Sweet moment

In the midst of the usual sibling wrestling and screaming, there was this - an inspired moment of giving. Gillen got up before Jesse did and decided to make him breakfast and bring it to him in his room.
For a moment, Jesse said, he thought it must be Christmas.

What they chose to do today

Jesse started a screenplay that is already five pages, printed out and cast, ready for its first day of shooting tomorrow with Eli, Alexander and Gillen. There will be more actors added on Friday. Right now, props and masks are being created.
In his spare time he cracked many pecans from the farm for the pie. We're all still cracking now, while watching SYTYCD and we are only half way there.
Earlier, we realized that we needed more nuts, the squash and the herbs for the next stage of the slow cooking marathon. Gillen brought his newest duct tape creation (intended originally to carry nerf bullets in the next ARGH nerf war) to the farm in order to easily collect the pecans.
It makes quite a cool man bag.
And, he came home wanting to make dinner! Man. My gratitude is overflowing. Salad filled with chopped root vegetables, mashed potatoes, and Romanesco cauliflower (newest thing Nicolas is growing - looks like light green broccoli and is delicious).
I am so grateful to have ended up with these two amazing boys in my life. Now I have to stop writing about them so that I can help them with the cracking.

Local Thanksgiving

A few months ago, some talented, young cool women from Lake Oconee Living magazine came to the farm to interview Gillen about his turkeys. In their article about his heritage bird business they also interviewed us about what our family eats for Thanksgiving. Here are some of the recipes we use since becoming more aware of eating locally, all glossy and beautifully dressed up by the magazine:





The noble birds who starred on the magazine's cover, here more humbly photographed by me:

These are a few of those who were experiencing the inside of a coop for the first time the other day. It was their last stage of life before becoming next week's meal. Their end was very quick and Gillen and Nicolas did all that they could to make it pain free. I'm glad that there are still several gobbling and free and that the very first bird, Cody, will die of old age.

Curing the blues

Sometimes, even the most cheerful of us have dire, out of the blue blues. The other day, it was Jesse who was feeling down. It wasn't, of course, completely random. He had waited all day for a Bionicle that he ordered to arrive and when it didn't, he lost his sense of purpose.

He didn't think that listening to sad music and really getting into it was the way he wanted to go (yes, I do that) but did decide to take my advice to go outside.

What do you do when you're blue, and you're Jesse? Create a "J" with your bottle cap collection and then bury it in the dirt.




Much better.

Moving sand art

My mother's father was from the Ukraine. I grew up hearing, tasting and admiring all things Russian. He died when my mother was 13 (murdered, long strange story) so I never knew him. But she passed along some of this heritage through her passion for Russian artists (mostly dancers), blinis at The Russian Tea Room, and through the music. Oh. How I love the music. I wish that she were still here to have felt this performance with me. I hope one of you watching is as blown away by it as I am.

A bright weekend

On Saturday, Jesse and I went with friends to a Tibetan Festival in Atlanta at a new temple there. We loved the food, the dozens of colorful prayer cloths shining in the sun, and learning how to make sand mandalas. There is a copper tool that is used to place the sand more specifically where you want it. In order to move the sand out of it, you vibrate this tool with a long copper bow. This creates a wonderful, calming hum while you work. I liked the sound and the mandala possibilities so much that I bought one there. It is called the chokpur. Elizabeth and our new friend Frances checking out the food:We liked all of the jewelry, journals and clothes that they were selling to help fund their temple. I especially liked Jesse and Eli in these hats:
Last night, the brighteness came from Jupiter, the Andromeda galaxy and the dumb bell nebula (an exloded star) - all of which we saw down the street at the nature center. The Atlanta astronomy club meets there every month and they really seemed to love sharing their passion and their telescopes with us.

A few more colors from today, with friends on the trampoline:

How to get out of my head - a reminder to myself

Sometimes I get stuck -mired in my own muddy thoughts.

It's usually when I'm not looking in the right direction.
When I forget to see life in unexpected places.

and lose sight of the abundance right in front of me.
It helps to put on the wide angle lens and take in their perspective (like when I watched Jesse the other day at our former beaver pond, patiently hunting for tadpoles with his spear).
Listening is good (here, Jesse is describing the interaction of his spear and the tadpole's skull).Or, I watch the way others interact.
In silence,

or not.
I like imagining through his eyes,

and the reminder to just keep moving.

Sara's WanderCraft book

I received a beautiful small scrapbook, sewn together and covered artfully by Sara at WanderCraft. Her etsy store opens today. Check it out! I blogged about her book here.

Halloween Orange

And when there was a blue moment, we followed our orange dog to the dirt roads, highlighted by orange of course.

Party for The Graveyard

At the beginning of the week we found out about a party being held last night for Neil Gaimon's (he wrote Coraline, among many other books) newest book - The Graveyard. We have been to this unique children's book store several times before, once for a rocking Harry Potter party, so we knew it would be worth it to drive in last night for this and we read as much of the book as possible during the week. The invitation asked that only those nine-years old and up attend as they planned to scare the life out of us. Gillen and Jesse wore frightening costumes but you'll have to take my word for it. I only have pictures of them with peeled back layers and with their sweet faces showing through.
I love that Gillen still gets scared. He didn't even go with Jesse and I on the dungeon horror walk. I think this shot caught the moment when his imagination got the better of him and he stepped out of the line.

I love a party that can provide a terrifying ghost walk, an eleven year old great lead singer:AND the possibility of reading books while you party:
The party was held in answer to a challenge put out by the author, Neil Gaimon, to independent booksellers. Whichever book store put on the greatest Graveyard party will be honored by a visit from Gaimon in December. I don't know how anyone could have surpassed Little Shop of Stories.