Registration for Holidays in Hand is Open!

You’re invited to our FINAL class of 2009, and best of all, it’s FREE! Take advantage of this special opportunity to refocus on what matters most to YOU during the holiday season, no matter how you celebrate.

We’ll be making a great project to help you tell your holiday stories both past and present, and I’d like to extend a personal invitation to EVERYONE. You don’t have to be a digital scrapbooker, you don’t have to know Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

Registration is easy and free!

1. Log in to your account at JessicaSprague.com.
2. Copy this code by highlighting it and typing Ctrl-C (Cmd-c on your Mac): HIHFREE2009
3. Click the image above, or click right here, then paste (Ctrl-v or Cmd-v) the code.
4. You’re registered! Click on your My Classes link to view the introduction to the class! (I’ll be posting the supply list on Wednesday)

I know we’re going to have an amazing time together in class, and I would LOVE to share this information and experience with everyone! Please tell your friends and family, spread the word, share the love!

Welcome to Holidays in Hand!

NoVeMbEr!

Can you believe it? Halloween is over, October is over, and we’re heading in to the holiday season that ends 2009. I can’t BELIEVE it! I finally got a picture of Rowen’s “tooth holes” - which are kind of cheats, since her two bottom teeth started coming in about 6 weeks ago:

So she wrote a letter to the Tooth fairy, and even decorated the envelope:

Translation (it’s in two columns):

“Dear Tooth Fairy, My tooth came out today. I put it in an envelope. Please give me a dollar or two.”

When I first saw this, my heart squeezed until it came out my eyes. She has been phonetically spelling for only a couple of weeks, like a switch that came on - suddenly sounds relate to letters, and letters make words. I’m so PROUD of this sweet girl, and this note is so purely, perfectly her - complete with the little toothy decorations to melt the Tooth Fairy’s heart. (It did).

Thursday was the Halloween party at Red Hat, so Jared dressed up to go to work that day. He was Nosferatu, which a surprising number of people haven’t seen. If YOU are one of those people, what the heck? It’s a classic spooky BW vampire flick! It rocks! Check this guy out:

Now check out Jared’s version!

HAWT!

He Bic’ed his head, and even shaved his goatee, which I think he’s had for all but maybe a month? of our entire marriage. I did the makeup, and he rented the FABULOUS long coat. It’s the first time he’s ever dressed up for Halloween, and it was awesome!

Now go rent ya some of that Nosferatu action, kay? Coolest part? It was filmed in Germany before World War II, and many of the buildings in the movie were destroyed during the war, so it’s a wonderful and rare view into what these parts of Germany looked like.

I have some Halloween pics, and pics from the Sprague-o-Ween party last week. More later. :)

Happy November!

Quick Recap, more to come!

Wow. So much has happened in the past several days. Gotta get it down, then expand on it as I get time

• Rowen lost her first tooth! Yeah! Her permanent teeth on the bottom had been growing in already, and she wrote the SWEETEST  note to the Tooth Fairy. Scan to come.
• We visited a pumpkin farm and did the corn maze. It took us about an hour, and was awesome for almost all of it (less awesome when the kids got tired and Jared and I ended up hauling them on our backs through the end of it), we pretended that we were in a dungeon searching for the mini-bosses at the dead ends (they are the ones with the chests full of loot, of course).
• We had our first annual Sprague-o-Ween on Friday night, complete with pizza, coloring, cookie decorating, and we made starched fabric ghosts.

I know there’s more, dangit. This is what happens when I’m a bad blogger. But I’ll head through my pics and see what else. Hehe. Anyone else use their photos in place of an actual memory in your brain? Yeah.

Chicken soup.

I was awake last night. Most of the night. And I got to thinking, as I often do when I can’t sleep - of course ALL my best ideas (at leat they seem like really good ideas… hmm..) come in the middle of the night.

But this one wasn’t so much a bright new idea as a little bit of a revelation. I feel like I’ve been sort of in survival mode, waiting for what I don’t know, but there it is. I’ve been out of habits, out of sorts, in high-alert mode for weeks, and I feel stretched pretty thin for it.

So today I read planet books with Ele after preschool. And I made chicken noodle soup, following this Paula Deen recipe called “The Lady’s Chicken Noodle Soup” - EASILY the best chicken noodle soup I’ve ever eaten. I  modified it as follows:

Here’s how it went:

• 1 rotisserie chicken
• 2 32-oz boxes of chicken stock
• 2 cups water
• 1 small onion, diced
• 2 cups sliced carrots
• 2 cups sliced celery
• 2 1/2 cups uncooked egg noodles
• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary leaves
• 1 cup grated Parmesan, optional
• 3/4 cup heavy cream, optional
• Seasoning salt
• Freshly ground black pepper

Bring the stock and the water to a boil, add carrots and onion, cook for 3 minutes. Add celery and continue to cook for 5-10 minutes. Add egg noodles and cook according to directions on package.

