Our a/c stopped working yesterday afternoon and today we found out we have to replace the unit….

However, I have to say, I’m enjoying just having the house completely opened up and smelling the fresh air. Usually I have to go for a walk to get this.

Yesterday I went on another long walk with the boys. It was sunny and quite warm. I had to run a couple errands so I took the boys out for a stroll. In case your’e curious, yes, there was another toddler pee break on someone’s lawn…discreetly.

The sun was pretty intense and I definitely used the sunshade on my boba to keep Eli’s little bald head from getting sunburned. The heat definitely had Avery flushed.

Cute little chubby face. When we were almost home he stopped answering me and I went to check on him and found he had crashed adorably and stayed asleep when we got inside so I simply rolled the stroller right into his room and he napped for two hours in there!

I’m grateful I have healthy boys. I’m grateful I’m healthy. I’m so grateful that we have the ability to go walk for hours if we want.

When we got home, it seemed cooler than the outdoors. But when Shane got home it was the same inside as outside and it didn’t get better. We had our ac guy come look at it this morning and we have a freon leak and that means the unit has to be replaced because it’s too old to repair. Lovely.

That wasn’t bad, because it’s nice today and will be for a few days but Eli has been teething and has had a slight fever because of it (I won’t even mention the kind of diapers I’m seeing) so the only way to go play with Avery was to wear Eli.

Usually I don’t backwear with slings because I generally use them for quick things like in and out of the car, grocery store, church, etc and the Boba Air is my go-to for longer distances. But he’s big enough now that wearing him in front makes me completely useless around the house and so I just threw my hands up and gave this a try. Very functional and comfortable!

He stayed happy in there until naptime and I was able to get a lot done. Unfortunately naptime came right as I was in the middle of taking apart his crib to put it down in Avery’s room (the loft where he’s been sleeping is now too hot since it isn’t ducted). Stroller to the rescue! I popped him in the stroller and rolled him into our room and finished up the crib. He slept off and on today nearly all day. Teething can really tucker out a little guy! Now he’s all perky, happy and eating his weight in anything I give him.

Here’s to hoping the weather stays sustainably coolish around here!

I get that many, maybe even most, people commute to work. In fact, the job I had for years before I had Avery required me to commute over twenty miles  and across state line…..and back. Nearly a fifty mile round trip every day.

However, Shane and I are a one car family. We love being local, going to local businesses, local church, and Shane has worked locally our entire marriage. He has a scooter that he took on nice days and I have a stroller/baby carrier to walk where I need to go.

Now that he works far away it’s not as easy for me to have access to the car. It would require lots of needless miles to drive him to work so I could have it and I can’t just walk to his work to pick it up if I need to like I did when he worked nearby. So this means what? It means I’m finding out what the real local is.

Yesterday I needed to get coffee filters and some groceries and this meant going to the local coffee shop to get the filters and then the grocery store. Both places are nearby, but they’re on opposite sides of my house. So I spent the morning walking.

You know what? It was nice. I got a lot of exercise (five plus miles of wearing a 20+ pound baby and pushing a 30+ pound toddler as well as groceries in 80+ degree weather is a lot of work), the boys got lots of fresh air and natural stimuli and we all got plenty of sun.

Thank goodness for my Boba Air! I seriously love how it’s lightweight enough that even on a really hot day like yesterday (it got up to 90 degrees!) it didn’t make me too warm. Or Eli for that matter. However, if the weather gets any warmer (which I know it will) I’ll eventually have to sell off our current stroller and get a double stroller for the boys. Not to mention Eli is just about a year old (mindblowing) and he’s getting massively huge so long walks would be easier with a double stroller.

I have been looking around a bit for one that would work for use but still haven’t decided whether I want side by side or the other kind…whatever it’s called, where one is behind the other….obviously haven’t done enough research after all.

On our walks we get to make stops where ever we want to, like the community garden, the park, someone’s lawn for a quick toddler potty break….etc. It’s nice because in the car we’d be zooming past to our destination and not taking everything in as we go while soaking up vitamin D and getting exercise, refreshing our lungs and minds. It’s pretty much a win win win win situation.

Sure, a stroller basket doesn’t carry many groceries and sure, it takes a lot longer to get things done but there’s an upside to both of those things. Less groceries means more frequent walks, longer walks means we’re outdoors more and getting more activity.

This experience has really showed me that I CAN do more to live locally and so when we move I fully intend on doing this in our new neighborhood. It’ll  be fun to get to explore anyway since I’m so unfamiliar with the area we’re looking at.

