blogging & other scattered thoughts

Does anyone else feel like personal/family blogs are falling by the wayside? Meaning, it doesn't really seem like we are reading each others' stuff anymore. That leads me to ask why we blog in the first place. I mean in real honesty. I think some people do those blog to book things, but if we aren't putting it into blog form, why are we doing it? Are these blogs really going to stick around forever for our children to look at when they are grown?

Do we write posts because we want to share with our friends and families what is happening in our lives? I know the grandparents at least look at it once in a while. But if we want to share, doesn't it kind of suck when nobody leaves a comment?

I was listening to the radio the other day and it was talking about how the younger generation is having a harder time getting hired because with the technology age we are in, they really don't have the social skills that people are looking for. Basic skills such as answering a telephone appropriately, interacting with customers face to face, even having social skills to present well in an actual interview. The point of that was that we need to teach our kids this skill. 

I hardly ever call any of my friends anymore to see how they are or to just talk. I'm going to be very honest and admit that most of the time, I just don't want to. "Communicating" has gotten so convenient when we can just send a quick text or email to find out what we want to know. It's even to the point where if there was a chance that I wanted to call someone, it seems so foreign to me now, that I'm not even sure if I would know what to say or do! I should change that.

Anyway, other than that I have a pot of ham and bean soup on the stove (that I hope turns out well and will help Justin not to be mad at me anymore) and some homemade biscuits that just came out of the oven.

so many firsts

That darn tooth finally came out! Katelyn's adult tooth had popped up quite some time ago. Her baby tooth was wiggly, so we were hopeful it would come out on it's own and not have to be pulled. She really didn't want me to pull it, but it was hanging by a thread. Last Wednesday I told her she had until Friday for it to fall out or I was going to pull it out. (Which reminds me....I asked Justin if he would pull it out and he refused! What's up with that?! I thought that was a Dad kind of thing to do, but he wasn't for it.) Anyway, Friday I picked her up from school and her tooth was still attached (hardly). I told her that today was the day. However, while she was having a sandwich after school, she gasped with excitement when the tooth had fallen out all on it's own. I was relieved.

That night she was very excited about the tooth fairy coming. I struggled for a little bit on what exactly to put under her pillow. Visions of what "everyone else" had done for their kiddos were filling my head and finally I just got fed up! I didn't get presents and other crap when my teeth had fallen out. Everything seems so over the top anymore. Do I really need to get on pinterest to find ideas on how to make this milestone memorable? It's a tooth for crying out loud! Anyway. I decided a dollar was a generous enough gift. I attached a note "from the tooth fairy" and Katelyn couldn't have been more excited. Keep it simple. Nothing else was needed. The tooth fairy is gonna get cheaper by the tooth too!

3 year olds

One of Alaina's personality traits is: determination. I don't always appreciate it at this point in her life, but I hope I have enough foresight to see it as a strength as opposed to a weakness. After all, I am pretty similar. If she wants something, dang it! She is going to go for it. And that is why I snapped this picture of her. Last week I think I was lying down on my bed when she came in asking for ice cream. I told her no. She didn't throw the typical fit, she just left. A minute or so later, I heard some commotion coming from the kitchen. She had helped herself to the container of ice cream, gotten the scoop out and was diggin in. In case you are wondering....I caved and let her have some, but I did put it in a bowl first :)

She recently got a real bed! I am still in the process of painting her head/foot board so it's just on the floor at this point. After a lot of tossing and turning the other night, I went to peek at her before I went to bed and found her sprawled out like this. Cute little munchkin!

Miss Katelyn is 6 now and started 1st grade! Here she is on her first day of school, wearing her new Hello Kitty dress. She specifically requested a side pony tail for the special day.

Alaina & Katelyn. Apparently Alain thinks she needs to stick her hip out for every picture these days.

Katelyn & Ren, our next door neighbor. We usually walk to school with them :)

Katelyn going into her classroom. Her teacher this year is Mrs. Sandberg and Katelyn says she is really nice.

I love that Katelyn is back in school. I am excited for her to learn and grow and have new experiences. She is still learning how to read and it is a struggle for us to teach/help her. She gets very flustered when she doesn't get it right. A bit of a perfectionist that one. In a moment of exasperation on my part, I vented to a group of ladies on facebook and one of them volunteered to give Katelyn some reading lessons. She has a Masters in Literacy education, and I decided that it might be good for Katelyn to work with someone other than Mom or Dad, so we're going to give it a try for a bit and make sure she is on track with reading, as that is very important!

So far she says that her favorite part of school is P.E. and she was so excited to get 3 recesses. She also got to eat "hot lunch" today. I told her she could get hot lunch one time each week. She really wanted that pepperoni pizza and chocolate milk!

She is also about to lose her first tooth. Her lower front right one. Her adult tooth is coming up behind it, but the baby tooth is pretty loose, so I'm hoping it will come out on it's own and she won't need it pulled.

