The Gleeners

The house next to us is empty and the owners has given us full reign over the fruit trees on the property. Which is fortunate because we have had terrible luck with fruit trees at our house (another lemon tree is looking in sad shape). We picked a pile of plums, thinned the pear tree and then walked down the street and cleaned the blackberry brambles. I wish we could somehow transplant their fruit trees and divert their natural spring to our house. We can only hope that the house doesn't sell too quickly.

Speaking of houses selling, we met our soon to be new neighbors across the street. They are a couple about our age, have a daughter that's two in the fall and are attendees of the Waldorf sing-a-long. Just another example of what a small town we live in. We are relieved that they don't seem the type to let their pit bulls run loose and remove the mufflers from their cars.

To continue our day of collecting food from the community, we drove up to collect some fertilized eggs that we put a posting for on freecycle. We pulled up to this house way up a gravel road and a pack of dogs greeted us. Brian opened the door and a little dog immediately jumped in the car and proceeded to urinate all over. Lucky for us (yes there is luck in this story) the dog managed to pee entirely in the cup holder, avoiding all upholstery. Unlucky for us, Eason was very thirsty but not thirsty enough to be tempted by a water bottle tainted with dog pee. We received five fertile eggs and then proceeded to our next stop for some Diestels Compost to juice up our beds for fall plantings, all the while I held the eggs between my legs to keep them warm.

Why the fertile eggs? We've got a VERY broody hen and since they don't lay if they are broody (news to us) we decided to slip some eggs under her, make her happy, relieve my guilt of pushing her off them every day and see what happens. We may, just may be ready to thin our flock a bit in time to have a nice roast chicken in the fall.

In other news. Eliot is on about week two of potty training. Yes, our 15 month old has decided he is ready to be like his big brother and is well on his way to being potty trained. The other day I asked Eason to use the bathroom before we left to do errands and Eliot went tottering into the bathroom, sat down on the toilet, peed and said "bye". Wow. Can it really be this easy?

And lastly, the first photo is my newest favorite item in the house. Last year when Brian and my mom were insulating the attic we found this old wall paper, which looks like it's from when the house was built in 1951 (I need to do a bit more research). We've been talking about framing it, but it's been sitting in the corner for ages. We finally took it in and the framing shop had the PERFECT frame for the paper. He said it's an old antique maternity frame. I was delighted. If we hadn't of procrastinated we never would have found this frame.

Okay, sorry for the long post.

Birds

Today we made bird nests. When we arrived home from Europe there was a bird's nest, with five baby birds, in the rafters of our carport. We watched the birds, would run to the window when we'd hear them chirping for food and got the ladder out to peek in on them every day or so. We also got to watch the Cliff Swallows that built nests on the sides of the building at Brian's college. Eason was amazed at the construction (they make almost little caves with mud). So we decided to build our own, using red play dough and what ever we could find in our backyard. Eason and Eliot set out on a quest and came back with lots of goods for nest building. Eason was particularly excited to find a bit of orange yarn. The nest in the carport was cushioned with yarn and Eason was determined to find some for his nest. Much to my surprise he found a little piece in the backyard.

On a mommy note. I FINALLY went to a yoga class today. I had all I could take and huffed out of the house for some yoga. On my walk down I thought "well this will be nice, but I'm sure I'll return home and still be peeved." But, after an hour and a half of yoga, I was a new woman. Two other frazzled moms of little ones were my classmates and the instructor tailored the class to work out mama stress.

This is my goal, to make it to this class once a week. I know know know how much better I feel but there is some block to just making myself carve out the time. Luckily, I have a husband that is fully supportive of me taking this time. It's one of those "duh, why haven't I been doing this all along?"

Highlights

Slovakia

Czech Republic

Romania

Bulgaria

Hungary

I couldn't just breeze on past our trip to Eastern Europe, although it's tempting. We had such an amazing time, it's hard to sum it all up in just a few sentences. I'm completely overwhelmed with attempting to organize all the photos and realizing that my goal of FINALLY completing those baby books and previous travel albums this summer is just not happening, not to mention my new idea of a web page to organize all our travels. So here is a little glimpse of the trip. I limited myself to just one photo from each country visited. Again, these are in jumbled order. Can anyone help me on this? Also, won't let me add the USA photo. I'll try to add that later. Too time pressed too start it over.

Too sum up our trip...

We asked a lot of our kids and they were such troopers, on the other side of things it's really tough to have all of your children's tantrums be in foreign public arenas.

A Long Time Gone

Jack and Jill ran down the hill and Jack got a really nice shiner

Eason's very own 4th of July accessory

I've done a terrible job updating. Since we've been back from our trip it's been go go go. I'm just not sure, not sure at all, how those blog mamas manage to update their sites daily. Just in the time it took me to upload these photos (not in order again, what gives) Eliot ate about a golf ball size piece of play dough (homemade at least). Eason tipped me off that he had it in his mouth. Eason tried to remove it himself, he's a very very good big brother. Then Eason replied "hey, where is the piece I gave Eliot to play with?" Not on the floor, not on the counter, must have been consumed. I will try try try to be better about updating the blog. We are doing very interesting things, so many interesting things that I don't have time to write about it. I also suspect that the blog mamas don't have kids who need much less sleep than their mothers.