moving right along

Happy first week of Advent!

Happy Thanksgiving!

The pies are defrosting as we speak, the bread for the stuffing is drying out (aka being stale-ified), the turkey is defrosting in the fridge, and I have enough potatoes to make food for a small army.
I made cranberry sauce on Sunday, and it turns out that making it ahead of time was a really good idea, because it gave me the chance to boil it again on Monday (when I realized it hadn't thickened up properly), and then it gave me the chance to eat some of it when my brie sandwich was boring. Yum - cranberry sauce is one of my favorites.
Happy Thanksgiving!

G is for Girl with Greencard (with Giveaway)

I'm so excited to be part of Brenda's (aka Secret Agent Josephine) super-stealthy book tour! Brenda has  written and illustrated three beautiful kid's books!

I have a tendency to be picky, and I'm certainly picky about which books are on Noah's shelves (and not only because I'm the one who gets to read them over and over and over again). These three have my stamp of approval.

stealthy reader

They're a good read-aloud length, and there are plenty of chances for Noah to help me read - he can recognize some of the letters, and he loves to tell me what each letter is for. And thanks to the letter 'N', he now knows what a newt is (he guessed salamander and gecko first... much to my amusement).

"Bo biddly bum bum?! HAHAHA!"

The illustrations are, as you may expect, charming and whimsical and funny (typical Brenda). The books are colorful and playful and funny, which makes them a hit with kids (and parents).
As a matter of fact, Noah liked them so much that I bought numbers as an ebook for my iPod. So far, I have kept that a secret from Noah - I'm not great at sharing my overpriced electronics with a (well-intentioned, usually careful, though often sticky-handed) three-year-old. I have some doctor's appointments coming up though, so when the waiting room gets boring, Noah will get to read Numbers on the iPod. I'm sure he'll love it just as much as I do.


If you know anything about being a secret agent, you know that disguises are of the utmost importance. Not to worry - Brenda's got you covered with printable, cut-out-able, stick-on-able mustaches of all colors and shapes! Click here to download! The green tea brews in tranquility. You know how I feel about mustaches...

har, har, haaaaar!

 Add a few accessories and fly completely under the radar!

trying hard not to laugh

Now here's your to-do list:
1. Leave a comment on this post to enter the giveaway for a beautiful print from the ABC book. Tell me which disguise you couldn't do without on a secret spy mission.
Comments are going to close on November 30th, and I'll randomly pick a winner on December 1st.

2. Click over here to buy one or all of Brenda's books! (They make great Christmas presents, too.) If you've already done that, consider leaving a review.

Brenda's amazon author page with links to paperback and kindle editions of all three books

ABCs on iTunes
Colors on iTunes
Numbers on iTunes

paperback and nook editions of the books at Barnes & Noble

3. Download the template for the mustaches, print, cut, and go under cover! If you take a photo of your mustachioed self, I'd love to see it - why don't you upload it to flickr and add it to the SAJ's Undercover Crafts pool?!

4. Keep checking Brenda's site so you don't miss any of the stops on the super-stealthy book tour! Remember, there's a special give-away for those of you who collect all the secret code sentences. And of course, there'll be lots more stealthy crafts and giveaways and interviews with Brenda!

5. Cuddle up and read a book to your little secret agents!

Working

I've been working on a big project for a while, and we're finally ready for a preliminary reveal:

This little person is due to arrive early in May, which puts me at around 15 or 16 weeks.
I've been feeling alive and human again since the first trimester ended, which is a pretty amazing feeling when you've spent a good two months constantly nauseated and a part of that time feeling that things like "standing up" and "walking around" required more energy than you actually had. One day I will perhaps tell you about the Persistent Heartburn of Doom, but I'm currently just too happy not to be dealing with that anymore.
Supposedly, the baby is the size of an avocado right now, so here's a nice little comparison:

Anyway - we're thrilled.

I'd tell you about my day...

... but it was really long and stressful, so I figured I'd just post a photo instead. I spotted this when we were in San Francisco in September:


It was immediately clear to me: It's a miniature TARDIS! (It's bigger on the inside.)

(If you don't understand this at all, do not worry. I'll be back to non-Doctor-Who-related content next week.)

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~


Pretty:

Apple peels from my apple pie making. My little helper happily munched on these (all the vitamins etc. are right under the peel you know!) while I cored and cut the apples.


Happy:

Sharing my third of the apple harvest from our back yard with my little buddy. It was delicious.
(And yes, his hands were clean. His fingernails tell the story of a boy who likes to dig (and whose nails need a trim).)


Funny/Real:

Around here, we usually have one or two thunderstorms each year. One of those moved through the area last weekend, and Noah was more or less terrified and finally hid in bed with his hands covering his ears. No cajoling or explaining could get those hands off his ears, so I just settled in bed with him and held him, and he actually fell asleep. It was around 6pm and he hadn't had any dinner, so I was really surprised, but the "never wake a sleeping baby" rule is one of my favorites (and while he's not technically a baby anymore, that rule will apply to him forever as far as I'm concerned).
Thankfully, he slept until morning (rather than waking up hungry in the middle of the night), and husband and I got to enjoy dinner and a movie. Impromptu thunderstorm date? Yes, please! :)

This photo simultaneously makes me laugh and breaks my heart a little. I guess that's motherhood for you.


