It's the eve of Alida's 8th birthday and while I type Terah and Alida are enjoying some of the treats from the Easter egg hunt Alida included in her birthday party last Friday night - Terah has actually transitioned to rubbing my shoulders, playing with my hair and hugging me (I'm not complaining, but it is also a tad distracting). Kali and Jason are at their second to last pottery class. You can see some of the fruits of their labor pictured here. Kali missed last week's class with what appears to most likely have been her first migraine - she had a headache and threw up four times in about four hours and then was perfectly fine and has been since.
I asked her if she had been particularly worried or anxious about anything. She said not that she was aware of, but then it had only been two days since she heard her mother crash to the floor in the middle of the night. For a very quick back update - I'm better AND so grateful! Soon after I put my last post up, Emily and Ivy came to hang out with us as I was feeling pretty anxious about being home with the two younger girls alone. They hung out until Jason and Kali got home and then Jonas joined us for our St. Patrick's day green meal - and they all pitched in to fold our laundry. It felt like a little boost of support at a time I needed it most! By Monday, I was ok being home alone with all the girls but didn't feel up for driving yet so worked from home. By Wednesday, I made it to the office but was still struggling. Then I woke Thursday and felt I had fully turned the corner and it's been a up since then! Just in time for Alida's birthday and the push of spring planting - both things that I wanted to be fully present and involved in!
I'm going to wait until after Alida's actual birthday to report on all her birthday fun - which there has already been a lot of! I'll catch up on other tidbits here!
This week we enjoyed our last frozen hull peas. We had been given the gift of a quart of rice grown near the Chesapeake Bay by a new friend of ours. What better way to use the last of the peas than to have one of my favorite meals - rice, peas and cheese sauce (now made with our homemade cheddar)! It did not disappoint. Now we eagerly await this year's pea crop and also the information we've requested on how we can purchase rice from our watershed! We haven't purchased rice for a long time so the meal was an extra special treat that we all savored!
It was also the perfect meal for Kali as we had it on a braces tightening appointment day. Two positive updates from the orthodontist's. The first is completely unrelated to Kali's teeth but Terah and Alida both were brave enough to pet Wally AND Hank - the two resident dogs there. It's great we have made good progress on that front as it appears we'll be having less orthodontist appointments in our future! They noted that Kali will have one more appointment and then assuming nothing has changed for the worse, they will schedule the appointment to
take off her braces! It felt like so long when they went on and here we are nearing the end!
This week included a first for Alida - her first field hockey practice with the Purple Pups program at JMU. She is doing a Tuesday evening program for the next month or two that is run by their field hockey team. She loved the first week and is excited that her second one falls on her actual birthday! She now has a stick of her own that is her size. Now with my two sticks from high school, we have enough that our girls can play field hockey together. It was so cute yesterday to hear Kali exclaim, "Terah, you scored!" with a sound of disbelief in her voice. Alida followed up by telling me that Terah actually hit it well and got it through her legs.
One other highlight of this week was me having most of the day with just my two eldest daughters - thanks Mom! They tagged along with me for various errands, including some birthday preparation ones, but the feature of our time together was going to see EMU's musical production of Beauty and the Beast. After our experience taking Terah to James and the Giant Peach, we felt certain that it would be best to leave her with Grandma for this one! We were right - the older girls loved it but Alida had to avert her eyes a couple times and accept my reassurance that all would turn out ok! It was all school kids there and I loved the question and answer time at the end where kids hands shot up with eagerness to ask questions like: was that a real knife that you used? did you really kiss?
Now on to the really exciting stuff - WE SPENT ALL DAY YESTERDAY OUTSIDE AS A FAMILY IN THE GARDENS! It was more or less my favorite kind of day. I really don't think Terah came inside at all from when we went out at 9:30 a.m. until I collected her for a
much needed shower around 6:30 p.m. or so. My back held up all day, the weather was perfect, the kids were (mostly) happy and helpful or at least able to entertain themselves, and we far exceeded our hopes for the day.
Here's some pictures and captions from the day, but here's the rundown: We planted onions, shallots, beets, lettuce, spinach and peas. We cleaned out the composting chicken coop and applied it on the garlic and onions and shallots. We broke into our next humanure compost (amazing stuff!) and put compost on beets, lettuce, peas, spinach and raspberries. We unburdened the figs and pomegranate and put all the leaves in Terah's turtle shell garden play house. And of course we had a picnic!
