shutters painted

heat and humidity

watercolors

watermelon

hot dogs

beer

good times with friends

kids in the pool every day

 bathing suits hanging on the line

new growth in the garden

s’mores!

popsicles

grilled corn with cilantro lime butter

long naps

evenings in the backyard

Nothing too crazy this weekend, we needed that. This week is going to be our first official week without going to school multiple times a week and I’m seriously looking forward to the change for a bit.  More time for friends and visits to the park, water time, berry picking and jam making, simple meal making,  birthday party planning.

How was your weekend??

The drive on the turnpikes and the waiting to go across the Verrazano Bridge. Trying to see the Statue of Liberty. The traffic around the city and getting further out on Long Island.  The azaleas in front of their house.  The pictures on the side of the fridge.  The tea at 2pm. Grandpa sitting at his desk working on stamps. The painting in the kitchen that my dad made when he was a kid.  The bedroom with the twin beds always made perfectly with their plaid sheets and the sketches of each of their children hanging on the wall.  The color of the carpet and the feel of the couch.  The bay window with flowers always in the middle. The teacups with the yellow flowers and the glasses in various colors that remind me of being a kid and picking which color I wanted. The stopping for bagels on the way home because you just can’t buy bagels like that in Pennsylvania.

Their house is a 3 bedroom ranch and they raised 4 kids there.  Every time I think of it, I’m reminded of how much we really need. How our house is just fine and that we don’t always need bigger and better. How we all really are just fine with exactly what we have and how we have all that we need. It was good to see them.

p.s. The picture is my sister, not me:) Just in case you got all excited that I decided to come out from behind the camera for a minute – I didn’t;)

In one year, we’ve made a big leap. The kids are 3 and 5 this summer and we officially have some wiggle room in the afternoons for some fun time and/or a few skipped naps for the first time in about 5 years. That feels so so good and opens up a whole new world of options. I’m sure a lot of these are doubled up on the past lists, but I’m not in the mood to cross-reference a Summer Fun List, so let’s not worry about doubles, k?

The 2012 Summer Fun List

Go to the Zoo (or a few!)

eat ice cream

make popsicles

make lemonade

grow sunflowers as tall as we possibly can

plant veggies in the garden and watch them grow

go to a baseball game

go to an amusement park

play mini-golf

go on a lot of picnics

play in the pool in the backyard. a lot.

visit as many state parks as possible

hike.hike.hike.

grow some massive tomatoes and some teeny tiny tomatoes

Camp!

stay up late to catch lightning bugs (I swear that’s the correct spelling – I even researched!)

work on lots of messy art projects

go berry picking

make ice cream

see a movie outside

go fishing

play in a creek

have a bubble blowing extravaganza

make our own sprinkler

go to a water park

swim in a lake

go to farmer’s markets. a lot.

visit roadside produce stands

grow flowers and have them always in the house

go for early morning and late evening walks

make an obstacle course in the backyard

make water balloons

eat a meal of only corn

What’s on your list this year??

It’s the official first day of summer vacation today and I was totally that mom this morning at the grocery store. Kids screaming in the aisles, mom barking at the kids to knock it off, dropping everything to run to the potty only to have him pee all over his pants anyway because he want some “pribacy” and didn’t pull his pants all the way down, getting to the checkout only to realize that my wallet was still in the car, old lady behind me shaking her head and making loud huffing and tsking noises, getting back to the checkout with my wallet and 10 seconds later Nick lets out a massive shriek because he sat on the window ledge and sat ON a piece of glass…it was a good one.  Got home, kids are wild, we eat lunch and head to naps early and no one will for what feels like for.ev.er. I’m kind of done with today.

Thankfully, though, they’re asleep.  Resting quietly for a tiny bit and I need it as much as they do.  I yelled. Took stuff away. It was a hot mess. We had all sort of fun planned, but sometimes it all needs to be put on a shelf for another day and I’m completely fine with that.

Some love for today to balance out the general grumpiness around here:

-All of the images above via Instagram. Maybe it’s getting old at this point that I keep defaulting to sharing them? It’s just so easy and I love them! Are you on there? Find me, I’d love to see you! @lillianranauro  Also – I got a bunch of my Instagram photos printed the other day and I love them so much.  I even showed my mom and she was all funny about how nostalgic they were because of the borders and the square format – that made me laugh. (She also made some smarta$$ comments about how it was “creepy” that I took pictures of my sleeping kids and how, “Oh, yeah, your kids will have pictures when they grow up! They’ll say, ‘oh look! I have  pictures of my mom’s feet!’”  but it kind of comes with the territory;)  I used Instaport to download all of the images, then uploaded to have them printed locally.  I checked my favorite local lab (a drugstore,  they do a great job and develop all of my film for personal work) and they had an option of 4″ x 4″ prints, so I went with those and it was perfect. It was easy and I’m glad I made the prints – they were so fun to see and hold outside of a phone!

