What's up my sleeves?

You are busy, especially this time of year.  So you may not have noticed my absence.  But I notice.  And here's the reason: I've been cheating on my blog.  Lately I've been devoting my extra brain space to developing my yoga and life coaching business.  My mission is to bring wellness, joy, and radiance to women who want to enjoy their beautiful lives, but who - right now - haven't got the space to catch their breath.  Creating space in your life for YOU can take a little work, and I want to help. 

If you haven't seen it already, I've created a Facebook page for Cara Maclean Yoga:

http://www.facebook.com/caramacleanyoga

It would be lovely (and I would really appreciate it) if you would "like" my page and share it with women who you think might like it as well.  So far I've been posting links to useful articles on yoga and wellness.  In the future, hopefully soon, I'll have some yoga videos too, so you can get your move on too!

So, get in on the biz side of my life while I'm just starting out, then you'll be helping me immensely and getting some zen for yourself.  My goal is to launch a proper website in January, so please send me good technology vibes too!  I'll need them.  Thank you for your support!

(And, yes, I do realize I don't have any "sleeves" in this picture, but you get what I mean.)

I'm Thankful For...

Well, this is a first.  Listening to the boys play together this afternoon, I'm hearing the words "Star Wars, rocket ship, and war."  Hmmm... (insert grumpy face)... still fairly benign, thankfully, but it might be a sign that they are, in fact, little boys who may not always be content learning names of plants and flowers.  In any case, we've had a lovely last few months even though I've neglected (yet again) to post anything.

If you're celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, I wish you a day (and a lifetime) full of gratitude for who you are, what you bring to the world, and everything that graces your life.  Here's a peek into what I'm grateful for this year.

Creative kiddos in cozy jams.

That Gavin is beginning to smile like a normal human in pictures.

That one day I will get a picture of the front of Graeme's face.  Someday.

My lovely sister and our family.  Kids rockin' it out in the tube.

Getting cousins together.  And, again, almost the front of Graeme's face.

Train diversions on our long road trip home from Utah.  (Thank you to Mom and Dad for hosting all of us!!)  And that the boys were SO excite by two little train erasers, below, that it bought us an hour or so of content quiet time in the car while they played.

Overall, Fall has been wonderful.  Gavin's enjoying school and I've got the boys in swimming and ice skating again.  (Pictures coming.)  There are so many things and people and lessons to be grateful for... so much so that I bought myself a new gratitude journal today.  This, however, begs the question: when does one retire a journal?  I've got a few and can never seem to let them go unless they are complete.  Not a bad addiction I suppose.  Happy Thanksgiving!  Enjoy!

It takes some time...

The first few days of Kindergarten were challenging.  Gavin didn't quite realize the importance of actually doing what the teacher is asking you to do. 

He didn't feel like counting to 100... until the teacher said it was the last day before the glittery letters went up on the wall for the "100 Club".  Suddenly, it was easy. 

He didn't feel like playing in PE (freeze tag isn't his favorite apparently), so he hid under the table.  Then he realized he wouldn't get picked for teams from that station.  Now he's more engaging.

He didn't feel like coming in for recess - there were still construction trucks to watch after all.  (As they were doing finishing touches to the school and field.)  Now he's first in line.

He didn't feel like participating in Music, so he just laid down.  The teacher let him "nap" off to the side.

And this was just the first two days!  Craig and I were worried.

Luckily, after a few weeks, he's acclimated.  He follows the rules now.  The other kids seem to like him as a few yell, "Gavin!" as he arrives in the morning.  He gets hugs from one of the girls, and one little boy even gave him a hug and then turned to me and said, "I love this guy!"  He earned the class pet, BoBo the Monkey, to take home for the night.

Turns out, he IS a pretty sweet kid.   And he is just 5 after all.

Gavin's First Day!

Today was the first day of Kindergarten for Gavin.  

A little delayed because the school is brand new, rebuilt this summer, and just getting finished.  

Overall, I think he liked it! 

 As we were leaving for school, he showed me (as he does pretty much every time we leave the house) the little baby tree sprouts that we have in our yard.  When we met the teacher on Tuesday, she asked Gavin if he was excited for Kindergarten.  That got a smile and nod.  Then she asked how he was going to go home everyday, to which he responded, "Really excited!"

Here is the enormous backpack he picked out.  The first one he saw.  I wasn't going to argue if he liked it!  It is really cute to see all the kids lined up.  And, Gavin just got right in line and, of course, told the teacher right away that he had an electric train.  Cause, you know, that is the information most needed on the first day of school. 

