One of the things I appreciate about the school our little miss attends is that all kindergartners have three group violin lessons each week. This has been such a neat experience for her. Before we started this program, I had considered starting her in piano lessons, but I suppose that's just because that's what I'm more familiar with. So far violin seems to be a good fit for her and I won't be surprised if she wants to continue learning the violin next year (privately--Right now the school program is just for kindergarten.).
For the first few months of school the students practiced with a paper violin. We actually made these one evening at the school. This is a photo that was in our local paper to update the community on this exciting and new program. The paper violins let the students practice holding a violin, proper posture and how to be on stage.
(photo by Micheal Penn)
A few weeks ago, the kindergartners had a concert to show off their performance skills for parents and grandparents as well as several of the other classes at the school. Our little miss did a great job. She was just as into performing at the concert as she is into the whole idea of playing the violin.
(photo by Bethany Vaughn)
This program is new to the school and actually is one of just a few in the entire nation. Boston, Chicago, New York, and little old Juneau, Alaska! The credit for this successful endeavor goes to the amazing music teacher at the little miss's school, who was just named Alaska's Teacher of the Year. We are so glad and blessed to have a kind teacher who is so passionate at what she does, fostering a love for music in our little one.
Yay for great teachers!
(photo by Michael Penn)
I'm hoping to soon post a video of the little miss doing her concert routine for daddy the evening of the school concert. Stay tuned...
Thanksgiving 2010 was great...in fact, so great and so delicious that this turkey leg is one of the last few things in our fridge left over from that day.
And yeah, you should have seen the look on Shawn's face when he came into the kitchen and found me setting the turkey leg up for this shot. I just figured that having it on a cutting board with one of my furoshiki's behind it would make a much better backdrop than the rest of the turkey carcass awaiting the stew pot. My sister who is having a baby very soon and has an aversion to raw poultry can thank me later. :)
Oh, and do you have turkey still sitting in your fridge? Then I highly recommend Pioneer Woman's Leftover Turkey Pot Pie. We had it tonight for dinner and it was delicious. As with most of her recipes, it's full of good buttery flavor. I suppose you could make it low-cal. Just jog in place when you stir the pan!
Anyway, back to Thanksgiving. The day was good, busy before the meal, but relaxing after--just about how Thanksgiving Day is supposed to go. We ate our meal with several others from our church family over at the church building. One of the perks to that arrangement is that I didn't have to make the whole meal. But I did cook one of the turkeys and I'm so glad I did. The smell that filled our house while it cooked was so wonderful.
I did so much relaxing after the meal that I didn't get very many pictures, but I did get a few of the kids enjoying some post meal time playing with friends.
I'm sure it's no surprise, but I'm very thankful for my family--my three fun and beautiful children and my wonderful husband. I'm also thankful for the Christian families here in Juneau that have children that my kids can grow up with. That's a great blessing.
When I posted my Three Months post a little while ago, I forgot to include a recent detail about our little babe. That's our transition into cloth diapers. We're using a brand called Smartipants. So far, so good. After several weeks now, we like using them. And fortunately, they haven't turned Shawn off from doing diaper changes! Yeah!
Smartipants are considered an "all in one diaper". That means the liner slides inside the outer cover. Basically, the diaper has a pocket that's open on both ends that the absorbent liner slides into. Also, the snaps on the front and sides can be adjusted as the baby grows. So these should last us quite a while.
And look at the chubby roll lines on his knees! So cute!
A happy bum, means a happy baby!
And look how nicely he held his feet for me. Had to take advantage of a little baby toe shot. So cute!
Laying with his smarti bum in the air.
A true little Smartipants all dry and ready for an adventure.
Being a northern gal, I had never even heard of hoecakes let alone tried one (that is until last week). So when Shawn and I saw these, we were instantly interested. In fact, Shawn immediately and confidently proclaimed them as his favorite food--before we had even tried them. He also made it pretty clear that he wanted these to his project. And after he made these--twice in fact--I don't mind at all because he did a great job and they are delicious! He's definitely the hoecake chef in our house!
Hoecakes are sort of like a sweet cornbread style pancake, pan fried in hot butter. The cornmeal gives it a nice grainy texture. Top these with warm maple syrup and you've got something great for any time of day, not just breakfast. I personally think they are best right off the griddle.
Here's the recipe that Shawn uses--straight from the queen of southern cooking herself, Paula Deen. Hoecakes
And the recipe for self rising cornmeal that Shawn uses.
And really these tasty cakes are in our lives now all thanks to college football. That may seem like an odd connection, but let me explain. Every fall, our love for college football drives us to get the extended cable channels, so we don't have to miss any games on Saturdays or the Thursday night game. So during the rest of the week, when there's no games to watch we often watch the food network. (And Swamp Loggers--I love that show!) So the other night with no game on, we watched an episode of The Best Thing I Ever Ate: Cake Edition, and these little beauties were featured. I'm so glad we caught that episode. Think of the tragedy if we had settled for a rerun of Dirty Jobs or something!
