Fashion model lol

     They say laughter is the best medicine..we should be the healthiest people around LOL One silly girl equals lots of fun and laughs

It hit me today

     It hit me today that in less than four months my silly little girl is going to be ..5. Maybe it was the way she turned her head demurely and giggled. Maybe it was the way she phrased her sentence. Maybe it was...just looking at her and realizing that my babygirl is...going to be FIVE!
    That in five short years she's went from this:

    
 and this......

   to this....

and now to this.....

  She's changed so much. She has a wonderfully broad vocabulary, awesome imagination, huge heart and the biggest stubborn streak you'll ever find :) She loves all things spooky...zombies, bats, vampires and Halloween...but will be the first to tell you they are not real so don't freak out! She loves the colors pink and purple.
    Five years is approaching fast. Seems like only yesterday I was listening to Steve and my brother tell me I had to go to the hospital NOW because they were afraid they'd deliver a baby at home hahaha Working all day with contractions then finally giving in the next evening and going to the hospital..and that night having her born...all 9lbs 5 oz of perfection. :)

Kaya would agree..

   Saw this and thought of me and Kaya :) She LOVES tomatoes. I'm not talking just likes to have one in a salad now in then..I'm talking full on love lol We planted 29 different types of tomatoes last year and lets just say I had NONE to can or make salsa or pico de gallo with because she cleaned the vines every time she could (and she ate them with her supper nearly every single night!!) The only ones she snubbed was the California Golds (yellow tomatoes) so we won't be doing them again. She hated when our last garden ones ran out down in the fall..and she had to eat store bought!!
   And the therapy part..suits me. When Steve got diagnosed with MS and was reeling from it's affects etc gardening helped destress me. It was something Kaya and I could do together, we saw our effort pay off in veggies, getting your hands dirty is truly therapeutic and it gave me focus. 

Getting ready for Valentines Day :)

     Decided tonight to try a different kind of treat. Steve found the recipe online and holy moly it was awesome! 

   Recipe came out great. May spray the cupcake liners with a small amount of baking spray on sides next time to prevent the paper sticking but otherwise came out great!
   Going to put red icing on top and use heart sprinkles on top. Used Valentines cupcake liners to add to the festive touch.
   Kaya was more interested in trying to eat the brownie batter and with the finished product than she was actually making them but I think it's because the cookies crumbled some when we put peanut butter on them. I think she was afraid she'd break the cookie.
   Taking some into work..treats from Kaya :) so they can sample it. They are a great sounding board for new recipes and never complain about taste testing.
  This is a pretty rich dessert. It would be great though for a party though. 

Read in the paper...

