While I was washing up the dinner dishes a couple of nights ago, I heard the screen door slam and two little sets of footsteps running down the path to find NannyJane.

Apparently, they were in search of greener pastures and wanted to take Ester Lily for an evening stroll.

Once again, Mia is in her pajamas and cowgirl boots. I suppose it’s her own unique farmgirl-style statement.

Miss Mia sings everywhere she goes, and if she isn’t singing, she’s acting like everything is a drum set. So while the girls help NannyJane with feeding the cows, she sings and the cows are baffled…

In the last two pages of our children’s book, Moo-n Over Main Street Metropolis, we created a project for kids so they can have their very own Jersey cow. All they have to do is make a color copy of the cow, Sally O’Mally, in the book onto cardstock, write their cow’s name on her pinafore, cut her out, take a photo of the two of them together, and mail or e-mail it to us. We’ve posted some of the photos on our HeritageJersey.org website.

Here’s a glimpse of Dolly Anna and Gladys Pippi on their first trip with us.

Since we’re in between moving out of our old home and moving into our new home, we’re bunking up at the farm with NannyJane. We’re calling it our “farmcation,” and you might see a few more farm pics in the coming weeks.

We just got back from an East Coast trip, so we’re waking up with the sun and the rooster, and this morning, we decided we’d wander out our back door at the farm …

A beautiful morning with my favorite hikers.

My fraternal grandparents had a house on the Cape during my childhood. My summer memories are filled with all things Cape Cod.

So taking my little family back is a dream come true for me. We filled our days with the beach and bike rides to and fro. And our evenings were spent eating seafood and fresh veggies from the same farm I frequented with my grandmother as a child.

The Crow Farm stand has actually been selling veggies since the 1960s in its current location. Not much has changed since I was a kid.

I picked up some corn they were just bringing in from the fields. And a beautiful head of lettuce.

Then we completed the meal with a few of these …

And caught the sunset on the beach.

Thankful for farmstands and childhood memories that have withstood time. And thankful for memories in the making!

When Mia brought home a small cucumber plant that she had been meticulously watering the last few weeks of school from a small seed she planted, she was so proud and I was a tad worried.

I knew we were hoping to move and wasn’t sure where we should plant this precious plant. But NannyJane came to the rescue and Mia carefully dug a hole at the farm in the designated cucumber area of the garden. She and NannyJane have watered it carefully (NannyJane may have watered it a little more).

She took her time picking which cucumber she wanted to devour first.

Then we peeled it and added a titch of salt.

Yummy! Mia may have a green thumb. But it’s also clear she does her best gardening (and eating) in her pajamas!

We sold our house!

We are so excited to be moving across town to something closer to the schools and parks and downtown. We’ve been boxing it all up.

And we’ve never had such a big truck in our driveway before.

On to our next chapter!

We snuck off! Kidless! Just the two of us!

I adorned my stoop with my new rug, shook out my checkered tablecloth for the picnic table, hung some lace and ribbons, and hubby and I officially took our Tabitha glamping at The Gorge Amphitheater in George, Washington.

The Gorge hosts a spectacular concert and sunset too!

We had a wonderful time and can’t wait to take our Tabitha out with the whole family in a few weeks,

Piles of books. I have them all around. Some are mine, some are my hubby’s, some are for the girls, some I want to pass on to friends and family, and some I keep in my collection because I have plans to get to them soon. They give me a sense of anticipation, all those stories waiting to be told, all those new characters waiting to be met.

Almost every reader I know has at least one pile of books that stares at them, and it appears that these staring piles of books are a “thing” shared round the world. In fact, the Japanese have a word for it. Tsundoku is a noun that describes a pile of unread books, or refers to a person who buys books and doesn’t read them, and then lets them pile up on the floor and shelves. It is believed that the word entered the Japanese language in the late 1800s as a pun. The story goes that the original word, tsunde oku, meaning to let something pile up, got swapped out for tsunde doku, which literally means reading pile. The two words were eventually combined and shortened to make them easier to pronounce.

While my piles of books have all been boxed up while we get ready to move from one home to the next, I left out the reading pile … Just in case I have a moment with a cup of tea and a new book.

I love it when my girls spend time with the elderly nuns who live in a nearby convent. I’ve found myself loving the interaction and wished it happened more often.

sweet hands via PresentPerfectFilm.com

So when I learned of an assisted living facility in Seattle that also houses a preschool within its walls, I had no doubt that it was an excellent idea. The 400+ residents of Providence Mount St. Vincent assisted-living center interact on a daily basis with the children, age birth through 5, who attend The Intergenerational Learning Center. The broad purpose of the ILC is to help children learn about the elderly, specifically naturalizing the aging process, accepting people with disabilities, reducing their fear of older adults, and just relishing the plain old joy of receiving unconditional love and attention.

reading a book via PresentPerfectFilm.com

It’s a total win-win situation, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Check out what filmmaker Evan Briggs has put together at PresentPerfectFilm.com. Briggs hopes that her beautiful film will spark more discussion about how to expand the model further. The film’s title, “Present Perfect,” refers to the fact that while these two groups of people have no future or past in common, their relationships emerge and exist entirely in the present and are absolutely beautiful.

doing a puzzle via PresentPerfectFilm.com