Summer

Just Some Weekend Stuff

Posted on by Amy
My big girl had a big weekend with her “Kids.” This is what she calls her many cousins on my husband’s side of our family. Some of them came to visit us last Thursday in preparation for a big weekend at the Wisconsin Dells. Miss was so excited to see them. As always, she had a blast playing with them.





Her judgement of the time spent with her kids? A wink and a thumbs up! Sort of.
Another try at the wink. My girl is funny.

Friday we went to the Wisconsin Dells, where Miss and Lass saw the rest of their cousins on my husband’s side of the family. Everyone met at the Dells so that my husband, all of his siblings, and two brothers-in-law could run an event called the Tough Mudder. It’s a race about 10 miles long with several different obstacles to complete along the way. Here they are after finishing. They all completed every obstacle and finished in one piece. My hubby is the one on the far left.

While I was glad that my husband had a blast participating in the mud run with his brothers and sisters, I have to say I was really not impressed with the Dells. Though I really try to make the best of any situation and have fun wherever I go, I just didn’t have a good time there. There were too many people. The one water park I took the girls to was kind of lame for little ones (a lot of the attractions for really little kids weren’t even turned on). The food was outrageously expensive and not appetizing. And on top of the lackluster nature of the “resort” itself, my girls were super tired, Miss had a few meltdowns, I forgot to bring snacks for Miss (though I remembered tons of food for Lass) so I felt like a big Loser Mom, and Lass woke up this morning at 4:30 am. I was seriously ready to come home today. On the bright side, Miss did have a great time playing with her cousins. And that’s what really matters anyway! We have decided we might try to go back when the girls are a little older for a winter getaway weekend. An indoor water park would be a blast for them then.
In other news, someone is 11 months old today. So big!!
In the car on the way home this morning I taught her how to do “high five.”

She is such a ticklish, giggly baby.

She’s just so darned cute (even if she is sleeping like crud right now).
Today I made tacos with my homemade taco seasoning. I always use ground venison to make tacos or any other recipe that calls for ground beef. Before I added the seasoning I set some of the venison aside for Lass, who had her first taste of it at dinner tonight. She loved it!
When I was growing up, I ate venison rather than beef almost all the time, I think. I never really even notice the difference. I’m thankful that my husband hunts and that he gets at least one doe (rather than a buck, at my request) each year for us to eat so my girls will grow up knowing venison as the norm as well.
Today my hubby started the process of making sauerkraut. It takes a while to do whatever sauerkraut does while it gets made, but I’m eager to try it on some of his homemade brats when it’s done.
He’s pretty handy to have around.
Speaking of handy, my husband minded the munchkin (who napped for less than an hour this afternoon) so I could take a little nap this afternoon. I’m still pretty tired after being awakened at 4:30 though. My bed is calling me. Goodnight.

Hot Rod

Posted on by Amy

Check this out:

She’s still working on learning how to make the pedals work, but she does love her trike.
She especially loves her helmet
and the bells on her handlebars.
It’s been a little hot this week for being out riding, but it makes me so happy that she loves this tricycle. Every time she sees it in the garage she wants to sit on it and ding the bells. She calls it her “big girl trike.” I can’t wait until she’s able to work the pedals and steer herself.
And speaking of “doing things herself,” this little one is very into doing everything herself. Getting from point A to point B, feeding herself, etc.

I thought she might be ready to take her first steps the other day.


She thought really hard about it.

We were ready with the camera, video and all, but she decided she’s just not quite ready. That’s cool.
We scored at the farmer’s market on Saturday. This says “Summer,” right here.

Can’t you just hear the “slurp”?


Last day of swimming lessons tomorrow, lots of family coming to town, and a big weekend at the Wisconsin Dells. I do love summer.

Live at Lunch

Posted on by Amy
My husband and I have taken some fun photos of the girls over the last several days. I love my camera more and more every time I use it. I feel like I’m starting to take better photos, but I still have so much to learn. Fortunately, I have the best subjects in the world to practice on.
I love that this photo seems to have captured the activity of my two girls right now just perfectly.

No words needed for this shot, taken by my husband.