   Read on the online newspaper that they released the cut off dates for Kindergarten this year. Last year was about the first of June so our thinking was that Kaya would miss the deadline this year as well. The cut off this year is AUGUST 1...Kaya turns 5 in June. She can go this year!!! We discussed it (my best friend is the youngest and she always hated that in school...she couldn't take driver ed with us, couldn't do this and that due to her age) and we have decided that we will send her next year after she turns 6. We are debating hard between us (Steve is fully against preschool I'm more for it) about sending her a couple days a week this coming year to preschool. Steve sees it as letting someone else take responsibility for our child..I see it as a chance for her to be in a classroom setting with other kids and be prepared for K. She has very few little cousins to play with (due to we do not live next to most my family so we really don't get included in events..and Steve's side has very few little ones) on a daily basis and she's the youngest kid in our neighborhood (and all the kids being older have school stuff or parents that seem to stuff them into every single activity possible) so she's not got alot of kid on kid playtime etc. She's great when she is around kids..sharing,playing etc...but she deals on a more adult level by being around us (we play, do kid stuff etc but we speak as adults etc)
   Indiana doesn't require a child start school until they are 7 but I will not wait that long...too hard on the child. We've talked private school with the pro of smaller classes etc but the cons:
 1. We are not Catholic so our child's tuition would be twice a church member's amount.
2. Kaya would be left out of mass, out of certain field trips and class projects since she is not Catholic.
3. The other private school requires skirts at all times or dresses and believes women should have long hair and not dress as a man. At one point you had to even wear a skirt to pick your child up. Ummm not our lifestyle at all.
4. Private schools cater to their own religious agenda....sorta hard to deprogram your child from hearing "Women do this and women do that and dress like this" when she comes home.
5.I'm not changing my stance on my beliefs to send my child to school. I am not a hypocrite and I will not allow my child to think that it  is ok to be one to get what you want in life.
6. How will the school interact with obvious non members?
    We've toyed with the idea of sending her to the private school preschool to suss out the environment etc. So undecided.
   I thought it was only Steve having anxiety over it until I woke up the other night with a sweaty neck from a "school dream" lol Silly maybe but handing my child over to a stranger..relying on that person to help foster my child's knowledge and outlook on the world, trust that person with my child's safety and life...is SCARY!!! In today's environment with shootings, bullying, school issues it scares the crap out of me. I'll never hold Kaya back out of my fear..but I will not thrust her into society to fend for herself!
   So lots of issues to talk out and arrange. Steve came from an environment of hating school, bad teachers and no parents to help him. I came from the exact opposite. So it's meeting in the middle on feelings and issues.
  We discussed home school but I don't feel that is the best option either. I am not a teacher. I'm not stupid but..it's a big step to take to home school  We have been reading on it but again it will not help foster the "be around kids" deal.
   I worry too that when Kaya starts school that she will be singled out more simply because...we don't give into societies idealistic materialistic crap. My kid doesn't have to have Nike on to succeed at school or life. She is extremely compassionate and has dealt with Steve's MS issue right along with us in her own way. We don't fit alot of "parent profiles". We have rules, chores, punishment for bad behavior but we don't freak if she's not wearing a cute  shirt, skirt and doing exactly what the neighborhood kids are. We don't feel the need to impress others and we both feel strongly that she will NOT be pushed into everything in school. If she wants to do things awesome and it will be encouraged. But I will NOT sign her up for every sport, every event, push her to the limit she becomes frustrated and hates school simply to make myself "look" better or in some asinine theory that it will get her into a good college because at 8 she was involved in every sport, every event and running her legs off so much that she can't just sit and play. She may speak Spanish off and on now but I don't expect her to be a fluent speaker and know rocket science by the time she's 8.
  People forget in the world today that our kids need to be kids. Yes they need an education and I am very stern on that. She will go to college, she will do good in school and she will do what makes her happy for her profession. But I won't make a kid sit inside doing school stuff or advanced school stuff for hours on end and she loses what it is to be a child.
   I never had preschool. I started school being able to have a high reading  proficiency  I was in reading programs at school because I read 3 grades above my level. I took all advanced classes in school with a majority of them advanced English and sciences. I graduated with an academic honors and I graduated with a full payed scholarship  for English journalism at Franklin college because my essay I wrote won out of all that applied. Sadly I did not use it and I kick myself to this day. Am I blowing my own horn? NO just showing that I accomplished all that with parents that realized a child needed time to play and get dirty and be a kid. Just a thought.
   Sooo lots of thinking on the upcoming issue. Scares me yes but another new chapter in our life and Kaya's...and we will do it together :) :)

Fun day but lots of wind!

   The wind here yesterday was insane! We had to tie down everything that was light, zip up the trampoline cage to make sure nothing inside would fall out and hope that no tree limbs decided to fall.
   While outside we kept hearing a scratching noise..something was in our downspout from the gutter!! We'd tap it,it would stop. I finally tapped it hard and heard whatever it was fall to the bottom drain piece (that goes underground to the drainage ditch). We gave it a few to see if it would try to climb out towards the light but...no success. So Steve and my brother got the tools, took apart the downspout and tubing and found one very scared ....
  