While the noodles cook, remove the skin from the chicken and shred the chicken breasts finely. When noodles are done, add chicken, parsley, and rosemary. Add Parmesan and cream, if using. Cook for another 2 minutes. Adjust seasoning, if needed, by adding seasoning salt and pepper. Enjoy along with a nice hot crusty loaf of French bread.

Oh my dear sweet reader, PLEASE make this soup. Your belly and your family will thank me. Fo reals. I wouldn’t lead you astray, would I? And plus, how can you go wrong with heavy cream and parmesan cheese?

So after our domesticated dinner, we played Bingo with M&Ms as the markers, and went through the kids’ school papers to sort them into big shallow plastic bins. These are the best solution we’ve been able to come up with to store their papers - we have been absolutely inundated with papers since we have one in kindergarten and one in preschool. It is crazy. Some of it is just homework, which goes into the bins, but so much of it is stuff we have to read and sign and whatever, I feel like I’m the one in school. And I have a sneaking suspicion (moms of older kids, confirm this?) that it only gets worse from here. *sigh*

But Rowen truly is loving kindergarten. She told us tonight at dinner all about the friends she’s making, and what she does during art class, and what she had for lunch. And as we looked through her papers, I told her how proud I am of all her wonderful work, and the words she is writing (an EXPLOSION of words! Suddenly she’s taking notes on EVERYTHING, sounding out and writing down, and it’s so cute), and that we love all she’s learning.

She lit up like the sun, and then put her hand on her chest and said, “I think I’m killed with happiness, and my lips are turning red!” Apparently, this is a very good thing. :)

And yeah, it’s 9:45 and I haven’t done anything else. But what I have done feels like what really mattered. And that feels good. :)

September Extended, Halloween, Digi, Sleepless

So, apparently September decided to extend itself several more days. It’s threatening to take over Halloween, which we really can’t let happen, because Rowen decided to be something EASY this year (Tinker Bell) and we already have her costume.

However, if it wants to delay Halloween just a bit, until I can figure out how to accomplish Ele’s request (that’d be, you guessed it, the planet Saturn), that would be fine.

How does a kid who is four want to be A PLANET for Halloween? Not an astronaut, (he didn’t want to be an astronaut last year, but we convinced him), he wants to be the planet. And of course he wants to be the ringed one. Thoughts?

Also, it’s 3:30 in the morning. TypeWriter 2 is keeping me up late these days. It’s tougher than I thought it would be in my head, getting it together enough to teach a class and live my life right now. There’s just so much .. life, I guess.

• Rowen is still loving school. Struggling a bit with getting up early and trying to adjust to how demanding a full day of kindergarten can be on a 5-year-old. And so are we.
• Ele, is our planet guy as always, and it is so much fun to hang out with him when Rowen is at school. Something neither of us have ever had before. 
• Struggling getting my sleeping back in order - maybe after being in Utah for a week? Maybe after being sick? Maybe after having Liv here, who does not need sleep, only coffee? Who knows? But I am certainly wider awake right now than I will be at 9 a.m., which is fine if I were a moth. As a mother, though, not so much.

Oh, and by the way, I am going to be teaching an introduction to digital scrapbooking class locally (I get asked this all the time), at the Family History Conference on Saturday morning, at the Apex NC LDS Stake Center.

You don’t need to register, just arrive (it’s free), and you’ll get three different family history related classes between 9-noon. I think it’ll be fun to talk about digital scrapbooking with an emphasis on the history part of family history. :)

Also, I think we might be winning the battle against the sickness AND the fleas of September. Cautiously optimistic. And thanks to Terminix, we got to spend 5 quality hours away from home yesterday, mainly shopping, while our house was treated. Just what I needed right now, right? But actually, it kind of was. And got some super cute pillows from Restoration Hardware. :)

Now if I can only get to sleep before 4 a.m., I might have a shot at some daylight hours tomorrow without feeling like I’ve been hit by a large vehicle. Wish me luck!

Goodbye, Hello.

September.

sigh.

It was. Wow.

I haven’t had as crazy a month as September in as long as I can remember.  My grandma passed the end of August, then my birthday, then the first weekend in September, our little kitten Cassie ran away. :( That weekend, Ele got sick. Then Rowen and Jared followed and were sick for another 10 days. I survived until mid-september, then got it too. We discovered that our other cat, Jane, has fleas (and consequently, so does our house). Liv arrived the 16th, which was awesome, and we had SUCH a cool, cool time. We spent from the 21-27 in Utah at the Digital Scrapbook Experience, which was also awesome. It wasn’t easy being sick during that entire thing. I’m SO grateful to be feeling better, just now feeling mostly myself. And frankly, I’m pretty grateful that September is over. I’m hoping that the new month means slowing down.

But, maybe that will happen tomorrow… cause it didn’t happen today.

Today was interesting. Rowen had her well-child checkup for kindergarten, had 4 shots, and failed her eye exam. So off to the eye dr., which we managed to get in today. So the whole day spent waiting in waiting rooms, getting shots, wiping tears, getting ice cream reward, getting eye drops (which for some reason freaked her out as much as the shots), wiping more tears, getting more ice cream, and I’m tired.

