Place

I took a break from everything. Mothering, teaching, managing meals around our family's various activities schedule. It’s been great. I took a LONG weekend (nearly a week) to spend some time with my parents in Idaho. My dad had open heart surgery a little over a month ago and my siblings and I have taken turns going out to stay with them. I think I planned it out just right though—my brothers and sister have done all the hard work of getting their farm and house ready for winter and I mostly just spent time with them. 

Part of me is still here in in this place.

Sunrise from the deck

My dad is limited in what he is supposed to do, and my mom is limited in what she can do only because she is, contrary to what some might believe based on what she accomplishes on a normal basis, human. And she has to keep Dad from doing too much. They are the hardest working people I know, and they live off their land. They can make anything grow. Anywhere. They have two big gardens, a gigantic berry patch, and a large orchard. 

This is their retirement. They live on a hill above the lake I spent my summers at when I was a kid-- just up the hill from where my grandparents lived.  

Have I been a little anxious about how all my boys are holding up back home? A little. And I miss them. I’m so thankful for Brian being so supportive of my decision to come out, and for taking care of the boys all week. But this is the place I need to be right now. And it’s so quiet.

We always come here in the summers, but then it is busier. There are all the summer boaters and swimmers and it's very much a vacation-y time for me and for my family, as well as for most other people at the lake. Now it is quiet and chilly. There are a lot of fall colors in the orchard and in the brush along the roads. I’m rockin’ my flannel shirt. The deer smell hunting season coming. Most everything in the garden has been harvested. The old raspberry canes are stacked up to burn. All the apples and pears have been picked. I picked the last apple tree the other day and helped my mom and dad press cider and make applesauce.

The earth is getting ready to sleep under blankets of snow.

I got to watch playoff baseball with my dad, the one who taught me to love baseball when I was little. The highlight of that was seeing the Yankees get eliminated. I got to go kayaking on the still, blue lake, roast s’mores over a fire with some cousins, and visit my grandparents’ graves. I picked herbs from my grandma’s herb garden for her and Mom picked various noxious (but flowering) weeds and some pine tree branches for Grandpa, from his fields and woods. I went to water aerobics with Mom and some old ladies. It wiped me out, except for my biking legs, that held up fine. :)  

I helped my mom cook a ton of tacos and burritos for their church’s Awana kickoff night. I did a fair amount of paper grading at the table while watching sunrises. Now that I type this all out, it seems like I did a lot. But it felt very laid back and peaceful, and like I said, quieter than my normal life.

It has put me in a poetic mood, but I haven’t come up with a poem I’m happy about sharing yet, so I’m sharing one I wrote the summer before last about being in Idaho at my parents’ house. The power of place interests me. How people can become so much a part of a certain place. I have lived in Virginia nearly as long as I lived in Idaho, but there’s something about those formative years that leave an imprint on a person. I do love Virginia and could (and should, actually…good idea) write a poem about Virginia too. But for now, here is what I wrote about being part of a place and a place being a part of me.

Here

In summer dry air
In cool blue mountain shade
In prickly yellow wheat fields,
always whispering, never heard

It’s Here.

In quiet gravel steps

In calm rows of cabbages and corn

In dust ribbons rising behind trucks,

dancing away, never remembered

It’s Here.

In slender pine tree needles

In silver blue green water

rippling on a lake born of glaciers

always moving, never changed

It’s Here.

In still moonshadows at the garden gate

In crickets’ midnight songs

In silent zig zag lights of a car descending a mountain

always inching, never stopped

In pink purple clover blooms

In tangled orange honeysuckle

In ditches of milkweed and teasel,

always growing, always spreading

I’m Here.

I’m the little girl in braids

you almost see

skipping under sweet cherry trees

shoulders pink from sunshine

Always Here, never gone

And now, when my plane leaves from Denver, I'll be on to my noise. My beautiful, beautiful boy noise, which is another place where a very large part of me is.

apples from the last apple tree

cider!

applesauce

Our Month of Fun Things

I have a beautiful and blessed life. I love my life. I just have to share what our month has been like, because it amazes me what we've had come up the past few weeks. 

First of all, in April I broke my ankle when a line drive hit me at a softball game. But didn't know it was broken, so limped around on it for three weeks in pain before finding out: The x-ray didn't show the break, but the MRI did.

Calvin has had the most remarkable month of all, though: He...

• Fell out of a tree, ripping up his chin, and cutting up his eyebrow and mouth and knocking out his tooth: needed a stitch and antibiotics for the tooth.

