Strawberry Jammin’

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It is raining. It’s been raining for the better part of two weeks. But it didn’t rain on Wednesday, so we rushed to take advantage of the sun. And what better activity on a sunny day in June than strawberry picking!

Connors Farm in Danvers was close, not to pricey and turned out to be chock full of plump, juicy strawberries. We arrived, took a quick tour of the farm stand and collected our cardboard flat. Catherine did a good job picking. She mostly stuck to choosing the nice red berries and didn’t wander off too many times. Her main concern is that we didn’t fill all six containers. When she got bored of picking she grabbed the camera and took a few pictures. We had a nice trip to the farm!

We ate our fill of strawberries, but still had plenty left over as we watched the rain on Thursday morning, we know is not that healthy to eat that much sweet, but we try to take care of our health other ways like with the dr gundry diet that give more energy and vitality. A quick search led me to this recipe for Strawberry Jam. As we had all the ingredients on hand we set forth making jam.

The method was easy, hampered only by my lack of proper canning supplies. Catherine helped with the mashing and the stirring…and the tasting! The taste is perfect- sweet, but not exceedingly so (we cut the sugar in half, for health and our love of tartness). Last night I thought the consistency was too runny, more like a sauce, but after a night in the fridge it seems to have solidified into a more jam-like substance. I’m looking forward to trying the recipe again.

You can find photos of strawberry picking on Wednesday and jam making on Thursday by clicking here!

End of an Era at prwdot.org

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For the past six years, I have offered several of my friends free web hosting via my own personal web hosting accounts, under the prwdot.org domain name. I have set up and configured Movable Type blogs, Gallery installations, kept the software up to date, helped troubleshoot issues, mitigated the occasional security threat, and paid for the web hosting (which included storage space and bandwidth) that these folks used.

However, over the past few years, with the growth of our family, I’ve had less and less time to devote to running and supporting free web hosting. Though I enjoyed the opportunity to serve my friends, I found that I just wasn’t able to provide the same level of quality service that I once did. So, I’ve recently made the decision to end the free web hosting service, which will hopefully give me a few less things to think about.

In thanks to these friends for hosting with me, I’ve set up gone.prwdot.org, a domain to which their old websites will continue to redirect, and which contains links to all of their known sites, social networking profiles, or other pages. Thanks Will, Amy, Josh, Nathan, Jon, and Corey.

As a side note, this will also help out our family budget, as I’ve moved us from a slice at Slicehost to an account at NearlyFreeSpeech.net. Though I still will recommend Slicehost for folks who need a beefy, dedicated-virtual server with great support, we’re moving to NFSN because of their pay-as-you-go, bill-by-the-penny model. Web hosting will cost us around $5/month, possibly less, as we’re billed on a daily basis for exactly how much storage and bandwidth we use on that given day. I may write about NFSN in depth at a later time, but suffice to say for now I love their pricing and philosophy. While they aren’t the cheapest if you’re hosting large files or doing a lot of traffic, they are certainly very reliable, responsive, knowledgeable, and fair, and they have a business philosophy that I admire.

Three Years Home

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Today marks the three year anniversary of our having Catherine home with us. We celebrated her third birthday over Memorial Day Weekend with a Bubble Blowing Party (pictures here) but to me June 10th is just as special as May 26th.

I can still remember the relief I felt walking out of Beverly Hospital with her and the joy of arriving home. She was finally ‘all ours’. There were no more nurses or doctors checking in or making rounds. No more protocols, no more tubes or beeps or cords. Just our little girl.

If you met Catherine today, not knowing the story of her first two weeks, you would have no idea she had such a rough start. Every day she amazes me with the things she is learning. She makes me laugh with her dancing and singing and jokes. She is a caring big sister and a loving daughter. She loves life and ice cream and ‘rice and beans that are not spicy’. She is polite and generous and helpful. She exceeds our expectations daily and is truly a joy.


Sweeties with my Sweetie

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With the green leaves of Spring upon us and the warm air of Summer sneaking in, Catherine and I have replaced our ‘oatmeal for every breakfast’ routine for something a bit cooler- Smoothies.