In his class, there are 14 boys and 8 girls.  

A veteran teacher, thank goodness.

When he saw Graeme and me after school, he ran up to us with a big smile!  He was a little tired, but not exhausted and he seemed in pretty good spirits.  He said he had "a little fun".  And that is enough for me on the first day!  No major drama and as long as he learns when to sit and listen... which we knew would be an issue to start... he'll do quite well.  We're pretty happy parents. 

And it continues...

The train track.  Really.  It's all over the house (via Gavin and Graeme's paper, electric, AND wooden train tracks), and now it's expanded  out the front door, down the stairs, and into the driveway.  They even tried to continue the line into the gravel, but that didn't work so well.  We had a little help from some friends, but the boys drew most of this while I picked the endless supply of weeds in our front yard.  Thought you'd enjoy!  It should last a few days as the rain might stay away for the week.

year of the sunflowers!

After a whole week without the boys, I'm ready for a little more noise and chaos.  They have been at grandma's house, and Craig and I have had the week to ourselves to go out to dinner, go biking, and get a little break.  I vowed not to do any cooking or cleaning.  And, it turns out, I didn't do much gardening either.  

This year the theme for the garden is the Year of the Sunflower.  

They are massive.  Some I think are volunteers and others I planted, but they've never really done all that well in previous years.  I wasn't expecting this.  I think the sunflowers were so established before everything else arrived, they ended up sucking away the nutrients first.  As a result, I have very small tomato plants with tiny tomatoes, and little smatterings of other veggies here and there.  Although, that said, I still think we've had a fair amount to eat from the garden.  And that is always very cool. 

One of the smaller sunflowers.

Happy little cucumber blossom... they are trying their hardest to get some sun and attention from the bees!

      

Tiny beans.  I bet they'll be ready to munch after the weekend.

Here is a picture of the sunflowers.
You can see that they almost reach the height of our deck.  

And there are more to the left of this picture. Seriously crazy.  

I hope the bees don't forget the veggies down below all those flashy flowers.

One thing new this year... potatoes!  This is the first potato I unearthed.  

I felt a little bit like a raccoon looking for dinner, but I found four of these little guys pretty quick. 

They are weird plants though, as it doesn't even seem like the potatoes are connected to the plant.  

They just appear.  It's odd to not be able to see the growth at all.

And then chopped for dinner.  Yum!

As I watered the plants today, I noticed a little brown shuffling something in the strawberry patch.  It got away before I could see what it was... and I'm hoping it wasn't a rat.  Could be, but that would be gross.  There was, however, a very cute furry bird that was perched on the fence close by a few minutes later.  He looked young and not very quick... well, he actually looked like a furry grandpa bird with hair coming out of his ears, but I'm pretty sure he was learning how to fly.  I hoping he was my mystery guest.

Bikes, trains, and green things... oh my!

I've been delinquent.  My apologies.  My attention right now keeps straying to other endeavors... which I'll share soon.  Here is our life in pictures for the last month.  With a little commentary of course.

 Cute boys. On bikes.  Big and small.

 Basil from seed... these guys are doing the best of the seed bunch.  (I did buy some too.)

Our peas.  All snap pea varieties this year, but only half seem to be blooming thus far.  

Maybe it isn't warm enough for the others yet... waiting, waiting....

Back to front: Beans, lettuce, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, and nasturtiums. 

The boys went crazy planting nasturtiums (we saved a lot of seeds), so they are all over the bike track too.  Craig loves it!  

 Flowers with new bird bath.

Tomato from seed, though no idea which variety, and you can see that there are tiny blossoms just starting.

Sun!  We need you!  The sunflowers in our yard have gone crazy ad are kind of shading the tomatoes a bit, but so be it.  I've never had this many sunflowers, so it should be fun.

Raspberries finally starting to blush!  Yippee!

And this year we planted potatoes (on right), which have gone crazy.  

I've been told I need to cover them more, and will get to that sometime soon... peas and beans on the left.  

And boys with trains.

Gavin has a plan to engineer train track throughout the bike track in the backyard.  This includes a function where the train goes through the wall downstairs and then up onto the deck to bring in veggies from the garden to the kitchen.  At one point, part of the plan was to extend train track out to the driveway so the train could unload groceries.  Oh, and tracks to the laundry room so trains could do the laundry.  

Which would be fantastic.  

Ask him about it.  He likes to share his ideas.  At length.

