Catching Up: Fabulous Fourth

"Hey, Mom!"

I called my mom on the phone just before the Fourth.

"Want to come sit on a hot sidewalk for two hours, sweating and watching tractors? For a bonus, you might get your eardrums blasted out by sirens and get hit in the head with Smarties."

Why do we do this? Every year, I think to myself, It's going to be hot. I want to stay home. I've seen all this before. And every year we go to the parade, barbecue, go to the fireworks. Why do we sit in the blazing heat watching firetrucks and Boy Scouts on bikes? Why do we eat outside in the back yard? And why do we pack everyone up, drive for forty minutes and sit for an hour waiting for a thirty-minute fireworks show then drive home to tuck in tired, cranky, sticky kids?

And every year....We sit on the sidewalk chatting and stealing the Smarties from the kids' candy bags. The people in the parade smile and wave. We see the same tractors and horses that we saw last year. We gather in the back yard, family all together, with good food and good fun. And we sit in the cooling evening next to the river. I remember why I love the Fourth.

This year's highlights:

The parade. Always. There's nothing like a small town parade. No fancy floats here. The veterans wave and salute, farmers bring in tractors, the insurance agent drives his car through town, the churches pass out fliers, the horses and bikes and red-white-and-blue everywhere. People are smiling and waving.

Our guests. It is perfect that our friends from China are here for this oh-so-American holiday. They get to celebrate our country with us. This year I learned that in China, they too celebrate a holiday with fireworks on the riverbank, standing in the gathering dark awaiting the show. It was familiar and foreign to them.

Backyard gathering. It was 93 degrees, but in the shade of the filbert and magnolia it didn't feel like it. Our family was there, the people I love. That's my favorite part. I insisted that someone play Uno with me, so there was an Uno game at the picnic table. The food was delicious, melon salad and chicken and watermelon and macaroni salad and hot dogs, even delicious vegan sausages. And an impromptu talent show, which deserves its own line.

The impromptu talent show. I don't know how this came about, but we held The First Ever 4th Family Talent Show. We had yo-yo tricks, silly acts, a contortionist, singing and even...eating. Come prepared with a talent next year! Note: Eating no longer qualifies as a talent unless you're going to eat something gross or amazing, like bugs or fire.

Fireworks. I grumped about having to go to the fireworks. I groaned. I tried to think of a way to get out of it. In the end, like every year, I went anyway.

And just like every year, settled in the cool evening by the river, surrounded by my family, watching our children play with their cousins.....

I realized (again....when will I learn?) how much I love this holiday. And why. I like the parade and the picnic and even the fireworks. But my favorite parts are the quiet moments, and the silly ones, and even some of the loud ones: The children playing, visiting with the people I love, waving at smiling strangers in the heat, watching the sun set by the river at the end of the day, and even tucking in tired, cranky, sticky children.

Life is good.

Pictures of last year's Fourth here, featuring the same old dude on the same tractor, and the same firetruck too. Oh yeah, same kids too, just shorter.

A Day in the Life: Here Comes the Sun

It's been gray and chilly and drizzly. I have been utterly exhausted for days, so tired that I wanted nothing more than to just crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head and sleep for a week.

Today there was sun.

I dug up the grass that had invaded the strawberry bed and planted new strawberries. I weeded the garden. I thinned the spinach, the beets and the salad greens, so we're having fresh green salad tonight for dinner, the first harvest of the season. I planted basil and baby bok choi and carrots.

I had help in the garden. Kindergarten gent and his second-grade cousin each earned thirteen cents squashing snails, and they sat on the edge of the garden box snacking on baby bok choi they thinned from the salad mix. Kindergarten gent will not eat any green food that we put on his plate. Green food is defiled and heinous and foul. But I casually mentioned that his older brother loved the bok choi so much he ate it straight out of the garden, and next thing I knew my greens-hating gent was pulling off a leaf and chewing. "Yum!" he said, and helped himself to another. I tried not to faint or show my amazement in any other way, lest I call his attention to the fact that the food, in any other circumstances, might be considered green.

I baked bread, the honey whole-wheat bread I used to make when I was a kid.

