Well, we finally finished school (insert Hallelujah chorus
here). The boys, who thought that they
would be on summer break, discovered that Jim had time off and instead they’ve
spent the past two weeks moving furniture back in once the wood floors were in, walking the fence line and trying to find
and fix where the donkeys get out, building a skeet-shoot platform, mowing the
lawn, cleaning the cars, cleaning the chicken coop, and cleaning their room. I helped with the wood floors until I had an allergic reaction to the sawdust. So while I was taking the girls in to get their vaccinations up to date, I convinced the doc, who is a friend of Jim's, to write me a medical excuse which exempts me from any further home-improvement projects, now and forever, real or imagined. I think I will have it framed and hung in the bathroom, next to our diplomas and awards.
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| Prepping the Girls' room |
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| Almost done! |
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| In the hall |
The garden this year is HUGE, probably because once Jim got behind the wheel of the tractor, he just kept plowing and plowing, and once that was done, then he figured he might as well plant it all. He and the kids have planted corn, sunflowers, pumpkins, green beans, tomatoes, and onions. They planted, but I don't know if we'll actually harvest anything. Betsy and Lucy, whom the chickens adore because they go randomly during the day and pour out scoop after indiscriminate scoop of chicken feed, insisted on helping drop the seeds with Jim. Naturally the chickens hiked up their skirts and came galloping out to the garden plot when the girls appeared, and happily followed them, pecking up any seeds the girls dropped on the way. Jim did plant me a patch of lettuce, which looked delicious until Betsy decided it was time to pick it. ALL. Now I have the equivalent of six heads of lettuce in the refrigerator and the lettuce patch looks like it was hit by a tornado.
We did take a long weekend to go to Silver Dollar City, in
Branson, Mo., where I grit my teeth and went on Thunderation Rollercoaster (at
Woody’s request) twice. I haven’t been
on a real roller coaster (Fire In the Hole doesn’t count: it’s fun)
intentionally since about 12 years ago when it suddenly hit me that only crazy people, or people without young children, go on roller coasters.
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| Our kids don't get annual school photos. They get the coffin photo every year. |
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| In spite of the fact we have every animal under the sun, anybody else's are more interesting than ours. |
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| Lucy in the Fun House. |
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| By lunch time, we're all exhausted. |
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| Oh, my! |
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| Onward and Upward |
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| Dipping candles is almost as thrilling as Thunderation. |
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| Panning for gold. |
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| I got a rock! |
The kids are doing great.
Before we finished up school, Betsy and I were reviewing shapes, and
after correctly identifying several triangles, I pointed to a rectangle. “Um, NOT a triangle?” Betsy offered
hopefully. Then while working on some
logic exercises, Betsy was supposed to select the correct object among a
bicycle, glass of milk, a rabbit, and a book.
“You ride on me.” I read dutifully out of the instructor’s guide. Without a second’s hesitation, Betsy pointed
to the rabbit. Heaven help our
animals.
Lucy is talking non-stop now, which is not to say she has an
expanding vocabulary. One 30-minute ride
back from town was filled almost exclusively with this age-old, thought-provoking
question: “Mom? Mom? Mom?
Mom? Mom? Mom? Mom?” She staggers out in the morning, tripping over her fleece blanket she wraps around herself, even when it's hot, and says, "I lake up!" (I wake up!) Her prayer list at night changes, depending on the day (unlike Betsy, who consistently prays for "people we love" -- but not those we don't?), but usually she remembers to thank God for "Daddy and Tylenol." Lucy still loves eating everything, and Amanda nailed it when she compared her to a baby robin, following you around with head upturned, mouth wide open.
Now that school is out, Jack is devouring books that have no literary value whatsoever. You know: fun books. So far he's finished more than a dozen Hardy Boy mysteries, some Madeleine L'Engle (the non-Newbery winning ones), Rick Riordan (thank you for the suggestion, Dallas), and Mr. Popper's Penguins. Again. Jim had to get onto him a few times while they were working on the floors because Jack would absent-mindedly hand Jim whatever tool was right next to him, instead of tool Jim asked for, and sometimes didn't even hear Jim talking to him, because he was so absorbed in his latest book. Heh heh, I thought. That one's definitely my child.
Woody is as attentive to Lucy as ever, and I had one of those "Awwww!" moments when I looked out the kitchen window to see him placing her in the swing and giving her a gentle push. But then he raced off to the porch, grabbed his Nerf bow and arrow set, and proceeded to use Lucy as his moving target, aiming just a couple inches above her head, and maybe a little to the right. So much for the moment.
For our 17th anniversary, Jim and
I left the kids with Jim’s parents and we went to Kansas City, ALONE. We weren’t quite waiting at the end of the
driveway with the car packed and running, and the kids back at the house with
instructions safety-pinned to Lucy’s shirt, but it was close.
We rediscovered the joy of NOT stopping every 15 minutes for a potty break, NOT choosing restaurants based on whether or not they had chicken strips and barbecue sauce, dinner conversation NOT made up of quoting line-for-line the latest Futurama episode, or the last Garfield comic book read in the bathroom, and I got to wear a dress all day without the fear of a certain 2 year old sticking her head up underneath the skirt and then whipping it open like a cheap shower curtain. Yep. It's the little things that count.
