Guest Post: A Day In the Life: Homesteading with Kelly

Our little family of four lives on a five acre plot in rural Northwest Washington. We currently have 27 chickens, two turkeys, a horse, two doelings with the intent to milk, two barn cats and a sheepdog. My husband and I have always believed in teaching our children to respect the land and to respect themselves and others. To us, this means being aware of what goes into our bodies and teaching our children to live thoughtfully and with purpose. This is the Homesteading Life.

Very little goes to waste on our homestead. We grow much of our own food in raised  beds and plan our meals accordingly. Canning and freezing our food for the colder months cuts down on what we have to purchase. Whatever food waste is created in this process is either composted or given to the chickens and turkeys to eat. Our poultry flock provides us with eggs and meat. Their manure is composted for next year's garden.

The entire family is involved in this process. Our (not so) little Farm Boy collects eggs and takes the compost to the chickens each day. Our little Farm Girl feeds the chickens and feeds our sheepdog, who helps to guard our flock. Both children are frequently involved in the cooking and canning. We all do farm chores together until all the chores are done. They know where their food came from because they helped to harvest it or raise it. They both understand that all animals are treated with respect, no matter what their purpose is, as pet or food.

There is beauty in living simply. Even though we work hard to live this life, it is immensely satisfying to know that we are teaching our children values that they are unlikely to learn elsewhere: The importance of clean eating, the benefits of a sustainable lifestyle and the power of family.

Kelly is a licensed mental health counselor and stay at home mother. Aside from homesteading, she enjoys crocheting, baking, and riding horses.

Visiting the Dallas Zoo

In May we took a week long family trip to Dallas as a piggyback on my husband's business travel. One of my favorite things to do with my daughters is visit the zoo, so I've made it a fun goal to visit different zoos across the country when the opportunity presents itself.

We actually ended up visiting the Dallas Zoo two days in a row. This was in part because of my sprained ankle that happened the day before our flight and because I spent most of first day in the Zoo North part of the park, only realizing at the very end that the Wilds of Africa part was worthy of an additional day as well. Luckily I have an annual membership at our local zoo which granted me discounted tickets to any AZA accredited zoo, so it was totally affordable to go twice!

It's kind of fun getting to seeing a different zoo that is across the country because animals behave differently based on the climate. Seattle is very temperate and you don't get a lot of extreme weather, but I'm sure that the warm climate creatures missing their natural sunshine. For the time we spent in Dallas it was in the mid 80's, fairly humid with scattered thunder showers. It was amusing to see what thunder showers mean to Texans versus what it means to a Washingtonian. In Western Washington we really don't get a whole lot of thunder storms. But when the thunder started rolling at the Dallas Zoo, I quickly saw the umbrellas and ponchos get broken out. Then it started to rain...and it was warm. Yes, the stereotype is mostly true, it rains a lot in Washington but a girl gets used to it. But warm rain, on a hot day, was actually nice! It was funny to notice that difference.

At the age of 3, Penny is really into dinosaurs. We even had a fairy-dinosaur joint birthday party for per and Ruby back in March. So imagine this girl's glee when we walk into the park and she spots something very peculiar on the ground..

Nope, we definitely don't have these in Seattle!

It was awesome witnessing her reaction to seeing "real" dinosaurs; as most of these were animatronic and fairly realistic, even to an adult.

She also had to make sure that each dinosaur was appropriately roared at.

Onward we went and discovered The Steam, which was a play area designed to look like a stream for children (and their parents) to cool off in. We spent a lot of time here, wading through the water, Penny jumping from different rock features and Ruby testing the waters as she toddled around.

But the part of the zoo that has me raving about is the Wilds of Africa portion. It was truly impressive because of the truly open layout of the savannah that momentarily takes you away from a zoo in Texas to actually seeing what it looks like in nature. As a matter of fact, this was the first exhibit in North America to combine elephants with zebras, giraffes, impalas, ostriches and guinea fowl in the same habitat!  

The Woodland Park Zoo recently transitioned their elephant herd to the Tulsa Zoo and it was incredibly surprising to see how many elephants the Dallas Zoo has; at one point I photographed 5 in the same picture.

