Our Deer Baby

Hobbit Hole

2009-07-17T10:40:00.005-04:00

First one in my series of 'Houses which fascinate me and I briefly considered, but then common sense took over and I didn't'

This is what they call an earth sheltered house, but I would call it a hobbit hole.

It does not have any heat source beyond passive solar, which might or might not be a good idea in Vermont.

It has many advantages, like low heating costs (I hope ^^) and it just is a very cool concept. How can one not love a house like this?

What did worry me was where it says 'Needs extensive work' I mean. I do have seven willing workers, cough, but somehow it still didn't feel like the best decision to move into this house and pretend to be hobbits.

A few days ago we actually tried to FIND this hobbit house, just to see what it looked like from the outside. We drove and we drove and we drove. Roads got smaller. Woods sprang up around us. Thunder storms were raging. We got farther and farther away from Vermont's major civilization.

After driving for an inordinate amount of time, we finally arrived on the right dirt road. We tried to find the correct house number, but the house numbers were not in any logical or helpful order. We went back and forth on this road for a while, but it was very clear that this house was a bit too private and far away for us.

Click here to see the house. Read 25 reasons to get an earth sheltered home. Here are some myths and facts.

Still, this house is not for us. Too bad ^^ It would have been fun to be a hobbit.

Weather Forecast

2009-07-16T09:32:00.000-04:00

Today

Showers likely early...then a chance of showers

Gotta love living in New England...

Fire Tower

2009-07-13T10:36:00.000-04:00

First fire tower climb of the season.

I LOVE the views.

Six Miles Hike

2009-07-13T10:28:00.000-04:00

We went hiking / geocaching in Concord and had a wonderful time.

We were organized enough to have two cars, so we could park one on one end of the trail system and one on the other end, enabling us to hike all the way from one side to the other. It was a beautiful hike.

We met squirrels, who would yell at us for disturbing the peace in their forest.

We saw many frogs and toads.

It was a great day and I plan on doing many more hikes this summer.

Nachos and Cheese and House Hunting

2009-07-11T23:25:00.000-04:00

I grew up in the Netherlands, where there is not much variety in cuisines beyond Chinese food, which usually is actually Indonesian over there. My mom was a typical Dutch person with a healthy suspicion for any food which wasn't Dutch or Indonesian, so we ate boiled potatoes and boiled veggies and meat. We definitely never ate nachos and cheese. Heck, I am not sure whether I even knew about the existence of nachos and cheese.

When I moved to the States, I heard about them, but it took awhile before I actually got to eat them. Once I did... I was addicted! Somehow I never learned how to make them though. So much life, so little time. A a few days ago, I decided to start to learn. I was home by myself and put some nachos with grated cheese topping in the oven. Not bad, but not really what I wanted. I was envisioning the gooey yummy cheese sauce I am used to see on nachos.

Fast forward to tonight when I tried this recipe from the Big Red Kitchen. I was attracted to the simplicity of the recipe. I mean, I wanted to make nachos and cheese, but I didn't want to spend tons of time to prepare before I could eat them. They turned out very well with sharp cheddar and mozarella (the cheeses we had available) and everyone enjoyed them. Well, the ones that like nachos and cheese that is.

On Friday we spent our first day house hunting. We looked at four houses. First one was old town offices, a lovely house, school with big playground and ball field in the back yard, and interesting attics. The drawback was a very old, very small kitchen and the biggest drawback was the very busy road in the front yard. Both the house and the front yard location didn't feel like our best choice.

Second house was boring looking on the outside, but excellent on the inside. It was a newer house, built in 2003. Four bedrooms, everything in such good shape. Walk out basement, nice big backyard, and to make it really Vermonty, it was at the end of a dead end dirt road. This house gets the top place for now.

Third house had The Best Kitchen Ever, and was in good shape. It had a cemetery behind the backyard, which the realtor was apologetic about, but we reassured her that we would be fine with that. What I wasn't fine with was yet again a very busy road in the front. Not to mention that the 'river frontage' which had been advertised as something wonderful and perfect, was on the other side of the road. Let's just say that kids and busy roads do not go together well. It would be a great house for a family with older, or no kids. But not for us.

