Urban Green Farm

fish for tea

ARGH whole post just deleted. I feel like crying. Maybe I am. 

Yesterday was really awesome. These last 2 weeks of pregnancy have really improved with the bursts of nesting energy I have been receiving. I am able to actually get things done. It is nice to have a little ME back. Keith and I have even got in a good routine of tidying up the house each evening, so that I go to bed with a sense of peace and wake up to a happy place. 

Yesterday the energy hit early and the girls and I were out by 9, hitting Starbucks and then picking up a used Ergo carrier for a sweet deal! I have lots of slings, but I wanted one with more padding and the backpack option for older, spicy Ayla! This one should do the trick, because little mister here is going to be in a sling for a lot of his baby life I predict. 

After I scored on the sling, we had some time to kill. A pet store was near by. The one cat they had was being lame and so we ended up in the fish aisle, talking to the fish expert, dreaming of fish pet happiness....

I couldn't leave them there! 

Ivy picked pink rocks, a purple flower and a pink fish with rainbow fins. Her name is (he is a he) Rainbow Goldie Princess Flower or Rainbow for short. 

Ayla picked awesome decorations and a bold, bright, red, feisty, spicy fish named Goldie Fishie. He is my favorite. 

They are Betta Fish, the only kind pet stores will let you keep in a bowl these days. Apparently gold fish need aquariums as even the smallest ones are meant to grow over a foot long and squishing them in a bowl they will sense their environment, keep their bodies small, but their insides keep growing and kinda explode! Sad. No more gold fish bowls. 

The girls and I LOVE them. I have had fish growing up, and I liked them, but these little ones I really love. Watching them swim so peacefully is so calming, so beautiful. The girls are mesmerized by them and have become so protective, screaming at Tissue to back away, he has gotten sprayed with water a few times for being too curious. It is magical watching them bond to these little fish. 

If getting a pet wasn't enough excitement for one day we decided to craft up a storm with the fish (they are on our dinning room table, which we also use as a craft table). 

We made hats to celebrate Prince William and Kate's 2nd wedding anniversary, because you can't attend a English wedding without hats! We also had ourselves a tea party, Keith's Grandma even joined us for hat making and tea, and she has had tea with the Queen in Buckingham Palace, so she's a good person to have around for a fake royal tea party. 

After tea I tried to nap with Ayla, but a storm hit and the wind was blowing so hard and knocking our gate I gave up. I came down and Ivy and I flipped through the royal wedding magazine and watched the fish. 

Great day. 

I imagine much of today will be spent watching our newest family members, they are just so NEAT!

TODAY: Midwives later, fish watching now. No baby yet :) Although last night I had some pretty convincing false labour stuff start up....nothing happened, but my body is getting ready. Glimmer today is your last day to claim a diamond as your birth stone...think about it. 

in review

It has been almost 2 weeks of eating Once a Month Mom's August Traditional menu. 

Its funny how a site like this has been around for 3 years and the month I find it and send all my readers to check it out they go to a paid membership. Nice.  

I don't think we need to debate this here, I honestly get why they have gone to memberships, I can't believe the amount of work the authors of the site do every month, they deserve to get paid I think. Just bad timing! But they have left all their old menus before 2012 available for free. So I plan on using those. 

I plan on using them, because I am hooked. 

I can't believe the quality of this food. I have been so impressed. 

The burritos we had with homemade garden salsa. Awesome. The orange pork was the most wicked sauce I have ever tasted. The yogurt greek chicken was mouth watering. The tomato soup tantalizing with a whiff of spice. The taco bites go down quick and happily. The lemon yogurt muffins I have devoured, I am making more of them today or tomorrow, they freeze so well. Just awesome. 

We have ate 2 flops too. The Bubble Up Pizza, was plain old NASTY! The rattlesnack rolls, ground beef and cream cheese rolled up in crescent rolls didn't bake right, so they were raw in the middle, but they would have been tasty if cooked right before frozen! I will try baking them longer next time we eat them to see if that works. 

