Most of the time my gardens look better in my mind. 
In my own theoretical universe I shower them with time and attention and they reward me with a constant show of blooms.
And sometimes the beauty of reality puts my dreams to shame.
The Cull – Blood Demon by Eric J. Gates
Alright.
I know.
It’s the fourth book and you already know that I love them. But I just have to tell you…
They keep getting better!
Would I recommend it? Well, no.
What I’d recommend is that you start with Bloodline, move on through Bloodstone and Blood Feud and then I’d definitely, really, for surely, absolutely recommend this one too!
Clara’s Favorites at 5 Years Old
Clara what’s your favorite…
Color – Blue- that’s easy!
Animal –Cats
Food – Bratwurst, on the grill. (With no bun and lots of ketchup for dunking.)
Clothes – “Dress with circle-y star thingy and blue pants.” (You got that, right? Let me help, a black and white tied dyed dress with dark blue leggings.)
Dog – Rosie at Grandma Mary’s, but at our house Trip. (My dog wins again!)
Cat – Gypsy (Gypsy starts purring when she realizes I’m going to lift her up and tuck her in with Clara at night. Once she’s tucked in you can hear her right across the room!)
Person – Lola
Thing to do – Eat popsicles. (She wants to eat popsicles even when it’s freezing cold and nasty outside. We do not see eye to eye on popsicle eating.)
Thing to do inside – Watch Doc McStuffins. (Once. I think she’s watched that here once. I think her favorite thing to do is run around the circle that makes up the bottom of the house, chasing her sisters and her friends and screaming every time they see each other. Or it just seems like it because of the loud factor.)
Chore –Feeding the cats. (Clara is a very good cat feeder. Apparently it’s because cats are her favorite animal. Good thing I ask these questions so I figure this stuff out.)
Time of day – In the night time. Because sometimes at book club we get to see your friends. (Guess who just hosted book club?)
Place to go –Grandma Pat’s- even on Halloween. (I have no idea what the “even on Halloween” refers to. Grandma Pat got them all awesome costumes last year and I hate Halloween. It should say especially on Halloween! But you know, she’s five, so maybe that’s what she meant.)
Song – Bursts into song “Cows go white on the mountain tonight, not a cow to be seen, a kingdom of isolation and it looks like I’m the cow…” (And for the uninitiated yes, that was Let it Go, with Cows.)
Flower – Strawberry flowers AND pansies.
Farm Animal – giggle giggle Cats. Nope, weirdos. Just kidding cats. (So, cats then, definitely cats.)
Friend – Lola
Movie – Ok I’ll tell you my favorite movie now. What’s it called… What’s it called, the movie Jessie. (We had to come back to this one before she would grace me with an answer. Jessie is a TV show and while I can’t say I dislike the name it’s a pretty crap looking show. All I can say is that she doesn’t know about it from our house.)
Thing to do with Ivy – Play American Girl dolls. (This is the year that Darling and Mamma games finally died HOORAY!!!)
Thing to do with Jane –Play Minnie Mouse.
Thing to do with Dad – Pick apples! (They both like climbing the trees!)
Thing to do with Me – Clara: “What do you think? We do it in the greenhouse lots of times.” Me: “Plant seeds?” Clara: “Yeah! or pot plants!”
Book – I have two favorites, the Boxcar Children that we are reading right now, (Surprise Island) and Ulysses and Flora (A hilarious chapter book by Kate DiCamillo that we are half way through and all loving!)
Meal – Dinner
Thing to do in the car – Drive. Insert shit eating grin. Play on my drawin’ board. Eat breakfast get in the car and go with our stuff. (She’s a girl who likes road trips!)
What do you want to do when you grown up? – That’s an easy one! Go in the Rodeo!!! (I have it on good authority that she’s not interested in bull riding. Phew!)
Anything else? –Nope.
And that wraps up the girls’ favorites for the year! Clara has had some very amusing answers in the past but her answers at four are a personal favorite of mine:
Clara’s Favorites at Four Years Old
Table Manners
We’ve been working on table manners. Specifically I’ve been championing the “I don’t care if you don’t like it just don’t say so!” platform. Because, with multiple children involved if one says, out loud, that something looks: weird, icky, yucky, gross, green or like an onion, suddenly no one, not even children who have been eating it, will touch it.
Tonight Ivy was inspecting my homemade salsa. She ate some, she asked questions about what it was made out of, her sisters ate some and then she said:
“Like I’d rather have this than swim with a great white shark and a tiger shark.”
