The Princess and the Insect

Not unlike Last year, Amelia was Snow White and Evelyn was a ladybug. Again.

Earlier this week at AWANA's costume night, Evelyn wore her hoop dress and Amelia was a bumblebee. I was surprised Evelyn didn't wear the hoop dress tonight. I guess when the inspiration hits to be a bug, you fly with it.

As much as we love gatherings, it had been really busy lately & we decided to just trick-or-treat the 'hood (not unlike 2008.) Shelley came and we strolled leisurely along the rather quiet streets.

I must say, this was another check-plus in my "Lovin' the 'hood" series. You would not believe how much CHOCOLATE we scored. Regular sized bags of M&Ms, whole Snicker's Bars, and a myriad of the mini stuff. Alan and I will need a personal trainer for Christmas.

Amelia had wanted to bring an apple as a prop, but at the 4th house I suddenly gasped, "Oh, Amelia, we forgot your apple!" The woman of the house immediately went inside and produced the healthiest "treat" of the evening. Amelia took one bite and feigned "death" on the porch furniture, requiring Evelyn to kiss her awake. She repeated the performance at the next 10 houses, until she'd eaten most of the apple. Half the time she received applause, but at the house where the door was opened by a couple of 5-year-old-ish boys, Evelyn refused to give Amelia the kiss of love to awaken her ("I'm not going to do THAT in front of BOYS!") and I had to step in. And I must say, it was sweeter than chocolate to spend Halloween awakening Snow White with a kiss of true love.

It's a Hard Knock Life

If this is what happens every time Amelia watches "Annie," we're going to make it a regular feature. (How 'bout the state of the water in that bucket? That's the nice thing about letting a floor get so dirty: even a four-year-old can make a big dent.)

Lovin' the 'hood: Part 2

What else do I love about where we live? The things I've ever seen anywhere else. Sure, we've got gas stations, Jiffy Lubes, pizza joints, banks, 7-11, dry cleaners, Family Dollar.

But really--have you ever seen a sign like this before? It's in the window of the pawn shop we walk past going to the grocery store.

You gotta love Hamilton.

Lovin' the 'hood: Part 1

I've been wanting to do this forever but kept forgetting to take the camera on our walks. I love where we live. This is the first installment of why.

On Mondays, June-November, we walk to Church of the Messiah to pick up our CSA vegetables.

I love this place. It's a beautiful building with a cloister and a real bell tower. (Ran the video while it was ringing--LOVE this!) The swings in the big tree are a bonus.

And the pickup? Nice math practice (not to mention vegetable identification. I'd never seen white radishes before.)

Even the walk is fun. Like this week, when the girls brought their dolls in a stroller and a plastic sled.

Thus begins a sharing of the reasons we love Hamilton.

25 Years of Deep Creek!

When you have the same family going to the same place year after year, you've got to delineate one year from another, or else that quarter of a century is just one big, happy blob of fishing, eating, and laughing.

There was the year Grandma fell into the sunken living room searching for the bathroom in the middle of the night. (We've since upped the beds-with-baths in the rental homes, especially for the septuagenarians.)

Or the year the kitchen sink got clogged while the traditionally enormous Saturday night fish fry was being prepared. As the rental house had no dishwasher, all the dishes were washed in the bathtub. That house also had like a hundred steps down to the lake. We did not let Grandma attempt those in the middle of the night.

We've had about three years where it snowed. In October.

The year Mom started chemo for breast cancer, she, Aunt Joan and I took a two hour hike, stopping at an overlook to lay hands on Mom and pray for her. (That is one of my personally sweetest memories.)

There were the years we rented the house with the ping pong table in the loft (same house that had the hazardous sunken living room), and there was a continual loss of the ball over the railings. "But," Josh reminded me, "there was a ping pong table." Yeah...

There was the year Mom forgot to defrost the lasagna. We had a very European dinner around 10 p.m.

One year a bunch of family was visiting from Africa, which was the first time we had to rent two houses. (We're now several years into renting two houses to accommodate everyone. That's a nice feeling.) That was the same year we all dressed in costume and played a game where you had to transfer peanuts from a pile into a cup by inhaling them to the end of a straw.

So what did we do to delineate THIS year, Deep Creek's Silver Anniversary? We decided to etch it in blood by making sure every child in attendance incurred some sort of injury.

So, on the traditional hike to Swallow Falls, we arranged for Anna to slip on some rocks and fall into the water. She was wet to her waist plus one arm. Grandma & Opah graciously took her immediately back to dry off and recover. Evelyn accompanied her for moral support.

