The World is Still Spinning Here

I have been absent for nearly 2 weeks, so this morning when I saw that some of you still stopped by the pocket, I felt quite humbled. I fully intended to do a travel post after our trip to the mountains of NC in July, but when we got back the green beans were producing and they just wouldn’t stop! We finally pulled them out this week, just because. There is a later crop coming and the boys are already so excited about picking them every other day. Not.

Also when we got home, we dove into school. The first week we cleaned and organized and bought our supplies. This is the first year ever that we were ready to go before the Back to School sales hit! Some of our eagerness was due to having finished early in May and the children were actually bored with swimming and picking beans and making stuff. Or maybe it was me who was tired of keeping the flock reasonably occupied and the house decently ordered. I was ready for more of a schedule, especially since we plan to take time off this fall. I have purposed in my heart that I will never again attempt to do school and peaches or school and tomato sauce or school and pumpkins on the same day. That is just ignorant. But I am also not ready to throw in the towel on home-preserved foods, therefore we are tucking in some extra school days now.

Well… here we are again, 4 days later. I need to do this post and move on. Summer time is not optimal blogging time. There are just so many flowers to pick and raspberries to eat and porches to sit on whenever all the other stuff has been attended to. The last thing that happens is writing. But I do have some photos to share from July.

I am not good at capturing the moments, like my scrapbooking friends who take pictures purposefully with an album layout in mind. For me it goes like this: “Oh, I should take a picture! Where is the camera? Hey, everybody, hold that right there while I run to the vehicle to scrounge for the camera in the bowels of my purse.” Usually by the time I get back on scene the spontaneity has gone and my boys have evaporated. They really, really dislike posing. So does my husband. 😀

Here we have cousin fun. All these girls are my girl’s cousins and did she have fun. There are four NC girl cousins more that are not even in the photo.

This is my little brother giving the children thrills on July 4. There was a constant scream of hilarity wafting out of that little cart.

And my big brother holding the wee-est baby girl. Aren’t they cute?

Like I mentioned, my photos are quite inadequate to detail the great time we spent with siblings in NC, and I completely forgot to fish my camera out of my purse when we stopped for an afternoon and a night at P.D. and Leeny’s place enroute to the the coast. I guess I was too busy catching up and watching our children become acquainted, not to mention eating so much fabulous produce from their garden.

We crossed the 13 mile (or more) Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel to the Eastern Shore peninsula and meandered through the countryside to Chincoteague. All of my life I have loved the story of the Phantom and Misty, and here we were in wild pony beach territory. (So were a few other people. 🙂 )

The days were hazy, but the water was great. We had a lot of fun fishing for crabs with chicken necks for bait. I may have warned them a time or three about being careless about the edge of the walkways.

Out of all the takers, only 2 crabs were big enough to keep. We steamed them with Old Bay Seasoning in our motel room and extracted the minuscule bits of meat for tastes all around.

The little girls were in hunter-gatherer heaven, picking up bucketfuls of little crabs and shell bits while the boys were happy jumping the waves. I wished they would have found Gabe’s prescription sunglasses washed ashore, but no such luck. We had walked pretty far up the beach, way past the crowded areas to a spot where we were mostly on our own. To our astonishment, friends from home who live only 4 miles from us came walking along in the sand looking for a spot of their own. 🙂 Small world.

The ponies are smart and elusive, staying out in the marshes, far away from the roads. Just before we left for home I convinced Gabe that it is some sort of crime to leave without at least going to look at the rescued ponies in a paddock where they are quite tame from being fed handfuls of corn from a vending machine. It was a bit of a let down, but the children thought it was neat.

I gathered the troops for a group photo on the morning we started home. I thought it would be such a happy feeling, you know, all lovey and “we had such a good time”. Snicker. Here is what we came away with. In their defense, the sun was a little bright and they hadn’t had much breakfast and it was time to go home and wash the sand out of all the crevices.

I will treasure these pictures always.