So thanks, college football. Thanks for the competitive rivalries, the amazing plays, and the tasty hoecakes!
Last week we passed the 3 month mark for our little babe. He truly is growing SO fast.
Remember how in my 2 Months post, I said that I estimated he was about 15 lbs? Well after I posted that I thought I had to be overestimating. Because, honestly how many 2 month olds are 15 lbs? Probably something like 5 out of every 100. Well, as it turned out, I was right. At his 2 month check up (that ended up being just about 5 days shy of his 3 month birthday), he weighed 14 lbs 15 oz. Exactly 5 lbs more than his birth weight. Yeah, we don't grow 'em scrawny around here!
There haven't been very many big milestones this month, but changes for sure. At some point in the past month he's taken to sucking or chewing on his hands. In fact the other night we caught him discovering his thumb for some chewing. Are we going to have a thumb sucker? Hmm. He's also started acting a bit more like an older baby. He holds his head up really well and likes to be held so he can look around. And his eyesight has definitely improved from his newborn abilities of 1 foot. He follows me with his eyes all over the kitchen from the comfort of his beloved bouncy seat. (Best $5 I've spent in a long time.)
And people often ask me how he's sleeping. And well, I don't normally publicize this, but...are you ready?....
he sleeps through the night!
!!!!!!!!!
Generally speaking, of course. He occasionally has a couple of off nights in a row, but then he hops back on the sleep all night train. After waking up two to three times a night with the little man for many, many, many months, this sleeping style is very welcome in our house.
The pictures this time around aren't too glamorous. Mostly due to the dark Alaskan winter that has started. More nighttime darkness, combined with cloudy days, and no snow on the ground yet to at least reflect the daytime light we do have makes for dark indoor pictures. Plus my timing for the little babe probably could have been better. He wasn't feeling completely photogenic.
Oh, well. Life can't always be a bowl full of cherries.
Look out folks, three posts in three days! Something crazy must be going on. Well, actually I guess it's just closer to how I wish I could always post. But things often get too hectic and my posts are sometimes fewer and farther between. I guess I'm just on a good stretch right now. Either way, thanks to all of you who read this blog regardless of how often I'm able to post.
Lately, I've been enjoying baking with pumpkin. It just seems fitting during this time of the year, and I thought I'd share some of the recipes I've tried.
The other day, on a whim, I decided to make Pumpkin Scones with Spiced Glaze. They were delicious. And I love that scones are generally simple things to bake. These particular scones were a lot lighter than other scones that I've made before. Probably due to the texture that pumpkin puree gives it. And there are actually two glazes on these scones. A simple on that is brushed on and then a spiced glaze that is drizzled on. I halved the amounts for the simple glaze, then added a bit more powdered sugar and the spices to make the spiced glaze. This resulted in exactly enough glaze for each scone. Now wasted ingredients. Yay!
Then I figured that I couldn't stop the pumpkin train, so I made two Pumpkin Spice Lattes. One for me and one for my honey. The only thing about this latte recipe was that I thought it needed a bit more sweetness, but I like my warm coffee beverages sweet. That way I don't have to taste too much of the coffee! :) I also put my drink in my current favorite coffee cup--my souvenir from Shawn's hunting trip this year. And yes, there is such a place as Chicken, Alaska.
This week our little chickies turned 23 weeks old. Officially they are full grown at 20 weeks. So we now have a total of 8 full grown hens in our humble backyard coop. These pictures were taken about 3 1/2 weeks ago when the waiting game began for the first egg.
In this picture you can see the two sets of "twins" all grown up. The brownish chicken to the left (showing us her backside) is Miss Scarlett one of our original hens. The original four are about 19 months now.
Here are those same four chickens at one week old--their first field trip outdoors away from their heat lamp.
It's so interesting how the coloring has changed on their feathers. Especially on the black and white ones.
A few months ago, when we realized that all four of the chickies were indeed going to make it and that none of them were surprise roosters, we went ahead and named them. Unfortunately, I'm not happy about any of the names. All of my requests were turned down. For some crazy reason, my brother-in-law let the little missy name the two gold chickens (buff orpingtons) all by herself. Although I must admit that only reason I think the idea was crazy is because I'm not too fond of the names. It is nice to encourage her creativity though. And since everyone else liked the names, they stuck. So we have Patty and Irene. That's Patty on the left, a bit smaller and lighter colored. And Irene is on the right, more plump and darker gold. I just wished we would have named one of them Goldie, but oh well.
Here's Patty again.
Then we have another "twin" set of silver laced wydottes. Shawn was adamant that one of the chick sets be named Sam and Ella. [Apologies to my cousin, Ella. :) ]
Do you get it? Sam and Ella...Salmonella. Hilarious, I know. *insert eye roll* So once again I didn't get a say in the names. Hopefully one of these years I'll get to name a chicken Clementine or Fiona.
