You all know by now that we love gardening, particularly Ben, and we spend a lot of time working on our garden. I’m excited to announce that my husband is now part of the California Rare Fruit Growers Association! I think it’s so cute! He joined this past month and he went to his first meeting a couple weeks ago (they have monthly meetings). You know how some guys have fantasy football?! Well, my guy has the Rare Fruit Growers Association!  Personally, I think this is way hotter than being into fantasy football, but that’s just me.

I want to go to a meeting with him at some point, but honestly, all that technical gardening stuff is just way over my head and I’m all about just eating eat. Besides the meeting, the following Saturday they had a field trip to a local farm to check out their fruit. This was open to the families of the members, so all of us girls tagged along too.

When we got there we tried something called paw paw, jujubes, and che. We loved them all, particularly the che. One member of the group also made spaghetti squash bread and my girls were happily guzzling that stuff down! Before the tour started though, Glow got stung by a bee and her hand started to swell. Thankfully, I got the stinger out right away and we had medicine on hand, but as you can imagine, that was a bit of an ordeal. Then midway through the tour, Soul got a big chunk of cactus stuck to her ankle, which she tried to remove with her hand, and then we ended up spending a bit of time with tweezers trying to take every prickly piece out (so thankful for a kind lady who had tweezers on hand!). Overall though, we all had fun despite our little unfortunate events, and we were able to finish the tour, and we even went home with a big bag of pomegranates.

Seeing this little place made us dream of having more land to grow fruits and veggies on and for more space for the girls to run around like crazy! There were grapevines there and they just stood there for 15 minutes picking fresh grapes and popping it in their mouths (they allowed us to do that). They were all thoroughly enjoying themselves. That was their favorite part of the tour. It was a such a hot day, but we all had so much fun on this farm.

We’re thankful for our house and how we’re able to transform our little suburban backyard into a garden that works for us, but maybe one day, our fruit farm dreams will come true (not sure if I’m cut out for animals), but hey, you never know!

That first picture above demonstrates what goes between the sisters at home. Soul often says, “No!” to Brave and refuses to go with the flow of her older sisters. She’s the one that fights with them most, in fact, she bullies them! But when the two older girls are gone at school, Soul incessantly complains about them not being there and counts down until it’s time to pick them up. Oh that girl! Then once they get home, she starts fighting with them again. HA! It’s really funny and not so funny at the same time.

I was talking with someone over the weekend about what I think is the perfect age gap between kids. I think 4 kids pretty much back to back is insanely crazy, but I’m living proof it’s doable. If you want to maintain a little more sanity, two years seems like a nice little spacing between kids (in my opinion). Though when I look at True and Brave and their friendship, I’m very glad they are so close in age. They fight, but it doesn’t last long, and they love on each other so much. If you’re up for a challenge and would like an adventure, then getting pregnant when you have a 6 month old baby might be for you. Based on True and Brave, the outcome is pretty nice even if I have lost more hairs along the way. Then, just throw two more in there and there’s never a dull moment, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. Our house is full of chaos, but also a lot of love!

If you have kids, what are the age gaps of your children?

on me: top, kohls. vest-thing, anthro. jeans, c/o old navy (worn here). shoes, vintage. on true: dress, vintage. socks, target. shoes, vintage. on brave: shirt, thrifted. tie, ben’s. pants, c/o old navy. shoes, thrifted. on soul: dress, vintage. pants, can’t remember. shoes, salt-water sandals. on glow: dress, vintage. shoes, c/o freshly picked.

P.S. I have a friend in the Los Angeles area looking for a roommate and she lives in the echo park area. This is her cute little place (complete with rooftop deck and view of the lake) and if you’re interested, email her here hope.makes.music(at)gmail(dot)com.

Crab Cakes with Lemon Aioli. Very good and threw cayenne pepper in there because we love spicy. I already have some lump crab meat (a decent price at trader joe’s!) in the fridge to make more soon!

Yakisoba Chicken. I winged this one and it came out good. This was for the girls, since I was cooking up something spicy for Ben and me. True still doesn’t like mushrooms, but she liked all the rest of it. The baby really loved this dish! She was the last one standing.

Jjambbong (Korean-Chinese Spicy Noodle Soup). This was so good and I doubled the recipe and doubled the amount of chili it called for. Ben said, “You for sure have to make this in the winter!” Mind you, I made this when it was sweltering hot outside, so we were double sweating from the weather and the heat in the food. Such a good recipe and if you like spicy foods, make this!

Spaghetti and Meatballs. I know it’s basic, but even still I usually need a recipe to make something from scratch. This time, I didn’t even use a recipe for the meatballs! I’m slowly getting more comfortable venturing off on my own, but I still wouldn’t say I’m a cook of sorts. Maybe one day it will come more naturally, but until then, I’ll keep practicing.

Week of 9/23 – 9/27

Monday: Fish Tacos
Tuesday: Leftovers
Wednesday: Chicken Enchiladas
Thursday: Curried Split Pea Soup 
Friday: Sushi/pizza night

I’ve cooked so many different recipes in my family meal planning. I definitely should do a round up of my top ten. There is so much to learn in the kitchen. I’ve been the main chef these days that it’s been months since Ben has cooked and cooking is more natural to him than me. Family planning has definitely saved us a lot of time and allowed us to enjoy our dinners more together as a family. We’re so thankful for our dinner times!

The baby. Friday afternoon, I dropped the girls off for piano lessons and the baby and I set off for lunch with friends. I remember one being tough when it was just True. It’s overwhelming to be a first time mom and there are a lot of changes (sleep?! what’s that?!)! But once you slowly (or we kind of did it quickly) work your way up to 4, and then get an afternoon with just one, the difference is amazing. One becomes a piece of cake.