I took care of the chicks and the chickens, cleaning and watering and feeding. Collected two round eggs, one still warm.

I read a book (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver) and I napped in the sun. Well, that's not entirely true. I read about two sentences of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Then I used the book as a sort of tiny pillow. The napping part is true.

I am sunburned and dirty and scratched and tired. My hair is frizzy and wild. My fingernails are dirty, and I went barefoot in the garden so my heels are a disgrace.

But I feel whole. I didn't realize until this day how much I craved sunshine.

I just took two beautiful round brown loaves of bread out of the oven. The house smells of fresh bread and soup, and my favorite ceramic bowl is full of fresh tossed greens-spinach, beet greens, lettuce. My children are out-of-doors riding bikes and looking for bugs in the grass. A day of sunshine and good work and outdoor play has restored me. I feel like my self again, refreshed. I'm off to swing in the hammock until dinner time, with my book.

Life is good.

A Day in the Life: Field Trip Friday

Rainy Day

Today was a grey stormy windy dreary day. The rain was bucketing down.

There was fussing and fighting, grumping and groaning. There was "Do I have to?" and "I don't want to." There was blah.

So.......




There were puddles....


...and a muddy ditch and a leaf-clogged gutter...


...and umbrellas and smiles.


And after buckets of rain, the sun came out.

There were hot baths and hot chocolate and warm pumpkin pancakes with cinnamon and stories on the couch.

Life is good.

A Day in the Life: Field Trip Friday

Visiting:
The Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon and Toshi's Ramen . (I forgot to take the camera in to the museum. Pictures from last year's field trip here. The fine young gents look so young.)

The fine young gents voted on possible outings: A trip to Dorris Ranch to walk to the river, a trip to a brand new place, or repeat last year's outing to the museum followed by a nature walk on the university campus and lunch at Toshi's. Toshi's won.

We are wrapping up our History Pockets study of Native American culture and history, so the Museum of Natural and Cultural History is an ideal field trip. The museum has a wonderful display of local Native American culture and history. There are many artifacts, but the displays that catch the attention of the fine young gents are the replicas of Native homes and environments from different regions of Oregon. They got to see model homes and tools.

The museum also has a new exhibit: Shoes. The fine young gents tried on shoes from different cultures, saw the oldest shoes in the world and looked at shoes from different decades in American history.

The hands-down favorite, again, was the hands-on exploration room. The gents played a Native American beaver tooth game and looked at rocks, fossils and bones.

We tried to visit the Eugene Pioneer Cemetery next, but middle gent needed to use the rest room. After this many years, I couldn't remember where the restrooms were in any of the nearby buildings, and the library was quite a trek away, so we moved on to Toshi's.
Eating and drawing: Toshi's has wonderful food and large portions. We ordered gyoza (potstickers), teriyaki chicken with rice, and ramen. The drawback: A long wait. Last winter, the gents showed stellar behavior during our visit, but it was a challenge to keep them entertained. This time, we brought our nature journals and spent most of the wait sketching. Our nature walk was cut short by, well, by the call of nature, so the journal request was "Draw something you saw on our walk, something you can see from the window, or your choice of drawing as long as it has something to do with nature." Second-grade gent drew a fall tree. Kindergarten gent drew houses with fall gardens. Even the littlest gent drew a tree, with some coaching from his brother. My journal entry was the easiest. Each gent wanted to draw a tree in my journal, so I only wrote, "Drawing trees at Toshi's."
We ate a delicious meal, then home for quiet time followed by gymnastics for the younger gents. We had so much food left over that we had Toshi's for dinner too!

Reading:

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum. (Poohsticks Read-aloud)
I had forgotten that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is such an absolutely wonderful, magical story. There's just something so refreshing about a book that flows smoothly as a read-aloud. We'd just finished The Black Stallion (Walter Farley), an exciting story but not my favorite to read out loud, and a book of Japanese children's stories, Japanese Children's Favorite Stories(Florence Sadake), charming but in simple language. The Wizard of Oz is a breath of fresh read-aloud air. The gents have been begging for "just one more chapter," and even wished in all the excitement of eating at Toshi's that I'd remembered our book. We've just gotten to the Cowardly Lion, and the fine young gents can't wait to find out what happens next.


