This face!

My niece Finley!
...thought of this little girl all day today (and during shavasin, cam!)
...she just started pre-school and is soooo her own happy self!
Just look at this face!!!
FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

"So I am just a muggle."

Mac regrets to inform you all that
although she is 11 years old
she did not, by Sept. 1rst, receive
her Hogwarts letter of acceptance...
and is therefore
a muggle.

Bummer.

collard greens and kale for days!

I made the best soup today (despite it being summer weather...)

But just look at it. There is no way the kids will even try this without some serious...garnish??

And bribery and promise of desert.

And Silas won't even try it I am sure. So sad.
It is really really yummy.

Vegan Greens Soup
Swiss chard, collard greens kale whatever... about 4 cups cut up very small like cole slaw.
1 onion, 3 cloves garlic, olive oil
one large potato cut small-ish
great northern beans I can or 1/4 cup dried
vegetable stock 2 boxes
bit of cumin, teaspoon fresh thyme leaves, bit of cinnamon, bit of curry, shake of red pepper flakes

saute the oil onion garlic spices first
add potato for a while
add then everything else
bring to a simmer and then reduce heat and cook on low until potatos are soft.
add parmesan if your are not vegan!

awesome!!

UPDATE: later that day...Emmett loves it. Happy to be wrong!

Everyone but Silas gave it the thumbs up!

coming home to this is the best...

Mac and Emmett have discovered that they can play the basics of almost any song by getting the chords online and sitting down together. This is a new development. Instead of the "pretend play" that used to go on around here, now they spend a lot of time doing this....and their childhood continues to evolve.
I LOVE IT.
Besides the fact that they are learning so much so quickly...they are also having so much FUN. This is the reason I made them practice. Not to be famous pianists but for this. Now, along with the tedious rigor of learning complete piano pieces and figuring out finger picking etc...they get to see why its so worth it. Suddenly it all makes sense! Hurray!!!

What are these people really protesting?

The big concerns seem to be that we will become a socialist country (hardly), that Obama is a fascist (they must be unclear about the definition), that he isn't even a citizen, that he is too smart and his speeches too fancy, that he's responsible for out of control government spending (war $ and tax refunds are o.k. though) and the rest of the folks seem to be misinformed about death panels killing granny and Obama taking away their guns. You know its hard not sound like an arrogant uppity liberal smarty pants when we are dealing with folks like this.

I am ALL for a protest. Where real concerns are brought into the light from the power of thousands of voices. But this is silly.

All in all, a very uneducated gathering. At least from what I can tell from these signs. (I didn't even include the ones misspelled as that is just too low a blow.)
The one civil, clear exception would be the little girl with the CUT SPENDING sign who, you can tell, really IS worried about government spending (on frivolous things like health care, I am sure.)
And then there are the racists who are shouting "racism".
Whole lot of convoluted fear mongering going on around here.

Julia Child

Saturday night mom and I finally got to do something together other than chat while cleaning the house...we went to dinner, frozen yogurt and then to see "Julie and Julia".
What a great movie full of the passions of life! So much fun! Thanks mama.