Fourth house looked great in the pictures, but was in bad shape and built by a do-it-yourselver who wasn't a very good do-it-yourselver. It had many weird issues, and it again wasn't our best choice for a house.

One out of four isn't bad though, is it?

Tonight, we spent some time driving past more houses. Some got rejected when we couldn't find it after driving for three hours on a smaller and smaller dirt road and STILL not being there. Others got rejected for other visible reasons when we drove by. It was interesting to drive around on unknown dirt roads and NOT knowing whether this was either a dirt road which went somewhere, or a dirt road which would disappear into mud and nothingness. With big drop offs next to the road for good measure. Making me wonder how I would EVER be able to turn around the van here if needed.

Did I mention how it was raining? And we drove through a Very Impressive Thunder Storm and I did not like half of the dirt roads, and life was wet and that is why we needed nachos and cheese when we came home.

Born Under A Maple Tree

2009-07-08T14:51:00.000-04:00

Five years ago, Sylvia was born under a maple tree in our front yard.

Now she is running around under the maple tree and letting me take her birthday pictures. What a wonderful five years it has been! Before she was born, I had many miscarriages and things were not easy. She was my sticky baby and so very welcome.

Watching her grow up with six older siblings has been fascinating. I think being the youngest of seven teaches one both lots of good qualities ('If they can do that, so can I!') but also some bad qualities ('I am just the baby, so I can get away with anything'). Overall, she is a well rounded and pleasant person though, and I feel blessed to be her mother.

She tells everyone 'I used to be four, but now I am five!' just in case they didn't realize she has had a birthday. She also will tell people 'I am Sylvia and my totem is a deer.' when they ask her for her name. Somehow people don't always know how to answer that one ^^ She is very aware and pleased that her name means 'From the woods'.

Happy birthday, little girl!

Playground Pictures

2009-07-07T21:38:00.000-04:00

Today was one of those crazy days, getting five kids to three places at four different times, and that was only the morning. The rest of the day was just as complicated.

I didn't get much done beyond all that, but the good news is that I had some leftover blueberries and made an awesome blueberry buckle for dessert. We ate it with ice cream. Yum!

The other good news is that Dawn brought some fresh organic lettuce from her job at the farm, and we had a very nice salad. Mostly appreciated by Dawn, Sylvia and me, the other kids think that green vegetables should be outlawed.

I never made any pictures today, so sharing some playground pictures instead, from the playground at the farmfest a few weeks ago. All those pictures were taken by Jane.

New Post at Largerfamilies.com

2009-07-05T21:59:00.001-04:00

Please go visit Loving Kindness and Baby Steps at largerfamilies.com.

Enjoy and don't forget to be nice to yourself. You deserve it!

Why One Should Label What One Puts In One's Freezer...

2009-07-05T19:26:00.000-04:00

Remember the move? I have no idea yet when, but there will be one in our foreseeable future. In a moment of feeling organized, I decided this would be a perfect time to start emptying that basement freezer. The one that I put stuff in, and sometimes label, sometimes not. I am sure I can come up with many excuses why I sometimes don't, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Last night, I took an item out of the freezer. I had No Idea what it was, and I have to admit that I am still not sure. For now I am labeling it as a lentil soup, and I have a bunch more containers which look similar. I don't think I particularly like it, although I don't hate it either, so I am eating it for dinner and pretending I am organized and on top of things.

I am curious to see what other things will show up from the depths of the freezer. At least all the placentas have been buried by now. And I think we don't have any dead rats anymore either.

What is your freezer like?

Farmfest

2009-07-05T08:17:00.000-04:00

Meeting animals up close.

We had a fun day.

Even the parts when it rained.

Sylvia got to bottle feed a goat, how cool is that?

Cees

2009-07-04T17:30:00.000-04:00

This was before he turned American.

About six years before...

Happy Independence Day!

2009-07-04T17:10:00.000-04:00

Today, it is exactly one year ago that me and the boys got naturalized.

Last night, our town celebrated by organizing a big fireworks display. I went there with five of my kids and a bunch of friends and we had such a wonderful time. Even although it had been rainy all week, the weather for the fireworks was quite good, and everyone ignored the occasional drizzle during the display.

