A Brief Overview of the Rest of Last Year, and Also Apparently Some of This Year

Here it is the end of January again, and we haven’t opened our thermal-lined curtains in days.  Any energy-efficiency benefit we may have received from heating this oh-so-aesthetically-charming 1970s ranch with 8-foot dropped ceilings is completely lost through the 40-year-old floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall windows.

January is the month I start cleaning out the pantry, trying to scare out the mice who’ve been enjoying our Holiday Indulgences.  We’ve had so many mice this winter (we never see them, just the “evidence” of their presence) I’ve had to resort to sealing everything in plastic containers and tubs.  While inconvenient, it’s more practical than Jim’s suggestion which was we should put a cat in every cereal box. 

It seems I owe you a few months worth of updates. 

October/November 2013

Jim and I may be the only parents ever to have surprised their kids with a trip to Disney World. 

Let me clarify that statement: we are the only parents to have surprised their kids with a trip to Disney World, in spite of the fact we had to drive through numerous states, over multiple days, including last, but not least, Florida.  You’d think the flat terrain, palm trees, Spanish moss, sunshine and 75 degrees in October, and Florida license plates would be a dead giveaway, not to mention the ten-foot tall Disney World billboards spaced every half mile for the last hour.  Also that gas station we stopped at, bursting at the seams with Disney key chains, postcards, pens, ceramic Florida state thimbles, stuffed and mounted alligators, and oranges.  We all even took a bathroom break there.  You would also think that by now the kids would expect that if we are going on a road trip of any duration, there’s a 50 percent chance we’re going to end up in Orlando.

To be fair, we threw them off the scent since we traveled by way of Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia.  I had this misguided notion the kids would enjoy an educational trip to Williamsburg, Va., as much as I would.  Also, I wanted to go there before I die.

It certainly was educational.  I told Jim, as we were leaving the last day, “Well, I learned that there is a certain age you shouldn’t take children to Williamsburg.” Jim said, “And it’s whatever age Woody is.”  Not that the scenery wasn’t gorgeous, even in the two days of straight rain in which we drove there.  It was.  Not that we didn’t plan on one of the kids getting sick (pick one, any one) or Jack snoring all night, every night.  That happened. I just thought historical sites touted as being “family friendly” might actually be prepared for total unmitigated chaos.  Silly me.

Williamsburg, Va.

Woody and That Man Who Introduces General Washington

Williamsburg was picture-perfect, and all the employees were dressed in character and knew their stuff about colonial America, imparting their knowledge with onlookers when they (the employees) weren’t part of a re-enactment.  We walked for miles trying to tire out the kids, ate semi-authentic colonial food (not the squab, thank you; we like our baby pigeons which have heads and claws still attached to be alive, and not dinner) in very authentic buildings, visited blacksmiths, armories, the governor’s mansion, the original prison and jailer’s home, and participated in a colonial-era spy ring.  

And everywhere we went, Woody swung from the rafters, Betsy demanded, “are we were there yet?” and Lucy lamented that she was “hongry”!  Jack, who did seem to enjoy it, picked out a flint and steel at the general store, which he cleverly struck over and over inside the car in an attempt to set it on fire.

MMMM.  So glad we aren't eating here. 

Resting

Ye Olde Wiggery

Hard to tell if the kids are mesmerized or bored.  And maybe the blacksmith too.

How did anyone survive with this armor?!

Ah.  Jim must have been trying on the kids' armor.  Wait.  Why did Jamestown have armor for kids?

Meanwhile, at the church ...

The Armory.  Now THIS is more like it!

How Woody slept in Virginia.

On to Yorktown!

Betsy luring the ducks to certain death.

The highlight of the trip was the day we went to Yorktown where they had a “child-friendly” interactive reconstruction of a colonial farm complete with cabins, slave quarters, outbuildings, cotton crops (if you count three cotton plants as crops), livestock, and crusty old employees who detested most children, and especially mine.  

This became clear when Lucy and Betsy were running excitedly into a gaggle of geese and ducks, and the caretaker of that section called out to the girls not to chase the birds since if they (the girls) did, they (the birds) would become mean, and he would have to put them down (the birds … I think).  