Her sisters kept eating the salsa.
I’m calling it progress.
Good Vs. Great
It’s not that hard to be a good mom. You love your kids. You try to do what’s best for your entire family. You make mistakes, your kids make mistakes. You love them anyway and you try again.
Good moms come in every make and model.
Good moms are everywhere.
But great moms. Great moms are amazing. Because great moms have one thing mastered that us good moms are still just grasping at.
Timing.
That’s right, the difference between good and great all comes down to timing.
For example, when do you feed the kids. Well, you don’t want to feed them too early, they won’t be hungry yet. Not hungry kids, don’t eat unless you are feeding them nothing but ice cream and popcorn. And us good moms only do that on occasions that really warrant it, like Tuesdays. So, on those non-ice cream/popcorn days, if the kids aren’t hungry the kids don’t eat. Which means that approximately 20 minutes after dinner is cleaned up, the kids will be in the kitchen wanting food.
All moms dislike this.
Of course if you feed the kids too late then you create small ravenous monsters. Monsters who will dissolve into tears and cries of “That’s not fair!” when the table is set and the food won’t be ready for another ten minutes (true story). Monsters that will argue with everyone, cry, fight and become so upset that they can’t eat dinner. Which means that approximately twenty minutes after dinner is cleaned up the kids will be in the kitchen wanting food.
All moms dislikes this.
I’m certain that great moms, can sense the exact moment to start dinner so that it will be ready just as the children become hungry enough to eat and yet not so hungry as to attempt to eat each other.
It all comes down to timing.
Bedtime is another prime timing example. Put the little darlings to bed too early and you’ve earned yourself an extra long session of, “One more drink, Please one more book, I just have to go potty, I’m not tired…” But too late and overtired mania will kick in. And, as everyone knows, overtired mania turns children into tornadoes that swirl around the house causing disruption and destruction everywhere they go.
Also tornadoes do not sleep.
Great moms no doubt sense that the precise moment of sleepiness coming at least a half hour before it happens so they can calculate back when to start brushing teeth. Great moms with their great timing earn themselves a calm and lovely evening tucking in their children, once, before moving on with their night.
It all comes down to timing.
Us good moms try our best. Sometimes we touch greatness for a moment and sometimes we miss it. Sometimes life is grand when everything falls into place and sometimes life’s a mess with a pack of overtired hungry monsters.
But we are good moms, so we love them anyway and try again.
Oh, but to be a great mom and have that timing figured out…
Ivy’s Favorites at Eight Years Old
Ivy, what’s your favorite…
Color – Blue (Interesting…)
Animal – Cheetah
Food – Tortellini Casserole (She must not know I always hide green stuff in there.)
Clothes –Grey workout pants with the pink stripe (Because blue’s her favorite color so of course those are her favorite pants. Also why do my children hate jeans? Don’t they know that jeans are the best thing ever?)
Dog – “Auntie Anne’s little dog – she’s adorable!” (Auntie Anne’s little dog is a papillon. She may be adorable but I was thinking of getting another Great Dane for my next dog…)
Cat – Cassie! (Cassie still loves going to bed with Ivy and on nights Ivy’s not home Cassie follows me around demanding to know where she’s gone.)
Person – You and Dad and Natalie
Thing to do – biking
Thing to do inside – play with legos
Chore – Letting out the chickens and the ducks because you get to see the baby chicks and you get to see how many duck eggs are there for Clara.
Time of day – Morning or afternoon. (I will say that she is, unfortunately, the only person in the house who is truly a morning person. But since she walks around the house trying to wake people up and then getting yelled at for her troubles, that’s probably not as fun as afternoons are for her.)
Place to go – waterpark
Song – Better Dig Two (by The Band Perry) and my Songs Know What You Did in the Dark, what Jane calls the Bam Bam song (by Fall Out Boy)
Flower – Iris! No, ummmmm…. snowdrop.
Farm Animal – Ivy: “I’m trying to remember what they are called.” Me & John in unison: “There is a farm animal you don’t know what it’s called?!?” John: “Mammal or Bird?” Ivy: “It’s a chicken. What are the puff balls called?” Me: “Polish chickens.” (Phew, I was worried there for a second. Of course now I have a new concern- Polish chickens, Ivy? Really?!)