• Got a horrible case of poison ivy all over his face-- swollen almost beyond recognition, the day before      his field trip. That lasted about a week and a half.
• Got lice and consequently a shaved head-- thankfully this seems to have been taken care of quickly (fingers crossed).
• Has a very sore throat that might be strep
• Has had almost all of his baseball games cancelled due to rain.
  
  The kid is holding up remarkably well, even though he made several questionable decisions in the baseball game he played the day after his stitched up eyebrow and skinned up chin: slid headfirst twice. He rationalized it by the fact that he was safe. I'm not sure why sliding headfirst was necessary, but that is a debate I don't want to get into again.

Meanwhile, Teddy's eczema flared up and resulted in a staph infection, and then steroid cream, antibiotics and lots of baths. He also got lice. I could not bring myself to shave his head, so I'm guessing it might take a little longer to cure, though it's looking good so far.

I found out that my ankle was broken and cannot put weight on it-- this has been for the last week and a half. I have at least two more weeks to go without weight-bearing. Then I got lice. Thank you, first grade.
Clark joined in on the party by also getting lice. Though aside from that and a few baseball rainouts and a particularly bad flip into the boards in a hockey game, he's had a relatively smooth month.

Brian hurt his back and neck somehow, so he's had a hard time doing normal things as well. Since we've had record amount of rain this spring, we've barely gotten any baseball games or practices in, which has been frustrating for him as a coach especially. But he has risen to the many challenges and been great about picking up the slack around the house, and scheduling make-up scrimmages so the kids can have a bit more baseball this spring.

I started this blog as an outlet for myself to write, and especially to record parenting things that might seem frustrating at the time, but in which I could see the humor by writing about them and sharing them with readers. This month seems to fit the bill. I'm still in the midst of hobbling around doing 47 loads of laundry and combing hair with lice combs and trying to do normal household things with one leg, but writing this has made it seem less exasperating and a little more comical. I'm also buried in a super messy house while ironically maintaining a blog about a clean and less cluttered house. I know it will pass, but I still feel a little fake about it. 

I've been shown once again how amazing our friends and family are with all the help that they've generously given us. I couldn't have survived without them.

How Valentine's Day Rocked: Kids, Bacon, and Baseball

Today we had a Valentine's Day party at our house. We spent time decorating for it the past couple days. The boys' art teacher had them make heart mobiles with contact paper, tissue paper, and glitter last week. So we made more of those in heart shapes and put them on windows, stuck Charlie Brown Valentines on windows, and the boys made construction paper hearts and taped them all over as well.

Art class mobile

Making our own

This one we made into a big heart for the window.

Our guest of honor was none other than Alexandra.

At our party we did a little art: scribbled markers on coffee filters cut in heart shapes and then dripped water on them with medicine droppers. The colors slowly spread out, giving them sort of a tie-dyed look. Super easy thing to do with little ones.

Markers on coffee filters

Finished hearts- I also tied yarn or ribbon through the holes I punched
at the tops so they could be displayed.

Next we did some experimenting with candy hearts: The kids took turns dropping candy hearts into various liquids and we observed what happened. We tried cold water, hot water, lemon juice, and water with baking soda that we added vinegar to. The cool one was the soda and vinegar because the hearts danced and flipped around in all the fizz. The hot water melted chunks of the hearts off, and color from the hearts slowly dissolved in the cold water and lemon juice. In case you were curious.

Philip and Alex check out the hearts and liquids.

Everyone was so curious!

Pouring vinegar on them made the hearts dance!

Next, the eight kids had a picnic on the living room floor. Grilled cheese, strawberries, and banana chips. The other three moms and I actually were able to sit down at the table and talk for a few minutes over some soup and sandwiches. The kids were awesome. Even after having mini cupcakes and Rice Krispie treats, they sat on the couch and humored us for some pictures of them all in their reds, pinks, and purples.

Picnic in February!

Rice Krispie treats on sticks with strawberry cake mix,
hearts, and mini cupcakes

Yum!

Can you say Red and Pink and Purple?

Happy Valentine's Day!

Besties

After the party dust settled, I made my gift for Brian: bacon roses.

Yes.

That's what I said.

I saw the picture here online and modified the instructions. I did not take a drill to a perfectly good mini muffin tin as they suggested (to account for bacon grease), but I microwaved the bacon a minute and a half first, and then rolled it into rolls and stuffed them in small cookie cutters on top of the broiler pan, like this:

I found some fake flowers and cut them off and stuck the bacon roses on.

This. Just. Happened.

Brian approved. Then he laced his leftover grilled cheese sandwich with bacon roses and I had made his dinner as well! Pretty sure I just won an award.

