The Trip - Part 1

I did get the planter built and filled before we left on our trip. I was afraid all the little plants I've been babying in the kitchen were going to die if I didn't get them in a real planter before leaving. I had to borrow a saw from a friend to complete the project, but it did get done.  (I do have a saw, several in fact.  But they are burried in the "storage" room with no hope of coming to light until that is cleared out.  That is a project I hope to tackle when we get back.)  Hopefully in a few weeks we will have fresh kale, spinach, lettuce, and herbs to feast on!

We did make the long trip from Baltimore to Decatur Mississippi in one day.  It was 956 miles and took us 16 hours, but we did make it.  And it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.  It certainly wasn't something I'd look forward to in and of itself, but it was ok.  We stopped a few times to walk and get a drink and a look for a few geocaches.  We were pretty zone-blazed when we got to my parents' house though.  To top it off, Gwyn and Celee were both sick that night so we didn't sleep very well at all.  I was basically a zombie the next day.  Thankfully we did a lot of restful things.  The weather was beautiful and warm and sunny, so I sat out in the sun for most of the morning half dozing.  We did get to go fishing later in the day.  I did not actually fish.  The girls and Mimi and Papaw fished.  I laid on a grassy bank, in the sun, and dozed some more.  I was generally being a bum.  And it was so nice.  The girls caught enough fish for us to have fish for supper too.

My parents have a huge patio in back of their house and the girls almost always have a blast with chalk back there.  I thought their artworks were quite nice.  I especially liked Lyla's "chicken." Maybe I'll get motivated to print the pictures when we get back. I think they'd make neat pictures to hang in a playroom or, in our case, where-ever I can find a spot in the apartment.

Speaking of chickens.  It's that time down here.  My good friend Holly's family had 50 chicks that the girls got to play with while we were visiting.  Then my Uncle Robert had a batch of chicks in his barn that we played with too.  Oooh I miss our chickens!  I can't wait until we can go get our own one day!  It is funny to me that Lyla really wants to hold the chicks, but she's super scared they are going to poop on her.  Celee is scared to hold them because she doesn't want to accidentally drop them and hurt them.  This is exemplary of their personalities to me.  :)  Bless their hearts they both tried, but I pretty much held them while they petted them.  Too little exposure I say. 

 

The Trip - Part 2

We made the drive down to Hattiesburg after a few days with my parents. The weather is wonderful here too. Just hot enough, but not sweaty. One of the first things the girls always go for if these big inflatable globe things that Monty keeps in her garage for them. They are hollow and you can get inside them and battle each other. But the girls always find new games to make out of them too. This time the globes were islands surrounded by lava and they had to keep jumping from one to the other.This is harder than it sounds as the globes don't hold air as well as they used to and they roll when weight isn't evenly distributed on them.

On Tuesday we decided to drive down to the coast and play at the beach. So we made the hour and a half drive to Gulfport. The Mississippi beaches are not super nice, the toilet bowl action of the water between the shore and the barrier islands always leaves the beaches less clean than one would want and the water less clear. None-the-less we enjoyed it. It was a nice day and the girls got to play pirates and sharks and hunt for treasure and build sand castles. They chased the seagulls and sand pipers. They found pieces of shells. I collected bottlecaps. And we did a little Earth Day observance (a day late) by picking up some trash off the beach. They were not ready to leave and Lyla had completely soaked her entire dress and gotten sand in her hair, so we headed over to the playground hoping there was a shower there. There is, but apparently it is only turned on in season, so she just had to air dry as best she could because we headed for the outlet mall. The girls all got a pair of Crocs there. Not the big chunky kind, the narrow girly kind. The salesman in the store was an interesting man, but he earned his commission trying to find a shoe that both suited and fit Celee. I'm not sure why he alternated speaking in almost baby voice to the girls at times and normal voice, but he appeared to enjoy his job.

We practiced for our upcoming 5k Mississippi style today. Meaning in the rain. I knew it was going to rain eventually, but I was hoping we'd be done by the time it really got going. So we started off in a light drizzle, which is actually quite nice. I admit that I have not encouraged the girls to practice very much for this race. It was more along the lines of every now and then realizing "We really need to go run before the 5k!" So I'm pretty sure it will truly be a 5k run/walk for us. I'm still glad that they are going to do it with me. Then I can let loose for the 10k the next day! (Not that letting loose will look like much. I run slow as all get out, but at least I know I can run the whole distance barring any crazy accident or injury). Anyway, they did make it the whole 3 miles in increasing rain. It did lightening once too and I was very glad we were almost back to the house when it did.