Thing about school –Daily Five (A very long explanation followed my question on what exactly that was. I’m shortening it to: different reading and writing options that they get to choose from every day.)
Friend – “Natalie – obvious.” (Please use your best “Duh Mom” voice when you read that.)
Movie – Enchanted and Secretariat
Thing to do with Clara – Nothing. (Some car rides are harder than others, they happily do many things together, just not that day.)
Thing to do with Jane – The tree game (That’s when Jane bikes toward Ivy on her tricycle and she waves a tree branch as a signal. A bit like red light, green light but with the added fun of possibly bonking your sister in the head with a giant leafy branch.)
Thing to do with Dad – Biking (Oh dear. John went running and Ivy biked along recently. I only heard about it but it sounded like a best laid plan gone terribly awry.)
Thing to do with Me – Sewing (We’ve not done that in… lets see… umm… forever.)
Book – Ottoline and the Yellow Cat
Meal – Dinner
Thing to do in the car – Play with the GPS. (Probably because we let her do that for the first time just before the questions started.) Read books. (Yay for readers in the car!)
What do you want to do when you grown up? “Be a mom, but I really haven’t decided.”
Anything else? – Ivy: ‘What’s my favorite tree?” Me: “What is your favorite tree?” Ivy: “UUUUUHHHHHHHHHH………. apple” (That was a hard one I guess!)
Favorite Fruit – Wolf River apples (Yeah – we have an apple orchard, how’d you guess?)
This is the fifth year I’ve asked Ivy her favorites everytime has been remarkably enlightening and entertaining!
Here they all are:
Ivy’s Favorites at Seven Years Old
Ivy’s Favorites at Six Years Old
Will O’ The Wisp by C.S. Boyack
I want to say that reading this book is akin to watching a horror movie, but my actual knowledge of horror movies is severely limited because they scare the bejeebers out of me.
This is some of the best cover art I’ve seen in a bit, it fits the book absolutely perfectly. In fact my heart started pounding again just looking at it.
So you tell me.
If a book…
-Says, per the book blurb, that ” It involves a strong element of suspense…” (Or translated into layman’s speak- your elevated vitals will have you feeling like you just ran a marathon while reading this book).
-Has a main character and sidekicks that have you yelling at them “What are you doing?!? WHY? Why would you do that… no… what?!! Have you no sense of self-preservation!?”
-And was a non-stop page turner despite the fact that you wished for more character development in some cases and a bit better plot flow in others.
Does all that make it like a horror film?
I think it may be the next blockbuster.
It’ll probably be great.
I’m never watching it.
Would I recommend it? It was scary and icky and Dear Lord had I read this as a kid I would never have gone into the woods at night again – but wow was it a page turner. I think if horror is your thing this could be the book for you. But if you, like me, would rather get off the couch and actually run to elevate your vitals, you might want to take a pass on this one.
This honest review was given in return for a free copy of the book from its author.
The Worst Part of Being an Adult
The worst part of being a card carrying, full fledged adult is going to the dentist.
It’s being responsible enough to drive yourself to a place that you loathe with every fiber of your being. A place that will likely cause you at least some amount of pain and suffering. And then, as if all that wasn’t bad enough, you’ll fork over lots of money and promise to come back.
Going to the dentist is the worst.
Maybe the dentist isn’t your worst thing.
But whatever your worst thing is, if you had to do it today, try this.
Take a Diet Coke (or another fantastic beverage of choice) sit down and look at this lamb.
Awwww
Be grateful that as an adult you also get to take spontaneous Diet Coke breaks midday and look at cute lamb pictures.
Then get up and go do a nasty project. Pick something that you’d normally hate, it’ll be so much better than the worst thing that magically, your nasty project will seem great.
Me, I’m taking my clean teeth off to mow the lawn.
The One Armed Fisherwoman
So I have this mother, and she broke her arm. But she’s my mother, so she’s still doing things that normal people wouldn’t do, like trying to catch trout on a fly rod – with only her left arm.
Dont’ forget to admire the boat Dad made this last winter!
Turns out, with enough assistants she can catch a trout on a fly rod with only her left arm!
A few days later my mom and I found ourselves watching our friend fish for carp off of our family’s pier.
This is the family pier on the property where my mom grew up and still lives. I grew up there and visit often.
We have both done lots of fishing off the pier.
But never, ever, has either of us gone carp fishing.
So, of course, we teased him – cause that’s what you do when you’ve just been fly fishing and you are watching someone catch giant ugly fish using corn as bait. 