The eye dr says she is fine, and that it’s normal for little kids to fluctuate, mix up letters, etc. So she doesn’t need glasses.

I feel like I’ve run a marathon.

There was a funny from today, though.

I was bringing the kids home from the eye dr and dinner, we got a call from our babysitter, who has been on a vacation to Hawaii for the past 2 1/2 weeks (oh yeah, did I mention that our sitter has been gone during most of September?), called to say she’s home. She told us she had taken a helicopter over the volcanos, and had taken a submarine to the ocean floor.

So I got off the phone and told the kids I had talked to Ms. Linda, and that she had gone in a helicopter, and a submarine. I asked if they knew what a submarine was, and Ele said, “It’s a thing you get in and it takes you down under the water.”

“Yes, that’s right!”

Then Rowen said, “Yeah, and they are yellow!”

LOL.

But here’s to a smoother October. Goodbye September, hello smoother sailing. And if not smoother, then here’s to having the gift of strength to deal with what comes. After all, the meaning of life isn’t in the victory, but in the struggle, right?

Short.

I can’t even remember when I have gone so long without blogging. I’ve missed it. I’ve also had a sick family for a week, and managed to stay well until Sunday. Then I’ve barely been able to keep my eyes open since then.

Liv comes into town tomorrow.

And we’re beginning registration tonight for Type+Writer 1 and 2.

And I feel this relentless need for sleep that makes it hard to accomplish much.

Day 1.

So, we are two days in, and by far the hardest two things have been a) getting up earlier than usual - everyone has to be out the door by 7:30 and b) starting up every few seconds to look around for where Rowen went, and then remembering with a little pang, oh, she isn’t here.

She did pause for a few pictures yesterday morning. In the rain, no less, before heading out to the car. (Our school has a fairly stringent no-parents-sobbing-in-the-doorway policy, so you can only drop a kid off except in extenuating circumstances).

Here is a girl ready to take on the world.

Oh little-big girl. So beautiful on your first day of one of the Great Adventures of life. I am full to overflowing with pride (look at this person! this being of grace and intelligence and laughter and spirit!) and wonder (how did you get to be so big all of a sudden? you are the most beautiful creature I can possibly imagine) and anxiety (are you ready for this? have I prepared you enough? will this school experience be what it should be?), and I wipe a few tears, because what else does a mother have but a heart has expanded wide as the universe, and can’t be contained, and so it flows out her eyes?

And now, having held you cupped in my two hands for so long - having had you almost literally all to myself for these your years, I feel a rush of hope - tinged with, what is that? sorrow? which sounds like the wind through new leaves as I lift and open my arms, and watch you fly…

Alright, so everyone I have looked at or talked to for a week has given me that consolatory look - that mourning-with-gladness look that EVERY SINGLE MOTHER has who has sent a kid to kindergarten. I think you must learn how to give that look as part of the first day’s rites of passage.)

And here - my last view of her was rounding the corner of the house to ride with Jared:

p.s. I made those pigtails. Pretty proud of that.

As for her?

She climbed into the car at 3:10 yesterday and I said, “How was your day in kindergarten?”

She sat down in her chair with a supremely satisfied look on her face, and said, “It was pretty much awesome.”

Yeah, sweet girl. I knew you’d love it. It’s ME that we need to fix up. :)

Whew.

This is one of those “I’m here!” posts that you probably won’t have any idea how to respond to. I’m considering not writing it, but I need to update from out of the swirl of events here, if for no other reason that making lists is head-clearing. :) I feel I’m awash in a tide of bittersweet Time in the events of the past few days, and in learning to accept change and let go.

Rowen had her Assessment Day at kindergarten yesterday. Jared and I both went, and pulled around (in the carpool line! an alternate universe!), and the teacher opened the car door, and helped her out, and led her inside. Better that it was quick, since it wasn’t really the Official First Day, right? And all day yesterday, I kept starting up and saying, “Where’s Rowen?” before almost immediately remembering she was at school. At school! It was like my heart went wandering - I could almost physically feel the tug. Ele and I went to pick her up at 2:00 and we went for ice cream. I asked her about her day, and she showed me the papers she had made. They were testing her on things like writing her name, coloring, cutting, tracing, and she had done well. But the weirdest? I asked her what she chose for her school lunch, and she said, “I had pink milk, and a hamburger, and peaches and pears.” She is making her own choices about FOOD! Without me there to say, no, let’s not have 7 desserts today. And she did pretty well, I think. She starts school as an official Kindergartener on Monday. Time. Washing over me. And the bitterly sweet feeling of opening my arms to let go.

