A Blessing in Disguise

I got a call from Kirsten tonight letting me know that she’s just not going to be able to make it this week. This means that I won’t be able to go to the convention with Peter and have our three days without kids.

But it means that I now have all my meals up until Wednesday in the fridge ready to pop out and cook when I need them, all the pressing jobs before the wedding done, AND we get to go on the two field trips we look forward to every year, but were going to miss (the Pumpkin Patch and the Apple Orchard).

So boo-hoo, but yippee too!

The Dresses are Done!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when one is making fancy dresses one must watch an excessive number of Jane Austen movies. This held true for me this past week, as I invariably had a member of my collection (thanks, Emily!) playing whilst I worked. I am now thoroughly versed in all things Austen (I think I watched each version I have of each of her six novels at least twice!)

Even Sam is getting a little “over-Austened” – I overheard him playing with the girls the other day, and as they were discussing what to call their stuffed animals, he commented, “That’s a very amiable name!”

Apparently one can watch too many adaptations of novels . . .

And I actually found a sequel to Sense and Sensibility (not by Austen herself, of course) entitled The Other Sister. While the prose does not equal that of dear Jane, it was fun to see what might have happened to little sister Margaret. The same author also wrote a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, entitled Presumption. Maybe next time I have leisure to read a novel . . .

“Ooh! My Cheeks Hurt!”

Only five points for that one – it’s too easy!

Last night Peter and I went out to dinner with some friends from church who we hadn’t seen in over a month (due to a death in their family, and then medical issues – talk about adding insult to injury!) It was so good to see them, and we had a great time. I laughed so much, my cheeks were sore!

Unfortunately, it looks like we might not be seeing them much this coming month, either – it’s looking to be pretty crazy for us. Just this week, in the two days left before Sunday, I have to finish making the girls’ dresses for Jessica’s wedding (one down, two to go), clean the house before my parents get here Saturday night, go apple picking with the kids, make meals for Kirsten to feed the kids (Peter and I are going to a conference for his work from Sunday night until Wednesday afternoon), get all the laundry done, pack, get quotes for life insurance, organize a Mom’s night for our homeschool group, go grocery shopping, and also shoe shopping, since I don’t think the girls have shoes for Jessica’s wedding, either. (I think I need a nap just looking at that list!)

So apparently I need to get off the computer and get to work . . .

Change and Decay in All Around I See

It’s been a strange month. Since Labor Day weekend, four people not directly connected to me, but one step away, have died. The first was the brother-in-law of my best friend up here. He was 35, with a wife and two young children, and died suddenly in a jet-ski accident. The next was an old friend of my parents’ who had been sick for a while. Then there was my babysitter (the wonderful Jessica)’s fiancee’s mother, who died suddenly just two weeks before their wedding. And just this Tuesday, my sister-in-law Kirsten’s grandfather died after a short illness. It’s like death is hovering around me, but not coming too near. It’s terrible to see my loved ones hurting, and not be able to help.

Of course, this makes me more conscious of my own inevitable death. Needless to say, the day I heard about my friend’s brother-in-law’s death, I hugged Peter a whole lot (he was just five years older than us! Our kids had played together! We had joked about having an arranged marriage for Sam and their daughter . . .  What would I do if it had been Peter????) It puts a little more urgency on updating our life insurance (which we’ve been meaning to do, in the back of our heads, for over a year) and finally making our will (which we REALLY should have done long ago . . .) and makes me think of what I would want for my funeral.

I definitely don’t want a conventional church funeral (you know me!). My idea is of everyone gathering at my house, singing hymns about heaven and giving glory to God – “It is Well With My Soul” “Christ Arose” “When We All Get To Heaven” No “Abide with Me” (which always makes my Mom cry) – death is done, it is swallowed up in victory! It is time for rejoicing! I am home at last!

They’re Ba-ack!

And they brought their laundry with them!

I’m not sure if this is some kind of penance for having so much fun this weekend, but it’s been a doozy of a day. I know I didn’t have to change any diapers all weekend, but really, did Josiah need to have a runny, poopy diaper EVERY TIME I changed him today? The first one was so bad I had to give him a bath before breakfast!

And although Elaina did wake up happy and shower me with sweet smiles, it was less than an hour before she was crying and whining because Sam only gave her half a banana. And this funk lasted until her naptime. Apparently someone had too much weekend!

