Milestone moment, blueberries and a house concert!

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! 

This past week also marked another temporary but very welcome change: June 11 was my last official day in the office until August. I'll be going in weekly to do various tasks that I can't do from home but otherwise am mostly "staycationing" through the end of this month and then working from home in July. So far I haven't really gotten into any kind of "staycation" mode as there have been lots of loose ends to tie up and I have yet to mark some "no email" days in my calendar but I'm determined to select a few throughout my time at home or else I will never feel truly off!

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...

Braces off and more...

October 17, 2017 Kali got braces on. 

June 6, 2019 they came off! 

 

Lest you think that's all I'm going to say about it, read on if you wish! We aren't done with trips to Dr. Kray's office, with one next week to get her retainer, but we are nearing the end. It may come as a surprise to hear me say that I'll miss those treks, but they have mostly been quite pleasant and with an added and unexpected perk. Of course it's never fun to pass over 1/5 of one's yearly income at one shot for something like braces, especially when there are still lingering doubts as to whether it was "essential" for Kali's long term jaw and teeth health. But once the payment was done, we could just focus on the process, which turned out to be much easier than expected. 

Kali didn't seem to have any extreme pain throughout, just discomfort after each tightening. And she is a trooper and not one to complain so we didn't hear about it much. Additionally, it was really nice to work with an office full of people who seemed to enjoy their jobs, seemed to have playful and respectful relationships with each other, and were kind and competent with all of us who came through their doors. It was a smooth running operation with never much of a wait at all and the staff was great from the front door folks to the technicians and Dr. Kray herself. I'd recommend them based on our experience to anyone.

The hardest thing for me is the amount of waste that seems to be part of so many businesses that I just wonder if there is a way around. Single use toothbrushes. New gloves every time you do something new. Instruments in packaging for each patient. And the list could go on and on. But I'm pretty sure that would be the same at any orthodontist, so I'm very glad with the one we went to, because I haven't even mentioned the biggest perk: dog therapy!!!!

I talked with Dr. Kray this week to let her know that we felt like we got both braces and dog therapy out of our payment and how grateful we are for Hank and Wally. By this final appointment, Alida and Terah both walked confidently into the office, went looking for the dogs, were sitting or laying on the floor with them, Terah was putting her face right in front of them, petting and giving them belly scratches, etc... Yep, nothing short of a miracle - or the result of almost two years of repeat positive experiences. Now if only we can get those experiences to translate to some improvement in other settings with other four legged creatures! 

Kali now just has a little wire keeping her front bottom 6 teeth where they want them. That will stay on indefinitely. She had lots of x-rays done and was fitted for a retainer that they will make and give to her next week. For awhile it sounds like she will need to wear it all the time and then just at night (but flossing is already easier, giving her a few more minutes of nighttime reading)! So I probably won't have as great an opportunity for crazy photos of Kali for awhile. That is, unless she has to get her wisdom teeth out, which sounds like it might be on the horizon.

Terah was saying this week that she hopes to get braces some day. Her mother feels differently about it, and Kali tried to articulate to her the downsides of them. But for Terah it was mostly all fun: cute and friendly dogs that became pals, free pens of different colors, other treats occasionally, people who were kind and fun, and dress up clothes for post-braces photos! There would be much cheaper ways to accomplish all of those things so I won't be at all disappointed if Alida and Terah are spared the experience, along with our bank account. Time will tell!

The way we celebrated the occasion was picking up a bag of organic apples from the co-op so that Kali could crunch into a whole apple rather than having it cut in small slices. Oh the luxury!! 

So that's the main news and the rest of this post is just an update on the outdoor growing things. With lots of rain in the forecast, I left my camera inside a lot recently as we tried to get as many seeds in the ground as we could and as many weeds pulled before they grew event bigger. We've had poor germination on a number of crops this year so it's been a stretch to seed once and then have to go back and fill in. Not sure where in the process we are having failures, but it's been a little discouraging. But the pictures below will try to highlight some of the successes, as I'm great at looking at what is not going as well. So things to celebrate:

Pea shelling has commenced and I forgot how much our kids love it. Bright moment last evening: Terah shelling peas and chattering with Alida providing background music!

