Yoga is kicking my butt!

The alarm goes off at 6-something and I lay in bed drifting between dreams and the sound of the radio. I slowly wake up and listen to the news report about Clinton's stupid stubbornness. Groggily, I sit up, convincing myself that as better-informed as I'd be laying in our cozy, warm bed listening to NPR, it's good to exercise and I always feel better.

I repeat this reminder to myself: You don't need motivation to exercise; you simply need to put on your sneakers!

I love that and it works. I learned it in grad school and I teach it to my clients. It's one of the best exercise "motivations" I've ever heard.

We alternate--M, W, F are elliptical machines days and T, Th, F are Yoga days (and Mark does ellipticals in addition to Yoga). You'd think that the ellipticals would be more grueling. Not so! Yoga is kicking my butt! But it does feel REALLY good. And it's kind of fun that we have an exercise room, too. The kids join us and we all work out. It's great.

And since flexibility is connected to longevity, Yoga is a good thing. (Yoga is a good thing. Yoga is a good thing.).

In addition to exercising, we've been doing all kinds of neat things. We've been having so much fun with school. We've been doing some neat things in the community. And we've been enjoying ourselves and our friends. It's nice to be getting into more of a routine. One of the stresses of moving is that it takes a while to get settled, though we're LOVING the home and yard projects we're doing and everything is looking AMAZING!!

So, school. We're incorporating more and more "unschooling" in our approach. We love the flexibility of homeschooling and how we can constantly tweak to best suit each and every one of us. We have a LOT of fun! We've discovered the fun of lapbooks as a way to really feed that curiosity and excitement for learning! When the kids are super interested in a topic, we make a lapbook! M's been on a "Bee" kick (from doing some reading in our leap pad), so here is our lapbook on Bees--see how excited he is?:





Mark and I got to go to a really nice volunteer appreciation luncheon this past week and that was fun. The librarians and volunteers are so nice and we love being a part of it. We got in for physicals, which is always good habit. We enjoyed a lovely low-key Mother's Day (LOVE that!). And the kids (with Mark's help) made me these great baked homemade clay Mother's Day gifts:





We volunteered and got in dentist appointments, too. (You can tell we're feeling more settled). On Monday, after K's violin lesson, we rather impulsively called our friends down the street and took their 3 teens to a guitar riff competition and that was a lot of fun. M is showing a real interest in guitars and Ukes, too.






And here is a video of him rocking out to some Men at Work:

BLOGGER is having issues uploading videos, so I'll post this later.

K really loves to cook and eat and loves all things "restaurant." Outside of reading, food is pretty much her favorite hobby. She is SO running a restaurant as she gets older. She loves it. Here she is helping in the kitchen--cutting potatoes for Portuguese Soup.




This one is of M with a bunch of "Th" words he's come up with. He is doing SUCH a great job reading and is constantly amazing us reading all kinds of books, signs, etc.! And we're having a lot of fun doing fun phonics games.



And yesterday, we shopped for our garden and started putting up our garden fence. We got nice and dirty in the dirt--good times. Here are our seeds (we're getting 4 more--potatoes, asparagus, collards, and strawberries). We're also ordering an apple and peach tree. We are doing organic farming and are so excited to have our own yard and garden! We got lots of stuff you can plant and harvest twice and we're learning about canning from a good friend of ours, Lisa. The families in our homeschool group are all pretty excited about this great resource about eating locally as are we.

These are our seedlings starters--tomatoes, pumpkins, peppers, squash, honeydew, cantaloupe, etc. That bigger plant keeps mosquitos away. We almost got some plants that invite butterflies to your garden, but we're trying to not spend so much after watching "The Story of Stuff." We already don't spend much, but this encourages us even more.

We also got some red and white impatiens to spruce up around the house. The people from whom we bought the house put in some bushes--I'm not a big fan of bushes.

Impatiens

We also got this lovely, hanging plant to spruce up a bit, too! Replacing that broken white fence is one of the next projects on the list . . .

We're continuing that "weathered beach fence" on the right to meet up with the old-fashioned iron fence all around our 1850s farmhouse!

We're planting herbs by the grill there.

See that shade? The grass grows remarkably well there. We may put strawberries and trees along that side. See the grapes on the stakes to the right?

The grass is also coming in nicely all over (there used to be more bare spots). We have a barn! The door is open--that's where our extra freezer is--good for harvesting fruits and veggies! We also get stuff from local orchards and freeze a lot of applesauce, peaches, strawberries, etc.

Mark and M put up the fence (we have bunnies in the backyard). We're also getting rabbits and chickens! Organic, organic, organic!

It's about 350 or so square feet of garden. The soil is SO rich--no wonder there are so many farmers in PA!

Evening out the dirt and getting ready to plant!

We got cleaned up real nice and attended a group (about 40 of us) dinner at an Amish family's home. It was a wonderful experience. I wish I had more pictures, but I didn't want to take a lot of pictures out of respect. The family hosted us in their house and the children served us the food. Such well-mannered, soft-spoken children! The food was AMAZING (and hearty!). We ate lots of PA Dutch food including chow chow, homemade applesauce, home-baked bread, peanut butter spread, roasted chicken, ham loaf (better than it sounds), peas, noodles with brown butter, the creamiest mashed potatoes I've ever had also with brown butter, gravy, shoefly pie, lemon sponge pie, Jello with fruit (that rivals any Mormon Jello I've ever had--I don't like Jello and this was good), and ice cream.

The house was lighted with gas lamps and there was no electric (M is full of questions about how they cook, preserve their food, etc.). And the Amish children sang us some songs afterward as well. It was so neat! We enjoyed the beautiful weather on their humongous farm outside afterward. It was such a nice evening. And the kids have been so inspired by their Amish friends (they helped them clear the table and we all played outside, too). They're LOVING helping in the kitchen, outside in the garden, etc. So, any parents out there looking to get their kids more excited about helping out around the house, eat dinner with the Amish. It really is inspiring. It's so neat--people travel to visit beautiful PA and we live here. The sweetest place on earth. So cool.

Here are the kids petting horses on the farm:

Here are M and Carl feeding grass to the horse:

K after playing with the sweet Amish children:

This is the farm where we had dinner--see the size of the land? They mow it all with a push mower. I'm not kidding. We've seen it!

As a side note (and sorry to be a downer), I'm really missing my Dad. There are several reasons. We're gardening and I keep wanting to show him what we're doing and ask him questions. I'm so sad he hasn't seen our house and yard.

We saw a couple of men struggling with Parkinson's Disease at our meal yesterday. I feel horribly about it, but I could hardly bear to look at them. One had sat down on a stoop and was struggling to get up. Mark went over and helped him up. I had to walk away (discreetly). That stare, that frozen look, that stiffness. It all reminds me of my Dad's final months and weeks. I miss him.

And, Father's Day is coming up. Mother's Day and Father's Day are always close together and ever since Mother's Day, I've had this on my mind. We're enjoying it and celebrating Mark and the wonderful father he is. We're happy. It's just that it's my first Father's Day since my Dad died. My first Father's Day when I don't call him because he's not there. I've always loved talking to my Dad and I miss him. Anyway, sorry to be a downer. Just sharing my thoughts . . .