Wedding Season?

I've heard of the "four seasons" but I thought they were fall, winter, spring, and summer. Wedding season though is one you find in our area and I'm sure you see it in other places as well.

This is the first time I've had the opportunity to get photo proof of it.

You might have to enlarge the photo to see it properly.

Parker and grandma had a grand time cracking hickory nuts the other week

I need to get some five-year-anniversary pictures for Shekinah's final post placement report.

Overheard from the back seat: "Get your nose off the gum or there won't be any smell left for me!"

Do your kids sniff everything? I declare they are part bloodhound some days. "Mom were you at Kendra's house? You smell like Kendra's house!"

The Beach in the Fall

 ....Amidst anniversaries and trauma-versaries.
If I would have been planning for the date that was the wisest I would not have picked

my daughter-in-law's birthday

their wedding anniversary

and Shekinah's adoption day.

But that was the weekend that worked with church schedules

availability schedules

and I hoped for a favorable weather forecast.

We filled the van to the gills.

At least we were able to share the food prep with "the married children"

That sounds like something my mom would say...ah well

I need to face up to the fact, that I have two married children and two grandchildren.

And a lot of gray hair.

We were going to the BEACH! and going to eat seafood!

We rented two floors of the house we had last year.

The water was warmer than the air on Saturday.

My hoped for weather didn't happen, it was gray and overcast.

BUT we didn't need sunscreen and we didn't need our winter coats.

Sunglasses weren't necessary either.

Most of us got wetter than we planned.

I realized I don't often get a chance to have a photo like this one.

So was it wise to have a family vacation on trauma-versary time?

What is this trauma thing anyway. Well, according to research formal and informal, our bodies/brains/hearts...whatever you want to call that place you keep memories can remember things that you can't really put into words. Why does the smell of fresh bread bring back warm happy feelings (other than you like to eat bread)? Why does a certain sound make you flinch before you even have time to register the source? A smell brings back a flood of memories?

Some evenings I've walked outside and I smelled China...

Well imagine that those smells, sounds, and sensations bring back bad memories?

For a lot of kids the anniversary of meeting new people who would be their parents is not a great time of the year. While my memories are of anticipation, theirs are filled with loss.

A lot of times they can't put into words what they are feeling and when children have those sensations, you know what they do...yeah, act out, cry about crazy things and generally can feel bad and out of the ordinary for this particular child.

What helps me the most is to prepare my mind for it and hopefully my schedule. (No I don't always remember- like this past weekend) And just be a bit more available and alert for when the wheels are about to fly off my wagon.

So was the beach trip a success? Yes. I would say that any of the "stuff" we saw after we came home was normal "post-vacation" syndrome. My idea is to layer good memories over

the difficult ones and hopefully they don't have as much pull.

Cat's Cradle

Every few years this makes a come-back in one of the classrooms. There are loops of yarn in many places around my house. When Faith first started with "look mom Jacob's ladder" I was a bit concerned about Shekinah.

I mean how well can you manipulate the yarn when you are missing a few digits?

Well you can teach your big brother how to help you.

Quite honestly, I think she was doing quite well for a 2nd grader.

When all else fails you make your own designs- did you ever make "envelope"?

I know I didn't, but this one was designed for you by our in-house designer.

A Visitor

The other week Shekinah was delighted to have a visitor that shared her special physical features.

We were just as delighted to see her home and doing so well.

This past weekend we were host family for church, that of course required the cleaning of spaces that normally get overlooked ...like the crevices on the chicken door stop. Shekinah went over him with a fine toothpick.

Tonite's stromboli was thought by some to resemble "snake in a blanket"...fine tasting snake it was.

Hope's latest creation...the mouth is a zipper.

Tonight's QOTD: So Shekinah started telling us about their history lesson today..."It was about ummm a guy that did a bunch of..."

"Thomas Edison" someone broke in.

"No...who comes after Martin Luther?"

"King?"

"No, who was Martin Luther anyway?"

"Oh" someone answered, " I think he hammered some nails in a door knob."

So much for my composure, we never did find out who they studied in history today.

