Tuesday Tots

Today a fellow friend from MD who also recently relocated back to PA with her hubby and son stopped by so our kids could play while she had an appointment. We got to visit a bit (as much as two energetic 2 year olds and a newborn will allow) before and afterwards.


Natalia simply loves playing with Brayden. Here are two cute shots of them "cooking" dinner for me. I thought they did pretty well having two cooks in a very small kitchen!!! I of course was closeby to moniter any flare-ups in the cooking. LOL


My favorite is the one where Brayden is offering Natalia a taste. How cute is that?!?!

What A Zoo...And All Things Fun!

What a great weekend!

Many of you know I mentioned we were going to be celebrating Natalia's 2 1/2 birthday this past Sunday in light of the busyness we're expecting this Christmas...and it may just become a permanent tradition. How fun it was to see her truly enjoying the spotlight and delighting in having her cousins and family around to celebrate her special day. (Her real 1/2 birthday would have been June 28th, but that was the middle of the week.) It of course was a miniature zoo inside the house as the kids and adults were all in a festive frame of mind! :-)

This weekend she learned how to sing the birthday song and of course likes to sing it over and over for everyone she knows: especially her cousins, friends and family members. I also tried to teach her, as much as I could remember, the Polish version, "Sto Lat". Pete helped to fill the gaps in my memory...she now can sing each version equally well. So cute!

Here she is in her "Sunday's finest", a gift from her Babcia. I thought it looked "July 4th-ish".

And here is the promised picture of the ladybug cupcakes from her party.

If you're interested in what I thought was an easy design, I made chocolate cupcakes, spread a thin layer of chocolate frosting on top, then cut 2 half circles from a strawberry Fruit Roll-Up and overlapped one end to form the wings. I then used an upside-down Rollo candy for the head and piped a face with white frosting and spots with the remaining chocolate frosting. They were no sweeter than your average store-bought cupcakes since I was careful to be minimal with the frosting. What's nice is that the Roll-Up "softened" and didn't pull off in one big piece when eaten, because they were mostly kept at room temperature prior to serving. (And, I despise few things as much as heavily colored icing to the point it tastes bitter...thus my bright red icing dilemma was solved!)

Pete remarked that it was a bit scary having them all smiling at him like that! LOL

Later that evening we pulled out the sprinkler and some plastic for the kids. We all had some laughs watching their fun.



Finally, early Monday morning we headed for D.C. and Ryan and Sarah drove down from Philly to meet us at the Metro station. Since the Washington Zoo is free, we decided to stay for the day and find some dinner nearby before making the drive back home. We used the Twinbrook station off of the red line and found a great place to eat just off of the Bethesda stop. (The Zoo was off of Cleveland Park).

Here are a few pictures from the day.




All in all, the zoo in D.C. was comparable to the Philly and Maryland Zoos, but it was fun exploring another part of D.C. and the Metrorail made our trip pretty inexpensive considering what we would have paid at the other zoos. Thankfully we hit NO TRAFFIC either way, and it only took us just over 2 hours to drive from our place! Not bad.

I love organizing things like this! Planning trips and events tends to energize me, especially if I have time to work at it ahead of time. My family jokes that I'm their representative booking agent. That's a kind way of saying I'm detail oriented...just a bit Type A! LOL

A Fun-Filled Week

While leaving our home and "family" of 7 years in Maryland was hard, this summer has once again confirmed in my heart how glad I am to be closer to family here in Lancaster County. Being able to see family so frequently has been such a blessing...not only our immediate families, but aunt, uncles, cousins and great grandparents too. The familiarity of this region brings that distinct feeling of "home" to me.

This past Wednesday was another wonderful example. Our mortgage/financial planner, Ken Pederson, made tickets to the Lancaster Barnstormers available, and so Pete, Natalia and I went with my parents to the baseball game that night. What fun!

Mom and Dad came over for dinner beforehand. We grilled up some steaks with mushrooms and a burgundy sauce, scalloped potatoes and salad, topped off by my first attempt at sour cherry pie. Needless to say, my stomach was happy! Then we headed into Lancaster for the night. What a beautiful evening it turned out to be. Humidity/temps were relatively low and the skies were clear. Natalia got to shake hands with "Cylo," the Barnstormers big red furry cow mascot. She kept asking "Where's Cylo?" all night long. And she would enthusiastically shout, "Hit the ball guys!" and "Awww, good try." :-P

This coming weekend we'll celebrate Natalia's 2 1/2 birthday. We've decided to celebrate her special day at the 1/2 way mark--December is just too crazy for our family with the soon-to-be 3rd birthday added to the week of Christmas! Last year had her dazed and confused.

So today I was being industrious in the kitchen. Just call me Betty Crocker!
I decided to go with a ladybug theme since she just loves her ladybug pj's. I'll have to post a picture later of the cupcakes I made today...hopefully I'll remember to snap a shot before they're all eaten.