This is one of my favorite Lass poses. She puts her arm up to her face and makes a sucking motion with her mouth when she’s tired. She does this when I’m rocking her to sleep. She holds the pose when I put her in her bed. Sometimes, like here, she does it to let us know she’s sleepy. It’s her comfort move.
Busted!
Look closely at the photo below. It’s a little bit hard to tell, but she is not holding on to anything to keep her balance. She does this a lot now and for pretty long periods of time. She’s going to be walking before I know it. How can that be??
Today we went to a weekly event they have in our town all summer long called “Live at Lunch,” and I actually remembered to take along my camera. Each week in this little grassy area downtown they have a restaurant selling food and a musician playing music and people come out and eat and listen and bask in the sun. Kids dance or run in the grass or climb on the monuments. People eat and drink and laugh. There was a long line for the food today.
Standing in it seemed like the thing to do, even though the food at the end was just a cold hotdog on a too-dense bun with chips, and there were other restaurants around where we could have gone in and probably gotten better food faster. It was about the experience though. We stood in the line. We danced and sang while standing in line. Miss nearly lost it, but we managed to get to the front of the line just in the nick of time. I almost lost our hotdog and did drop our chips more than once while trying to maneuver the stroller and balance the food while finding the perfect spot for our picnic. But we made it of course, and it was worth it.

Miss danced, and danced, and danced.


I couldn’t help but love the fact that a few tables of elderly people were watching Miss dance and play and smiling at her. A woman actually came up to me afterward and commented on what a “bright” and “enchanting” little girl she is. That just warmed me to my toes.

Home Run

Posted on by Amy
Raisins and cherry tomatoes were my at-home-“Chopped” ingredients this week. I thought and thought for a week about what to do with them. Initially I was going to cook them with some onions and broth and spices and then puree them into a sauce for some pork tenderloin medallions. Then I realized that the skin and seeds of the tomatoes would probably not work well in a pureed sauce, so I scratched that idea. I finally settled on making a pan sauce for pork tenderloin using the raisins and then doing a side dish by caramelizing some fennel bulb (my new favorite vegetable since I learned how to cook it in my cooking class) with some raisins and then adding in the tomatoes. I wanted to use caramelized onions and raisins in a sauce (topping might be a better word than sauce, because the raisins and onion made it chunky) for the pork but add in just a bit of heat to compliment, brighten, and balance the sweetness of these ingredients. Similarly, I thought the tomatoes would balance the sweetness of the caramelized fennel and raisins in the side dish. Yeah. I hit a home run with this one. Here are both of the recipes.
Pork Tenderloin with Spicy Raisins and Onions
1 Pork Tenderloin (about 1 lb)
Salt and Pepper
1 Tbsp Vegetable oil
1 Onion, halved and sliced thinly
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup white wine
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 cup chicken broth
3 Tbsp unsalted butter, cold and cut into 1 Tbsp pieces
Trim fat and silvery skin from the tenderloin. Slice it into 1-inch-thick medallions. Season with S&P on both sides. Then press the tenderloins (with your hands or the flat side of a knife) until it’s about 3/4 inch thick. Heat your pan over medium high heat. Put in the oil. When the oil is shimmering, add half of the pork pieces. Sear them on one side for 2 minutes, then flip them using tongs and sear the other side for about 2 minutes more (they should be firm around the sides). Remove to plate and cover with foil. Repeat with the rest of the pork. Add the onion and cook until it starts to get soft, stirring occasionally. Add the raisins. Let the onions and raisins cook together for a while so the onions get nicely caramelized. Add wine, cayenne and paprika. If you don’t like spicy, you can reduce the amounts of these, but I would recommend still adding them, maybe at about 1/2 of the amount I used. Let the wine reduce by about half. Pour in the chicken broth and any juice from the tenderloin pieces that has accumulated on the plate and continue to simmer for a few minutes longer. Off the heat, add the butter, 1 Tbsp at a time, swirling each Tbsp piece around until it melts. Serve the sauce over the pork medallions.
Fennel with Raisins and Cherry Tomatoes
1 tsp Vegetable oil
2 Fennel bulbs, julienned
1 Tbsp sugar
1/4 cup raisins, chopped
1 pint cherry tomatoes, quartered
Sprinkle of salt
Heat a pan over medium high heat. Add oil, then fennel. Stir fennel to coat with oil and add sugar. Stir, then add raisins. Cook for several minutes, stirring occasionally, to let the fennel soften and start to caramelize. I can’t remember how long this took, but the fennel will start to darken and get soft, but still have a little bit of bite to it. Add the tomatoes and stir them in. cook for a few more minutes to let the tomatoes start to soften, but don’t let them get too mushy. Sprinkle a little salt on, stir, serve.

