I’m still trying to recover.  Here’s what’s on my mind, in no particular order:

• We’re getting ready to go on a pack trip with llamas next week.
• I’m on a new diet hoping to get my hormones under control.  I’m tired of having one week a month that I feel totally out of control emotionally.  I mean, should a pile of legos or potty accidents really bring me to tears?  I struggle with hypoglycemia and IBS– apparently PMS can be related to all that digestive stuff too.  We’ll see how it goes.
• I love the short videos on Yoga Today’s YouTube channel.
• I missed posting about our anniversary on Sunday– our 12th anniversary to be precise.  It’s gone by so fast and seems so long all at the same time.  On our trip we stopped at the campus of Utah State and found the tree Barry and I climbed and talked and talked and talked and fell in love in the weekend we met.  It’s a big old tree– all seven of us fit in the branches.

So, a couple of you guessed right on the purpose of my cushions– they’re for our “new” camper!  We’re heading out for a week to try them out, so I’ll have pictures of the whole thing soon.

In the meantime, enjoy these photos of a 6 year old birthday party.  I’m up to my packing deadline, so I can’t say much.

Later, skaters!  I’ll see ya in a week or so.

It’s been a while since I made a crafty post, so I thought I’d show you what I’ve been working on.

I’ve got a stack of cushions.  Can you guess what they’re for?

taken by Jonah

Hunter likes cows lately.  Just about everything bigger than a dog that stands on four legs is a cow to him.  As soon as he gets a glimpse of one he moos and moos and says cow with his lips sticking out.  He really is the cutest thing that ever lived.

Since he hasn’t seen a cow close up ever before I decided today was the day he needed to have that experience.  There is a great park in Englewood (which is part of Denver) called Belleview Park that has a little petting farm.  Brenna and Logan took turns manning the camera because I was on baby patrol.

Hunter was pretty hesitant about being close to the animals.  He said cow over and over and mooed when the little calves they had were on the other side of the farm area from us or closed in a pen, but they were just too big for him up close.  He was wild about the chickens, though, and didn’t mind the goats and sheep.  He thought the pig was hilarious and laughed and laughed and tried to imitate the pig’s grunts and snorts.

The one who really had a good time was Ian.  He fell in love with this sheep and petted it there for about 10 minutes.  He didn’t mind when the white rooster tried to eat Buzz off of his shoe,

and he found a good friend in the bristly pig.

My animal loving Brenna had a good time too, and as we left she said, “I think maybe this is what I want to do when I grow up, I mean, those girls get are getting paid to take care of the animals.”  I guess being farm girls is just in our blood.  Animals just make life feel so– real, I guess.  I’ve never actually lived on a farm, but my mom grew up on one and when I was a little girl we visited my grandparents in the home where she grew up almost weekly.  I was always too self conscious to really say what I wanted or ask to help with the horses and be really involved in the workings of the place, but I would sit out in the yard and daydream about growing up and somehow inheriting that beautiful, perfect little place with its enormous sycamore trees and clothes line and peonies and berry patch and green pastures.  I really thought it was the most beautiful place on earth.  I had my wedding reception there.  Then the housing developments encroached on it and my grandparents had to sell it.  They moved farther away from town on lots of open land.  They made it beautiful, built stables and planted berries.  2 years ago now my grandpa passed away.  I remember a conversation I had with my grandma about selling that big place and moving into town closer to my mom so she wasn’t just out there all alone.  She said she’d like to, that she needed to, but that everything made her feel claustrophobic with their fences and little yards.  She said she was born a country girl and maybe she just needed the open spaces.

After that conversation I’ve wondered if maybe I was born a country girl too– if I have that yearning to live with space and trees and animals because my grandma passed it down to me– if it’s just in my blood…

Our weekend was rather rainy.  Actually it has just been rainy here lately.  Every afternoon the thunderclouds roll in from the mountains.  Where we live, kind of up on a hill 20 miles east of the mountains, we can watch the storms as they move over the city toward us.  Sunday brought torrential downpours.  Barry is such a good dad– he’s not one to let a little a lot of rain throw a wrench in our plans.