And don’t even get me started on Sam’s attitude (although in his defense, he did get really sweet around supper time) . . .

But, thanks to my refreshing weekend, I am looking on the bright side and remembering that in a few years there will be no more diapers, I will have kids who can do their own laundry, and Elaina can get her own silly banana, and eat however much of it she wants!!! “This too shall pass” – right, Mom?

And in the meantime, I will enjoy all of the smiles, all of the “I missed you” hugs, and all of the cute baby moments, and store them as treasures in my heart (to pull out and look at nostalgically when I have five teenagers!!!)

Girly Fun Part 2

We spent the next day at home, baking cookies and cleaning (I wanted to see how long it would actually stay clean – it lasted until the other kids came home! Yay! But of course the first thing Josiah did Monday morning was pull all of the bowls out of the cupboard and scatter them around the kitchen, then move to the bookshelf in the living room and pull all the books down - I could swear he even looked around with a satisfied air and thought to himself, “now it feels like home!”)  

We actually even cleaned the windows, which I usually don’t bother with – grimy little fingers just can’t seem to resist clean windows! But even though it was raining steadily all day, it was amazing how big a difference it made. I even cleaned the window over the kitchen sink, which I usually don’t try to clean because I can’t reach it very well (I ended up sitting in the sink, which was the only way to reach it comfortably!)

But there was high drama in the evening, when we went to put the ducks to bed and found that mamma duck only had two ducklings with her! To be honest, I couldn’t remember exactly how many ducklings she had started with, but I knew it was more than two! We looked everywhere we could think of, but we couldn’t find them. Hannah was in tears: “Why would the ducklings do this? We can’t leave until we find them! We can’t disappoint our friends!” Finally, I had to force the girls into the van. It was getting dark, and we had nowhere left to look. Hannah cried herself to sleep, she was so upset.

The next morning she was calm again, and after a nice breakfast we hurried over to feed the ducks before church. I prayed as we pulled in that the lost ducklings would be back, for Hannah’s sake as much as our friends’. I went into the house to feed the dog, and as I came back out Hannah ran toward me with a huge grin, shouting, “Mom! Mom! Guess what! The other ducklings are back! They’re waiting by the door!” As we drove home later, I realized that, like human parents, God likes to do little things to make his children happy. I get caught up sometimes in the awesome glory of Him, and forget the little graces he loves to lavish on us.

Then home for church, which was at our house again – but the house was already cleaned, and it actually stayed that way overnight and through the morning! That is SO HUGE for me, you have no idea! When we have church at our house, Sunday mornings are usually crazy, running around feeding the kids, getting them dressed, picking up toys and books (and the bowls on the kitchen floor . . .), vacuuming, and trying to get a shower and keep the kids from messing it all up again before people start arriving. So having a nice, relaxed Sunday morning was a really big treat for me.

I didn’t plan anything for the rest of the day, not knowing when Peter and the kids would be home, so it was fun and relaxing. Hannah read to me from “Little Farm in the Ozarks” – one of the sequel series to the Little House on the Prairie books, about Laura’s daughter Rose and their life in Missouri. I still get a huge thrill when my kids read to me – I taught them that! Another yay for homeschooling

The girls helped me make grilled cheese for supper (they helped with every meal we had that weekend – there’s our Home Ec class for the week!) and Hannah called Peter to see when they’d be home. Apparently they’d gotten a late start, so they wouldn’t be home until after 9:00. So we got to have a leisurely supper and watch a movie before bed (we didn’t need to take care of the ducks since our friends were coming home that night). It was so relaxing and nice I didn’t want the weekend to end, but on the other hand I couldn’t wait to see Peter and the kids again. When they finally did arrive, they were pretty tired, and poor Josiah looked like he wasn’t sure if I was really his mom or another one of the miscellaneous aunts who had been passing him around all weekend (in his defense, I was wearing my contacts and had my hair down, which is not how he normally sees me – this morning he definitely recognized me, in my “mommy uniform” – an oversize t-shirt and a ponytail)

Girly Fun

Once again, I have just the girls – and this time without warning! Peter had been debating back and forth if he should go down to see his Mom with Trevor and Debbie, and then spur of the moment yesterday morning he decided he was going to go.