- If you need some garden inspiration, you have to check out Diggin’ Food. So much great stuff there! I just found it via a link on Pinterest and I feel like I’ve been spending every night digging through everything on the site.

- If you aren’t living under a rock, you’ve probably had a conversation with at least one person about the recent TIME magazine article.  This article by Kristen Howerton of Rage Against the Minivan struck a much more important chord with me:

When it comes to issues of motherhood, there is one issue I care about: some kids don’t have one. All of these petty wars about the choices of capable, loving mothers is just a lot of white noise to me, Quite honestly, I’m often astonished at the non-essential parenting issues I see moms getting upset about. Particularly when there are so many kids in this world not being parented at all.

- Have you seen Jenny’s Sketchbook? A-MAZ-ING!  I just cleared out my Google Reader and got rid of a good 150 blogs so that I’d stop distracting myself with blogs all the time and/or not get to reading the blogs I really love.  This one is definitely added in there anyway!

- I KNOW you want to make pesto with the basil that’s growing outside your back door right now!

- We didn’t think we’d be able to do a vacation this summer, but John’s co-worker is renting out their cabin near a lake about 2 hours away for next to nothing and we went for it.  Our first real family vacation with just the 4 of us – I can’t wait!

What’s new with you? Are you ready for summer? Kids getting antsy? Are you itching for some time off from work? Getting your hands in the dirt and planting your garden?

I had a pb&j for lunch today. Straight-up white bread + Jiff + Smucker’s strawberry and I enjoyed the heck out of it. Earlier this week I bought a whole lot of big-name-brand chicken at the grocery store because it was all 40% off and it’s hard to beat that.

What was that I heard? An audible GASP?

Just kidding – sort of.   Why am I even telling you this? You might think I’m being weird and not understand why I’m even pointing this out. I hope  that’s the case. But if you can get a chuckle out of me thinking there are people out there gasping or cringing at the thought of white bread or non-organic-or-grass-fed-pasture-raised-chicken or something that contains high-fructose corn syrup every so often, stick with me here. I want to talk about this.

I thought a lot about adding the caveat above that the pb&j wasn’t at my own house because I don’t have any of that here, but who cares? We all read so much on blogs and Facebook and all around us about perfect, beautiful foods and about all of the “shoulds” of how we should feed ourselves and our children.  It made me think while I was yumming it up with my sandwich. It made me think of the photos I took of the strawberry rhubarb crisp I made yesterday because I’ve really been wanting to work on food photography because it’s insanely hard for me. So I spent the afternoon cooking and photographing and trying to style food and I didn’t even like it. I just can’t get on-board with rhubarb!

I started ruminating about how good a pb&j uncrustable is in the summer, packed to take to the pool or beach with a juice box and some pretzels or chips and a piece of fruit.  But I would feel self-conscious about feeding that to my kids and it’s so ridiculous that I don’t even know where to start.  I know that there are many people reading this who are rolling their eyes at that, but I think there are a lot more of you who get where I’m coming from. If I make pb&j I need to clarify that the bread is whole wheat and the jam has ho high-fructose corn syrup and the peanut butter has no hydrogenated oils. And -Oh! – don’t worry, chips aren’t a regular thing around here and neither is juice.

This idea of perfection and that other people never ever feeding their families anything but organic, local perfect food (whatever that actually is depending on the day, person or current trend,) or feeling like if you don’t strive for that, you should be ashamed, is getting really old (along with a few choice other parenting topics that result in constant judgement.)  I try really hard to make simple, good meals with real ingredients.  It doesn’t always happen and I know it doesn’t always happen for you. Can we all just get together and be completely ok with that? Educate ourselves, strive to give ourselves and families food on the whole that will help us to stay healthy and strong and grow and understand that it’s ok if it’s not always perfect? And be thankful for the food on our tables? Setting ourselves up for an all-or-nothing mentality when it comes to food is a really great way to live with a lifetime of unnecessary guilt and to perpetuate the mentality that only perfect will do.  I don’t want to teach that to my kids.

A rare even-keeled day.

An easy trip to market with happy kids

a little Sesame Street

getting the final round of seeds in the ground and every square inch of the garden is officially planted

cooking Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp and Strawberry Rhubarb Baked Oatmeal (only to confirm that I definitely do not like rhubarb)

playing in the rain

a trip to the doctor for yet another ear infection and pink eye

silly kids

extra snuggles and happiness at bedtime

Do you ever relate things in your kids’ lives to points in you life? I sit and think and crunch numbers all the time: I’m 30…she’s 5, was I really 25 when I had her? Only 3 years alder than my little brother is now? Only two years younger than my mom was when I was 5 which means she was not so much older when I was 10…and it makes so much of childhood and teenage angst feel more human from a parental perspective.