Detectives in Togas, Henry Winterfeld.
Second-grade gent is devouring this book. A light humorous whodunnit set in ancient Rome. Rufus' classmates set out to discover who really defaced the temple of Minerva so that they can help keep their friend Rufus from going to prison. Fine young gent's review: "It's funny, Mom."



Johnny Lion's Book (An I Can Read Book, Level 1), Edith Thatcher Hurd.
Kindergarten gent is at the magical stage where he's discovered that he can read for fun. I keep finding him tucked into corners or curled on the couch with a book, or several, and he's going through the books on the Poohsticks shelves like mad. In one of his favorite library finds, Johnny Lion discovers the magic of books.

Crocodile and Hen: A Bakongo Folktale (I Can Read Book 1), Joan M. Lexau.
Another library find, as I've been raiding the Early Readers library shelf. I keep finding Crocodile and Hen on the couch, at the foot of kindergarten gent's bed, in the upstairs hallway. Crocodile discovers that Hen is really not that different from him. It's a lovely story that promotes peace and the idea that we're all brothers and sisters even when we look different.

ABC: A Child's First Alphabet Book, and 1-2-3: A Child's First Counting Book, Alison Jay.
I chose these Alison Jay books from the library for the youngest gent. He loves them. He looks at them every night before bed, and when he chooses stories for a story time, these are the first books he brings to the chair. My memory insists that these books are another recommendation from Nina at Painted Rainbows, but I can't seem to find them. If not, they're certainly the kind of books that Si and Kitcat find in their reading baskets, which is probably why I am so certain that I first saw them there.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan.
I've been working on The Omnivore's Dilemma for an embarrassingly long time. It seems to get misplaced with alarming regularity, though not purposefully, or displaced by a must-read-now. After bogging down in the corn, corn, corn section at the beginning, I promised this book to a friend, so I'm finally buckling down to finish. It's interesting. Fascinating, but not for the faint-of-heart. I've just started reading what feedlot cattle are fed, not even the butchering part which loving husband assures me is worse, and I am already sick at heart. Thank goodness we already know where to buy local grass-fed beef.

A Keeper of Bees: Notes on Hive and Home, Allison Wallace.
I have set aside The Omnivore's Dilemma temporarily because A Keeper of Bees is a library book, and must be returned soon. I found it on the table next to the library computer, and snatched it up. It's part memoir, part bee history, information, and lore, and part love letter to bees. Any bee lover would enjoy reading this book.

Watching:
Senator McCain and President-Elect Obama. Loving husband recorded some of the election night coverage. My fine young Obama fan was so sleepy that he couldn't wake himself up to watch Obama's live victory speech (though his kindergarten brother woke and watched, half-asleep on loving husband's lap), so he asked to watch it. I asked him to watch Senator McCain's speech as well, so that he could see that both men were very gracious and eloquent in victory and in defeat. My fine young gent was riveted. Loving husband and I are not "into" politics, though we feel that it's important to educate and inform ourselves so that we can vote carefully and thoughtfully. Our fine young gent, however, is fascinated by the whole process. He's disappointed that his mayoral choice did not win (though the race was very very close). I'm trying to figure out how best to encourage his interest without raising him to just vote like Mom and Dad, how to incorporate politics as a topic into our learning while teaching him to think for himself. A great family challenge, I think.

Playing: Legos.

Apple Picking

It was beautiful yesterday. So beautiful that we rushed through math and language arts, piled in the car and drove out to the apple orchard. Just the drive into the country on a sunny fall day would have been a good reason to ditch school today. Oregon is beautiful in the fall.

The fine young gents were delighted to see their new favorite apple on the trees: Granny Smiths. I promised them a pie if they picked at least eight green apples. We've got an entire bucket almost full of Grannies.

I found a new favorite apple, Idared. They're a round red squatty apple, white-fleshed, crisp and sweet.
I thought, "Oh, we'll come home with a bag of apples." Heh. Each of the fine young gents wanted his own bucket. Each fine young gent felt that he should fill his own bucket. We've got bags of apples in the garage.

