The Steele family Saga: Part 1

Sorry I have been out of touch for the last week and a half... coming home for me means going non -stop all day and getting 5 and 6 hours of sleep each night, until I make it successfully to Ohio for the Synchronized Skating Training Festival 2011. Whew!

I love this picture because of Margret's face, I love her so much :)

For those of you who don't know, I am on the Western Michigan University Synchronized Skating Team, a sport that I am competitive in as a part of my college experience. It is something that has found me and become a huge part of who I am. I'm sure I will blog about it much later when we are traveling around the country, but it's just some context for now. The festival I am at is for any skater who wants to train with the top coaches from Team USA for a weekend, and it is one of the most educational times of my life! I just love it. This is my third year going.

We recently took our annual trip up to the Adirondack Mountains and I knocked off another high peak on my list of way to becoming a 46er (hiking the 46 high peaks in the Adirondacks, all over 3800 feet). Seymour mountain took my Dad, Lily and I 16 miles and nearly 7 hours to climb, but it was so worth it.

While up, we began telling old stories, and I would like to share one that is particularly pertinent to my childhood, and as they occur to me, will continue to share them in different "parts" of the Steele Family saga. (It's not really a saga, I just chose that word for alliteration...)

Once upon a time, there were two parents and they had three little girls, Charlotte, Lily and Frances. They were fairly close in age, and all pretty young, maybe 5, 3 and 1 year old (Frances being in a high chair). Some of the scariest times of their childhood took place around the dinner table. Dinner was at approximately 5:00 each evening. The girl's mother would not let them drink cows milk when they were younger because of the added hormones. So Charlotte drank rice milk, Lily drank Soy milk, and Frances drank goats milk. This little particularity captures the Steele girl's eating habits perfectly. However, because they were not getting the calcium they needed from "cows milk" their mom made them eat dark leafy greens" (spinach and chard to make up for it). But you can't exactly put these veggies on a 3 year old's plate and expect her to eat them, so she would puree them into this weird green pudding in the food processor and mix them with applesauce... supposedly this made it taste better. So, each night with dinner, the girls would get their very own bowl of pureed vegetables and would have to eat the WHOLE THING. No excuses. Now, easily defeated, logically minded mothers would motivate their children to eat their pureed vegetables with some kind of reward like dessert or money or something. (actually easily defeated, logically minded mothers wouldn't feed their kids pureed vegetables in he first place...) But this brilliant, ever determined mother would do no such thing to outweigh the value of the delicious side dish she required her children to eat. So, in order to persuade her unconvinced toddlers, she would become "witchy witch".
"hehehehehehe...." she would say, in her witchy witch voice, hand mangled around the spoon with a big bite of green applesauce spilling off of it, "My name is witchy witch and I'm here to make sure you eat your pureed vegetables" between the mangles hand, her protruding retainer neglected teeth, high cackling voice,  and the occasional witch hat with blue hair that she would put on for effect, our mouths would drop robotically and gobble down the vegetables, but they were NASTY. I mean, easily gagged upon, but they just wanted it to be over they would gobble them down anyways. Now, just for a moment, imagine that you were a gusher-feeding mother, walking in on this scene. I don't know about you, but I might call diphus. I would be a little freaked out by the hovering mother, cackling in her kids faces to get them to open their mouths to shovel in applesauce flavored spinach.

That's all for now, folks, more stories to come, sorry for the rushed-ness, but we have full days here in Ohio... I have learned so much today and met so many great skaters. I can't wait to bring what I am learning back to my team. Thanks for reading!

Goodnight moon, please give any other veggie-feeding mother witches into a bit more sanity!
xoxo