Tomorrow’s my birthday, which I only mention here because I get a new purse and possibly a date with my honey. I somehow still feel 25, so some OTHER lady must be having a birthday tomorrow, that isn’t me. Couldn’t be me. Time. And the sweet satisfaction of utter denial. ;)

And lastly and most sad, my dad called today to tell me that my dear Grandma Bills, my last living grandparent, passed on into Eternity early this morning. It wasn’t unexpected - her health had been failing in the past few weeks, and she was ready to go. So my sadness here is only to lose one of the great Trees of my life - one of those monumental figures that I learned from, and respected, and admire so much. I grew up living next door to them, and she taught me about cooking and sewing, and showed me by her faithful example what real-life love and determination are. She had been a school teacher, and was a legend among my high school friends for being the absolute toughest second-grade teacher imaginable. I will always love that about her. I feel Time washing over me. And the bitterly sweet feeling of opening my arms to let go. I’m kind of too raw tonight to do a long memorial of her, but I do think that my Grandpa, who passed in 2005, came to greet her and escort her Home, and the thought of them reuniting with the love of their lives for all eternity brings me some great comfort.

Grandma’s funeral is in Idaho, of course - on Monday, the day that Rowen begins Kindergarten. As I talked to my dad today, he said, “Grandma of all people would tell you that you belong with your girl on her first day of school. Don’t worry about missing her service.”

So suddenly, sitting here tonight, I’m not immortal, and not immune to change and the progression of days and weeks that have somehow become years. Suddenly I’m hard up against Middle Age, and my little baby girl that I just held in my arms is starting school, and the last living grandparent has departed this life. I suddenly look up and glance around, a little bewildered, wondering how this happened? Suddenly my mission of the past few years since becoming a scrapbooker, to savor and save, becomes more immediate and more real.  Not from the fear of losing the beauty of today, but so that tomorrow, when today is gone, there is the looking back that gives the courage to turn and look ahead again. That’s all I’ve got for tonight. Savor and save.

I love you more because you're the owner.

My sister-in-law stopped by on Wednesday night, with her 5 kids. They’re on their way back to Oregon from a summer in Jacksonville, Florida, and chose to pass through Raleigh. I’m so glad they did - my kids (ages 5 and 4) have only met any of their cousins once, and have never met this particular set. In fact, I hadn’t met the youngest two of Heather’s kids, either. Such is life when you’re many hours’ drive away and you’ve got small kids, right?

It was great fun to see them - so much fun that they decided to spend a second day. We ended up at Monkey Joe’s for a couple of hours, and then hit up the Crazy Fire mongolian barbeque. I walked in and said words I never thought I would say - “Two adults and seven children for dinner, please” and I think I managed to say it smoothly enough. Turns out it was a very pleasant and surprisingly calm meal, and I was very proud of that. :)

Rowen and Elliott LOVED playing with their cousins. E- is 8, and Rowen latched onto her and barely let go for the entire two day visit. Elliott found a partner in crime in 4-year-old T-, and the two sat playing on the kids’ computer for FAR longer than either of their individual attenion spans would have indicated. We spent some time talking on the couch, watching the kids play, and loving just being related. :)

As they were leaving last night to go back to their hotel (they left town this morning), Rowen gave each and every cousin a huge hug and a kiss, and then ran back to Heather for seconds. As she was hugging, she told each cousin, “I love you! I just LOVE you!” and then to Heather, arms around her neck, she said, “I love you more because you’re the owner.”

Heather laughed and said, “The owner of these kids, you mean?”

“Yeah, you take such good care of these SWEET cousins!”

We both cracked up. We will miss them. It’s one of the VERY few things I miss about being on the East coast with almost all our family in the west (I have a brother in Cincinnati, but everyone else is west of the rockies). The casual time. The growing-up-together time. Did you grow up near cousins? What was your experience like?

And on a completely unrelated note: If you have a little girl, how do you contain her clothes? We have yet to figure out a hanging-up vs. folding system that actually works and keeps Rowen’s clothes from a pile on top of her dresser. Do you hang all? Fold all? Have a dresser+closet? Any help would be appreciated. :)

Update.

Okay, what do you get when you take 2 in-laws visiting from out of state, a 4-day trip to the cabin, a 3-day trip to Charlotte, and 2 days of nearly comatose recovery from said trip, all while teaching a brand-new class online?

Not a trick question. You get no blogging.

I’ve been hopelessly lame about it, and I’m sorry. I know you come and check here every day for some new wise words of wisdom, right? EVERY DAY. Several times. I know I do, just in the hopes that someone else will start writing about my life and I can read about it. It’s the only way I can hope to keep up.

In the news:

I registered Rowen for kindergarten on Thursday. And after filling out these papers (her permanent record! ack!), I was informed that after an assessment day and a meet-the-teacher day next week, she starts school on August 31.

She starts school on August 31.

August 31.

Crap.

That’s like, 10 days away.

There aren’t very many times this has happened to me, but as I was leaving the office of the school I had to pause for a minute just to gather myself together - to catch my breath. I could actually feel, in that moment, my life changing forever.

