We had a very short lived momentous change in our home this past week! Alida has been loving weekly playdates with another local homeschooling friend and this past week the time together expanded to include a sleepover (I think the hope is that that will become a regular occurrence!). As bedtime neared, Terah declared she was going to sleep in her bed. She has said that before, so I didn't take it all that seriously but sure enough she crawled right in, accepted a kiss and a tuck in and said goodnight. The giggling above her didn't induce immediate sleep, but on one of my check ins she sleepily told me that when I next came to check on her I could turn out the light. She was asleep soon thereafter and I headed to our bed that now seemed rather large. Jason and I concur that we could quickly get used to sleeping next to each other on a regular basis again, but also have to admit how odd it feels after many years of co-sleeping. Realizing that that may be coming to a close also highlights the sweetness of how much snuggling and closeness we have shared with our children at night! It was about 4 a.m. when I woke to Terah crying, having been woken by a bad dream. Bummer! She hasn't done another night in her bed since but she'll tell us when she's ready to give it a go again!
So the pictures above (not to mention the title of this post), lets you know what season we are entering: blueberry picking season!! It's one we welcome with great joy and anticipation each year. I pulled the last gallon bag of blueberries from the freezer a week or two ago as it felt like it was time to enjoy the last of last year's bounty before restocking for the coming year. Each year the first tastes of blueberries and red raspberries transport me back to the little patches of both on Barclay Road at my Grandma and Grandpa Myers' home. It's a warm and comforting memory that I'm happy to recount each spring!
Up until last evening, we had just done two exploratory treks to the back patch to check on the ripening bushes. With some effort, we came home each time with a bucket of berries. Not so last night! My folks joined us in the front patch and in a little over an hour (but what felt like 30 minutes or so), the girls and I had picked 3 full buckets of luscious, ripe, large blueberries! The warmer weather is encouraging ripening and a lot are coming ripe fast. Alida had volunteered to be a "blueberry poster child" for Hickory Hill's marketing and so I brought the camera along to get some photos of her with berries.
Who would have thought that the idea of having one's picture taken with berries could inspire such speedy and cheerful picking! Alida chattered nonstop in the patch and kept checking to see if she was outpacing Kali's picking, which she did. We had joked that she had to fill her own bucket before I took her photo, but it wasn't long before determination had set in and she was not leaving that patch until her bucket was full. To say she was proud holding her full bucket of berries would be a gross understatement. Even with rain drops starting to fall, she had to be coaxed out of the patch. Let's hope the willing blueberry picking help will continue for the next few weeks. Like Kali did last year and is again this year, Alida and Terah are both talking about joining the picking crew when they are old enough. They are getting some good practice in the interim and helping to fill our freezer!
Some of us seem to work a lot harder at Tangly Woods than others. I believe we were on our way back from the patch one day recently and found the pigs in their house with noses burrowed under the hay snoozing. They are amazing nappers and they do a lot of it! Jason is paying very close attention to the cycles of our two female pigs and keeps giving me the reports of the absence of any signs of heat. He now chuckles at me as he knows that he is not going to get me excited about the prospects of piglets just yet! I've gone down that road before and the disappointment was bad due to my heightened expectations! So this time, I'll believe it when I see it!
The summer reading program is underway and this year we have three readers (or two readers and one excellent memorizer!). Like last year it is a pretty major motivator for Alida - which is kind of funny since we didn't use the free pool passes and may take advantage of one of the free Friday activities with their wrist bands and often only use a percentage of the things from the prize packs. Regardless, it always seems to inspire an uptick in reading for all but Kali, who is decidedly not motivated by external factors and is so honest that she will not put down any 15 minute checks for reading unless she checked the time before/after - even if she was up in her bed reading for hours before sleeping!
The highlight for me this year was finding another section of Mo Willems books at the library. Terah practically has them all memorized and is happy to read them to us, which is so entertaining! What a great author! It's so nice to find books that we enjoy reading too. These are a very different genre than Patricia Polacco for sure, but great when you need some pure silliness! And could there be anything sweeter than a 3 year old surrounded by sisters and friends, all giving her their full attention. She was in heaven!
The other day she was reading to me while I stripped dill off the stems. Yes, that is a bucket of dill beside her. It is to go down in history that dill has officially seeded itself in at Tangly Woods and is growing in vast quantities all over the place. We are tickled!! And what does that inspire? Experimentation! So this weeks' experiments included: dill pesto (delicious) and dill cheddar (ask us in two months but it looks and smells amazing already). I have been so grateful to friends and neighbors that have shared their excess dill with us over the last number of years and I'm happy to think that we may soon be able to return the favor! 
There hasn't been a lot of extra time since this past weekend was the last of a major string of hosting/planning events - first the two surprise anniversary events, then the blood drive earlier this month and on Saturday we had a lovely outdoor house concert with the Clymer Kurtz band! We've done it yearly for many years now and have normally had to go back and forth up until the last minute about whether we can risk being outdoors or need to do it inside. We've seldom been able to confidently set up outside - this year we couldn't have put in a better order for weather if we had tried! It was partly cloudy with a nice breeze, not buggy, dry and a gorgeous rising moon as a perfect culmination to a beautiful evening. And, of course, there was the great music we all got to enjoy while relaxing with friends on the lawn while watching kids run hither and yon. Everyone seemed to have a good time, the snacks were all devoured, and we are already looking forward to the next one! We don't have a final count on guests that joined us by my attempt at counting has me guessing it was somewhere between 80 and 100.
An added bonus to the weekend was my sister, boyfriend and his grandkids joining us! It was so fun to get to know two new little people, who were fun and engaging to be with! They spent Sunday morning with us and got in on some blueberry picking before enjoying brunch together before they headed back north to PA. Terah is really into little people her age and during the concert she commented to someone that she thinks she made a new friend that evening. The granddaughter was just a bit older than her and they got along well. I think Terah is used to often tagging along when Kali or Alida have friends over so it was a bit of a novelty to have the kids visiting be closer to her in age than her sisters.I'll close with two other tidbits - one unfortunate and one exciting!
So the only bummer about the house concert was Alida having an experience no one has had yet during our time living at Tangly Woods. Kali, Alida and I were standing towards the back of the crowd listening to the band when a walnut fell from the tree and landed squarely on Alida's head. It happened fast (falling from very high) and her hand quickly went to her head while the tears started to fall. Kali found the offending walnut and I tried to comfort her while encouraging her to keep her cries to a volume less than the band (which wasn't too hard!). Of course, I found myself looking around wondering if the same thing would happen to someone else that night - but surely not when it hadn't happened in the 13 years prior! Thankfully no other incidents to report and Alida has fully recovered (did within minutes in fact).
One of our concert guests was a potter friend who Jason had passed some of the clay he found on our property. The friend had made a little bowl, fired it and it worked! He brought it to the concert and gave it to us and it is beautiful! I love the color! So another future dream - that there will be more bowls and such crafted from that clay, hopefully by members of our family who are eager for such an opportunity! That will have to remain in the future dreams category for the time being, but the prospects are exciting.I think that's as good a place to stop as any and I've got a little prep to do for two committee meetings today. I guess I'm not done planning things but the two upcoming things are both with me joining others in the planning which is both fun and I think makes for better events. The first is for a family reunion in August and, while hard for me to believe, new student orientation planning for CJP in August is also underway. But I'm not wishing for August just yet...
No comments:
Post a Comment