Tag Archives: Family

Meet Multi The Beta

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Jellybean recently turned 7 and we decided to give him a fish and fish tank setup. All went well and he was super surprised on his big day. Unfortunately that fish, called Aries, didn’t last 48 hours. Jellybean was crushed but was willing to learn from our care mistakes.

So I would like to introduce to you, Multi the Beta. He is a male beta of some species I can’t remember. But he is a series of vibrant colors so Jellybean decided Multi was suiting for a multi-colored fish.

We are a couple days in and our water is now optimal. So fingers crossed we get some decent time with Multi. Oh the adventures of having pets and navigating parenting!

Knitting And Other Life Skills

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PB and I did some “quality” time the other day when daycare was closed. I worked on my 2020 Advent Socks #2 and she “did” some dishes in luke warm soapy water. We both practiced some positive life skills I would say.

Total win/win. She played happily for about 45 minutes and I added a third color to my scrappy socks. I love knitting and listen to her little brain chatter away. She’s very much in the “stream of consciousness” phase right now. Sometimes the honesty hurts and sometimes its hilarious. I’ll take whatever I can get, lol!

Happy Knitting!!

Bring On Vacation!

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A hearty happy Monday to all! No knitting content today as I’m running around the house preparing for our first family vacation in two years. Sooooo much to remember to do when you are taking littles. So I’ve decided to take the week off from blogging and unplug a little.

I already have way more knitting projects packed in my bag than I need for the length of time we will be gone. So I hope to have some good content when I come back, lol.

I wish everyone a restful and happy week!

Rachelle

Goal Achieved

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I set some private goals for myself early in 2021. I needed to get past the fog of 2020 and feel like I was moving towards getting some positive things done. One of those larger goals was to actually do something with all the photos and scrapbook pages I made on my phone.

I had one year, 2017, completely done and half of 2018 printed. But I was woefully behind after that. I had a mix of finished pages hanging out on my google drive and many many pages left to do on my almost out of memory iPhone. So I worked on weekly goals that started to stack up and as of April I am all DONE! By the grace of some babysitting, shutterfly free coupons and 60% off online scrapbook supplies.

These are four years of memories of my littles and life events. It was bittersweet to work back through these. But I’m happy I did. It gave me a little perspective of how my kids have grown and what we have managed to accomplish, even if its just feeding and clothing ourselves on a regular basis.

These projects are important to me. Even now Jellybean is old enough to enjoy flipping through pictures and remembering some our shenanigans. I know my books will get thinner as they get older but I will never not regret having these captured. But I don’t think I will let four years build up again…shoo boy that was both a time and monetary investment that would be better served to spread out!

Happy Memories!!

Summer Canning

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Our current temperature in Kansas is roughly the surface of the sun with like 1,000% humidity. So why wouldn’t I want to haul out all my canning supplies and heat up my kitchen? I was having some anxiety related to world events and general unrest so I felt the need to make something. That feeling turned into one batch of strawberry rhubarb jam, two batches of blackberry jam, two batches of peach jam and one batch of strawberry jam.

Jellybean helped me off and on saying that he “didn’t like the hot and sticky parts”. Which we all know is almost the whole process. He did like how dark and ruby colored the blackberries cooked down into. All this fruit, except for the strawberries, was homegrown from my families gardens. To me this gave me a grounded feeling and a connection to people I can’t visit right now.

This project did make me feel a bit better. I did have a tiny bit of frustration when my peach jam didn’t set and I had to haul all the supplies back out to re-cook and add more pectin. But the re-do process did seem to work. Now I have some jelly stores for the next year and enough to give as gifts this holiday season.

How is everyone else coping lately?

Bring Me All Your Butter

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We spent what we hope was a responsibly safe 4th of July with my parents. We kind of have made our own little “bubble” and see few people but each other up close and within breathing distance. Everyone in my family is getting really good at cleaning…even the littles. And we stayed up WAAAAY too late shooting big fireworks and chasing fireflies.

So Sunday morning, after the 4th of July, I found myself awake with PB with the rest of the house was snoozing. So PB and I raided the fridge to make breakfast. Being good hearty Midwestern folk I made a well rounded country breakfast. I turned leftover baked potato into hash browns, used up the last of the sausage gravy, cooked off some thick sliced bacon and fried a perfect medium egg in butter.

Forget yarn….bring me all your butter!!

Getting A Little Dust On Our Boots

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Restrictions here in Kansas are easing despite our cases of COVID still rising. I have opted for my family to err on the side of caution so we are largely doing the same routines we did during Shelter in Place. However, my kids and I really needed to shake things up so we decided to do that carefully. We loaded up the van and spend a quiet weekend at my parents house as a “vacation”.

We opted not to interact with other extended family or public spaces. We played in the yard and around the house with lots of trips around town in my dad’s golf cart to get some wind in our hair and dust on our boots (or bare feet in Jellybean’s case).

One evening we stopped to say hey to the local high school’s chickens. They are definitely missing their kids! We rolled up to their “coup” after they had been put up for the night to protect them from predators. They came RUNNING to us. So the kids and I talked to them and threw in some fresh grass and chicken feed. It was quiet and simple and a nice way to spend time as a family.

Note: These chickens are most certainly well cared for despite schools being closed since March. They are fed, watered and set to graze daily by the ag teacher and her family. They even collect the eggs and hand out to local families in need. No animals were harmed in the making of this blog post 🙂

More Gratuitous Baking Content

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Jellybean looked at me this week and said “we should make cookies”. And I said why not! So here is more gratuitous quarantine baking content.

We made pretty standard cookies except for Jellybean insisted on adding the whole bag of chocolate chips. He then put fork marks in them like peanut butter cookies because why not? He also squished the completely flat. So we have very nice and crisp cookies.

They lasted all of 3 days. But to be fair I only baked 1/2 the dough and froze the other half or another baking day. I hope future Rachelle enjoys the work of past Rachelle, lol.

Happy Baking!!