Queen of Wonder

January 15th at 3:00am My sleep was interrupted by a child crying. I sat upright in my bed like a soldier coming to attention and swung my feet on to the floor. I rushed up stairs to the boys’ room to see who was crying and why. When I got there, I found Sam on the floor wailing. It was not an ordinary I had a bad dream kind of cry. The pitch was different . There was pain in the cry. There was some fear in the cry. Even in my groggy state, I knew these things. Like feeling my way along a dark wall looking for the light switch, I started to instinctively feel my way through the situation. “Sam...

Michael and I got a rare chance to explore San Francisco (also known as The City in my house) without the kids yesterday and - we had a lovely time. If I am exploring a new city (or a city I know well but have not been to in a while) I am a happy happy girl.  We started our adventure at Flax . Flax is an art supply store that has any art supply you might need, as well as a mind boggling room full of beautiful paper, there is also a great selections of pens, stationary, gifts, picture frames, journals, kids art supplies, books- you name it and your art fantasies are within reach. I could browse...

My kids got The Silver Spoon for Children cookbook for the holidays and it is such an adorable book. I am thinking about buying a stack and keeping them on hand children's for birthday party gifts. Anything that gets kids cooking is fantastic in my eyes. This book has cute illustrations and simple easy to follow instructions.  The focus is on Italian food, which most kids love- at least mine do....   So, in the past couple months we have been doing some cooking. The boys love the  desserts section the best. So far we have made the homemade ice cream (made in a Cuisinart, no ice cream...

It's the end of July, and the first pear fell off the tree the other day- so I started picking them. I put a few little pears in a paper bag to ripen and today I noticed they were ripe and firm.  The day was not going well before this discovery....first I searched high and low for The Magic School Bus videos due TODAY, then my girls day lunch fell through, then I could not find the checkbook. I was getting very bitchy. Somehow I stumbled into the kitchen in my grumpy mood. I noticed the pears. I decided to make a claufouti... one hour later the house smelled yummy and I was temporarily sedated...

  We visited the Charles Schulz Museum to attend a birthday party. The kids had a tour and a drawing class. Since we are all Snoopy fans around here so it was a complete treat. Great museum, great birthday party, great day. We were the first ones to arrive at 10:30am and when we were still there at 3:00 I had to drag my family out of there. It  was a long, Snooptacular day. We loved it.   If you want to check out this fun museum you can too! Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center 2301 Hardies Lane ● Santa Rosa, California 95403 (707) 579-4452 ●          ...

          Today we walked out the front door and down the street to the hippy and fun Fairfax Festival . Gotta love a parade that features more tie dye than not, spawning salmon float and lessons about landfill. Yes people, this is Marin County and we are teaching our kids to be GREEN. Sat by this cute dog at the parade and loved the Star Trek finale. Trekkies made a little play about how there were alien life forces coming to Fairfax and then, instead of offering to blast them to smithereens, they proposed befriending the aliens. PC and hilarious.     We stopped...

Sam had his last day of school today but Alex had his first day off,  so I am declaring this the first official day of Summer Vacation. Wahoo! I am so ready for a break from constant carpooling, homework, making school lunches, rushing around with nearly non-stop days. My wish for my kids (and myself!) is to have an old fashioned, old school, low key, lazy, fun, relaxed SUMMER. We started the day off with french toast and strawberries. The boys loved it. Sam calling it FRUNCH TOAST. I shuttled Sam off to school while Alex played with his Jenga Blocks making a  fortress for all his Star...

Even though the sun has been playing coy, and it sort of feels like Winter , things are happening in the garden. The best picks of today were the strawberries, the salad greens and the sweet peas. Who needs the 3 tenors, I have the three S’s!  I know, I know, 7 strawberries is not a bounty, but there were only seven dwarves and look at all   the attention they got....

        Turns out that skipping yoga and not racing all over town has it’s benefits. Today, I took in the calming benefits of picking some things from the garden. The main things I picked were some mixed greens (left) mustard and arugula (center) and carrots (right). Sam loves to help pick things in the garden. He followed me along and we picked these goodies. That Sam loves to help slays me about as much as the gorgeous vegetables that we pulled from the soil. Soon we will have pears,  strawberries, more greens,and green beans I hope. In even more time, we will hopefully...