Then a sour-looking woman in the gift shop requested that Woody not play with the wooden pop guns someone had temptingly left out on display (and not bolted down at all, or even locked behind glass), next to the stuffed animals, coonskin hats, and other toys.  I was mad enough to tell them what I thought of them on their visitor comment card, complete with my real name, address, e-mail address, and phone number.  I haven’t heard from them yet.

You don't say!

That's the door to the prison cell on the left.  Just the window on the door for ventilation.  No insulation, no heat source.  Yikes!

From there we cranked out the drive to Florida in one day -- the day that followed the night when neither Jim nor I got any sleep because Jack was so congested he couldn’t rest, but tossed and turned, moaned and groaned until 2 a.m., when Jim got up, packed the car, and I dosed Jack with one of everything I had in the medicine box (worth every square inch of space it takes up) before loading up the kids and heading out.  So for the rest of the day, the kids watched movies, played video games, and Jack passed out sitting up, head back, mouth open, for most of the drive. 

Fishing with Dad at Disney World

Lucy was too scared to watch Fantasmic from anywhere but inside Dad's shirt.

Nana made the girls' dresses for breakfast with the Disney Princesses.

Awwww!

Awwww!

Waiting to get on the new Ariel ride.

 

This was the next to the last night. Things are beginning to unravel.

We’ve got the Disney Routine down now, from knowing exactly what rides to tackle, and when, to knowing just what day the kids are going to put their heads down on the restaurant table and sigh, and ask, “When will be done?”  Usually that’s a couple of days after I start thinking it in my head.  Jim has never thought that.

Something we did differently this time was we brought along our bikes.  The girls rode in a tag-along trailer behind Jim.  I rode behind the boys to ensure they obeyed all the laws of the road on the campground.  Laws like: "Stay On the Right Side, Guys, For Crying Out Loud!"; "HAND SIGNALS!"; "Stop BEHIND the Stop Sign!"; "No Riding Side-by-Side!"; "What Did I Say About Stopping BEHIND the Stop Sign?"; and finally, but most important, "WOODY!  Brakes!"  

For being an athletic kid, Woody never could seem to figure out how to use both front and back brakes.  We ride all the time here at home, but not on well-traveled roads, and most of Woody's stops involve jumping from the moving bike.  "I can't remember which is the back brake!" He'd wail after flipping head first over the handlebars for the umpteenth time.  "Don't try to remember!" We'd holler in disbelief.  "Just pull BOTH brakes!"  By the time we left, Woody's crash helmet had proved it's mettle.  

2^nd Part of November 2013:

We got the call that my Uncle Joe was in the hospital at Tulsa on the drive back from Disney World.  Joe had struggled to shake illness over the summer, and received a diagnosis of cancer in the fall. We were able to stop in Tulsa, however bedraggled and stir-crazy we were, to kiss Uncle Joe goodbye.  He was sedated, and agitated, when I saw him.  He kept reaching up his arms, pulling his hand out of mine.  I thought he was irritated with me for trying to hold his hand, but one of my cousins later said she thought he was reaching for someone.  Grandma?  Grandpa?  Mom? That idea made me think.  Here I was imagining Joe was all but gone from us.  Maybe so, but not lost; not wandering hopelessly, but reaching steadily for the hand to lead him home.  Joe passed away a few days later. 

My older brother, who had planned to fly out for Thanksgiving, changed his tickets to fly in for the funeral in Crowder, Okla.  Afterwards, he survived the 5-hour drive back with all of us.

Not to brag, but I think visitors to our home are treated to a new perspective of their own lives.  Three days here makes most people glad they decided against ducks, chickens, dirt roads, and children.  The kids’ constant refrain was, “Uncle Sendo, watch this!” “Uncle Sendo, wanna play [a video game, football, Monopoly …]?", “Uncle Sendo, Knock Knock!”  Uncle Sendo good-naturedly did it all.  He even mentioned maybe visiting us again.

Torture.  I mean, Playing Monopoly.  Jack, Woody, Bets and Sendo.

Can't wait for Thanksgiving Dinner!

You might never suspect it was Jim who married into the family.   The similarities are frightening.

Martha, Sendo, Amanda

December 2013

This month was most notable because I came down with the flu twice, thereby disproving Jim’s often and loudly proclaimed theory that I sold my soul to the devil in exchange for not getting sick. 