Penny enjoyed the giraffe exhibit as well - the giraffe heads were at eye level with us so we were able to get pretty close to them. Sadly we just learned that the little baby in the herd died last week because of an injury.

Stay tuned for more of our adventures in Dallas, Texas!
Part 1: Getting there and staying at The Omni

Have you visited the Dallas Zoo? 

Tell me about your favorite exhibit!

Catch up on my other zoo trips across North America!

Catch the Moment: Week 17

A picture a day, for one year.

 So many things to love about this picture. I'm not a huge Mariner's fan, I mean - I'm from Seattle, have lived here most of my life and I will go to a game for the food and company. There, I said it. However, the grandparents are sports fans so every once in a while I oblige and send them a picture like this one. But seriously, when did my baby grow up? She's wearing K-Swiss sneaks, for gosh sakes.

 These are a few of my beautiful sister in laws. We celebrated a couple birthdays at the local trampoline park, which ended with two glamorous injuries (including yours truly) thanks for a moms vs. dads dodgeball. Yes, on trampolines. It's a long story, but basically an 11 year old sprained my ankle and it was so awesome because the next morning we flew out for our trip to Dallas! Yay! Because babywearing 2 kids and hauling a stroller with carseats and carry ons isn't hard enough to do; we needed to add a sprained ankle into the mix to make it interesting.

 Our trip to Dallas was flight #2 in the last year with both kids - and we have our third trip planned in December to fly across "The Pond" to see my parents over Christmas. Our first trip was to Long Beach in October, which was a mere 2 hour flight from Seattle. Seattle to Dallas is about a 4 hour flight, so we learned a few more lessons about how to fly efficiently and sanely with two littles. One huge travel tip came from That Mama Gretchen, who had recently flown to Texas with her littles too, and that was to put the ticketed non-lap child in their carseat for the flight. Penny was comfortable and calm for the flight. She's used to sitting in her car seat for sometimes hours at a time, so this wasn't that different. Miss Ruby, on the other hand.. well, she was a wiggly 15 month old who wasn't allowed to adventure like she wanted to. Again..more lessons were learned, but this was the exciting start for our super fun week in Dallas, which I will share more full details with you soon!

 Due to that (im)perfectly timed sprained ankle, I had to take it easy for the first part of our trip. But that wasn't going to stop me from taking the girls up to the infinity pool at the Omni hotel. How did I manage a 3 year old and a 1 year old in the water, by myself? Babywearing, of course. 

 Ok, I seriously lucked out on the hotel's restaurant. Texas Spice rocks my socks. The breakfast buffet was to die for. My glutinous, eager fingers made this photo come out embarassingly blurry, but what you'll find on that plate are eggs, breakfast potatoes, breakfast veggies, bacon, bread pudding, rice pudding and waay up there at the top were blueberries and raspberries. Why don't I just eat like this every day??

 More poor quality, but this was taken with a cell phone in a pretty much pitch black room so you'll forgive me. Both girls nap for 2 hours in the middle of the day and I was very thankful for their flexibility in our routine. I wasn't sure how it was going to go down with putting them to sleep in our hotel room each day, but it worked perfectly. Watching them sleep together on the bed made me dream more about them one day sharing their bedroom and perhaps even trying out sibling co-sleeping if that suits either of them. 

This picture won't do it justice but I hope you can get a good look. This is a pano of the view from the Giants of The Savannah view point at the Dallas Zoo. I actually ended up visiting the Dallas Zoo on two separate days because there was so much to see on the first day that we didn't get through everything. Thankfully I have an annual membership at the Woodland Park Zoo, which gave me reciprocal membership benefits of discount tickets. Zoos are kind of my thing (here's a list of zoos I've visited), so keep an eye out for what we thought of the Dallas Zoo. 

Catch the moment archives

These aren't on Instagram, but most others are!