Then when Jon, Courtney, Aidan, Amelia and I finished the hike, we allowed Amelia to get her finger slammed in the car door. We had, after all, started out with a kid falling into freezing water--we had a momentum to keep up.

Later that night, we let the four kids shut themselves in Grandma and Opah's bedroom to play rough-and-tumble games (we pride ourselves on being laid-back.) This enabled Aidan to crack his head on the door. (Prior to this, he'd had a bleeding hangnail. To him, this was very serious, but we knew we needed to take it up a notch if these injuries were going to make THIS Deep Creek stand out.)

That same night, all 18 of us turned a blind eye as barely-six-year-old Evelyn was carrying 15-month old Eva. Evelyn tripped and fell ON TOP of Eva...who was face down. Even before the copious amount of blood that resulted from her lower lip impaling on her top teeth, I knew it would be bad. How? By the horrifically long silence between Eva's first two screams.

And if you're wondering what injury Evelyn incurred, well, beyond the skinning of both her knees riding her scooter, imagine being the kid who falls on top of her adorable, 15-month-old cousin and makes her look like she's gone eight rounds with a prize fighter? Let's just hope that leaves no emotional scar.

So, to keep all the great fishing, hiking, canoeing, moonlight walks, gourmet meals, fish-eating, meaningful conversations and hilarious game playing from running all together, we spiced up our Deep Creek Silver Anniversary by injuring all the children. After all, we want THEM to remember Deep Creek, too.

Pitfalls of a Hoop Skirt

Evelyn LOVES this dress my mom gave her. And she had a really hard time understanding why she couldn't wear it to church. Then she sat down.

These pretty much sum up...

...our day at Six Flags yesterday with Grandma & Grandpa Blackman, Aunt Becky, Uncle Matt, and Casey. (Well, minus a lot of walking and looking around for one another. :)

Thank you for celebrating Evelyn's and Casey's sixth b-days at an amusement park! (I'm pretty sure it was just as much for the grownups, who enjoyed taking turns running off to ride the big-time roller coasters.)

The Home Celebration

On Friday night we met Grandma & Opah, Jon & Courtney, Anna & Aidan, and two of Evelyn's classmates and their moms at a nearby park. The kids rode bikes and scooters, played on the playground, and we all had pizza. Then we headed back to our house for ice cream tigers--a version of the kitty cat ice creams we made for Amelia's b-day in May. And of course, some wildness ensued--check out Evelyn, wearing her new princess hoop dress, wrangling her friend, Trevor, into being her prince. :)

Thanks for the birthday fun, everyone!!

The Kindgergarten B-day

Here's Evelyn w/her class's "guest reader" this week. (I'm sure the kids appreciated that I honed my Julia Childs accent watching YouTube for cook's voice in "Plum Pudding for Christmas.") She'd dipped pretzels in chocolate (with help from Grandma and Amelia) for her classmates as a birthday treat.

Evelyn was so cute introducing each of her classmates to me (their hands are on the book), and it was great to put faces with the names we hear about so often. We've been impressed with her young teacher and with the Tunbridge School in general, which is good, because we trust them with a very special six year old five days a week. :)

Six years ago today...

...we became parents of Evelyn Grace. I'll post pictures soon of the visit to her classroom this week, her little party in the park yesterday and our day at Six Flags today. But for now, I'll simply thank God for her:

- zest for life
- extreme enthusiasm
- readiness to laugh
- insatiable appetite for being chased
- insatiable appetite period
- desire to run on the sidewalk alongside our departing guests' cars as they drive away down the street
- love of stories, books, and movies
- way of, as my brother Jon put it, "Giving you what you need."

Thank you, Evelyn, for giving us yourself so unabashedly, enthusiastically, and so early every morning. :) I am reminded here that when we called Aunt Barbara and Uncle Diego to announce her birth, Uncle Diego (for whom the name "Evelyn" was unfamiliar) was heard in the background saying, "They named her WHAT?!? 'Avalanche?!?'"

We've been sliding adventurously down the slopes of parenthood ever since.

Feeling bloated?

Evelyn, Amelia, Anna, and Aidan about made me pee myself filling their clothes with corn kernels at Maizefest on Saturday. I thought we'd jiggled all the corn out before heading home, but a few stuck with us all the way to the bathtub that night.