Wildflower Bouquets and Mint Tea

I don’t seem to post very much these days because I haven’t written anything other than grocery lists and the odd quick bits on Facebook. Some of this is due to the fact that we have bitten off an enormous project on our property, fencing a plot and preparing it for productivity. This included hosting a work night with a bunch of ambitious young friends who persevered with setting posts and stretching wire in drenching rain. It also entailed hauling a dump truck load of compost from the barnyard of our friend, the horse farmer, and spreading it all by hand. Gabriel has started four rows, each 25 feet long, of raspberries and blackberries. Next was a large plot of asparagus, which you may know, is quite a production. Asparagus has to be planted in rich soil, 18 inches deep, so we dug these massive trenches and made the rootlets comfy. They are coming up thin little pencils, very happy with their bed. Just last week we managed to get the rest of the garden planted, corn and squash and melons. It is nice to have all the space to plant stuff that we never had room for in my kitchen garden which is close to the house.

In this process, I hauled straw for mulching and a load of 5 scoops of mushroom mulch, which I personally unloaded by scoop shovel, thank-you-very-much. Since we replaced our mini van and our truck with the Suburban and a trailer, there was nothing for it but to learn to back a trailer if I don’t want to wait helplessly until Gabe has a day off work to do all the hauling that needs to be done. When I went for the straw, I chickened out and let the farm girl back the trailer into the barn. Then I came home and practiced for a while, down around the curves, backing into and out of the fenced garden. I didn’t hit anything, but I am not telling how many times I had to pull forward to straighten out a potential jackknife. Still, I am getting better! It is an empowering feeling, not unlike the time I finally pulled off a perfect parallel park for the first time. 🙂

We took two days to camp at the local State Park. With the weather so perfect, who can resist? I packed up the stuff and the kids while Gabe was at work… bikes and gear on the trailer once more. It was a little like trying to keep a clear head and not forget anything while surrounded by five very excited, very vocal crickets. We decided not to go the tent route this time. The cabin rentals were on a first-come-first-served basis and I was a bit nervous. What would I do with my happy load of people and stuff if we got there and there were no cabins available anymore? We got to the campground at lunchtime, fortunately found a nice secluded area where I had no observers while I backed that trailer into the trees. After I tucked the littlest crickets into bunks for their naps, I sat in a chair by the fire that the boys had built by using an inordinate amount of charcoal starter because we forgot paper. I just sat. And I thought about how last winter we fantasized about all the camping we want to do this summer. I looked up through the lacy caps of the trees and swatted mosquitoes and was happy. Gabe couldn’t get off work until nearly seven that night, but the cabin made it really easy to set up camp.

We had friends from church join us for the second day. Swimming, boating, fishing, biking, just wearing ourselves out in general, doing the cooking the hard way and all that. 🙂 Is it even fun? I ask myself that when I am clearing away the aftermath, washing smoky clothes endlessly, and dealing with all the over-tired grouchiness. All I have to do is ask the children, and yes, it is fun!

There was a 5K on our last day at the park, racing around the lake on the trail. One of Gabe’s friends from work lost a baby to SIDS and the run was to benefit SIDS research. The boys and I registered to walk, although we ran some of the way. Alex came in 2nd of all the walkers. Greg and I dragged along a bit more, coming in 21st and 22nd. There was a lot more competition among the runners. I can’t remember exactly what Gabe’s spot was, but it wasn’t too shabby considering that he hadn’t practiced much and there were a lot of thirty-somethings runners.

