I'm back!

Because I'm sure you noticed I was gone (yes, I'm kidding), I'm hereby announcing to the world that I'm back. And I have my kids again. I missed them like crazy, and I need to take a picture of their matching facial bruises. Leaving your kids with their grandparents for four days apparently results in physical trauma. I say this with great sarcasm because M1 dropped a bowling ball and had it bounce back into his cheek and M2 somehow whacked her eye on a bedstead. So the grandparents had nothing to do with it.

Anyway, Oz and I have been married 10 years now. That's just over 1/3 of my entire life. In another 10 years, if we haven't killed each other before then, I'll have been married over half my life. All you math whizzes out there should be able to work out my age (roughly) if you read that carefully enough. Let me know if you work it out. I'm not that motivated.

We never had a honeymoon. When we got married, I had a job - barely - as a small-town lifestyle reporter, and he had no job and no car and - the kicker - no green card. He wasn't here illegally, but there were glitches with his visa that our marriage kind of helped to work out. "Kind of" as in he would have been deported if we hadn't gotten hitched. So we've only ever taken two trips without the kids, and one was our first anniversary, which was before M1 came along.

It was time for another trip, so when Oz mentioned visiting Arkansas wine country (I hear you out there. I do. You're saying, "Arkansas has WINE country??"), I went along with it. Especially after he booked a hotel room with a Jacuzzi.

We took off on Saturday morning with the goal of reaching the Wiederkehr Winery by roughly lunchtime. Wiederkehr is run by a family of Swiss German descent, though with a good Arkansan accent, it's pronounced WEE'-da-ker'. That messes with my head every time I see it.

But I have a German flag tag on the front of my van and a penchant for pronouncing things properly.

It still drives me nuts to say Miam-uh for the town named Miami in Oklahoma.

Wiederkehr is such a cute little place. The girl working there said it's "stuck in a time warp," but I can see why they keep it that way. It does have charm.

This is one of the buildings in front of one of the parking areas. I guess they have a Weinfest every year, so they have ample parking and several bathrooms. After you've been in a car for 2-1/2 hours and drunk orange juice AND coffee on the way, bathrooms are important.

They have tours, so we decided to kick around for a while and wait for the next one, short though it was. I let Oz take this photo of me because my entire outfit was brand-spankin'-new and I had been instructed to make sure a photo was taken of me in a skirt with accessories and a purse. And new shoes.

The thing about shoes... when purchasing flip-flops to be worn on vacation, look for arch support. My calves were killing me by the end of the day.

Live and learn.

This was the gift shop at Wiederkehr. The tasting room is in the back area. Tastings are free, though tip jars are set around. Their Grand Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon tastes like a really, really good steak. And I strongly dislike red wine. But we bought some of that, and I may have to splurge for some filets to go with it. Yum yum yum.

I loved the grape leaves carved into all the railings around the buildings.

A performance room. There was a recorder band practicing while we were there. I suspect they usually practice up the road at St. Mary's Catholic Church, but there was a wedding going on that day (Oz and I found that out when I was going to go take pictures of the church and the happy new couple were walking out. We maaay have left rather than disturb them.), so they moved to Wiederkehr. Cool, huh?

Wiederkehr also has a little restaurant on site. It's located in what was the original wine cellar that was hand-dug in the 1880s and is actually listed on the historical register. Oz nearly cracked his head on a few beams, but the interior is darling.

I also liked the little herb garden growing next to the restaurant. They were growing parsley, sage, rosemary, and ... dill. And basil.

We did hit up the restaurant for lunch. Five-star cuisine it isn't, but it's not bad, either. Their fried potatoes are delicious, and Oz loved the onion soup.

After we left Wiederkehr, we wanted to hit up Mount Bethel Winery. I'd provide a link except I'm experiencing a bit of sour grapes, so to speak, about them. We drove up to the place, which is basically a small store across from a nice-looking house, parked, and walked into the shop. We were greeted by dogs. Two dogs in the store and one dog outside. And that's it. We had seen a woman when we drove up, but she never came in. We wandered around the shop, and I really wanted to taste some of their fruit wines - blackberry, elderberry, etc. - but... you'd have thought the place was abandoned. After wandering around for about 10 minutes (felt like an hour), we left. We saw a man on the way out. He walked into the house and shut the door.

