A Season of Wonder

December first, we opened the advent calendar I made (only to discover my lack of primer made the lovely gold paint stick more to itself than the boxes - live and learn).  We enjoyed small pieces of fair-trade chocolate from Trader Joes ($2 a bar).  Our note in the box told us that we were to go make advent candle wreaths at our church and then head downtown for Redmond Lights.

Our Advent season was kicked off with all the Christmas magic I could muster.  After arriving home and getting the kids ready for bed, we heard a knock at the door.  Curious as to who would knock at bedtime, we opened the door to find a mysterious package.  The poem on the front referenced the 12 days of Christmas and inside we found two cans of pears.  Such fun.  Each night we found more bags on the porch, mostly containing food, but we also received a Christmas candle, a new Christmas children's book, and a jar full of coins and a gift card.  Each night we were astonished at the thought, time, and generosity being poured out on us.  Everything was completely anonymous, and though we had guesses along the way, we really do not know who did this for us.  Now I am reading the book, Christmas Jars, which I think will explain the idea for this random act of kindness, and I am sure will further inspire us to pass on this activity next year.

We already felt like our twelve days of Christmas was generous.  The coins and gift certificate took it over the top.  The Christmas Jars book talks about a tradition beginning where neighbors pay attention to those in need and find a way to give a special gift at Christmas time.  There is a website where people can write in their stories of how they received their jars.  Reading other people's stories makes us feel even more honored that someone wanted to bless us so much this year.  I love not having to wonder how I will stuff stockings this year.

The daily surprises were a true blessing.  I had a few rough days where the thought that a mystery gift was going to be on our porch that night was actually a huge pick-me-up to endure the witching hours and each day the kids were excited to try new foods that we don't usually stock.  I shared the adventure on Instagram each night and several of our friends have asked for the details and poems that accompanied our gifts so that they could do something similar next year.  How lovely to think of how this simple gift could multiply next year.  My understanding is that Christmas Jars are one thing, and a series of 12-days-of-Christmas are another.  Our secret friends combined both.  You can research 12-day gift ideas for friends with accompanying poems (that would include a twelfth day that was not a Christmas Jar), but I thought I would record ours here in case you'd like to use it.

Pears   "On the first day of Christmas your special friends give to you...a partridge in a pear tree.  Sorry but we can't find the partridge, so we are giving you some pears from the tree, because the partridge flew away."

Turtle caramels "On the second day of Christmas, instead of a turtledove, we are bringing you a box of turtle caramels brought to you with lots of love" They were delicious!

Chicken Soup "On the third day of Christmas, your true love gave to you Three French Hens.  Well, we don't have any french hens, so we're giving you some Chicken Noodle Soup, complements of the three French Hens."

Candle "On the forth day of Christmas, your special friends bring tonight Christmas candles to bring you Yule time light."

Pineapple rings "On the fifth day of Christmas we bring you five gold rings.  We hope you enjoy them as they are fit for a king."

Dozen eggs "On the sixth day of Christmas six geese were a-laying, so we bring you some eggs that they did not mind us taking."

Dove chocolates "On the seventh day of Christmas seven swans were hard to find, so we brought you a dove. Hope you do not mind."

Eggnog "On the eighth day of Christmas, eight cows would not fit in the car, so we bring you some eggnog from the farm afar."

Candy canes "On the ninth day of Christmas some ladies danced and danced some more, some (candy) canes were needed for their feet were rather sore."

Fudge "On the tenth day of Christmas ten lords leapt to your door to bring you this fudge and good wishes galore."  It was yummy.  Penny had some and asked "Mmm, what is this called?!" It was adorable.

Oranges and Christmas book "On the eleventh day of Christmas, eleven pipers laid down their pipes and read a Christmas story while munching on an orange ripe."  With this gift, Soren remarked, "Not only are we getting so many gifts, but we are getting a lot of really nice bags!" (he knows how I like to save and reuse pretty gift bags)

Jar of coins, gift card, and Christmas Jars book "On the twelfth day of Christmas your special friends bring to you a Christmas Jar full of cheer and a wish for a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, too!!!"

Porch Surprise

We found a surprise on our front walk the other morning.  It reminded me of the dead bird we discovered years ago and the poem I wrote in its honor.  Søren jumped at the chance to do some nature sketching (his idea, in case you think me morbid).  I enjoyed his attention to detail as well as the way he included the background in the picture (see the full picture below which includes me looking on from the front door in the background).  I also resisted the urge to save the bird for some future science project (only because I did this with another small bird years ago and I never got around to figuring something out so I just had a dead bird in my freezer for a year).

Have you found dead birds in your yard?  Did it inspire any art for you?

Penny's Private Pink Picnic Party

The Particulars

The Penny

The People

I am so spoiled to have a sister who is a photographer.  She has captured so many amazing pictures of my kiddos.  I know that when we are old and the kids are grown I will be able to look back on pictures like these and want to sit my 65-year-old bottom right down and re-write thank you notes to her for taking the time and sharing her talent.  