Pretty, happy, funny, real is the brainchild of these ladies here, who are encouraging their reader to find contentment in the everyday perfection and imperfection of life.

our epic road trip, part 3

Sunday afternoon, we made our way to the General Sherman Tree. It's not the tallest, but still the largest tree (by volume).

A moment after I snapped this photo, my mom (I think) said something along the lines of "IS THAT A BEAR?!!" and... sure enough, it was:

He slowly made his way down the hill, across the paved walkway, under the fence, and toward the tree. He got really close to people:

And then he suddenly started running (and I snapped out of my initial "THIS CANNOT BE REAL" trance) toward a bench where some visitors had just unwrapped a nice picnic (looked like subway sandwiches). The guy turned white as a sheet (understandably so), dropped his food, and backed away.
I scooped up Noah and we all started walking rather briskly back up the hill, away from the bear picnic, just as most of the other people who were around started walking TOWARD THE BEAR.
Further up the hill, we saw a lady who had a little white dog with her (perhaps a Maltese or a Bichon?), off leash. When we told her about the bear, she picked up and carried her dog. You know, for safety? Or... something? (Seems like a little dog like that would be a perfect snack for a hungry bear, and carrying it would not be the most effective way to keep the dog safe, but maybe that's just me, overthinking things?)

Now... I was pretty upset. I'd done some reading about bear safety (all of which suggested that bears wouldn't approach a loud group of people because they're afraid of humans), and I'd glanced over the guide we'd been given when we entered the National Park, where they describe the rules. So I knew that you're not supposed to eat anywhere except for designated picnic areas. On our way back to the car, I saw the - admittedly rather small - NO DOGS sign at the trail head. My faith in humanity took a serious beating that afternoon. My righteous indignity was off the charts, and I needed to tell Someone Who Would Make A Difference. Like, I don't know, Barack Obama or something. I'd have settled for a NP ranger, but there was no ranger to be found. NOWHERE.

When we got home from our vacation, I sent an email about the whole thing to the general info email address for Sequoia NP, saying that I had a photo I could send if they were interested. They asked for the photo and forwarded my emails to their bear specialist, who sent me an email asking for my phone number so he could get more info. He told me he was really happy to have a confirmed report with a photo. I guess now they can go ahead and try to capture and tag that bear so it can hopefully be re-educated so it won't be a danger to people. I also told him about the lady with the dog, and his response was "Well, we haven't had any reports of dogs being snatched by bears. [pause] The mountain lions usually do that." Hee, hee.
That phone call at least made me feel like I'd been a responsible National Park visitor and steward of the environment. Or something. It did restore some of my faith in humanity.

After the bear incident, we regrouped, I took some deep breaths (though I won't lie to you - I was REALLY upset and shaken), and we moved on. The above photo shows three of the four guardsmen. The lanes of the road are split up so you drive right in between those huge trees.

more pie

I took home two (raw) pie crusts on Saturday, intending to make apple pies. I wasn't feeling great yesterday, so I put the project off until today.

What made the pie-ing more challenging was that my apple pie recipe requires a second crust for a lid, so I needed to make more pie crust.

Next, I made a mistake measuring the shortening and was forced to add almost a whole cup of extra flour, leaving me with enough crust for an additional pie.

ready for the oven

Ironically, I actually ended up using both crusts from Saturday for the same pie, making my whole crust-making extravaganza obsolete (it was fun though, and I do have three pies rather than one, so I don't have terrible regrets here). I made my crust with whole wheat flour (which may have been part of the issue?!), and I decided to go with one-color pies rather than a funky white pie with a brown lid.

One of the best parts of Saturday's pie party was that I came home to a kitchen that didn't look like the above. Sticky dishes, ingredients, apple peels, crumbs stuck to the counter and a sink full of dishes... I was actually surprised that I managed to clean up the whole mess within the first 20 minutes of baking time.

And an hour or so later, the counter looked like that. Win!

3.14

pies cooling on my counter

We were invited to a pie making extravaganza yesterday. There were three of us making pie crusts (with "help" from the children) and two of us making pumpkin pie filling, and way too many children running around like crazy (aka "playing"). We'd cranked out about 20 pies by the time we sat down for dinner! It was sort of exhausting, but also really fun. I liked being able to focus on just one thing (I've got that pie filling recipe memorized...). My friend was steaming and pureeing the pumpkin, so I didn't have to worry about that, all my other ingredients were within reach on the counter, pie crusts were being assembled faster than I could fill them... I guess I'm used to doing housework on my own, so working as a team like that was really refreshing and fun.
And at the end of the day, I took home four finished pies and two more crusts,* I was fed a delicious dinner (and people liked the salad & dressing I contributed), and my child fell asleep in the car on the way home. WIN!

*I left early because Noah was getting tired-hyper, so I took two crusts home for apple pie.