So poo on them!!!

Luckily, the Post Familie Winery was pretty much next door, so we popped in there. It's a busy place, and they had very nice employees. Apparently winery-hopping is a common weekend activity around there, because we saw several folks there who had been at Wiederkehr with us. We came, we tasted, we bought. It was pretty, and the wines were good, but the place didn't strike me as anything spectacular. I would go there again, though, because the people were kind and they had quite few cute goodies in their shop. And cheese lol. If it wouldn't have melted in the car, I'd have bought some of that, too.

Finally, we headed back toward our hotel with a Jacuzzi and passed by what probably should have been the first winery of the day since we passed it on our way to Wiederkehr, but it wound up being the last. I'm very glad because they had the best wine we tasted all day.

Welcome to Chateau Aux Arc (pronounced Chateau Ozark). It's a fairly new winery - their web site tells you more - but they're doing very well for themselves. Word to the wise: It's more of a spot for young folks, as new-age music is piped into the tasting room/gift shop area and we were greeted by a blond man in dreadlocks who was reading philosophy. But he knew his wines, and we had a great tasting. They do charge $5 for their tastings, but you get to keep the glasses (nice advertising) and get to taste every wine you want.

And they have the best wine I've ever had. Oz loved it, too, and for us to love the same wine is almost unheard of. It's called their Altage. I don't see it on their web site - not that I could have it shipped to Oklahoma even if I did. It's a limited-edition wine for them because it's made from some special grapes... I'd share the story, but it's kind of long and this post is going to be long enough as it is. Suffice it to say we bought two bottles.

Beautiful grounds, too.

Since we still had a good chunk of afternoon to kill, Oz decided to take me antique shopping (I am not a person for whom antique is a verb) in Van Buren. It didn't happen, though.

There was a bike rally in town, so most of the shops were shut! There were some awesome bikes, though. I really wanted a certain red one that happened to have an H and a D somewhere in the name. I'm such a freak. :)

I'm glad we stopped in, though. Van Buren is cute. Couldn't stay there, though. Crawford County is dry. So we went back to our hotel in Fort Smith and went to Landry's for dinner. Very much a college joint, what with the blackboard walls and ginormous beer selection, but also very good. I'd happily go back.

All in all it was a great weekend trip, but I'm glad to be home. My garden and chickens were glad to see me, too, and have informed me that I'm stuck at home preserving food and taking care of everyone for the rest of the summer.

I think I can live with that.

Harvest time!

I got a HUGE surprise when I walked out to check the garden today. I found produce!

These were my first clue that things were ripe. I was bending down to check the peas (not quite ready yet, by the way, but getting there) and saw a flash of red in the middle of one of the plants. I grabbed it and saw another. Thorough investigation uncovered the third. The weight is measured in pounds and ounces, so that's 1 lb. 9 oz. of tomato there, and there are *lots* more on the plants just waiting to ripen.

I grabbed these next, because they were easy to see. The two in front are very, very teensy and the one in back isn't big, but ripe they were, so in they came. They are bell peppers, by the way, just orange and yellow varieties. I plan to pick some of them green when I get a few more tomatoes so I can make some of my own salsa again. The family has really enjoyed it over this last year.

Then I found these. I thought I'd find maybe half a dozen. I was not expecting this many. At all. I was using my shirt as a kind of apron to hold them. By the end, I had been wishing I'd stepped back into the house for the five whole seconds it would have taken to grab a bowl. Have I mentioned that the green bean plants haven't even STARTED to climb the trellis yet? I'm going to be rolling in green beans by this fall. Don't think we'll run out this year.


Finally, I figured since I'd already gotten that much, I'd poke through the cucumber plants to see what I could find. I found these babies. There are a few more that are almost ready and hundreds of flowers still on the vines. They are supposed to be small like this since they are pickling cucumbers, but I strongly suspect that if I'd left them, they'd get still larger. I want snacking pickles, though, so I picked them now.

I'm excited! Let the harvest begin!

