Busy Hands Homestead

     I pulled my nice set of prismacolor pencils out of their hiding place, stuck a few pieces of paper in a book and put it all into my purse waiting for an opportunity to sit alone and finish Adam's batch of home brew.      Every beer needs a label.      I was hoping for the magical double nap that would allow me to finish the sketch I had started a few days ago.  I loaded the kids into the stroller and set off.  The double nap remained illusive.  After walking for a hour and detouring to the Children's Museum for a few more hours, I finally called Adam to come get the two of them and give me the chance to, well, do what I needed to do.      I almost forgot that I like to draw.        After much deliberation and a few starts I decided to call the beer Break of Day IPA.  The morning star is still bright in the sky, but the dark of night is fading away and a track of hoof prints ...

      Before we had children, we managed to fit both of our families into our Christmas routine: Christmas eve with his folks, Christmas morning with mine. The first Christmas we had Ivory, I refused to drive anywhere, and everyone came to us. The second Christmas we lived thousands of miles away from any family and for the very fist time we were on our own Christmas morning. We are about to celebrate our third Christmas away from our families and there are a few traditions that we have brought with us and some that we are cultivating on our own.      Adam plays a Christmas eve morning game of phone tag with parents, siblings, aunts and cousins that I simply roll my eyes at, and I bake a giant wreath of cardamon bread that was a staple during my childhood holidays. Every Christmas since Ivory was born, we have woken to the smell of cinnamon and apples and then have opened presents with steaming cup of coffee and a bowls of Christ...

Last year, we woke to a winter wonderland on Thanksgiving morning, bundled up and followed converging sled tracks to the site of what will hopefully become a longstanding neighborhood tradition: pie breakfast.  Slices of sweet and savory pies, mimosas and fresh espressos disappeared as quickly as the time and we all had to rush home to cook for dinner. This year, we woke with equal excitement and trotted across the still bare ground to the second pie breakfast and our second thanksgiving far from home. Cradled in my arms was a pie baked on the inspiration of a faint child hood memory. Shortly after we moved to the United States, my grandmother took me to the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I sat across from her scanning the menu for a compilation of words that I recognized, trying desperately not to let her know that most of what was written was almost illegible to me. There, I spotted something I knew:  Brie. And that was the dish...