What I did over my summer vacation

There is really no fast way to catch up on months of blog neglect. Especially if you are like me and can't for the life of you figure out how to flip pictures so that blog readers don't throw out their necks turning their heads to look at the pictures. But I digress.

I decided it would be easiest just to post some random assortments of pictures. And by the way, my use of the word "vacation" might have been a little sarcastic. Moms don't get vacations. They don't get sick leave or overtime, either. I tried standing in the living room with a sign demanding fair treatment, but no one even noticed, so I gave up.

First off, I grew some things. These are peas. The best peas you'd ever hope to eat. And I grew them. If you want your kids to eat vegetables with enthusiasm, try having them help grow them. Amazing!

I also spent a lot of time cleaning bunny cages, brushing bunnies, carting bunnies outside for play time, trying to catch bunnies when they sneakily opened their cages and escaped into my kitchen, and made disgusting oooooing and aaaaahing noises over how cute they are. Knit sleeps on his back with his giant furry feet in the air, but I haven't caught it with the camera yet.

My children also spent a fair amount of time communing with Knit. They know better than to get too close to Purl. We're fairly certain she descended from the rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In other words, she's slightly evil.

Then my friend Kat, known among certain circles as "Kat the Enabler", taught me to dye yarn. It was fun. REALLY fun. Here is some sock yarn I dyed. I call it...Hubba Bubba. Am I dating myself? I loved that gum!

At some point, this creature adopted me. Her name is Maura. She weighs all of five pounds, has only three working legs, and is The Boss. When Maura meows, you listen. I find that letting her run the household saves a lot of unnecessary worry. Plus, my children obey her far better than they obey me.

As you can see, I grew some more stuff. These were my herbs somewhere mid-summer. The small tomato plant below has since made a play for domination and taken over the front yard. I should really take a picture, because I'm not kidding. One day, my house will just be the big lump covered in tomato vine. However, I'm not complaining because we've had LOTS of tomatoes.

Kat was involved in this activity as well. She taught me to spin. I've always wanted to learn, and I'd been saving for a wheel. For my birthday, Mom, Dad and Pawpaw conspired to get me my own wheel. I also need a picture of that. Because this is apparently the only part of my wheel that I photographed. Odd.

And then I grew some stuff. This is a heap of mixed greens. It was delicious. We ate pretty well this summer, considering my garden tried to kill me. (It gave me poison ivy that landed me in the ER. Twice. And no, I wasn't trying to grow poison ivy. It's a long story.)

I would like to say I grew this, but I didn't. The birds did. I have very helpful finches.

I made some pickles, using my grandma's recipe. My cucumbers didn't do very well, but my cousin donated some cucumbers to the cause. I enjoyed making them, even if the smell of the brine caused Timothy to walk around with his shirt over his face for an entire day.

So, that was my summer vacation, the highlights. Yes, I realize I turned into a hippie. I didn't mean to, if that counts for anything.

If my cats don't hate me yet...

It's probably a miracle.

I truly don't know what possesses me sometimes. Poor Meanie.

Halloween 2009

I truly don't mean to go months between posts. I don't. It just happens. I've had so many gentle reminders (from my two remaining readers!) in the recent past, I finally dumped the camera card and here I am. We are big fans of Where the Wild Things Are. The book more so than the movie, but we did take the kids to see the movie, too. So it came as no surprise when Timothy expressed interest in owning a wolf suit. Unfortunately, because the movie came out so close to Halloween, no wolf suits could be located. What's a mother to do? The answer is take a trip to the fabric store and beg her own mother for help! Gabe decided he would be a Wild Thing (not a big stretch for those of you who know him!) and we were set!

Mom helped me a lot with Timothy's costume, especially the hood, which was a little tricky. I managed Gabe's by myself. Both boys had knitted fun fur tails. Here they are showing them off, with Boris doing his best to roar his own terrible roar, gnash his terrible teeth, roll his terrible eyes and show his terrible claws. Or, you know, just sit there and beg for attention.

Here I am with the Wild Things.

My friend Lena goes all out for Halloween, so we had to stop by and see her house. Here are the boys, posing with her she-wolf!

This is how the evening ended. Timothy enjoyed trick-or-treating in Mom and Dad's neighborhood for about an hour, and then he was done, so I took him back to the house to hang out with the grandparents and eat some candy while Gabe and Chris went back for more. It was rather a warm evening, for Halloween, so Timothy ended up shedding his fleece once inside. I guess Chris was feeling left out...