One of my favorite moments of the day: Eldest gent offering to help his brother carry the heavy apple bucket.

The farm has a little hay maze, a farm stand, and lots of fall and Halloween decorations. Cute without turning into the crowded circus of the Hayrides and Cornmaze! farm. We admired the decorations and chose two more pumpkins for the front porch. We shopped at the farm stand. The fine young gents and I chose a few butternut squash, some delicata squash, and a jug of apple cider.

Then the fine young gents played in the hay maze while I soaked in the sun.


Time for nature journals. This is a school day, after all.

We picked apples.



When we got home the phone rang. It was lovely elderly neighbor, inviting us to come pick up her windfall apples before her yard guy comes and throws them in the yard waste barrel.

Last night I dried apples, and I've got more to dry tonight.

This morning we picked up the neighbor's yard and made a huge apple crisp.

Life is good.

A Day in the Life: Monday, Monday (Da da, da da da da)

Monday Monday, so good to me.....

6:22 a.m. &*%^(&$#. Alarm goes off. Hit the snooze.

6:30 &*%^(&$#. Alarm goes off. Hit the snooze.

6:38 &*%^(&$#. Alarm goes off. Hit the snooze.

6:40 Drag my weary self out of bed. Leave the alarm so that loving husband has to roll over to my side of the bed to turn it off, which will hopefully get him to drag his sorry a....ah, weary self out of bed.

7ish Let the dog out. Let down the chicken coop ramp. "Oh, giant weird chicken mom! Where's our food?" they ask in chicken language. Feed the chickens. Bring the dog back in with me. Make breakfast. This morning it's toasted bagels, scrambled eggs and sliced apples.

7:20 or so Listen for lovely lady stirring overhead. She's supposed to be downstairs by now, but alas, she's still in bed. Her lovely sister is at her dad's on Monday mornings, so no need to wake her. I wake the fine young gents by opening the curtains to let in the morning.

8:00 Breakfast is over. The lovely ladies have a deadline, a bus to catch or a friend to meet to get to school on time. But the fine young gents can daaaaaaawwwwwdle their way through breakfast, so plates clear at 8 whether they've finished or not. I help the fine young gents dress, brush, make beds, do their chores. I can hear loving husband and lovely lady chatting as they clean the kitchen together. Lovely lady's friend arrives and she's off to high school for the day.

8:30 I take a shower and dress while loving husband helps the fine young gents with their Monday morning chore, tidying the play room.

9:00 School starts. The fine young gents haul their school boxes to the table.







We start with our morning warm-up. The gents were having a hard time coming to the table. Grumpy attitudes and dawdling, and a frustrated momma, were the order of the morning. I realized that I was asking them to start their day with a concentration-intensive activity. Math may be a favorite, but it takes a lot of mental energy. I took a two-pronged approach. I addressed the attitudes: "No more grumping, groaning, fighting, fussing, or farting when I ask you to start school," I said. "When I say, 'Let's get started,' I want to hear 'Yes, Mom' and see you get your box without being asked again," I said. And I addressed the teaching: Now we start with a light and enjoyable learning activity, something to ease young minds through the transition from play thinking to concentration. Monday morning warm-ups are mazes for kindergarten gent and a Math Minute sheet for second-grade gent. Preschool gent decides to play with a puzzle on the couch instead of joining us at the table today.

9:15 Morning school.

Preschool gent comes to sit on my lap for a while, plays with the counting bears, then goes to play with his brother.

Kindergarten gent does a Miquon math sheet using the counting bears, practices making "L" and "l" on a handwriting sheet, and works on his alphabet book/memory poem, "A was an apple pie." He takes a break when he's done, playing chess and Legos with his younger brother.

Second grade gent works through math, his Language Arts, and Challenging Word Problems.

10:15 (I think) We all take a break. The guys are playing Legos. I am surfing the Internet.