Then on Monday my whole family is going to the Zoo. Still undecided if it will be the Washington or Philadelphia Zoo. Either way it looks to be a fun day.

And since it's currently raining tonight, it looks like our fireworks plan for this evening are capoot. Oh well, I think I could find a comfy spot on the couch with a book.

HAPPY 4th EVERYONE!

Kite Runner Movie

This past spring I read two excellent, though a bit heavy, books by Khaled Hosseini: The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. I'd highly recommend both of these--check out my reviews on my Shelfari bookshelf on the sidebar for more info.

When I discovered there had been a movie made of The Kite Runner I was immediately curious. Some people have said it was just okay in their opinion, and I would agree to a certain point. It wasn't one of those films that you walk away from thinking, that was extremely well-crafted and artistic, YET, the story is so compelling that I still thoroughly enjoyed it. Granted, since the book deals with the grim realities of war and human depravity, it is not for the young viewer. But, I felt it didn't go into too much graphic detail that you felt visually assaulted. Most of the "violent" matter was implied. And I felt all of the essential details of the plot were dealt with well.

To thoroughly enjoy this movie I feel you need to either have read the book yourself, or watch it with someone who can fill in some detail for you as you watch. Oh, and it is subtitled, but I didn't really mind. I personally think it would have been wierd if they hadn't used subtitles!

We got it through Netflix.

Berries and Cherries

Monday night we were again enjoying the bounties of summer from my parent's garden and their neighbor's trees. Pete picked about 4 quarts of sour cherries and after sharing some with his mom I plan to make my own filling for a pie.

We also brought home a quart of black raspberries--one of my absolute FAVORITE flavors of summer! Though we never get a big harvest, they are melt-in-your-mouth delicious! I plan to make a pie from this too.

My mom gave me two recipes to try. I thought I'd share the raspberry one. It's adapted from a Cherry Pie recipe in the Mennonite Community Cookbook.

What are your favorite pie recipes? (They don't have to be limited to fruit pies!)

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Black Raspberry Pie

1. Wash 1 qt. fresh berries (about 2 1/2 c.) and reserve some juice after clean; add water to equal 1/3 c. liquid.
2. Mix dry ingredients together: 1/3 c. sugar, 1/3 c. brown sugar, and 2 heaping TBsp. clear gel (the cook kind).
3. Add dry ingred's to juice, then berries.
4. Pour berry mixture into prepared pie shell; trim top crust to fit inside bottom crust and jag with a fork before layering on top of berries.
5. Bake for 10 mins. at 400 degrees, then lower temp. to 375 degrees and bake for 30 mins.

(Can use a crumb topping in place of second crust, though I personally think the second crust balances out the sweetness of the berries better. I usually leave the crumb topping for cherry pies. See recipe below.)

Crumb Topping

5 TBsp. flour
3 TBsp. sugar
2 TBsp. melted butter

Natalia Singing

I finally got Natalia to sing some of her favorite songs, although she's still wingling and only singing fragments, but it's something! :o)

Enjoy!

Fun Weekend..But Still Recovering

Well, I'm not sure where to begin the saga of our weekend.

We had a lot of fun seeing all of our extended family--some we only get to see once or twice a year, others every few years. This family camping tradition started before I was born and has been one of those fixed events of my life. I look forward to it all year long.

Now, if you know anything about my dad's side of the family, you'd quickly agree that they are a fun-loving, rowdy, inventive, and servant-hearted bunch. Every time we're all together I'm reminded of how blessed I am to have come from such a strong, faith-oriented heritage--a family that loves being and laughing together. Stories abound, we help one another, and seek to support one another in the good and the hard times. It's truly a blessing to see the values and faith of my grandparents passed down from generation to generation.

To the casual observer, this camping ritual is quite a sight. We take up about 6 sites for our tent village. We joke that we've bought out Walmart's supply of blue tarps because the place looks like a tarp city! We all tent, with the exception of Grandpa and Grandma (in their late seventies and early eighties!) who sleep in the back of their minivan. There are 5 or 6 picnic tables drawn together in a long line to accomodate the 30 or so of us at mealtimes, and all of our food is prepared over one fire.

Now...I sadly was not able to take pictures this past weekend, but there was a very good reason for that. Primarily exhaustion because our sweet little girl did not sleep well--AT ALL! We laugh about it now, but at the time it was quite a test in patience and longsuffering. I'll just add that since coming home she's making up for lost time--and we are so grateful!

If you're curious to see some pics of our time, check out Musical Jean's blog here. Keep scrolling down through the multiple posts for Sunday, June 29th. There are 25 pics chronicling our weekend.

One highlight is always our Sunday morning family church service in which we sit around the fire. After one of the men shares a devotional he's prepared, we sing some worship songs and hymns, and each family member gets to share what's been happening in their lives in the past year--recount God's goodness and faithfulness through life's blessings and trials. Usually there are some tears followed by laughter, and it always encourages my heart.

A lot of work goes into this weekend, but regardless of weather, we always have fun and come away with great memories.