The kids were running around, we bought light sticks, we had good food and junk food and lots of fun and I was grateful for the opportunity to become an American. Although it is hard to imagine that it already is a year ago.

Time flies.

Today is a quiet day, since we had the fireworks last night already. Did I mention it is raining today?

Happy Independence day to all my readers!

Proud of My Sister Min!

2009-07-04T12:37:00.002-04:00

Another one of my brilliant sisters to be proud of. She graduated from Dartmouth College with a Master's degree.

Wow!

We attended the graduation, which was rainy. Big surprise, eh? ^^ We had a great time anyway, especially when we found an indoors location to watch the graduation on a huge screen. After watching our sister graduate, we made our way to good food and had even more of a wonderful time.

Congratulations, fabulous sister, you did it!

More pictures can be found in this album.

Bean Trellis Coolness

2009-07-02T19:59:00.001-04:00

My sister is in a wheelchair, which makes gardening a tad more challenging, to say the least. Luckily, she is just as brilliant as I am (ok, maybe even MORE brilliant, since I wouldn't have thought of this) and designed this super cool bean trellis.

She had a friend cut down a bunch of saplings and tied them together into this trellis. She added boards to the soil in between the trellis poles and she can ride in through her own bean trellis and pick her very own beans! Without having to borrow my or other kids to help her.

She rocks!

Now if it would ever stop raining...

Strawberries and Chocolate

2009-07-01T19:39:00.000-04:00

So many strawberries. Good tasting ones at that.

We found small ones, we found big ones, we picked and picked and picked.

The kids thoroughly enjoyed the harvest.

And even although it seemed impossible, we still managed to increase our happiness by adding chocolate to the strawberries. Chocolate dipped strawberries right in our own kitchen. How much more decadent can one get?

No one had the patience to wait for the chocolate to cool down and harden around the strawberries. The temptation was just too big. Sometimes giving in to temptation is just right.

More Festival Pictures

2009-07-01T19:28:00.000-04:00

Strawberry Festival

2009-07-01T19:20:00.000-04:00

This year, life had been crazy (unlike other years when nothing was going on ^^) and last week I guiltily realized that we might have missed the opportunity to go strawberry picking. Which obviously is not the end of the world, but it was slightly disappointing and added to my 'I should be more organized and be able to do everything!' feelings.

Imagine my happiness when I realized that not only did I not miss the window of opportunity to go picking, but in addition, there was going to be a big strawberry festival at one of our local organic farms.

On Saturday I heard about the festival. On Sunday I grabbed six kids, we drove over to the farm, saw a baby fox on the way, and had a great time.

I met friends, the kids met friends, we picked strawberries, we did wagon rides, and for a change it did not rain! Well, at least not much of it ^^

On the way back we saw two deer. What a great day!

Summer and Life and House Hunting

2009-06-30T21:32:00.000-04:00

I would like to say summer is here, but the rain keeps interfering. Not that I care, I will take anything that isn't snow. We are spending a lot of time outdoors, my garden is being ignored as usual, my lawn resembles a jungle, and we have many camps for many kids, requiring much driving and logistics.

We are doing a lot of geocaching and baking and swimming. Cees still works at McDonalds, and Dawn works at an organic farm in Vermont. Jane is doing an aquatic explorations camp at our local science museum. The older boys will be doing a college learning strategy course at Dartmouth. Kate, Erik and Sylvia have daily swimming lessons. There is theater and soccer and other camps waiting for us over the next few weeks. I will go out kayaking a few times. So much to do, so little time!

And my divorce is finally OVER and I can talk about it and talk about looking for a new house. I didn't want to blog about the decision and the process. The summary is that it was a hard decision, but definitely the right one for us. The actual process took almost 1.5 years, which is way too long, but that's the way things are. Now I am happily single, and looking forward to house hunting and moving to a place where we can have chickens. Well, actually, I am not looking forward to the actual move (just wait and see how many times I will say 'I HATE moving!) , but I can't wait to settle in a new house and make it perfect for us.

I am happy to share more details in private email, my addy is in the sidebar.