Visiting the Aquarium of the Pacific - Our Family Trip to Long Beach (Part 2)

Read about our visit to San Pedro, Downtown Disney and how to babywear at the pool:

Long Beach trip Part 1

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Visiting zoos and aquariums has kind of become my thing when I travel with the kids. This past year we've tagged along on three of my husband's work trips - Long Beach, Whistler & Vancouver BC and Dallas, Texas. The Aquarium of the Pacific was my favorite part of our trip to Long Beach.

We have an aquarium in Seattle, but to be honest it really hasn't been updated since I visited in high school. I didn't know what to expect at all when we visited the Aquarium of the Pacific and in hindsight, it was one of my favorite days ever.

The Aquarium of the Pacific is right in the harbor at Long Beach. One of the first exhibits that we walked into was the deep sea exhibit which featured a recreated "whale fall." When a whale dies in the ocean, it falls to the ocean floor and becomes a source of nutrition for many animals. The Aquarium recreated the habitat that it would have become. When I saw it in October, it had already been on display for several years and it really wasn't as gross as you would expect. The crustaceans that were working on it kept everything very clean, so there were several spots where ribs and other bones were exposed but picked clean. I've always had a fascination with the ocean, especially whales and the deep sea, so I geeked out a little bit and texted pictures to my real-life marine biologist friend, who had participated in several whale decropsies. She geeked out too!

The most impressive view at the Aquarium of the Pacific if their Blue Cavern exhibit. It's modeled after Blue Cavern Point near Long Beach, a popular diving spot.

Several times throughout the day they got a team of divers in the water. They cleaned the glass, fed the fish and were mic'ed so they talked to the crowd about what they were doing, who they were feeding and conversation information.

We also visited the penguins, seals and jellies. Then I got kissed by a ray.

Penny was in a pretty intense shark obsession phase, so it was only perfect timing that the Aquarium has an area where we could touch different types of docile sharks. We worked up our courage and Penny was able to pet one. I could tell that she was not expecting the skin to feel like sandpaper!

When big sister took her regularly scheduled nap in the stroller, I took little Ruby out and she got to get an up close view of the colorful tanks without Penny's toddler agenda pulling us around. This is one of my favorite pictures of Ruby as a little baby.

We easily spent 6 hours at the aquarium that day. I walked through all of the exhibits several times, each time finding a different tank that we missed because of too many people crowding it. The outside area had toddler story time, a splash park and more climbing structures to give the kids something to play with.

At dinner that evening, Penny asked me to draw a few of her favorite animals that she saw. All I had was a napkin, but she was happy to color them in for me too.

Have you been to The Aquarium of the Pacific? What was your favorite part?

See what zoos The Pierogie Mama has written about

Our family trip to Long Beach (7 months later) Part 1

While I'm away on my next adventure, I realized that it was probably high time that I shared about my last big one with our little family. I'm talking about our trip to Long Beach, CA from back in October. Uhm...yea. Bad blogger. Normally I'd be super pumped about writing down our travels the second that we got home, but there's something about 2 kids that makes the words pause at the end of my fingertips and sometimes they just never make it to the blog. Sorry! But nonetheless, here we are. Enjoy!

My husband's current position in his company takes him around the country a little more often than we were accustomed to a few years ago. Most places that he travels to are boring or he has a work project to support and will be working 16 hour days, so it doesn't normally make sense for the girls and I to tag along. But on the rare occasion, he snags a work trip that has a light work load and is actually in a destination where we could turn it into a little family vacation. And that's what happened with Long Beach, CA back in October.

I'm a pretty independent gal and I love to travel. To turn my blog into a family travel blog would be a dream come true. But for now, I am blessed to be able to piggyback on a few of my husband's business trips. The girls and I have a blast. They travel very well and I like to justify these little trips as our warm up for our trip to Germany in the winter, to visit my parents.

During these work trips we expect that my husband will be occupied during working hours (and sometimes longer), so I make sure to find ways to fill our time and make our travels worth it. While he was networking about natural gas solutions for the semi trucking industry, the girls and I cavorted around the Long Beach area for 4 days. Our hotel was in San Pedro, not too far from Long Beach. For one of our days we puttered around the water front there.