So while making pancakes (which I had started before he told me he was going) we both scrambled around the house packing. They had decided that since we have an 8-passenger van, Peter could take three of our kids (making four from our family) plus Trev and Deb and their two boys and they would fit perfectly. After a short debate, Peter decided to take Sam, Elaina, and Josiah, leaving me with Hannah and Naomi. I tried not to dance a jig as they drove away

Don’t get me wrong, I miss them terribly (especially in the morning when there’s no smiley Elaina, giggly Josiah, or helpful Sam) but there’s just so much more you can do with only two kids, and neither of them babies!

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention – the reason I couldn’t go was because Peter had promised a friend of ours that he would watch their dog, ducks, and geese, so one of us had to stay behind and take care of that (they were taking a second honeymoon to Door County for their 21st anniversary – isn’t that neat? And the only reason they weren’t taking the dog along was because they were taking the motorcycle – big dogs and motorcycles, especially ones already carrying two people, don’t work so well)

So as soon as they left the girls and I got dressed and went over to the farm to let the geese out, only to find that everything was already done – Peter forgot to mention that our friends had left that morning, and had taken care of things themselves.

Next stop, the library, where I had a book to pick up, and the girls wanted to pick out movies to watch while the guys were gone. Then, the big super-surprise – I took them to Dairy Queen for lunch. We each got a sandwich and a kid-sized twist cone, and had a grand time.

On the way out, temptation struck, in the shape of GARAGE SALES!!! Normally, I don’t get to go, since walking among breakable things with five kids under seven, all begging for toys, is undoubtedly one of Dante’s levels of hell. But, with only two girls, who theoretically wouldn’t break or unintentionally steal anything, there was hope.

We hit about three of them, and only bought one thing – a toy horse for Hannah for 10 cents. Then off to Rice Lake, for my unplanned but much needed once-a-year haircut. I don’t think the girls have ever been in a salon before, but they took it very much in stride, looking at the magazines (I could tell Hannah was a little disappointed that there was no Field and Stream) and spinning around on the empty barber chair next to me.

Then, shopping! I needed something to wear for an upcoming wedding, and since I NEVER get to try things on (fitting rooms are not built to accommodate six people at one time) this was a big thrill for me. Naomi was the best, pointing to just about every outfit and saying, “Mom, you would look beautiful in this!” (I need to remember to always take her clothes shopping with me)

We found a nice pair of pants, plus a cute t-shirt just for fun (which I’m wearing right now!), and then home again, home again, jiggety-jog, where we started a pizza crust for supper and baked zucchini bread with dried cranberries for breakfast the next morning. I also realized that the tomatoes sitting on the counter (an ice cream bucket-full from my garden, plus a very full walmart bag from the friends we are goose-sitting for) would not keep much longer, so I stewed and strained and got them boiling while I was at it.

By the time I had the tomatoes to where I was just waiting for them to boil down (which, for the record, took about 4 hours) it was time to roll out the pizzas. My girls are expert pizza-makers, and each made her own pizza (Naomi made a heart out of pepperoni on hers, and Hannah made a pumpkin shape) We ate all of Naomi’s, and are saving Hannah’s for supper tonight.

When we had that eaten and cleaned up, we headed over to our friends’ farm to put the geese to bed. This was definitely the high point of the day. Hannah was running around everywhere hunting out geese and herding them into the barn. It made my heart ache seeing her run around over the hills and through the pasture and around the barn – I want a farm for my girls! Naomi was not doing quite so much running, having found a plum tree with the ripest, sweetest plums we had ever eaten. They were soooo good! We even saved the pits to try to sprout them (I know, I’m not holding my breath). I promised them we could have another when we go back tonight.

Then back home, where I popped popcorn and read them a story. Unfortunately, in the middle Hannah all of a sudden threw up all over the place (on the couch, the rug – even on Shaggy!) And of course I was just about to get them in bed, so now bedtime was delayed while I got the girls at least cleaned up (Shags was exiled to the backyard). I got the girls washed, jammied, and in bed, and then went down to deal with the rest of the mess. It was too cold to just hose Shags down, so I ended up cleaning him the best I could with a bowl of warm, soapy water and some paper towls. Poor dog – he smelled of vomit, wet dog, and lemon. Obviously, he slept in the mudroom last night!