5 years of her life and in that time frame, we’ve moved across the country, she’s lived in 4 places, we’ve given her a little brother and she’ll never remember a time in her life without him, we bought our first house, watched her go to school, learn numbers and colors and letters and vocabulary and emotions – oh, the emotions! A million outfits pieced together and discarded for another over the course of a day, a trail of shoes she’s worn could probably span a mile.  I sit and sip coffee and think – in another 5 years, she’ll be in 5th grade. 10. Another house, another sibling, I hope, we hope?

Almost past the things that shaped her early childhood  and into the school years, I think about what we’ve given her and what she’ll remember. Has it been enough? Please God, let it be enough, I pray.  I squeeze my eyes shut and blink back the tears.

I don’t remember clear memories of 5 – most of my clear memories don’t start until a few years later. What will she remember? Our morning breakfasts in the backyard and picnics and the park and her treasured sleepovers with grandparents? Big excursions or little stuff like the tiny little make-shift playroom that they will never realize is literally smaller than many closets in America.  Will she remember more by association because of the photos I’ve taken? Will she have those hazy memories when she grows up, like I do, where she can see a place in her mind but can’t figure out where she was? Will she call me or a sister or brother to ask us about it, to see if we can tell her if it’s a real memory or something from a dream she remembers?

It all seems so real sometimes. Dear God, I hope and pray and squeeze the ever-loving-sweetness of them tightly in a hug and pray that it’s all enough.

I go in circles constantly lately – I tell myself that we just need to stay home more often than not. Find a rhythm here. But there are errands to run and friends that we want to see. Dentist and doctor appointments. Impulse recipe groceries to buy. Laundry to fold. Tears because the little girl next door who my kids adore is moving. Tomatoes and peppers to finish buying and to plant and a few last seeds to get into the soil. Guilt in the back of my head that I joined the gym and I’m not going more than a few times a week. So many things that fill up a day that there’s hardly time to think intentionally about the way I want our days to flow.

So I go back to trying simply to infuse some calm, for the kids but mostly for myself.  Keeping the computer away and the tv saved for times of “necessity” and we all stay a bit happier.

One Year Ago: On Rough Days

On our way to Market this morning, I remembered a comment a friend left a little while ago.  She said,’Why does “a trip to market” sound so much better than “going to the grocery store?” ‘ and it occurred to me that I haven’t talked about our Farmer’s Markets around here in a while and that a lot of you might just think that I mean the grocery store, too.

It’s one of those things that you take for granted – “I’m going to Market” around here really means our downtown Central Market.  So I decided to get out my old phone and take some pictures while we were there to show you what it actually is when I say we “went to market.”  There’s also another market near our house that we frequent and both are sort of hard to describe. They both have actual permanent buildings. They both have permanent stands and stand-holders. So they’re sort of different in the sense that they’re not pop-up-under-tents-on-the-street-once-a-week Farmer’s Markets. They also both have a variety of stand-holders that aren’t entirely limited to just farmers and food vendors and they’re certainly not all idyllic organic romanticized loveliness. There are big stands with produce retailers that get stuff straight off of trucks, most likely in Philadelphia, at wholesale prices and sell at retail at these markets. At one there are also tons of flea-market type stands with random crap.There are tons of stand with baked goods, too.  Lancaster County may have a ton of farms and produce, but they surely also know how to do a whole lot of lard-laden baked goods around here.

But there are also amazing organic stands and local farmers and artisans sell produce, cheese, honey, bread, flowers – you name it.  If I were focused, I could easily do all of my grocery shopping at these two markets.  But, I’m not.  It would take a lot more planning and I haven’t been very good at that.  In the summer we’ll likely go even more and we’ll also have tons of great roadside produce stands around that also range from huge to tiny and I always love to stop at the tiny stands in front of peoples’ houses (Karen, if I knew where you lived, I’d SO come and get some rhubarb and see all of the amazing furniture you’ve been working on!)

Are there markets like this near you? Or great Farmer’s Markets?

Still confused on the comments, but working on getting them fixed!

Lately:
spring green
time with friends
thoughts of starting new home projects both inside and out
reading fewer blogs and it feels good
obsessing about different film
driving to other states for Birthday present requests
working way too hard to get my little guy to nap, but it’s worth it
A date night
Figuring out the new balance of working from home sooner than I expected
Only two weeks until the last day of school
Making summer plans already
Deciding if we’ll join the pool or lake
Signing them up for swimming lessons
Thinking about camping — SOON!
Almost all seeds and sets planted in the garden: peas, beets, onions, potatoes, strawberries, carrots, huckleberries, tomatillos, ground cherries, herbs galore and so many greens and lettuce varieties
Plus some lonely little tomato plants waiting inside and aching to get outside in the dirt and sunshine!

How about you?? What happening in your neck of the woods?