There is a little walking trail that takes you along the water front that parallels Harbor Blvd. It takes you past the USS Iowa, and we ended at the Gateway Plaza Fanfare Fountain. Every so often, classical music begins to play and the fountains are choreographed along. It was really pretty!

After his work commitment that evening, we took the drive out to Disneyland and walked along Downtown Disney. My husband comes from a Disneyland lovin' family - he's been dozens of times throughout his childhood and together we have gone twice. Our girls aren't at the age yet where we could justify the expense of the park tickets, let alone the sheer stimulation overload! So we went the free route and walking along the street of Downtown Disney was enough free fun for all of us. My father in law keeps asking me when we think that we'll take the girls into the actual park, and our best guess is that when Penny is 8 years old and Ruby is 6 they will have a total blast. Hopefully we will have someday-Baby #3 (and maybe even someday-Baby #4) along with us, but at the moment we can only plan for at what age these two girls will have fun. :) We had dinner at Tortilla Joe's, where Penny got her first balloon animal and I learned a few secrets on how to make the perfect guacamole.

The locals had a good laugh at us too. It was October and the temperatures were in the high 60's, low 70's. That is called tank top, flip flop and shorts weather in Washington. My kids are out in the backyard in the swimming suits and playing in our sprinkler while I lounge on a blanket in that weather. Californians don't seem to think that's appropriate in October, so we got laughed at when we hauled our family down to the hotel's pool. It had already been shut down for the winter! But luckily the hot tub was turn down to low and we went in that instead. Whatevs, works for us!

Oh, and that ring sling that I'm sure you've noticed? The one that lets me wear Ruby and still play in the water? None other than the fabulous Beach Front Baby ring sling, of course!  Click on over to that link to read more about it! No babywearing parent should be caught without one this summer.

My absolute favorite part of this trip was our visit to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. As it turns out, I have started to make a habit of visiting the local zoo or aquarium whenever we travel somewhere. It's a fun outing for everyone because they tend to be very toddler friendly. There's countless lessons to learn about the animals, our environment and thinking about the big picture. Not to mention, it's a great way to expend some of that toddler energy that builds up when cooped up in a hotel room! Penny was able to run around and I didn't have to constantly reign her in. But that, my friends, is a story for another blog post! Head over to read about our adventures at The Aquarium of the Pacific.

Vancouver Aquarium

After this weekend, I feel like I'm on a West Coast tour of Aquariums. In the last year, I've been to the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium, Seattle Aquarium, Aquarium of the Pacific (post coming soon..so behind on this! We were there in October!) and now the Vancouver Aquarium. The only aquariums that I'm missing are Seaside Aquarium, Oregon Coast Aquarium, Monterey Bay, Morro Bay, Santa Monica and Cabrillo... Bucket list for 2016? ;)
So our weekend in Vancouver started off with a two night stay in Whistler. On Monday Adam had a meeting with a supplier in Vancouver so the girls and I spent that time at the Aquarium, which I haven't been to in about 15 years. I remember seeing the orca the last time I was there. In the emergence of the movie Blackfish (and my feelings towards cetacean capture in general), I was happy to learn that in the early 2000's Vancouver had created a bylaw preventing the Aquarium from displaying wild caught cetaceans and only obtain cetaceans from other facilities if they were born in captivity, captured before 1996 or were rescued and deemed un-releasable after this date (source). Since 2001 they haven't had an orca but currently have two belugas (one was the first conceived and born in a Canadian aquarium) and two rescued Pacific White Sided Dolphins. They do put on a show for both of these, but it's more of a walk through of their daily health check and training with a big emphasis on education of these animals. I whole heartedly agree that animals in general should have the freedom to be wild, but that's not the case every time and at the very least..I am thankful that institutions put forward the effort to education and conservationism. When I was younger, children would see the orcas and want to become trainers at Seaworld. Now this current generation will learn about these animals and hopefully want to be scientists who study them in the wild. 

My favorite part about aquariums is that the animals are always visible. Now that Penny is a toddler I take the time to stand in front of most of the tanks and talk to her about what's inside and have her describe as well. 