I got to go have lunch with my friend Emily at an Italian restaurant called Tabella. It's always nice to spend time with friends who have known you since those awkward preteen years. We just pick up like we see each other more than the twice a year that I make it back home. On the way back I took a detour to Triangle Seafood. I kept seeing all these shows and advertisements for crawfish so I knew they had to be in season. I was not disappointed! So I got three pounds and took them home to introduce them to my girls. Well, I have one crawfish lover at least. Lyla said they were too creepy. Gwyn just kind of ignored them and me. But Celee tried them. They were a little Cajun spicy, but so good!

For our last Mississippi day the girls got to play in the rain and puddles. They have been begging me to do this for quite a while, but there's really no where to do it at our apartment so today was their day. It was a little chilly after a while, but they had a blast running through the yard and sliding in the puddles. Tomorrow we're off again, this time to the MidWest where it is no where warm enough to play in any rain, so I'm glad they got to do it here.

Outdoor Therapy

There is something therapeutic about being outdoors. The smell of grass, the sound and feel of a light breeze, the sun on my face, this all speaks to my heart in a way that words can't. Not just any outdoors though. I hear no vehicles, no sirens. There is no music in the distance. There are no strangers walking about. If someone I don't know did happen to come up, a quick inquiry would discern who were his or her people and who are mine thus rendering us known to each other and strangers no more. There is not a lot of new blood in Newton County Mississippi. If someone is new blood they probably only come from a county or two away and aren't that exotic of a newcomer anyway. I on the other hand, while bearing the ticket of Newton County folk, have thrown a wrench in the works by driving a vehicle with dubious Maryland tags. The argument that I do indeed live south of the Mason-Dixon Line, in growing zone 7, and technically in the "South" holds no water here. But I digress. Lying here on a slope of St.Augustine with red dirt underneath next to a breem pond, I feel like I belong. I can breath here. There is room to be alone with the world, to think, the clear my head. The birds are tweeting and chittering. The crickets sing off and on. I hear a fish jump every so often. Some of those fish are libel to end up on our supper plates tonight. Today this comes not due to any effort on my part, but the efforts if my daughters and their grandparents. Those are memories that will anchor a little of Newton County in their hearts as well. But today I am the observer. I get some much needed time to think, and not think, and breathe, and just be. My dad commented earlier, "Well Honey, you were brought up in the country." It's part of who I am. I long for it and have dreams about it and feel most like myself when I'm in it. And today I'm getting revived by it.

Archers in the Making

We had been waiting to see when the cherry blossoms were going to be in full bloom in DC for a while.  When I checked the forecast on Monday, it said that the peak bloom period would be within the next 72 hours so we had to go quick!  Even though we had other things planned everyday, I thought we could squeeze in a trip to DC on Tuesday.  We ended up getting a later start than I had hoped, then going in the wrong way and getting caught in school traffic in DC itself.  In all it took us 2 hours to get there and get parked.  I did find street parking though, so I didn't have to pay!  (A small victory for me)  It was an absolutely beautiful day though and we enjoyed walking to the Jefferson Memorial and then around the Tidal Pool.  The girls weren't too impressed with the Memorial. I think this is because they know a good bit about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and so were more excited about those monuments.  I realize now that I don't think I've talked much at all about Jefferson to them.  This will have to be remedied in the future.  In the meantime, the trees were just amazing.  There were tons of people out so no picture is without others in it, but it was just too good to miss!  Lyla especially wanted me to take her picture toward the end, complete with all the ice cream she had all over her face.  :) We walked and enjoyed the late afternoon, had a picnic under the blossoms and then headed home.  All in all we were in the car about twice as long as we were out, but I'm glad we got to go anyway.  Besides the obvious treat of seeing the Cherry trees in bloom, every trip into DC just teaches me more about getting around there right?

 Friday we attended a field trip to the Maryland Historical Society with the Lamb of God School.  A friend of mine's son attends there and they had room for tag-a-longs on their field trip so we got to go too!  We really don't know a lot about Maryland history, other than general colonial history, so it was really interesting to learn about how the Maryland colony began and grew.  We learned a lot about indentured servants and slaves.  The girls got to role-play gentlemen on the boat coming to the New World and decide what they would and wouldn't (or couldn't) bring with them from England.  It was a great program and it held all of there attention.  I would definitely go there again.

