and in other piracy news...

scrump

you'll have to look it up :-)

Sprout's Birthday

I made the Sprout a very sturdy little doll for his birthday, and Wild Thing helped to make a big golden pompom, and he got a lovely board book that is spiritual and well ... just the greatest celebration of being born on planet earth ever called - On The Day You Were Born by Debra Frasier.

Papa Pan wrote and played him a song.

Nature Girl made him cupcakes, she picked the recipe, she let Wild Thing beat the eggs, and she measured and sifted and mixed up everything and we made vanilla butter cream icing together.

Dark Mirror made the card we all signed.

Wild Thing decided he would pick the dinner and got out a family classic, The Mr Men Cookbook. We had Mr. Happy's potato boats with sausage sails and bacon flags, and pirate salad (cut up veggie pirates who swim in salad dressing before getting eaten up.

It was a nice first birthday.

The only glitch was that Wild Thing celebrated his birthday twice this summer - once with his father in Ottawa and once again when he got home here, and now has it in his head that birthdays are just parties and he thought this should be HIS birthday and was pretty upset off and on through the event.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SPROUT!!!

I year ago today give or take 30 minutes.

and today (this was hard fought for, he's ON THE MOVE and much too busy for pictures!)

Continuing the house search...

Yesterday we looked at an 1870's school house in a PRIME home based business location (its currently a B&B) but it is on the main road into town so LOTSA TRAFFIC
also lotsa space and charm and what have you.


Tonight we're looking at two little farms - one with 16 acres and a pond and an old barn, the other is 3 acres surrounded by orchards, and it has two barns and a small house. There's a tire swing out front.

Then later this week we're looking at a house in Kingsport - actual deeded ocean access and room to build a workshop, and a crazy cobbled together 150 year old house and a TON of work to be done (like GUT the upstairs and live downstairs for awhile while its being rehabilitated from a shag carpet and stucco 1970's nightmare) but it is CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP and we LOVE LOVE LOVE Kingsport.

And then the house above - a circa 1750's acadian house. Pretty huh?

Wish us luck on finding our forever house!

In contrast...

Nature Girl did her own mini harvest on the way home from school. I'm not looking forward to the worms coming out but I think we have 144 acorns now for our times tables work!

I don't even like cantaloupe that much

But this is part of why I love Papa Pan.

Its big news here in the Valley that the big grocery chain told a local farmer they'd buy melons from him. So he planted 50 acres of them. Then the grocery chain backed out of the deal. When the "he said - she said" dust settled the farmer invited neighbours to come pick all the melon they could carry before they rotted in the field.

So Papa Pan went melon picking after work yesterday.

This is what was left after we gave a trunk full to the neighbours, to my daycare families.