Leprechauns and Suffragettes and Syrup, oh my!

 I don't think I have ever been so disappointed for warm weather... it made the trees bud too early and the sap quit running.  I've also never spent so much time agonizing over weather forecasts. Ha.  There's always next year, and next year these girls will be maple sap collecting pros! 

I don't like being up so high and I will use every available handhold!  :D  Poor Bob. :P

It was not really warm enough for a picnic but we wanted to keep an eye on the sap...

Such fun.

We spent most of our Friday off of school boiling sap, getting ready for potluck, and then looking at a house.  It was... interesting.  I mean, when the sellers acknowledge that it's a tear-down.... :P    Once again we are too picky- it's a little bit too wooded of an area and fairly densely populated for me; we heard multiple dogs barking and people noise the whole time we were walking the lot.  *sigh*  Oh well.  I would gladly build a new old house in a heartbeat (I might even have floor plans...) but not on that spot. :)

Anyway. Biography day is a big deal in 3rd grade.  Cecily got to be Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a pioneer women's rights activist.  (Bob suggested she be Lyudmila Pavlichenko.  Ha.  I don't think that would fly...) We have a picture book called "The Ballot Box Battle" about ECS, and she checked out a few more from the library and we all learned all about her life and times.  Most of the pictures of ECS are from when she is an older, white haired woman wearing all black.  Cecily didn't want to wear black, she thought maybe blue would be nice. With puffy sleeves.  *sigh*  Long leg-o-mutton sleeved blue dresses that look remotely historical without being too prairie-homespun for a well to do NY activist in kid sizes do not exist at thrift stores.  (I briefly considered the Target dress, but it was out of stock. Hehe.)  Soooooo, since I am insane and spend far too much time watching historical sewists on youtube while waiting for Miri to get sleepy, I decided to just make her a dress quick.   I found some blue civil war era reproduction fabric to use, although, I'm kind of wishing I had used something that looks a little bit fancier.  Oh well.  I dug out an old lace collar to dress it up a bit.  Mom: Is that my grandma's lace collar?!  Me: ummm.....maybe....  haha.  Don't worry, it's just tacked on and I didn't cut it. :P  

It's playhouse kitchen weather!  Wood slice pancakes are a favorite. 

We got to host potluck for the first time in over a year.  The girls went to the farm for the evening, and we had a lovely evening with lots of good food and conversation.  :)

I pulled out my zipper stash to work on Cecily's dress.... and I wasn't sure how I felt about having a zipper stash.  haha.  What have I become??  Gone are the days of crying over 4H dresses and taking out and redoing zippers 5 times before throwing up my hands and going with good enough.  Also, WAWAK sewing supply has a really inexpensive bundle of zippers.  

Little fearless Emmy wanted to play one of her piano songs for her class at school and Mr. W was more than happy to oblige and sent me a picture.  (Pretty sure Cecily cried when I asked her to play a song for our elderly neighbor.... they are very different.)

March in first grade means Leprechaun traps.  Woot.  Not my favorite project, but Cecily and Cadence were very willing to help out.

Hehe.  One last sap boiling day- it was chilly so we ate inside at the little kitchen table because it's closest to the patio door and I could watch the sap from the house.

I.  Don't even know.  When you come around the corner to see what the 4 year old is up too and she's got sidewalk chalk lipstick.

Maple syrup in fancy bottles!  Our sap total for the two weeks that the sap was running was about 16.5 gallons, and we made about 6 1/2 cups of maple syrup.  Such fun.  Next year, we're going to tap Dad's walnut trees because I want to try walnut syrup....

Beware the Ides of March... we had another ice storm and our half of town lost power.  The older girls were at school, so they came home with all kinds of stories about how much fun they had.  It was much less exciting at home, eating lunch by lantern light (propped up on paper products... so classy).

Cadence Mae 'fitting on' her Easter dress.  Yup.  I am crazy. 

Leprechaun trap all ready to go to school!  There's a trail of gold beads leading up to a trapdoor on top.

In the morning before school: "I don't want to take it in that big plastic bag!"
After school in the pouring rain: 'Aren't you glad I gave you that big plastic bag?' Grudgingly: "Yes."

Bob and I have very different brains... cinder block fire pit to me means a couple of cinder blocks in a general circle shape.  Bob built a veritable cinder block castle... haha. 

Saturday evening was communion.  The girls were supposed to go to the farm again, buuuutttt..... Mom realized that she couldn't smell the corned beef and cabbage she was making for lunch.  (One wonders why one would make that for lunch anyway, but I digress.)  So.  We were left without a babysitter 6.5 hours before we needed one.  And if you've ever tried to find a babysitter for communion, it's hard 4 weeks before, let alone last minute.  All of the church girls are taken or babysitting for their own siblings.. my brother had pity on me so they got to go play with Jack and Logan.  I felt like I spent the day on the phone and then driving back and forth to W-ton, and everyone got to bed late but we survived.

Sunday evening was the Easter Program!  There was great rejoicing.  Cecily's American Girl  doll has an adorable white tea dress (1910's era) that I loved and I suggested that the girls could all match her for Easter.  I bought a basic drop waist dress pattern to go off of and then copied Rebecca's dress as best I could.  I think they turned out really cute and the girls all love them.   