I think as a scrapbooker I’m more conscious of the passing of time in general - I try to pay attention. I try to celebrate and be grateful for small details, everyday joys, reasons for laughter. Most of the changes in my life either occur gradually, or I only look back on them later and think, wow, that was a thing/moment/day/event that changed the course of my entire life. It’s a little like hearing the echo of thunder from a storm that’s already passed, or hearing a distant clock strike the hour.

This was like standing there with the door of the giant grandfather clock open, watching the gears turn and seeing the Big Hand tick its final tick to the 12, and feeling TIME actually vibrate through me as the bell began to sound.

I rushed home and hugged her for all I was worth - my little girl. Suddenly the word bittersweet takes on new meaning, and it’s far more bitter than I had previously imagined, honestly.

I mean, I love that she’s growing into someone amazing. I love the opportunity and the fun and the learning that’s ahead of her. I hope (more than anything!) that she has a good experience, that the kids are nice, her teacher is nice, that her fear of the unknown is eased in her first few days. And perhaps the bitter taste is my own uncertainty for her, combined with the fact that I can feel the change coming that changes one of the most joyful times of my life so far.

I love my two little kids. I love the immediacy of their joy, love sharing the wonder and laughter, and laughing at their stories and games and songs. I get hugs all day, and “I love ya, mama!” I love answering their endless questions, love watching them make instant friends wherever we go (“Hi! I’m Rowen. Want to play on the slide?” and two little girls go off hand in hand to play), love reading and hugging, running and dancing, baking together, and kissing soft blonde hair at night. It’s hard to imagine a life better than this one, and so I’m afraid for the change I can feel coming. I hope that this joy is a pattern of life, and not a passing thing. And that that looking for the delight in life is a skill I’ve developed, and haven’t simply been passively enjoying.

Kristen sent me a link to a great sermon by one of the LDS church leaders, about hope. Here’s his story from the end of that talk:

Thirty years ago last month, a little family set out to cross the United States to attend graduate school—no money, an old car, every earthly possession they owned packed into less than half the space of the smallest U-Haul trailer available. Bidding their apprehensive parents farewell, they drove exactly 34 miles up the highway, at which point their beleaguered car erupted. 

Pulling off the freeway onto a frontage road, the young father surveyed the steam, matched it with his own, then left his trusting wife and two innocent children—the youngest just three months old—to wait in the car while he walked the three miles or so to the southern Utah metropolis of Kanarraville, population then, I suppose, 65. Some water was secured at the edge of town, and a very kind citizen offered a drive back to the stranded family. The car was attended to and slowly—very slowly—driven back to St. George for inspection—U-Haul trailer and all.

After more than two hours of checking and rechecking, no immediate problem could be detected, so once again the journey was begun. In exactly the same amount of elapsed time at exactly the same location on that highway with exactly the same pyrotechnics from under the hood, the car exploded again. It could not have been 15 feet from the earlier collapse, probably not 5 feet from it! Obviously the most precise laws of automotive physics were at work.

Now feeling more foolish than angry, the chagrined young father once more left his trusting loved ones and started the long walk for help once again. This time the man providing the water said, “Either you or that fellow who looks just like you ought to get a new radiator for that car.” For the second time a kind neighbor offered a lift back to the same automobile and its anxious little occupants. He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry at the plight of this young family.

“How far have you come?” he said. “Thirty-four miles,” I answered. “How much farther do you have to go?” “Twenty-six hundred miles,” I said. “Well, you might make that trip, and your wife and those two little kiddies might make that trip, but none of you are going to make it in that car.” He proved to be prophetic on all counts.

Just two weeks ago this weekend, I drove by that exact spot where the freeway turnoff leads to a frontage road, just three miles or so west of Kanarraville, Utah. That same beautiful and loyal wife, my dearest friend and greatest supporter for all these years, was curled up asleep in the seat beside me. The two children in the story, and the little brother who later joined them, have long since grown up and served missions, married perfectly, and are now raising children of their own. The automobile we were driving this time was modest but very pleasant and very safe. In fact, except for me and my lovely Pat situated so peacefully at my side, nothing of that moment two weeks ago was even remotely like the distressing circumstances of three decades earlier.

Yet in my mind’s eye, for just an instant, I thought perhaps I saw on that side road an old car with a devoted young wife and two little children making the best of a bad situation there. Just ahead of them I imagined that I saw a young fellow walking toward Kanarraville, with plenty of distance still ahead of him. His shoulders seemed to be slumping a little, the weight of a young father’s fear evident in his pace. In the scriptural phrase his hands did seem to “hang down.” In that imaginary instant, I couldn’t help calling out to him: “Don’t give up, boy. Don’t you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead—a lot of it—30 years of it now, and still counting. You keep your chin up. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come.

I will take the advice at the end, there, even though it frightens me to step into the darkness. Will they ever be the same as they are now, in this final carefree Summertime before school begins? Probably not. But I can trust that there are yet amazing times to ahead. I believe it.

