Tidbits from the last 3 weeks!

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this post will be worth many thousands! I'm gonna mostly share about the past few weeks via photos, as the words aren't flowing as much today! So here goes before all this is ancient history...

Jason calls the bike shed "background work!" And anything that is background work around here is gonna move at a pretty slow pace before there is plenty of the work that is time sensitive and not at all in the background. That said, each week we have found a chunk or two of time for him to make progress on it, and I've been pitching in by helping to amass rocks from around our place. It's getting close!!!

Luca is anything but in the background when we are with him! What a spunky, creative, snuggly, on the go, funny kid!! And we love his parents too. Our families seem to be great at sharing good fun, meaningful conversations, fun and more recently germs. I guess it's all part of the package and hopefully the fun and meaningful times are on the increase and the cold germs on the decrease. We've attempted to shift some times together to the outdoors, and it seems like we are not alone in feeling like the colds are pretty common these days! 

Speaking of fun times with family and friends, all three girls enjoyed a trip to Jason's parents' place in PA - a belated Easter gathering with some cousins, aunts and uncles. I wasn't there so can't report in detail but the pictures seemed to show lots of people having a good time together! There was a pit stop on the way up to enjoy Anna's backyard with a new zip-line. They also went to Longwood Gardens for a day, which was interesting but Alida said the place was "a little too trimmed!" They also went to the Lehigh Valley Zoo, where it seemed like at least one of the highlights was watching the giraffe run. They all reported a good time, but Terah said it would have been more fun if I had been along. I think she just found herself pining for some mommy hugs along the way!

Jason and I remained at home to keep up with the animals and gardens. Maybe "keep up" isn't the right word as far as the gardens are concerned, but we kept up with the animals and worked together some in the gardens. Having only 2/5 of us around to eat, make laundry and noise, led to a bit of a calmer slower pace few days for the parental units! Jason even took the time to make us breakfast one morning, we weeded and collected rocks together, watched a few movies and enjoyed a chance to focus more on each other's company. I took very few pictures while they were gone!

We've also had a little family work time together, but honestly it often seems like we are all going different directions these days. Girls to soccer. Jason to construction jobs. Me to a birth! Kids having playdates. Jason working on the bike shed. Me doing all sorts of food related stuff. Younger gals playing dress up. Kali hanging laundry and more laundry. Jason off to play trickball with friends. Me going on walk/talks and to doula meetings. And on and on... Here's a bit of what is happening in the gardens and flower beds (I'm highlighting the things we intend to be growing, not the other things that are also thriving!!). Also noting here that breaks on family work days are very important and the fruit sorbets I made recently were a hit! Also enjoyed making bread for the first time in a long time yesterday, using 100% sirvinta wheat that we grew!

We gave up nearly an entire day of outdoor work time to do a task that we finally decided had to be done, rain or shine - as a family we went through ALL our books! Yes, it took most of a day. Books were spilling off shelves, being stored on tables and other random locations, there were some in the attic, and turned every direction on shelves. I felt the most urgency about this project, but I think we were all glad about it AFTER we were done. Whoever uses a section of books the most got the first go through, putting onto the appropriate shelf the ones they knew they wanted to keep. Then the rest of us went through the remaining books until each person had the chance to say which books couldn't be parted with. That, or course, whittled down our "get rid of" piles, but we still parted with a few boxes of books. Now one might wonder why we have so many books when sometimes this is what most of us are doing (ok, in all honesty this was a very rare moment!). 

Editor Alida's note: I read a REAL book

Four or five days a week right now, 1-3 kids are involved in soccer. And they are LOVING it! I guess Kali hasn't really gushed about coaching in the same way the younger two just pine for the next practice or game as soon as one passes. It's very enjoyable to see them having so much fun!! Alida even asked her coach if she could try out goalie, which she did for half of yesterday's game and really enjoyed it (especially the punting part!). 

We all survived an afternoon at the dentist this past week. Nothing notable other than the mother in the household (yep, that'd be me!) complaining a lot that she didn't want to go to the dentist and Terah not having enough room in her mouth for all her teeth. So we'll be starting with an orthodontist consult here shortly. None of that had me pulling out my camera, so I'll just put a few in here so confirm that there is still plenty of silliness to go around in this household!

Just to be clear, this is not going to become a common hairdo for me and is thanks to Terah. I'll put up with any kind of hairdo, even one that create more tangles than I started with, if that means one of the kids is playing with my hair! 

I almost forgot to put any chicken updates here. I guess that is an indication of where we are getting to in the chick-hatching-season. There are chicks hatching in the incubator today and nobody is paying all that much attention. There are mamas and chicks of various sizes in various locations and half grown chicks ranging now. 

And, last but not least, I'm officially in my busy birthing season of 2023. I entered "birthland" for a few days this past week and am slowly re-entering life here at home. It's still a bit of a shock to my system to go from seemingly mundane things like washing dishes to accompanying someone in bringing a new life into the world and then back to the dish pile a few hours later. It's all part of the same messy, beautiful, mundane and miraculous thing called being human and supporting each other, but the variety of day-to-day experiences feels particularly poignant sometimes. And I must still be loving it (or not feeling prepared enough...) since I was bingeing birth videos right up until going and then came home and was processing and landing home by listening to birth podcasts. It's some of both - I love it and feel like I still have so so much to learn. Mostly, I'm just in awe every time I have the privilege of bearing witness to such strength and vulnerability and love and the importance of us having people in our life to tell us "you can do it" when all we feel is that we can't!