MommyCoddle

Well, I’m definitely no "ma" Ingalls, but yesterday the girls and I gave butter-making a go. I cannot imagine the time it would have taken to do this by hand. We were lucky enough to have the help of my grandmother’s electric butter churn. There used to be a jersey cow on the farm that was milked, and my grandmother said she would make butter every day. But those days are past. And Sunday she and I pulled the very dirty, dusty electric butter churn off the top of the refrigerator so the girls could give it a try.
The girls were very enthralled by it all, but once we didn’t get instant results they grew a little weary. It turns into this beautiful whipping cream and you think you’re really close, but then it goes back down into a liquid stage. I was ready to give up and assume I had done something wrong, when little bits of butter began forming in the liquid.
So, in classic "Ma" style I ran to my computer to look for a little more instruction and discovered that I was going to have to strain the separated milk (buttermilk?) from the butter globs.(globs? probably not the proper terminology.)

I didn’t have the wooden butter paddles that my grandmother used to have, but using my two rubber scrapers I "worked" the butter to get out all the extra liquid and rinsed it in cold water (don’t know why, just following directions).

Then I pressed some into our butter bell and the rest went into a glass dish in our refrigerator.
So, of course, I had to make homemade bread for dinner, which I let rise by the fire. (Ma would be proud).

And as I sliced off the first piece of steaming hot bread and prepared to spread a little of our homemade creamy butter on top, Emma stopped me:

"Can I please have some of the GOOD butter from the store?"

Ahh. lovely.

(**try it yourself with just a glass jar and whole milk….and get buttermilk to boot!)

It’s coming. The real winter weather. So today we took advantage of our last spring-like day before the big freeze.
Nothing like pizza, pistachios and yogurt out on the porch. (complete with baby stroller and dog rumpus)

Long after Mary and I had come in from lunch, Emma was busy at work with one of her birthday gifts.

I love this next picture. I wasn’t sure if she was really catching birds with her binoculars. But when I saw her get these Canada Geese in her sights(the little dots in the top right corner), I knew she was….

Then she carefully recorded everything she saw in her notebook, including Canda Geese, a Turkey Vulture, leaves, electric fence, pine trees, and a cat.

Emma and Dan just started reading "Little House in the Big Woods" before bed each night. Of course Emma seems especially fascinated by all the hunting and detailed deer and pig-butchering scenes. She’s glued to the stories in those parts. Today, I overheard her calling Mary, "baby Carrie". So I have a little Ma Ingalls project planned for the two of us tomorrow. My grandmother, is my "Ma Ingalls" go-to–I’m borrowing some of her "tools" for tomorrow’s project. I’ll be sure to show some pictures.

I just overhead this conversation between Mary and Emma, sitting in front of the dollhouse. Actually, it wasn’t much of a coversation, more of a lecture from Emma’s doll, who wants to play at the dollhouse alone, to Mary’s doll:

"Are you listening to me? Look at yourself. We don’t look like each other. You’re made of wood. I’m made of rubber. So you can’t possibly live in this doll house."

I’m going to refrain from adding any type of interpretation to this pretend play.

Hello Miniswappers!
I’ve finally finished swapping all 136 of you!!

Below you will find a microsoft word document and a pdf document. Click on either one to open it up and see the list of partners. If there is NO email address beside your name, then you are the first contact. That means it is your job to contact your partner and open up those communication lines!

I haven’t included any information about addresses, children’s names, ages, etc. And once everyone swaps their partners and names, I’ll be removing these files from my blog.

Please let me know if you have any problems or the email address is wrong. I’m SURE I’ve made a mistake somewhere!!

Have fun!