Hiking

Jared’s parents came to visit us from Oregon on Thursday night, and we left on Friday to come stay at the cabin for the weekend. We’ve been grilling (yay for our two new books!), eating really, really good southern barbeque, and today we all went for a hike to Linville Falls. The one main trail goes in about .4 miles , and then the second and third trails go beyond that one, with the furthest about another half-mile in. Each ends at an overlook, so we took the first one, heading over to the Upper Falls Overlook. The falls here are small, disappearing around a huge s-curving gorge eroded in hundreds of layers through the centuries. Back out and onto the main trail, and we decided to try for the second overlook, to see the larger lower falls. It was another maybe 1/3 of a mile back, quite uneven, with a steep wooden staircase down to the overlook itself - I snapped a few pics and then followed Elliott back up the hill to where the main trail had branched off down to the overlook.

Ele and I assumed that the rest (Grandma, Grandpa, Jared and Rowen) would be following us, so we headed up the third trail (trusting the sign that said it was 800 feet further ahead). The sign was a dirty liar, and the final overlook was a good third of a mile out. Ele was flagging by the time we got up there, took a few more pictures, and didn’t see the rest of the family following. So we went back on down the trail, and right at the turn-off to the second trail (probably .8 miles out), Ele sat down on a rock like a deflating balloon. His tired little legs just wouldn’t carry him any further.

Still seeing no sign of the family - I figured they had gone back to the car - I hoisted Ele on my back and headed down the trail. He weighs probably 30 pounds, so it was fairly easy going on the downslopes, but definitely got harder as we began the climb back up to where the parking lot was.As I walked, Ele started humming against my back, and I put my arms back, and underneath him to help hold him up. As I walked, I thought about what a privilege it was to have this strength. I thought about mamas - strong mamas all over the world who do far more than walk 3/4 of a mile with a kid on their back - without ever considering that they wouldn’t or couldn’t make it. I thought of magnificent mamas, and their emotional and mental toil over weeks and years in the service of their beloveds. This is simply what must be done, and so it will be done. Mamas, I admire you!

The last 500 feet or so was a really steep upslope, and I will not lie - I was puffing pretty hard by the end of that. But I thought with gratitude of my back grown strong in my years as a mother, and my months working my garden. I prayed a prayer of thanks for my legs, strong enough to carry me AND my small son when his legs would no longer support him. Motherhood seems to me to have been, in addition to so many other things, a school of patience and strength, and I’m grateful for that.

Awesome on at least four different levels.

And I say that, with authority.

Watch this, be moved, relish the typography, the inflection of the speaker, the cool animation, and the digital patterned paper background. I think my day is complete. :)

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

Little Ordinary Joy.

Today.

I felt like today was absolutely PACKED with little joys. It was crazy- from the taste of the sandwich (thanks, Jersey Mike’s!) I had for lunch, to the story I was listening to on NPR, even sitting in the driveway for a few minutes to finish it. It was amazing - the story of a Jamaican poet who interviewed HIV/AIDS patients and created an exhibit about their stories. It was so beautiful, and I highly recommend a listen. You can find it here. And listen to it on itunes here.

After the sitter left and my workday ended, the kids and I had a pool party in the backyard. We were joined for much of it by our small Jungle Stalker, Level 1. I was practicing with my focus points and my Tamron 28-70mm f/2.8 lens, and by heck, I think I got it! A few times! Hehe. I love good pic days.

Here are some:

I must say, these make my mama heart sing. I am so, SO blessed to have small people in my life who love me unconditionally. They show me about lighthearted living, unrestrained ideas, and the therapy - the universal cure for tightly-wound adulthood - that laughter is.

I might point out that just behind that flying supergirl is where my new fountain/bench will go. Lots of my sweat on the ground back there in the corner under those trees…

And here’s the Jungle Stalker, who loves being outside with us, exploring the grass! Jane is a timid cat, loving to stay on the porch steps, but Cassie loves roving, chasing her tail, diving into the grass, and generally killing me with cuteness. Also, I laid on the ground to get these, which I only do in special circumstances. :)

We grilled (JARED grilled, I should say) hamburgers, and popped popcorn and watched our favorite family cartoon: Phineas and Ferb on Disney On Demand.

On the way upstairs to put kids to bed, I spotted this sweet little lady asleep - on my purse. No apologies from Miss Cass! She obviously comes from the “what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine” school of thought.

Come to think of it, EVERY cat belongs to that school of thought. There’s something in their fur and their purr and their LOOK - like this one she is giving the camera right up there that is total brainwash.

…

Excuse me, I feel this compelling need to go fill  a food bowl…

Garden.