Anyway, this is why I am so happy with my new table for my new house. It is very symbolic. Not only do we have the new table, but friends cleaned out our play room and moved the table in there and now the dining room is a dining room! Tonight, I had a great dinner with five girls (four of mine and a friend) and we talked much girly talk all around the table and life is good ^^

Tomorrow, I will get many things done and might even work in the garden. Or not. We'll see ^^

The Yellow Brick Road

2009-06-22T12:19:00.000-04:00

Somehow, don't ask me how, the yellow brick road from Jane's school play made it over to our house.

The cats love it, it is a new place to observe the humans and to wrestle with one's siblings! How perfect!

Jane was a munchkin in the play, and did a great job.

I would post more play pictures, but the quality is bad and blurry, so this is all you'll get.

Anyway, we are now the proud owners of The Yellow Brick Road. I bet y'all are jealous ^^

Socks Seal of Approval

2009-06-13T22:59:00.000-04:00

Socks would like to let y'all know that he approves of the new chairs.

They have really grown on me too, funny how that happens. Now my next baby step project is cleaning out the dining room, which is a play room at the moment, and get the new table out of the living room (it is just a tad in the way ^^) into the dining room. I might or might not post pictures soon of the 'Dining Room: Before'.

Today I hit the Salvation Army and got a bunch of placemats and napkins, in a variety of colors and sizes, including some with all kinds of Swedish cheers on them. And maple leaf ones. I am sure I'll post pictures of some of those too, or not ^^

Observant Girl

2009-06-13T22:41:00.000-04:00

One thing I love about Sylvia is how observant she is. When we are driving, she will notice every single detail and often remark on it.

When we are at home, she will observe and pipe up with interesting and often deep observations.

Last week at the counseling center, her observation was quite funny. They just moved and their new waiting room has poles at various spots in the room, because it's an old building. Sylvia came in, sat down, looked around for a bit, and then told me 'Mama, I really like this waiting room, it feels so much safer!'
Me 'Oh?'
Sylvia 'Yes, the poles are holding up the ceiling, MUCH safer than the old waiting room!'

Now I am wondering whether she usually goes around worrying whether the ceiling will fall down?

THREE Teens!

2009-06-12T22:07:00.000-04:00

Happy birthday to my favorite teenage daughter!

She got makeup and fish and makeup and books and makeup and chocolate (needed for all those teen hormones ^^) and did I mention makeup?

Did you know one can buy special stickers for one's nail?
Or special pens to draw on one's nails?

I didn't either ^^

She was my very first unattended birth, and she was an accidental water birth. Those were the times!

Riceball

2009-06-12T00:02:00.000-04:00

Isn't she cute????????

First New Furniture

2009-06-11T23:43:00.001-04:00

Today, we stopped at the thrift store and we were just going to LOOK at the furniture section. It would be nice if there were bunk beds, but we were not holding our breaths.

Well, there were no bunk beds, but there was the BEAUTIFUL and BIG table outside. It just had not so nice looking chairs with it, but then, maybe I could just buy the table. I asked the guy how much it would be and he started out at $100, but went down to $80 pretty fast. Which means that either *I* am a master negotiator, or it means that they wanted to get rid of this space eating ugly table. BUT! I had to take the chairs too, they were not willing to sell the table without the chairs.

It took me all of ~~five minutes~~ ~~one minute~~ twenty seconds to decide that I could totally live with the chairs after all, and I could either use them somewhere else in the house, or use my current benches somewhere else. I mean, this was The First Furniture for my new house, I couldn't let it slip through my hands just because of getting six extra chairs, could I?

The thrift store people were nice enough to deliver the table, since my van was still in the garage, and now I am the proud owner of a brand new old table. I just have to find a house to go with it. We had Chinese take out to help us baptize the table.

Wrecks and Windmills and Queen of the World

2009-06-07T22:40:00.000-04:00

Yesterday's geocaching led us from 'I am the queen of the world!' to

Why the heck would anyone dump this wreck of a car at the bottom of the thousands blocks of granite from an old granite quarry?

The top of the stack had a windmill, it was an interesting contrast.

Useless tidbit: close to stacks of granite like this, it is very noticeable how much the temperature drops thanks to the heat mass (or lack thereof) of the stones. It immediately felt colder every time we came close.

Somewhat puzzling tidbit. We found many more wrecks like this. I guess that people consider this the manly way to get rid of their old cars?