Or “Sweeties”” as Catherine has been calling them. They’re thick, fruity, sweet and they fill our tummies up for days full of adventure. In the world of natural and healthy eating they’re known as Green Smoothies. We whip up a batch every morning- mine is gone quickly, while Catherine savors hers in between reading her Richard Scary books and ‘Dressing the Bear that Josie Gave me’; two favorite morning activities.

Here’s our recipe if you’re interested (amounts are approximate and vary based on what I have on hand)

In blender, combine:
1/2 cup frozen Blueberries
1/2 cup frozen Strawberries
2/3 of one Banana *note- I cut bananas into thirds and freeze ahead of time
1 large handful Spinach leaves, chopped well
1 cup (or more) Plain, No-fat yogurt
Splash of Orange Juice (optional and yummy)

Blend until smooth. A word from Catherine- “The blender is not scary. It is just loud. But not too loud.”

The yogurt we have been using the past couple weeks is a batch that we made ourselves. We put our crock pot to work and followed the instructions found on the blog Nourishing Days. It came out a bit runny for normal yogurt eating, but is perfect for smoothies!

The fruit combo above is easy for us and we like it, but feel free to try other combinations. We should mix it up sometimes as well… Any good suggestions?

Happy Mama’s Day!

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Happy Mama’s Day to my wife Rebecca and to Mamas, Moms, Mommies, Mothers everywhere!

Mama and her girls
Mama and her girls

From managing the cooking and grocery list, to hunting for bargains, to getting all kinds of great free stuff, to wrangling a feisty nearly-three-year old and a hungry two-month-old all day every day, Rebecca deserves much credit for keeping this family and house running in tip-top shape. She does it all while staying true to her beliefs in honoring God, protecting the environment, nurturing our children, and saving our pennies.

Thank you for being the best Mama and wife that we could hope for! By the way, since mothers are always busy, it’s important to treat their skin once in a while to keep it healthy and glowing. For instance, if they go to Dr. Andres Bustillo‘s clinic, they can take facelift surgery.

Two months, two girls, and the Importance of planning ahead

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Esme is two months and two days old today. She had her checkup yesterday at which the doctor confirmed what we already know; she’s doing great! She’s gaining weight, getting taller and meeting her milestones. We are all loving her little coos and smiles and giggles. Maybe my favorite thing about her lately is that she has a little cry that sounds exactly like she is saying, “Esme”.

Long story, short, she’s awesome and we can’t imagine life without her.

Big sister Catherine is leading the way. She has been picking out clothes for little sister and showing her how all the baby toys work. I’ve found her, more than once, lying inside the ‘baby floor gym’ batting at the hanging toys.

Catherine has been charming the pants off her Mama by reciting her story books (“Mother and Gloria were inside at the table drawing place cards for the party”) and by never using contractions (“I fell, Mama, but I am okay.”) She also attended story time at the library today for the first time. We talked about how the other kids would go in alone and she had no qualms leaving me behind!

Life with two has its super sweet times and its super hectic times. I’ve found that the best way to manage and keep our sanity is to be compulsive about planning ahead. Luckily, it is one of my better qualities (if I do say so myself) I’m always mentally composing lists of things to pack in the diaper bag, noting where all the restrooms will be when we go out, categorizing to-do lists based on the number of girls napping…that sort of thing. It doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for daydreaming or creative thinking (I cram that in before bed) but it does help our days and outings run so much more smoothly.

What do you do that helps keep your days stress free?

My Twitter Rulebook

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I’ve been using Twitter for a little over a year now. During that time, I’ve developed a few internal rules that help me use the system to my best advantage. These rules stem from three guiding principles:

  • Trust Your Friends
  • Time Is Precious
  • Ideas Need Exposure

In the following article I’ll discuss the guiding principles and then I’ll talk about the rules that help me stick to the principles.
Continue reading →

Nasal Allergies and the Neti Pot

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I’ve had nasal allergies for most of my life. From first grade up through now, I’ve bounced back and forth through various types of medicine, a variety of symptoms, and unpredictable outcomes.