(photo by me)

My dearest Penelope Grace Alene is three years old today.  It hardly seems fair how grueling early motherhood is such that the years slip right through your fingers while you're just trying to get through each day.  However, each of my babies is helping me to slow down and savor a bit more.  I know that these are the golden years.  We have healthy kids who love us and love life.  I am the most blessed woman.

But because I will forget the particulars.  I thought I would capture a few things here.  

Penny loves pink.  She loves dancing with her sister and brothers, loves making up songs.  She always asks Daddy for dates at Starbucks.  She loves food.  She wants to look like Judy Garland from "Meet Me In St. Louise" when she grows up.  She'd like to start school.  Her head has dropped down to the 97 percentile while her height is now in the 8th.  She has so much love to give but she's also a scrapper.  She is fearless, other than at night when she is afraid dinosaurs, owls, or "the red dog" are going to sneak in and eat her fingers.  She makes me so happy to have a daughter.

Happy birthday Penny!  We love you so much.

Forever-lasting Playdough Recipe

(store in an airtight location)

 

~Tips~ 

Use the same number of drops of each primary color in each batch so that you have the same density.
The batches pictured have 17 drops.

Cut rolls into quarters, mix two quarters of each color per combination.  

Then you will have 2 "quarters" worth of each color 

(Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet).

(note: I did not do this for the top picture - I had a few too many helpers)

 Let the kids do the mixing.  

This should help get out their curiosity about combining colors.

Playdough keeps my kids happily occupied for hours.

Tea Time

As the summer heat finally arrives, tea time has moved to breakfast.  

It's a great way to start the day.

In Which I Ramble About Dating, Courtship, Love, and Marriage

I've recently read a few posts on the damage of courtship.  Yep, you read "courtship" not "dating."  I am glad to be reading these posts as I am just getting started on the homeschooling adventure, because it seems like a tendency in the homeschooling world to think that we can shelter and protect our children in a way that will guarantee a successful/pain-free/godly/pure life.  I don't homeschool with the hope of sheltering, or with the hope of any guarantees, but since I did not grow up with hyper-sensitive, Christian parents, I might be less aware of what damage different ideas carry.

I never really "dated" in the sense of going places with lots of different boys.  I had several "boyfriends" and we were "going out," which my mother always thought funny because until I was actually allowed to date (age 16) it's not like we actually went anywhere.  I think it meant something like "we hold hands and kiss when teachers aren't looking exclusively with each other, and we talk on the phone until we fall asleep every night."

I loved - painfully loved - two people prior to my husband.  Both break-ups were devastating for me even though, to a large extent, they were initiated by me.  In college, I heard someone speak about emotional fornication (download talk here) and how it causes emotional divorce, and man, I lived that.  Emotional divorce sucks, and it DID take me a good year into my actual marriage to truly recover from the emotional divorce of my prior relationship.  That person and I did cross a line emotionally.  I stayed in a bad relationship with him for too long because I felt like we were committed.  It was a wake up call to realize I had not married him, he did not love me the way that marriage would require, and I could, in fact, leave him without guilt.  Just leaving him took a good year of my life, not to mention the years of emotional recovery.

Andrew started pursuing me after I had been single for one month.  I told him to check back in five months (in fact, there was another very sweet man I was supposed to get back to once I was truly over the ex-boyfriend, and I figured that by then, I would be able to tell Andrew - who was then only a newly met acquaintance and customer at the coffee shop at which I had just begun working - that I was actually seeing someone).  Of course, about five days later he asked me if it had been five months.  Considering we were engaged six weeks later, his charm obviously won me over.

However, it was not just his charm that was responsible for our rather quick decision to marry.  Instead it was the lessons I had learned about guarding my heart.  Pain is always the most efficient teacher.  Two men had promised they would marry me.  With those empty - however-well-meant - promises, I gave my heart fully and I gave my imaginations and hopes and dreams along with it.  Thus my heart broke when I realized those promises were broken.  I had to rebuild my imaginations, hopes, and dreams.  With Andrew, I was rather up-front.  I told him I wasn't interested in dating.  I told him I was willing to get to know him as a person.  I was willing to let him get to know me.  I wasn't willing to tell him what I was looking for in a guy (so he wouldn't be tempted to act the part and woo me) and I wasn't interested in hearing what he was looking for in a girl (so that I wouldn't be tempted to act the part).  Instead, I trusted that if we could spend some time being ourselves, we could figure out it we were a match.

When the time came, six whole weeks later, when Andrew had so decided that he did want to spend the rest of his life with me, he wanted to talk about it.  He said, "I gotta talk time frame.  Is it okay if we talk time frame?"  I had to guard myself again.  Two other boyfriends had told me, "I really want to marry you someday" and ultimately not meant it.  My heart had broken twice.  I told Andrew I was unwilling to talk about marriage until he was serious.  This was not some coy, playing-hard-to-get trick; this was the truth.  I could not go there again without a real commitment.  Not just "I really want to marry you someday" but "will you marry me, and tomorrow's fine."  So, he said, "Okay, will you marry me?" and I answered, "sure."  (I know, such a romantic reply!)  Then we talked time frame and planned a wedding.

