lovely love quotes

on valentine's day, i find myself thinking about love, about what it means to love people and especially what it means to me to love my husband. here are some quotes that i find resonate with me more than any others. and happy valentine's day.

"To love is not a passive thing. To love is active voice. When I love I do something, I function, I give. I do not love in order that I may be loved back again, but for the creative joy of loving. And every time I do so love I am freed, at least a little, by the outgoing of love, from enslavement to that most intolerable of master, myself." » Bernard Iddings Bell

"being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage." -lao tzu

"love is what you've been through with somebody." -james thurber

the csa: or in other words, how not picking out my own produce helped me plan meals faster than usual

ok, so, joining a csa is one of those things i've been meaning to get around to for about a year now. and last tuesday i finally remembered to make my bountiful baskets order, and nate brought it home yesterday. what a thing of beauty. we chose to get an organic basket which was ten dollars more ($25) but still a great deal, and in our box we got:

a bunch of spinach

a bag of carrots

some broccolini

a bag of yams

a bag of pink lady apples

some blueberries

a bag of celery

2 red peppers

some haricot vert (green beans)

fennel

a really unripe spaghetti squash

grape tomatoes

at first i was like, "whoa. fennel." i've never cooked with fennel before. and i have to admit that i didn't recognize the spaghetti squash as a spaghetti squash until i saw the sticker on it. (i knew it was a squash, ok? i just didn't know what KIND of squash!) after looking at everything i started to feel kind of overwhelmed. but then i decided i paid 25 bucks for this stuff, hence, my goal for the next couple of weeks is to not let any of it go to waste. so i hit my recipe books and the internet and i came up with this menu for the week:

monday: fried rice (to use up leftover rice and ham) with chinese celery salad.

tuesday: tuesday is sometimes taco night around here (partially because it's fun to say, "TACO TUESDAY!" and partially because it was suggested in my new favorite cookbook, the family dinner, which i must post about later.)so we'll have tacos with our leftover meat from last taco tuesday with some black beans or pinto beans mixed in.

wednesday: baked rigatoni with italian sausage and fennel, but instead of using the jarred marinara sauce the recipe calls for, i'm going to make a sauce by roasting the csa grape tomatoes using this recipe. on the side: sauteed broccolini. (i'm so excited because in this one night we'll be using tons of our csa produce! all the fennel, one red pepper, all the grape tomatoes, and all the broccolini.)

thursday: breakfast for dinner, buttermilk pancakes, bacon, and green smoothies (using our csa spinach.)

friday: ginger-carrot soup with parmesan-herb pan biscuits

saturday: invite in-laws, make italian-style meatloaf muffins, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, and green beans with bacon and crispy garlic butter, which is a menu completely from rookie-cookie's blog, which i highly recommend (every recipe i've made of her's has turned out great--so maybe i'll make one of her dessert recipes and make it a rookie-cookie night!

sunday: sunday is nate's cooking day, hooray for a night off!

wish me luck! although it's quite simple this is a pretty ambitious menu plan for me considering i haven't been feeling amazing lately. but family dinner and making good quality food for my family is one of my highest priorities lately...maybe i'll tell why in a future post.

what are you making for dinner this week?

i can't believe...

...i was ever afraid of having a boy.

charlie,

thank you for making my life silly, snuggly, exasperating, loud, and so much fun. when i saw you for the first time, and they put that bright red hat on you (only for babies born around christmas time,) i fell into so much love that it caught in my throat.

today is your day. today you can drink pop and have more than one treat! i hope that it is so much fun for you, and i hope that someday you understand how special you've made my life.

love, mom

my 4 year old

today my little boy turned 4. yes, this one:




how can he be 4?



wasn't this yesterday?



and now he's into buzz lightyear



and planning his astronaut career.



happy birthday to my precious, smart, handsome, wonderful, sweet boy.

the doing

(little c. asleep on the couch.)

