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!

20 year Martin House reunion!

There are so many reasons I like to keep up to date on this version of scrapbooking, but probably the main one is that it's hard to take myself back a former time/event/feeling when life has continued on at its rapid pace. So I'm doing something that I'm not good at. I'm going to write this post about last weekend, which was nothing short of marvelous, when I'm not feeling in a very marvelous state! Let's see if I'm up for the challenge.

It was such a great idea to hold the reunion before April, but the day after it ended April started and that was no joke! April is here and it is shaping up to be like many April's past. I'm reminding myself that I've already survived a baker's dozen of them out here on our homestead! There's so much beauty around right now and I'm trying very hard to just focus on the one next thing, rather than the big picture which is utterly overwhelming! So this morning as I did chores, I did take a moment to just stand and watch a mama and oodles of baby chicks running around with little on their minds other than following their mama's clucks! I did feel just a tad envious for a moment.

But I did not want to be a chicken last weekend. I very much wanted to be a human and former Martin Houser. Back on June 13, 2018, I sent an email around to all my former housemates to see if folks were interested in a 20 year reunion. They were and we set a date that worked for EVERYONE! In the end two housemates and their families could not make it due to illness and professional opportunities (we missed them!), but the rest of us gathered for a weekend of reconnecting!

We gathered on Friday evening up at the Discipleship Center at EMU for a potluck. We were a group of 18 children and 16 adults. I had not met a good number of the children and did not know all the spouses well either. In hopes of helping to "break the ice" we had developed a list together of statements to read while standing in a circle together. If the statement applied to you, you stepped in. If not, you remained where you were. We learned who knows how to trap a rat, who has been licked by a giraffe, who has kissed someone in the Martin House attic (and basement), who has lost a tooth in the last 5 years, etc...It was such a hit that the kids wanted to do it again on Saturday and they came up with the vast majority of the statements for that time around.

Following a hearty and delicious meal together, there were many rounds of Dutch Blitz (human-sized cards!). This was also such a hit with the kids that the cards were brought out to our home for a few more rounds of it Saturday evening. All day Terah had been very clear with me that she was "going to be a little shy" with the group. She was, but not for long. I honestly didn't see a lot of our kiddos for much of the weekend because they were having so much fun with the other 15 kids. Terah had been a bit under the weather but she rallied and enjoyed herself thoroughly. It was a creative bunch of kids that did not need any fancy kinds of entertainment and I don't think I saw a single kid on an electronic device, which was so refreshing! Instead they made trains out of chairs!

Anyone that was from out of town and not staying with family, bunked at Tangly Woods. I could not resist the temptation to stay up late and play games both nights. It was well worth sacrificing a bit of sleep time. And it was perfect for my personality to have our home stuffed to the gills with as many folks at possible - I had very little time to worry that I was missing something exciting. I'm sure I missed plenty, and of course I wished for lengthy and in depth conversations with everyone. But we clearly packed in as much as we could in our short time together.

Saturday was spent out on our homestead. Kids helped with chores and feeding chickens, there were soccer games to join, our pigs got some extra attention and grass, chicks were hatching, old photo albums were looked through and memories rekindled, good food shared over meals and snacks together, etc... As much as I don't have many specific memories of my year in Martin House and the community living aspects of it, it was clear to me that we had eaten, laughed, cooked, played and cleaned together before. It felt like the smoothest hosting experience I've had in years!

Early afternoon, about half of us headed out for a hike to Hensley's Pond. We couldn't have put in an order for better weather than we had. It was the kind of weather I wish I could can and then crack open and let out when we host the CJP grad party, the CJP orientation dinner or house concerts. The blood root is blooming beautifully in the woods and a few of the kids learned that they are big fans of sweet sicily (the biggest fan also learned that she loves to eat violets in large numbers!).

Upon returning from our hike, there was more animal feeding, more people feeding, more game playing and then an outdoor fire for roasting s'mores, visiting around and enjoying an impromptu cello concert!

More chicks hatched over night so there was a happy line up of kids ready to adore them Sunday morning! I think chicks are pretty cute, but I must say that I felt rather partial to the line up of little humans! While kids ran hither and yon and played Pit on the front walk, the adults gathered to sing and share together. Sadly a few families had to leave early and missed the morning time.

I felt such a welling up of emotions as we sang hymn and after hymn together. I didn't want it to end. It felt more church like than any gathering of humans with hymns and readings has felt to me for many years. There was laughter and tears and snippets of stories and sharing about why particular songs were meaningful to us. It came to an end way too soon.

And then it was time to say goodbye - to new friends and to old friends. There's been a little flurry of facebook correspondence since the reunion, as I don't think any of us want to wait another 20 years before we try to gather again - maybe we can hit our 100% participation yet?! We did dig up some other pictures from 2006 and 2007 and 2012 reunions so it was really only about 7 years since our last. On Sunday afternoon Alida was already asking me when we were going to be doing that again. It was a weekend that I will treasure for some time to come. I feel so grateful to the safe and brave space that house, and the people that made it home, provided for me in an otherwise rather tumultuous year of my life. And in many ways I feel like I'm in another rather tumultuous time, spurred by different things but nonetheless hard. The weekend felt grounding and beautiful and for that I feel so very thankful!