But 2 flops out of more then 30 recipes, pretty good I think! I still have some to taste obviously, but I am sold on this cooking method. I will be having another cooking day sometime near the end of Sept. I think I am going to do half veggie half trad menu. 

Did any of you try it out? What do you think? 

The neighbour play date was awesome yesterday. We are doing it again and soon! YAY! 

I am absolutely exhausted today. I can't believe how this pregnancy is kicking my butt!? With both girls I got sick and tired, but not until 6 weeks or so. This is crazy, but I am SOO glad to be feeling it, the more I feel sick, the more that baby is sticking! BRING IT ON GLIMMER BABE, bring it on. Also Ayla decided to have a spice attack at 3am. Who does that?!

Spicy Ayla. 

She wanted a bottle, she is teething and a bottle always calms her down. But she just had a second one at 11,  I wasn't giving her a third. And she lost her mind. Cried and cried until 4. I tried walking her around, rocking her, signing to her, rubbing her gums....nothing worked. Finally at 4 I got her to calm down, I walked around with her until she was almost sleeping, then she came to bed with me. She woke up at 6....and then started crying again. Until 8am!! No jostling, carrying, loving worked. She just lost it. 

AGRH. She is finally calm now. She ate, and is watching cartoons. Going to be a long day. 

TODAY: Groceries this am. Just some basics. Bread, almond milk, eggs. Early naps for ALL. Then playdate this aft and holding itsy bitsy Caitlin, I think holding all these newborns are keeping Glimmer firm in place :) 

How it worked

We survived! 

If you remember on Friday I was tackling a WHOLE day of cooking. Today I am going to explain how it worked out, and answer all the questions I got about it!

So after reading the amazing, Once a Month Mom website I knew I had to try this out. I picked the August Traditional Menu. I inputted 4 people into the grocery lists and recipe cards and printed out all the material for this process. I read all the instructions and recipes and then hit the grocery store with the huge grocery list. 

I spent $300 on groceries for this menu. Not bad, considering the AMOUNT of meat I had to buy. Which was disturbing for this girl who has been trying to not eat as much meat. I couldn't afford to buy it all free from, so I compromised and bought one of each meats free from (there was 4 packs of 5 chicken breasts, 3 packs of ground beef, 4 packs of 2 pork chops and a huge pack of 5 steaks and bacon and pepperoni!!!) 

I also needed 3 dozen eggs and sucked it up and bought them free range. I learnt a lot at the Stampede about the differences in egg types and I can ONLY buy free range, not even free run anymore. And I pay $6-8 a dozen for them! ICK. 

So if you do this, you can save money buying on sale meats and cheaper eggs, so it could be a lot less then $300. 

The night before the big cooking day I prepped all the veggies, like the instructions tell you too. I cut sooo  many veggies, browned a lot of ground beef and sauteed mushrooms. 

The day of I started cooking at 7:30am. I finished at 5:30pm. No breaks, other then to deal with the kids. 

2 kinds of muffins, one to eat while cooking, one to cook and then freeze. I followed the instructions exactly, because I like instructions and they were written so well. But you can do this type of cooking how ever you want. But the instructions use your oven the most efficient way by cooking the lower temp things first and higher temp things later. 

So while something was cooking, I was preparing the next recipe. Then one would come out of the oven and cool, while the next one went in and then a new recipe was prepared. I also had to flash freeze things, lay them on cookie trays in a single layer and freeze them before packing, and package things!

It didn't take long till I was behind a whole recipe in the instructions. 

I also would fill the kitchen sink with water at the beginning of each recipe, use the water throughout cooking, then wash all the dishes from that recipe and counters at the end of cooking it. I like a clean work space. This amount of cleaning also helped in putting me a recipe behind. 

What ended up happening was the oven was on for a while cooking nothing, because I hadn't prepared the next recipe by the time the cooking one had to come out!

I have big counters and I soon found that they were all full, the table was being used to cool food and I had no space left! AND a big glob of dough to roll out, so in came the floor. 

