It rained yesterday. Beautiful, down-pouring awesomeness like I used to crave in Utah. Growing up in a desert has made the sound of the storm magical.
Apparently I am not the only one in my family who finds it so. We had just finished up a grueling five and a half hours of choir and acting rehearsal and I had called it good for the evening. We did a quick straighten up while I put the finishing touches on dinner, we ate and then I declared the evening free.
"Maybe we could watch a movie or something," I mentioned casually, to the delight of the kids.
During dinner, the rain started coming down even harder, beckoning. The older kids asked if the little ones needed a bath tonight.
"If so, can we do it outside in the rain? You know, just leave their clothes on but let the rain clean them off?" they queried.
Brilliant.
So that is what we did on our evening off...let the rain pour down.
Piper and Lily both commented yesterday about how it is like everything all of a sudden turned green. The birds are out in choruses and everything feels alive. The sound of the distant freeway have receded even further, masked by the unfurling of all the leaves in our little woods.
I love to listen to the birds outside my window, particularly this morning when I lay there snuggling with my baby, trying to get her back to sleep in my favorite way possible...nestled up against my body. There is something equally magical about snuggling a sleeping baby so the combination of bird song, rain and sleeping baby has really set a wonderful tone for my day :D.
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Lily has started a new tradition of reading off all the holidays for the day. This week we have celebrated:
-"Minimize Food Waste Day"--leftovers for dinner!
-"Blueberry Pie Day"--particularly delicious.
-"National Kids and Pets Day"--every day, right??
-"National Pretzel Day"--another yummy one with homemade pretzels
-"National Tell a Story Day"
-"National Prime Rib Day"--sadly, missed celebrating this one
-"National Devil Dog Day"--won't mention how applicable this one was
-"National Great Poetry Reading Day"--every day!
-"National Zipper Day"--or as Liesl puts it, "beezer" ("Mommy, will you do my beezer?"
It's been a riot! Maia was sad that we didn't celebrate "National Hug a Plumber Day" last Sunday until she realized that Quinn had done a lot of plumbing work, so we felt that qualified him. Oh, and we forgot to get out the shrimp last night for "National Shrimp Scampi" day because we got so caught up in the rain and beauty of the evening. I am great celebrating that one a day late ;).
I love it when my family members remember things from those around us and share it. Here are a few gems--
From
Piper:
Every
so often, one of the little kids come upstairs to join me for online
seminary (it starts at 6:30 am). Well,
this morning it was Xai. He snuggled up by me and made a lot of
suggestions like: "You should turn off your camera," or
"You should rename yourself 'I am your best friend!'" Then
I had to ask him to be a little quieter because I was turning on my
mic and he conceded and scooted closer to me. After I finished and
turned off my mic, he bellowed out "I WOULD LIKE TO BEAR MY
TESTIMONY..." Such a cute guy:D
From
Quinn: On Saturday I was working outside and Liesl came up to me to
tell me she found a dead spider. She wanted me to go look at it and I
told her in a fearful voice that the wind would blow the spider on
me. To which she said without hesitation in her little Liesl voice,
"The wind will blow it up and up and God will SMASH it with a
hammer."
I love the way my husband interacts with my darlings...
Maia and I captured a fun moment together....
Liesl insists on snuggling or "touching" Penelope as much as she can. This night was particularly sweet because not only did they match, but Liesl fell asleep snuggling with her baby sister.
Liesl
was helping me shovel manure in the barn the other day. She was
super excited to tell me the different kind of animals that had
pooped there: mommy horses, baby horses, etc. At one point, she held
her mini-shovel over her head and declared, “I have strong
armpits!” Yep.
Penelope
has loves her bouncer. The other day, I was working in
the kitchen later at night and she must have bounced next to me for
over an hour, keeping me company and smiling up at me periodically.
Her sweet and sunny disposition truly helps to compensate for the
fact that she regularly wakes up almost hourly at night. (She is
really great at sleeping between 4:30 am and 9:30 am.) She also has
vamped up her rolling capacity to take in the entire floor. She will
scoot and turn and roll to get almost anywhere in the room. She
loves it!
We recently started her on solids. I made the mistake of mixing some applesauce with yogurt and she was instantly hooked to the creamy sweetness. Now she will tightly press her lips together and refuse most anything unless there is a little yogurt included. Oops. I should know better after all my years of researching the best way to introduce foods...no sweet stuff at first! Of course, this is one of the less sweet yogurts, but apparently, the combination of that with fruit got my little sweetie hooked onto sweets already. She does like guacamole (a very tame variety from the store we always get) as well as the mashed up liquified potatoes from a soup I prepared last week, so her diet isn't exclusively high in sugars. Cute girl. Still not sleeping very well--I guess that just having 13 children in a family doesn't make you a sleep expert. I've tried everything I've heard of or experimented with myself and the more I try, the more often she wakes up. I think I am just resigned to it now.
OUTDOOR WORK
We planted the last of our eight ordered fruit trees yesterday in the middle of a rainstorm: cherry, pear, two kinds of apple, apricot and three peach trees. Can't have too many peaches...ever. We also picked up a whole bunch of inexpensive bushes along with 5 rose bushes for a border along the front of our driveway...I love Aldi! (They have the most amazing random deals.) Anyway, it was a busy day for planting.
