Our eldest is legally an adult...

 ...and she will always be our first baby and hopefully retains all the wonderful things of her childhood long into her time of legal adulthood! As an unschooling family, and a mom still in the process of deschooling, we aren't big on these standard and set milestones (or at least I try not to pay much attention to the external pressures that place ages next to specific things that "should" happen in a certain time frame). That said, should Kali wish to, there are some things she could do now without getting into trouble that she could not a mere two weeks ago... 

But enough about that! I mostly wanted to give you a rundown on the various ways we chose to celebrate this dearly beloved human! I should probably start by giving a quick update on the long dreamed of trip to the Philippines - as I'm getting some questions about why Tala has gone home without Kali. That was, most certainly, not by Kali or Tala's choosing - but instead due to the Philippine government's regulations. Thankfully we came to this realization weeks before the set departure date, giving time for all to adjust to the idea of a postponement of this dream. The hope, assuming Covid regulations change to make it possible, is that Kali could go next spring during fruit and festival season! So it's not a cancellation, just a delay. 

Maybe for starters, I'll share the ways that some things have changed and others have not. Kids have clearly grown. But they still love to be goofy. One of the fun aspects of Kali's small outdoor bday gathering this year was an attempted reenactment of a birthday party photo from 4 years ago. I think they did pretty well:

It was fun to have a few additions to this year's picture. Maybe this one can be reenacted 4 years from now?!

It is still relatively uncommon for Kali and her parents to be sleeping much at the same time in any 24 hour period. She is still much more a night owl than us, which we discovered (much to our dismay initially) almost from the start. 

She is very much like her father in a number of ways - not that he likes to spend time reading in a laundry basket. They both can easily get lost in a book and are both highly distractible (note the book she chose to read on this particular occasion - Driven to Distraction).

Her sweet and kind nature can still bring joy and fun to any space that she is in. 

She is not afraid to be goofy (and very orange) - she actually relishes it! She is also eager to embrace new experiences and challenges when she sets her mind to it - like moving from being an orange-dressed supporter at blood drives to donating blood herself.

She is a patient, sensitive, caring big sister and cousin. She takes delight in little people and honors their dignity, respecting them even when their requests or needs may seem unreasonable or inconvenient. She will speak up if she feels Alida and Terah have not been heard out (trust me, I've been called on this on multiple occasions and am so grateful for her accountability).

From little on up she has been interested in being involved in what the rest of us are doing. And "helping" has now become helping! But she has been a delight to include in home and farm and family projects (if we can get her out of bed in time to join us!). I remember early on marveling at how fun it was to do errands with Kali. She made a string of 12 stops around town more enjoyable! 

She is very generous and has very little attachment to material things (now anyway - there were the days where she was very sentimentally attached to every little shred of paper she had touched and become attached to. But I'm more and more convinced with each child that that must be some very important developmental stage that many children naturally go through and make it, along with their parents, to the other side). 

And, finally, she is eager to stretch her wings and fly (while she had been hoping that would be in a plane over the ocean, she will have to seek out some other ways to stretch her horizons and embrace new experiences until that time is possible).

In the meantime, we are going to savor all the times we have together. And here's some of the ways we soaked up fun times on and around Kali's 18th birthday!

While not exactly for her birthday, a fun road trip kicked off her birthday week. She, along with Tala and our dear friend, David, did a little two day jaunt to Cape Charles. They were able to stay at the same small cottage that we stayed for a much needed getaway by water soon after Nora died and returned the summer marking 10 years since her death, that time introducing Alida and Terah to that special place. It was really sweet envisioning Kali there with other loved ones. I'm glad she made it safely as she successfully held her breath through half of the Bay Bridge Tunnel. They also took a lengthy detour so she would "wade" in the ocean. One thing about Kali: wading in water, no matter the time of year or temperature of water, normally ends in swimming - this time was no different!

The days right around Kali's birthday are all getting really fuzzy in my mind. Kali couldn't even be very helpful with the chronology. I know this much - we had a lot of special meals together and played games (and did fit in some canning and salsa making and green bean processing in the cracks). We had a T.W. birthday meal early on the Thursday before Kali's birthday since my parents were headed out for a long WV stint before the actual anniversary of her birth. For that meal we enjoyed fried eggplant and okra and fresh corn on the cob! I'm always so glad when she chooses fried eggplant for one of her birthday meals. :) And clearly she has enjoyed corn on the cob for a long time now!

The first of several Smiley's ice cream cakes came out later in the evening! We just finished off the last of those cakes tonight and I think all concurred that the ice cream cakes were yummy but going forward we would just pick the delicious ice cream and choose our own toppings. 

We then had a T.W. birthday meal (minus my parents) on the eve of Kali's birthday. This featured Tala's delicious burgers at Kali's request - another menu choice stamped with the approval of all of us. This was planned for her actual birthday but weather had us move her gathering with friends to allow for an outdoor get together. 

I'm chuckling that I have very few pictures of Kali's birthday celebrations that don't involve us sitting around the table with a spread of food. She requested potato crusted quiches for her birthday brunch and I added in some pumpkin cranberry chocolate muffins for good measure. 