Gwyn's group got to lead the rest of the group in earning their Geocaching Badge on Friday.  We had scouted out the caches at Oregon Ridge the day before to make sure that everything was where it should be.  She and her two friends taught the troop all about what geocaching is, GPS coordinates, types of caches, trade items, etc.  Then the girls all got to make some trade items before going out to find two caches that were placed nearby.  I must say that I think many of the girls really enjoyed it and I think they are intrigued by the fact that there are things hidden all over the place that they never knew about before.  We may have some geocachers in the making!

Saturday Celee's troop got to go to an animal shelter in Phoenix.  They were in animal heaven because there were three puppies there that they all got to play with for a long time.  The cats at this shelter have two big rooms to roam in, but they don't really act like they want to be petted.  Most of them run, hiss, or bite, but that could be because 10 or so routy girls were in there trying to pet them.  So the cats weren't a hit, but there were also two pigs and a sheep that live at the shelter, and a number of dogs so the girls were happy anyway.

Saturday Gwyn got to go to a Girl Scout Archery program.  In GS here, Brownies aren't allowed to do archery so Celee wasn't able to go.  A library in the city just happened to be having an archery fundamental program on Saturday though, so I took Celee to that.  They didn't actually get to shoot arrows because it was inside, but they got to string a bow and learned how to pull the arrow back correctly.  I even got to try! I got some great info. about lessons that all three girls can attend (for minimal price!) in May.  They are all three so excited!  Bless her heart, Lyla got left out on the archery this weekend, but she tried very hard this week to shoot a homemade bow and arrow at a friend's house.  The amount of effort she is putting forth is proportionate to the length of her tongue sticking out.

Platitudes

I am thankful for the acquaintances and friends and family who I know care. They ask how I am and then they offer well-meaning platitudes. I know that they don't really know what to say if you don't answer "fine" or "good," But they do care. Today I am especially thankful for the people who do and say more. For people who will stop and ask questions because they do want to know more. For people who will stop and pray with you and for you right then and there. I don't think badly of the friends who say they will pray for me/us (meaning later). I am thankful knowing many of them DO actually pray for me. I need those prayers. But today I needed that immediate concern, compassion, and prayer. I needed to hear that prayer lifted up by someone else on my behalf. And I am immensely thankful that God knew what I needed and a beautiful woman of God was there to respond right then and there. I hope that I can be so bold and ready to step out of my comfort zone when God shows me people who need me to listen, show real concern, and pray for and with them in the moment.

The "Beach"

This past week the girls and I started a Homeschool Reading program at the Govan's branch library in the city.  Homeschool families get together once a week to read books together.  They feed us lunch. (It was really good too)  Then we all take turns reading two books out loud before we discuss them.  The discussion was neat because it spanned everything from the illustrations to the plot to themes to connections the kids made with other books and experiences.  Lyla was really nervous about reading out loud in front of other kids, but she did great!  There were kids on all different reading levels so she wasn't the only one going word by word.  After she got over the nerves she was an enthusiastic contributor to the discussions as well.  Did I mention that this is all free?  To top it all off, they had lots of food left over so I brought a bunch home and we ate it for dinner too.  I didn't have to cook all day!

For the past few weeks we've gotten into the Golden Age of Greece in our history studies.  The girls think this is super fun stuff so we've been trying to do lots of projects about it.  Our first one was making Greek tragedy/comedy masks.  We were having a particularly hard day the day that I had planned for us to do this project though.  One of those days that no one wants to do even the fun stuff that any other day they would beg to do.  So I decided that the masks might be better to do as a whole family once Jason got home.  That did make it more fun!  He of course did the most elaborate mask.  I think they turned out really nice though.  Even though Gwyn got a little silly toward the end and put a chicken leg going in the mouth of her mask.  The girls all wanted to do comedy masks, so I did a tragedy one.  Jason's was a goat-man, perhaps a Pan-type character so I'm not sure if that counts for tragedy or comedy.