 My favorite animals to photograph are jelly fish!

Penny truly enjoyed the beluga show. She is too young to understand what the narrator was discussing, but it was so cool to see her finally realize that there is such a creature as a beluga (we sing the Baby Beluga song to her every night, since she was born). Penny kept shrieking "It's a BABY WOOOGA!" They did only one or two "tricks" but even as someone who has had an interest in whales all her life, I learned a lot! 

We also watched the dolphin show, which had a lot more acrobatics. Unfortunately..there's something about the dolphins jumping very high and the loud clap as they hit the water that just really upset Ruby. Poor baby just cried so hard whenever they did that! So we left the show early and I got a few very strange rude stares as we left. ? Sorry guys, yes I have to inconvenience you as I push through, my baby can't take it anymore. So strange.

Have you visited the Vancouver Aquarium?

See what zoos The Pierogie Mama has written about

Catch the moment: Week 3

Well, this week was all catch up because I didn't spend any time on the computer while on vacation (imagine that?!) and then the rest of the week was a battle between recovering from the explosion of post-vacation and the girls and I got the crud that's been passed around. But I did manage to take my "real" camera out more!

Squirt has come a long way with the kids. When Penny was born he kept his distance because rather than petting him, she preferred to yank his fur. With baby #2, I think he's learned that they're not all so bad and sometimes they make decent companions. Typically when I'm done cooking I lay the bowls, pots or pans on the floor and let him get a taste (and do a little dishwasher prep for me). This evening Ruby came over to check it out too, and he bravely stood his ground and allowed her to peer on while he cleaned up.

I took this picture because it was Ruby's first day of going into childcare at MOPs. Until now she's snuggled with me in the Boba and napped for most of the time. Nowadays she has little tolerance for the Boba if I'm just sitting down so she'd prefer to crawl. I decided that we were both ready for her to be in the care of MOPPETs while I got my mama break time. The girls were so darling that morning; Penny dressed herself (in a dress that I absolutely love and kind of wish they made it in my size) and I ended up putting Ruby into this little tunic dress that I remember Penny wearing a lot. As it turned out, poor Ruby had skipped her 20 minute power nap before MOPs and while she put in a good effort, this time was not meant to be so she returned to spend the rest of the morning with me. 

We finally took the getaway vacation that I have been whining longing for. Adam had a supplier meeting in Vancouver BC scheduled on a Monday, so we drove up the weekend leading up to it to Whistler and stayed at a great condo. It was located right by the Whistler walking trail and it was a less than 5 minute walk to the ski lifts and sledding. No skiing for us this time around, but it was so much fun to get to play in the snow multiple times in one weekend. Read more: Whistler weekend

I am not a football fan. I really can't even convince myself to jump on the Seahawks band wagon...yea, I've got Seattle pride and I understand it's a huge accomplishment. But to step up onto a soapbox for a moment, I *hate* it when teams are called "brave" or "heroes." Really? I'm going to quickly step off the box before I get into too much trouble and instead tell you about how we spent a part of our vacation having a quiet afternoon, warming up from a morning of sledding (and rain) to snuggle and watch the Seahawks win the NFC championship. Maybe it wouldn't have been my choice of what to watch on TV, but I'm blessed that we got to do it together. 

The afternoon that Adam had his meeting in Vancouver, he dropped us off at the Vancouver Aquarium so that the girls and I had something to do. I just love aquariums! I had not been to the Vancouver Aquarium in probably 15 years and much has changed. My favorite animal to photograph is always jellyfish and seeing Penny discover that a beluga whale is in fact a real creature (not just one we sing about) was pure magic. Read more: Vancouver Aquarium

These little hens of mine. I try not to get too gushy and put them up on an honorable pedestal, but really...these girls rock. When you think about what an intense and intricate process it is to create and lay an egg (almost daily), you can't help but be thankful for this seemingly simple gift that they give my family daily. Chickens are easy to keep and will surprise you with all the benefits they provide. I'd like to remember to take a page from their book; because a chicken lays an egg regardless of whether her day was crappy or awesome. Whether she got the extra attention or if she snagged a juicy worm. Without fail she'll still do her job and be sure that the whole world knows about it with her egg-song of triumph after.

