No more books!
No more students, dirty looks!
School is out for the summer and so we celebrated with a delicious dinner: lamb breast, slow roasted in the oven (they’re ribs and are SO good – our favorit cut of lamb), winter squash (from our freezer) thyme (from our front porch) (and homemade chicken stock) risotto, and lettuce, arugula, radish salad (all from our garden) and shallots too. Yummy!
I’m guessing that some of you, my dear readers, are getting a bit upset with me at the lack of current Ellie pictures on the blog the past couple of weeks. So here’s a few to appease you!
After a walk – she looks so long and grown up!
For the record, she’s not sucking her thumb…thankfully.
Very fashionable in her outfit from our family in Greece
I know this one is not current but evidently I forgot to post it months ago: Ellie’s first Christmas tree!
What do you do when it’s over 100 (heat index) and you don’t have central air? Have a picnic in the air-conditioned office!
Fun times with Mama and our coordinating outfits!
She loves strawberries! (Click on the picture to make it bigger to see all the juiciness!)
This precious little girl just doesn’t sit still anymore. Here she is attempting to dive off the couch. And notice that now she’s a blondie – just like her mama!
As I was posting Ellie’s 7-month photo shoot pictures, I realized that I had never posted any pictures from the photo shoot that our friend Julie did when Ellie was 6 weeks old. Julie is a great photographer. If you’re in the Baltimore area and need pictures taken, let me know and I’ll get you in touch with her!
And 7 months later, this little one is crawling backwards on the floor behind me and fussing at me because I’m ignoring her. It’s amazing how quickly the time has flown!
My family hadn’t all been together since my sister Rachel got married in May 2008. So it had been 2 1/2 years and in that time, we’d gained three more babies. (Actually, since Christmas we’ve gained two more babies!) So we figured we needed to have a family picture – of all 21 of us! Super sadly, we chose to take the pictures on the last day of our trip there and Chris, Katie, Addie, and Alex were sick that day. So we weren’t able to get them in the picture. We missed you guys!
As you can imagine, it’s nearly impossible to take a good picture of 17 people when 7 of them are children. (For proof of this, see the “Ellie in peril, Noah rescues her” series of these pictures.) Here is one of the ones that turned out relatively well.
But I personally like these better because they express perfectly why I love my family so much and why we had such a fun trip!
THE END
Today is the third day in a row of temperatures that are way too high -yesterday, add in humidity and the heat index was over 100. I’m [desperately] trying to have a good attitude about this so here’s what I’ve come up with.
1. We don’t have to pay to heat our house! And because we don’t have central air, we also don’t have to pay to cool it. We have window units instead which are much cheaper to operate than central AC because we aren’t cooling our whole house. [This is also me attempting to think positively about not having central air.] I am exceedingly grateful to whoever invented air conditioning.
2. Summer clothes are so much less bulky than winter clothes that my laundry has been cut by probably half.
3. I have become ultra-motivated to get up early, get outside, do some yardwork and get work done in our house early on before it gets unbearably hot. This has meant that I’ve had relatively productive days even though I don’t get much done past around 11:00ish.
4. I got a lot of [boring but necessary] sewing done yesterday because it was so hot yesterday that Ellie and I went to Yiayia’s deliciously cool house for the whole day yesterday and I took my sewing machine with me.
5. I am so looking forward to a cold Alaska summer, because even if it’s a heat wave for Alaska, it will be cold, deliciously cold to us. Two more weeks!
Or, “Anatomy of a Modern Quilting Bee”
1. I realize that I have Steph’s key fabric that she chose for their nursery. (I also used the same fabric in a tea towel for a wedding present for Dan and Betsy – it’s the fabric with a bit of pink in it!)
2. I suggest to the other Sewing Club members that we make Steph a quilt. I propose an entirely too complicated quilt (but reduced to baby size), which would have taken us forever and been really hard to coordinate between four people. (I still have dreams of making that quilt sometime!)
3. Anne, thankfully, suggests a much simpler and better pattern – this pattern from Oh, Fransson.
4. Ben stealthily gives fabric samples of Steph’s other fabrics to Anne.
5. Anne and Heather choose the fabric for the quilt.
6. Anne washes, drys, irons, and cuts the fabric (all while being VERY pregnant). (I cut a few squares but Anne does the vast majority of the work.)
7. Anne and Betsy layout the squares in a pleasing pattern. (I am very grateful that I don’t have this job.)
8. Anne and Betsy sew the patchwork strips and hand them off to me.
9. I sew the patchwork strips to the sashing to make the quilt top, then make the quilt sandwich and quilt it. Ellie, as usual, helps.
10. While helping me pin the quilt, Ellie decides that she’d rather play with the safety pins rather than help me. Dangerous? Probably. Does this allow me to get the job done? Yes.
11. I pass off the quilt to Heather, by way of Anne’s house and meet Anne’s new baby too!
12. Heather chooses the binding fabric, makes the binding, and sews it on to the front of the quilt.
13. She hands it off to Betsy. Betsy finishes the quilt by hand sewing the binding to the back of the quilt.
14. We have a fun baby shower for Steph. Steph opens the present and is very surprised and excited!
15. We are all proud of the great job we did together on this quilt.
16. Heather, Betsy, and I are exceedingly grateful not to have to juggle e-mails for two secret quilts at the same time any more. Anne knows about her quilt. Steph knows about her quilt. One little girl is here. One little girl will be here soon. We are so happy for everyone!
THE END
It’s hard to believe that it was almost two years ago that I got to meet my newest niece!
And now she’s two!
Happy Birthday Kaitlyn! Here’s a kiss from your cousin Ellie!
Don’t make the twos too terrible, OK?
Your mommy and daddy will thank you for it!
For New Year’s Eve, Dad, Jon, Leah, Kaitlyn, Nik, Ellie, and I went downtown to the celebration. It was really cool. Nik asked me if I’d ever gone to this before and I said, “No – it never occurred to me to check it out.” And then I pointed out to him that the people in our family who went were the out-of-towners and the grandpa who wanted to be with his out-of-town grandkids (and his kids too, of course!). Interesting. Anyway, I was impressed with how much there was to see!
There were lots of ice sculptures:
We’re in the kiddie ice maze here.
That’s me tempting fate.
There was even fire juggling!
My personal favorites? The kettle corn and the cousin love.
Oh yeah – and riding in the way back in the cold Suburban. That brought back some memories too!
If you didn’t guess from either the title of this blog “series” or the dog mushing pictures, we spent our Christmas vacation (or most of it anyway) with my family in Alaska. Here’s the proof:
The one moose we inevitably see walking past Eric and Meggan’s house at some point in every trip we make to AK:
Mountains, snow, and ice:
(That’s Mt. McKinley)
(That’s downtown Anchorage.)
And, for your viewing pleasure, a video of ice moving! Now you may think that this sounds pretty boring (and frankly, on video, it is) but I have always loved watching the ice move like this in the winter. There’s something really peaceful and beautiful about it. Consider going to Alaska in the winter to experience it for yourself!
I’m not exactly sure what was going on with my brain yesterday but I managed to miss featuring Auntie Rachel with Ellie! Sorry Rach! So here are a couple pictures of Auntie Rachel with Ellie! (I think it might be that we are Skype addicts so it feels like we see Auntie Rachel every day! :))
Here Rachel is taking care of the all important job of standing on the brake so the dogs don’t take off!
More fan club love!
Salmon and Souvlaki 