The Sound of Silence

My children are gone. They are at my mother-in-law's house for FOUR days. Count 'em with me - one, two, three, FOUR. It's my 10-year wedding anniversary this weekend, and she's taken the munchkins off my hands so I can get my hair done and enjoy a peaceful, long, glorious weekend and remember what life was like 10 years ago when I was all of 18 years old and had a flat stomach and time on my hands. One day you'll have to make me tell you the wedding story. It's insane. Truly.

So because my children are gone for four days, I am sitting here in my living room with three sleeping cats and two sleeping dogs and there are no toys being tossed around and no fights that need to be broken up. The only sounds I hear are the fan of my computer and the train whistle from across the way. There is an entire cat's worth of fur on the carpet because I have been refusing to vacuum until the children are gone, and now that they're gone, I'm not inclined to move.

I have, however, gone shopping. I started at Ross. I bought three tank tops - yellow, green, and white/blue - and a white skirt (skirt!) and a pair of Tommy Hilfiger capri pants because I love Tommy. He does good things for my figer... I mean, figure. And then... and this is the kicker... I went to the $1 jewelry shop and ACCESSORIZED. Those of you who know me well might die upon reading this. I should have put in a disclaimer asking you to sit down and check your pacemakers first. Most of the time my 'accessories' include my wedding ring(s), a waterproof IronMan watch from Wal-Mart, and whatever pair of fake pearl or cubic zirconia earrings happen to be in one set of the holes in my ears (my ears are pierced twice). I don't use purses. I don't shop. So accessories just. Don't. Happen.

Ever.

I bought three necklace/earring sets that actually match what I bought. And I had left the tank tops in the car while I did the purchasing. I impressed myself.

And now I'm going to copy some recipes out of some cookbooks that I'm getting rid of (not keeping cookbooks that only have one or two good recipes) and freeze some blueberries and generally sit on my expansive derriere and enjoy the silence.

Though come bedtime, I'll miss tucking my babies in. There's a price to be paid for everything.

But when I'm sitting at Starbucks tomorrow morning and don't have to buy a giant bottle of juice and a scone for a boy who is done and bored and starving again 30 seconds later, that price will be oh, so, wonderfully worth it.

Negotiation with terrorists

I do not, by principle, negotiate with terrorists.

Apparently, however, I negotiate with 7-1/2-year-old boys and 5-year-old girls.

Oddly enough, I find them to be pretty darn similar on most counts.

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Let's explore the similarities:

1. Terrorists and children both make highly unreasonable demands.

"Mom, can we sleep on the couches tonight instead of in our beds?"

Um. No. But thanks for asking! Run along now and clean up that tornado of toys you've got strewn over two bedrooms, the hall, the living room, and the kitchen, k?

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2. They both have something to gain by their demands, while you get the short end of the stick.

"Well, if we can't sleep on the couches, what other options are there?"

What do you MEAN, if you can't sleep on the couches, what other options are there? There are no other options! NO, you may not set up the tent. In the living room OR outside. No, you may not trade bedrooms. You may sleep in YOUR rooms. In YOUR beds. WHY do you even want to sleep on the couches or in the tent??

"Um... we want to talk. And stay up really late."

Nothing good ever comes of either of those. Good Lord, he must think I'm missing half my brain. See point #1. And point #3.

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3. They don't ever, ever give up. And they recruit others if necessary.

"But we both think it's a good idea, Mom! It's not just MY idea!"

Oh, good, drag your sister into this. She's supposed to be cleaning up her half of the tornado, you know... as are you, if we want to get back to the point *I* was trying to make. I'm also trying to make supper. You may NOT sleep on the couches. You may NOT sleep in the tent. You may NOT trade rooms for the night. Your rooms. Your beds. Heck, I'll concede that if you want to sleep on the floor, I'm okay with that, but YOUR floor in YOUR room.

"Can we sleep in the hall?"

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4. They're very, very good at skewing your words to their purposes.

OMG no. Not in the hall. Dear heaven, not in the hall. I'd rather you sleep on the couches where I could at least keep an eye on you than have you both parked in the hall doing God only knows what.

"So we can sleep on the couches???"

NOT what I said. And tell me again why you're not in there picking up your toys?? Oh, right. Point #5.

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5. They're both very good at dismissing anything they consider irrelevant to the conversation.

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6. If worse comes to worse, they'll happily throw themselves under the bus for martyrdom's sake.

