in the next year or as soon as possible:

• Clean and reorganise our cupboard. It's shameful, really. Full of all the pots/cooking things, as well as all our grains/cans/pasta/flour/etc. So haphazard.
  
• Defrost our fridge. I don't even want to talk about why we have to defrost our fridge. Sometime I think I'll do a post on our fridge, to show you what we have to work with here. It has about 3 cubic inches of space. I'm exaggerating just a little.
  
• Try growing a couple new vegetables. I expect that during the next growing season, we'll be living with the parents. My growing capacity will still be limited although I will have a lot more outdoor space, at least for pots.
• Grow garlic
  
• Buy predominately organic dairy products
• Research & start composting. It's just impossible in this flat, but I'm trying to research a bit more and figure out what would be feasible to do once we leave this place.
  

Future goals - long term:

• Use open-pollinated / heirloom seeds. In other words, the way our grandparents used to grow things. Keep the same seeds from the same produce year after year. The books Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and The Omnivore's Dilemma convinced me of this. I might start this with tomatoes next year.
  
• Grow zucchini/courgette, more tomatoes, rhubarb, beans, squashes, onions, garlic, cabbage, lots more veg.
• Learn more about taking care of soil.

I think I'll cut it short from here. Food is one of those subjects that I can go on and on about. I think many of you are passionate about it as well. Let's keep encouraging each other and learning from each other in this area! A few of us have become fairly proficient at living in a small place while still trying to live within our morals when it comes to food and food systems.

Joel's roast

Yesterday, Joel made a roast! It was his second time, and it turned out delish. It was basically a mushroom & onion beef roast, and I made roast potatoes (another reason our marriage works, pls refer to previous post re. hamburgers), steamed red cabbage (with red wine and cloves) and steamed carrots. We ate some leftovers tonight, and they were possibly even better than the original. The flavours were nice and settled in.

All the veg we used were from www.thewholeshebag.com, an organic vegetable delivery service we just started using. Our farmer is based in West Lothian, near to Edinburgh. For £10 each Wednesday, we receive a bag full of freshly pulled organic veg. He also includes a newsletter which details what is in the bag, when it was pulled from the ground, and tips on how to use lesser known veg like the fennel that we got this week. We get new things each week. I am excited to let this widen our veg eating habits, and learning to like new veg. This is definitely the next best option to growing your own veg, which is an impossibility in Glasgow. Our back garden is pavement with some admirably persistent weeds growing between the cracks, and the supply of garden plots in Glasgow is shameful - I've heard there is a 4 year waiting list to get a plot! Thankfully places like The Whole Shebag exist and so we are able to be that much closer to the ground our veg comes from.