The other exciting event was the chicken coop burned down after we headed into town one Wednesday night.  Our neighbor called us 10 minutes after we left and asked if we were having a bonfire on our property.  Visions of roasted chicken came to mind, followed by a giddy, guilty moment of hope.  But then I remembered the ducks also roosted with the chickens.

By the time we could get off the turnpike and turn around, the entire Benton Volunteer Fire Department was at our home.  It probably helped that our other neighbor was a volunteer fire fighter and they all thought it was his home on fire.  I was sure they’d be furious when they realized they’d been called out to extinguish the flames on a lousy chicken coop, but even though the coop was burnt to cinders, and the fire had spread to underneath Jim’s Kubota tractor and was heading toward the wood pile and propane tank, they got it out.  

By a stroke of luck (or maybe fate was leering at us), we had not closed up the chicken coop before we left.  A couple of chickens had crispy feathers, but they and the ducks were out huddled between the fire trucks and the legs of the fire fighters, clucking and quacking, as they glared furiously at their benefactors. 

The charred coop is still there.  We moved the birds out to a small barn Jim built several years ago and never used to its full potential.  We have one chicken now who refuses to go to that coop each night.  It's probably the one that insisted on laying her egg in the burnt out coop for days afterwards.  We have to go hunt her down by flashlight and carry her out to the safe one.  Lousy chicken.

The remains of the chicken coop and yard.  It actually doesn't look much worse than it did originally.

January 2014

I finally got the Halloween Jack O’ Lanterns off the front porch.  

I also had this conversation with six-year-old Betsy:

Betsy: “How did your mom die?”

Me: “She died of cancer.”

Betsy: “How did my Grandma die?”

Me: “Your Grandma is my mom.  So she died of cancer.”

Betsy: “Sooooo … your mom died of cancer, and my Grandma died of cancer …”

Me: “And that’s because my mom –“

Betsy: “Is you?!”

The conversation could have ended there, but three-year-old Lucy joined in:

Lucy: “What did my Grandma die of?”

Me (sighing and rolling my eyes): “Cancer.”

Betsy, shocked: “She has a Grandma?”

I think Mom and Joe would have enjoyed that conversation.

Happy (and hopefully warm) Valentines Day to you all!

Betsy, Joe, and Lucy, 2012

September 2013

Home

Well, here we are: another fall in Kansas!  It seems that normally the leaves have started dropping in bigger clumps from the trees, but with all the rain, they are still hanging on, green as they were in June.   Also, it probably has something to do with the fact we got the pool cover on, so there’s no point in them dropping en masse.  But if we hadn’t got the cover on, I’m sure I’d wake up one morning and an entire tree would be floating on the top. The hay is standing in the fields in great big round bales (the square bales are already stored in the barn loft) and the grass is turning yellow.  The tomato vines have wilted, but still have that good, DIRT smell when you run around them, trying to catch the ducklings Jim and the girls just had to have.  Again.

They started out with six chicks and four ducks.  But then they had to go back to Atwoods for starter chicken feed, and naturally came home with two more ducks and three more chicks.  The girls take their bird-care responsibilities very seriously, and after the first two days of reminding Lucy not to hold the chicks upside down, and reminding Betsy that they don’t have feathers yet, and can’t fly when she tosses them, even if they’re only a foot from the ground, the girls finally got the idea that gentler equals better.  Or anyway, it equals the same number of live chicks at the end of the day as what you started with. 

Catching him (her?)!

The chicks are mostly a straggly looking bunch, not very cute, and not terribly interested in anything except the warming lamp and the occasional unlucky grasshopper that strays into their bucket.  But the ducks are hours of entertainment for everyone.   Whenever you reach in to lift one out, they race around their bucket (Jim just stuck them in one of the great big plastic horse watering troughs) in a frantic cluster, barreling over their water feeder, peeping frantically, and splatting through the soggy wood chip bedding that stinks to high heaven.  When you feed them, they peck anxiously at their food, then tilt their heads and blink at you rapidly, clearly distrustful.  But, oh, the joy, when Jim takes them out front and turns the garden hose on them, and lets them play in the puddles that form in the rock garden.  They duck under the water and come up waggling their back sides and hopping from foot to foot, chattering and grabbing at bits of tomato vine in their reach, gobbling off the leaves, and then scolding Jim furiously when he turns the water off. 

Watering the ducklings

Trying to catch the OTHER five ducks.