Lost in the Translation

S: "Mom, today the art teacher told us about a girl who hung on the wall for art."
Me thinking...one of those stunts that people pull- like the real people posing as wax sculptures. "Oh? so how was she on the wall?" " was she real?"

S: "Yes she was real, but I don't know how she stayed there."

Now about this time the others got in on the conversation and we figured out...

She was behind glass.

She did it for art.

She had a name but that was a piece of information that didn't stick in her brain. "Google it mom."

The conversation got a bit tense as her thick-headed family really couldn't pull up the name of a girl who stuck to the wall and posed behind glass.

Last night she brought it up again. I searched  "girl who was wall art" "artist who hung on wall"

Nothing.

This morning I saw the art teacher walking between the two schools and almost stopped her to ask about this mysterious artist.

Tonite the mystery was solved....her name?




was Mona Lisa!

Camping, Applesauce, and Sewing

Before Labor Day weekend we talked about camping and discovered that Shekinah never slept in a tent. Daddy decided that would need to be changed, so he told her we would set up the tent in the front yard and sleep out. Well the weather did not cooperate and our front yard was a bit swamp-like. Rather than disappoint the youngest, we set up the tent in the living room sans tent spikes and slept with the windows open. Almost the same! Daddy decided the tent was sorta full so he slept on the sofa. They nicely placed many layers of blankets on the floor for me, but around 4AM I gave up and sneaked up to my soft bed and got a few hours of real sleep. Maybe mud would have been softer.

When you work for a quilt shop you never know what your next order will be. I do like the variety. This month I made a purse. I highly recommend "Aunties Two Patters- Bailey Island Hobo" for the clarity and simplicity of the directions. Some patterns require a masters in pattern reading, but this one was pretty straightforward. The hardest part was deciding which order to place the colors.

This one was a "design-it-and-see-if-it-works." It works. You could do a lot of different effects depending on the color arrangement.

School requires frappes some mornings, but icy frappes require fuzzy blankets.

School is going well, she is being stretched just a bit with physics and chemistry at co-op  this year and a part-time job. I like that I'm the "room mom" in chemistry, I'm actually learning something! I was introduced to significant figures and how they apply differently to addition and multiplication.

Shekinah still could use some extra with math and I found another math game that she likes. It involves three people. Each person draws a card (you can use any numbered deck of cards)and without looking at it puts it on their forehead. The third person adds up the numbers and says the total. Each person holding a card needs to figure out the number on her forehead by looking at her opponent's number, doing the subtraction. Who says their card first gets both cards. Most cards wins. You could do this with any of the operations depending on the skill level of the players. Add a challenge by playing with four people.

Applesauce day! Since everyone is in school or at work during the day, I decided to ask the eaters to join me in making applesauce on Saturday morning.

The goal was to be finished before lunch time.

Five baskets of apples five or six helpers we were pretty much finished by eleven.

I did start at 6:30 so I could get some apples cooked before they were out of bed.

Finding all the Fluff containers and lids, led to cleaning out one of the cupboards and purging the lonely lids and un-needed containers. Good-bye to a bunch of yogurt containers.

They even helped me clean up the dirty dishes...the lure of ice cream at McDonalds for all of us and a trip to the Re-uzit store for the girls might have helped.

This morning we ventured out of our comfort zone and attended a Lutheran church service. We (I) were invited to attend for a special service recognizing First Responders. It's nice to be recognized but it feels funny. The girls decided it wasn't so bad after all.

Thirty-one Years!

I'm sure there is a scanned picture here somewhere of that day thirty-one years ago. Back when we were delightfully naive newlyweds. The world was such a simple place then ah not really. I'm thankful that there was no Hurricane Irma that year because we went to Florida for our honeymoon. Some day we should go back. We keep saying that kind of thing, "one of these days we will go away by ourselves for a week".  Maybe next year.

One year we found ourselves in China adding a son to our family- that was seven years ago. One year we went to  VA for an Empowered to Connect seminar by Karyn Purvis and team. One year we went away overnight and took a two-year-old with us. One year we traveled the New England states for a whole week and one year we went to Williamsburg for a weekend. The last two were the PC (pre-children) years.