And of course as soon as that was done, I still had tomatoes to can! They had boiled down just about enough, so I brought up the jars and started the canning water heating. Did you know that tomatoes need to boil for 40 minutes in the canner? I had forgotten that, too. So it was a good two hours after I got the girls in bed before I got to crawl, yawing my head off, under my own quilt.

But mornings without babies do have their advantages – I got to snuggle with two warm little girls for a good half hour before dragging myself out of bed to make breakfast (which, as you will remember, I had baked the day before. Yay for forethought!)

And we have the rest of the weekend left! Yay for girl time!

Emily, What Have You Done?

On Tuesday morning, Emily sent an email inviting me to join Facebook, and I did (I couldn’t help it! She used Jedi mind tricks and subliminal messages! I could not resist her will!) In the two days since, I have spent nearly every free moment fiddling on the internet. I am addicted. By sheer force of will I break myself away to make meals for the kids, and then succumb to its siren song once again as soon as I can get away. It’s sick. It’s sad. It’s fun!!!

But I can feel myself growing stronger. I WILL fold the laundry! I WILL make another batch of yogurt! I WILL GO TO THE BATHROOM NOW!!!

Chicken Coop Fun!

- Or, Labor Day Weekend Part 2 -

I didn’t mention in the last post, but Joel and Kirsten and their kids were supposed to meet us in Pepin and tour the Laura sites with us, but we got a call as we were unpacking the grill that they weren’t going to make it, since Joel was putting some finishing touches on the new coop he was building for me. A little later I got another call, telling us that they might be even later because their truck was overheating! Oh, dear! I got the expanded story later – apparently one of the hoses going into the radiator was old and had developed a leak, and coolant was draining quite copiously from it. When they first noticed it, they stopped to check it out, and thankfully there was a group of BMX riders also at the gas station, who just happened to have tools so Joel could jerry-rig it enough to limp up to our house. As it turned out, they pulled in shortly after we got back from Pepin, so it was perfect timing! Of course, I was grinning from ear to ear when I saw my new coop (and so were the kids, who thought it should really be their own personal playhouse!)

But we had to wait to work on it until the guys figured out for sure what was wrong with Joel’s truck. It turned out to be a pretty simple fix, but of course the guys had to get into some odd positions to accurately diagnose the problem:

We spent most of Sunday working on the coop (more fun with power tools! Yay!) while the kids ran around the yard doing what kids do (mostly getting dirty, apparently) I had the bright idea to annex the old coop, which was too small to be suitable winter quarters for our larger flock, with the new coop, thereby nearly doubling its size. I’m quite impressed with myself for thinking of that! It worked beautifully, too – all Joel had to do was cut out an extra little door and butt the coops up against each other (oh, and cut the eave off of that side of the small coop). Now the chicks have room to stretch their wings!

The best thing about the coop, though, was that the whole thing cost less than $10. Joel scrounged all of the 2×4s from the minkyard in their back yard that they’re working on tearing down, the OSB (that’s Oriented Strand Board, for all of you non-handy people (don’t feel bad, Peter didn’t know that either) and plywood were throw-aways from his old job, and the shingles they had gotten from Freecycle. Even the hardware we scrapped from other things – the latches were from the “summer home” chicken tractor I had made (which is now the feed storage bin) and the old dog kennel in the garage (which we are dismantling so Peter can put in a bigger, better workbench – the dogs always found a way to get out of it anyway). So yay, cheap coop! (cheep, cheep – cheesy chicken joke!)

Oh, and I have to give props to Kirsten, the best first-time roofer ever! She did an awesome job (and even let my kids help! Brave woman!)

Unfortunately, they had to leave before the project was completely finished; we were thinking painting it on Monday, but they decided they needed to get back to take care of their animals. So this is their first glimpse of the completely finished product:

Isn’t it pretty???

Of course, that’s the back side – here’s the front:

I don’t know if you can read it, but on the side it reads: “For the Birds” which not only is literally true, but also, I think, captures Peter’s feelings about the whole project!