This girl's imagination is at full speed. She loves to pretend and this time I caught this little conversation: "Come on little ducklings! Stay with your mama and you will be just fine. The daddies are at work but they will be home soon. Let's go swimming. The water is not too deep, it is just fine. Stay close to your sisters and your brothers."  more: A Penny for your thoughts

Catch up on previous weeks: 

Catch the moment archives

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Whistler family vacation

I've got a dormant monster inside of me. It's called wanderlust. I love to travel. Near or far, whatever it is I love seeing new places, eating new food and just seeing what else is out there. It's amazing to me how little we know of the great places so close to us. Wanderlust doesn't mean traveling across the globe. It's just being somewhere new.

Well, this past year has been a quiet year for us. It's been spent majorly focusing on this whole transition of one to two kids and the craziness that it ensues. We've also been cutting back on expenses in order to maintain staying a single income family and honestly that's way more important than vacations. Truly. However, sometimes we just need a change in pace.

The last few months I've been somewhat obviously hinting that I'd like to take a weekend getaway with just our family. "Oh look, did you see that That Mama Gretchen escaped to the coast?" Oh man, my husband got sooo tired of all my weekly updates of everyone's travel plans during the holidays. Well, it got the point across and last week he got invited to meet with a supplier for work in Vancouver, BC and he nonchalantly asked via email "hey, would you and the girls like to come up with me to Canada? ...We could make it a weekend in Whistler."

It wasn't even a minute later that I was on Air BnB looking up condos. I even found the perfect one that fit into our budget and right in the village. Alas, that didn't work out because of some kind of techno glitch and I was ready to throw in the towel because who has an available condo on the cheap on MLK Jr weekend. Then on my last ditch effort search I FOUND ONE. It was perfect! So I snapped it up and we prepared for our trip to the north. Squee!!!

We only live about 4 hours from Whistler and with all of our stops along the way (yay for Penny in taking her first long road trip in undies!!) we got there in about 6 hours. The border crossing was a breeze for us old pro's, took a stop for lunch and groceries and thoroughly enjoyed the drive out of Vancouver up to Whistler. My camera was packed away (!!) and my cell phone was dead (!!!!) so I couldn't document the absolutely gorgeous drive out there. We talked about going up again during the summer and hiking along the way.

We checked into our cozy little condo, which was at the Marquise and just across the street from the Whistler Walking Trail. A few minutes down this trail brought us to the back of the Whistler Fairmont, which is at the base of Wizard and Magic lifts. There was a bit of sledding behind the Fairmont but in the early evening when the lifts stopping running, many people came out to sled that part of the run.

The condo

We spent the next two days alternating between snow play and warming up in the condo. Unfortunately it poured rain all day on Sunday and that was the time that we decided to take the trail from the condo to Whistler Village. Normally it would be a 15 minute walk for an adult, but when you're pulling a sled with a toddler (who wants to get out half the time) and/or wearing a baby (both of you are bundled up in your snow gear), it takes like 45 minutes. Add that it was raining and creating huge puddles, and your toddler just LOVES puddles, which means their non-waterproof snowboots get soaked before you get to the village. Oh, and for some reason a ton of the restaurants and shops were closed! On a weekend during the winter season. So weird. But, we made it to Blenz for some coffee and cocoa, warmed up and started the trek home. Along the way, our brave all weather warrior passed out. Yes, those are pink gloves on her feet. We couldn't bear to put the wet boots and socks back on..

daily photo challenge for 2015

But no complaints here - it was exactly what this family needed. We are so project driven, between house renovations or whatever other project the hubs has going on, we very very rarely aren't "working" on a weekend. So it literally took us hopping the border to get a break.

On Monday, when Adam had his meeting with his supplier, he dropped us girls off at the Vancouver Aquarium so that we'd have something to do while he was busy. Read more about our Vancouver Aquarium adventure tomorrow!