10:35 We all come back to the table. The fine young gents finish a few odds and ends, then work on their history project. We're trying History Pockets this fall. The curious young gents are interested in Native Americans, so I purchased the Native Americans unit. I'll try to remember to write a curriculum review once we've completed the unit, to go over what we liked and didn't.

As the fine young gents colored, cut and pasted, I read out loud, Native American tales from Keepers of the Earth: Native American Stories and Environmental Activities for Children (Keepers of the Earth) (Joseph Bruchac & Michael Caduto), with Under the Green Corn Moon: Native American Lullabies playing in the background. Preschool gent gets tired of coloring, so he sits in my lap while I read. His kindergarten brother soon joins him.

11:30 Time to make Navajo fry bread. I give each boy his own bowl, so they each mix up and flatten their own little breads. This link has both a recipe and some history, which we read while the bread was frying. The background information was interesting and the fry bread was delicious.

Noon Lunch for the fine young gents. We're reading The Black Stallion (Walter Farley), but the gents enjoyed the Native American tales so much that we continued reading from Keepers of the Earth. The first lunchtime story was a Pacific Northwest story of mountains and rivers that we know and love, the Columbia River and the Willamette, and the mountains now known as Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams and Mount Hood.

1:00 Back to school. The fine young gents take turns practicing piano and playing games in Japanese on the computer. Preschool gent alternates between the two activities. He likes to "practice" too so that he can get a sticker. As soon as piano practice is over, they all go outside to play with the dog.

3:00 Quiet time. Second-grade gent is upstairs with his reading book, Detectives in Togas (Henry Winterfeld). Kindergarten gent is on the couch with his bin of Legos. Preschool gent is playing with toys on his bed. It's awfully quiet in there, so I think he may have gone to sleep. I'm working on this post. In a moment, I'll go out to collect eggs and feed something green to the chickens.

Oh, and I ate lunch around this time too, leftover pasta. Sometimes I forget.

3:45 Lovely lady the younger usually arrives home around now, but she's not here. She's officially at her dad's on Mondays, but it's easier for her to ride the bus home and meet him here than it is for him to fight the traffic at the school. I called her dad. He'd picked her up and forgotten to tell me.

Lovely lady the younger is usually closely followed by her older sister, who bikes home from school. She gets a snack then settles in to do her chores and homework.

4:00 Quiet time is over. It's nearly time to take the eldest of the gents to his choir practice, so he's getting his shoes. I realize I haven't brushed my hair since I took a shower this morning, and I'm wearing my ancient too-big jeans with the coffee stain and the hole in the knee. (Just keepin' it real. Most days are like this one. Honest.) I brush my hair and contemplate running upstairs to change, but I decide I can't be bothered.

4:15 Choir drop-off. I leave the younger gents with their oldest sister for a few minutes. I contemplate staying to watch the rehearsal, but I've forgotten swim things and a snack for choir gent, who's got swim lessons immediately following choir.

5:15 I pack fine young gent's swim bag and head out to pick him up from choir. When I get there, he's so wiggly that the director has to ask him to move to sit between two of the fifth graders. She assures me afterward that it's normal, and that he'd been quite well-behaved up until then.

We drive straight from choir practice to the pool. Fine young gent eats a snack in the car and changes at the pool. There is a family changing room at the pool, but it's always full, so I let him change in the locker room by himself. With strict but low-key instructions to talk to no one, to change and come right out, to leave immediately if anything makes him uncomfortable. It's a challenge trying to give those kind of directions to my child. I want to allow him freedom and independence. I want to protect him and teach him to protect himself without making him afraid because I know who might be in there, but he doesn't yet. I'm not too worried. There are several dads in that locker room with their own children. They grin at me as I give him his instructions while they walk by us. As long as fine young gent follows my directions--don't talk to anyone, stay in the public area, leave if you feel uncomfortable, yell if you need help--a dad would help him even before I dash into the men's locker room.

When he comes out, he tells me, "I made a friend. It's that kid over there. I told him where I live and what our house looks like. And the number." Sigh.

While talkative young gent swims, I finally finish the last three pages of the Michael Pollan article I'd posted the link to a few days ago. I love the idea of a Victory Garden.