If you're local, go to Maizefest. It's every weekend in October and beautiful and fun. www.rivervalleyranch.com. And they need volunteers, too--free entrance for you and your family if you do!

(To be honest, I feel about like that picture right now. I've got to lay off the ice cream.)

I Can Hardly Stand It!

This is about my favorite picture of the girls EVER. Alan took it on his phone one day when they were at the zoo. It makes me clench my teeth and groan with joy every time I see it!! (Do other people clench their teeth and groan with joy? I hope so.)

There they are. Sisters. Hugging each other. Smiling. Outside. On a rock. I can hardly stand it!!

UURRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH! (That is a clenched-teeth groan of joy, FYI.)

"Baby Brain" II

(To read the original "Baby Brain" example, click here.) Alan poured his morning coffee. He poured the sugar into it from the dispenser. He stirred. He tasted. Yuck! Not enough sugar, by far. He poured more sugar from the dispenser. He stirred. He tasted. Yuck! Still not sweet enough. Hmmmm.

Then he looked at the dispenser. It was empty. It had been empty the whole time.

(In his defense, he was not wearing his glasses.)

Something Out of the Ordinary

(WARNING--don't watch the video w/your kids until you preview it.)

Just in case you think my life consists of taking the girls to school, cooking weird, local vegetables, and desperately seeking a semblance of sanity while working and keeping house, well, you're RIGHT!

So, when my cousin Caleb's wife, Amanda, found out that her favorite group, The Yard Dogs Road Show, was performing here in Charm City, and she opened the invitation for any of us to join them, I said, "Sure!" When do I ever go to a bar??

It is honestly hard to describe the Yard Dogs, but I'll try. They are a band. So there is constant music, most of it original. There are also three dancers (more like actresses, really), one of whom sings. Pretty much everyone in the group sings. It feels like the modern version of a traveling circus, with all these quirky talents displayed creatively over the course of the show. Each performer has this can't-take-your-eyes-of-them quality while on stage, which makes the whole thing pretty riveting. And quirky and wild.

Then, afterward they all hang out and chat--you learn who has kids, what it's like traveling with 15 people and a chicken in a bus, and how the whole thing got started. It's fascinating.

Now here's the video. I still squirm when I watch it. I cannot get over the fact that sword-swallowing is REAL!! This was the THIRD thing this guy swallowed in the course of the evening, and there was still more. I just couldn't (and still can't) believe it. It freaks me out but I keep going back to it like a bad relationship--or like determining to not look at the roadside carnage but finding yourself stealing a glance. (Shudder!)

So here--enjoy a taste (eeeewwwwww!!!!) of the Yard Dogs with me--and Caleb and Amanda, thank you for the SCREAMING great time! (The loudest scream you will hear is hers--I'm convinced she's one of their biggest fans.)

Our Magic Pumpkin Patch

Magic?!? Why yes. We thought we planted zucchini. Then, as the garden grew, we thought, "Look! Our zucchini is watermelon!" Then, magically, they turned into pumpkins!

Actually, it's not really magic, but something a lot less glamorous--compost. We figured that some of last fall's rotten, decorative pumpkins that I threw in the compost (seeds and all), ended up getting spread into our garden.

So yes, we're only sophomores in this gardening thing. But it doesn't matter to the girls. They love whatever's growing in there (even if they have to don their winter gloves to pick it--pumpkin leaves are a little prickly.) As far as we're concerned, if we can grow something out there and consume it ourselves, that's magic!

Whatcha eatin'?

Lots of green! (Those are fruit smoothies with kale. My brother did it first. I cannot take credit. As I look at that picture I see my girls' beautiful eyes and their apparently brush-deprived heads of hair.)

Between the farmers' market and the back yard garden, we've gotten more and more into local food. This year we joined a CSA. One Straw Farm brings its produce to a couple of pick-up places in the city once a week and those of us who've joined for the year just go get it. We can walk to ours. (It's so fun to keep saying I can WALK places! Kind of makes up for the frequent sirens.)

Beyond supporting a local farm and eating seasonal food, we've been exposed to SO much food we'd never cooked or even eaten before. It started in June with a bazillion different lettuces. Yes, a bazillion. You'd excuse my exaggeration if you'd eaten it all, too.

There were a few glorious spears of asparagus--I had no idea until reading a book Courtney gave me called "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" how desperately short the growing season for asparagus is. It makes me want to grow our own patch. (I'm so good at wanting things...not so good at the effort of getting them!)