Oh, and for the record, it is a BAD idea to let kids help paint (another one of those “kids and crafts” things). Luckily I bought a lot of paint – kids can waste paint like nobody else! Holy cow! And of course I had to go back over everything they had done; parts were dripping with too much paint, and just two inches away the bare wood was showing through. Argh! And of course Naomi decided to paint whatever else was nearby – so now we have bright red splotches on our concrete blocks! And needless to say, the grass looks like some kind of massacre took place (thankfully it doesn’t show up in the pictures). Ever the pragmatist, Sam made sure to remind me not to worry because, “it’ll all go away, Mom, and next spring the grass will come back nice and green again!” That’s true, and for all my complaining, we really did have fun

And in their defense, it’s very hard to paint OSB and get it to look decent without going over it from just about every conceivable angle. I decided we’d just say we were going for the “rustic” look. (Yeah, Peter didn’t fall for that one either)

Labor Day Weekend -part 1

Sorry for the delay, folks, it’s been a busy week!

On Friday night, Peter’s sister Megan, her husband Dan, and their daughter Anya stayed overnight, and the next morning we all drove to Pepin for the first installment of their week-long Laura Ingalls Wilder trip. They were going to spend the week visiting most of her homesites.

So after a leisurely breakfast Saturday morning (with Trev & Deb & the boys) we headed down to Pepin, which is about a two-hour drive from here. We had planned to grill out (steaks, since Dan was here!) at a park nearby, which of course happened to be the Laura Ingalls Wilder Park (Pepin is very proud of its famous authoress!) We got there at about 11:30, and as the kids and moms were walking up to the play area (the guys were setting up the grill) we discovered to our dismay that there was a siren right in the center of the park, with a sign that informed us that it would be going off at noon! Ack! So we let the kids play for a little bit, and decided that when it got a little closer to noon we would pack up the kids and head over to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Homesite, which was a reproduction cabin in the place where they think her actual birthplace was (about 7 miles away). So at 11:55 Peter calls out, “Five minutes!” and we all scramble to get the kids in the van and buckled. Of course half of them left their shoes on the playground, and wouldn’t you know it, as I’m walking back to retrieve them the siren goes off. Now I know why the lady at the train museum next to the park was a little bit deaf!

But we had all of the kids packed up, so we headed over to the homesite anyway. It was pretty cool, and all of the kids are well-versed in Laura lore, so we were all speculating on where the barn would have been, and how it would have looked with the big woods all around it (there is a highway and corn fields  surrounding it now). And of course stopped for a quick photo opportunity (although, of course, Megan and I both forgot our cameras, so all we had was my phone!)

The actual cabin was tiny – just three very small rooms: Ma and Pa’s room, with a window, the girls’ room, so tiny I don’t think you could have fit a modern twin-sized bed in it, and very dark because there was no window, and the kitchen/living area, with an open hearth for cooking. The mother in me immediately quailed at the thought of raising kids in a house that small – they would always be right there – there was nowhere in the house to send them to if you needed a moment of peace and quiet. But the homesteader in me immediately thought of how little “stuff” you would be able to fit in a house that small – you would have to live much more simply. I am big on getting rid of “stuff” right now!

Then back to the park to have lunch with the guys (and surprisingly there was still meat left - perhaps eight steaks was more than even they could eat!) Megan provided a watermelon, which the kids sucked down without flinching (although the dads wouldn’t touch it – what kind of wierdos don’t like watermelon? Dan couldn’t even cut it, because he couldn’t stand the smell. What???)

Anyway, then it was on to the museum. On our way out of the park we stopped at the neat little train museum I mentioned before. Apparently it had been the train depot for Pepin long ago. There was a lot of miscellaneous memorabilia – very neat.

The Laura Ingalls Wilder museum was actually two separate buildings, the first one with a schoolroom, where our homeschooled kids got a quick lesson on sitting still and raising their hands (no, it didn’t really sink in). In the larger room there was a replica of a steamboat (Pepin is right on the Mississippi River) and the kids had a blast running around in that while we adults looked at the more “boring” stuff.

In the second building, they had more vintage Laura-type stuff. They had a room that was set up as a bedroom, with crazy quilts on the big bed and on a trundle bed below. They had period clothes hung up around the wall – christening gowns and lacy ladies’ dresses. Another area had farm implements, and another room had kitchen things. It was fun to have the kids try to figure out what each might be used for. And then of course there was the gift shop (“Mom, can I please get this pencil sharpener shaped like a horse???” *groan* ) And then suddenly we were done, and hugging everyone and saying goodbye. They were off to Plum Creek, and we were on our way home to meet some other cousins (more on that next . . .) It all went so fast!