I made this all work by having the instructions taped to the bottom of my kitchen cupboards. Then I taped up each recipe and left it taped up until the recipe was packaged and frozen. I had 10 recipes on the cupboards at one point! 

The kitchen table was my packaging centre. I had the labels ONce a Month Mom provides and taped them to the gallon or quart freezer bags. The labels tell you what is in the bag and how to prepare it when your ready to cook it. 

As the recipes went on there was less oven cooking, more stove top, then it was no cooking at all, just putting the meat in bags and adding marinades or sauces or both to the bags. 

I would say half the recipes have some cooked meat and the other half has raw, now frozen, meat. Which cut down a lot on the cooking time that day. 

I was worried the recipes would be basic and simple to make the cooking day faster, but they were full of amazing ingredients and every sauce tasted awesome! I was really pleased with the whole set up. 

There was only 2 recipes I ended up not making, the pepperoni grilled cheese sandwiches sounded great, but grilled cheese is an easy go to lunch for us, so them taking up precious freezer space didn't seem wise. I also tried to make the raspberry roll ups, they are pancakes spread with cream cheese and raspberry sauce, but the pancake batter they had me make was way to thick for this! It should have been a crepe batter instead. So I just froze the pancake batter for later and put some into the fridge to use that weekend. The sauce I froze into ice cub trays to pop out as a single portion sauce for pancakes. 

What I ended up with, 

2 Bubble Up Pizzas

15 egg burritos 

12 taco bits (wonton wrappers filled with beef and yummness)

16 lemon raspberry muffins

1 huge container of tomato bisque

1 gallon bag of tomato bisque

8 large rattle snack rolls (croissants filled with beef, veggies and sauce) 

12 raspberry cubes

1 gallon bag of pancake batter

1 gallon bag of meatballs and homemade bar b q sauce 

2 gallon bags of crockpot mongolian beef

2 gallon bags of chicken cacciatore 

2 gallon bags orange teriyaki pork

2 gallon bags Dijon baked chicken 

2 gallon bags yogurt marinade chicken 

6 spinach and goat cheese stuffed chicken breasts, wrapped in bacon 

AWESOME! 

And it all fit in my fridges freezer!

It all needs to thaw before cooking. I learnt that the best way to thaw something is in your fridge, then you can put it in the oven, bar b q or grill once thawed. And if you decide not to use it you can put it back in your freezer! Most of these things will take 2 days to thaw, so weeks still have to be planned. 

 

So I made up this board. It says what we plan on eating that week and what day each things needs to come out of the freezer to thaw in the fridge. 

It is also important to keep track of what is in your freezer, because it is sooo full digging through it to find out what I have in there would be crazy. 

Freezer inventory sheet, right on the fridge for easy access. 

Now the real test begins. Cooking all this food was, hard, but really rewarding actually. I am soo happy with the quality of food in the freezer. But if it doesn't taste good, then there is no point in all of this. 

I have had 2 items now, some taco bits (AWESOME, the kids devoured them) and last night we had one of the crock pot Mongolian beefs, ummm wow. Keith could not stop saying, this is so good, this is so good! It was really amazing. 

I am impressed so far. I have a feeling this will become a monthly thing for us. Next time I might try the vegetarian menu, as this was A LOT of meat! 

Ohh how did the kids do? They were unsupervised basically all day. The TV never turned off. But they were fantastic. Moving the table down there and setting up those simple craft trays were such a great ideas, because they played on them all day long. 

That's one played in room! Worth it though. 

Things for next time, wearing shoes! AHH my feet were sore, standing for 10 hours takes its toll. 

Happy :)

TODAY: I don't have to go grocery shopping! CRAZY, I grocery shop every Monday....this is weird. I might just go to get yogurt and a few baking items I ran out of, just because it's Monday, it's what I do. A friend is hopefully visiting today too. We are eating burritos tonight! 