6:35 We arrive home. Loving husband is putting the finishing touches on dinner: Pasta with tomato sauce, green salad. Lovely lady the elder is out, babysitting.

After dinner I get the fine young gents ready for bed while lovely lady, returned from her babysitting job, helps loving husband clean the kitchen. I gave her that particular chore on purpose. Time with Dad is at a premium in our busy family, and it gives them a time to stay connected and maintain their wonderful relationship.

8:00 I read The Black Stallion to the boys. I give them hugs, and kisses, and blow the scary away before I turn out the light. I'll hang out here for a while, then off to bed for me. Tomorrow, I'll do it all over again.

Finally, a typical day. Not very exciting, but it's our life. Every day can't be field trips and fantastic art projects and rah rah rah. Life is good.

Monday Monday, it was all I hoped it would be....

Wordless Wednesday: A Day at the Beach

Tuesday Ten: Countdown

Ten blog posts behind. More like twenty or thirty, but this is the Tuesday Ten. I don't have time for a Tuesday Twenty. I'd like to write about learning to pan for gold in Sumpter, I've got some great nature photos, a short blurb about a stunned dragonfly (the body was all ridge-y, and bumpy--way coooool), first days of school, nature outings, art projects.....

I'm too busy doing all this stuff to sit down and write about it.

Nine months of school, give or take. We're cruising right along into this new school year. Already we've hit our groove. We've got animal masks drying on the cabinet, nature poetry in the nature notebooks, Japanese Post-its all over the living room, a nature collection on the cabinet next to the masks. This year we seem to have hit our year-round groove too. I expect we'll be enthusiastic and immersed in projects and outings this fall. Ambitious. By the time winter really sets in, we'll delve more deeply into rigorous academics, with lots of reading and writing and snuggling on the couch in our jammies. By spring, we'll be ready for the outdoors and lots of hands-on active learning experiences.

Eight books in my to-review stack. I've read some really good books in the last couple months. But at the end of the day when it comes down to, hmmm....read? Or write about reading?.....I go watch Project Runway. (Just kidding. Sorta.)

Only Seven days in a week, twenty-four hours in each day for teaching, piano practice, laundry, cleaning, yardwork, gardening, grocery shopping, volunteer work, cooking, talking to my wonderful teens, homework, errands, playing games with the boys, reading out loud. I wish we had an extra day in the week, just once in a while.

Now I've got "Eight days a week, I Loo-ooo-ooo-ooo-oo-oo-ve you" in my head. Great. Oh well, it's better than something insipid like The Itsy Bitsy Spider.

Added a few minutes later: Well crud. Now guess what's spinning through my head.

Six things on my mind at all times. There's always something going on up there. Mostly things I need to do; the rest thoughtful, personal, spiritual, whimsical. That doesn't count any of the hundreds of things I'm forgetting. One thought enters, another must leave to make room, perhaps never to be seen again.

Five wonderful children. All unique, all precious, all maddening and beautiful and time-consuming and absolutely worth every second I can spare for love and discipline and play and conversation and hugs.

Four: The number of jobs I can handle at one time. Mom (with the attendant nurse-chauffeur-counselor-police-housekeeper-pet care-gardener side jobs), Teacher, Choir Parent, Activity Director & Behavior Manager. I gave up one of my choir volunteer positions because I didn't feel that I could do a good job on both and have time for my family. Fortunately there was a woman who actively wanted the position. But I still feel guilty.

Three things at once is about all I can manage. I've become a queen of multi-tasking. I can talk on the phone, hand out schoolwork and stir dinner all at the same time. Of course I might start telling you over the phone to carry the ten, or to add 1/2 cup of broth, or that "h" is a tall letter.....

Two hands.

And only ONE of me. Maybe I'll try to build a duplicator in the basement. I could make a chauffeur-me, a housekeeper-me, a yardwork-me, a detail-person-me....that would leave this me to do the fun stuff, like teaching and gardening and napping.

Until then, I'll muddle-scramble-revel in and through all of the lovely chaotic mess that's my life. Life is good.

Wordless Wednesday: Fabulous Fourth (a little late)