The game highlight of the day was playing Elusis. No, I'm not going to even try to explain it here. Suffice it to say, it takes a lot of cards (especially if the pattern chosen is very complicated or the people trying to figure it out are very tired). Both were true in the instance pictured here. 

The day featured a fun zoom call with one of Kali's two birthday buddies. Years ago around the table with friends we realized that 3 of them all had the same birthday. 

Then a very typical birthday celebration commenced with a few close (and thankfully fully vaccinated) friends: an evening around the fire making pizza pockets, roasting the last corn on the cob of the year, laughing and playing games. 

While Covid made for a 2nd year without the tradition of a trip to the Rockingham County Fair and it also had us reign in the number of people joining for birthday festivities, I think (hope) that Kali still felt well loved and celebrated. Because she is!!

Applesauce, river and lake times...

I'm back...with some Elephant and Piggie books being read out loud the background, along with Jason "noodling" on the guitar. I'm happy to report that I had 100% seal rate on all the canning from yesterday. I know this might not sound like much, but it makes this canner happy... All the jars are washed and tucked into the root cellar. This blurry photo was taken last night before the new round of jars was added, but it shows off what 95 or so quarts of applesauce look like on the shelves! Nearly every year we wonder where the apples for sauce will come from and where sauce-making will land in the season. 

This August, the timing was perfect in that dear friends offered an abundance of apples from a thriving Yellow Delicious tree and it just so happened that we were able to squeeze in apple picking and sauce making with Tala before her departure. Picking apples was something on her "bucket list" for the year and we squeezed it in with little time to spare - "thanks" to the squirrels, there was no apples for picking at Tangly Woods! On Friday (Aug 20), Jason took the girls and Tala to Waynesboro to pick apples (I had to work for CJP that day with my first orientation events) and then Saturday we got into sauce making bright and early!

I wasn't expecting 12 buckets of apples from one tree! We had our work cut out for us. But with good help in the house and eager piggies outside enjoying the fresh apple scraps, we made an excellent team! Even Terah was busy wielding a sharp knife...

We had every burner on our stove and the outdoor propane burner working overtime.

And at the end of the day, our porch looked like this! The pink jars on the left were an experiment, adding elderberries to the cooking apples. It makes a beautiful pink sauce but thus far the family is not convinced of the flavor alteration. So we'll likely stick with straight apples in the future. I didn't have 100% seal rate on these as I was working hard to re-use lids. So a few quarts made their way into crockpots to cook down for apple butter. And from there some of it made it's way to the dehydrator to make scrumptious apple leather (It came out of the dehydrator the morning we took Tala to the airport and I was so glad to have a nutrient source to offer her for her long journey that didn't take up much space)!!

Just so we don't give the impression that all we do in August is chop and can things, I'll include in this post two very fun outings that we enjoyed in the past few weeks.

It's probably been years that my dear friend, Wendy, has been interested in introducing our family to a sweet spot along the North Fork of the Shenandoah River that adjoins some land that has been in her family for many years. With grape season upon them, the window for this year was again closing. So squeezed between many other things, we enjoyed a glorious evening together along the river. It was with good reason that she was eager to share that spot with us!! We met up at a little ice cream food truck and then caravanned to the point that only the 4 wheel drive vehicle my parents loaned us could proceed. That got us to within a short walk through the woods from the river. 

It was beautiful! And, despite the river being very low, it had an amazing deep swimming channel in the middle. Jason declared it the best river swimming spot he'd ever enjoyed, and I think I'll have to agree. We were joined by a little muskrat, water snake, dragonflies, crayfish, bigger fish and (thankfully only seen after we were done swimming) a snapping turtle. We enjoyed a picnic on the bank until the sun started setting and the mosquitos came out in full force. I'm really hoping that it won't be years until we are able to enjoy that spot again. And hopefully next time Mark will be able to join us!

Then, just this past Sunday, we also squeezed in another outing in a different direction - to another spot enjoyed by loved ones who were eager to introduce it to us. In celebration of Kali's bday, Jonas' bday and his last day at work, we took a jaunt with Emily, Jonas and Ivy to Switzer Lake for the afternoon. This lake is not a swimming lake (though I think some of the people who were on boats and "falling in" to the water might have been stretching the rules a bit). We enjoyed some canoeing and kayaking, following hang out time around a fire (where I got a little snooze, and lots of chatting, eating and Rook playing occurred). Here was my view for part of the time:

But more of the time, I was looking out at the lake! There were lovely large shade trees, making it incredibly pleasant to be outside on a warm day. 

Boating was a big hit!

And the photo doesn't quite get it, but some of us on the shore couldn't get over how cute Terah and Ivy were in the middle of the canoe with their big sun hats being the predominant thing poking up over the edge of the boat. 

Tala got to experience another first just two days before heading home. She seemed to enjoy and pick up on kayaking very quickly. 

Throughout all these activities of the last few weeks, the clock ticking towards saying goodbye was ever present on our minds. So as we moved from counting the months to counting the weeks to counting the days to counting the hours happened, we fit in hugs as often as possible. 

More on that in a later post. I'm catching up by moving from the easiest posts to write to the hardest!