Even though it was pouring today...

With a week of sun, the garden got its jump start!  The sunflowers tower over the rest of the fledgling plant already, and the hodge-podge of herbs that seem to be growing are (I think) scaring some of the slugs away (dill, parsley, cilantro).  The boys and I did, however, harvest a whole swim team of slugs and snails from the front and back yard.  They are still swimming in beer by our back door.  Gavin fed them a radish.  Forever hopeful.  (They want pets so badly.)

We harvested salad greens tonight, which is the most exciting thing ever!  And yummy french breakfast radishes.  Everything else sprouts and grows with whatever sunlight it can glean from the clouds.  The tomatoes are doing marginally well; I always doubt their ability to produce soon enough and buy some plants anyway.  We'll see if I can restrain myself and have confidence in my green thumb.

Don't let it go to your head

We had a lovely weekend with an impromptu visit from my parents - perfect for Mother's Day!  We visited with family and enjoyed the sunshine.  After they left on Sunday, we trekked over to the McCollum Bike Park for the BMX race.  Gavin raced while Graeme and I explored a river trail nearby.  Though I missed all but one race, Gavin ended up doing pretty well.... he'll get the hang of racing eventually... and, of course, he got a trophy.  (They like to encourage kids to come back.)  Since I was with Graeme, these pictures are actually from a practice session, but you get the idea.

Gavin wears my helmet, which fits him pretty well.  You can see, however, from the picture below, if he reaches too far forward, he can get a little top heavy.  Oops!

This gave the audience a good chuckle.  Gavin included.

We all have moments like this, right?

A Note to Our Guests

This post is sort of about our garden, but more of an apology to those lovely guests who took away cucumber starts as their favor from Gavin's birthday party.  Please do not attribute the death of your plants to your black thumb (if they died... if they haven't then you surely have a bright green thumb).   All but one of my plants that I set out have died, and I now realize that 1) it is too cold for cucumbers to be out, and 2) they don't really like to be transplanted if you keep them indoors too long.

I didn't want you to feel like you killed your plants, because you were really just set up for failure.  My apologies.  Next year we'll give out seeds or another start that has a better chance of surviving.

There are plenty of things to be doing right now: dishes, laundry, putting sheets back on the bed.  Instead of doing things more "productive", I realized this was a quiet moment not to be wasted.  The boys are outside with Craig doing this: 

 

I'm not exactly sure what "this" is, but Craig assures me it will look good.  (I particularly like how Graeme is helping with the level.)  But, the only time I can write is when the boys are otherwise occupied and my brain is still fully functioning.  That gives me only a small window in which to operate.

We've had many mediocre, but fun adventures since I last wrote.  You can tell by my last post that things are pretty exciting around here.  Gavin's birthday came and went.  He is now FIVE!  And the weekend was lovely, made incredibly special because my sister, Peyton, and Morgan surprised us by showing up at our door on Saturday morning.  The weather was fantastic, and the bike track well-ridden.  

Craig organized a hockey weekend this last weekend, so many (10) of his Canadians friends invaded our house.  The boys and I ran off to Canada to hang out with the in-laws and the other mums and kids of the hockey dads.  Though not totally a weekend off for me, it was lovely and I was able to go to yoga at Parallel ( http://www.parallelyoga.ca/ ) on Saturday AND Sunday.  

(Thank you Karen!) 

But really, on to more important things.  

The garden.  How is the garden, you ask?  It is coming along slowly as it has been chilly here still.  (No surprise.)  The biggest development seems to be the ants, who are back and, this year, devouring my red cabbage and brussel sprout starts.  (See video below.  Little bastards.)  Many people have tried to convince me that the ants aren't actually eating the plants, but something on them... but I've never seen ANY other bugs on these plants. Only ants.  And lots of them.  If you have ideas about how to rid your life of ants (that won't also kill my children), please let me know.  I can live without the brussel sprouts, but I was actually kind of excited about the cabbage.  I've never grown it before and it would be kind of fun.  

The greenhouse is still going with tomatoes, peppers, basil, and zinnias.  The tomatoes are the only ones that seem to be getting unhappy.  I played the role of Crazy Lady last Thursday, where I re-potted as many tomato starts as I could.  In the cold, pouring rain at dinner time, since I knew I would be leaving for the weekend and HAD to get it done!  I put some outside in the ground, knowing full well that they probably won't survive.  It's an experiment, or rather a riveting drama: will the tomatoes survive without covering?  will they survive with covering?  will they survive in the green house? or will I be going to the store the end of May to buy bigger plants?  Stay tuned.  