Cue meltdown because I'm "not listening."

-----

In the end, Terrorist 1 and Terrorist 2 settled for getting to stay up half an hour later than their normal bedtime. I'm not sure how that made up for not getting to sleep on the couches since M1 can tell time but just won't take two seconds to look at a clock and M2 can't tell time yet, so as far as *they* know, it's 30 minutes past bedtime.... an hour early.

I do not negotiate with terrorists.

Roaches, with Love

This is my friend Nan's house. She just closed on it last week. It's a darling little place.

Did you like the additions on the floor?

Did I mention it was her birthday a couple of weeks ago?

Traditions run deeeeeep around here, and we couldn't let it pass without totally pranking up her new place. Thankfully, she's living with her sister temporarily, and her sister has no problems letting us hooligans into the house so we can create much havoc.


So we roached her. One of my Cohorts in Crime thunk up and created that cake.

We also decided to be nice and get her some actual stuff for her house. Other than roaches.

We put them EVERYWHERE. She'll probably never find all of them. When we left, the cats were hard at work hiding a few under the couch.

We had to throw a few near every drain in the house,

which meant all sinks, tubs, and even the dishwasher.

Figured a few in the fridge (and crisper!) couldn't hurt as well.

I just hope she found these before nuking something. I'm not quite sure these would survive the same nuclear holocaust as their live cousins.

I do love my friends. And it's a good thing they love me, too. :)

Snapshots of summer

Summer vacation may only be a week in, but already our to-do list is overflowing. There is just no way we're getting it all done in two months.

Of course, we're going to TRY.

Meet Jo. Named for Josephine from "Little Women," this bird is my baby. I had thought that Sophia and all the other Rhode Island Reds were going to be the queens of the coop, but boy, was I wrong. The Plymouths have outdone everyone else. Last night when Oz went out to close up the coop (I was off performing evil deeds and hanging out with the girls), the Plymouths were all parked on the top perch while everyone else was still huddled up in the bedding below.

These girls are go-getters, and Jo is the leader of the pack. She runs to me every time she sees me (she's a bit of a greedy girl) and lets me pick her up and hold her without the slightest fuss. When someone else finds a bug, she's right there to steal it. She's stolen my heart, too, and I can't wait to see how big she gets. They're all getting huge!

My garden is getting big and full already, too. Here are a few images:


Tomatoes, obviously


Bell pepper changing colors

Blue Lake green beans (already!)


Tiny cucumber (meant to stay small, for pickling)

Peas


Baby butternut squash


Blackberries!

We went down the back of the pasture the other day to check and see how they were doing since I've seen a few farms about that are starting to advertise blackberries already. Traditionally mine aren't ready till about July 4, and that seems to be holding true again, but I had to check. So many baby berries!

And speaking of babies, look what mine can do! He learned to ride a bicycle today, too. It's been a big week. :)

They both enjoyed a good evening catching fireflies, too. I helped M2, but M1 caught a few on his own. Oz can't see very well in the twilight, but he caught a couple, too.

They loved watching their catches. I put some bug-food gel into the jars and let the kids keep them overnight, though M2 got herself worked into a tizzy about how they weren't free and could we please let them go so they wouldn't die, and so we DID, and then she cried because she didn't have them anymore. She's a walking catch-22.

We've also hit up the splash pad and the pool this last week. Didn't take pictures in the pool for obvious reasons, but watching them splash in the water on the first *real* day of summer vacation was a huge treat.

Let the good times roll!!!!

Vignettes: Into the minds of kids

I love talking to kids. I can't help it. Most of the youngsters that I see and associate with are young enough that they don't care about whether they talk to grown-ups because we're not totally dumb yet. Yet being the operative word. My day will come. M2 is counting on it.

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Yesterday, we had some of my homeschooling friends over. I am grateful to have a very wonderful, caring group of ladies to be able to call associates in this wonderfully crazy adventure called homeschooling. Their kids are great, too, and since I love having any excuse for company, I was glad to be able to host.