He even had his daughter and her little princess pole rigged for carp. 
So we teased him about that too.
Right in the midst of a large amount of friendly banter on the merits and supposed fun of carp fishing, his daughter ran off to play with mine and handed my mom her little princess fishing pole.
Which is when I told my mom that while she could catch a trout on a fly line, I didn’t believe she could catch a carp on a princess pole.
But, if she has enough assistants…
Look at that! A picture with me, the designated “reeler” in it! Photos by Cory.
…she can do that too!
Ok, so the pictures above were from later. But mom and I really did work together to pull in one of the carp in the net using that tiny pink princess pole. Cory already had just netted one of his own and we made him get ours in the net too before we lost it. A memorable first carp catching experience!
And that’s when we stopped teasing… 
…and asked nicely for an adult-sized pole of our own to use!
Jane’s Favorites at Three Years Old
Jane what’s your favorite…
Color – pink
Animal – I can’t decide…. ummm… Mouse!
Farm animal- Jane: “I keep can’t guessing!… Lion.” Me: “Do lions live on farms?” Jane: “NO!” Me: “What’s your favorite farm animal?” Jane: “I can’t decide.”
Thing to eat – Animals! (She says with a grin. Which either means she’s a very good carnivore or just messing with me.)
Thing to eat for breakfast – Tomatoes! I’m just kidding…. JELLYFISH!…ummm… TIGERS!… just kidding. (And so Jane continues to be the hardest person to get a straight answer from that I’ve ever encountered.)
Person- YOU!
Cat- Gypsy
Dog – I don’t like any dogs!
Thing to Wear – Elsa dress (Of course it is. I haven’t tricked her into the bath to steal it away from her recently so she’s been wearing it for at least 48 hours straight and it’s covered with dirt and sticky stains.)
Jane: Say what’s your favorite leggings.
Me: What’s your favorite leggings.
Jane: OLAF! (The world is only right if they are worn with the Elsa dress.)
Thing to do – play…uhhh…hmmmmm…I like to play with a teeny tiny mouse and a squirrel and – LETS GO PAINT! (And that sums up my third daughter quite nicely right there.)
Thing to do outside – Go find chicken eggs.
Chore – Get the duck eggs and the chicken eggs.
Time of Day – Going to sleep. Me: “Why? Do you like going to sleep?” Jane: “Because it’s dark out!” Me: “Do you like the dark?” (Because let me tell you she has a really odd combination of fear of the dark and willingness to roam a dark house looking for someone) Jane: “Yeah! … No, I hate babies and I don’t like holding them because they are poopy.” (ummm….ok….)
Place to Go – to the bouncy house
Song – Let it GO!
Flower- peony
Friend – Dad!
Movie – Let it go! (Frozen)
Thing to do with Clara- Play hide and go seek.
Thing to do with Ivy – Play in our room with me!
Thing to do with Mom- Go the the bouncy house… and… putting decorations up and making decorations. (It was a hard question for her. I don’t sing and dance and wear enough dresses for her world. Also I don’t take her to bouncy houses. But, really, why would she start answering questions in a way that made sense now?)
Thing to do with Dad- Make jewelry. Me: “Have you ever made jewelry with Dad?” Jane (turns to John): “Dad? Do you want to make jewelry with me and Mom will make decorations because I want to do that.” (Also last time I “made decorations” I planted flowers outside. Just thought you should know so nobody gets the wrong idea and expects me to have pictures hanging on the walls or something crazy like that.)
Book – princesses (After much discussion that was revealed to be All that Glitters a truly terrible disney princess book I refuse to read. I was surprised seeing that I’ve read Fancy Nancy and the Fanciest Doll in the Universe at least once a day for the last week.)
Thing to do in the car – My painting thing for the airplane ride. (It is pretty cool, thanks again Grandma Mary! http://www.melissaanddoug.com/water-wow-numbers-on-the-go-travel-activity)
What do you want to do when you grow up? Be a big sister… but I’m a little sister… (Yeah, no. Says Mom)
Anything else? When I was a baby I was to Jonas’s age. (?) I didn’t say what’s my favorite thing to drink! Water.
There you have it. Another year, another page of cryptic answers from Jane.
For the last two years of evasive answering you can check out –
Jane’s Favorites at Two Years Old
and
A Study to Determine Jane’s Favorite Items at the age of 15 months
Behind the Willows 