I’m spending the afternoon/evening getting ready for the Brush*Abilities class that starts tomorrow. But stumbled on this most fabulous of gardening quotes, from this article from Slate:

So why garden? Because gardening is one of the joys of life. Peaceful and meditative, it’s work that involves nurturing lovely, colorful creatures that never talk back or defile the rug. You proceed at your own pace in your own space while listening to the birds or your iPod or your kids, and, if you’re lucky and keep after the weeds, you’ll end up with a stir fry. When gardening ceases to be a labor of love, you might as well stop…

I spent 3 hours digging yesterday, to unearth a corner of the yard where we’ve previously just raked and blown all the pine needles and leaves from 2 years of yard “maintenance” - it made a pile in the corner of the back fence, behind two large pine trees, roughly 3 feet high and maybe 5 feet to a side. I’m going to have those two trees removed, to make way for a little fountain and a bench, and hopefully what will become a little quiet bowery spot outside. So the whole “peaceful and meditative” didn’t apply so much yesterday as “sweaty and breathless and backbreaking”. But they are right about one thing - being part of my own garden in the past few months - digging in my own dirt, being outside with my kids, watching with wonder as these little plants have grown, has become one of the non-computery joys of my life. In short, it’s a little bit of nature therapy that I’ve discovered I desperately needed.

Hence my instant identification with this phrase from the same article:

…one tightly wound adult [could] discover the therapeutic pleasures of hoeing…

I’m still bewildered by the sheer amount of information, and by this whole new dictionary-worth of jargon to learn (perennial? annual? at least I have these two down), but it slows me down, helps me think, gives me a new outlet for discovery and an opportunity to be part of a beautifying process that I really only have a small, humble part in.

The process of GROWING is a lovely mystery that I marvel at every day. But it also feels like I’m experiencing the way the universe works in a very tangible and visible way. It’s hard to see my own growth, for example - to see the way with nurturing and care and time and experience I have become a different person over time. But it’s easy to see my tomato plants grow, bud, and produce small green fruit that ripens into a big beautiful red tomato where no tomato existed before - incredible! And humbling. Mysterious, and yet beautifully ordered. No tomato ever grew from a watermelon vine, so I witness the irrevocable law of the universe that one only reaps what one sows. And that growth - ALL growth - takes patience, and care, and nurturing, and above all - TIME. I have learned this lesson now after one summer of gardening, more deeply than I have ever learned it in theory.

Over time, as I’ve been outside, and especially as I’ve been watering plants, breathing in the beautiful, fragrant mist, and almost feeling the joy of my plants, this phrase from the book of Isaiah comes into my mind, which is one of the blessings of fasting, but something that I understand better than ever now:

And the Lord shall ^aguide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in ^bdrought, and ^cmake fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a ^dspring of water, whose waters fail not.

If I end up a little less tightly wound, and my little corner of earth ends up better than when I started (ha! have I shown pictures of our backyard when we bought this place?), it will have been worth it. I’ve discovered for myself another thing that - like so many things in life that are really worth it - combines labor and love into a beautiful, gratifying whole. Plus backache, dirt under my fingernails, and the occasional brush with poison ivy. Pretty darned perfect.

Unforgettables

Today while we were working in the yard, I heard Rowen and Elliott discussing gathering “wands” - small twigs - from around the yard. I overhear Rowen tell him, “Okay, Elliott, with THIS one, you can turn me into a lemon-yellow-marker-haired princess with pearl blue eyes, and a hearted crown aaaand dressed all in pink, all the way down.”

Girl knows what she wants. Especially Lemon Yellow Marker colored hair. LOL!

Yesterday, she busted out this front flip on the couch, fearless girl, and sat there where she’d landed and said, “See mama? I can do an air-sault! It’s a sumersault, but in the AIR.”

Also, I have managed to get poison ivy on my other wrist, and must have been sweaty too, because I have three small patches on my FACE. The ones on my wrist itch like a motherbear, but the ones on my face are the hardest to deal with, looking like three big zits as they do. Sob. Ah, vanity. Also, benadryl at night so I don’t itch myself to death in my sleep.

I swear I have been wearing garden gloves. I swear! Probably all the times except one, and I’m sure it was me reaching under some bush somewhere in our yard, and brushing the wrist against it. It would also appear that I’m more allergic than usual to poison ivy, since it looks like a big puffy blistery chemical burn. At least the one on the other wrist has faded to a pinkish scar, and I get the lesson - always wear garden gloves! I am a slow learner sometimes…

Also, it has rained every afternoon for over a week here, with steady humidity in the 90% - I went outside about 8:30 this evening to get in the car, and my glasses fogged up. Three years in, and this is something I’m still struggling to get used to.

Okay, as promised. Pics of cat and tomato:

She runs and runs and climbs and jumps and chases her tail, and then finds somewhere, anywhere soft, and plops down for a nap. I snapped her on a pillow in one of the chairs in the living room. What’s weird is how fast she is growing! I left for 4 days, and I came home and she was noticeably bigger.

She’s a ball of curiosity whenever she’s awake, especially loving to see what’s UP:

And here is a shot of the Tomato. Actually that should be TOMATO, because it’s the first thing I’ve ever actually grown that I could actually eat (aside from the herbs, of course, which we’ve been enjoying like crazy), that Grew! In my yard! Without further ado, the TOMATO.

