Laundry Day and Lunch

Today the laundry needs to be done. Seven loads. Yup, 7. I can't imagine how much laundry will need to be done if (when) we have more kids. It's a good thing I LIKE doing laundry! Here's Jake on the washing machine during the spin cycle. Seems like it would be fun but he doesn't seem so sure.

Jake does love to help me sort the laundry. He picks up the laundry and sorts into random piles. Only his genius brain knows the reasoning behind those random piles.


And here's today's lunch for Mike. In the big bottom container is a salad with smoked salmon pieces (he's a true Alaskan at heart, and salmon is his favorite food). The salad has red leaf lettuce, green onions, celery, radishes, red bell pepper, carrots, and sunflower seeds. The little jar has the dressing which is You-Must-Make-This-Dressing from Sarah Kramer's cookbook The Garden of Vegan. It's our favorite dressing, except for the G family's amazing garlic-honey dressing. The top container has a pita pocket bread with lettuce and a filling of mashed white beans with cilantro, salt, and Pace salsa (we love Pace salsa, always have since we were both children, and it now comes in an organic version!). There's also 3 cut-up kiwis in there and a piece of dark chocolate with cranberries and almonds wrapped in foil.

The salad was easy to make because we had the same salad last night, except with avocado instead of salmon, so I just made lots of it. Beans are easy -- I tend to cook them in batches and freeze them in small jars, and always have a jar of beans ready in the fridge. White, black, pinto, I love them all.

Sun Day

Another beautiful day here! We went to the Hillsdale Farmer's Market this morning. I forgot to bring the camera -- there were lots of people and it was such a nice atmosphere and good vibe. It feels good to be buying locally grown/made products (and be outdoors while at it). We got some more starter plants for the garden -- green and yellow zucchini, cilantro, and another catnip plant. Yes, another. We got a catnip plant about 2 weeks ago, planted it and I was very puzzled as to why it wasn't growing, but rather, seemed to be dying as soon as we planted it! I discovered the culprit, or probably one of the culprits when I spotted Kami making love to the plant and drooling profusely while doing so. Aha. So this time the new plant has a wire cage around it so that the cats can't destroy the plant but they will be able to munch on the leaves when it grows big enough. There's nothing like happy, drugged cats!

I got these at the farmer's market to make strawberry-rhubarb pie. Yum!


Mike and I planted our new starter plants, mowed and trimmed the grass, and I trimmed a blueberry bush. Jake is cute in the grass and enjoys being outside.



While we continued to do yardwork, Jake was entertained by this bowl of water. He loved splashing the water and putting the toys in and out. I got the idea for this from Jake's friend Monica. That's Kami the cat in the background (with her collar on, of course).




He soaked his clothes, and then realized he was wet and cold. So I changed him. Daddy put him back in front of the bowl without me knowing, and guess who got his clothes wet again! He had twice the fun.


Daddy and Jake with his 3rd outfit of the day!


Last night Mike, Jake, Grandpa, and I went to dinner at the yummy Kalga Kafe. We all shared a vegan pizza.

Water, water everywhere! But no sleep.

It's not actually raining in Portland today, on the contrary, it's BEAUTIFUL and sunny. Unfortunately I'm not enjoying it as much as I could. Last night was one of those (luckily for me rare) difficult parenting nights where I didn't get much sleep. Jake passed out early -- around 8pm while Mike and I watched the movie The Pursuit of Happyness (a very good but rather heavy movie) and stayed asleep even when we moved him into bed with us. Mike soon followed Jake to dreamland. Me? Wide awake. No idea why. Normally I fall asleep as soon as I can (when Jake has gotten his fill of milk), but not last night. I think it took me 2-3 hours to get to the point where I was ready to fall asleep. Then Jake woke up and wanted milk. And then he wanted more milk. And then he continued to want milk. I think he's teething and he's uncomfortable and he had finished his deep sleeping for the night. About 5am I'd HAD it and sat up in bed staring at my sweet boy who wanted... yup, you guessed it, more milk! I gave him some homeopathic teething tablets, more milk, and then mercifully, he went to sleep for 2 hours! But then he was awake again and I needed some sleep so Mike (who had a great sleep) got up with him and I slept for another hour. Not enough. The last time I remember such an awful, sleepless night, was in January when Jake had croup. I suppose I should consider myself lucky that normally he sleeps so well. Hopefully tonight will be better.

