The New Locavores

The big excitement this week is that our CSA farm box had started!  From now through mid-November we'll be picking up a weekly box of fruits, vegetables, fresh eggs and a bouquet of flowers from our local synagogue. 

Of course before the synagogue, it came from a farm called Garden of Eve in upstate New York. Not only is it exciting to be surprised each week with what fresh produce we'll be receiving, but it's also a great lesson for the kids to learn about what produce grows in this region and which seasons they grow in. I've already had to explain to Ella why her wish of getting mangoes next week won't come true (next week or any week for that matter).  

And the kids have started to notice the signs in Whole Foods that tell them that their apples were shipped all the way from New Zealand and their bananas from Mexico. It's good for me too to be reminded to pay attention to those signs and remember all of the energy (and waste) that went into getting that produce here - not to mention the fact that they were probably picked a week or more ago and very under ripe. Even the kids notice the taste difference in our new local produce.

And Holden liked the peonies.

My hope is to be able to take the kids up to the farm to visit before the growing season is over (yes, unlike California, the box isn't available year-round).

We've also officially adopted one of the garden beds at their school over the summer. That means we'll get to plant, grow and harvest anything we want this summer.

That is, if we have time.

And how cute is our Spanish tutor/piano teacher and her sea foam green guitar?!? She was singing a song that she wrote in Spanish to Holden and having him write down the color names as she serenaded him. [Especially for the Grandmas: don't forget that you can click on any photo to make it bigger.]

Tomorrow is my and Kevin's ten year wedding anniversary.  He's playing hooky from work and we'll spend the entire day together, child-free.  Our babysitter is picking the kids up from school so when I say the entire day, I mean the ENTIRE day.  I'll fill you in next week on our shenanigans.  Meanwhile, tomorrow also happens to be World Day at school.  The one day where both Ella and Holden's classes are having presentations that the parents are supposed to attend and ooh and ahh over their kids' masterpieces.  Kevin and I thought for about 30 seconds about still going even though this was supposed to be our child-free day to focus on each other.  Then decided better and stuck to our original plans.  So I went into Ella's classroom yesterday to help them set-up for it and get a peek at what we'll be missing.  Each class presents a different country to the rest of the school.  Ella's is Fiji and Holden's is Yemen (Holden refused to get a henna tattoo with the rest of the class.  Party pooper.).

Ella's homemade grass skirt.

And Sleeping Beauty