The lettuce is happy, spinach I'm sure will be gifted to friends, and the mystery sprouts are still coming up.  We've got lots of poppies and cilantro (from the compost), as well as some kind of tomato and something that looks like cucumber, but might be squash.  I'm hoping for cucumber, because if it is squash, no one will eat it except for me.  In any case, I'll keep guessing until something definitive appears.  Again, you can't get drama like this anywhere else... 

I realized the other day (because I realize again and again), that my life is pretty good... if the problems weighing on me are how to get rid of ants and where the dryer ball disappeared to... there are other worries to be sure, but those are the ones really bugging me!

Problem solved!

Tonight I've realized something that might eliminate a problem for me, or parents everywhere. You see, I have been challenging myself to let go of little things that bug me, and allow the world to be as it is without my having to fix it. Hard task.

One of the ways I've done this is to allow - don't laugh - the toilet paper roll to be backward. That is, paper comes out the back, not the front. Most people have a preference, or so I hope that it's not only my neurosis. Anyhow, I usually switch the roles put on backward. This week I didn't and I've gone a whole, well, maybe two days handling this quite well. Recognizing my annoyance and knowing that I can let go. Deep breath here.

But back to my realization. For some reason, as I was getting ready for bed, I thought about Graeme unraveling the toilet paper. Like every time we have a new role. With this roll, he hasn't done it and I think it's because it doesn't unravel if it's backward. I tried to spin it myself and you actually have to work hard spinning backward to unravel anything. Not as fun. (Or so I imagine for Graeme.)

Could that be an easy solution for parents everywhere? Maybe others have already noticed this, but I'm fully willing to let things be backwards. It beats having re-rolled toilet paper any day. Just shows if you open up to different ways of being, new solutions arise! And that's just with toilet paper...

Grocery Priorities

While I was spending my time planting in the front yard, I let the boys play trains and have a snack.  Gavin came outside after a while to show me his shopping list.  It reads as follows: 

1.  Car Feed (as you know, all of the toy cars and trains in our house have to be fed real people food or they get grumpy)

2. Pistachios

3. Letter Cheezits  (Scrabble Junior Cheezits, clever marketing)

4. Candy

5. Alphabet Soup

I need to train him to take inventory of the pantry and write the actual shopping list.  

Update in Pictures

In the past week or so, I've written many posts for you, but unfortunately, none of them have actually been extracted from my brain.  So, this is my attempt at a synopsis of what we've been up to.  The famous, or not-so-famous, catch up through pictures.  Here goes:

First, garden and starts:

The seeds I started indoors are doing quite well.  I'm thinking I should probably replant them before they get too big - particularly the cucumbers because they will start twining around themselves and then be useless.

Here are some of the tomato starts.  There are a bunch as nearly all have survived.  They are tiny, but last year even the tiny starts ended up producing fruit, so we'll see.  They make me smile every morning nonetheless.

Here are the new plants the boys and I chose for the front yard.  Below are some "bumblebee flowers" which we all thought were too cute to pass up.  Hopefully, everything will survive my mediocre watering habits in the summer and grow in beautifully.

I couldn't resist taking a picture of the backyard flower bed.  It looks even better now as the tulips have bloomed... however, the point of the picture was to acknowledge that the clover won the battle. I was going to try to weed it out, but then thought there might be a better use of my time.

Novelty picture of the lupine coming up in the backyard.  I love the way rainwater just bubbles in the center of the leaves.  This is but one of the ten or so pictures I took.  Luckily for you, I just posted one.

And the war begins... slugs beware.

Aww... cute little bird at the bird feeder.  We put this up about three weeks ago and the birds love it.  And we love the birds.  I was wondering, however, why there were some many sprouts coming up in my garden. Things I did not plant.  It didn't take long to figure it out; my all-knowing neighbor had warned me.  The birds apparently like to share their seeds with the garden.  Needless to say, we'll have a lot of sunflowers.  (And who knows what else will pop up!)

Oh well, how about that!  The whole post and all of the pictures have been about the yard or garden.  (You can tell it is Spring!)  Yes, I do have the boys to talk about.  They enjoyed the chocolate eggs at Easter and wore cute little vests that they'd never wanted to wear before.  Both Gavin and Graeme are very busy.  Gavin's brain does not stop.  Ever.  And Graeme hangs right in.  Can you recognize what their newest drawing obsession is?  They've drawn out quite elaborate schemes...