He's Four and a HALF

Well, Adrian. You are four and a HALF. Wow, you keep growing!

Here's 4.
Here's 3 1/2.

Here's 3.

Here's 2 1/2,  
Here he was at 2.
Here he was at 18 months.
(And before that, I wasn't a blogger).

To my Adrian:

What a kid you are! You're serious, determined, focused and smart. You question everything, want to learn and spend 24/7 of your life with your mama. You are empathetic, loving and giving.

Pretty much all you do is farm. You still wake up and get straight to work. You take care of your farm animals and dream of the ones that are to come (COWS!...so you say).  You love the county fair and 4-H. You love Holsteins and Jersey cows. You know cows have 4 stomachs and want to learn the names for all four stomachs (?!) and I find myself making up a song to help you remember them all (?!).  I tell you, you're one of a kind. You love love love tractors.  John Deere in particular. You pretty much wear something John Deere everyday.
While you're not a sports dude, you do enjoy swimming and snowshoeing so you can track animals.

You love scissors and use them daily. We have every single cow and barn from butter containers the last year. You cut apart farming magazines. You love to collect every tiny little farming pictures and sometimes we get them glued onto 'cards' randomly. We are NEVER allowed to throw away your treasured farm pics.

You love homemade anything. You are mostly a vegetarian, by choice. No way will you ever ever eat cow. Carbs and desserts are your fave. But you do love your salads and your fave fruit is grapefruit.

You love books. I'll read to you for hours. You'll read to yourself. You have decided you want to learn how to read, so you learned your letters without teaching from me. I imagine your determination will pay off soon.

You love Audra and play nicely with her. When daddy is gone, you say "I'll be the man and take care of my girls." That you do! 

You, sweet boy, are a joy to us. You bring smiles to us and we cannot wait to see the big things you do between 4 1/2 and age 5.  I'm sure you'll be impressing us once again. We love you.

And his questions:

Nicknames: Adrian Teele

How old are you? 4 1/2

What is your favorite color? Green

What is your favorite animal? Cows

What is your favorite book? All about Farms

What is your favorite TV show? Farm Tractors

What is your favorite movie?  Farm Tractors

What is your favorite song?  Jesus Loves Me

What is your favorite food?  Mama's Homemade Bread

What is your favorite drink?  Milk

What is your favorite breakfast food?  Eggs and Toast

What is your favorite snack?  Trail Mix

What is your favorite outfit?  Farming clothes

What is your favorite game?  Count Your Chickens.

What is your favorite toy?  Farming toys

Who is your best friend?  Henry

What is your favorite thing to do? Playing Farming. Putting tractors in the sheds, Turn the cows and horses out to pasture, Putting hay in the hayloft, farming puzzles with cows.

What is your favorite thing to do outside?  Play farming stuff, like put out all my John Deere stuff and then farm with it and organize it.

What is your favorite holiday?  Christmas because I like getting John Deere Tractor toys.

What do you like to take to bed with you at night?  Four stuffed animals, doesn't matter which ones.

Where is your favorite place to go? To the thrift store

What is your favorite restaurant?  Spaghetti ones.

Where do you want to go on vacation?  To BOG's. I'll play with his little John Deere Tractor toys.  BOG will read stories to me about John Deere tractors. I'll play puzzles.

What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be a farmer. I'll be a John Deere tractor farmer. I'll have cows. Jersey cows and Holstein cows. I'll turn them out to pasture. I'll milk them until they are dry. I will have calves and I'll turn them out to pasture too. I will have chickens and goats but the cows will be my favorite.

What did you do on your half birthday? I'm going to party with all my people.

Breadsticks (Jackie Original)

Just took my staple bread recipe and adapted it to be breadsticks. I want to remember what I did, so I need to hurry up and post. They have been a delicious addition to meals. I froze a bunch and break off one for each of us to defrost come mealtime.

Breadsticks

2 ¼ C. warm water with 1 TBSP sugar
5 tsp. yeast
¼ C.  veg oil
1/8 C. dry milk
1 T Italian seasoning
1  tsp.  salt
~5 C. white flour

Topping
Olive oil
2 T grated parm cheese
1 T Italian seasoning
1 T garlic powder
1 tsp salt

 

Wisk water and yeast with fork.  Let set 5 min.  Whisk in oil, dry milk, seasoning and salt.  Add flour one cup at a time (amount changes depending on humidity).  Knead for 5 min. 

Spray a large bowl with cooking spray.  Put dough in bowl, then turn over (so top of dough is covered with cooking spray).  Dampen cheese cloth and put over bowl.  Let rise in warm place for one hour.  Bang bowl to punch down.

Separate dough in half. Roll into a 13x9 rectangle.  Place onto baking sheets/baking stones that are greased and dusted with cornmeal. Cut into strips.  Let rise for 1/2 hour. 

 

Brush breadsticks with generous amounts of olive oil.  Mix remaining dry ingredients in separate bowl. Sprinkle on top of breadsticks.

 

Bake at 350 for 15-18min. Turn out of pans immediately onto wire racks (so dough doesn’t get soggy).  Enjoy…and make sure to tell me you tried my recipe!

*Variation, I also made in pie plates for a different presentation.

Cat naming

We have an orange cat who has entered our barn and decided to stay. Adrian wants to name it"Heifer", Audra wants "Meow". We're trying to collect different name suggestions and have a family vote. Any ideas for the orange kitty who just may be our forever kitty? I'll try to get pics of the sweet kitty soon. 

Last time around, we had such an easy time naming this cat, Zoom. He's really an awesome cat. Here's our Zoom.

Weekend mornings....

Sometimes breakfast by the fire is the best place to start a weekend morning.

Winter will perhaps turn to spring?

There's still snow. Lots and lots of snow. The nice field view from my kitchen sink is now a view of a snowbank. I cannot even see the tops of the trees anymore from inside the house. My son looked at me with serious eyes the other day: "Mama, I'm so sorry I prayed for snow."
 It's okay. We've had a few warm enough days to actually get out there without being knocked over by the wind.

 A few days for us all to get out there.

 And warm enough evenings to stay out until bedtime.

 But, with the changing time this weekend, there is a promise of spring. Fruit trees have been pruned. Starting to go through my seedling supplies and the maple buckets will need to be cleaned soon. There's so much goodness in each season, I feel so fortunate to live where there are distinct seasons.

No stripes.

Thank you to so many of you who sent encouraging messages and kind words my way yesterday. I appreciate it.  It was a good day.

I have a little story for you today.

Sweet girl has a lot of mama made dresses. Even a good number of wool mama made dresses-seven wool dresses to be exact. We do live in Maine, afterall. Here's the wool ones:

 I laid out her wool dresses and asked her to pick one.

 We were heading out in the cold and I wanted her to be warm. 

 She looked at her choices and freaked. "There's no stripes!"  Oh, the performance that followed....

Thankfully we have some very nice friends who share their hand me downs. Striped tights saved the day.

 

 

 And even made her happy enough for a mini photo shoot, just the three of us and the camera timer.

Thankful for my littles and thankful we made it through that epic disaster of the possibility of an outfit san stripes.  Stripes from not on...I know the drill now.

Stress, what stress?

Thus far, this week would not get a 10/10. I've felt scattered, anxious, frustrated, short on patience and mad at myself for making mistakes. I have no one to blame but myself.

I need to remember that more often than not, the "complete disasters" just work themselves out, without the need of all that fretting. Worrying, overthinking and stressing changes nothing.  All it does is pull thoughts away from that which matters most.

I'm a woman of faith and believe God is in control. I'm going to give all that stress away so I have time to concentrate my full attention on what I love doing best...which is spending time with these littles.