Highlights
#1: Food
January is always about returning to healthy eating for us. I realize how much better I feel when I remember to feed my body well and do simple things like take my vitamins and drink water!
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| Homemade Refried Beans |
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| Beans ready for the freezer |
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| Broccoli Spinach Quiche |
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| Gluten Free Carrot-Date Muffins |
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| Spinach-Feta Pizza |
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| My favorite breakfast: Spinach, Onions and Sun-dried Tomatoes sautéed. Then two eggs cracked on top and put under the broiler (over the veggies) for 2 minutes. Served with farm sausage and steamed broccoli. YUM! |
#2: Birthday Celebrations
Due to a staff training exercise for Daddy's students, both my oldest and youngest daughters celebrated their birthdays this month. The surprise party held for Caeley in the middle of the school day was super fun. She truly had no idea.
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| I love this kid. |
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| And this one. |
And my baby turned two, but you heard all about that already. :-)
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| This is how she feels about Elmo. All the time. Every day. |
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| We had to save the candles. She plays with them still! |
#3: Witnessing Creativity
There's nothing else to do in January but host circuses and play dress up and paint...
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| Circus folk. |
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| I refuse to name the college kid in this picture in order to respect her privacy and prevent her utter humiliation. |
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| Captain Ailin to the rescue. |
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| She's also obsessed with paint. And playdoh. And water. And anything else that destroys the house in seconds flat. |
#4: Getting Outside!
The weather this January was just ridiculous. In mostly a good way (see below for my caveat.) We had a touch of snow, but tons of sunny days that were nice enough to really go outside and enjoy. What a treat!
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| I feel like I should have a bowling ball to knock these pins over with. |
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| One morning we went out for ice cream. Just because we could. It was WARM. And SUNNY! |
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| Shooting hoops at the ARCC |
#5: Feeling the Call of the Chickens and the Garden
The warm weather has me tricked. I'm afraid to admit that I would be happy for winter to be over, especially when my farmer Will told me that the chickens will be laying in mid-March. I'm ready! With the days growing longer, and the temps hovering way too close to fifty for this time of year, I'm ready.
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| They are getting so big and pretty! |
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| The white Leghorn and her obnoxious tail crack me up. |
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| Letting the girls start bug control before I plant the hoop house. Soon? But you know the minute I put seed in the ground, it will snow 85 feet. |
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| This is a close-up of Elizabeth's neck feathers. She truly is a gorgeous chicken, and her feathers are nothing like her sister's. She's our hands-down favorite, though it seems that the others pick on her for being so docile. I'm already envisioning that she will be our most faithful layer. :-) |
#6: Hitting the Half-Way Mark for School
Eighteen weeks have come and gone. We are in week twenty-one of school. We have fifteen left. We can do this. We're in the "post-holiday groove." The normalcy of life after the holidays, and getting the school work really done is wonderful. It's such a short window, I have to seize it and hang on with tooth and nail.
#7: My friend Mary
You might've seen in my recent post that I'm focusing more of my spiritual life this year on Mary. It's been a shocking experience for me. I won't bore you with some long treatise about it, but by far, she has been the best part of 2012. I feel like my life has changed in a month, and the fact that prayers are being answered in my life in a way they never were before is not something I attribute to coincidence.
Lowlights
#1: The Almost Superbowl
It was awesome to have our football season as Ravens fans last as long as it did. But so hard to swallow the loss to New England. What a great game, but one that I wish we could've won! Next year is our year, boys! (P.S.: Kinda happy NE lost to NY. Okay, not kinda, VERY!)
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| The students had Ravens cupcakes for our biggest football fan! |
#2: Running Over a Chicken
I stupidly decided to move the coop during the day when the chickens were down in the penned area. And I ran over the foot of one of my Speckled Sussex chickens. She YELPED like a dog. I felt terrible. Her foot turned purple and huge the next day. She hobbled around like a sad little thing for days. But lo and behold, it wasn't broken and she is fine now. Lesson learned. Only move the coop when they are locked in the house.
#3: The Weather
Okay, I know I put this in a highlight too, but let's be serious. Not enough cold weather means that not enough bugs will be killed off over the winter. As a gardener, this makes me super nervous. My husband thinks I'm a nut case and that I'm imagining this problem. But I got bit by what I could almost promise you was a mosquito the other day, and there was a YELLOW JACKET on our kitchen floor yesterday. We get quite enough bugs around here for my taste, and I could use a little bit of winter to set things right. Not to mention, having FOUR seasons is a really nice thing. It makes you appreciate each one so much. I want to be excited when I see my garlic popping up in the SPRING. But it's already popping up, along with my chives, parsley, and mint!
#4: The HHS Mandate
I don't have it in me to get into this in this post. I was in such a good mood looking over all our highlights from January that I don't want to end on a sour note. But a sour note this is. Sour. Sour. Sour. Blech.
Is it February ALREADY???!!!!
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