Just me

Today I was thinking about me. Well, me as a thirteen year old. Truth is, it seems like just yesterday. I was suddenly struck with the recollection of just how much things mattered to me. Just silly, little things compared to now, but to thirteen, fourteen year old Jessica, they were earth shattering important. I chuckled  to myself and then a second idea dawned on me. My eight year old is FAR closer to thirteen than I am these days. OMG, I will in a few short years have a thirteen year old of my very own. A few year after that a whole household of teens. How did I get so far from my teenage self with just a blink of an eye?  

Truth is things are not always happy & rosy for us. That's reality of life. I've butted heads far to often with a too close to thirteen year old boy of mine. I will say that every time I think I have this mothering thing down, something new comes up. I laugh now at my naivety of two child, Mama Jess. Oh how easy and simple all my solutions were. As a mama to four now, I see just how complicated things with a tribe of children, can get sometimes. This new pre-teen stage has me reassessing everything I thought I knew again, as does the realization the unknown part, never ends. Honestly what is motherhood other than reassessing, and learning as we go. Trying to hold our heads up when we are down and sharing our glow when we are up. 

The thing is, I want my kids to know thirteen year old Jess. I want them to realize I wasn't always the woman nagging them to be nice to their brother, or clean up their dirty socks. I want them to know my passions and experiences. I want them to know that I was once a thirteen year old girl, who thought her parents were silly and life had to be better, easier, more exciting... somewhere out there- over the rainbow. I want to connect. I've decided to make a new effort to try and relate and remember what it feels like to be a kid. Not just a tired, sometimes overworked mama with a mile long to do list. It's still there inside of me. 

One of the first things to let go of was my "adult" aversion to being photographed lately. {Let's just say 4 kids in 6-ish odd years is not the easiest on the figure} The other day I realized the kids don't see the extra baby weight I see right now. They see their mama who they love. I want them to have pictures to look back on with their mom. So they can chuckle and laugh and pick apart the my hair, and clothing style in 20 years. So, I've been letting the kids take pictures of me-whatever they want, silly, serious, fancy, often out of focus, and depending on the photographer, lacking me in the photo at all.  Sometimes I make silly faces, {oh how luc loves those}, sometimes I smile, but always it's me there. Real, genuine Mama!

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.  join in @ Soulemama.

Pumpkin Patch 2012

My favorite time of the year is here! One of my favorite things to do in the Fall, is go to the Pumpkin Patch.  We have been going to the same, pick your own pumpkin patch, since the older kids were just little, tiny babies. I think it's worth the drive for the tradition of it alone. The kids love it, I love it! 

The past 2 years we've had friends join us. This year- I'm not gonna lie, it was a wee bit stressful for me. Seven kids will do that I guess. Six of which are running in opposing directions at once. Mostly it was Little {L} , TRYING to get lost in the corn field that bordered the pumpkin patch that had me a bit worried.  You'd think with two husbands along with us, that we were doubling the adults, so children could be more easily watches. Lesson learned, ehhh, yeah, no. It totally doesn't work that way. One husband is somewhat helpful, two makes them useless because they talk to each other the whole time, oblivious of those six children dispersing in all directions around them. All in all once all the kids finally got reeled in, pumkins were picked with care, and we had a great time. 

Some yummy apple cider, a little dancing, some hilarious {obscenely shaped} swan gourds, seven happy children, and 12 pumpkins later, made for a great afternoon

Spring is Here!

What better way to celebrate the arrival of Spring than a Spring Equinox Tea Party? We had so much fun over the weekend celebrating the sunny [and hopefully healthy] season ahead.

Fruit, cookies, tea, cakes and friends= the perfect combo! I spent the week leading up to the stitching the embroidered tea coasters. I think they were the perfect touch for the day, even the boys liked theirs.

I think we may have to add this to our annual events list.

It's Santa!

First Year with no tears & all the kids made it onto Santa's lap. Hooray! Baby {J} wasn't "thrilled", but we'll blame that on just being woken from a nice comfy nap and dropped onto a strange man with a giant white beard and silly hat's, lap.

Gifts asked for this year: a sword, magic, & a guitar, or kids computer... Baby {J} just wanted to go back to sleep.

Magic

The magic of Christmas is once again flowing through the house. Whispers of Santa and all the upcoming fun times, flow out from under the doors of the "sleeping" children's rooms. The ornaments are on the tree and we listened to our young children reminisce about their "old" memories of Christmas' past. Mama is happy and can't stop thinking about knitting, sewing and all the new gifts to be made for the children. If magic exists I feel it this time of year. We will be celebrating Baby's First Christmas, for the fourth time-each and every as special as the last.

I can't wait to see what else the season holds for us!

Ready for the Holiday's?

Man, Christmas is really sneaking up on me this year! At this point, I am usually done with shopping, have everything wrapped and most, if not all of the handmade gifts complete. This year I can;t check off any of those things! I have a 1/2 knitted scarf on my knitting needles for my son, and just a LONG list of projects for my children, and a few gifts to make for my parents, and in-laws.
Things around here have been going at a much slower pace since I found out we were expecting baby #4 later this Spring! Yikes, my energy has been zapped. It will be a whirlwind two weeks of sewing, knitting and creating! I'll share some of my handmade gifts here as soon as I get them complete!

The one thing that was done on Thanksgiving was our decorations. The tree is up, the wreath is on the door, and the lights are strung in the yard. Just seeing those things make me smile!

Prepared

Lately I have been really prepared for things. It's funny because it's come after a several months long spell, of unprepared chaos in the house! It feels nice to seem to have things under control again. I spent the morning preparing for our Thanksgiving.

This will be the first year that my husband is joining us in an ALL Vegetarian feast. While me and the children are vegetarians, my husband is not. Usually we have family coming in to visit, so we make the typical American Thanksgiving food-turkey. With no one else to eat it, he has decided to skip it this year. I was really excited and wanted to prepare a few new dishes to help make it "easier" for him.

While we have some of the normal Thanksgiving staples, we also have several foods that we always make [carrot pudding], this year we are added a stew served with couscous, mashed turnips [which the kids actually love!], berry soup and a bananas cinnamon cake to the menu. Mmmmmm, yummy!

Our fridge packed full of healthy goodness!

I decided to make 3x the stew and turnips we would eat. I froze the rest for quick, healthy and easy meals throughout the next few months. I love making big batches of food and just reheating it later! It really adds almost no time to the cooking, just a few extra minutes to cut up the veggies and spices.

I was so lucky to have 3 little helpers today. The kids are really excited about helping prepare the food this year. I have been making them carrot pudding for Thanksgiving since they were born, this year they started asking if we were going to have it-weeks ago! It felt really great that it has become a "family tradition" food for the holiday.