Also, it’s amazing to be getting lots of greens from the garden. I’ve been putting them in everything from smoothies to sandwiches (on homemade buns).

Got the onions from the farmers market  and the rest is obviously from the grocery store…..because I can’t grow mustard. Just sayin’.

So, do you walk around where you live?

It’s been really gorgeous weather, sunny and in the 60′s, so we have definitely taken advantage of that. We went to the community garden the other day to get our hands dirty and take in the sunshine. I only live about a quarter mile from there so we always walk.

As you can see (by his pants) we definitely got involved with earth.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day and aside from church I spent some time with the boys at the park and also had a little (much needed) solo shopping time. Then Shane and I had a carry out dinner at home with wine and watched the hilarious, and potentially amazing new HBO show called Family Tree. You can’t go wrong when you combine Christopher Guest with quirky British and Irish humor.

Anyway, back to the daytime, at the park we picnicked.

Eli ate loads of grapes, cucumber and crackers and Avery requested hotdogs (which he refuses to eat any other way than plain, ungrilled, without a bun or condiments) and ate about one….because he was waaay too busy going down the slide and applauding himself.

He looks like such a big kid! He really is getting big I guess.

I enjoyed that little outing so much. My phone was hijacked by Shane so his calls would come in to it since he’s between company phones this weekend and so I was technology free and that really helped me soak in time with my kids completely unplugged.

We had a couple rough patches like Avery fighting bedtime and whatnot but that is how motherhood is. Filled full with rewarding, fun, challenging, exciting, silly and ridiculous moments with a lot of other stuff like frustration….but it’s just like every other part of life. Even while I enjoyed my time alone doing some retail therapy, I missed them. After a couple hours I almost felt a desperation to get back with them. Shane was amazing and when I got home he had already gotten Eli to bed and Avery had played outside and eaten and everything too. I love my hubby and how capable he is with the boys and I feel comfortable being away but I miss all three of them.

Today Shane is having his first day at the new job and I’m adjusting to the mentality that he’s not down the street but across the state line. It’s not super easy to realize I can’t walk down to his work if I want. I’m sort of lonely thinking about it. Can’t wait til we find the right house and I’m nearby him again.

Until then, I’ll be doing lots of walking!

As long as it wasn’t raining I walked to the post office (about one and a half miles from my house) and it has felt sooo good. I have made that walk a lot of times lately and I like to think I can do it pretty fast wearing/pushing at the same time…but I might be delusional  I back wear Eli and he always falls asleep at some point.

Avery, on the other hand, is always looking around and pushing the limits of the stroller straps.

Mostly he brings along a toy or something but this time he wanted his doggie and blanket….I figured that meant he was tired or something but no, he just liked their company.

When we got home from this particular walk we were both thirsty and craving the green so I picked a bunch of herbs, greens, and foraged plant life to put in it.

Sorrel, mint, violet leaves and flowers, kale, collards and tarragon.

I blended it up with a banana, orange, ground flax seed and some honey and IT WAS SO GOOD!

Maybe it’s because it’s been winter forever and I forgot what a great, fresh green drink is supposed to taste like but it was floral, sweet, refreshing and Avery walked around drinking it say ‘nummy gween shmoofy. Mmmm, nummy. Avery luf gween smoofy.’ Which was adorable.

Other than that I listed a couple more slings on The Ring Slinger

A lovely green and white stripped one.

And I relisted a fav. With a new detail.

Shane starts his new job on Monday, which is exciting and we started house hunting!

I feel like things are moving so fast! His new job is across town and (gasp!) across the state line. So we’re looking for a house in Kansas…..a place I have made fun of forever because of the large, newly developed, slightly snotty, chain loving part of it. SO, naturally we’re looking in the more established, older, full of character part. Hoping to move very close to his job so we can enjoy the benefits that we’ve had all these years with him being just two miles from our house. We did some house hunting today and have a bunch of showings tomorrow so we’ll see what we can come up with.

We’ll be renting our current house and so that’s a little scary too. Hopefully we can find good renters!

It’s been a year of pretty intense change for us and very good things have been happening but we’re generally the super steady, calm life sort of people so we’re a little out of our element. It’s really crazy but we’re in it for the ride.

I know I’ve been pretty radio silent on the shop lately but my stock is starting to get dangerously low so I figured I better get sewing and so here’s the product.

Organic White Cotton Ring Sling with Teal detail/chevron pocket World’s longest name, I know.

I put a pocket on this even though I never use pockets…because I think it’s kinda pretty and I know some people like pockets.

Pretty cool. Also, I have tons of extra teal chevron and it’s fun to play with.

