Photos

I guess we've been a bit busy, and bit tired, and a bit lazy. And my mom has been asking me for photos.

Until about 8 months, Aidan was just a happy baby. He was always smiling and he cried a bit when he got tired. End of story.
Now, he's a lot more than that. He crawls all over the place. He stands up and cruises along furniture. He wants to get into everything. He wants to be picked up. He wants this and he wants that. Basically, he has joined the ranks of his sibling and became noisy, disgruntled, and sometimes happy kid. So that's why I've been busy.

We made gingerbread house with some friends yesterday. They kept picking on the candies and eating them. The kids were all high on sugar and excitement. At the end Terran and Sisi decided to just bite into the darn thing. Gotta say, all those hours of making models in college have definitely paid off. Our house was solid and stable even with lots of dead and live loads on the roof with snow, candies, and fingers and all:



Brothers:

My Native American Kids for Thanksgiving:

Me and my kids on my birthday. I thought Pat went to buy a cake for me. He came home with chocolate cake mix and heavy cream. I actually had to put together my own cake....:

Baby Aidan:


Having snack. Aidan definitely wants to be a part of the group now.

Thoughts on immigration

My friend and I are working on a simple design competition. (I think I'll blog about my friend later) It's about immigration.
When we started working on this, and when I started thinking about this topic, people like my husband's greatx4 grandparents came to mind. How they came to this country and what they might have gone through. This thought could be interesting if I knew anything about them. But I don't. I don't really personally know that many immigrants - except for myself, of course - duh! And so I began to think about my story. And my own process.

I remember my first flight over. I was 18 and was on my way to go to college in another country. My mom was away and wasn't even there to see me off at the airport. It was just my dad and me. On our way to the airport, he said,
"This is our last day together and the last time that you are going to be living with me."
I said,
"Why? Really? Why?"
"You'll come back from time to time to visit me but you'll never live with me again."
I was shocked by this statement. And obviously, a little confused.
"Can't I come back to live with you after I graduate?"
"No; you'll have your own life and your own future and you won't come home."

I thought about our conversation on my 8 hour flight to San Francisco. It made me cry for most of those 8 hours. I was so sad and I felt so lonely that I would no longer be part of the family that I came from. I was upset that I had gained independence; something that I never really craved. I was already missing my dad and I just wanted to go home. I was sad and I was afraid of the unknown. I just wanted to be his kid again....

Of course, all this changed as soon as I got to school and saw the amazing buildings scattered amongst green open space. I was inspired immediately and thought myself so lucky that I'd be able to learn in that beautiful environment. I couldn't wait for my new life to begin!

(to be continued.... my husband is interrupting me....)

Scarecrow in the village

Last weekend, the Lawrenceville Main Street hosted "Scarecrow in the Village" where school age children make scarecrows. So I took Terran and Sisi there and we made our own.
Well, actually, it was suppose to be Terran's scarecrow but I ended up doing most of the work. Sisi helped a little. Terran found his friend from school and started throwing hay all around.
Other than the scarecrow, they also had pumpkin painting and mask making. It was a fun little event. Now, our scarecrow sits on a bench along 206 and we see her every time we drive by! Fun!

Our scarecrow wearing clothes that Sisi outgrew recently. I wanted the kids to sit next to the scarecrow for a photo op but they both refused.

Terran was not helpful at all in building the scarecrow. He just ran off and started playing with hay.
Sisi is working on her mask.

And Terran is painting his pumpkin. Happy Fall!

Fall is here.

My kids wait for autumn to come all year. They know what they want to be for Halloween for the following year as soon as this one is done. They dream about raking and they get excited by the thought of running through a huge pile of crunchy leaves. Now, the long awaited fall is HERE!

They start off by riding their bikes fast on the sidewalk towards their fresh pile.
Terran rides his bike into the pile.

He loves to fall into the soft and crunchy pile. Notice Pat with his laptop in the back.
All covered in leaves.