I came into the kitchen at one point to hear M2 talking to the daughter of another lady. I'll call the daughter J. J is 9, I believe, though I'm sure someone will tell me if I'm wrong. She's very poised, considerate, well-spoken, and definitely has a strong love of learning. Her mom actually does speaking engagements, so I suppose none of this is any surprise, but I really like J and her younger brothers (and her mom). I should also note that J is quite petite and only an inch or two taller than M2. She comes by that honestly as well, but M2 doesn't realize that there's an age difference, I don't think, and it makes for a fun conversation. Let's see if I can reproduce it:

The scene: I walk into the kitchen to get some lemonade, and the girls are chatting.

M2: Mom! J has said I can come to her birthday party this year and she's going to make sure I get an invitation! Can I go???

Me: Oh? J, that's very kind of you. M2, if we get an invitation, I'm sure we'll work out a way to go.

J: It'll be [date on a weekend but during the school year].

M2: Oh. I might be in school. Mom, if I'm in school that day, can I skip???

J, looking quite confused: But... I thought you were homeschooled?

M2: No. M1 is, but I'm not. I go to private school.

J, still quite confused and looking at me now: Why can't you homeschool both of them?

Me: Well, I could, but M2 likes going to school and seeing her friends every day, and M1 likes being alone and not having other people around while he's learning, so we just do it this way because it makes everybody happy. If M2 ever wants to come home, I've told her she can. And if M1 ever decides he wants to go back to school, then we'll talk about that, too.

J: Oh, OK. [pauses, then leans forward and puts her elbows on the counter and puts her head in her hands] I wonder what it's like to go to school.

M2, doing what she does best and carpe-ing the diem: Oh, it's fun! There are centers and you can go to the science center and learn things there and there's dramatic play which is my favorite because you can pretend to cook and clean and there's blocks which is [a preschool classmate's] favorite because he likes to build things...

AAAAAnd that's when I interjected and had to explain to J that fourth grade would not, in fact, contain centers and would be much less exciting than what she was learning at home on her own terms. I think she got the idea and began expounding the virtues of the science curricula that she has. And then she moved onto the Great Debate of which animal she's going to try to talk her mom into: Lizard, Turtle, or Betta. I told her to aim for lizard. Though I don't know that J was in the room when I broke the mealworms out of their refrigerated container and half the kids thought they were the grossest things they'd ever seen. The verdict was that they'd NEVER feed their lizard THOSE. Crickets would be much, much better.

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Speaking of food, I like to occasionally blow M1's mind, too. He and M2 made dinner tonight. M2 "made" a pineapple upside-down cake (since she can't quite read that well yet, she helped measure, dump, mix, and put it all together), and M1 made some tostadas. I threw together some homemade refried beans (Best. Beans. EVER.) and supervised M1.

After we got done stuffing ourselves silly, M2 went to get ready for her bath with the new "farmer's market soap" that we bought this week and M1 and I sat around to chat.

Me: Thanks for making dinner, Bug-ling. You know, I could never have made dinner at your age. And certainly not at M2's age.

M1: You couldn't? Not even a quesadilla? (Quesadillas are the epitome of easy cooking for him, and he's been making them independently since he learned how to reach the 30-second button on the microwave.)

Me: Nope. Well, to be fair, at your age we didn't even have a microwave (there I go showing my age again), but even so, I couldn't have done it.

M1: But... you could have made things if you'd wanted, right? You had to have had recipes.

Me: Well, Granny had recipes, but I didn't get to cook them.

M1: But you helped mix ingredients? [Me shaking my head.] Measuring things? [Continuously.] What DID you get to do?

Me: I got to lick the beaters sometimes.

M1: That's not cooking!!!

Me: I know that. Granny just didn't really let me into the kitchen all that much.

M1: You could have peeked around the corner.

Me, laughing: I guess I could have. But our kitchen was kind of small and I was too busy pestering my sister.

M1, looking sheepish: Oh. So how did you learn to cook??

Me: I had to teach myself. When I got to be a grown-up, I had no idea how to cook. Daddy and I had to eat some really gross meals before I learned.

M1: But you're a great cook now (Little suck-up).

Me: Thank you. I just want to make sure that you know how to cook before you get to be all grown up and live on your own.

M1: Yes. I'll be a great cook someday, too, just like you. What do you want me to fix you? 'Cause I'll be able to cook everything.

