Here are a few pictures to summarize our fall last year.


The boys at Potter's Bridge during a break from riding bikes.


Stuart on his birthday with his dinner of choice--Pesto Pasta!


The new bedspread I made for Stuart for his birthday (although he still totally prefers my bright green, pink and yellow floral bedspread from when I was a little girl in the 80s).


A knight and a fireman.


A grumpy giraffe.


Stuart and Daniel are becoming friends, even though when they play together, the most commonly heard expression from Stuart is an exasperated, "Da-an! Why'd you do that?"


Dwayne took the boys to a demolition derby. They got a taste of some true Hoosier-land entertainment and all three talked about it for weeks. Sounds like it might become an annual tradition (for them-- a quiet night at home for me, thanks).


All of my siblings and their families were in town for Thanksgiving this year. A whole week of lots of fun, food, cousins and noise!

I am pregnant and due in the middle of January. When talking about whether they wanted a brother or sister, the boys usually chose brother, and Simon solidified his preference when he realized that if it was a boy, there would be five "guys" in our family, and his favorite burger place here is called "Five Guys Burger." So we told them we could go there to celebrate if my 20-week ultrasound revealed a brother. But then we realized it actually could be a girl (although I scarcely dared to hope), so came up with the alternative of getting a treat at Dairy Queen if the ultrasound revealed a sister. So the ultrasound was last Tuesday, and here we are....


A girl! Hip hip hooray!

Last summer we chose a spot in the corner of the yard between two trees to be our compost pile ("area" might be a better term). We dumped kitchen scraps, yard trimmings, some grass clippings and leaves into it over the course of the year and turned it occasionally. At some point we must have dumped the "guts" of a pumpkin we carved or cooked because we got a surprise this Spring when a vigorous pumpkin vine started growing there and eventually set six pumpkins! We had to move our composting operations elsewhere, but loved watching our little pumpkins grow. I don't really have a lot of culinary or decorative uses for pumpkins at this point in the summer, but by the middle of August, most were completely orange, so we have harvested three and will get the others in the next week or two. They should store well for a couple of months in our basement. Dwayne's mom gave me the idea of etching the boys' names in them when the skins were still soft and green, so maybe you can see Stuart showing off his "STUART" pumpkin in the picture.


Stuart also has a tomato plant that has been ultra-productive this summer. On the day this picture was taken, we picked 82 of the little pear-shaped yellow tomatoes from his plant. It must know how much he loves it, so is happy to produce a bountiful supply of fresh snacking material each day for its little gardener.

Just because the pumpkins are in the picture, I'll include this one with this post. Simon has heard me and Dwayne talk about playing "Settlers of Catan" on occasion and convinced me to teach him the basics. He can keep track of the rules pretty well, Stuart is another story, and Daniel is the Destroyer of Catan, so basically it just boils down to a good exercise in patience for me. It is fun to have Simon learning to play games that are actually interesting to us, though.

Simon started Kindergarten a week or two ago. He goes in the afternoon, so we have to take him to school, and he rides the bus home. He seems to really enjoy school and has especially enjoyed getting to know our neighbor "girl friends" better, the younger of whom is in his class. I'm glad he has a little friend for recess and for the bus ride.

The boys have been enjoying their bikes a lot lately and are gradually allowing us to increase the wobble-factor on their training wheels. We went for a morning ride (for them, walk for us) near Potter's Covered Bridge in Noblesville. Stuart threw up for some reason right when we were unloading the car, but once that was taken care of, he had a great time on the paved trail on his bike. There are some swinging benches along the trail, and we stopped at a "beach" along the White River where Dwayne showed them how to skip stones.


Strange that the bikes didn't make it into any pictures!

We had a fun 4th of July weekend, with Dwayne's parents in for a visit from Kansas. We went to the pool (on an abnormally cool 3rd of July),
attended the (Draper) traditional 4th of July parade in Carmel,

and then had fun with lots of boys and lots of fireworks!

Whenever Daniel goes unsupervised in our garage, he goes straight for the two kid-sized snow shovels and proceeds to scrape them across driveway, grass and sidewalks.
Daniel has definitely reached the age when he knows he's a (cute) rascal.


Stuart has been asking us for the last few weeks if he could take the training wheels off his bike. He hadn't even tried them unbalanced yet (he was basically riding a tricycle), but was undeterred by comments from a more fearful Simon like, "Stuart, it's not as easy as it looks." (Simon is not the most courageous kid I've ever met in terms of mastering new skills and has yet to let us so much as loosen his training wheels). Anyways, we unbalanced them quite a bit for him (I think he needs a couple more days of practice before we take them all the way off) and here he is, proudly sporting his helmet and gear and trying to ride "super speedy." Hmmm....I think his bike is getting too small.

So the obvious lapse of time between seedlings not yet in the ground (my last post) and harvesting vegetables (this one) shows how long I've been away from our blog, but I have two good excuses: a trip to Europe (with it's attendant preparations and recovery afterwards) in May, and a broken digital camera for most of the rest of the summer. I'm coming to re-acknowledge the fact that I have three children and a home to take care of and can't vacation carefree in Europe any longer, and my camera is now fixed, so I'm back!

I will post some pictures of the vegetable beds soon, along with a surprise that popped up and took over our compost pile this season. But back to the post title--beans! My mom gave me a pound of heirloom Vaquero beans from Rancho Gordo at Christmas. We cooked and savored most of them, but I kept a few aside to try in the garden this year. I knew what they should look like, but it was still amazing to pick the plain-looking dry pods today

and have these pop out!
I don't think growing bush beans for drying is the most efficient or cost-effective use of garden space, but I think I'll do a couple plants of different kinds each year, just because opening the pods made me so happy.