I was so happy with the way these dishes turned out. Lots of flavor and great textures. The only thing I might have done differently would be to add more wine, chicken broth and butter to the pan sauce to have more of the liquid part of the sauce. It was yummy.
We have already decided to go to 3 ingredients this next week and I drew them from our spreadsheet. I do it like the old game Battleship, picking coordinates that my husband matches up the the spaces on his spreadsheet. The one way that we limit what comes up is that he makes sure at least one of the ingredients is a protein. So, next week? Sweet pickles. Bran cereal. And Pickled Herring. Yes, you read that right. Pickled Herring. My husband told me this and then said, “I hate pickled herring.” What?! This freaked me out a little, because I thought I was doomed from the start if he hates it (I’ve never had it, so I have no idea, though I can imagine, how vile it is). I was prepared to go ahead with it, but I think he felt bad for including such a horrendous ingredient on his list. He suggested we draw a different protein, and we did. The next one that came up was Canned tuna. But after thinking about it for a bit, I told him that I wanted to go ahead with the herring. That’s the challenge, right? Taking something crazy, and potentially kind of gross, and making it fabulous? *gulp* Hubby did point out that it’s actually a win-win situation for me though. If the dish I make is horrible, I can blame it on the herring. If it’s delicious, I become a cooking goddess. Score. I told him I can’t even begin to plan what I’m going to make though until I go to the store and get some herring and taste it. I have no idea what it’s texture or consistency or taste is like, so I can’t figure out what I’ll do until I know that. Wish me luck!!
In other exciting news from the weekend (and to get on to the cute pics), we got our swing set delivered on Friday! The Hubby and I started putting it together during nap time yesterday.

Naturally we couldn’t get it all done while the girls were sleeping, so they joined us outside while we continued to work on it.




We had to put in some more time this morning, though it was mostly the hubby getting it done today because the girls were awake the whole time. Finished product:
We have to trim up the landscaping and the dead stuff underneath a bit and put down some soft mulch, but the girls didn’t care about that. They went right to it after they woke from naps.






This one continues to amaze me with her climbing. My mom says she gets it from me.



And no, she didn’t actually climb all the way onto the platform by herself, but she did climb the ladder all the way to the top, until her hands reached the platform and she wasn’t sure what to do with them to keep climbing. I don’t have photos of that part of her performance, because I was hovering around her as spotter just in case. She never even faltered though!
I love this swing set and I know the girls will get so much fun out of it. According to my husband, who had to deal with most of the inevitable frustrations of putting such a contraption together, they’d better!
As a last note, please excuse the status of my header right now. I thought it was about time to change up the photos, but for some reason could not get the far left photo to fit in the header correctly. Also, some of the photos in this post have a bit of a foggy look to them. It’s because my camera lens fogged up when I took it from inside the air conditioning to the muggy outside. Sorry!

Full

Posted on by Amy

Starting swimming lessons and gymnastics class and three forensic cases to do and trying to get in my 20 days of exercise this month and watching Chopped last night. . . and this week is quickly getting away from me. So I realized, “What happened to my Independence Day post?” Well, it got combined with my Wednesday July 6th post, that’s what. Here you go!
As I predicted, our 4th of July celebration consisted of more of the same festivities that filled the rest of our holiday weekend.

Well hello there Hunk.


Celebrating the birth of our country with my sunscreened babies, splashing and loving the water. Cherishing family. Perfect.