I guess our whole week was kind of rough, so Friday it was warm and I gave up and decided we all just needed to get out.  We dragged all four bicycles downstairs and somehow got them all puzzle-pieced into the van.  My idea was that the girls really haven't gotten to ride their bikes since we moved, so a bike ride would be good for all of us.  I tightened Lyla's training wheels super tight and took the wrench with us just in case.  (This has been a source of misery for us on past bike rides, but that was many months ago so I was hoping for a little more patience from the little one....and for the training wheels to stay on)  It was a beautiful day and we hit the NCR trail before school was out so it was not crowded.  The water in the river was gorgeous.  We all can't wait to tube this summer!  We found some geese and played on a landing for a while as rest stops.

We went about two and a half miles when the girls wanted to take a footpath to the riverbank.  We found a "beach" there.  We ended up having a snack and playing for quite a long time there.  I sat and soaked up the sun while the girls played fairy houses and tried to "improve" the plants and beach there.  (See my previous post for details on that)  Everyone got to take their shoes off.  The girls got gloriously dirty.  Gwyn and Lyla buried each other in the sand.  Tinkerbell got off the leash.  It was quite nice.  Finally it started to get cooler so we headed back.  Tinkerbell did not want to be carried in the bag or in my arms for the ride back. (She rode most of the way out in a drawstring bag strapped to my front with her head and front paws hanging out)  so I took it slow and let her run alongside my bike.  She did pretty good for a geriatric dog.  And I had to stop a lot anyway to "help" Lyla who was by this time tired and frustrated.  Her little wheels take way more peddling than any of our bikes, but she kept up pretty good.  I will say that Tink was very slow moving the next day.  I think she was sore from all the running!  Poor puppy.  I didn't realize until we got home and I mapped the ride that she ran somewhere between 2 and 2 1/2 miles.  Lyla on the other hand had peddled 5!

On a previous note, the frog spawn that we may have had in a bowl in our dining room was very cool.  The eggs hatched and the girls watched them each day as they got bigger and developed outside gills and then inside gills.  Once they got bigger and started swimming around a good bit, we knew that the water would have to be changed several times a week with fresh pond water, which is not something we have at hand.  So Sunday we all took a hike out and released the tadpoles back in to the pool the eggs came from.  So we didn't get to watch them grow all the way into frogs, but it was pretty cool to see how fast they grew in the one week we had them.

It was hot today!  My hopes are up.  This season of our moving to Maryland has an end in sight.  Five weeks until we close on the house.  I know intellectually it doesn't make sense, but it's been hard for me to see past the right now for a while.  It has seemed like the now is all that will ever be.  I just couldn't see out of it, even though I "know" it will pass.  The message on Sunday was particularly meaningful to me and I pretty much spend the entire hour of worship crying.  At least it wasn't loud crying.  It did make me wonder when it came time to welcome the people around you, which includes shaking hands with all the strangers sitting around you, if they cringed knowing they were shaking my hand after seeing me wipe tears and possibly snot off my face for the first 20 min. of the service.  No one is supposed to be paying attention to what I'm doing though, right?  It doesn't really matter.  I felt God's presence and comfort on Sunday.  He wipe a little of the dirty window clean for me and I'm thankful.

Improvement

What is it that makes us think we need to improve on everything around us? We're playing on the sandy river bank near the NCR trail. The girls, as always, have stakes out their "houses" and are fixing them up for their pretend game. Celee started leaning sticks up against the tree trunk that made up her house. When Gwyn asked her what she was doing, she answered, "I'm making it ... better." What could make this place better? This beautiful place just isn't "housy" enough. Later the girls found a small patch if Bonnie Bells growing in the sand. They all already know better than to pick them. But they were definitely doing something beside them so I asked what they were doing. They told me they were building up the sand around the bottom of the flowers so they wouldn't fall over. Do the flowers really need their "help?" The girls think so. Now I know that they are just playing and having fun. There is no paternalistic superiority complex being played out. I think it's just human nature. At least in the Western human mind. We want to improve the land. That was our excuse when we came here and took it. I find myself more of the Thoreau mindset. I look around and want everything to remain untouched. I cringe when the girls pick weeds to give me. It makes me profoundly sad to see litter anywhere. I know I need to get out and just "be" outside, and by outside I usually mean somewhere that I can not see a roof or hear a car. That may be why apartment life grates on me so much. I relish these days when the girls can come out to places like this and take their shoes off, play fairy houses, and just " be" outside.