Our little homegrown fireworks show looked like this:

(That’s our new (to us) camper over to the left of the picture set up in front of our house to “dry out” from our camping trip.  The whole drying out thing took a couple of days because as soon as it dried out it rained again.)

He’s even brave, or crazy, enough to hunch over on really skinny tires and ride really fast with a bunch of other guys on skinny tires going really fast on wet slippery pavement.

The rest of us were crazy enough to go watch him.

Tonight I am…

tired from camping for 2 nights and a day.

thankful to call that cute baby up there my own.

amazed at the grandeur of the Colorado mountains and how being surrounded by them never gets old.

excited to let you know that I have a post over at the Rhythm of the Home blog.

looking forward to a restful Sabbath.

thinking about the miracle this country we live in is, and so thankful for it.

How is your weekend going?

Have you looked at the SweetPod flickr group lately?  Well, I’ll give you a few of the highlights, but you really should just mosey on over and look at them yourself.

Isn’t this such a great manly carrier with the denim and the scooters? (from Sew She Sews)

Speaking of scooters, here’s another fantastic one:

I absolutely love the fabric choices on this next one from Liz. I think I need to make myself one.

I can’t get over how cool it is to see how people are using my pattern.  Really, you guys are awesome!  It is so fun to see how people put together fabrics and lug around their cute babies.  I’m so excited that people out there are as excited about the SweetPod as I am.

So, about the Saddle Bag pattern.  Many of you have been asking when it will be ready.  It is still in the works.  I’ve got the pattern pieces digitized, I’ve got instructions typed up, but those illustrations are holding me up.  They’ll get done, but I can’t say when.  It seems I have a very hard time holding myself to a time line.  Things like reminding a little boy to go potty, cleaning up the mess when said little boy goes potty in the wrong place, and doing laundry have taken precedent.  Not very exciting, I know, but my life does revolve around bodily fluids and not sewing contrary to popular belief.  I wish I could be more specific, but I seem to totally misjudge when I can get things done and feel like a loser for not keeping commitments, so I’m just going to keep it vague for now.

In the mean time– keep sewing your SweetPods!!  It is SO FUN to see them!

In Ohio we belonged to a wonderful CSA and got boxes full of produce every week.  We haven’t joined one here, but this year I’ve made a goal to find farms where we can pick our own produce and do as much of that picking as we can.  I think its important for my kids to learn where real food comes from and that it takes hard work to get it.  I’m hoping to find some orchards in the fall where we can pick fruit too.

A couple of weeks ago, after swimming lessons and lunch and a little rest, I took the kids out to Berry Patch Farms on the opening day of strawberry picking.  They opened at 8 AM, but we had to go in the heat of the afternoon after people had been combing through the 7 acres of strawberries all day.  I had a baby on my back whose left shoe must have fallen off in the garage as we were leaving our house, so he had to stay on my back.  There was a big thunder storm the weekend before, so the tractor couldn’t give us a ride out to the field because of the mud.   We had to hike, the organic fields were full of thistles, and the strawberries full of holes from hail damage.  As you can imagine, that led to a lot of whining on the boys’ part.  I don’t think Jonah picked a single strawberry because he was too hot and they were too hard to find.  Brenna was a splendid picker, though.  She combed through the plants and found the best berries there were.  After her and I (with a baby on my back who wasn’t super excited about all the bending over) filled up 3 little containers full, we called it a day and good education on how expensive food really is and how hard it is to be a farmer.

I wasn’t satisfied with the amount of berries we had, and promptly gobbled up, after that outing.  We needed more, so Brenna and I got up early Saturday morning to comb through the fields on their final day open.

We got there before the sun was high and hot, and the hail damaged berries were long gone.

In half the time we spent picking on our last trip we filled an entire flat.

Brenna had fun searching for the tiniest ripe berries she could find.

I needed the quiet time out there finding sweet treasures with my girl.

When we got home, Barry and I made homemade strawberry freezer jam– one of my very most favoritest foods ever.

We went swimming tonight so the kids could show off their new skills to Dad.  Just as we were heading out to the pool an evening storm rolled in, so we ended up finding a random park with a shelter to eat our picnic at and went swimming indoors at our nearby rec center.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend!

(Underwater photos by Barry and the kids.)