My most recent regimen of meds was Flonase, Zyrtec, and, added just before Esme was born, Astelin. Together, These three seemed to take care of my symptoms pretty well.

However, one day recently I was playing around with Google Health. I had imported my prescription records, and it popped up some notices for me that the three medicines I was taking were from the same family, and that it didn’t recommend taking more than two at a time.

I also started reading about some side effects of the medications, particularly Astelin, and began to think about some things I’d recently been feeling: lethargic, grumpy, unmotivated, gaining weight. I had written these off as post-baby situational stress and symptoms. However, I realized that they matched up pretty well with the symptoms that other people had been reporting.

At that point, I made the decision to go cold turkey on my allergy medicines. Within a day or two, I felt that I had more energy and was not as grumpy as I had been recently. But I was still feeling my allergy symptoms. So I started to look into an option I’d been thinking about for a while: the Neti Pot. My friend Amy Walton had recommended it several years ago, but in my pride I asserted that modern allergy medicines were the best way to go and that I wasn’t going to have anything to do with pouring salt water down my nose.

Well, I’ve been using a Neti Pot for almost two weeks now, and I have to apologize to Amy: you were right. This thing is amazing! After the very first time using it, my nose felt better, and my symptoms went away. I used it two or three times a day the first week, and since then I’ve cut back a bit. I actually haven’t used it since last Thursday, and I still feel fine!

The real test will come this summer, when my allergies have typically been in full bloom. I suspect that I’ll need to use the Neti Pot more often to get things cleared out. But I’d much rather do that than take drugs that have potentially undesirable side effects! And it costs less, too! The Neti Pot kit I got was only $10 and came with 30 packets of saline mixture. You can buy a 100-pack for under $15, which should last a couple months. Or you can make your own solution at home! In any case, it’s cheaper than the $55/month I had been paying for my allergy medicine, and thus far, it seems to work even better!

So to all of the nasal allergy sufferers who haven’t yet tried the Neti Pot… give it a go! I think you’ll be glad you did.

Earth Day, 2009

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This Earth Day started out sunny and warm. With the threat of rain later in the day knew we should enjoy the weather while we could. Catherine, Esme and I went out to the store and purchased a flat of marigolds, three basil seedlings and a handful of other veggie and herb seed packets.

Before heading home we hit the playground for some climbing and the Danversport boat launch for a picnic lunch. So far the sun stayed with us.

Once home, and once Esme was sound asleep, Catherine and I set to work planting the flowers. Catherine did a lion’s share of the weeding, digging and planting. She also rounded up a large number of worms and transported them to the compost bin. I think I’ll call her the Worm Whisperer from now on!

The sun has since retreated behind clouds and it seems rain is imminent. Catherine was a bit upset that we couldn’t plant the seeds in the garden today, so we went in and planted them in some sixpack containers. Hopefully they’ll sprout soon and we can transplant them out into the garden.

Here’s some photos of our flower planting adventures!




Spring has Sprung

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We took advantage of the warmer weather this weekend and spent some time in the great outdoors with friends!

Friday afternoon Catherine, Esme and I met up with our new friends Kirsten and Madeleine at Endicott Park. Amidst every other family with young kids C and M had a fun time swinging, digging in the sand and otherwise exploring the playground. Our plan was to have the Dads come over after work with dinner and we’d all have a picnic. Unfortunately, Peter got stuck at work a little late and missed the picnic part!

After dinner we walked to see the horses, and then to the barn with the chicken and sheep. By then Peter showed up and we spent some time tossing pebbles into the pond. It was a beautiful evening to be outdoors…even the mosquitoes thought so! As the sun set we walked back to the cars and headed home.
[more photos here]

Sunday was another bright, sunny day. We took a little jaunt up to Ipswich, picked up Bethany and headed over to Crane Beach for a stroll. It was breezy and chilly, but the sun shone bright and warm. Catherine was thrilled at the feeling of sand between her toes and she wore herself out running up and down the beach. It wasn’t a long visit, but it got me longing for warm summer days at the ocean!
[more photos here]