The next day was a picnic for the EMS personnel in the area and the day after that was our Rita-girlie’s 5th birthday. It crept up on me when I was otherwise occupied and I had not gotten a present or made the traditional special dress. I knew I would not have time to go shopping after our camping jaunt, but I did take a few hours to walk through a community yard sale. I found a lovely dress and new shoes for her and I prayed for something special yet, not having any idea what I was looking for. I am more prone to shop for birthday gifts on Amazon than at yard sales. Then I saw the vast collection of Boyd’s bears, all new and just the sort of thing that would delight Rita. I got her a lady bear with a velvet dress and a hooded cloak. She has named her Mrs. Teaberry and thanks us repeatedly for her beautiful present. 🙂 She wanted a flower cake and insisted on blue petals with a yellow middle. We didn’t eat it for over a day, so it darkened to a shocking blue and she just giggled with glee. Here she is with her special dress.

This was followed by three days with out-of-state cousins amidst picnics and cookouts and fishing and Old Bedford Village. Gabe had 40 hours of work in those three days… I have been just trying to keep breathing and doing laundry here, but the kids would say we have been really living!

The Goings On

It is a good day to spread joy! The sun has actual heat in its goodnatured rays. There is only a little snow and ice in the backyard, which is easily navigated in puddle boots. This is a good thing, since one of the children lost the felt liner for one of my trusty Sorels. I hung out laundry without snow boots on my feet for the first time in months. We are going to have a picnic at lunchtime, the birds are singing, and we are happy!

Since I packed February so full of activity, I have been doing catch-up in March. I have a teeny weeny little goal of clearing out all closets this month. One is done. About seven to go. I know…It’s probably not going to happen. The problem is an 832 page book that I am hopelessly stuck in as soon as the daily needs are met, and sometimes before. Admittedly, I need help with that.

Last week I got to spend 2 days with my sister in Ohio. I took only the biggest boy along to help with painting her little cubby hole storage closets in their new house. The thing about spending time with your sister is you don’t really have to do anything to have a good time. We did, however, paint the stripes in her crafting room. It took me an hour of figuring with graph paper to mark and mask the first half of the stripes wrong. The problem was a window that broke up the continuity of the wall and complicated the process. In the end, she figured it out with a cell phone calculator and I erased my marks and remasked. All was well, with beautiful fresh stripes of aqua and grey that will inspire creativity for years, I hope.

In the evening we hastily washed off the paint from our arms and left the children with my brother-in-law so that we could attend a Pride and Prejudice play at a nearby high school. It was really well done, and doubly amusing because I kept imagining all the dramas within the drama. I mean, this is a modern group of teenagers with attempted British accents, dressed in Victorian Era costumes. It was rich. The folks sitting directly in front of us seemed to be related to young Mr. Darcy. In the very end, during the quietness of a tender proposal scene, there was a literal snort of hilarity from the gentleman in front of us. I could only imagine how much joshing young Mr.Darcy had to endure later because of his excellent performance.

We lost our painting urge on the second day, and went shopping a bit instead. Of course. I like going to the Amish stores out there with all those rows of solid colored fabrics and practical household items. I like to watch the Amish, too, and eavesdrop on their conversations. I can’t quite fathom how they manage to live so well in such a limited way. It fascinates me, just like a tourist.

My sister took me to a basket shop in a Swartzentruber Amish home. It was scrupulously clean and neat, lighted only by the sunlit windows when she pulled back the navy blue curtains. The lady of the house was frying some lunch on the cookstove in the kitchen, so I frankly stared. This was a flavor of Amish I had never seen. Any surface that required paint was blue, colonial blue. Apparently that is the only color sanctioned by the church for inside use, although their barns are sometimes red. All chairs were wooden, no soft couches, but there was a sort of cot in the living room with a navy blue spread on it. The house had a Shaker feel in its stark simplicity. The only evidence of vanity I could see was a shelf in the kitchen with three colored-glass candy dishes arranged on it.

The baskets they make are Longaberger quality, for about half the price. They are durable and useful, yes, but they are also beautiful, with colorful reeds woven in patterns along with the tans and browns. I wished to visit with this lady, to hear what goes on in her mind, to get to know how she thinks. But I just politely made small talk and paid for my basket.

We had about four hours left in the day before I needed to start home. It was just enough time for me to sew a dress for my sister for her seventh anniversary. I did it in three hours, and it was fun, and the whole trip was fun.