On a lighter note actually related to water, here are some cute pictures of Jake.


Don't let the innocent look fool you. He loves to SPLASH. We've taken to throwing down a towel on the floor to catch the water, but we still have to towel off the walls and the door when he's out of the bath.

Lunch, pet tags, random things

Mike works very hard at his job, often 13 hours a day. So he needs a good lunch for fuel to keep him going. I really enjoy putting together a lunch for him from things that we have in our fridge. Here's today's lunch:

I put together a flour tortilla with roasted red pepper hummus, lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, and jalapeno in the bottom container. In the top is some cut-up kiwi and can-a-dew melon. Also is a bag of cookies made from sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, blackstrap molasses, maple syrup, and other things. Also chocolate chips. The recipe didn't call for chocolate chips but for Mike, a cookie really isn't a cookie unless it has chocolate chips! Those cookies have lots of energy in them for getting him through the afternoon (and sometimes into the evening).


The whole lunch fits neatly packed in this wonderful lunch tin which can be found from this website: http://www.gaiam.com/retail/product/14-0358. We love these tins (we have 4 of them). They can go in the dishwasher and is so much easier than having separate tupperware containers that need to go inside a bag or box. Thanks to the G family for introducing them to us!

Today Theo and Kami's tags arrived for their collars. They have been going outside more and more and enjoying it, and with a baby to look after, it's easier for me. They're generally outside for no more than 2 hours at a time, and come back when called (although not always immediately because you know, they're cats, duh!). I decided they really needed some sort of ID and I did ask the vet about microchips, and he said that recent studies have shown a possible link to cancer. Eep! So tags they got. Cute, no?

The purple with the flower is for Kami, and the green with the fish in the fishbowl is for Theo.


My sister's boyfriend gave me this neat seed growing thing for Christmas. We had so much fun putting it on our kitchen window and watching the seeds sprout.

Last night Mike got home from work "early" (early meaning 6:30, haha!) so we walked down the street to the little bento hut in our village for dinner. Here's Jake on my back, ready to go to dinner.

First Post!

I've been contemplating creating a blog for awhile... but what to blog about? After spending lots of time reading other's blogs, I finally came up with some ideas for things I can post about. So this blog will be a combination of the happenings of the lives of Lee, Mike, and Jake; the cats Theo and Kami; what we eat (a la www.veganlunchbox.com); being "green", and other random thoughts. This is also a place to obsessively pursue my love of parentheses! (Ha ha.)

Happy Spring... there's a lot to be said for "spring cleaning". What is it about the new flowers, warmer weather, and fresh air that nudges us into action? I am finally getting my finances in order, something that has been bothering me for a few years (!), the garden has been started (yay for tomatoes, snow peas, swiss chard, carrots, radishes, beets, corn (fingers crossed), basil, chives, mint, dill, parsley, and others) and the house continues its gradual state of being unpacked/organized/decorated (but we've lived here long enough that deep cleanings are already needed, sigh).

Jake turned 10 months on April 20th and yesterday he CRAWLED! He didn't move far, but it was definitely a real crawl. Whoohoo! Time to further baby-proof the house. He also went from his belly to a sitting position. My baby is growing.

Here are some fun pictures of Jake. Notice the wild hair he's inherited from his daddy... it's sticking up on one side because he just woke up from napping on that side. :)

Hey, look at me! I'm cute!

Yup, my hair sticks up like my Daddy's.

Humm maybe that's not such a bad thing as Daddy is good-looking.

Look, I have teeth!

Are you still taking pictures?

Maybe if I look away the camera will go away...

Eep! That didn't work!

I guess I'll just have to EAT THE CAMERA!