Alida's flower garden is starting to provide splashes of color outside our side door.

Goumis - yum! And the bush is tall enough that the chickens haven't gotten all of them!

Our kitchen garden soil knows how to grow sugar snap peas!!!

We have to divvy them out carefully at this point, but hopefully there will be lots soon!

The potatoes are hilled (thanks to Jason's hard hard work!) and there are black beans and watermelon planted with them.

Main barley crop harvested and today Jason is harvesting some in the pig paddocks but giving most of the rest to the chickens (we are just out of time!); in the foreground is Kali's garden with eggplant, popcorn, spaghetti and PA dutch squash - beans will go in once the corn gets a head start.

Alida and Terah's popcorn patch is now taller than her!

The chickens left a few red currants that were up high but not many!

And I'll end with a flower from each of our daughters' gardens. The gardens are full of beauty, just like the girls the gardens were created for/with!

Terah's garden

Alida's garden

Nora's garden

Kali's garden

Blood drive for Nora and Norah

Tuesday marked 11 years since Nora died. I would say surrounding the anniversary that I have felt quite "June 4th-ish." It's a feeling that is hard to articulate and one that I sometimes don't even identify myself initially - it was a day or two before the anniversary that it struck me as I was trying to sort out my heightened anxiety, weariness and other odd physical symptoms. For a variety of reasons, the emotions on this anniversary were more poignant than some of the past few. With a very full schedule leading up to and around the anniversary, I will admit that I did not carve out enough times for reflection and being attentive to how each of us was feeling emotionally. I felt pushed on time for the logistical preparations for the day, so was glad when the lullaby CD we played for Nora 24/7 before her death allowed some tears to find their way out.

As we have done for years now, we hosted a blood drive in Nora's memory. While there was much that was the same - familiar faces, yummy homemade snacks, meaningful rituals of remembrance - there were a number of things that made this blood drive unique from previous ones. Since Virginia Blood Services (VBS) no longer exists - it was bought by the Red Cross - this was our first drive under a new organizational umbrella. I won't go into all the things I went over in my hour long debrief phone call with my liaison at the Red Cross following the drive. In short, we've got some kinks to work out! And I'm feeling hopeful enough about the possibility of doing so that we are tentatively working towards a drive on Nora's 12th birthday, this October 30th. 

Back when I learned that drives at the old donor center would not be possible - at least in the short run - I reached out to a neighbor who is part of the local Ruritan Club to explore the possibility of hosting a drive there. They not only said "yes" but were willing to waive a large reservation fee and let us use the space for free for the blood drive. We are so grateful for their generosity in not only opening that space to us, but putting the drive on their sign, posting a flyer in their space, and helping with various logistics leading up to and on the day of the drive. I have no complaints about the space other than it almost feeling a tad too big. We were able to have registration tables, food tables, kid entertainment tables, eating tables, donor check in stations and all the donor beds and it still felt like there was lots of extra space to roam around in. I would rather a little large than too small, but I do think it was one of the factors that contributed to it losing a bit of the intimate feel of other drives.

We were able to incorporate some additional volunteers to help in other ways other than giving blood this time - mostly by having wonderful cheerful welcoming faces at the registration table to check in donors as they arrive, pointing them to the food, kids' tables and bathrooms as needed while they waited. And, thankfully, folks were in good spirits and no one gave up despite some needing to wait for quite some time for their appointment. Yes, one of my pieces of feedback is that drives need to be staffed adequately! While one staff person did have to leave due to needing medical attention herself, there were still not enough there to keep up with the appointments and being open to walk ins. It sounds like that feedback has been given by multiple departments to the Red Cross, so we'll see if lending my voice to the cause will do anything to help them rework their algorithms that tell them how many staff to put on a given drive. 