Then I drove home in freezing rain and that was not fun, but it sure was nice to have a place to go and people who were happy to see me again.

I have been writing this post in spurts all day. Now it is nearly bedtime and the children are muddy and exhausted from all the unaccustomed tree climbing and bike riding they did today. Already we found a tick on Olivia, which is disgusting when you consider all the frigidity we have endured this winter. I thought those guys should all be dead.

Anyway, there you have it. It’s what’s been going on, minus a few details. 🙂

On the Mountaintop

Did I need my pep talk? Yes, I did. I had a mountain of laundry to climb today, probably due to having never caught up last week. And I scaled it, all the way to the top. Well, it isn’t folded yet, but that is downhill work. I did get to the summit and planted my victory flag.

When I went downstairs to start the boys on school, I had to fight the impulse to turn tail and run from the chaos in the basement. Their school stations are inside the door where all winter activity comes and goes. Booted, mittened, snow-panted, muffled, coated, hatted activity flows through that area, and they were sure that they put their stuff on the register to dry, but there it was, muddled on the floor in the worst melee ever. There is no way one could do math in that atmosphere, so we spent a good half hour cleaning up and sorting out. I was exasperated, and I didn’t scale that challenge so well.

Then. Time for school. And I find that the boys had done the last DVD lesson that we had. Apparently the company only sends 2/3 of the lessons at the beginning of the school term, then doesn’t send the last 50 lessons until they receive the first 1/3 back. As the teacher, I should have known this, but I completely forgot. So today I taught the lessons, and I remembered how much I really like to teach. I also realized again that it is quite the dance, looking after tots and teaching. And doing laundry.

Gabe was putting in a ski patrol shift and called to say the snow was fine. Patrollers get paid with passes. Did I want to bring the three oldest children and join him? I had known that he might call, so I had lined up a babysitter for the little girls just in case. I made them eat lunch fast, left all the washing and dishes and leftover school lessons, stuffed everybody into extra layers-hats-gloves-pants-coats-mufflers-boots, sent the little girls to the neighbors, and hauled the crew up the mountain.

I really like adventure. Oh, the thrills I experience at a used book sale! I like finding painted turtles on nature walks and I like wading in shallow creeks. An adrenaline junkie I am not. Today I decided that I am still just like the little girl who used to climb up the hay bales in the barn for a long, thrilling swing ride on a rope hung high on the beams of the hayloft. I would stand there, daring myself to let go, then when the other children got too impatient to wait, I would just get off and let them take turns. After a while I couldn’t stand them having so much fun and would fling caution to the wind and after that I wouldn’t give up my place in the line.

I feel that way about skiing. I stand at the top of the slope, mildly terrified. But there is only one way down, and that is to push off and try. The first run is the worst, trying to get the feel of this thing that I only do once a year. There is a great deal more flailing than finesse for a while, but then I start to feel like I can handle these skis and make them go where I want them to go. Slowly, I have very careful fun. I only fell three times on that first run down.

There was hardly anyone on the slopes for the first two hours. Gabe put Olivia on a tether and showed her the moves. She zipped off like nobody’s business, and I was grateful she was tethered! I was always the last in the line. Then the school busses came and emptied their loads of cocky young snowboarders onto the mountain. I know exactly what they think of the cautious lady V plowing down the steep spots as they flash past in a kaleidoscope of colors. Boarders tend to run in herds so that they can show their stuff to everybody on the jumps and more technical places. And they swoosh past with terrible swiftness. All I can think is, “If their mothers would see them! And where are their helmets? And who goes up to the top of a mountain in 20* weather in only a hoodie?” I wonder if they can guess what I think?

That is the slope that I am happy to stay on. I have nothing to prove more than staying upright and having fun. The sun went down and the mountain got blitzing cold. Livvy and I took two runs down the easiest slope without the tether. As we were creaking slowly up on the lift, suspended 40 feet in the air with the mountain chuffing and puffing frigid blasts at us, we decided that we had enough.