Then mini Nationals Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg gave me some tulips for the balcony. Super romantic.

And my gift from Brian was a subscription to MLB.TV, so we will be able to watch the Nationals even though we got rid of cable!

After my tulip gift, we took the boys to the playground. They ran around like crazy monkeys, hit baseballs off their new tee, and got covered in mud. Then it was bath time, dinner, and bed.

It's taken Brian and I nine years of knowing each other, but I think we've finally gotten this holiday right: kids, bacon, and baseball.

This was one of my favorite Valentine's Days ever.

Baby Peapod is...

Okay, this is kind of weird, but I wanted a fun/unusual way to blog-reveal our little Peapod's sex. Here it is. Pretend it's normal?

Meet Boy and Girl

Boy and Girl- FIGHT!  Whoever wins represents Peapod.

Boy takes out girl...

Oh, but now Girl goes in for the kill!

AH! I don't even know what's happening!

Who's going to win?

Here they go again...

And the winner is...

BOY!

I foresee a lot more football, baseball, and hockey games, astronauts, cars, and a whole lot more poop and throw-up discussions. Bring it on?

How the Huzz Rocks the Condo

I have a wonderful husband. He’s been especially thoughtful and helpful lately with my lack of energy due to little Peapod expanding inside me and sucking all my life forces. I’m finally through the first trimester, which gives me hope that I’ll be more… Dawnish soon.

We were all sick for two weeks around Christmas and New Year’s and despite Brian’s sickness he has: gotten rid of our big dining room hutch, installed shelves to hold what used to be in the hutch, put up a whiteboard that the boys love, put lights in our always-dark living room, put up more shelves in the boys’ room, and been doing little things like making the boys elephant toast (with no help from Pinterest, he doesn’t know what that is), his experimental and delicious mega bacon burgers, his signature mega-awful waffles, and in general taking care of a lot of our meals. He got up with the boys over Christmas break while I slept in until morning times that start with 9s and 10s. He takes the boys out so I can nap. Maybe I should be pregnant more often? Nah.

 Brian is a big fan of de-cluttering, and I also am in theory, but unfortunately I have a harder time parting with things than he does, and in buckling down and facing facts such as, our pantry organization makes absolutely no sense anymore, and why do we have fifteen pairs of shoes in the entryway when we have closets?

 With Peapod coming in July to join our two-bedroom-condo family, all our de-cluttering and rearranging is with that little bundle in mind. (Small homes grow tight families, right?) When we first found out that I was pregnant Brian got rid of our bedroom dressers and put shelves up with boxes, which are now our drawers. (I have fabric to cover all the boxes and so far have covered three. Oops.) I was reluctant at first (Aren’t you supposed to have dressers?), but we now have room for a crib and changing table in our room and I don’t miss the dressers. He moved our recliner from the living room to our bedroom, which opened up our living room for the many wrestling matches, and hockey, baseball, football, and basketball games that spontaneously break out every day.

Over the break, we kept going. We moved our forever-cluttered shelf from the entryway into our bedroom. Now there’s actually room to turn around and take your coat off when you walk in our door. Maybe even inhale deeply. I cleaned and reorganized our pantry, Brian cleaned our balcony, and he’s got stars in his eyes thinking about going through our storage closet to get rid of more stuff. We've made a drop-off run to Goodwill and sent some end tables from the living room and our bikes to Brian’s parents’ lake house.

This is the kind of constant culling that I think is necessary to remain sane and generally clean in a small place. I’m glad I have my handsome, de-cluttering huzz to nudge me to keep it up.

PS. While I wrote this post he did piles of dishes and cleared the counters, which confirmed to me that he rocks. And then he asked me to get rid of one of my tea sets, which confirmed to me that I like things. 

Here are some pictures of our snug dining room before the re-do:

See the computer shelves crowding the back corner.

Clutter-magnet hutch...

I could clean it up...but it still made our dining room tight.

Brian took everything out and off, our computer shelves down,
and put the leaf in our table...

and put up high shelves, a white board, and a shelf for art supplies.

Now Cal can draw ceiling fans to his heart's content.

And we can all sit down for dinner comfortably!

...and learn numbers and draw monsters....

and make dot-to-dots in Batman masks and capes and
sock gloves...

and learn sight words and keep track of  fruits and veggies eaten.

More shelves in the boys' room

and even some above the bookshelf

Dad makes elephant toast!

Mega bacon cheeseburger (water bottle for scale)

Mega double cheeseburger (children for scale)

Here's a link to our tale of how we got rid of our storage unit a couple years ago.