Swiss chard in different colors, and summer vegetables--yellow squash, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, watermelons, cantaloupe, and lovely white beets. I roasted them in thin slices and put them on a salad. Garlic, onions, and a green called purslane that I'd swear is a weed--I pulled something out from between the cracks in our front walk yesterday that looked SO much like that purslane stuff that we ate over the summer.

Kale, mustard greens , acorn squash, butternut squash, thyme, marjoram, red beets, broccoli, and different kinds of potatoes. The fun part is trying to use and eat it all before the next week's pickup. Last week I found a Potato and Mustard Green soup that we all ate rather dutifully. It was SO bland, even with my addition of the thyme and marjoram. But the next day I added sweet potatoes and mild Italian sausage to it and Evelyn was BEGGING for it. (Okay, so she's in a growth spurt...and she WAS saying, "Mommy, I want the soup with the MEAT in it!!")

Saturday night I made vegetarian chili that had mustard greens, kale, chard, eggplant, bok choy, and the usual peppers, onions, tomatoes, and garlic (you get to Saturday and you think, "If we don't eat all that produce in the frig, where are we going to put Monday's pickup?!?") Tonight we finished the leftovers of it with corn bread.

It HAS kept us from going to the grocery store as often, and it has certainly kept us eating and cooking things we'd never have tried otherwise. I'm really getting a kick out of it. Feel free to send me recipes, books on eating/cooking locally, and any other hippy-dippy thing you find. I do feel quite at home with a bandanna in my hair.

So how IS school going?

(Here are the girls with their Snoopy dogs from Aunt Cari in Iowa. Thank you, Aunt Cari!!)

After a month of the new charter school, Evelyn says the best part of school is sitting next to her friends. And they are all boys. She says, with her big goofy grin and a dramatic shoulder-shrug, "I don't know why, but all the boys in school LOVE me!", adding, "I really LOVE that!" Her best friends at school are Trevor, Zyon ("Zyon with a Y" as he is known, since there is also a "Zion with an I" in her class), and Kay'ran, whose claim to fame is that he was born with braids. ("Just like his grandfather!!" Evelyn says with a wide-eyed hush, imitating the wonder with which Kay'ran shares this amazing genetic trait.)

I think, being an active kid, she is drawn to other active kids--especially ones who will play "chase" ad nauseum. Those are often boys. Alan is hoping this is not a trend. Or at least that she'll continue in her distinct pleasure in out-running them.

Amelia had her four year old well visit this past week. "Uh," you say, "didn't she turn four in MAY?" To which I reply, "Why yes she did, but our health insurance dictates 12 months between well visits." Enough said? Uh...ok...I admit...I'm a procrastinator and between my procrastination and the occasional illnesses that have stalled our well-visits over the years, we're several months behind on each kid. But my friend Diana assures me I'll eventually catch up again. :)

Anyway, the well visit came with multiple shots, and Alan was worried about our sensitive second child's reaction to this trauma. Prepping her in the doctor's office, he told her to expect some sharp stings. "Ok," she said, shrugging, "I'm not scared." He reinforced that she might be afraid and that it might hurt. "Will it hurt like THIS?" she said, taking her index finger and digging it deeply into her own thigh. A bit stunned, Alan just said, "It might."

The nurses came in, both armed with needles. Alan held down her legs. Plunge! Plunge! Nothing. She didn't flinch, whimper, or even change her facial expression. The nurses and Alan all looked at each other. "Wow," said one of them. Plunge! Plunge! Again, nothing. Amelia's bragged ever since (in spite of the huge, rock-hard bulges on her thighs right now) that she got shots and they didn't even hurt and she didn't even cry.

Why do I share this? Because she still shakes, clings, and sobs silent, gigantic tears every morning when we drop her off for school. She says she likes school, has fun once her minutes of tears have passed, and is never anxious about going.

There are just certain things more worthy of tears than others. :)

Amelia's Going Camping

At least that's what she told me when she plopped the purse and backpack into the entryway. She left the room and I couldn't help wondering what a 4 year old would consider "camping essentials." So I snooped:

- Pink blankie (this shows me how seriously she's taking this trip. She goes nowhere w/out this.)
- water shoes
- two t-shirts
- one skort
- two ballerina dress-ups
- Cinderella water bottle
- two stuffed animals
- two tiny dolls
- one wiffle golf ball
- pink illustrated Bible for little ones
- Hello Kitty pen on a string

(Conspicuously absent? Underwear, toothbrush. )

And the purse was full of sea shells. :)