We left the guys up there, still going strong, and came home for hot drinks and baths. Apparently the water heater isn’t working. So we are really down in the valley again. But at least there is heat even if the views aren’t so grand.

Knee-Deep

Cheerful Giver

Yesterday Gabe had off work, so we had our Valentine’s date a day early. It was snowing furiously and the roads back into the sticks where my parents live were unplowed when we took the children over after lunch. There were 10 inches of snow, it was hilly and curvy, and I confess that I shut my eyes a few times when I was scared. You know a slide into the ditch isn’t so bad if you don’t see it coming, right? I have to hand it to him, my husband is a very good driver. Also a Suburban is a very good vehicle to be driving in snow like that. No sliding at all.

The city streets were nearly deserted, and we were the only patrons at Lone Star Steakhouse. We aren’t ordinarily steak house people, but we had a gift card so there we were. I am a chicken or seafood fan, but last night I ordered a steak at a restaurant for the first time in my life! It was very good, yes, but I slightly regretted not getting shrimp. 🙂 Now I know. We lingered until more folks started drifting in for supper. The stores were closing early, except of course, Walmart, where the shoppers were ambling through the aisles of teddy bears in heart mugs and chocolates wrapped in tinselly boxes, and people like me were buying flour and croutons and salad dressings. Actually, I have heard urban legends of people who live at Walmart when there is a storm with power outages. Not a bad plan, I suppose, if you fancy sleeping standing up in the bread aisle.

By the time we got back home, there were another 3 inches of snow accumulation, making it a grand total of 13 inches of fresh stuff on top of last week’s frozen pile up. It is settling slightly today with brilliant sunshine and blue skies. This winter, out of necessity, my husband’s work schedule being what it is, I learned to scrape snow with our little loader tractor. It is fun, except I am a bit embarrassed at my lack of skill when I am out by the mailbox where anybody driving past can see that the woman hasn’t done this real often. But I am good at pretending that I know what I am doing. 🙂

Oh, one more thing. Those verses about feelings I was looking for? I thought of one: “God loves a cheerful giver.” And look at the context, please.

2 Corinthians 9:6-7

English Standard Version (ESV)

The Cheerful Giver

⁶The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully^[a] will also reap bountifully. ⁷Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Here is my 10 cents about love today: Loving=giving.

God loves cheerful loving. I mean, giving.

Cheerful loving/giving is not possible without a decision from the heart first.

If you love/give bountifully, you will reap bountifully.

If you feel that you are only reaping sparingly,(everybody hates me, nobody likes me, guess I’ll go eat worms…) maybe you need to check your sowing.

Easy-peasy, right?

About that Oobleck I Mentioned

Here it is, but take it from me and just don’t do it. See, it sounds so deceptively simple. My boys stirred the 1 1/2 cups of water into the 16 oz. of cornstarch and suddenly it all seized up. “Hey, this isn’t working! It said to knead it together with your hands.” Naturally I plunged my hands into the mass to knead it and instantly got a traumatic flashback from years gone by.

Back then I was working part time at a bulk food store and occasionally there was a need to scoop corn starch from a large bag into smaller sized bags for the shelf. The first time I was assigned that job, I scooped right into the powdery stuff. It squeaked and felt silky and hard at the same time and my every hair stood on end in horror. I was too embarrassed to tell my boss that I would rather do anything else, please just let me wash up the floors on my hands and knees. Anything else. That day I got cornstarch overload and I got really good at being busy whenever it needed to be bagged again. Anytime a recipe calls for cornstarch, I am very, very careful with spooning it out. I get a nasty little chill just stirring a few tablespoons into liquid.

