Flag Day

It is an extra, extra, extra special day today because it is Poppy and Uncle Adam's birthday and it is also Flag Day.  I think there is the same amount of excitement in our house today as there was Christmas morning (or maybe even more!) -- for those of you who know my children you know that this is really true!  I absolutely love, love, love how Grace, Jack and Eve get just so excited by everything in life.  We have been talking about the birthday boys all week as well as the meaning behind Flag Day.  Earlier this week Grace, Jack and Eve made these American flags to celebrate today.  I really love how unique each of their flags turned out.

Here is a brief history behind Flag Day:

On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress proposed that the United States have a national flag instead of the British Union Jack.  The 13 stars of the flag represented the 13 new states.  There were few public ceremonies honoring the Stars and Stripes until 1877, when on June 14, it was flown from every government building in honor of the centennial adoption of a national flag.  Schools had unfurled American flags over their doors or outside the buildings long before this; but in 1890, North Dakota and New Jersey made a law that required their schools to fly the flag daily.  The first official Flag Day was observed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1893.  New York also proclaimed June 14 as Flag day in 1897.  Other states were slow to follow.  Some people thought the day was too close to Memorial Day and Independence Day.

In August 1949, President Harry S. Truman proclaimed June 14 as Flag Day.  Since then the President proclaims the commemoration yearly, and encourages all Americans in the country to display the Stars and Stripes outside their homes and businesses!

Happy Birthday Dad & Uncle Adam!

We are thinking of you both today and wish you the happiest birthday.  We love you both so very much.  Happy Flag Day too!

Eve's Hard Working Hands...

Eve loves fine motor activities or any activity that involves using the small muscles in her hands.  Eve has a special basket that is filled with a variety of items to keep her tiny fingers busy and strong.  Some of Eve's favorite fine motor activities are pictured here.  In the picture above, is is working on her sewing block.  Eve enjoys carefully threading the wooden needle through the holes in her block.

This fine motor activity has always been a favorite for Grace, Jack and now Eve.  Eve works so hard to put toothpicks through the tiny holes of an empty spice container.  This is Eve's favorite activity and she often sits for ten minutes or more working on this fine motor task.

There are several containers inside of Eve's fine motor basket that she loves to open and close.  In the picture above Eve is working on opening and closing the tiny doors on a pill container.  I often hide little treasures inside of the containers for Eve to find like bells, balls or stickers.

Since the first time Eve pulled to stand to reach the piano keys, she has expressed an interest in playing the piano and singing.  Eve loves using her fingers to press the piano keys.  I also love how she sings, "la la la" while she plays (or any time she hears the words "sing" or "song").  

Natural Foods

It is such a joy for me to have Eve, Grace and Jack work with me and with each other in our kitchen (or outside on our deck in this case!).  We have always enjoyed preparing our own foods and cooking together.  It is extremely important for me to feed my children the healthiest and freshest foods that are organic, free of artificial ingredients, minimally processed and without refined sugars. It is also important that they learn where our food comes from.  One of my  favorite cookbooks that I often use to support my goal is Rodale's Basic Natural Foods Cookbook. This cookbook has become a staple item in our kitchen.

Over the years I have loved watching Grace, then Jack and now Eve join me in the kitchen.  We all learn from each other and enjoy the process of preparing our food together.  We make a great team!  Right now we are so happy that strawberry season is in full swing.  This week we made a strawberry banana pie (the recipe from Rodale's cookbook is shown below).  Eve is currently working on using a knife to cut her food and she did a great cutting up (and eating!) several strawberries for our pie.        

Ever since Grace was a teeny tiny baby she has always enjoyed helping me in the kitchen.  Grace reads all of the recipes for us and she is excellent at measuring out all of the ingredients.

Jack cut the bananas into slices for the bottom of our pie.  He loves to cut with knives and he is always a very willing participant to try all of our recipes!

Here is the recipe that we used for our Strawberry Banana Pie --

Ingredients:
2-3 cups of fresh strawberries quartered
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup honey (we used much less)
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large banana (we used 2 bananas)
Whole wheat piecrust

In a medium-size saucepan simmer strawberries, 1/2 cup water, and honey for 5 minutes.  Shake cornstarch and 1/4 cup water in a jar with a tight-fitting lid until smooth.  Slowly add to strawberries, cooking until mixture thickens.  Stir in cinnamon and vanilla.  When the strawberry mixture has cooled slightly, thinly slice banana(s) into piecrust.   Pour strawberries over bananas.  Refrigerate until set.

Florida

Click here and here to see what a fun week our sweet little Eve had with Maddy and Poppy.  We missed our Eve SO much when we were in Florida but we knew that she would be happier in her own home spending the best time with her Maddy and Poppy.

Fort Lauderdale Beach

I am going through our Florida pictures and I will be posting many more soon.

 

Update

I am taking just a few more days off from blogging but I promise that I will be back to regular postings after that!  I have  so much to catch up on but so much has happened since we returned home from Florida including two emergency room visits within five days of each other -- one for myself shortly after getting off our our plane on Saturday (what a long plane trip home that was!) and the other was for Jack today.  Our sweet Jack fell head first off of a climbing structure this morning.  Jack is okay now but he is very sore.  :(   We also returned home to a huge rain storm which dropped over 7 inches of rain over the weekend and also filled our basement with 18+ inches of water.  We woke up on Sunday to find our freezer floating at the bottom of our basement stairs.  Oh my!             

Greetings from Sunny Florida!

I am posting from Florida. We arrived in Fort Lauderdale on Sunday and have been enjoying lots of swimming, trips to a science museum, walks on the beach, collecting sea shells and meeting new friends. We will be back to Maine on Saturday. I will be posting pictures from our trip all next week!

Recital Day

Lights, camera, action....showtime!!!

Grace's ballet recital was on Friday evening.  It was a day we were all looking forward to for so long.  Grace was absolutely beautiful to watch on that great big stage.  I was one very proud mama!  Grace's danced to a piano version of Butterfly Kisses and it was so sweet.  Bravo, Grace.  

Getting Ready for Dress Rehearsal

Here are a few pictures of Grace getting ready at one of her dress rehearsals last week.

Here is a picture of Grace with her wonderful ballet teacher, Miss Juliette.  Miss Juliette helped put Grace's hair into a bun for the rehearsal. Miss Juliette said that Grace had the worlds smallest bun -- and it was so cute!  

Prior to one of the dress rehearsals, the dancers had their pictures taken by a professional photographer.  I was watching all of the action from the hallway and caught this sweet moment between Grace and Miss Juiliette just prior to Grace's picture being taken.

I love this picture of Grace!  Grace was getting her ballet shoes ready and she reacted to something very exciting Miss Juliette was saying.

Recital day pictures to come!

Dandelions

While Jack was hard at work exploring the tractors at Pineland Farms, Eve and Grace walked hand-in-hand to explore the beautiful dandelion fields together.  The girls spent most of their morning at the farm picking dandelions and blowing the dandelion seeds together.  It was so very, very sweet and special for me to watch.