Simon and Stuart also helped me harvest some mature potatoes yesterday. If you've never done this with little kids (which I hadn't until yesterday), it's WAY better than an Easter egg hunt, and not just because the prize is potatoes instead of more unwanted candy. Digging in the dirt, finding earthworms and potatoes big and small--that is seriously my idea of fun! Yield was about 5 pounds for 4 eyes planted. Here they are:

We are so excited that Spring is here! We've spent a lot of time the last couple of months reading and planning and purchasing supplies for our vegetable garden this year. We chose a spot for raised beds last fall and had some stuff composting there over winter to kill the grass. When the weather warmed a couple weeks ago, we borrowed a tiller and mixed it all up. There were still some clumps of viable grass, but the mulched leaves/grass clippings mixture on top had decomposed nicely into a crumblier texture. We looked into the Square Foot Gardening method and decided we would try many of its principles in this year's garden. Dwayne has been busy building the boxes (with little helpers), and I've been working on making and acquiring good dirt, planning plant locations, and starting many of our veggies from seed. Here are Dwayne, Simon and Stuart, drilling holes in the wood to make the beds.




Here is the first set of beds, set in the ground. It's three 4X4 boxes, dug in slightly, leveled, terraced, and screwed together. Only six more to go! I think they look great and thanks to Dwayne's attention to detail, they are precisely level and should drain well.



Here are some of my little veggie babies. We have a shop light hanging from the rod in the guest room closet. It's been easier than I thought it would be to get the plants going, but now they're getting bigger, and I'm not sure where they're all going to live until planting time in May.... Part of the problem is that I I planted 60+ tomato plants, planning to share many with family and friends, but by the time they're ready to plant outside, they'll be taking up some serious counter space. I might have to give them away a little early and make people find their own sunny window.

For our St. Patrick's Day breakfast, we had an apple puffy pancake with green sprinkles and a green chocolate banana smoothie. Here are two versions of the recipe (the riper the bananas, the sweeter the end result):

2-3 overripe bananas, peeled, cut up and frozen
1-2 cups milk
1-2 T. cocoa powder
green food coloring (or spinach if you have a VitaMix)

Now the dairy-free version (taught to me by Veronica):

2-3 overripe bananas, peeled, cut up and frozen
1-2 cups water
1 handful whole almonds
1-2 T. cocoa powder
green food coloring (or spinach if you have a VitaMix)

The almonds definitely blend up better in a VitaMix, but make a respectable smoothie in my Bosch blender as well. Here are some testaments to its yumminess!

So back to Star Wars: We found some fun video games online that we've let the boys (Dwayne is included here :-) play occasionally. After Simon had been playing for a while one day, I told him that if he wanted to stay on the computer, he needed to do some "learning" games, not just fun games. He said, "But Mom, Star Wars is a learning game."

"What do you mean?"

"We're learning to use the Force."

Trying to capitalize in an uplifting way on Simon and Stuart's intense interest in weapons and battles, we had a family home evening lesson on the Armour of God. Here is our makeshift armour.

We enjoyed having Brian and Veronica and family visit in January as they returned from Brian's internship in sunny Florida to mid-winter Boston. Ivy is such a treat to have around. She is one of the smiliest baby's I've ever met (especially in contrast to Daniel who is slow to bestow a smile on anyone).

Lance, Spencer, Simon and Stuart were all so excited to have extra friends around all week that they usually woke up and hour or two earlier than usual just to enjoy each other's company. Only problem was the resultant fatigue and bad moods that usually surfaced right after breakfast and sometimes lasted throughout the day. They really enjoyed drawing together, and we can definitely credit Lance for Simon's recent interest (or perhaps better put, obsession) with drawing all things machine-like, especially things from Star Wars.

Dwayne is the birthday cake decorator in our family. He's much more careful and patient than I could ever be with that kind of project. I realized as he was laying a new tile floor in our laundry room how cake decorating and tiling were quite similar. He enjoys both and does a great job, so I'm just grateful neither task falls on me.

Simon loved his cake, especially the action figures decorating the top. He turned five in January. It's going by so quickly! We had a small party at my parents' after a Sunday dinner.

Daniel is starting to test limits. He gets so much attention when he stands in his high chair that that's probably why he does it. Stuart uses a very stern voice and says, "Daniel, sit down on your bottom bum!"

Daniel also has two very large top front teeth (plus some since this posting is happening 3 months after the picture was taken!).

If I were asked what Stuart's favorite toy is, I think I would have to say it is a blanket. He definitely has a preference for two or three particular ones, but in a pinch, any blanket will do. He turns them into boats by piling them up around him on the floor, into caves by draping them over a table, and most often of all, turns himself into a mythological creature that he invented named, "Tiki Tiki." Here is what Tiki Tiki looks like. Pretty cute creature, I think!

The snow fell a couple of times this winter. The first storm was just a dusting, but the boys were so excited to try out their new snow shovels. I hope they are this willing to help when they are teenagers!


At the end of January we got a lot of snow! It was enough for shoveling, sledding, and even digging out a snow fort complete with a secret hole in which to stow emergency rations--graham crackers, gum, and a fruit leather. Here are all the boys during a break from a tiring morning of clearing the driveway.