So many exciting and new things happening in her life. She is a sweet girl and is all about playing with her friends. She appears to be a very social creature.

Our little munchkin turned 3 years old on Sunday! Alaina is such a joy and a fun kid. She is potty trained (except for at night), she loves to watch Strawberry Shortcake, she loves to hang out with big sister and big sister's friends (wonder how long that will last), she has beautiful medium blonde hair with fantastic natural highlights. She really loves her baby dolls and is a very good mommy to them. She would live on chocolate milk if I let her. Now that Katelyn is in school all day Alaina and I get to have a lot more one on one time. She's my little buddy and my love. She likes to be sung to at bed time. Sometimes, like tonight, she will ask me to sing a certain "song" and I have no idea what she is talking about. Tonight it was "sing that song: hush now, sleep"......and she even sang it to let me know what song it was....No clue what she means, so I just make something up and she smiles and snuggles in. I think she likes to sing. Oh, she's just cute enough to squish! We're so happy Alaina is in our family :)

We had a little "party" for her on Monday (Labor Day) and just invited both our neighbors who have small girls as well as one family from church who has a daughter her age. It was very low-key and it was perfect!

life

It's been a great week for the girlies. Katelyn and I decided it was time for her to have her very own space, so today we have been rearranging furniture to make it happen. Katelyn is really excited and I am happy to have gotten rid of a few things to make extra space.

As far as Alaina goes: she is learning to use the potty! FINALLY!!!

The Evolution Of An Idea

This isn't an official logo/design, etc. That will come soon. However, I just wanted to share my new adventure...officially. In a nutshell, I have started a business. I real, bona fide, licensed business. A very, very small business. Have I always wanted to have my own business? No, not really. Have I always wanted to make my own bread? Yes.

When Alaina was still a baby, I made some of my first attempts at homemade bread. Specifically, whole wheat bread. They didn't really turn out very good.

Several months later, my friend Shalise had me over to show me how she makes bread. From there, the rest is history! She showed me a great recipe and that I could get away with only one rising. The speed of it all is what kept me making it week after week. I don't want to spend hours upon hours waiting for dough to rise.

During all this time I had also been on a journey to learn about healthy foods. Whole foods. Unprocessed foods. I decided I wanted to try a bread recipe that did not have any sugar or white flour.  In the process I also purchased my own wheat grinder so now all of my bread has freshly ground whole wheat flour. I have learned a lot about making bread in the last couple of years and I am still learning.

As far as selling my bread. Well, that idea happened almost a year ago. A friend of mine asked me to do a craft fair with her. I worked my little tail off making a bunch of "crafts" that I thought were cool. I also had considered selling my bread there, but at the time did not have enough time to look into the legal/health dept side of it. So I scratched the idea. The craft fair was a real disappointment for me. I had high hopes and they were trampled on. However, I did meet a nice lady (the Gypsy Girl Granola lady) who bought one of my pallet shelves from me.

Fast forward to the opening day of the Pasco Farmer's Market. The Gypsy Girl was there (she makes fabulous granola, by the way) and what do you know? She was using my pallet shelf-the one she bought from me at the craft fair- as part of her display. I went over, said hi, reintroduced myself and bought some granola. I had a conversation with her during which she encouraged me to try selling my crafts at the market.  I wasn't so sure anyone wanted to buy my crafts as was evident at last year's craft fair. However, a spark was ignited. Maybe not crafts, but what about my bread?

Anyone who knows me well, (really well) knows that when I get an idea in my head, I can become somewhat obsessed. Just ask my husband. That was actually the first step. Getting Justin on board. After all, his support is the most important. I was afraid he would roll his eyes at me and say "here we go again", but he didn't (at least not in front of me). He was actually quite supportive and even wanted to get involved when I was looking into making labels.

After making some contacts to the Farmer's Markets I was directed to the local health department to find out exactly what I needed to do. Step 1: I needed a kitchen. I was not allowed to bake bread out of my home to sell at the Market or anywhere else. I did some searching and then found a great kitchen that rented for a great price. Not only that, but I could also sell my bread out of their kitchen/shop and the real kicker is that their target audience is really the same as my target audience as well. If you are into the local, whole food, organic food, grass fed, pasture-raised kind of scene, then this is the place for you. Are you going to pay more? Yep. No doubt about it. But if you're into that kind of thing, you are probably the type of person who looks at the list of ingredients on a product before you look at the price anyway, and it won't be an issue for you.

Find kitchen. Check. Get proper licensing. Check. Get a Bosch bread mixer. Check. If it is possible to be in love with an inanimate object, then I am in love with my Bosch and my Nutrimill grain mill. Two of the best purchases I have made this year.