"but the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. this is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. there is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. and I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less."

anna quindlen

quote via hula seventy

some things

halloween was short and sweet for us this year. the kids wanted to go to the school carnival without costumes, and i was fine with that. we went to the trunk-or-treat our community did and ran out of candy in about 15 minutes. it was our first trunk or treat and i loved it because we were done so quickly, and the kids got tons of candy without having to go a million different places. wait, is tons of candy a good thing or a bad thing? :)

the best thing to me was the awesome trick-or-treat bags that my mom made for the kids. (isn't she amazing?) i love those bags to death. she also made m.'s costume, the pinafore and the shirt that goes underneath. (thanks mom! you rock!) we lucked out and found sparkly red shoes at target.

this is sufjan stevens. last monday i got to see him live, in concert with my hubby, nene (co-author of this blog,) and nene's husband. it was amazing. it's really hard for me to describe my feelings about this concert in words, but let me just say my mind was blown. it is still being blown. i usually have reservations about using the word "genius" but i have no problem going there for sufjan. he is a genius. the concert was crazy, inspirational, loud, strange, beautiful, fun, enlightening, and haunting. i loved every minute of it and i'll always be glad i got to be there. it was seriously a privilege.

to the rescue

this morning could have been disastrous. j. woke up grumpy again and was refusing to go to preschool and refusing to wear his yellow shirt as well (they are doing colors this month). i was trying to make french toast and calm the chaos, but heading for frustration central. instead my husband saved me and helped us all laugh. he made goofy faces and got j. dressed and soothed a meltdown when j. freaked out over cutting his french toast. then we got into the car (on time!) to take j. to preschool and CCR was playing on the radio and we drove down the street singing "I WANT TO KNOW, HAVE YOU EVER SEEEEN THE RAAAAAIN." and everything was all right again. thank goodness for this man.

at the park

we went to the park yesterday evening. it was 92 degrees out, but luckily we went to a great park with tons of big trees. it didn't seem very hot at all.

i love how kids get so excited to play and how lost they can get in it. it's so fun to watch them enjoying such simple things as slides or climbing over and over. i have fun just watching them have fun.

the innocence mission

have you heard of the band the innocence mission? if you are a kid of the 90's, such as i, then you might remember their song "bright as yellow" which is one of their only tunes to really hit the main stream.

the innocence mission is one band that i feel safe recommending to anyone. teenagers, people who aren't all that into music, my parents who are in their seventies (hi mom and dad!) that's how good this band is. peaceful, lulling melodies, and sweet, meaningful lyrics.

they penned my favorite lines in all of song lyric-dom, (which, if you know how jam-packed my brain is with song lyrics, you know is saying something):

let's get up early now, dive clear into the day

let's get out of the car with open arms, not wait to be embraced.

-from the song "when mac was swimming"

isn't that such a beautiful sentiment? and isn't it just put so well?

this is my soul music. if i could make music, i'd want to make music like this. plain and simple.

so, why all this gushing about the innocence mission? they have a new album out today! it's called "my room in the trees." isn't that a great image? and if you click here you can download two of their new songs, "the happy mondays" and "god is love." also visit their website to hear "spring," which sounds just lovely.

i can't wait to get my hands on the entire album.

p.s. if you're just being introduced to the i.m. try "the lakes of canada," "sweep down early," or "beautiful change."

p.p.s. if you don't like them after listening to those three songs, i'll give you a hundred bucks. just kidding.

before church

here are some pictures i snapped before church today.

question: do i usually have time to take pictures before church?

answer: no, no i don't.

p.s. sweet m. completely dressed herself AND fixed her hair today. i smoothed out the bumps in her hair a little, but otherwise, that cuteness? all her.

my sweet seven year old

my sweetest of sweet m.'s,

i can't believe you are seven now. what a great year you've had. first grade, lots of new friends, you were super girl for halloween, you got so sick we almost had to take you to the emergency room, you played t-ball for the first time and started ballet.

i love how kind you are, how attentive you are to your teachers and coaches, how you really want to do your best and please everyone. you try so hard, and i love that about you. i love how much you tell me you love me. i know you mean it.

this year let's have so much fun we just about burst, ok?

love, mom

and one of you today, on your birthday:

a day with the grandparents

this is what it looks like when my parents come and visit: my kids are happier, my house is cleaner, everything seems sunnier and more fun.

please come back soon.

no time to sleep

i know it's silly but it makes me so happy to see him sleep. especially with his bum up in the air, which he is doing in this picture though you can't really tell.