What did we do this year? The weather was influenced by Irma so we couldn't do anything outside and our time was influenced by the fact that the internet-upgrade guy was coming "between 12 and 4 PM".  Three of my conversations with the internet people told me that "no one needs to be home". The most recent two calls told me that a person over the age of 18 must be home. So which is it?

With that in mind we decided to watch a movie that I had heard so much about- "War Room". I realized again how powerful is prayer. With seven children there is a never-ending reason to pray.  I need to remember to pray specifically for my husband too. Yesterday he came home from work and I could sense that he had something on his mind, but the kitchen was full of people. He grabbed some clothes and said, "I'm heading for the shower, I was cleaning up a mess for the last 2-1/2 hours." He is a machine operator in a woodworking plant and he is on the first aid team there. My brain added 2+2 and figured he wasn't cleaning up saw dust. I know from my own experience you need to talk that stuff through. You also need God's help in the moment. We managed to discuss it later and again today.

 I also know that he takes very seriously the upkeep of our family. I saw a little note that came from his work shirt pocket.

Van $ 20,000
Roof $7000
Kitchen $2000

He's planning and maybe worrying about the future. Husbands need prayers--prayers for wisdom, endurance, and for knees that stay stable. (His knee had an MRI and he has a tear in the meniscus. That wasn't on his bucket list.)  My job is to be content, helpful and pray...short list that.

Lunch? Oh yeah, even though Facebook friends gave us many great suggestions, we headed to a small Mexican restaurant that is in the area, it's not Chi-Chi's but then nothing is anymore.

Got home and a few minutes later we had a phone call from "Mike" from the phone company, just checking if someone was going to be home because he was coming to upgrade our internet. There's our answer, you do need to be home. Very glad hubby was home too because "Mike" needed to run new phone lines because our antique (over 30 years is antique in the electronics world) wires would not handle the new blazing fast internet we were about to get (50mbps- well actually 49.49- for those who wonder about such things)

Sometime I need to write down the stuff I'm learning in Chemistry class and about down-sizing (we just helped son#1 move) and camping in the living room just so I remember one day that we weren't terribly boring.

and then there's grandparenting :)

Eclipse 2017

We talked about The Eclipse at the beginning of the year-I think-- and we all agreed it was an event we wanted to attend. I figured there would be a few science-y families and maybe a few geeks, but really...

Since we are a large-ish family to travel, I planned the route and reserved motels back in May. I first tried Air BnB places but they were looking expensive--nice, but expensive.

So I started checking for suites at motels, they turned out to be our best option.

We really like Homewood Suites, they have a light supper during the week that is included in your room rate. It was just mac n cheese, pulled pork sliders, and a soup...no dessert, but it was more than adequate after driving all day.

The other note to remember before the Eclipse 2024--get your glasses before D-7...they get a little expensive. We managed to snag some child's sized glasses (that sounds dramatic- they are cardboard and plastic) but the child-sized ones were available and I was willing to do surgery on them if necessary. It wasn't, they fit everyone but me and Joe because we needed to keep on our glasses in order to see the sky.

We headed out Sunday morning after Sunday School and stopped in Roanoke for the night. Cooked spaghetti in our room.

We were in the totality zone by 12 noon but didn't know where we wanted to park.

Did we want to pay $20 to sit in a parking lot without shade? This was TN and I'm guessing the temps were high 90's or 100. We were following a bunch of cars toward a campground and I suddenly spied a turn-off with a few parked cars and I didn't see any signs stating a parking fee.

We parked and it was just what we had in mind...some trees, some grass  and not many people along  Little Tennessee River off Unicoi Turnpike. 

We settled in and made some crescent shapes with our hands.

Ate the sandwiches I had packed.

Tried not to melt. 

Took some goofy pics while we watched the moon take a bite out of the sun.

You really can't do this on a regular day.

or this...

Hope managed to get a good picture with an older Samsung camera we have.

Twilight came for about 2-1/2 minutes. Long enough to be awestruck and amazed.

Short shadows but evening light.

These are the shadows of the leaves ....no, you really don't see that on a "normal" day

Really wonder what people thought before they realized what caused an eclipse.

Actually I wonder how people can deny a Creator after witnessing an eclipse.

Reminds me of something I read on Facebook:

In one swoop, God caused the nation to come together to watch Him at work!!!

