Lately

1. I spent most of the last week gloriously alone – my big kids went away on vacation up north to the Upper Peninsula (my son recently said, “Do you pee in UP?”) with Jacob and his family, while the baby and I stayed behind.

Now, I am a strong believer in the stay-at-home parent carving out a healthy hunk of personal space in the course of daily life, and in taking every opportunity to send the kids to grandma’s and playdates to this end, but a long stretch like this was absolutely unprecedented, and a very special treat indeed.

Does this ever happen to you?

I also discovered a curious phenomenon – when you don’t have little kids in the house, things stay picked up after you’ve picked them up. Why didn’t I experience this before becoming a mom?

2. This is my son after he came back from vacation:

What my big sister thinks I am (a girl)…

What I think I am (a kitty)…

What my mom thinks I am (a cutie!)!

3. I am not entirely positive the baby noticed that her big siblings were gone. She didn’t appear to miss them.

While they were gone, I took this batch of photos of her. The most uninterrupted photoshoot ever!

4. I bought an ice-cream maker while they were away. Turns out, making ice-cream is simple, and because I am highly attuned to freshness, I found it tasting 100% better than boughten. In the week that I’ve owned it, I fully cracked the code behind both custard and non-custard varieties and made numerous batches. So easy.

This was the raspberry ice-cream.

This was the non-custard vanilla ice-cream.

The world of ice-cream is rife with possibilities.

5. The eggs in the bluebird house on my porch (sic!!) have hatched, and the bluebird parents have been tirelessly bringing the babies fat grasshoppers and moths and grubs.

I love having birds around.

6. It rained!

The incredible Midwestern drought we’ve been having was briefly broken by a really good, heavy rain, which I think may have turned the corn around, at least for a bit, at least where we are. I sure hope we get more rain, because things are positively starting to look scary. Our lawn is yellow, and we are likely to start feeding hay to our cows in August instead of November. Good thing we made plenty extra.

7. My three-year-old son loves to vacuum – this is because he loves machines, and vacuuming is as close as he gets to operating one:

8. My husband made campfire flatbreads yesterday:

Along with:

Campfire-grilled steaks from our cows and hobo packs with the nice veggies from the local farmer’s market.

He marinated the steaks in butter and garlic. Not a whole lot of butter, but butter still. It’s the cowboy thing.

How was your week?