Confessions of a Granola Eating, Salsa Making, Nudist Tolerating, Clothes Drying, Hippie Mom

In the past few weeks I have heard the following statements:

"I consider you to be a granola muffin sort of mom.."

and

"Well, I just figured because you're such a hippie like that."

Hmmm. I am a mom and boy do I love muffins! (Wondering what to do with your zucchini this summer? Might I suggest these?) I also made some tasty granola just last week. But am I really a hippie? Observe:

Do hippies let their kids do this?

Or how about this?

A little known fact about my kids in the car. I let them listen to top 40 pop music. You know, all that annoying crap that sounds exactly the same and gets stuck in your head after the second listening? My kids love that. They know who Justin Bieber is and Sawyer can't get enough of One Direction. They can sing along to "Call Me Maybe." Hippies would be all about the Beatles and Woody Guthrie, I think. Brent HATES this music with a passion and will try to drown out the kids' whining by blasting NPR. I simply flip the dial to 104.7 and everybody is suddenly bopping and singing along to "Payphone." (Not that they even know what a payphone is- how archaic! But thankfully I've noticed that they do not pay attention to the lyrics at all. Yet.)

 During one of my first years of teaching I had a.. ahem... let's say memorable student who came from a no TV family. He had the intelligence of an ivy leaguer but the social skills of a potato. He had no frame of reference for popular culture, which limits your middle school social interactions substantially. This caused me to reevaluate my anti TV policy with my own kids. Maybe a little screen time and pop music is good for us on occasion. I even let the kids watch the televised International Hot Dog Eating Competition on the 4th, which did prove to be a mistake because Jack has challenged me to eating contests every day since. But still, hippies don't even eat hot dogs. (Some of you are going to call me out on this because you know I would NEVER eat a hot dog. But I would let my kids eat hot dogs. Maybe. If they were the gourmet ones with no nitrates. And there was nothing else to eat...)
 

Speaking of food, I made some fresh garden salsa last week. I can't find the recipe I loosely followed, but it was simply a bunch of chopped tomatoes, a diced sweet onion, garlic, cilantro, the juice from a lime, and salt and pepper. Jack hates tomatoes with a passion (I know!), but Sawyer was all about it.

We have a seasonal frog infestation at our house, which sounds like it would be fun, except that these little guys hide out in our deck chairs. I just know one day I'll get up and find a squished frog stuck to my butt. Anytime somebody tries to have a seat on our deck one or both kids will scream, "CHECK FOR FROGS!" It's kind of unnerving.

I do have to admit that we are a pants optional house much of the time. Does that make me a hippie?

(Does this picture make you think twice about checking out books from the public library? It should.)

We have spent the last two weeks at Amazon Pool for morning swimming lessons, picnic lunch, and then afternoon swims. It has been fun for the kids, but exhausting for me. The good news is that I have renewed faith in Jack's ability to swim! I think he might be getting it. Finally.

Sawyer disappeared the other afternoon and I found him sacked out in the front yard. I think it was the coolest place he could find to take a nap.

This is why I can never be on time to anything. As I was getting dressed, Sawyer was getting ready for football. Or so he says. I think that a true hippie would have just walked out the door with their kid looking like this. I at least attempted to scrub most of it off.

Brent is building the kids an elevated playhouse in the backyard. In the meantime, it makes a nice support beam for my clothesline.

I think I have had exactly two garden strawberries in the past four years. These kids just plow right through them. Good thing for the farm. I've done a batch of jam and stocked away a few gallons in the freezer for smoothies. Still, there is something about picking them warm from the sunshine in your own garden. Which is why, I suppose, the kids cannot stop eating them.

I am pretty sure my attempt to convince you that I am not a hippie has backfired. My kids are practically PETA activists when it comes to our frog colony, Sawyer reads his library books in the nude, I have a perpetual summer clothesline, and I can wax philosophical about garden strawberries. Damn. Maybe being a granola muffin hippie mom isn't so bad after all.

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