The head sprouting from his back is NOT part of the original costume. I don't have my sister's eye for photography, clearly!

Trying to win some fabric...

My mom is having a give-away for her blogiversary, so I'm posting for an extra chance to win. If you want to see her beautiful quilts (and maybe a shot or two of my adorable-albeit-slightly-evil kids), click on the word "Mom" under blogs I read!

The Five Senses

Lest this become the world's most depressing blog, I have a kidlet story. Today when I picked Timothy up from preschool, we were talking about his day as we drove to Gabe's school. I knew his class has been studying the body, so I asked if they were still talking about the five senses in group time. With a little help, I got him to name sight, hearing, touch, smell...but he was struggling on the last one. At last, he said, "Oh, I know! It's temptation!"

Trying to keep a straight face I said, "I think you might mean taste."

"No," he insisted, "it's temptation! Like, if there is a cake on the counter and you would like to eat some but you haven't had your dinner yet, you should probably wait till after dinner! That's temptation!"

You can't argue with that kind of logic!

Beautiful Weeds...

I had a dream about my granny last night, and I can't stop thinking about it today. In my dream, Granny and I were sitting at a roadside park. We were on a trip together, and we had stopped to rest. It was a perfect spring day, and although Granny was beautiful and healthy, like I remember her from my childhood, I knew in the dream that she was going to die, and that this was the last time I was going to see her. We were talking about flowers. I asked her if she remembered the blue flowers that used to grow around her house when I was a little girl. They bloomed in the morning and then closed up for the rest of the day, and I thought they were the most beautiful flowers in the world. I used to pick them and bring them inside, but they would close up and never open again. I tried to press or dry them, but they lost all their lovely cornflower blue and just shriveled up. I even tried taking pictures of them, but the pictures never showed their true color. I asked Granny in my dream why she thought it was that I could never preserve them when I was a child. She answered, "Because it's against the rules, Honey. We don't get to stop time to enjoy the beauty we find in life. We don't get to keep it forever. We're just supposed to enjoy it as much as we can while we have it because it never lasts very long."

That's what my life is: a series of lovely weeds. The things I plant don't always grow, but there are plenty of flowers anyway, just waiting for me to stumble upon them. I wish I'd had more time with my grandmas. It doesn't seem fair that they're both gone. But I have so many memories of the things they said, the things we did together and the times I spent with them. I have the most beautiful field full of wildflowers in my memory.

The makings of a memory...

It's been another sad week for my family. My grandma passed away suddenly on Saturday morning, and we've all been dealing with the grief related to losing someone so dear to us. I thought I should write about Grandma and what she meant to me. We each knew her a little differently...each relationship was unique.

Grandma was a quiet, peaceful person. When I was a kid, walking into her house was like being wrapped up in a cozy blanket. She lived in the country, and I looked forward to exploring the woods, playing with my cousin who lived down the road, and working in the garden. I guess being raised in the city meant that I never had to work in the garden long enough for it to become a chore. I remember sitting on the back steps in the evenings, snapping green beans. I remember the way scratches from the blackberry bushes stung when I rinsed them in the pump, and how good that well water tasted on a hot day. I remember Grandma and Mom in the kitchen, canning vegetables from the garden or cooking a meal. Grandma always made my birthday dinner when we were there. She would make whatever I wanted, and I think I usually asked for pork chops, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob and green beans. It was always delicious.

Grandma loved animals. I remember her having several cats throughout the years, and she always fed the birds. Her yard is full of bird feeders and nest boxes, and we had a lot of conversations about what birds had visited her feeders. As an adult, I always called her with my gardening questions. We also shared a love of African violets, peonies and irises.

Needle crafts were another hobby we shared. Grandma was an excellent seamstress, and spent many evening hours stitching away on quilts, embroidery and crochet projects. Maybe that's where I get my "crafty" gene.

The day Grandma went to be with the Lord I went to a dear friend's house, and when I walked in she was pulling jars of dill pickles out of a stock pot. That about summed it up for me. Grandma was the smell of dill, the way those pickles looked in the jars, and the impatience I felt waiting the required six weeks before opening them. She was fresh spearmint from the garden in a glass of iced tea. She was quiet summer evenings and beautiful handmade quilts. She has left a big hole in the lives of all of us who knew her, but I know that when we get to heaven, she'll have a meal ready, and beds made up with beautiful quilts. I hope that she has a garden where weeds never grow and every pretty bird there is.