I also have to add that I spent a healthy amount of time questioning myself about this endeavor. I didn't want to just jump into this without some real thought, which I can have a tendency to do, being the spontaneous, impulsive kind of person I am. I asked myself why I was even compelled to do this?  Am I being rational, realistic? Is there any logical thought involved whatsoever? Was the risk too big a price to pay? Obviously, I (after talking it over with Justin) made the decision that it was OK to move forward. Not only that, but I had a couple of experiences where I felt I was being led in this direction. Although, I won't discuss all of those here.

I will say that when I went to look at the kitchen for the first time, the person in charge asked me what I wanted to make. When I told her I wanted to make bread, she appeared to have nearly jumped at me. In a good/excited way. She told me they were actually wanting to get someone in there who makes bread. You see, just another reason I feel like the stars were aligning.

The fact is, The NW Regional Food Hub is exactly what I was looking for. What I wasn't looking for was to open my own bakery or anything like that. I wanted to opportunity to make and sell my bread to people on my own terms and as something slightly more than a hobby. And yes, possibly a way to earn some money. 

Last Wednesday was my first day in the kitchen. My stomach was a ball of nerves. Excitement, nervousness and a little bit of worry all twisted up in a knot. I'm a chronic worrier. What if the bread didn't sell? What if people didn't like it? What if I end up with a raging case of Carpal Tunnel-if not some pretty sweet triceps- for no good reason? (I can hear my Dad saying how neurotic I am, right about now).

I made 12 loaves of bread and a couple batches of my no-sugar coconut/chocolate chip cookies. The great news is that as of yesterday, all the bread had sold (and I was told they could have sold more) and there were only 3 packages of cookies left. It felt great to finally produce something that people wanted and liked.

You can follow me on facebook at: www.facebook.com/BigDMamasHomeBakedGoods

Excitedly and Blessed!

Big D Mama

Fun in Roslyn

Last week we took a few days to visit Corey & Sarah in Roslyn. Justin and Corey took all the kids (except the baby) fishing-Barbie fishing poles and all! It was the first time Katelyn or Alaina had ever been fishing.  They were happy to report that they each caught a fish. Katelyn had the biggest fish and Daddy had the smallest :) They got 3 small rainbow trout and Justin cooked them up for dinner that night.

Ezra, Katelyn, Alain, Audrey

Corey helped Alaina get her fish

I love her expression

Daddy and his girls

Poor Katelyn was ambushed by mosquito's while fishing. She had other bites as well

We also celebrated Claire's first birthday!

Corey & Sarah

Happy Birthday sweet girl!

On Saturday Corey took us on a "little" hike into Thorp Lake. It was great weather and the trail was beautiful. I didn't realize quite how long the hike was going to be. Turns out it was 3.1 miles in (and UP) to get to the lake. That's a total of about 6 miles if you need help adding it up. It was a great workout and what really impressed me the most is that Ezra, Katelyn and Audrey hiked the whole thing. The whole way up and the whole way back out (with only the exception and a short piggy back ride here or there), which turned out to be a little more adventurous than on the way in.

Here we are at the beginning of the hike, all of us getting shuttled across the deep

 part of the creek by Justin and Corey

Sarah's turn

Claire & Alaina enjoying the show

Justin & Alaina by one of the creeks we crossed

Katelyn wanted to hold Aunt Sarah's hand the whole time :)

Came across this big stump that someone had carved into a chair

cousins

When we finally made it to the lake it was well worth all the effort and buckets of sweat I lost. I was hungry enough to eat and entire ham, I said!

On the way out we took a "short cut". It led us through big mounds of snow that was a little challenging for some of us to get through. The trail was a little hard to follow for a while, then we got on it again and were doing great and then suddenly: no trail to be found anywhere. We had to make our way down the creek. It was a little tricky, but we finally made it out to the road and probably and another mile or two before we got back to the cars. All in all it was a great hike with only some minor complaints at the end and a couple of tears. 

this is the "I have no idea where we are" picture

all of us crammed in the creek and trees

Free at last!!! Alaina finally gets a chance to walk/run

swim

 Another session of swim lessons under our belt. Katelyn did great. She wasn't scared at all this year, which I was thankful for.

 Here she is jumping off the diving board

She got to be in class with her friend Morgan again and that made her happy :)

Independance Day Fun!

We had a surprise, last minute visit from my brother Jared's family. They stayed 2 nights with us and spent the 4th of July at our house. We also invited one other family over to share in the Holiday. It was perfect! Good company, good food and good fun.

all the kids playing in the sand and having a great time

Michelle's (my sister in law) yummy strawberry pie and perfectly coordinated 

red, white and blue

Alicia and Timmy

Katelyn

Alaina: The only appropriate color shirt I could find for her was this blue t-shirt. Funny thing about it is that it says "Canada"

 Later we went down to the river to watch the fireworks. We had never gone down there before and

we chose a horrible spot. It was really far away and it was by a more stagnant part of the river, therefore the mosquito's were biting like crazy!

 Take cover!

???

Pelican

cool moon that night

Those exposed ankles got eaten alive!

Yay! The fireworks