Charlie Brown

We have a new addition to our family and his name is Charlie...well, officially his name is Charlie Brown. Olivia chose his name. She couldn't decide between Spiderman, Peter Parker, or Charlie. Thank goodness she chose Charlie!

He is a 9 week old Black Lab that we got free from a friend of a friend. He needed a home, so we made the big leap into doggie parenthood. So far, so good. He is a smart and playful little pup that plays hard then totally crashes!

Olivia is just beside herself with excitement that she has a real puppy! She asked Stephen, "Daddy isn't this fantastic? We have a puppy!!!!" She is doing well with her role as big sister. She even read him a book about puppy housetraining today in the car and said "...and soon you'll be housetrained, too!"

I'm sure I will have more to blog about little Charlie but this is his introduction. Enjoy the slideshow!

Jim's Farm

Definitely one of the highlights of our time here in California has been Jim's Farm. We have been members of his Community Supported Agriculture for 2 years. We get a share of his crops every week. Basically, we get a box of veggies and fruit from him every Thursday. Olivia and I go to his farm Thursday afternoons and sometimes Wednesday mornings.

Olivia has become an expert tomato picker...um....or should I say expert tomato eater. :-) Often I will look over to her after about 20 min of picking and notice she has not put one tomato in her basket. They've all been put in her mouth. haha. She is so funny. Olivia's friend Caroline enjoys picking the tomatoes, too, however she doesn't like the taste, so she feeds them all to Olivia!!! What a hoot!

We took our 3rd annual field trip to Jim's Farm on Monday. We invite friends of ours from Base to tour the farm each year. The small organic farm is located on his family’s farm land. His family has been farming this land since the late 1800s! He treated us to all-you-can-pick red and orange cherry tomatoes. The orange Sun Gold tomato is my absolute favorite. When I say it tastes like candy, I'm not kidding. They are divine. He also picked flowers for us and treated all of my friends to bright, beautiful bouquets of flowers. Fun was had by all!

I don't know if the farm would be as much fun if Jim wasn't such an interesting and friendly guy. You can tell he loves what he does and is proud of his farm. He has a great website (www.JimsProduce.net) that one of the Airmen here at Beale created for him. It will be so sad to leave this area of California but I will always have these amazing memories of Jim's Farm.

Bridgeport

Olivia and I enjoyed a day at Bridgeport. It was a beautiful morning and afternoon. It was so quiet there. We enjoyed the beauty of the river, the bridge, the trees, the sky. You name it and we marvelled at God's creation of it. I think we covered about every topic from river currents to booty shaking. After 3 hours of splashing, swimming, and jumping in the water, Olivia tells me that we need to "bask in the sun." We spread out the towel and lay together, loving the rest (and Olivia loving her thumb) and she asks, "Mommy, are we basking?" I assured her that we were "basking". She has no idea how much I loved "basking" with her. Precious.

Mendocino

This past weekend, we enjoyed a trip to Mendocino, CA. It's nestled on the Northern California coast about 5 hours from Beale. If you've seen "Murder She Wrote", you've seen Mendocino. They filmed the intro to the show there. Thanks to Shawn and Shelly we stayed at the Inn at Schoolhouse Creek. We had an amazing time! I think we all fell in love with each other, again. You know...when you spend so much busy time doing life things at home you forget how much you truly enjoy each others company. I love that Stephen got to spend so much time with Olivia. He got to hear even more of her precious little voice saying the funniest things. 

We were checking out our room when we first arrived and I was amazed at all the amenities (microwave, fridge, white noise machine, endless supply of filtered water). Olivia walked in the bathroom and said with her innocent little excited voice "Mommy, they have a potty!!!!" Thank goodness. That would have made for an interesting weekend. She was also impressed with the number of garbage cans. She took me on a tour of all of them. I can attest that she is very thorough and an excellent tour guide.

Saturday, we went on a 4 mile (we think) coastal trail. Breathtaking! It ended at a lookout where we watched baby seals ride the waves. We were also enamored with the squirrels. Their fur was just beautiful. We went to Glass Beach after lunch. A glass factory a long time ago had dumped their rejected glass on this beach. That doesn't totally make sense to me. Why on a beach? Anyway, the glass is all smoothed over now. We enjoyed collecting red, blue, and green glass. Stephen found an awesome piece that was part of a measuring cup. Very cool. 

Olivia loved digging in the sand. She created Hook's pirate ship complete with Peter Pan, Tinkerbell, and a few other Princesses. There were "a fundred people there, Mommy" as she held up all her fingers. When the masterpiece was complete, she stood up and said "Mommy, look at my imagination!!!" Precious. 

We ate at the Raven's Restaurant on Saturday night. Olivia was beyond tired and at one point just lay on the floor. She's a trooper. This restaurant is a part of the Sanford Inn By the Sea which is an all Vegan B & B. They grow most of their vegetables in their gardens. I was in heaven.

Sunday, we went to Van Damme State Park and rode the Fern Canyon Trail. There were signs up all over about Mountain Lions. We shared this info with Olivia. Big mistake! Bless her little heart...she was so scared. The sign said to make noise, so that the Mountain Lions don't get spooked. She sang for 30 min straight-"Do a Dear" tune with whatever words came out. Precious. She calmed down and resorted to sucking her thumb for the rest of the ride. 