What worked about this was not necessarily that we were "courting" and not even that I had "guarded my heart," though, indeed, I did guard my heart and my decision to marry him had less to do with feeling "in love" especially as, frankly, I was also still in love with my ex-boyfriend.  Part of why this worked so well for us was that we had both had our hearts broken.  We had both been in several other significant relationships, several other bad and unhealthy relationships.  When we began to get to know each other, we both realized rather quickly that this would be easy (and by easy, I mean, much easier than anything we had known before, marriage is not easy), that this would be someone whose issues (which were obvious since we purposefully dropped pretenses) were things that we were willing to put up with, deal with, etc. for the rest of our lives (by the grace of God).

I used to feel like Andrew and I finally did dating/courtship right, and that is why we were rewarded with a good marriage.  I used to think it was wrong of me to have ever had true feelings for another person aside from my spouse.  Friends that I knew had married their first and only love, I envied.  However, while I can feel badly about some of the poor decisions I made based on feeling "in love," I certainly cannot feel badly about loving nor about getting to know people with the intention of figuring out if we could do one life together.

If I had never dated, getting to know a guy 12 years older than me, who clearly liked me, would have been terrifying.  Further, I needed the years of "bad" to recognize "good" when it was in front of me.  Maybe if Andrew and I didn't both come from homes with divorce that wouldn't have been the case.  But it seems few people live in that perfect world where their parents stay happily and healthily married and train their children how to do the same.  I have friends whose parents stayed married, but did so with weird marriages, making my own "dysfunctional" family history the healthier one now.

Life is so complicated, but this I know: it's worth taking the time and risk to love people.  I have admitted to loving men other than my husband.  The truth is, I love them still.  That's okay.  I think of them from time to time, and I hope they are well.  I pray for them.  I hope they are growing and maturing and thriving and living.  I hope they are happy.  I do not wish that they were a current part of my life, and I do not think of them romantically, and I never think of them for long.  (I have four kids.  I never think of anything for long!)  Occasionally, certain memories come back and I revisit remorse, but I never regret loving them.  I do not regret the things I learned about myself and about being human from loving them.   Some people might be doomed to keep falling in love with the wrong people instead of learning from their mistakes, and thus dating is a disaster for them.  Keeping the idea of life-long marriage involved in your dating life helps with this, but I also think having community, family, and friends that really do love you help you to sort out what love really looks like.  I was fortunate not to have any history of abuse or neglect to stunt my learning ability.

Love is an amazing thing.  Having children has taught me this more profoundly than any other relationship has.  You can love many things and your capacity to love gets bigger, not smaller.  It turns out I am totally, hopelessly in love with my spouse and each of my four children.  I love them each with my full heart.  (They each also drive me crazy, in turn, don't get me wrong).  I love my friends.  I love my extended family.  I love several church communities.  Loving one thing should not negate loving other things.

I have found that love is always worth it.  I have loved neighbors, classmates, friends, children, strangers.  I make many friends for a day, for an hour, for a year.  We are all just passing through.  I am better for having loved, for having risked, for having been vulnerable, and I hope those I have met are better for having done those same things, too.

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What about you?  Did you date? Court? Arranged marriage? Are you better or worse for the experience?

Beating The Heat: Momsicles

Beating The Heat: Grandma's Pool

This afternoon I took the kiddos over to my mom's pool.  It is becoming a regular activity and makes living 10 minutes away so nice.  It was the first time I've really managed all four of them at the pool without anyone else.  My mom was working inside, and my sister did pop by and say hello (and snap this picture, and let my nephew Jack do some serious naked bicycle kicks on the pool steps).  Being in the pool with all four of them made me laugh at my early motherhood when I didn't like to have two by myself in the pool.  Of course, they were two boys, and now those boys are pretty self sufficient with their water wings.  Still, it is funny what we get used to.  I often tell other moms that one's ability grows with each child.

Beating the Heat: Outdoor Shower

There are lots of variations of this floating around pinterest, but the over-a-tree-branch won me over.  The kids thought I was awesome.  

Close up of the "shower" 

Like all outdoor water with my kids, it turned into mud-pie-making

Instructions:
Poke holes in an empty 2-liter, attach to hose, throw over a branch, play.

Tips:
If you don't have one of the proper adapters to make the threading correct for the bottle, painters tape (horizontally and vertically) works fine for a good long while. I imagine masking tape would too.
I made the holes with a corkscrew, which also worked well for pulling any dents in the plastic out.
Fiddle with the water flow to keep the water level even.  This step is important if you are holding it together with tape.  You don't want it to be too heavy.

Belated 6 Month Update