Saturday, April 6, 2019

Family photo shoot, Ruby's Arcade, first day of soccer, potato prepping and peas are up!

I've got an exhausted 3 year old sacked out on my lap. She could not keep her eyes open any more and they hurt to have open so it's great that they are now closed. We are pretty sure she is facing her first bout of pink eye. She has a lot to say about it and I hope it is short lived for her sake. For some this may be entirely too much information, but for the record I would like to note that about 3 months after Terah stopped nursing, I still was able to extract enough milk tonight to put some drops in her eye in hopes that it would be soothing. She fell asleep moments later so I'm going to give it at least a tiny bit of credit.

Alida has continued reading the blog books with enthusiasm and lately has been commenting when she finds multiple posts in close succession. So I'm aware that it was just two days ago when I last posted, but I imagine the title of the blog is enough to tip you off that there are just a few things worth commenting on! And this is things to note just from the last 24-36 hours!
Yesterday we headed to town for a family outing that was kicked off with a photo shoot with our friend and my colleague, Howard. He has ruined us for anyone else taking our photos as it about as low stress and low key as a photo shoot could be which is the only way it works for us. Unfortunately, Alida had remembered a little too much about how accommodating Howard was and how she had been nervous and then had a grand time last time. She was in one of her silly goofy crazy and impossible to settle moods. So the smatterings of 200+ photos we have give a pretty good sense of this stage of family life - and that's what it's all about right? Here's a few of our collective favorites:

Once done smiling for the camera, we continued smiling a lot as we were off for April's family outing and Terah was in charge! She was pretty pleased with this opportunity but also needed some guidance - at one point she was noting that she was out of "gift cards" and so we should go to the co-op for gift cards. :) In the end, we went to Shirley's Popcorn for the girls to cash in their March reading sheets for a bag of popcorn - wow, that stuff is intense. I am enjoying Alida and Kali sharing their chocolate, peanut butter and caramel variations more than Terah's jelly bean variety!

From there we went to Ruby's Arcade for some duck pin bowling and wood fired pizzas over a game of Sorry and Upwords. It was a noteworthy evening in that Kali beat Jason in Upwords for the first (likely not the last) time! I managed to come out victorious but not by that much and so I have a feeling that my experience of losing to Kali is just around the corner. Will I be a good sport about it?

It's a loud but fun place - Kali was the only one that had been there for a birthday party before. Terah was pretty cute with duck pin bowling. It was a great activity for a rainy afternoon that was not good for outdoor farm work. That meant we weren't chomping at the bit to go anywhere. Once our pizzas were polished off and kiddos were getting antsy to move on, we headed home to feed our pigs, do the evening egg rounds and we ended our day by looking through all the pictures from the day together - which was not as relaxing as sometimes since Terah was too tired to keep her eyes open but really didn't want to miss seeing them. 

Friday's rain wasn't enough to cancel the first day of soccer games, thankfully! The girls both had their first practice Thursday evening and are off to a good and fun start! Alida is now playing on a U9/U10 co-ed team with new coaches and only one player that was on her team in the past. Kali is now on the high school co-ed team with one friend and two former teammates. There are supposedly a few other girls on the two high school teams but at today's game Kali was the only gal out there! The friend I was sitting with commented on Kali's bravery. She noted that there was a lot of male energy out there and while that was fine and good, she just wouldn't want to put herself right in the middle of it! Both girls were in good spirits after their games, and very little of that had to do with the fact that their teams both won today.
My Saturday's will be rather chopped up for awhile. Jason and I were up early enough to finish going through our STAR manuals together over breakfast and mugs of tea. We even had time to read the first essay in the compilation of stories that we plan to go through together next entitled, "It's Personal: Investigating [My] Whiteness - the Stories of White People and Internalized Racial Superiority." It should give me plenty to mull over when shifting from our morning time together to the day's tasks. Today it included doing the morning pig and chickens chores, then heading to Alida's game, back for an hour for lunch and refilling water bottles, then heading to Kali's game, back home for a few hours of CJP work before joining Jason in the potato patch!

That's where he spent the entirety of his day! On days like this, I often think of Kali years ago seeing her daddy and commenting, "He's a hard workin' daddy!" That he is! This is the last rotation of the root patch to need a "makeover" to the three bed variation. He wheel hoed the whole thing and then did the first round of trenching, loosened more soil and got through the deeper digging in two of the three trenches. The girls and I just got in on an hour or two of "rock harvesting." My goodness there were a lot of rocks - I emptied 3 full wheelbarrow loads onto a travel path that needed to be raised up. Once again we are just relocating the resources!
On the way back up to the house to put the finishing touches on dinner, Terah and I went through the garden to see if seeds were up yet. Yay, for pea seeds and their friends! They are up, along with some spinach, lettuce and beets. It definitely feels like there is new life all around us - between the plants, the flowers, the trees, the chicks and will we be able to add piglets to that list soon? Our Red Rock sow is due a week from yesterday and my patience is not holding up so well. There is nothing to do really but to wait and so waiting (and hoping) we are!

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