This week’s learned, links, and thankfulness…

I’m noticing this week that True and Brave are better at summarizing the central idea of a story. Yay!

Glow loves hats. It’s her jam of late. I guess once you turn two, you find your style.

Soul said the cutest thing, as she was crying with lots of tears she said, “True, you’re making my heart break.” Well, long story short, True told Soul she wasn’t loving God because she was being rude (and Soul admitted to being rude). I guess that made her heart break because she wanted to love God.

Thankful for our church family. They encourage us so much! If you’re in the LA area, come visit us!

Loved my friend Karen’s interview (read it here). She’s the brain behind Misha Lulu and one of the most creative (and kind) people I know!

I think the SoCal has finally arrived. At least, I hope.

Tonight is Salvage Life store opening! If you’re in SoCal, I think you should go!

Love this reminder. So true.

I want to plan a fall potluck with friends. I think it would be fun to have a fall celebration get together!

I want a cute flounce or flared skirt for fall. I might to try and make one.

This fall we’re working on major garden changes. Oh that yard of ours is always changing. So much trial and error goes on all the time, I can’t wait to share until things are finally settled and figured out!

Glow gets her 2nd official breakfast in bed (see her first one here). We had a special birthday adventure out planned and there wouldn’t be any opportunity for birthday cake, so I made her this cake for her breakfast in bed. We let her have the first few bites of it, then we cut it up so each girl could have a slice. They devoured the entire thing and there was nothing left!

After they filled up on cake, Glow opened her presents. In that picture above with wrapped presents, only one thing in that pile was from us and everything else was made by the girls. They came up with their own ideas and I had no clue what they had made until it was time for Glow to open it. Our Glow is obsessed with bears, she calls them “baby,” so it was cute to see all the little bear things the sisters made for her. There were pop-up cards, bear paper dolls, and bear drawings. That’s also why Ben chose to make her a little bear out of lemons on her tray. She kept pointing at the lemon bear and saying, “Baby!”

Our gift for her was a mama-made bear softie (in the last photo). She gave it a big hug once she opened it. We were stuck on what to give her because she has 3 older sisters, so there’s not much she needs (she gets plenty of hand me downs), so we figured a bear was the best thing. I worked on a pattern and came up with this little gal. It’s been attached to her ever since! I will be sharing how I made it soon (with a downloadable pattern and all!), so you can make one yourself if you so desire a “baby” for a little one in your life.

After the breakfast and present time, we all quickly got dressed to head out (okay, it wasn’t that quickly as we left the house an hour and a half later than planned!). We had a special day planned to celebrate our littlest love…

In our homeschooling post, I wrote about how I love integrating literature and using a story to connect to other subject areas. Well, Chronicle Books sent over a stack of books and the book, Little Red Writing, was a perfect bounce-off story that we were able to use to make many different connections with. We’re deep into nouns, pronouns, and verbs right now and this story allowed us to talked about those parts in depth even more. Then, we got into story plot, and then summarizing, and the list can go on and on.

The wonderful thing about Chronicles Books’ site, is that besides the great story, Chronicle Books has downloadable discussion guides to accompany (most) their books (and they’re FREE folks!). These guides meet Common Core standards and help give more depth to the learning that come out of these stories. I’m all about this! Actually, I’m not sure if I ever mentioned this, but Ben works two jobs and besides being a health educator at a local hospital, his other one is working for a local school district creating lesson plans that teach nutrition. These lesson plans meet California Content Standards, include children literature, and have various ideas to show how nutrition can be connected to other subjects learned in school. These guides totally remind me of the lessons Ben creates!

Anyway, as we discussed the story, I used the tips and suggestions in the guide. We did a compare and contrast chart with the original Little Red Riding Hood versus Little Red Writing. The girls laughed at the fun facts I shared from the worksheets. Did you know March 30th is National Pencil Day?!! It’s such a good resource for any teacher or parent who wants some sort of guide that will help further their child’s ability to make connections and practice reading comprehension.

We took the Little Red Writing story even further to create our own characters…
Each girl created her own character with a pencil. Brave’s was Pencil Spidey (you know her love for Spider-Man) and True’s was Pencil She-rah (this is her favorite super hero). The directions are simple just wrap and draw, but be sure not to wrap the tape all the way to the bottom, that way you can still sharpen your pencil. After they created their characters, they did some free-writing and created a story using their characters.

Many of Chronicle’s traditional books have the discussion guide/activity kits to accompany it. We have a nice stash of books they sent over, so we will definitely be using the guides as we go through these too.Chronicle Books wants to set one of you up with a nice little stash of books… all you have to do is leave a comment telling me your all time favorite book and you could be entered to win $100 of Chronicle Kids books as a prize! If you wanted to check out some of their discussion guides/activity kit, check it out here, here, or here. Not only are there guides for discussing books, but there are kits that give you resources to have a party centered around a book! This one on Ivy & Bean is pretty neat. Giveaway will end next Wednesday, September 25th at 8am PST. The winner will be announced at the bottom of this post.

Chronicle also has a Pinterest account called Chronicle Classroom and there you can even get more resources for reading and learning activities, and there it’s broken down nicely by grade (Love everything in this section for my girls!). As a homeschooling mama, I definitely appreciate good resources like this that are easy to navigate and are engaging (and eye catching) for the kids. Look at how great this simple math card is!

*This post is sponsored by Chronicle Books. Thank you for continuous support of this space and my sponsors! I appreciate you all very much!!! Don’t forget to leave a comment on this post so you can win your own stash of books to add to your library!

The winner of the $100 prize of books is…Congratulations Lindsey P. and I will send you an email shortly! Thank you everyone who entered! I added so many other books to my must-check-out list!!! Thank you!!!