More fancy stitching too, which I’m addicted to.

Annnnnnnnd…

Gorgeous.

Anyway, back to the grindstone. Need to pump out a couple more slings today and maybe finish this bunting and possible a sling. Lord. So much to do! But first, off to the post office for the third time in two days to ship off another sling.

Peace!

I have harvestable kale and collards right now but I picked spinach and lettuce for a dinner salad and it was gorgeous!

Albeit, a little dirty…all this rain has been splashing that dirt all over the place.

I also picked up some cilantro for salsa. I have so much, I need to have it in salads too probably. haha. I got about 5oz of greens.

The boys played while I gardened and I didn’t have to pay too much attention to where they were because they were glued to where the sump pump empties.

Diiiiiiirty. Water is definitely attractive, I know, but they seriously wouldn’t even look up when I asked them so I could get smiles for this pic. Nope, the water was cooler than mommy.

The other thing I harvested (pre-snow) was from the violets in our yard.

I’ve been reading up on my esteemed herbs lately and their medicinal values and something that kept coming up in my research was all parts of violets. Their root, their blooms and the leaves all have qualities that are found in common synthetic medicines and since I have about a quadramillion in my yard (which I used to try and fight) I thought it might be a good idea to put them to good use.

The leaves are mostly beneficial fresh but the flowers must be dried and since they are very short lived you have to pick them during their bloom.

The dried flowers can be made into a tea or a syrup and used for all sorts of ailments from constipation to wet coughs and even have been used to treat tumors, pain, and used to cleanse blood and treat open wounds ( source, source, source).

So I couldn’t really ignore the purple field that is my back yard and not use it at all because really, the only thing that would keep me from harvesting the flowers is pure laziness.

The boys enjoyed helping me (although they mostly wanted to dump the colander) and we all crawled around and picked violets for quite a while in the sunshine. I picked about a half pound and then spread them on a cookie sheet to dry. The day after I picked them it snowed so rather than taking maybe 24hrs, it took about three days for them to fully dry.

Now that I have quite a bit I’ll be using them as tea and also infusing honey. I’m excited just to have a natural option for mild headaches, baby coughs (and me too!) and digestion aide on hand.

Question: What do you pick over conventional medicine?

It weirdly snowed the other day. In May, in Missouri. Pretty rare. It started with sleet that slowly turned to snow.

The amount of green going on made it rather surreal.

Once it got going I began to immediately notice how the fully leaved trees felt the weight. Weird how it takes quite a few inches of snow on bare trees to cause branch breakage but those leaves really do catch a lot more.

I put Avery down for bed and after a while he came running to the door saying the tree was broken…turns out, it was! Right outside his window, totally freaked him out.

It was a pretty hefty branch.

But later that night he came out again (around 1am so I was sound asleep) freaked out because the power was out! His light and fan had turned off and poor kid has become very scared of the dark the past few months so this was a big deal. I tried to calm him down and get him to go to sleep in his bed but he wasn’t having that at all. He came back to our room crying and saying ‘It’s dark! Avery so scared!’. So, for the first time EVER, we tried to get him to sleep in our bed. It took a solid two hours but he finally crashed. Of course Eli woke a couple times per the norm, so I pretty much didn’t sleep at all. Fortunately though, Avery did get some.

The next morning, another very large branch had fallen.

The power was out for over six hours and the house was 60 degrees when I went to get Eli. I was so relieved when it finally came back on around 7:30.  The second branch was really close to the house.

Isn’t it strange to see snow with so much green? I didn’t edit these photos at all.

The weirdest part was that it dropped over fifty degrees within twelve hours and I’m historically not great with extreme pressure changes and now I know that Avery isn’t either. We were a couple of grumpers. Not fun.

Today it warmed up a bit and tomorrow is going to back to the normal 80 sunny days we had last week thank goodness. So excited to garden again!

It sort of started with a phone call on Friday night I got from my baby sister Michelle asking if I wanted to join her at the Farmer’s Market  for Saturday morning. My family has had a booth at the Overland Park Farmer’s Market for years and years and each spring one of us kiddos get commandeer the work and profit by buying each plant we sold at the wholesale price from my parents and pocketing the retail mark up. It’s a huge money maker for a mid teen and it’s Michelle’s turn to make that mo mo. Of course, the majority of the work and profit go to the one heading up the operation but they can’t do it alone and I was honored to be asked to join this weekend.

I’m a bit of a market junky and fully enjoy every moment spent selling, buying, working and playing.