Spa, Chicken, Chops, and Blessings

AAAHH. I had a Jes-Spa tonight. Something I don’t do often enough. We stopped at Lush in the mall in Dallas on Friday evening (before the headache), and I picked up a couple of Bath Bombs. Threw a half one in the tub tonight and just soaked. MAN I need to do this more often. Now I’m clean and smellie-goodie (as the kids would say), toenails painted, face moisturized, and feeling super relaxed.

Ok, for the record, I do have pictures of a cat and a tomato, and I will post them. But they’re on my memory card, and I am transferred to the laptop, writing from bed. Not that I mind writing on the laptop from bed, of course. Just too relaxed to get up and get the card. Sorry. I can hear Jared playing Warcraft arenas in the office, and (this will surprise you) he gets WAY into the game. Stress and shouting rolling off him in waves sometimes as he gives commands and talks to his arena partner (that’s right, we are both headset mic wearers ;). I even tease him about it:

BURN BURN BURN BURN!

NICE!

I’m in trouble. I’M IN TROUBLE!

NICE!

HE’S ALMOST DOWN! BURN HIM!

NICE!

They’re doing well tonight, as you can see from the quotes above. Heh.

So, we decided a few days ago that we would like to learn how to grill. It’s fast, it’s healthy, and it beats the PANTS off of stirring a random thing on a hot stove. So, like good geeks, we did some Google searches, and bought a couple of books.

We got this one:

And this one:

They’re both really good, so far, and actually a good complement to each other.

We tried grilled chicken last night, after the kids went to bed, and it was AMAZING. The secret to good grill, according to our books, is layering flavors. So we created a vinegar-based “mop” to baste the chicken with while cooking, and rubbed it with a spice rub before putting it down. Then spread the mop on every couple minutes while the chicken cooks. Nothing sugary, or it’ll burn. Finish off in the last 2 mins of cooking with a barbeque sauce. I think I cried a little bit when I tasted it. And it was SO MUCH FUN to just cook with Jared.

Then tonight. Pork Chops.

Oh, p.s. Jared just came in all excited and told me how AWESOME they did tonight. So the quotes were pretty accurate. :)

Okay, I’m a BIG fan of pork chops. I get them at restaurants pretty much every chance, and love the flavor. Especially chops from a steak house. Oh baby. Trouble is, no matter what I have tried, I have never been happy with my own home-cooked chops, wherein I manage to make only tough grey coasters.

So according to BOTH of the books above, the secret to great pork chops - even the leanest ones - is brining. Basically soak them for a few hours in a salty concoction. So I made the brine with brown sugar, salt, a little oil, and a little vinegar, and added sliced onion, bay leaf, clove, allspice, and peppercorns (basically following the recipe). Soaked them for about 3 hours.

Jared grilled them up - he is a stickler for those crosshatch grill marks, and also (ahem) kind of a micromanager, so I let him do most of the actual meat-to-grill work. We also sliced up some apples and threw them on the grill as well, and I did some corn with herbed butter (rosemary and mint).

Then came time for the tasting. I cut into that chop, and I DID cry a little bit. It was the most delicious pork chop that has ever been made at my house by far, and easily one of the best I’ve EVER had. We just sat there mmmmm-ing at each other, congratulating ourselves on a terrific job, and we can’t wait to have them again. Tender, flavorful, juicy. Seriously. And you haven’t suddenly transferred to someone else’s blog - it’s still mine. Yeah, WE did this! :D

So, in just two days, our two new books have proven themselves absolutely WORTH IT. Oh yes. And they both offer more advanced recipes when we’ve mastered these basics, which we’re looking forward to.

And this was a post almost all about food. But see, really GOOD food doesn’t get created at my house very often. I think Jared and I might have found something in which we can make a perfect balance, though. I can slice and stir and brine and chop and accessorize, and he can make beautiful grill marks on a perfectly done pork chop. Sounds like a relationship to last a lifetime, right there. :)

Maybe it’s the hot bath and the slather of lavender vanilla lotion, but I feel so peaceful tonight. A kind of floaty bliss that just makes me smile a little bit. I am so incredibly, amazingly blessed, so lucky, so undeservedly fortunate that I’m humbled to just think of all the little beautiful things in my life. There are the Big things - home, family, health, safety, a job to do, a husband who loves me. But I picked my first tomato off of my OWN tomato plant this afternoon. And I had hot water for a long luxurious soak. And it’s 11 p.m. and I’m getting ready to snuggle down in this comfy bed, tired with the tired of having worked hard today. I hope you’re feeling blessed tonight, too.

More on the headache

Ok, so reading your comments, I did a few searches, and realized that what I THOUGHT was an incredibly (impossibly?) cricked neck is probably another migraine symptom. Crazy. I am still feeling that in my right neck/shoulder, actually, and was wondering what the heck? So thank you for your comments, and I will chat with the dr. about it. Thankfully, I don’t get these very often. Knock on wood, right?