HELP!

At first, I got onto the girls about washing their hands with soap every time they handled the chicks and ducks … some vague idea of preventing the transfer of poo and other germy stuff, I suppose.  But then came the day when I saw Lucy plant a big old smackeroo on her captive duckling’s head.  So when I remind them to wash up now, it’s more form than substance.  I also think twice about letting Lucy kiss me after she’s been playing with ducks.

We ended up with a bumper load of pumpkins this year. See what a little indifference and neglect does for growing gardens?  Jim and the kids hauled a bunch back up to the house and dumped about 20 medium-sized ones on the front porch.  The girls rearrange them every day, always selecting their placement based on where they can do the most damage when an adult is walking out the door and it's dark, or their arms are full of groceries, or they're being dragged by a great dane who realized just a moment ago that her bladder was about to explode.

Woody's baby

School is in full force now, and the kids are used to the routine.  The other day Lucy asked hopefully, “Mommy, can you read a book at me?”  Lucy turned three in August.  While on a walk with Aunt Amanda, during which time they noticed many lovely butterflies, Amanda asked her, “Do you want to be a butterfly?” To which Lucy matter-of-factly replied, “Nope.  I want to be a sandwich.”

Three Years Old!

Betsy started piano at the beginning of the month, and is making good progress in playing her scales and “Mary Had a Little Lamb”.  She has small hands, even for a six-year old, and releasing a key before pressing down on the next one is difficult for her, so I try to remind her to lift her fingers after pressing each key. Now she raises her entire hand to head level every time she presses a key, then brings her finger crashing down on the next key, and sometimes it’s the correct one, sometimes it’s not, but it always reminds me of Betty MacDonald’s piano teacher in Anybody Can Do Anything, the one who “lifted her hands off the keys about four feet and came down on all the wrong notes but the effect was very brrright and certainly staccato.”

As it turns out, Jack needs glasses.  Jim discovered this on a recent excursion when we told Jack and Woody to meet us at a certain store at a mall, and Jack couldn’t read the signs above the stores.  Funny thing about home schooling: you never have to sit at the back of the class, so you don’t know when you can’t see the chalkboard.  Jim’s suspicions were confirmed last week when Rooger bolted out the back door, and Jim and Jack had to go chase him down.  Jim told Jack to “go over there and get your dog” where Rooger’s black and white speckled rump could clearly be seen bounding through the freshly-mown yellowed grass … and Jack headed off in completely the wrong direction. 

Amanda has started a new job at R2 Dentistry in Wichita and on her first week, when she was in training, Jim and Woody, who were at Woody’s orthodontics appointment nearby, decided to drop in on her and say hello … wearing these Turkey Hats (that looked like fully-cooked Thanksgiving turkeys, complete with white paper-covered drumstick tips).  Then, when Amanda walked out, they ducked behind the front desk so only their hats were visible.  Poor Amanda, to have such charming relatives. 

Thinking hard

The next day, Woody and I were reading from a difficult passage in one of his books and I told him he really needed to focus and concentrate, to which he replied, “Wait, let me get my thinking hat!” and came back moments later with the Turkey Hat planted firmly on his head.  Which was fine for him, but now I couldn’t focus or concentrate for the rest of the session.  Later that day Lucy apparently urged Amanda to put the Turkey Hat on because, she told her plaintively, “It will make you happy!”

Their favorite ride - the train!

Jack gets measured by the Silver Dollar City Undertaker

We took a long weekend to visit Silver Dollar City again, this time with our former neighbors, the Ogrens.  They moved away, but we forgave them because now they live in a little farmhouse next to the Walnut River and the dads and kids go fishing whenever we visit.

The Ogren and Manry kids
 2008

2013

They say this is supposed to be a harsh winter, so Jim is spending a lot of his free time clearing out the dead Hedgerow trees along the property lines and chopping them up for firewood.  We've got maybe three ricks of wood now, but think we may need as much as eight.  Luckily, I get the easy job of driving the air conditioned tractor, complete with radio.  Lucy and I sit at the wheel with a can of soda and peanut butter crackers, and yell, "HUH? WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"  as Jim, dripping with sweat and covered with chainsaw oil and sawdust, gestures for us to drive forward, back up, lift the bucket, etc.  Yep, life is rough!

Hope you all have a beautiful October!