once upon a summertime

we've had a busy-ish summer so far. sweet m. is taking ballet and doing t-ball, we've done a quick road trip, and park day is every tuesday. what's busy to us is probably pretty mellow for most people. that's okay.

my favorite summer days are ones like today. nowhere to go, no big plans, pj's stay on longer than they should, some chores get done and some might not. that's okay.

i'm trying to live by my motto, some lines from leonard cohen's song "anthem." (that i've probably quoted here before, but that's okay too.)

ring the bells that still can ring

forget your perfect offering

there is a crack in everything

that's how the light gets in.

rocket pops and many thanks

last night we decided to try out our new popsicle molds. we made a mixture out of frozen strawberries, vanilla yogurt, and a little bit of apple juice. then i blended it all up and poured it in the molds. the kids had them for snacks this morning.

review: sweet m. loved them. little c. thought they were cool for one second and then, before even trying a lick, decided they were yucky and wanted a regular popsicle. silly kid!

i thought the molds were great. they froze the pops beautifully, the designs are so cute, and the little tray that catches drips is ingenious! they were easy to get out of the molds, too. just a little hot water and they slid right out. (if anyone is interested they are tovolo popsicle molds and i got them from amazon.)

now i have to take a little minute to say thank you to everyone who has been so kind to me lately. there have been words of encouragement, flowers from my parents, kind comments on the blog, there were really yummy cookies and a thoughtful note from a friend, there have been empathetic conversations and wonderfully capable women who covered for me and didn't make me feel bad about it at all.

one of the worst things about depression for me is how isolating it can be. it is so easy to stop reaching out to people and to convince myself that i'm alone, that everyone already has their group of friends and why would they want me to join in?

but i couldn't possibly feel that way now. not with all of the kindness and love you all have shown me. thank you, thank you!

i feel so happy lately. happier than i've been in a long, long time. and i know a lot of that comes from the happiness and kindness of the people in my life, whether it be old friends, new friends, acquaintances, or blog friends. i'm so grateful.

my new life

stephanie nielson is my inspiration. i'm not going to pretend that my battle with depression is anything like the trials and struggles that she goes through, but i draw strength from her example just the same. my new life and my new world is one with depression in it. hers is one with scars and surgeries and things i can't even comprehend. if i can face up to my trials and endure them half as well as she as hers, i'll call it good. she's amazing.

'fessing up

first shot, originally uploaded by girlhula.

sorry for my long breaks and silences here. i have been going through quite the doldrums lately. i guess i didn't say anything to anyone or even admit it to myself because i kept hoping the next day would be better. but it hasn't yet.
i know it will eventually. in the meantime i'm reading a great book called "the mindful way through depression" that i hope will be very helpful.
thanks for reading this blog. i will be back soon...see you on the flip side.

this is my mom. these are her hands.

when i'm feeling down, stressed, sad, frustrated, overwhelmed, depressed, lonely, or negative, i call my mom.

she is a great lady, this mom of mine.

she tells me, "you can do this!" in a way that makes me believe it.

she says, "i'm so proud of you!"

when i'm feeling like i have such a long way to go, she says, "look how far you've come."

when i tell her that hubby and i are having an argument, she never picks sides.

i know she always has my back.

her prayers are something mighty to behold. they are a force to be reckoned with, and that makes her the most powerful woman i know. luckily she uses her powers for good.

she is cheerful. she is a dang hard worker. she is an amazing gardener and mind-blowing quilter. she makes the best bread and rolls (among other things)i've ever tasted. but the thing she is best at is mothering. in all senses of that word.

y'know how people always say that girls grow up to be just like their mothers?

i can only wish.

I LOVE SPRING!

i'm trying to remember if i said last september that autumn is my favorite season. did i say that? maybe i meant spring. i love spring. i love that i get to celebrate easter in the northern hemisphere this year, where things are actually coming back to life. it is full of a whole different kind of meaning. i love it. love the pastels everywhere, love the budding trees and the sprouting tulips and other such bulbly flowers. love it. so to celebrate spring, and also because i love making cupcakes lately, we made these.

we made them from scratch with a yellow cake recipe and tweaked it a bit. and we did cream cheese frosting. some of them overflowed a bit when baking, but they taste pretty darn good. another great part of spring--wilton easter sprinkles.
what easter crafts are you doing?