In general the Red Cross is just so much bigger than VBS and, while not necessarily always the case, it seems that with their size has come lots more regulations, strict policies, red tape and bureaucracy. Most of the staff working this drive were former VBS employees and they were kind, competent, and professional. It just felt like they were hampered by the many hoops they had to jump through to do everything exactly according to protocol! It will take some getting used to for me, and I can't shake the feeling that "it doesn't have to be this way." I did miss the homey familial feeling of VBS and will hope that maybe over time we can figure out how to recreate that. I do have some ideas already for October!

All that said, the drive was still very meaningful and we had 23 successful whole blood donations (which I was told by my recruitment coordinator was "right on target" with the goal for the drive - which I had completely forgotten). We had over 30 attempt to give but due to high or low blood pressure, recently taken medication, blood clotting before it was supposed to, and a few walk ins being turned away due to time limitations, 23 is where we landed. Besides those able to give blood, my heart is always full to bursting to have children there with us - especially those that were Nora's age. I am so grateful to them for joining to remember her with us.

A few days before the drive I was in touch with our friends, Eric and Peggy, whose 10 year old daughter Norah died this spring on Good Friday. I mentioned her in a previous post and since her death my thoughts often go to her family as they find their way through this time of intense grief and loss. I wanted to let them know that for me this drive would be for both Nora and Norah! In the end, they wanted to join us and both donated blood in memory of our daughters. We were able to include both girls in this memorial blood drive and hope that that may have been the first of many. My turquoise fingernail polish applied at Norah's memorial service had almost faded and so I, along with others, were able to paint a fingernail Norah's favorite color to continue to hold their family close in the coming weeks and months.

During the drive, I played the lullaby CD that has become "Nora's lullaby CD" to me and also played the song Grateful that we were introduced to by Norah's family. Please listen to it! It's as close to a mantra as I've got right now!

I’m gonna cry

All alone in this room

Don’t ask me why

It’s just that I need to

I feel the sorrow

And I feel the pain

And I will be grateful

At the end of the day

I’m gonna walk

Gonna walk in myself

Through the storms in my body

Through the high water hell

I will press on

Be what it may

And I will be grateful

At the end of the day

 

I’ll be a witness

To the sorrows I see

I will not feel at ease

I will not feel at peace

When the world leaves me sleepless

I’ll be awake

And I will grateful

At the end of the day

 

I will be strong

And stronger still

Torn from my hopes

Worn from my will

When I speak my truth

You’ll hear me say

I am grateful

At the end of the day

 

I will be a mother

I will learn to teach

All the love in the world

And the dangers it keeps

I will give of my heart

And to show you the way

I will be grateful

At the end of the day.

While minor in the scheme of things, I did feel very grateful that day that I was able to give blood. Jason jokingly challenged me to a race, as we were some of the last in the chairs. He had a head start and was done before I was rolling. I believe he was done in under 8 minutes and I just squeezed in under the 20 minute limit at over 18 minutes. They also had to do "some adjustments" to the needle throughout to keep it flowing at all, so I was quite happy when my dad counted down to the finish line for me! I was grateful for the "blood building syrup" an herbalist friend of mine had given to me, as I'm pretty sure I have to give it at least some of the credit for me squeaking past the iron test with a reading of 12.6 with 12.5 being the minimum. Phew!

Jason and I got to sit outside the Ruritan in the dark as we waited for the staff to be done what they needed to do so we could lock up. The girls had gone home with my parents. It was good to have a few minutes to debrief - though we were also both pining for our pillows by that time. Red Cross drives have to be a minimum of 4 hours so our 3-7 p.m. drive was 2-10 p.m. for us with set up and clean up. A long day but well worth doing and we did feel a lot of gratitude a the end of the day for all those on the journey with us!