_my here . my now_

_my here. my now_   my exact current moment. Capturing the beauty of the simple, silly, normal things of my Fridays. If you want to play along leave a link to your post in the comments.

On your cutting boards

Get knifes 

GO!!! 

My now is facing, the 20 containers of prepped food, the counter full of ingredients, the 15 recipes going to be tackled. All while warm muffins cook in the oven to serve as fuel for this CRAZY day. 

By the end of today, I will have 16 indv breakfasts, 16 indv lunches, and some 50 indv dinners. Epic. 

From whole, fresh, veggies. 

To chopped and sliced prepped veggies. I chopped 10 cups of onions....my eyes just about burned themselves in their sockets. 

Ingredients standing ready. 

To keep the kids happy,

I have moved there eating table to the playroom, with a table cloth underneath of course! And set up their trays (Micheals, $9 each, amazing) with new toys, candies, crafts and books. It was a hit. 

I also have gobs of movies from my friend Lil to also help :) 

HERE I GO!

 

PS Fertility clinic, FINALLY called yesterday. I had to get another referral from my Dr, since it has been a year since they last saw me. I almost screamed at her, I AM NOT WAITING FOR 6 MONTHS ON THAT WAIT LIST! And she so softly replied, oh we would never do that to you. After you get your referral in, we will call you within 2 weeks, and book you for the next available appointment. I saw my Dr pronto yesterday and got her to send in the referral that same day. So to me that means END of Oct, beginning of Nov. BLAH, but at least the ball is rolling somewhere. 

Have a great weekend all. 

the passion of it

This is our third year gardening. Every year I say to myself I will do more, help more, weed more, use more, but never seem to get there. There have been pregnancies, newborns and mom-ness that has often kept me from the garden, but I don't have those this season and I am still not out there as much as I want to be. 

The garden is Keith's baby. He is the one who puts soo much work into it all. I imagine I will help out more when the kids are older, I hope so. But I decided this year not to let so much go to waste. There is just so much to learn with gardening, when to plant, whens the earliest to harvest, whens the latest. Lots of our crops last year and the year before went to waste because we didn't know how to preserve it. Not this year. 

Yesterday Ivy and I tackled that garden, while Ayla napped. 

First off we tackled the apples. 100's of rotten ones lay on the ground, we had a hail storm that knocked off so many apples and the bugs got to them before we did. Those all got composted. Then we gathered about another 100 from the tree and ones that were fresh on the ground. They all got thrown in the sink in a water bath to be washed. 

Then I (lost Ivy by this point) harvested almost all the spinach and kale. It was losing its freshness out there and if left much longer the moths and bugs would have eaten all the leaves. 

I also got a bowl of onions, some of their exposed parts were rotting and I didn't want to see them wasted. 

Next was time to preserve! The best way to keep leafy garden plants is by freezing them. But first they had to be sorted, all the bad, yellow parts composted, then the stems cut, then washed, then steamed for 2 mins and then iced for 2 mins, then dried and then sealed tight into freezer bags. A PROCESS! 

I did this whole ordeal with both the spinach and kale. It took me over 2 hours from harvesting to bagging. Crazy. 

Then the apples needed looking after. After getting them really washed, I began the grueling process of quartering and coring these tiny apples. I filled 3 huge pots with them, added a cup and a bit of water and cooked them for 20mins. Then blender full by blender full I blended them up with some brown sugar and cinnamon. 

I made 2 big fridge containers, 2 huge freezer bags and 6 jars for gifts of applesauce. We already ate a whole fridge container! I think more applesauce will be made in the future. 

So what lead me to this crazy amount of work? Partly the vow I made to not see so much garden growth wasted, but also a friend commented on here yesterday about a web-site and it blew my mind. 

Once a Month Mom

How oh how have I not heard of these ladies before? Their idea is to cook only once a month. Yes once. Cook for 12 hours make 30 meals and freeze it all. Not only do they suggest this, but give you new menus every month (traditional, vegetarian, gluten free, dairy free!!), then give you a grocery list, instructions on how to cook it all, recipes, labels for your freezer then have article after article how to do this successfully! I spend a good hour and bit reading all their information on the getting started page and my world was change. 