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| I think this is what garlic looks like when it smiles! |
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| Terah was a big help emptying out all the compost. She loves using her little shovel. |
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| Alida would do about 30 seconds of work and then exclaim what hard work it was and retire to the leaf pile for some rest and rejuvenation! |
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| Getting ready to get shallots in the ground. |
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| Alida did enjoy delivering little onion plants to Jason to put in the ground. |
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| Despite the amount of moisture in the ground we still gave everything a good drink to help give the seeds and plants a good start! |
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| I love how Nora's garden has become a good spot for a break or to play when the gardening gets long! |
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| And then Alida gets the camera - I don't think Jason actually felt like this much of the day! We were a pretty good team and I don't think we even exasperated him all that much! |
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| Here we were planting 2 pea seeds 6 inches apart - I would put one in and Terah would add "a friend." |
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| What a good feeling to be together in the garden, putting seeds in, tucking them in, wishing them well, and already eagerly anticipating the harvest! |
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| Lentil and venison burgers and roasted potatoes taste good inside but even better outside! |
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| A little post picnic stretch was in order! |
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| Terah's garden is taking shape - this year's weaving of the willows is done and with the tree in the middle gone, they will get more sun and so faster progress on her little turtle shell play house! |
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| I think this may be my favorite picture from the day. This kid is a something else!! |
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| We had poor spinach germination so our last task of the day was an onerous one - transplanting spinach - in the end we reseeded some beds. Hoping for a decent harvest! |
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| Caught this moment when Kali was taking a break and Terah found her! Towards the end of the day, the girls went to the swing set while Jason and I finished up! We even came in with enough time for some rounds of Rook together before calling it a day! It was as close to a Sabbath as it comes for me!! |
It's the eve of Alida's 8th birthday and while I type Terah and Alida are enjoying some of the treats from the Easter egg hunt Alida included in her birthday party last Friday night - Terah has actually transitioned to rubbing my shoulders, playing with my hair and hugging me (I'm not complaining, but it is also a tad distracting). Kali and Jason are at their second to last pottery class. You can see some of the fruits of their labor pictured here. Kali missed last week's class with what appears to most likely have been her first migraine - she had a headache and threw up four times in about four hours and then was perfectly fine and has been since.
I asked her if she had been particularly worried or anxious about anything. She said not that she was aware of, but then it had only been two days since she heard her mother crash to the floor in the middle of the night. For a very quick back update - I'm better AND so grateful! Soon after I put my last post up, Emily and Ivy came to hang out with us as I was feeling pretty anxious about being home with the two younger girls alone. They hung out until Jason and Kali got home and then Jonas joined us for our St. Patrick's day green meal - and they all pitched in to fold our laundry. It felt like a little boost of support at a time I needed it most! By Monday, I was ok being home alone with all the girls but didn't feel up for driving yet so worked from home. By Wednesday, I made it to the office but was still struggling. Then I woke Thursday and felt I had fully turned the corner and it's been a up since then! Just in time for Alida's birthday and the push of spring planting - both things that I wanted to be fully present and involved in!
This week we enjoyed our last frozen hull peas. We had been given the gift of a quart of rice grown near the Chesapeake Bay by a new friend of ours. What better way to use the last of the peas than to have one of my favorite meals - rice, peas and cheese sauce (now made with our homemade cheddar)! It did not disappoint. Now we eagerly await this year's pea crop and also the information we've requested on how we can purchase rice from our watershed! We haven't purchased rice for a long time so the meal was an extra special treat that we all savored!
It was also the perfect meal for Kali as we had it on a braces tightening appointment day. Two positive updates from the orthodontist's. The first is completely unrelated to Kali's teeth but Terah and Alida both were brave enough to pet Wally AND Hank - the two resident dogs there. It's great we have made good progress on that front as it appears we'll be having less orthodontist appointments in our future! They noted that Kali will have one more appointment and then assuming nothing has changed for the worse, they will schedule the appointment to take off her braces! It felt like so long when they went on and here we are nearing the end!
This week included a first for Alida - her first field hockey practice with the Purple Pups program at JMU. She is doing a Tuesday evening program for the next month or two that is run by their field hockey team. She loved the first week and is excited that her second one falls on her actual birthday! She now has a stick of her own that is her size. Now with my two sticks from high school, we have enough that our girls can play field hockey together. It was so cute yesterday to hear Kali exclaim, "Terah, you scored!" with a sound of disbelief in her voice. Alida followed up by telling me that Terah actually hit it well and got it through her legs.
One other highlight of this week was me having most of the day with just my two eldest daughters - thanks Mom! They tagged along with me for various errands, including some birthday preparation ones, but the feature of our time together was going to see EMU's musical production of Beauty and the Beast. After our experience taking Terah to James and the Giant Peach, we felt certain that it would be best to leave her with Grandma for this one! We were right - the older girls loved it but Alida had to avert her eyes a couple times and accept my reassurance that all would turn out ok! It was all school kids there and I loved the question and answer time at the end where kids hands shot up with eagerness to ask questions like: was that a real knife that you used? did you really kiss?
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