He loves fall!

apple picking

It's the season of apples! yum! yum!
My kids love them. And we have a huge orchard 5 minutes from our home. Isn't that grand!
So last weekend, we went picking. It was near lunch time and we were all hungry so to make it quick, we just picked Fuji apples - one of my favorites! We picked some off the tree and ate it right there. Even though some of the apples were not completely red, they were so sweet and amazing!

So here are my kiddos beneath the apples:

Sisi peeking through the branches while picking her apples.

Sisi and Terran each got a bunch of apples to take home and one for eating on the spot!

mascarpone cheese

My house is nice and quiet on Saturday mornings. Patrick took Terran and Sisi to Hopewell YMCA for Terran's munchkin sports class. Aidan is sound asleep in his room. And I get to sit on my couch with a cup of coffee and enjoy this lovely time. So I think about food and what we can have for dinner....

Well, there's not much to think since I have my week's dinner planned out. I think we're going to have mushroom sage pasta tonight! I bought all the ingredients at the market except for sage. I really don't like to buy fresh herbs from the store because they don't seem to have a lot of flavor and they are super pricey. But lucky for me, we got a bunch of sage as part of the CSA this week! Our farm has really wonderful herbs and that sage has got to be great!

As for the mascarpone cheese, the pasta recipe calls for 8oz but I could only find a 16oz tub. So I have some to spare. I've been searching the web for what to do with the extra. My mind immediately go to desserts like tiramisu but I am on a diet right now and baking dessert is a BAD idea. So here are some options to add delicious cheese into non-dessert food:
- Stir it into pasta for a creamy sauce
- spread on a rustic bread along with jam or marmalade
- mascarpone pancakes

I think I am going to make a run to the bakery down the street for some bread so I can spread some of that yumminess on it. And I think I am going to ask Patrick to make us some mascarpone pancakes instead of his usual banana pancakes tomorrow morning. Ohhhh yum!

Keeping up

I told myself about a month ago that I'd update this blog regularly. That's been difficult. I guess I should try harder anyway. With 3 growing kids, there's always something new and something exciting (sometimes just barely minimally exciting).

Well, the temperature has dropped and I can't say that I am liking it but it makes me happy that the season calls for more frequent use of my lovely crockpot. I didn't use it much during the summer because the food that comes out of the crockpot just isn't so appealing in heat.

So right now, my crockpot is on and cooking Hoppin' John - a stew like dish with black eye peas, sausages, chard, tomatoes etc. It took me all of 5 minutes to through everything in in the morning and we'll have something warm and hopefully wonderful at night.

Recipe is from one of my favorite website: crockpot365

Sisi's ballet class

Patrick usually takes Sisi to her ballet class. It starts from 6:15 and it's the worst time for us. Feeding the kids, grumpy baby, tired from a long day of screaming and yelling, the usual family stuff. But last night, Patrick said that I should really go see her dance. And he's right. I really wanted to. So I fed all the kids dinner at 4:30, and got Aidan ready so he can stay home with Pat and bathe while we are gone. It worked out well.

Sisi has a cute pink ballet outfit, white tights, and her tiny leather ballet shoes that she wears to her class. It's all girl and she loves it. Seeing her do her stretches in the beginning and then doing her plié made my heart swoon. She's so focused and I could tell she's loving it. It was just adorable and It made me so happy that I have my girly girl daughter to offset the two rambunctious boys.

Terran came with me so while we sat at the corner of the gym watching Sisi, he dutifully did his homework from Kindergarten. It's a packet of work to be completed in a week and had 7 pages which included drawing, handwriting without tears, figuring out patterns, coloring, and learning letters F and B. I think it's a lot for a kindergartner. So he worked hard on in and pretty much focused for the full 45minutes and got it done! Yay for T!

Fall

It's October now and the temperature dropped all of a sudden. I'm wearing a sweater today. And a skirt but I should really go put on some tights before I catch cold. Burrrr....