Two Teeth Down...

Marcos grabbed Gigi's first tooth out with needle nose pliers and yanked it out.  The next one came out a few days later at school when Gigi twisted it out during snack time.  She is rocking the gappy grin!

NC Hot Air Balloon Festival 2015

This was back in mid-October of last year.  Now that 8 months have passed I feel like I can look back at these photos without the acute anxiety in my chest that this day originally brought me, and I can almost laugh.  Almost, but not quite...  

It's a long story, but basically the weather was perfect that weekend, and I don't know if they advertised differently or what, but a much larger crowd showed up than usual.  We've been going to the NC Hot Air Balloon Festival for years, and it's always a highlight of our year, so I had invited some friends to come along.  Basically, after waiting for hours in traffic that didn't move, and seeing the hot air balloons disappearing through the sky, we finally arrived and took these photos in the parking lot before we even entered the fair.  Which was fortunate, because once we got into the event the last balloons had just launched and we had missed the entire thing.  Our friends who had traveled for hours to be there were turned away because the parking was completely full and there was no more room in the Inn.  I was dying inside that I had invited friends, only for them to get so close and then be turned away.  I felt really awful.  

But we tried to make the best of the night.  We caught a few cute photos, ate well, saw my favorite Scottish band play and then headed home.  Kind of a fiasco of a day, and I don't know if we will try again next year.  My heart might need a skip year to recover.

But despite the inner anguish, I think we still managed to look adorable.  Those kids...

Apple Harvest

Hello there.  Me again, back to finish up some posts from last fall!  (Amazing how young the kids look to me, now that I have allowed some months to go by!).

My friend Carrie Cate invited us to come to their home and harvest apples, since they are living the homestead dream.  Gigi was in Kindergarten this past year with her son Lennox, and Orion and their Zara are also about the same age.  We were hoping that the tree would be as laden with apples as it was the year before, but the pickings were sparse.  Oh well.  It was enough to make up a delicious batch of apple sauce loaded with cinnamon.  We took home several jars with us, and over the next days I heated the chunky apple sauce on the stove top and served it with vanilla ice cream.  It was exactly the perfect flavor of my Tutu's baked apples growing up.  It was like that flashback scene in the animated film Ratatouille, when the bad guy is reminded of his mother's cooking when he was a child...  so fragrant, so delicious...

Tutu came with us, as you can see.  She is always game for fun and unique experiences with the kids.

I love being friends with Carrie Cate.  She runs as loose of a ship as I do a tight one, and we balance each other out well.  We don't agree on everything, but I love how she draws me away from the edge and into a space of acceptance and peace with my children.  When I am frustrated she reminds me how good they are, and she's not afraid to call me out on my parenting BS.  She's also remarkably non-judgmental, even though she is an over-researcher and has come to some very tight conclusions about how kids should be raised.  How does she do that?  I don't know, but I appreciate how accepting she is of everyone.

These goats.... such a crack up.  They were more interested in eating the basket than the apples.

This is what it looked like most of the time!  A human pyramid of sorts, scaffolded by a rickety ladder.  Orion and Zara below, with their bounty.

And the true joy of the day: the apple peeler/corer!  If we ever have an apple tree, this will be an essential tool in our kitchen.  The kids loved being able to prepare the apples for the apple sauce pot, and Carrie Cate said that she found it on Amazon for cheap.  Hooray!