Of course, I took pics of all the food we ate. That was hard. You can see that I would remember to take the pic after 1 or 2 bites. At the end of the trip, Stephen started reminding me. So sweet. Olivia is a budding photographer, so I have included her pics, too. Most of them are of me eating. Yikes! I guess I did a lot of that this weekend. 

What's Cooking?

Here are a few dinners we had in the last week or so. Well, okay these are the ones that turned out really yummy! The others I obviously will not blog about since they were only mediocre or sucked.  I had 3 nights of meals that were awesome! Stephen said I was on a role which was a super nice complement. Maybe, I'm becoming a better cook! I hope so. That is my goal.

1. Tomato and Arugula Pasta (rice noodles) with Roasted Summer Squash recipe courtesy of Farmer Jim's Newsletter. This was so super simple and Stephen loved it! Olivia kept saying that it was too spicy. I'm guessing that was because of the arugula and raw garlic...at least she tried it! I tossed her some noodles with a little olive oil and halved baby tomatoes. She liked that better. Roasted summer squash is my new favorite. I love roasting! I had never tried summer squash, though. I used the directions out of Veganomicon. I'm happy to say that I am totally caught up with all my squash from our CSA. Last year, I was so sick of zucchini and summer squash. :-) I also added Almesan on top. If you can guess it...it's parmesan made out of almonds. How genious! Thanks, Isa's (Veganomicon). I didn't get it quite as ground up as it should have been to imitate parmesan better but it still added nice flavor.  

Another note...the pic is so bad, sorry. I was super hungry and got impatient. 

2. Sunny Summer Squash Soup with side of Kale from Susan at fatfreevegan. Another great way to use my CSA squash. Stephen said "Honey, this is absolutely delicious." I couldn't believe it. I used all the optionals Susan listed on her site. I just steamed some Kale for the side. I think I should have had an additional side, though. I was hungry about an hour after I ate this. I needed a spoonful of peanut butter. I always need a spoonful of peanut butter (or two)! 

3. Mexican Lasagna (or Enchilada Casserole) from Susan at fatfreevegan. I have no idea how Susan was able to get her dish out in such a nice square. She's amazing. As you can see from my pic, it was messy but oh so yummy! The fam loved this one. I enjoyed it for days after on top of salads at lunch and Olivia enjoyed hers in whole wheat pitas. It needed some salsa when I ate it leftover. It lost a little flavor. Still a winner! 

Afternoon at the Park

Olivia and I spent the day together while Stephen had some Daddy time. We got to see The Little Mermaid on Base performed by the Missoula Fine Arts Camp. It was very different from the movie, so Olivia asked "Where's Ariel...Where's Prince Eric...Where's Ursula?" She really enjoyed it, though.

Then, we went to Ryden Park for a picnic. Olivia is very into pretend play. First, we built Noah's Arc with hammers and screwdrivers (a.k.a. sticks). She used the top of an acorn for a screw. Pretty clever! Next, I became Maria from The Sound of Music and Olivia was the policeman searching for me in the Abby. She, of course, captured me and sent me to jail. And finally, she was Spiderman and I was a poor lady being attacked by the Green Goblin. Spiderman saved me. Thank goodness! What a fun day with my creative little girl. She's precious to be around.

Compassion for Animals

We went to visit the Farm Sanctuary in Orland, CA. It was awesome! Olivia LOVED the animals. Her favorite and mine were the pigs. So cute! So HUGE!

We fell in love with Lilly. I never thought an animal could look like their name but she does. That face is just adorable....all 800 + pounds of her! If I remember correctly, Lilly ran away from her farm where she was about to be slaughtered. Some locals found her and took her to the Farm Sanctuary. Lucky girl!

We went on a 45 min tour of the farm. It was HOT! As you can see from the slideshow at the bottom, we saw chickens, turkeys, ducks, cows, rabbits, pigs, sheep, goats. It was a very uplifting experience. I felt so good about my decision to be Vegan. Factory farming practices of abusing, neglecting, and torturing animals makes me physically sick. Hearing all about that, again, was not so pleasant but meeting the animals and seeing them so well taken care of was awesome.

A little side note...I couldn't believe how friendly the cows were. They came and rubbed our legs until we pet them, just like a cat. It was funny.

Olivia of course had a ton of questions. "Mommy why do they get killed?" "Mommy why do some people eat animals?" I got her a great video about the subject- My Friends at the Farm, cultivating compassion video. It showed thousands of chickens in one small warehouse and cows and pigs in cages where they could not even turn around. They spend their whole lives that way! It also showed how animals should live their lives....seeing the outside and how not eating meat and dairy is better for our earth.

On the way home, Olivia even told her Daddy they couldn't eat "Chicken Fried" (her name for fried chicken bites they got one time at KFC) anymore. haha.

Check out the Farm Sanctuary website. It's www.farmsanctuary.org. All in all it was a very fun adventure. Stephen enjoyed it, too. We ran across this Dam that was beautiful. Stephen was wishing he had a boat, again.