Old Grandma

Old Grandma visited this weekend - she's my Grandma but we now call her "Old" Grandma so the girls can differentiate from all the "Grandmas" in their lives. How lucky are they to have three Grandmas!? At first, Old Grandma was having a hard time adjusting from her trip and kept falling. So we took a day and spent it with her at my mom's house to try and bring some peace and stability to the situation. She doesn't get around much at all anymore but at 84 she's still sharp as a tack.

I cooked this fabulous Chicken and Orzo recipe for the Family (12 of us) on Friday night and I caught Old Grandma helping Baby A with her food. If I only have that moment to remember my Grandma by, I will treasure it forever. The oldest member of our family, helping the youngest keep food on her spoon and into her mouth, touched my heart. Old Grandma gets her share of the care taking these days, so seeing her give care reminded me how much she used to give to everyone else.

Watching my Grandma sew, made me want to sew. As a child, she patiently helped me thread needle after needle, sat and did crafts with me, made paper flowers... She also gave of herself through cooking and gifts. I would sit at her counter while she made me jelly rolls for breakfast - letting me eat my fill of them too! I remember her never being rushed and always having time to play a game of Uncle Wiggly. Remember that game? She never, ever yelled. I still sleep under the afgan she made me many years ago - especially when I'm feeling sick. It like a hug from Grandma. My girls still play with the doll clothes she made and there are flannel jammies waiting for them to grow into one day.

I made the girls jelly rolls yesterday for breakfast and let them eat their fill. Today we are making more skirts for their Fall closets. This little Lazy Days skirt pattern is quick to make and I love the ribbon trim!

Jelly Rolls Recipe:

1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup flour
2 eggs
2 T oil (veg oil, coconut oil or butter melted)

Mix all ingredients together. Lightly grease a small skillet and set heat to medium. Add 2 T of batter and swirl batter around in the pan until very thin. Cook about 2 min (you don't have to flip but you can if you want to cook the other side a little). Remove crepe to a paper towel lined plate. Fill center with your favorite jelly or jam (strawberry, mixed berry - they are all good!).
Eat while warm! Be ready to make many more!

Fair Days

This week marked the 115th Comal County Fair so the girls and I dove in to make things to submit to the Fair. My oldest girl made yummy cinnamon rolls, Twin One made some candy cookies and Twin Two baked a loaf of bread from my favorite bread book. They had to do it all themselves from scratch and they really did! I ended up cleaning the kitchen most of the time they were cooking, but it was fun to see them in the kitchen.  Twin Two's loaf of Boule Artisan Bread won the tri-color ribbon (Grand Prize!) for her age group.  We're very proud of her!  The others won a 2nd and 3rd place ribbons!  

Little A is still a little young to cook something completely by herself, so she wanted to make a sunflower picture. We set out all the art supplies for her to pick and choose from and we showed her how to paint with glue to make her materials stick to the paper. Then she went to work! She was so excited and kept saying "I bet I'll win a ribbon" over and over again. She did win a ribbon - 2nd place! All the girls are winners in our eyes of course, it is such a nice way to boost their self esteem by seeing them proclaimed winners in the Fair. They worked really hard! 

Our favorite spot at the Fair is the baby chicks. It something we do every year and I have pictures of them each year there. Fun to see how much they've grown from year to year. 

We saw many of our friends at the Fair and in the Midway rides. Merry Go Round, Glider, Fun Slides, Catepillar Coaster and Tea Cups are some of the girls favorites. My oldest likes the faster, spin you around like crazy rides more each year while Baby A hung on for dear life on the Merry Go Round. 

My Rock has his turn at the Fair tomorrow as he works the Swim Team food booth in the morning. He'll feel right at home with the sausages and corn on the cob! Thank goodness he loves to cook and doesn't mind volunteering his time.  

Hope whatever your weekend brings makes it fantastic! 

xo-Lisa

Welcome!

Hey! Welcome to my blog, my little space in the world, my journal of motherhood. I figure it's best to post an introduction as my first post here even though I suspect mostly friends or family to read this blog but here it goes.

I'm Lisa - it's the name my parents gave me when they adopted me as a baby. Being an adopted child will explain a lot of things about me down the road. Or at least I think it explains a lot about me. Being a wife and mother brings meaning to my life and my rock is my husband. I couldn't do half I do without him. So we have five children, all girls. Yes, all girls - we seem to only make the female species. So a house full of beauties is what my husband was meant to be surrounded by. Having a family of my own is all I ever wanted growing up - see there's that adopted child thing again. I have a tendency to go overboard or maybe it's just determination to do something right. Thus the five children! Once I figured out how I wanted to mother my girls, I just wanted to keep having babies. No, I am not currently pregnant nor do I have plans to be so. There's still time for that later - maybe. Our "baby" is going to be two years old in November and our oldest is 12 years old. Then there's my identical twin daughters whom just turned 9 years old and the child I never thought I'd have is now 4 years old.

We homeschool and run Full Circle Baby - a natural baby and mom boutique. Life is always busy, hopefully not passing us by, but living fully. Sometimes I can't remember what happened yesterday, but popping Ginko Biloba might help that if I didn't despise taking pills so much. So now I'm rambling, I'll stop. The girls anxiously await ......wait was that a crash I just heard? I'd better go investigate.

xo~Lisa

Going Batty

Austin is just the coolest city - really. Lucky for me, it's only a short 40 minute drive. This weekend we packed up the girls one evening and headed that way to view something we've never seen before. See these people hanging around the Congress Street bridge?