The farmer in the booth next to us had a simply divine spread. Obviously the tomatoes were grown in a hot house but the onions were from their fall harvest and they had fresh radishes, greens and morel mushrooms that they FORAGED. Insane.

Anyway, obviously my parent’s plants are incredibly beautiful.

Although it was chilly AND pouring rain.

Just a little shameless plugging for the best, organic, brand for herbs in the country.

Anyway, we goofed off and sold rather more than we expected despite the weather. Somehow our booth was next to a local bread vendor (Farm to Market bread…the BEST in the city) and at the end of the day they literally gave us six or seven loaves of bread.

The girls were a little overly excited about the baguettes that they had been drooling over all day. In fact, they had gone over to buy one to split for lunch when they got home but that was when we found ourselves the recipients of two baguettes, a loaf of rye, one of sourdough and an olive loaf too…..not to mention two little cheesy loaves. Let’s just say, it was our lucky day. We tried to dump a ton of plants on them. No one can turn down organic, heirloom tomato plants. hehe

Shane hung out with the boys while I played at the market and despite the fun I MISSED THEM. Like seriously. I’m so blessed to be able to spend my days with my kids.

Anyway, I got home in time to nurse and put Eli down for his afternoon nap and an hour or two later Shane and I were off for a pregame date. By game, of course, I mean the fantastically awesome Kansas City Royals….who are currently #1 in their division and we are drinking it up.

We’re big fans. We’re used to heartbreak….and this? This is like incredibly fun. It’s nice to not be in last place. GO Royals. Still rainy and chilly which would normally mean misery for me but they were selling massive cups of strong, hot, hot chocolate. It carried me through, along with all my team spirit. Shane may or may not have been slightly annoyed by my screaming cheers…I have no shame.

Then, yesterday after church we watched more Royals (double header, where they CRUSHED the first game and got killed the second..win some lose some, eh?) and after the first game we grilled some Boulevard Beer Brats. Gotta give the local brew some love! They were fantastic. I gardened some, Shane mowed the lawn for the first time this year, and then we put the boys down and since the second game of the double header wasn’t televised we kept up on our phones and had our traditional Sunday night movie. It was great.

Although around 10:30 Avery started making whimpering noises and I couldn’t tell if he was sick or just struggling with a recent eczema breakout on his right cheek. He kept getting up and crying until midnight. So not cool. Then Eli got up at 5am after screaming bloody murder on the hour, every hour. Not much sleep for this mama. All I have to say is, screw you, teething.

Fortunately it’s GORGEOUS weather today (like yesterday) and I’ll be outdoors getting my batteries charged by the warm sunshine and gardening.

Question: What cheers you up?

Well, I hope so, at least. We had a super hard frost a couple nights ago that definitely took it’s toll.

But surprisingly, not everything that it could have devastated was affected.

One of my baby apple trees has a surprising amount of blooms and while I was out taking these pictures a very large bumble bee was buzzing from bloom to bloom. It just made my heart sing.

There seem to be so many buds and blooms for such a tiny little lady. My other apple tree just has leaves so far and they’re all baby except or one nice tuft.

My peach tree has little leaves and lots of little blooms just waiting for the sunshine to help them burst forth.

Now that the cold seems to maybe be done and this lovely day appeared (around 60 degrees!) I suddenly feel as if I’m terrifically behind.  I guess that’s how it is here in Missouri sometimes, you just have to wait til those pesky late frosts are really gone and then get into a planting frenzy.

The seeds I planted ages and ages ago sort of paused growth during our cold snap and now they’re starting to move again.

As you can see from the other photo I have larger lettuce, kale, spinach and collard plants and I also planted seeds for staggered harvests (unless they get fried). They are companion planted with carrots and such.

I have sugar snap peas in my pallet beds that are starting to grow a bit and I need to plant more of those as well now that the frosts are perhaps gone.

Naturally I’m mostly looking forward to peppers and tomatoes and my inner greenish (inexperienced) thumb is telling me to plant those plants asap. So I probably will.

This is the first year in a long time that I haven’t grown green beans. It might have been three very large, pretty late, snow storms but when the time came, I felt unprepared. I’m a little sad about that since they’re consistently my best crop.

The next week or so I imagine I will be doing a very hefty amount of gardening. I am ridiculously excited about this.

Question: Do you grow anything?

Luxurious Gray Ring Sling with Stitching Detail

I went with Gray again and used a vine stitching detail to give it a pop.

I’m in LOVE with this gray color.

Just the most creamy, simple sheen. Gorgeous.

100% cotton as usual with aluminum rings…in bronze.

Hope you get a chance to check it out!