I'm sitting outside by the fire listening to Jason play guitar and the girls recounting the events of our day to Jonathan (ok, mostly Terah is with Kali helping her remember things - Alida is snuggling with my leg and ready to sack out for the night). The dishes are waiting this evening. The air is cool, the sky is clear, the moon is bright, and it feels good to linger by the fire. We enjoyed the last chestnuts of the season roasted over the fire, after a round of pizza pockets and roasted corn on the cob (we were joined also by Emily, Jonas and Ivy, who turned 1 today!).Side note: after an incredible chestnut season, it came to a rather abrupt halt this week (the squirrels and worms took the end of the crop). That's ok as we are now into persimmons so haven't had time to miss them!
We are about to turn the page from my birthday to Jason's. But first I'll share a few updates from recent days as one of my hopes for the day was to get a few pictures up on the blog and bring it up to date. Things have been hopping around here (what's new?!).
We are into the fall soccer season. Both Alida and Kali are playing again on girls' teams with the local community league and loving it. Terah is their faithful cheerleader and loves coming along to practice and games. It makes for a full day for me on Wednesdays - I head to work for a long day, come home about 10-20 minutes before taking off with them for practice, only to get home around dark. I'm grateful their practice is on the same day and time, since game days are not quite so convenient. We head there around 8:30 for Kali's game, get home around 10:30 and turn around and head back for Alida's at 11:15, arriving home right about the time Terah is falling apart and ready for her nap. But, as I've noted in other recent seasons, it feels very worth it. The girls enjoy it so much and I'm really enjoying watching them play.
Another new thing this fall is that the older two girls are taking an art class in downtown Harrisonburg at Larkin Arts. They have just had two classes thus far but are loving it. They go with another friend, get to play some after the class, and it being on Wednesday they get home with just a bit of turnaround time before soccer. So the week has a bit of a different feel with that and also that their regular playdates have changed in that one of their friends has transitioned from homeschool to going to school away and so we are working to make sure we can get them all together at other non-regular-school times. At a recent playdate/sleepover, we roped all the kids into joining us for our Adopt-a-Highway run. It's great that every time we do it we seem to be finding less and less trash and recycling. Yay, we may be actually making a dent - happy to work ourselves out of this job!
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| The free little library is getting some attention! :) We have taken the liberty to remove proselytizing tracts... |
This past weekend we took our annual trek to West Virginia with friends - I believe it was our 5th year going with grandparents, parents and kids and it is a tradition worth keeping. I so look forward to it each year. I can't say that I look forward to getting our place ready to leave for 3 days, or packing up kids and things, or the drive over the mountains. BUT once there, it's delightful. This year held much of the same - hikes and uninterrupted conversations for the middle generation, great food with the preparation and clean up shared around, picking cranberries, games, playing outside, going to Senaca Rocks for a picnic and time in the river - and some new things that might become traditions - making pizzas and roasting chestnuts in an outdoor oven, and us getting there a day early and me getting completely stuck in a book until I finished it! not sure how I feel about the latter thing (I loved reading a book but would enjoy it more if I didn't feel any sense of guilt about "checking out" for awhile - I really am good for nothing when I start a book that is hard to put down! I was able to finish it just before the crew arrived and then was more present to the relationships in front of me for the rest of the time - I had them hide another book by the same author!
Ok, my concentration on this blog post is shot (it's a rather typical occurrence that kiddo needs are trumping my desire for some writing/reflecting time). Terah is now begging for milk and pointing to the pictures on the computer so I'll end with just a few pictures from today. We took a little family outing to the Luray Zoo using the last (phew) coupon from their summer reading program. We are pleased to report that Cookie Dough, one of the goats we donated to them, is still as feisty and interested in people as ever! Terah was NOT equally interested in him and Alida was frightened initially by the very enthusiastic baby goats. She got more comfortable but Jason took Terah to look at other things while we fed the goats. We never got a glimpse of Oreo but they assured us that he is still there and doing fine, just keeps his distance a bit more from the action as he has more of the fainting gene and so keeps to the calmer places more regularly. It was nice to feel once again how happy I am NOT to have goats!
Most of us agreed that our favorite animal was the little monkey pictured here. He was really carrying on with Jason at one point. It was cute and entertaining. Terah, for some reason, was really interested in seeing a tiger. I'm not honestly sure where she got the idea she was going to see one, but they do in fact have a bengal tiger. But it was in its house so we were about to leave when one of the owners came out and got the tiger out. What a beautiful creature. We thought it rather interesting how scared Terah was of the goats but as calm as can be feet away from the tiger or the pythons and rattlesnakes!
On our way home we checked out Storybook Trail. We had learned about it some time ago from Samuel and Margaret, as one they loved to take their kids to when they were young. We hardly ever drive to go hiking but I really wanted to go, especially after Samuel died, knowing it was one of the last outings he took with the family (as the trail is wheelchair accessible). It was a delightful little trail - only 1/4 mile to a beautiful lookout, with lovely rock outcroppings all along a paved trail. We brought bikes and a picnic along. We pushed the envelope on Terah's afternoon nap as long as we could and I saved my birthday chocolate bar from Alida to help us make it home. Between offering small morsels back to the girls and then offering my phone with an Ivy video to entertain Terah, we made it home without too much fussing.
(and someday down the road I'm going to find/carve out/take the time to actually try to do more than slap up a few pictures with captions here - right now if I had enough time to write something more in depth I'm not sure I could actually articulate many of my swirling thoughts and emotions that accompany these days. The child at my breast right now seems to be sucking not only all the milk out of me that my body can make, but some days it feels like brain cells and my normal functioning capabilities too)
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