All this, all for free. WHAT!!!! 

So I got to work, scraped the new menu planning idea I talked about yesterday and printed off all the materials for Once a Month Mom. 

I put the vegetable freezing chart and the thawing chart on my bulletin board, I put a freezer inventory sheet on the fridge and all the menus, instructions, recipes and grocery list in my clip board. 

All the recipes use seasonal ingredients so that you are cooking with what is fresh. The idea is you cook all this, eat it the next month and then do it again every month. That way we will always be eating healthy, good food, but with NO time to make. Just pop them in the oven and enjoy. AHHH!

So I am grocery shopping today, prepping tonight and cooking all day tomorrow. I will let you know how this goes! 

It also teaches you how to organize your freezer better and how to make just a small freezer work with this type of cooking, because we don't have a deep freeze, but I am wanting one! 

You might be wondering, Alicia, whats with the obsession with food? You are always talking about it, changing your plans, your diet, everything! What are you doing? 

I think a problem we have as North Americans is that we have lost our relationship and our connection with food. We see meat in the grocery store but don't see the cow or chicken. We see every kind of produce we could want all year round, but we don't see the stickers from how far away it is, what was put in it to make it last that long, and what chemicals are on all the produce we eat. We see the convenience of packaged things and not what they are made of, or the foot print all that packaging leaves. 

We have lost something. 

I want my family to eat healthy, to appreciate the lives that were lost for our meat, to realize the crazy amount of work to bring produce to the table, to learn the joy of cooking with good ingredients. Because it tastes better, is better for the earth, better for local farmers, better for our bodies and now with this once a month cooking, better for our wallets! It's win, win, win. 

I want a relationship with my food and that is why I talk about it so much. Because we ALL eat everyday, we ALL need food, it is something we all have in common, it is so important to our survival but so many of us have no idea what is going on with our food. 

I am not trying to preach here, this is what I believe and why I am so passionate about food and finding a way to cook easier and better and take the frustration out of eating healthy and well. That is why I change it up so often, because I still end up at the McDonalds too often, buying heaping amounts of snack foods, giving in to the cheap meat sales and these are habits I want to change, or lessen if I can. 

Does that make sense? 

(our sunflower!) 

I am proud of what our family is doing and I am ok with not being perfect, I think the things we are trying to do is better for everyone and I am super excited about my cooking day tomorrow! 

TODAY: Grocery store, for one massive load of groceries (they say that this once a month cooking only costs $150 - 300 a month....amazing). Then a look at the game plan for tomorrow and creating some tempting things to keep the children entertained for the day! WISH ME LUCK. 

 

back to food

Thank you all. Your thoughts, prayers, love, offers to babysit, all mean so much. And I will take you up on watching my kids, we will need it! 

If you have read my blog for any length of time you see our eating habits change a lot around here! Summer always messes up the best well intentioned plans, even more destruction occurs when your youngest daughter deletes your meal planning app and upon reinstalling it ALL my meal plans, recipes and HOURS and HOURS of entering GONE. So I gave up on it, I am not doing that work again. 

So we had no meal plans all summer, which meant a lot of eating out, a lot of meat, and not a lot of health. 

September is nearly here though, and with it some routine. With the help of this blog, I am meal planning in a new way. I like her idea of themes, then when searching for a recipe you don't have the millions on the internet to surf through. 

I printed out these sheets, and am writing a theme on each day. Then I can search for a recipe using the theme, and I have been looking through Simple Bites recipes, so that makes it easier right now too. I also plan on using Fridays to make batches of dinner to freeze, so that we get a nice stocked up freezer of good, healthy foods. Excited! 

The themes I am using are comfort, kids, fast, garden, Daddy cooks, special, freeze (which means making a meal that can be frozen and then I make lots), freezer (which is using one of the frozen meals) and eggs. Searching recipes with these themes makes deciding on one a lot easier. I will let you know how some turn out.