That and great outdoor food. We had grilled kielbasa, veggie kabobs, potato salad, the works. Even ice cream!
Miss loves her “Chocolate ice cream on a stick” – otherwise known as a Dove Bar.
And this little one had her first taste of the sweet stuff.
The brat making continued. Here’s my hubby making sausage.
My hubby after I pointed out to him that he’s wearing his “Wiener Shop” T Shirt.
Wieners.
We ate some for dinner tonight. Fantastic. There’s nothing like fresh, homemade sausage. He also made chorizo, which I love to cook with. I can’t wait to try out a new recipe using it.
Speaking of new recipes, my “Chopped” ingredients this week are cherry tomatoes and raisins. I wasn’t able to get to the grocery store until today, but I got my ingredients and have something of a plan for my dish. I need to refine it in my head before I dive in to make it, so it’ll be Friday or so before I do it. Stay tuned.
I think I’ve written about how I have ordered some new big girl outdoor toys for Miss so that the push-behind lion can be passed down to Lass now. We are still waiting for her trike, but her roller skates arrived yesterday. And so did these:
We had to try them on today to make sure they fit. I ordered them with the intention that they would fit her now and also be gear she can grow into, so they look a little big but they do fit. Naturally she didn’t want to take them off and had to dance around in them until I had to nearly pry them off her for nap time.

Soon to come will be photos of this ensemble, outside, with little Barbie roller skates. I love it.
Right now we’re busy in a great way. Miss loves her gymnastics class and seems to be enjoying her new swimming class so far. We’re having play dates.
I’m enjoying work. Being a professional. Sorting out the intricacies of psychiatric diagnosis when a case is a little unusual. It helps me to be well-rounded. To be challenged and stretch my brain in a different grown up way. Then I come home and get back to my real job. And it’s good. My life is full. In the best possible way.

A Daddy Weekend

Posted on by Amy
I can’t really even put into words how much I love having a weekend when all the stars are aligned and 1. we are not traveling, 2. the weather is nice, and 3. my husband isn’t working. Oh, it’s wonderful. Fortunately, I do not need to rely solely on words to describe this happy time. I have photo documentation.
Daddy has been making lots of forts and Little Sister has been able to join in the fun. The girl loves to roll around on a blanket.



“Can I come in?”

This one lights up at the sight of her Daddy.
This morning we baked our banana chocolate chip muffins for Daddy.
This is the face she makes when she says, “Cheese!”
“They’re puffing up!” She kept calling the muffins “mushrooms.” This kid cracks me up.
After they baked, she “painted” honey on top of them.
She was so proud of herself!
She said, “I eat a bwownie out of the mushwoom!” when she picked a chocolate chip out of the muffin.
Sharing a special snack with Daddy.
And can I just gush for a moment about how ridiculously easy it is to take the girls to the pool when I have another pair of hands along??
I was even able to take photos for once!


Lass is happy when she can play with a ball. Or two.


Easy, easy, easy. I’m gushing here.

Did I mention this one loves to play with a ball?


We’ve been playing very hard this weekend.
And even after all this playing, Daddy is making bratwurst tonight. I can’t wait to eat them. Homemade bratwurst are the best.
I’m listening to fireworks outside right now. I tried to get Miss out of her bed (she’s not asleep yet) and take her out to see, but she didn’t like the sound. She wrapped herself around me, clung on for dear life, and said, “I want to go in my bed and go to sweep.” So she’s missing the fireworks tonight, but tomorrow we will celebrate the 4th of July. Mostly our day will consist of more of what you see here. Family. Love. Fun. Eating. Pool. Mix in some patriotism and perhaps a sparkler or two, and you have a celebration. Happy 4th of July.

Playing Catch Up

Posted on by Amy
I have my computer back finally! Still don’t have my old photos recovered, but I did get to finally upload and look at the pics I’ve been taking for the past week. Naturally, I have lots of photos of fun times with the girls.




These two are really starting to play together so well. I love to watch them. Miss gets such a kick out of making Lass smile or laugh or clap.

Lass idolizes Miss. Tonight when I was cooking dinner, Miss kept Lass entertained the whole time by dancing around and tickling her while Lass was in her jumper. It’s a good thing too, because Lass doesn’t really love being in the jumper so much anymore. Now that she can roam all over the place, she’s not so into being in any contraption that restricts her movement. But, she’s into everything, so I have to keep her in the jumper or her highchair any time I’m cooking. She climbs on top of everything she can and seems to be trying to climb on top of all sorts of things she can’t (like the window sill in my bedroom, the table under our TV, etc).
The other day she climbed up on the fireplace hearth like it was nothing. And I have made more than one diving catch to keep her from falling back on her head when she turned herself to sit after climbing up on our suitcase (the suitcase that sat on the floor of our bedroom waiting to be unpacked for way too long).
Miss is so fun to watch as she develops more and more skill in so many areas. Gluing, sticker-ing, and coloring among them.