But after reading how neat this stuff is, today I dug my fingers into the oobleck, then shuddered and quickly went to the sink to wash the mass off my hands. The children found it terribly fascinating, how it gelled and wept and turned mysteriously solid by turns. I let them make a huge mess all over the kitchen because I knew cornstarch washes up very easily. My oldest son couldn’t believe I tolerated the drippings and spills. He got a spatula and tried valiantly to keep it in one spot on the table, to corral it into a bowl, just anything to contain it. “Mama! They even have it on the wall! Make them stop.” He was nearly frantic so I reassured him and sent him out of the room until the little girls were done having fun. They tiptoed into the bathroom for a full scrub down and then I cleaned the kitchen for the second time today.

This is one “neat” experiment that is definitely not for the faint of heart. I guess next time we probably will just pass on it.

Interrupting Myself

I should be cleaning the cornstarch play goo off the kitchen table and floor, but first I wish to describe to you the meandering journey I sometimes make through the house.

It is 10 A.M.

The scholars are schooling, the littles have a snack to feed their dolls and now I need to Get Something Done, AKA Beat Aside the Chaos.

I start with the bathroom, because for me personally, chaos in the bathroom is terribly disheartening.

One boy already took the dirty laundry downstairs for me, but he dribbled a few socks and missed the towels hanging on the hooks, so I pick them up and take them down to add to the laundry piles.

I notice that one load is finished washing, throw it into the dryer, put in another load.

Oh, I am low on soap, need to write that on the grocery list.

I look over the shoulders of students, correct sloppy handwriting, encourage accuracy in math.

On the way back upstairs, I see that the tot has taken all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books off the shelf again, and I put them back into their spot.

Hey! There is that extra owl button I need to replace the one we lost so I put it in a safe place.

I am walking past the freezers so I think about supper, naturally, and take out a pack of hamburger.

I hear a squabble in the girls’ room, drop the burger into the sink, and go to settle it.

Sit here, little girl, and look at these books. And you, sit over there and look at those books.

Okay. Where was I?

Oh, the bathroom!

Yeah, the toothpaste splatters on the mirrors are really getting to me. I wash them off.

As long as I am cleaning glass surfaces, I might as well go shine the appliances, especially the spot on the dishwasher where gravy dribbled last night at supper.

Speaking of gravy, I should use that leftover gravy with meatballs tonight instead of making a spaghetti sauce.

I check the cupboard for rice. Almost out. Shopping list.

What was that other thing I was going to write down?

I can’t remember for anything! Oh well, it will come to me.

Hey, is that a trail of ants carrying off crumbs?

Get the broom, quickly!

I am gonna have to set outsome traps again.

I open the closet door, nearly get beaned on the head by my box of household tools.

“Boys!” I have a few choice admonitions for them on getting a stool to put the tools properly back on the shelf so that other unsuspecting folks don’t get hammered and wrenched when all they wanted was an ant trap.

I set the trap carefully in a spot only readily accessible by ants.

There is a hair bow under the table. I pick it up and take it to the bathroom.

I am right back where I started.

A half hour has passed and I have been very busy, but it doesn’t look as thought I have accomplished anything, really, except to cause myself to feel a little dizzy.

I don’t think I am ADD. At least I didn’t use to be. I used to pride myself on being so efficient I took my own breath away. 🙂

I think that I get so used to being interrupted that I even do it to myself. This goes way beyond multitasking to plain downright silly. I sort of hope I am not the only one who does this.

I am trying to stop it; I am trying to be more productive. I have to discipline myself to actually, literally stay in a room until I am done with it. I pile all the stuff that doesn’t belong in that room outside the door. Then I pick up one pile and take it to its home and stay there until I have done all that needs to be done there before I go back for another pile. I can’t tell you how hard it is to break the habit of suspending what I am doing to pursue yet another partial trail.

Wait… Am I hearing someone in the candy bowl?

Impressions

I have been thinking that maintaining a blog is a bit like building a snowman. You sort of have to keep the ball rolling so that you know what to build onto next. If you stop for a long time, you find that the energy has melted away and you aren’t sure where to start.