    
  Bird!! How in the world the thing got into the downspout hole we have no clue. It was healthy, full of energy, dry bird (later found out it was an English Starling). We checked it over...beak fine, no cuts and wings were fine, let Kaya say goodbye and turned it loose. It's one lucky bird that we could get it out as our only other option would have been to force it out with the garden hose. Risking it drowning would have been better then letting it stay in the downspout and die of starvation! But thankfully the rescue mission worked and Kaya's two heroes saved the day lol
     We also decided to make homemade flat pizzas. I've always made two simply because we all like different things on them but this time my baby brother had a special request. He couldn't get pizza in Iraq (not traditional pizza anyway) and it was WAYYY expensive in Hawaii and he was dying for an anchovy and pepperoni pizza. BLAAAH I hate anchovies and I hate the smell but...I couldn't turn him down. So Kaya and I got to work making the dough. We have to make Steve's in a square baking dish because he prefers a deeper thicker crust (yes..I'm use to altering some meals lol) and less sauce. Kaya had a ball till time to open the anchovies. She immediately grabbed her nose and said "Uncle, this is cat food. It smells like...cat food. You SURE you want this". We had a good laugh but everyone bulked out at putting it on the pizza so I got that lovely chore lol All in all they turned out well and we had a good supper. 

    

One ham and mushroom extra cheese, one anchovy and pepperoni, and one deep dish pepperoni, little sauce :)  Kaya did awesome :)

Fun project..and good things to learn

 Decided to get adventurous and take our nature learning to a new level. Kaya was super excited to mix up the homemade suet and I was surprised at not only how easy it was but what a good environmental lesson it was for Kaya.  We do alot of "green" things around here. We compost all vegetables (and will soon be composting shredded paper), we recycle cans, we do our own veggies, we recycle cardboard etc, we up use as much stuff as possible, we go easy on the lights (and use energy reducing lights), watch water usage, try to drive sensibly (make stops all in one trip rather than doing two then home to just run back to town etc),we butcher so the meat has no additives, we either make our own bread or follow the kosher list of bread to watch certain ingredients, Steve follows a decent vitamin regimen that we read that was good for MS, we created a water system that we can water one row of transplant veggies and it waters the low below it, and we use the compost bin to grow vine plants etc. We try to run the dryer in the evening when power usage is lower as well as it creates less heat in the house in the summer, we insulated our windows and put stop leaks on our garage doors, etc. We keep a close eye on alot of things going on in the world and we try hard to not become one of those that could care less about the world around them. Some of our friends like to tease us that we are not right lol or that we are hippies (which believe me we are NOT! LOL) but I think every family should do what feels right for them..and in turn think about another family down the line. We may be blessed with water but if we allow it to be polluted or used up insanely by us..it may not be there when Kaya is an adult.    To say we take the quote "We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children" seriously.  So while cleaning up from supper the other night it hit me we had our entire meal...homemade bread, fresh vegetables frozen from the garden, potato peelings that went in compost...either from scratch or reusable. But here was a decent amount of fat that I had trimmed off our boiling roast and since we don't feed Bella table food it would just go in the trash. So Kaya and I googled a few things and got to work :)   We cooked down the fat till it was a liquid (I didn't let Kaya do this step). Then we tossed the stuff that didn't melt (edging of fat). Into the liquid fat we stirred a cup or so of bird seed and 1 tablespoon of peanut butter. We poured a thin layer into the bottom of a container (I used one that I had bought ham salad from the store), put a layer of wax paper, then another layer of suet mix and repeated till done. Since it was only a small amount we had 3 good size suet cakes. Covered with wax paper on top and into the freezer for the night.    Next morning we pryed the cakes off the wax paper (not too hard using a butterknife) and into the feeders it went. The birds are in Heaven lol   Kaya is very much into nature, composting, science etc so this was right up her ally. She wants to do it again soon and I'm glad. She loves the birds and the woodpeckers are making quite the appearance to our feeders :)