To make one "scrapbook submission" for the month of August is just plain silly but here goes. It may be as disjointed as this month often felt. The month was colored with many wonderful family times, busyness on the homestead and at my work, and challenging due to me not feeling very good physically for much of it. But we made it and September (one of my favorite months) is just hours away!
Just a quick note on some of the garden highlights: We have more okra in the freezer than ever before and even some quarts of pickled dilly okra. Our cucumber vines, despite a rough start due to being shaded out by our "dill crop" have been the gift that keeps on giving. And I'm still canning tomatoes every few days and the root cellar is becoming more colorful by the day with a growing percentage of filled jars over empty ones. Fruit has been abundant in August too - with us currently enjoying blackberries, red raspberries, white raspberries, grapes (enough seedless for a pie!), apples, cantaloupe and peaches all from Tangly Woods. 
We kicked off August by attending my Mininger Family Reunion (this happens every 3 years and I've been on the planning committee for the last reunion and then this one). It was such a meaningful weekend of connection (both new connections and re-connecting). The theme of our time together was gratitude and I did feel very grateful as we hiked to the top of Cold Knob, as we ate wild WV apples, as I cuddled the newest member of our extended family who was only 4 days old, as cousins connected and had fun with each other, as my great aunt who is in her 90's read us a Mary Oliver poem, as we swam in the river at the base of Seneca Rocks... Jason and I practiced May Erlewine's Grateful song and sang that as part of my reflections on gratitude. I refreshed my turquoise fingernail polish before the reunion as much of my reflections on gratitude were inspired by our experiences of losing Nora and more recently Norah Brubaker's death this spring. It was the first time I had played guitar for years and years, which felt momentous in a number of ways. 
The reunion felt like the last hurrah of summer, as the week following our WV trip I coordinated a two day retreat for the faculty and staff I work most closely with. That kicked off the busiest few weeks of my work year (only late April pre-graduation competes with August). I felt so very grateful that my parents decided to spend 2+ week at Tangly Woods in April - I told them it could be my birthday and Christmas presents for the rest of my life. Yep, that is how badly I felt the need for some tangible assistance and moral support this month! I don't have the words for how thankful I was for all the ways they chipped in and made the month easier on me and Jason and so much more fun for the girls. I was proud of myself for getting one photo of mom sitting still, but this was probably one of the few times she was found sitting down relaxing during those weeks. I am sure she wondered on a daily basis how I would have survived without her - very good question and it may not have been pretty!A few markers of kids growing up happened in August - one for our youngest and one for oldest.
Terah decided she is done, and really truly completely done, co-sleeping! It was kind of cold turkey. She had a few attempts at her own bed over the last few months but normally she lasted a few minutes. Something flipped in her and she was ready for her bed! Even if she wakes to go pee in the middle night she will sleepily say, "I want to go back to my bed." No more of this sleeping with mommy and daddy - she can't even be convinced to do it when it would be convenient to give her bed to a friend sleeping over for the night. Now, that said, she still wants us to sing or read to her in her bed but once asleep she sleeps great there and I think Jason and I are getting more sound sleep than we have for some years!Terah's speech is also changing. She can now say her "l's." The cute this is that yellow has now gone from being "yeyow" to "lelow." I'm not ready for her to get it all figured out quite yet. I need her to still feel a little like my baby!
And my oldest baby turned 16! She could now officially drive...if she wanted to. Her parents are not pushing her on that front at all! From my observations, she enjoyed the crossing over from 15 to 16! There were some good rains and impressive clouds leading up to her party, including several power outages, but her party was able to be outside as planned. The tradition has become making pizza pockets over an outdoor fire and then making homemade ice cream. In lieu of presents she asked her guests to bring a pizza topping and/or ice cream topping - encouraging them to aim for something that could be used for both! 
Then with travel and birthday festivities behind us, we entered the second half of August and my final stretch up to orientation. Jason and I had our yearly crash and meltdown - it still kind of surprises us as much as it also feels somewhat familiar every time. The days were long, the nights were short and I felt very disconnected from home. I even missed corn freezing entirely, which Mom, Jason and the girls accomplished on one of my long days in the office. I'm still trying to be at peace with the idea that summer will come to an end and I won't be part of processing corn this year. But I'm not going to miss making applesauce or grape juice so I think I'll be ok! 
We did a few things right this year. At the end of the first day of orientation, Jason and the girls came to get me and we had a family night at a friend's pool. That was a very wise decision. I could have fallen asleep while floating with no trouble at all. The other good choice was scheduling a sleepover for the girls at Ivy's on the last day of orientation, giving Jason and I some time to reconnect and them something fun to do on the same day that Grandma and Grandpa left - easing the sadness of their departure! I'm hoping those might also become yearly traditions!
Well Terah is done with her bath and I better get rice cooking and myself cleaned up before folks begin arriving. But I can't conclude this post without mentioning one of the biggest events of this month: this past Tuesday Kali had her wisdom teeth removed. She is not that much of a chipmunk anymore and has done incredibly well with the whole thing. She was pretty nervous the morning of, enough that she took the one anti-anxiety pill that they had prescribed. I kind of felt like it would have been nice if they would have also prescribed one for the parent that had to sit in the waiting room. I was a mess when I left the room after watching them get the IV going and knocking her out. I immediately went outside and called my parents so I had someone to cry to (since I had our only phone so couldn't reach Jason). But Kali was fine. She was so silly with the laughing gas! I wish I had a video, but this picture is just seconds before she was out.When I rejoined her about 45 minutes as she was just waking up she was really emotional. She started crying and blubbering a bunch of stuff I could not understand. Finally, with tears streaming down her face, I made out, "I'm so happy...I'm so relieved..." Phew, she wasn't hurting or really upset, just glad it was over.
They sure moved us out quickly - they had already done 2 surgeries before hers at 9:30. She was still blubbering and teary when they were ready to get her in the wheel chair and out to our car. I will be honest that the thought, "you are sending her home with me like that?" crossed through my mind. :) By this point she seemed to be kind of interested in the whole thing - she was super chatty all the way home, making it hard for the gauze to stay where it was supposed to be to stop the bleeding. She kept saying, "I'm awake...." and "I think I will remember this..." and then "Oh, there are two of the same car in front of us so maybe I'm not normal yet..." She was cracking me up and it took some restraint for me to not see if I could get other things out of my pretty private daughter while she was in the mood to talk my ear off! I was so relieved to be back home with her and see her ready to play a game with Alida almost immediately.
We did laugh when she also "fed her chin" her first oopsicle when she was still numb (I had told her that I did that after my surgery). Terah and I had run out to get liquid ibuprofen for Kali after she had had such a hard time with the pre-surgery antibiotic pills. I could not imagine her trying to swallow pills with her mouth numb. While out, we got some popsicles that I think Alida and Terah ended up eating a larger percentage of than Kali. She followed all the recommended procedures to a T and as of right now is hardly swollen on the one side and just slightly on the other. We are all glad that is behind her/us! She was decidedly less swollen than her mother got!
I'm much more eager to welcome September than I appear in this picture. :)