Cow paper bag puppet! She’s crafty.

She is starting to really try to color inside the lines (without even being prompted to do so by me). She got this Hello Kitty coloring book and went through all the pages trying to precisly color Kitty’s nose again and again.


Tonight the Daddy made a fort with the couch cushions.


Miss had to take all her friends in with her.
She thought the fort was the coolest thing ever. No wonder Daddy is her favorite these days. . .
Today is the last day of the month. On the first of the month I wrote this post about exercising and stated my goal to exercise at least 15 out of 30 days this month. I am proud to say that, even with a week of vacation thrown in the mix, I did meet my goal, hitting 15 days yesterday. I thought I would go one better and get in a workout tonight, but I couldn’t drag myself away from my much missed computer. However, I do intend to do even better this next month. In July, I’m going for at least 20 days.
Another goal for July is to get Miss’s new swing set put together. After weeks of looking for one that will be fun for her for many years to come, will be safe and sturdy, but won’t break the bank, I finally found one and ordered it earlier this week. I’m hoping it will be here tomorrow so it can be a project for the holiday weekend. Wish us luck with that!
In addition to putting together a swing set, we’ll be spending time at the pool, eating ice cream, baking banana chocolate chip muffins (Miss picked the recipe), and celebrating the 4th at home.

Can’t beat that.

Summer Lovin’

Posted on by Amy
I love the smell of my babies in the summer. Sunscreen mixed with chlorine, a little bit of dirt and little girl sweat. . . Heaven. We have been busy here living summer. That’s what people do here in the North Country. After such a long winter this year we are trying to wring every last drop of summer-ness out of the few days of beautiful weather we have had so far. This weekend has been packed with the farmer’s market, two trips to the pool, and making the most of life outside – grilling and eating and lots of playing.
Tonight we had a jam session on the front stoop.

Miss had been collecting rocks from our front landscaping and asking my husband and I which ones were our “faybwits” (favorites). We were sorting and admiring rocks so much my hubby decided to grab his guitar and make up a song about Miss and her favorite rock. Notice in the photo above, his favorite rock sitting on his knee. She requested the song over and over, even after he had moved on to more well-known tunes.
These days are magical. Funny sayings from Miss. First assisted steps from Lass using the lion walker (featured here). Getting soaked at the water table. Miss dancing the most adorable wiggle to her daddy’s guitar music. Exchanging glances and laughs with my husband as we watch our amazing girls. When I stop and soak it in it makes my nose tickle and my eyes tingle and my heart squeeze with happiness. I love summer and the opportunities it brings for moments like these with my girls and their Daddy.
Note – My computer is “in the shop” again, because I am having trouble accessing all the photos I restored after my hard drive was replaced. Hence, my lack of blogging. Hopefully I will be back in full swing again very soon.
And I’d like to note that the recent lack of posts about our “Chopped” adventures has been due to my husband’s work in creating a list of ingredients to draw from, as I will now be doing two surprise ingredients each week. The list is now completed enough to pick from it (though it is a work in progress), the ingredients have been drawn, and my next challenge is to use shrimp and cheddar cheese. Immediately what came to my mind was Shrimp and Grits, so I’m going with that. I’ll post the recipe and let you know how it goes later this week. What would you make??