So our food priorities right now are use garden, meat once or twice a week, local local local and seasonal as often as we can. And following this new meal plan, it just saves so much money and takes so much stress out of cooking. 

Right now I am working on muffins. I just LOVE muffins in the mornings, good ones, moist, fluffy, perfect muffins. Store bought ones can't compare, not even cafes or bakeries! Homemade, fresh muffins are just to die for. So I am working on a triple batch, so I can freeze two without the add-ins and just pop the bag in the fridge over night so I can wake up to freshly baked muffins more often!

And because this post was not very picture kind, here's a really funny photo shot of our family!

TODAY: Muffins, maybe some coffee, and not much else! A day of no plans. 

new hobby

This is our third year of gardening and it is something we all love. Keith is defiantly the primary gardener of the family, but all of us lend a hand whenever we can. Connecting with nature and food this way is inspiring and it helped me want to learn more. 

I am half way done book 5 of 6 of the Clan of the Cave Bear Series and it is constantly blowing my mind. How the earliest of humans lived 40 000 years ago, and how the Neanderthals lived for some time before them. The author describes Ayla's journey's in amazing detail and what truly captures my attention is her knowledge of plants, which ones to eat, which ones to use as medicine, which ones to drink, it's all fascinating. 

So I started to learn more about foraging and quickly became overwhelmed, because there is just sooo much to know. I still want to learn this, but I have narrowed things down a bite first. I am concentrating now on making my own teas, not just because they are enjoyable to drink, but because through these teas there is endless medicinal uses and it is all incredibly fascinating. 

My first few teas were simple, lemon basil from my kitchen window sile, rosemary from the same window and peppercorn from the spice cabinet. I brought out the agave syrup to sweeten it, but soon found it was not needed. The flavors of the herbs are so wonderful that it needs no sugar. 

Next I dried some raspberry leaves from our garden, 

raspberry leaves dry well this way, between 2 window screens so the sun beams can reach them and they don't blow away. Most herbs you can dry inside on a rack and I plan on doing that soon. 

Some of the next mixtures I tried out were raspberry leaf, fennel seed, thai basil, rosemary, peppercorn, and sage. 

I am learning about all the different herbs there are and which ones grow here. When we get back from BC I plan on expanding our indoor herb garden to get more tea creations. 

In learning about the medicinal uses of herbs, trees and weeds I have been able to do some other neat stuff, I treat our mosquito bites with chewed basil leaves, little warts with the juice from dandelion stems (which is working!) even headaches with a special tea blend. 

There is endless knowledge here i am even thinking of taking a course on identifying plants. 

Most of my information I have gathered is from this website Annie's Remedy.

I am loving this new hobby and if you have any questions ask, or any herbal advice share please! 

TODAY: drinking some tea to help balance me, rejuvenate my mind, clear the sluggishness, even helping with my allergies! AMAZING. Also packing up the clean, clean car! A quick visit to cuddle baby Ezra, my aunt is stopping by and one more stop at the store. Busy, busy. 

PS I will be posting some BC pics here, but check out my Instagram for way more pics and stories! 

Amazing Saturday

After a vacation full of family and friends and then coming home and both Keith and I catching up with friends we decided to take all day Saturday just for our little family. 

Keith made pancakes and after breakfast we headed out on our adventure. 

We drove towards Sundre, a small town North of here. The place we hope to one day own our hobby farm. Why there you ask, it gets some of the most sun in Canada, it has a river, it has land! And it is only an hour from Calgary. Dreams. 

I found the house I want not long into our drive, overlooking the river, 3.5 acres, a huge beautiful log home, just perfect and only $700, 000! Haha, maybe one day!! 

On this little drive we found a meadery! I know, so random! We followed the signs and arrived here,

 

They gave us a tour and we learnt all about making mead. I really enjoyed this because in the Clan of the Cave Bear books they drink mead, well brew they call it, but essentially they same beverage. 