I have periodic freak outs about the lack of anonymity that comes with internet. Like, suppose someone reads that we are in Michigan and decides it would be a good time to clean out our house with a U Haul? So then I should probably not have posted that bit until we are home. And real bloggers have posts done ahead of time, scheduled to publish on set days.

Also, I cannot type on the iPad very well, which was the only piece of technology we hauled along. I have issues with anything but an Apple keyboard, finding myself so distracted with frustration and backspacing that I lose my train of thought.

So… enough with the disclaimers. Here we are, home again. So very much has happened in two weeks, I could bore you to tears. I decided to keep it to a terse list of impressions.

Rest…such a lovely rest in the middle of a National Forest in Michigan.
Enchanting foliage in hardwood forests
The limits of GPS on National Forest trails 🙂
New foods (Pasties, (pass-tees) anyone?) and painted moose
Political blather about the government shutdown on every. single. station.
A missed stop sign, a speeding feed truck, a smashed front bumper… within four miles of my grandparent’s WI home!
Large mercies!
An evening of family camaraderie with the uncles and their families
Half way there, kids!
Hours of mind-numbing corn fields
Welcoming arms of the SD home which was our ultimate destination
Wood stove, tea, comfortable catch-up chats with siblings
Laughter as yet another child, supposed to be abed, needs something
Melding of nine kids in one house, smoother than expected
My sister-in-law’s cappuccino muffins with coffee
Blazing sunsets… so much horizon you would have to believe the earth is round
New appreciation for the blessing, “May the wind be always at your back.”
Sunday lunch with friends, reminiscing over childhood memories
All too soon packing up again… fare-thee-wells
Fifteen minutes into a 20 hour journey Addy’s piping voice: “Are we about there yet?” (No joke.)
Due east into the Minnesota sunrise… and on… and on…
Dairy Queen to cheer the little people
Pit stop in Indiana at a beloved cousin’s house
Child blubbing sadly for an hour when we hit the road again the next morning… she doesn’t know why
Little girl fantasizing about a long bath
Loud, cheerful singing of “We’re home, we’re home, we’re home…” in the last three miles

There is also a list of numbers in my head.

Six audiobooks: Exodus, Number the Stars, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Amos Fortune, Calico Captive, The Man Who Was Thursday, and Dave Ramsey something or other
One hundred and seven (give or take a few tens) water towers
Hundreds and thousands of windmills, spinning their futuristic way to power
Zero. The number of times my two year old had a potty accident.
Two and a half books, read during stretches of mind-numbing corn fields and political blather
About two thousand, nine hundred and sixty-seven semi trucks between IN and PA, according to Greg
Three thousand, two hundred and forty miles

So here we are, home again. Grateful.

Are We There Yet?

The paved roads only brought us close, but the last 8 miles were graded tan Michigan dirt under a tunnel of golden yellow trees. It is off-peak season in the Upper Peninsula, mostly deserted and calm around the lakes and waterways. We have been blessed with weather 20 degrees warmer than is typical for October. It feels like Utopia… With wifi. 🙂 Our cabin is 110 years old, furnished with a charming disregard to modern ways, lights all operated with pulls and strings tied to various parts of the walls. There is an indoor toilet and a tiny mention of a shower.

Currently the boys are out in a rowboat on the lake, fishing and mostly rowing around. The little girls cheered when they heard that they can wash the supper soup mugs in the teeny sink. So here I sit, soaking in the ambiance of a perfect autumn evening. There are trails, there are meandering mazes of roads through the state forest land, and there are no. other. people. I brought four books to read, and a duffel bag with children’s books, toys, and games, in the event that we should hit a rainy day. Three days of blissful quiet before we resume the journey to South Dakota.

We decided to split up the travel time a bit, seeing we haven’t road tripped any further than 4 hours in the last 3 years. Even so, we were hardly driving for an hour before Rita said, “I think I just wanna stay home. I didn’t know it was going to take so long.”