Fishing

Posted on by Amy
Once upon a time, back before my husband and I had little ones, we used to go fishing together a lot. My husband is quite the fisherman, and in the early years of our relationship it was a fun way for us to spend time together. A lot of time. We would go out on the boat at the crack of dawn and stay out all day. Sometimes talking, sometimes not. Sometimes freezing our butts off. Sometimes sweating half to death. Sometimes catching fish. Sometimes not.
I started out as a complete klutz with a fishing rod. I frequently got my lure hung up on something under the water. Once in a while even in a tree. Above the water. Sometimes I managed to swing the rod wildly and nearly take my husband’s head off. Frequently my line got hopelessly tangled. I didn’t have the right technique for reeling in a fish on the rare occasion that I caught one. I couldn’t operate a trolling motor. I didn’t know how to take a fish off a hook. Basically, I was a disaster with a fishing rod when he started taking me fishing. I won’t even go into my early attempts to assist with getting the boat in and out of the water.
Now, I could spin this into a lovely romantic tale where I tell you all about how patient and kind my husband was with me when teaching me the art of fishing. How gentle and tolerant he was when I made my very frequent mistakes. When he had to back the boat up because I had cast behind us and my lure was caught on a rock. When I broke one of his fishing rods. When I nearly ran the boat into a bunch of rocks because he was in the back struggling to get my lure unstuck from some unknown underwater vise and I was totally clueless about running the trolling motor. I could tell a beautiful fishing love story. Except that wasn’t how it went. Not. Even. Close. My wonderful hubby is a hard core fisherman. He yelled. He swore. A lot. At first.

He caught this walleye last night
He yelled and swore a lot at first. See, those early days of fishing together were a great way for us to strengthen our relationship. Fortunately we had quite a strong relationship to begin with. So, when he yelled, I (essentially) told him to cut it out. And to his credit, he did. Most of the time. If I did something stupid, I apologized. If he lost his temper, he apologized. And miraculously, he kept asking me to go with him. And I kept going. I learned a ton and eventually became quite a competent fisherwoman. Some of my best memories are of the times we spent fishing together. And I think I softened him up a little bit for our daughters. Okay, who am I kidding? They don’t need any help from me to melt their Dad. It’s a good thing too, because I think they’re going to spend a lot of time fishing with him.
Today Miss saw her cousins fishing and was very into it.
She quite enjoyed checking out the bait, both the bucket of minnows and the box of worms.

She requested her own fishing rod so she could give it a try. Her Baba rigged up a rod for her and got her going.
Within a few seconds they got a bite.

Miss was so excited to “catch” her first fish. It was a bluegill.
But then she wasn’t so sure that she wanted to get very close to it. This is her, “I’m-not-sure-what-to-do-that-thing-is-kind-of-freaking-me-out” face.
She wouldn’t touch the fish, but we did manage to get her to stand close enough for it to get a few photos.

To top off our day of fishing, Miss’s cousins caught 13 huge crappies that my brother-in-law and father-in-law cleaned and my mother-in-law fried up for dinner. It was delicious, and Miss gobbled it up. I think we’re going to be doing a lot of fishing this week.

Weekend Fun

Posted on by Amy

We had a wonderful long weekend here. We had a visit from a long-time friend of mine (a former college roommate!). She met my girls for the first time and became fast friends with Miss.


Lass is experiencing some stranger/separation anxiety right now, so she wasn’t exactly warm and fuzzy with our guest, but she did lots of smiling from a distance.



It seems that the weather has finally cooperated with the calendar (though not until yesterday, which was 90 degrees!) and summer has arrived. We spent the morning yesterday at the pool. My husband had to work all weekend, so I took the girls by myself and therefore have no pictures of our first pool outing of the year. I was doing good to keep track of Miss while holding Lass constantly, so photo time wasn’t really going to happen. I tried to set Lass down in a tiny bit of water in the zero entry area of the pool, but she didn’t want anything to do with that. Then I tried to put her in our portable exersaucer thing. I should have known better. She didn’t like it the first time I put her in it at home.
But on that first day she eventually got a bit used to being in the thing, so I thought maybe she would do better at the pool. When I put her in it she immediately started screaming and trying to climb out. So she spent the entire pool time in the Ergo, which was okay too.

During nap time I finally got out our water and sand table, which has been in the box for a few weeks since it has been too cold to play with it. We didn’t have any sand but the girls didn’t know the difference when I filled up both sides with water.

Lass felt like such a big deal being able to stand and play with her sister.




There was tons of splashing.


Miss was just scooping the water onto herself!
And she was very diligent about watering the landscaping.
Including the rocks.
Then she realized how wet she was and begged me to get a towel and dry her off.
I wiped the front of her clothes with the towel and dried her feet. I thought she might be upset about her wet clothes and ask to get dry clothes on. But she just went right back to splashing herself and pouring water everywhere. It’s going to be a fun summer.