No protests!

No politics!

Just all people looking up watching Him at work!

It was interesting....we sat in a lot of traffic afterward...A LOT! about 4 hours of parking lot and 4 hours of driving.

There was no yelling

No horn-blowing

Just people waiting.

Now I'm not predicting what would have happened in our van if we hadn't had a steady supply of Adventures in Odyssey and other audio books. The phones even needed to be recharged quite frequently. I managed to crochet about three hats while we drove.

We also learned that Google maps can be misleading....we were at a standstill on roads that were marked as "good traffic" and moving on roads marked "red".

A bit of common sense and good-old paper maps are necessary for that type of a trip too.

Made it to our motel in Lexington at midnight. 

The next morning after sleeping in a bit, we headed to Ark Encounter. It is worth the drive as well.

Slept in another Homewood Suites and headed for home.

Then so we didn't lose momentum, we sent them off to school the next morning.

Hope is still homeschooling, but the others are in 7th, 2nd, and 11th.

This Girl...and Other Thoughts

This child, the one that keeps me young and makes me old.

The one that thinks of interesting ways to dust the furniture.

The one that can throw an amazing tantrum and thirty minutes after said tantrum-when I am still reeling and trying to think what to do about "this kind of thing"- she comes with 

the most angelic smile and apologizes.

This girl who worries a bit.

The other night at bedtime--"Mom, I wonder what my teacher will look like this year? (she is new for our school so I couldn't help her out) Do you think she will wear earrings? I hope not, I hope she wears a veil--like you. Do you think she will be strict? Like 'sit down in your seat right now' strict?"

I'm glad you would like your teacher to look "like me" and I think that with twelve boys in your class

you will need a sit-down-in-you-seat-right-now kind of a teacher.

This child who sometimes gets called "handicapped" by well-meaning individuals. One day one of the girls came home from school and asked "Is Shekinah handicapped?"  I turned the question around to them and they agreed that some people might think she is, but really, she's not.

I get tired of having to be PC (politically correct) all the time, but in the case of "handicapped", I do think "differently-abled" might be a better description. 

The other morning she was DETERMINED to crochet some yarn as she had seen me doing the night before. Quite frankly, I wasn't sure it was possible.

Good old YouTube to the rescue  "one-handed-crocheting" Yup, it can be done.

Of course, by the time I had looked up the procedure and we had watched the videos, she was on to something else. I will store the information away for the next time she wants to give it a try.

"Four-fingered-typing" will probably be a search for the near future.

"Left-handed piano pieces"

and "how to catch a softball when your hand is quite small for a glove".

Our school gives parents the opportunity to write a bit about our child for the next year's teacher...I'm just not sure what to write. Depends how the teacher reads into it, she will think Shekinah is helpless. And yet, there are things to think through....

Songs with sign language have been a big hit at our school.

Signs involving the ASL letters are normally done with the right hand.

My daughter's right hand is not her most capable hand.

Please let her use her left hand when doing signs with songs.

Hope is doing school work through the summer and she is taking Greek for her foreign language.

She gained new respect for those first graders that stumbled over lists of words during "Victory Drill"

Might be a good exercise for first grade teachers too?

"Looks like Greek to me"

Another experiment by the crazy lady.

I was determined to try this and see if I can make dress-fitting a less stressful procedure.

I really should give her a name and finish the armholes.

She has been called some not-nice names when she startled some jumpy half-awake children.

It kept them busy for half a day.

They mixed water colors in buckets of water and offered them for sale.

They do have imagination.

QOTD Shekinah "Mom, come sit on this chair" indicating the office chair

Me:" why?"

S:" Just sit on it."

I obliged and she pushed the lever, I sank down to the lowest setting.

S:" Now get off."

Me:"what was that all about?"

S:"Thanks, I wasn't heavy enough to make the chair go down!"

QOTD: Both girls were talking about "smelly socks" in a British accent. I asked what they are talking about. "you know mom, Mrs Collins in 'Pride and Prejudice' , she wanted her "smelly socks"

"Smelling salts, girls...smelling salts!"

Then I had to explain that to them...they thought smelly socks would do...they'd eaten the jelly beans that had that flavor....kids!