The only difference between the silver laced wydottes is that Ella (the chicken below) has white tips on her wing feathers. But when they were originally named Ella's white markings looked like "L's" at the top of her wings. A few more weeks of growing and her marking moved as her feathers continued to grow.
Here's 7 of our 8. Elvira, our black star, was missing.
There's Elvira on the right, running away from me. Why was she running you might ask? Well, I can assure you it wasn't because I did anything to her. It's because she was a bit more "on edge"...
because she was MOLTING! Eww! Just that word sounds a bit weird, huh? We've learned that molting is a natural and usually yearly event for chickens. Sometimes they lay fewer eggs or stop laying altogether during the 12-16 week process. Even though molting means they loose and then regrow feathers not all chickens are as obvious about it. Elvira's molting process was completely noticeable. She made drastic changes in just two days and looked pretty much half her size from all the missing feathers.
This is how she looked this past spring. Quite different. Fortunately, her feathers are all growing back in now so she doesn't look quite as strange with her skin showing, and her mood seems to be back to normal. But her egg laying is still much more infrequent than usual for her.
All four of our original hens have molted over the past few months or are still molting. Only one of them (Rosa, our Rhode Island Red) continued to lay consistently. There were several weeks where we were only getting one egg a day! I was a bit annoyed to be feeding 8 chickens and only getting one or zero eggs each day. But the good news is that the egg laying seems to be on the upswing.
Speaking of eggs...the chickies started laying eggs about three weeks ago! The egg on the left was our first (small) chickie egg. The green egg on the right (from Miss Scarlet) was a bit bigger than normal because that was the first egg that molting chicken had layed in 7 weeks! The first several eggs that a young hen lays are pretty small--more like quail eggs in size. But over the past three weeks, I can tell they are gradually getting bigger.
Here's the chickie egg being dwarfed in the egg carton. You can get an idea for how small it really is.
(And for how big that green one was.)
As you can tell, we're still enjoying caring for our backyard flock. Admittedly, having chickens is even more fun and enjoyable than I had thought it would be. And fortunately, they are even less work than I thought they'd be! Yay!
Hope you enjoyed the update on our hens.
Here's our crew on Halloween night. This was the best picture I got of them and since the two younger ones are actually looking and smiling, I chose this one to share. (Sorry, little miss.)
So from left to right we have Captain Hook, Peter Pan, and Wendy.
(Before seeing the little babe, a few people thought they were Robin Hood and Maid Marion--another good costume combination!)
About a month ago, watching Peter Pan was a daily request for our little man. So when I suggested dressing up as the main character for Halloween, he thought it was a great idea. Of course, it helped that since he just recently turned 3, he didn't quite understand what Halloween was before the other night. He's got it figured out now. For his costume, I followed an online tutorial from this site. I bought olive green sweat pants, and then made a fleece top, felt hat, belt and a felt dagger.
And surprisingly, our little miss chose to be Wendy rather than Tinkerbell. I'm a little bit proud of her costume. I decided against buying a $14 pattern and made one myself. I used tissue paper and a combination of a nightgown and shirt that currently fit her to make my own pattern. This is the first time I've ever made a garment without a purchased pattern and instructions or using an online tutorial. It's a Rachel Original!
The little babe was captian hook after a long search for a crocodile costume in his size for under $30 turned up empty. So a few days before Halloween, I found this pirate costume at Walmart. It was originally a girls 2T pirate dress that I shortened the sleeves and attempted to make leg holes out of the skirt. I say "attempted" because I put velcro along the opening, but he kept popping them apart during the Harvest Festival a few nights before Halloween. So for trick or treating, we just put black pants on him and didn't worry about connecting the velcro. I also took in the sides of his hat so it would fit his little head. Oh, and I made him a little felt hook that was on a felt wrist strap. It also doubled as a good sucking/teething toy.
Due to our crazy schedule, we weren't able to carve our pumpkins until Halloween day, but we still had a good time. The little man was an expert "craper" (scraper). Being 3, most of his words with "sc", "sp" or "sn" initial sounds end up getting the s dropped. I think it's a pretty normal and cute part of being 3.
The little man and I teamed up for his pumpkin and we went with a classic jack-o-lantern look.
Shawn and the little miss teamed up for a design that was a bit more complicated. They usually end up using a pattern.
So while she waited for daddy to finish the complicated and slightly time consuming carving, she did her homework with her Aunt Rachel who stopped by our house after a run.
Look at the alert little boy listening to his sister read poems!
(She's not a full reader just yet. Her class practices a new poem all week long and then she has to read it as well as the previous weeks poems to an adult over the weekend. She can read several words though. And she's pretty good at using context clues to make good guesses at words she doesn't actually know.)