What I also loved about this place is that the original family business was selling honey, they have 320 bee hives, with 60 - 80 000 bees per hive, A LOT OF BEES! I want bees soooo bad. So the sons of the family thought, hey we can make mead with honey lets do it! And they started up this meadery, so cool. 

We of course bought a few kinds of mead and a very special treat. 

On our adventure we also stopped to hike some crown land and during our wandering we found a lonely, abandoned stump. He just had to come home with us. 

We spent the rest of the day gardening and enjoying our backyard. Then we ate our first garden salad and our special treat.

Remnants of the salad and honeycomb!

The day wouldn't be complete without some late night painting!

After forever, I finally finished painting the blue stain on Ivy's playhouse. I am going to be adding in some white to break up all the blue, but my white paint was hard, needs a good paint store shake. 

We also branded the stump with the family M,

After a day of fun, sun, drives and bees we all headed to bed exhausted. Perfect day, just perfect. 

TODAY: Umm we leave in 2 days for BC and the car is full of stump sheddings, the suitcases are still lingering with dirty clothes, the car kits need sorting, snacks need buying, ohh and the house is a DISASTER!!! We also have been attacked by ants and feel like we are drowning in the creatures. So needless to say I will be busy the next 2 days. 

new

Coming home from our trip was like an ushering in of the second half of 2012. I have said before that the first half of 2012 has been sort of lame for us (besides the birth of our newest godchild, and celebrating birthdays of both our kids), but I have a feeling the rest of 2012 has lots of goodness in store. 

I can say that because upon our arrival home we were surrounded with wonderful newness. 

I got to meet baby Ezra,

and my heart changed, it grew some to add a whole space just for him. 

We drove home to the sight of our newest plant member of the family Spice, 

Ohh I love this tree. I love how it adds a needed touch to the front yard, I love how it was free, I love how it makes me proud of my city, I love that its a hot winged maple, a spicy tree a Ayla tree. 

Also getting home this week was dear, dear friends who have been gone far too long and a little reunion took place at one of all of our special places, the bird sanctuary,

I have a feeling, actually no, I KNOW the rest of 2012 is filled with excitement, with life, with love. A trip to BC in less then a week, another wonderful, special baby being born in August, more summer days to bathe in, birthdays to celebrate, a possible trip for just Keith and I (WOW) and to end the year off another beautiful, dear baby being born. Goodness. 

TODAY: Ohhh do we need groceries! It is just crazy that I haven't gone sooner, and now Keith and I are struggling to feed the chiclettes breakfast :) 

spice

When Ivy was about Ayla's age we got a tree. It quickly became her tree, she even named it treemore. It is a Mayday and is in the middle of our backyard. 

I read in a book about mothers putting the little umbilical cord piece that falls off under a tree for each of their children. We didn't save Ivy's cord piece, but I do have Ayla's. 

Today she gets her tree. 

Our neighbourhood was picked for a very awesome program our city has called Neighbourwoods. This program allowed the residents of a few selected communities to pick out a free tree! The only rules are you have to purchase the special water bag that waters the tree and it has to be planted on city property, which is the first 3 feet of every ones yard. So our utilities were identified and spray painted on the grass, our tree spot staked out and our tree picked. 

She is a Hot Wings Maple. A tree that sounds spicy, just like our little Ayla. 

Today she gets her tree, spice. 

I love that each of our girls will have a special tree, Ivy's was a lot more money, but so was conceiving her!! 

Normally there is a large drop off area for the residents to pick up their trees and then they have to plant them, but only 4, FOUR, people in my community participated so they are coming with the fancy hole digging truck and are planting the tree for me! YAY, but so lame of my community to not take advantage of this awesomeness. 

Check out instagram for pics of spice. Here is our other spice to please your eyes, 

TODAY: Welcoming home spice! Cleaning the car, getting refills on our prescriptions, taking the car to get a tune-up and a playdate!