Here's a look at my delightfully silly posers after our muddy planting session. The ground has a lot of clay so we had to dig out a bit and fill in the ground with some good soil to offset the clay and give our plants a good head start. Needless to say, it took a lot of digging :D. And a lot of mud.
We also picked up all the supplies we need for the bottom of our chicken coop that will probably outlast any major catastrophe, lol. It will be tough. And large. I have 39 happy chicks in my basement right now in their expanded area that will be excited to get outside and start making a difference on our tic population.
For lunch we enjoyed some Hungarian sandwiches. They were so big, Quinn called his a "Texas Hungarian sandwich":
We love these! This was the first meal Quinn had prepared for us when the entire family joined him almost nine years ago that late dark night in Hungary in our small one bedroom apartment. Ahhh...memories.
ELI
Yesterday morning I was singing "Saturday is a special day" to help remind one of my kids why we work on Saturday. I also started singing other religious songs (it helps keep my spirit right). As I prepared breakfast, Eli came over and stood next to me, fully dressed in his Sunday clothes. I smiled and praised him for getting dressed up so well (he doesn't usually) and then gently said, "That's so awesome buddy, but you don't have to get dressed up today...it's Saturday, buddy." He protested, "But you were singing music about God!"
I assured him it was in fact Saturday and he left with surprisingly little distress.
Later I found out there was another conversation that happened in the other room:
Eli: "It's Sunday, Lily!
Lily: "Uh, I'm pretty sure it's Saturday."
Eli: "No. Mom was singing Sunday music." He started to get dressed into his Sunday clothes.
Lily: "Okay, buddy." (I love that about her! She doesn't push it.)
Fast forward to after he came out and talked to me...
Eli: "Guess what, Lily! It's Saturday." Smiles slyly and chuckles. "I tricked you!"
ADVENTURES
We discovered that our library checks out bikes. And not just any bike...a whole assortment of bikes! You just show up, give them your card and the bike is yours for three hours.
The library is located just off of a relatively flat bike path that we enjoyed for quite a stretch. We stopped off at a place that ended up being right where a helicopter landed at a hospital...the kids thought it was pretty cool. Well, most of them. Eli yelled, "Ha, ha! The police got you and now you're going to jail!" Fortunately, there were no patients getting on or off the helicopter but wow! Eli even waited until the crazy whirring and noise of the helicopter stopped before he shouted. Just today in church, Quinn told Eli, "Shhhh, we're praying" to which Eli replied, "Shhh!! We're praying, Dad!"
Crazy kid. :D
He also had his hair buzzed to almost bald (as close as I would go) when I gave haircuts this week.
Six is sure a feisty age!
Back to the adventures, the kids also went to a skate park while I went grocery shopping and Maia discovered some new heights:
Quinn wouldn't let her climb higher. :P
I love seeing this girl do her thing!
XAI
I love to snuggle with this kid. He's super fun. He really enjoyed our "Princess Bride" night last night, when we all dressed up as different characters from the movie, ate a feast that could be something they ate, acted out a few things (sword fight, feats of strength, genius contest) and watched the movie using a projector that the amazingly technologically talented Hyrum set up. Xai was Wesley. Eli was Vinzini (he had to get used to the idea that his character died). It was a lot of fun.
Xai enjoyed our bike ride along the Ohio river and sometimes got tired. (We hadn't been biking like that for a while.) He is also enjoying our two dogs and two cats. Technically we feed three cats, but one hasn't appeared for a while since our dogs started chasing them. We just purchased some shock collars to help teach the dogs not to chase down the cats.
And then there's Drew...a picture is worth a thousand words.
My Piper shared this email with me that she had written to herself. I thought it was precious.
Your brother is a great guy. As a girl, I hear a lot of mean talk
about boys, mainly, brothers. I used to agree, or at least pretend to, but my brother has shown otherwise. Among many things, brothers can help with self-confidence, having fun, and learning how to disagree respectively. Brothers, blood or otherwise, are essential.
One, self-confidence. My family likes to invite missionaries to dinner, and I have noticed that the boys are much more fun than the girls. Why? Because the girls were almost always acting self-conscience. I have noticed that it tends to be the same with other girls and boys. My brother has helped me deal with this by talking to me about why he doesn't care and showing me confidence. That way I can have more fun.
Two, having fun. Our house is really noisy because everyone is always laughing and yelling, because of my brother. He chases us around and eases tension with jokes. Boys can be kind of rowdy sometimes, and that is good. He shows me when it is appropriate to be calm and when it is time to be crazy. Though sometimes I disagree.
Three, disagreeing respectfully. My brother often tells me when I am doing something wrong in his opinion, but he leaves it at that. Brothers almost always have different opinions, but, maybe because they know they can tackle you, they can be very respectful about it. And respect is one of the essential things in life.
Boys, brothers in particular, are important when it comes to living life; they can teach you how to be confident, have fun, and be respectful. Unfortunately, many girls don't have brothers or treat their brothers like trash. You need to love and show your love to your brother if you want all this from him. He can't talk through a shield. Treat your brother like the man he is.