As dusk approaches that same bridge starts to look more like this-

And below the bridge looks alot like this -

There's one of my twins watching..... and here's two more of my girls watching....

Finally, around 8:30pm or so what everyone has been watching and waiting for finally happens! The largest Urban Bat population takes flight out from under the Congress Street bridge! First, one little bat flys out, then a couple more, then over 1.5 million bats follow....amazing. We sat and listened to them squeak "talk" to each other for almost an hour before they took flight into the night sky. Such a neat summer evening. The exodus apparently can last about 45 minutes. We watched for awhile and the girls thought it was very neat.

This is what my camera was able to capture of them flying over our head.

Obviously, I need a much better camera to capture the millions of bats leaving their home!

If you look carefully, you can see a few of them here -

Amy's Ice Cream was the perfect ending to our summer night out in Austin. If you ever go, I recommend the Mexican Vanilla milkshake. It's rub your tummy good!

~Lisa

Sum-Sum-Summer Time

Those lazy, crazy, hazy days of summer are upon us. It is H-O-T! Hurricane Dolly is heading toward us today and I do hope she brings lots of rain with her. Our grass is dying from the heat and the garden has whilted.



However, the garden experiment took off with flying colors and encouraged us to try again with more plantings next year. We hope to bring in many more fresh veggies that have been home grown in the future. The book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" inspired me greatly and opened my eyes to many things I didn't know about our food sources. My oldest reads food labels more than I do now and won't let anything with "high fructose corn syrup" enter the house! Homemade ice cream has become a staple now instead of purchased and we are getting really good at it. This recipe was a favorite and one that needs repeating! You just can't beat ice cream made with raw milk and cream.....it is so yummy and healthy.



We just returned from a trip to Dallas to visit family, attend the LLL of TX conference and (most important to the girls) go to the American Girl Store. Fun for all! As I unpacked the past few days and caught up the store, I realized how much the store needed to be updated. That was done today along with plenty of reordering of products.



BumGenius 3.0 is our best selling diaper and obviously a favorite among many families. I have a hard time keeping it in stock and if I forget to reorder one week, then it unfortunately becomes a back ordered item. So, I've bumped up the inventory on this again and hope to reach really good stock levels to keep this from happening in the future. We'll be rolling in the diapers once more very soon! Boxes of cotton prefolds arrived this week and are waiting to be unpacked. These are really big boxes and heavy. There is something about the smell of new prefolds being unpacked though - very earthy.



Some other shop updates - I've put a few items in the Clearance section to make room in my storage area. So there are some really good deals there if you haven't looked lately! Also, Zolowear Slings are on sale this month and Baby Legs. There are some fun summer prints for Baby Legs and it's a good time to stock up for the Fall when they are on sale - right? :)



I'll try to not be so invisible the rest of the summer. I'm actually thinking of starting another blog that would be more personal and keep this one for the shop updates - still just thinking on that though. Off to paint the spare bedroom - what better things to do in the summer than to paint inside!



~Lisa

Baby UP!

The Japanese Tea Gardens have reopened in San Antonio - just 30-40 min from our town of New Braunfels. The girls and I took Grandma there this Spring to view the wonderful flowers and waterfall. It's a little scary with a 1 1/2 yr old trying to navigate the many steps but the key was to just keep her up in the Beco!

Most of those who know me, know I'm a huge baby wearing fan and will wear my daughter most anywhere. I prefer having her on me than in the shopping cart or stroller. She's getting quite heavy though (she did enter the world at 10.3 lbs!) and at 17 months I'm sure she is closing in on the 30 lbs mark. I need to weigh her soon.... The Beco has been the best investment I've made. It's a soft structured baby carrier and oh so pretty! Dear Jeff even wore Miss Abbey on his back while hiking up (or was it down) the Enchanted Rock in Frederickburg, TX. I think I was the lucky one who wore her going up!!! Talk about a work out... It makes me sweat just thinking about doing that again. The Beco uses both shoulders and a nice padded waist strap to support the weight of the child. When you aren't using it or your child wants down, it folds up nicely around your waist and is secured with a strap (looks like a fanny pack at this point) so you don't end up carrying it around all day. Of course, I like the pretty prints it comes in too. We are working on adding this to our store since I'm such a huge fan of the product. The Beco company is small, but growing so hopefully we'll be an approved retailer soon. In the meantime, I know another wonderful company that carries them - Cotton Babies. As a retailer for their BumGenius! One Size Diapers, I can vouch for their supreme customer service and they usually have a nice selection of products to choose from.

Where will you wear your baby today? Leave me a comment and let me know the most unusual place you've worn your baby and what kind of carrier you use most!

xo Lisa

This just in....

Something fun! We're participating in the Baby Legs "Sew Golden" event which will run June 1st - July 15th. Every pair of Baby Legs is sewn with a golden overlock stitch to prevent raveling and enhance durability. During the event period, all packages of Baby Legs will be stuffed with prizes!!! Prizes include Buy 1 Get 1 Free coupons, coupons for free products from various children's companies and the grand prize of a trip to Seattle! Who coupldn't use a trip to the "Sleepless" city??? There are some super cute new prints out as well and they will be in our store soon. Names like Popsicle, Sweet Pea (that's in the pic above), Sherbet and more are on their way to us.

Watch our homepage at http://www.fullcirclebaby.com/ for the start of the Baby Legs event! Maybe one of my customers will win the grand prize! How exciting..... but you'll take me with you to Seattle won't you??? ;)

~Lisa