Girls in white dresses, with blue satin sashes pink grosgrain bows....

"Bocca! Dwess!"

Aaaannnd then Emmy threw up in her bed in the middle of the night.  The healthy two ended up on the living room floor (it smeeeeelllls! *sigh*)  for the rest of the night, although the dramatic terrified-of-sickness one thought I had put her there with the sick one so she couldn't sleep for fretting and stewing and somehow it didn't register that Emmy wasn't at school with her in the morning. Emmy on the other hand is a great little sick person, neither demanding nor dramatic and she spent a peaceful day watching cartoons and sleeping.  Isolation doesn't work so well when the lure of cartoons is so strong.... :P  

She missed school on Tuesday also, but everyone was feeling well enough to play in the rain after school. "Wunning... spwash!"

Singin' in the rain....

Bob grew me a salad!  The first cuttings from his indoor garden.  :D 

All week we were praying she would stay healthy through biography day- so excited for school!

She wanted a hat, but she did not want a bonnet (which would have been period correct) so we compromised with a walmart hat that was vaguely bonnet shaped. Sort of.  We pinned on some flowers and a cockade to make it fancy.  I get way too invested in these things, I know, but while we were reading up on her we discovered that legislators against equal suffrage wore red roses in their lapels and pro-suffrage wore white roses; and the Kansas suffragettes adopted the sunflower as their flower.  So.  You can add that to your store of unnecessary knowledge.  :)

Also, Bob thinks I'm turning the girls into angry feminists. Ha.  Not really.  :D  

Also, the other three will get their pick of women who were famous between 1850 and 1900 so we can reuse the dress.  

Miri and I got to go to Tate and Tamra's wedding shower last night. Otherwise, it's been quiet here.

Blessings.

Welcome to the Sugarbush!

 Miriel plays with dolls more than the other girls did, probably more than all of them combined.  :)  She reads them books and puts them to bed- shhhhhhh! Baby. Seeeeping.

The girls and I went to the farm on Saturday to play in Grandpa's snow cave. 

Hehe. So fun.

It was barely below freezing and it felt positively tropical after the previous week.  We played outside for a long time.

Gus loved it.  Foof-foof! 

Hooray for barnyard snow piles.  :) 

They are a bit too steep and pointy to sled down easily, but they tried! 

Little miss Miriel preferred being pulled on the sled while eating an icicle. 

Checking out the icicles on the cattle shed.

And back to the cave, which they decided needed furniture.  haha.  Silly girls. 

Then it was time for cocoa... and cookies. 

So. Earlier this winter I learned that you can tap several kinds of trees for sap, not just sugar maples. Any variety of maple tree, or walnut trees, or birch will produce sweet sap (sugar maple has the highest sugar concentration) that can be boiled down into syrup. 

Aaaaand we happen to be in possession of no less than eight maple trees in our yard.  Eight!  Seven silver maple, one red maple, and an autumn blaze that we just planted. Sooo... guess what we decided to do?! 

Look at my cute little tree tappers.     

As soon as the temp got above freezing we strapped on our authentic Adirondack pack basket (purely for aesthetic reasons- and for carrying the drill) and headed out into the woods yard.

They wanted to help put in the taps.

I bought a combination of 9 taps and the buckets and bags to go with them.  So far all but one of the trees is producing at least a little bit of sap!

Cadence and I 'did a craft' one morning; Paw Patrol fleece tied pillowcase.

The red maple has sap in the bag! So exciting.

Bob and some guys got together on Friday night- they ate Duck, pheasant, and quail... the girls and I got to hang out with Meg and her kids.  :)  Maria had a really cute, fun craft for the girls to work on.

David was very sweetly reading books to Miri.

Saturday was lovely outside.  We started boiling down the sap that we had collected.

It boiled and boiled while the girls played and Bob worked on burning the stick pile.

Snack time outside watching the sap boil.

In the almost 10 years that we've lived here we've burned sticks in the same place as the previous owner, and while we technically should have a fire pit, it's so far from any houses no one's ever said anything.  Until Bob was just finishing cutting everything into small pieces and burning a few at a time... controlled and safely... and one of the neighbors came out screaming obscenities at us.  *ugh*  Put a damper on the day.  So out of the blue. We were both like- we have got to get out of town. :P 

But, Maple syrup!!  It boils down to so little volume, it's hard to get an accurate temperature on my candy thermometer or on the meat thermometer... :P

Two gallons of sap boiled down to just under a cup of syrup, and it tastes so good.  So fun and satisfying!  Then we ate half of it on waffles Sunday morning. 

 Otherwise it's been pretty quiet here.  I sang at Helen's funeral, Miri went to the doctor, the girls are busy with school, they are loving gymnastics, piano lessons, lots of everydayness, which we love.

Also, we collected 5 gallons of sap today and it's taking over the fridge!  Good thing we like syrup... and if we're stuck in town we might as well turn it into an urban homestead.  Or something. Ha.  

Blessings.