early in the morning.

hollis (as i'm waking him up): "i'm not very small, but i will always be your small baby, right?"

at a party.

[overheard at a bbq saturday night]:

annie: "i've been to disney land and lego land."

emme: "i've been to juiceland!"

hollis: "well, i've been to candyland!"

do you still blog?

i don't know. there's been a lot going on. and nothing, like sometimes happens. but it's all felt like too much to write about or adequately explain, so i've just been taking a little hiatus. i guess. but i'm still here, and i do plan to keep writing...

this past weekend we had spring weather and it was amazing. warm and breezy and sunny. we rode bikes and spent a ton of time outside.

the kids were really into valentine's day this year - my parents sent them some adorable cookies and they spent many hours sorting through their classroom valentines and trinkets all over the floor in their room. v-day isn't really my thing, but we made a pretty legit dinner on sunday night - filet, lobster tail, grilled potatoes, roasted broccoli, and smothered mushrooms. yes please.

hollis has been very three lately. so many feelings. so many tantrums. he loses it at least once a day, usually during transitions (to and from school, bedtime). we're working on a few different tactics to help him (and us) through this intensity...to varying degrees of success. the other day he was flipping out about something and i was like "i'm going to walk away before i lose my temper". he was like "where is your temper? ", so we had a talk about tempers and expressing our feelings in constructive ways. so a day or two later, he was starting to get upset and he busts out with "i'm about to lose my temperature!". he's such a rat but man, i love that kid.

spiralizing.

in january i started getting a CSA box delivered to our house weekly. the "farm box", as the kids call it, arrives every tuesday and it's a joyous day. i always have the best intentions of getting to the farmers market every week, but let's be honest: that happens basically never. at the same time, i really do believe in eating sustainably (is that a word? the internet is telling me it's not...) - local, seasonal, as many veggies as possible...these are all good goals. just hard to prioritize in the daily kerfluffle of my life.

anyway. one amazing outcome of our on-demand society (and living in central texas) is the availability of delivered farm boxes. for the bargain price of $39/week, someone drops off a box full of veggies at my front door, all grown within 40 miles of our house. rad. i think it's upped my creativity with cooking and my veggie intake.

last night, we had a few vegetables leftover that needed to be eaten before our new box gets delivered today. i made some lentils with onion, celery, carrot and green garlic (all from the box). then i roasted some broccoli and sweet potatoes, both from the box. then, while everything was cooking, the kids took down an entire bunch of raw carrots. they loved the "handle" left on the carrots by the greens. i also sauteed some spiralized turnips (you guessed it - from the box!) to eat under the lentil mix.

spiralizing is so fun and easy, even a three year-old can do it! literally. ek spiralized one and h the other. it was his first time and he was so proud! it didn't make him taste the turnip (he was missing out - it was delicious), but he tried pretty much everything else in our vegan feast. yay vegetables!