M2 returned at this point to declare herself ready for bath and could she please, please, PLEASLES give herself a bath with the new soap? So I told M1 I'd think about it and answer him another time and would he please, please, PLEASLES clean up the sour cream mess that he'd made in the kitchen since cleaning is part of cooking.

The Home Place

While we were up visiting my grandmother over the weekend, we went to visit The Home Place. Well, not with capital letters. That'd be the local retirement/assisted living facility in the town where my grandmother lives. But THIS home place was home for my grandmother when she and my grandfather were married and built it, home for my mother and uncle when they were growing up, and home for my uncle after he graduated from college since my grandmother had remarried and moved out to her new husband's farm (my grandfather died when my mom and uncle were teens).

After my uncle died - 10 years this December, and it still seems like yesterday sometimes - the long-time family friend/hired hand lived there until he died in December of 2009.

Now the house is empty.

It's out on a dirt road, but even driving up to it, you can tell it's been well cared for. To be fair, the barns are still in use. M1 found a cow in one of the stalls and came running out to tell me, "MOM! MOM! They FORGOT a cow!!!!"

No, son, they didn't forget the cow. I don't think a cow would LET you forget it. They're kind of visible. And loud. Off you go. Don't irritate the cow and stay out of the hay.


It *is* a nice-looking house. There's something to be said for old construction, which is why I didn't hesitate to buy our current home that was built in 1965. If done right, these homes really can last forever.

The census worker, who had been by the house twice to try to catch someone at home, finally called my grandma last week to find out who was living there. She didn't believe my grandma when she said the house was vacant. "But... it's so well-kept!"

Yes, yes it is. Thanks for noticing.
This might be the back door, but it's the one I've always come in. I've never even opened the front door. I don't know if it even works, though of course it probably does. Grandma says it does, so I'll go with that. I have pictures of my uncle and his dogs and my sister playing outside this door. I took those pictures with an old 110 camera that I had when I was a little girl. I probably still had the negatives till I went through and pitched a bunch of those earlier this year.

Inside the back door is the wash room. I covet this sink and would love to have it in my own utility room. It's deep and big and wide and old and solid, and having a place to soak the laundry would be WONderful when you consider that right now I'm using giant ice cream containers (strawberry swirl, anyone?) for soaking, and those aren't big enough to hold a tablecloth.

And don't you love the Lava soap on top of the sink there? Lava makes the farm world go round.
Off the washroom is the kitchen/dining room. Grandma fully intends to put new linoleum and new countertops in soon. I told her the countertops were fine, but the floor is kind of scratched up. She said if she's going to replace one, she might as well replace the other. My kind of logic.

I hope she doesn't get rid of this, though. Even if it's just left in a room somewhere, it'd be so weird to go into that house and not find it. How old is it, you ask? Let's put it this way. If you dialed the number, you wouldn't reach the house. The area code isn't even right any more. And when I was little, I didn't even have to dial the first two numbers to call anyone. Just the last five would suffice.

Though I'm not sure if that says more about MY age or the phone's.
Off the kitchen is the living room (with the front door, of all things). I love how tiny that TV looks compared to our modern monstrosities. See the chair there in the corner? The rest of the furniture is about as old. It's all "vintage." I remember there being a beanbag in this room, too, that my uncle would lay on to watch TV. He always was a little boy at heart.

This was my mother's room when she was a little girl. Of course, the furniture wasn't the same, but the room was. My mom tells a story of one night, back before there was air conditioning in the house (central heat and air now), when there was a thunderstorm while the windows were wide open. Lightning came in both windows simultaneously and met right above her bed. She said she's never been so scared in all her life as when that happened. Can you imagine?!?

This was my uncle's childhood bedroom. I love how it has more of a 'boy' feel to it.

It's been empty for a while.

Some of the other stuff around the house reflects my uncle's personality. He was a character and really, really loved what he did.

I bet you can't guess what kind of cattle he raised:
Or where he went to college:

Or even what kind of warped sense of humor he had (Read the titles of the green book and the black book... I'm not sure why I found their proximity funny, but I did):

All in all, though, the house will no doubt last for another 50 years and become a gen-u-wine hundred-year-old farmhouse.

I just have to say it, cheesy though it may be... There's No Place Like Home.