The Weekend Report: Massacre Sites, 90 Years, and Trees

In the last post, I noted that sometime soon we planned on heading south for my Grandpa's big 90th birthday party.  That sometime soon was last Saturday, which I intentionally didn't mention because God only knows who's reading this and we don't want any unplanned visitors relieving us of all our belongings because I blabbed GUESS WHO'S LEAVING THEIR HOUSE UNATTENDED?

So last Saturday the kids and I drove the five hours to my grandparents' house, which felt short because our southward travels are normally seven hours, to my mom's house.  Who knew that just two fewer hours would make a drive feel so short, so manageable? 

We still stopped four times within that five hours, none of which I can blame on the children.  I was the one feeling simultaneously achy and jitter-buggy, needing frequent stops to stretch my restless limbs. We stopped at my favorite Iowa rest stop, which borders and provides access to a county park complete with a body of water and wooded trails, which I have run before on a solo trip south and which freaked Derek out because a single runner on isolated trails right next to a rest/truck stop is apparently not the safest idea? 

Our other superfluous stop was made because I'm a sucker for historical markers.  I've seen the sign for the Marais de Cygnes Massacre site many times before, but this time we finally got off the highway, followed the increasingly narrow and windy gravel road, and drove into what ended up being a secluded but picturesque national historic site.

The above is an interesting contraption that you wind up by following the instruction to "turn briskly for sixty seconds," which charged it, I guess; then we pressed play and listened to a dramatic reading of the newspaper article from the 1860's which detailed the events of the massacre, where pro-slavery Missourians crossed the border and shot a bunch of Kansas free-staters (this is all Civil War era, Bleeding Kansas stuff, if you're trying to figure out why on earth any of this ever would have happened).  This was looking over the ravine where the victims were forced to stand and then fell dead into.  I appreciated looking over all of the information available and walking around the area; the boys' favorite part seems to have been the wild turkey sighting.  If you push this stuff in their faces enough something is bound to rub off, right?  Maybe?  Hopefully?


We did eventually make it to our destination, where we got to see nieces and grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles and other relatives whose connection to myself I can only guess at.  And even though we forgot our customary bribes (frozen snack-size Kit Kats), we still forced all the children into group photos, which I somehow did not end up with a picture of on my phone, but I do have this nice one of my mom, her sisters, and their parents. 

I also got this rare sighting of a group of von Soostens.  

What do think a group of von Soostens would be, anyway?  A herd?  A peck?  Whatever the German word for a pack is?  Whatever, they are all now or at some point were von Soostens, and I think at this point the birthday boy was just ready for his cake.

If at all possible, I would highly recommend having a cousin with a bakery.  It makes every family gathering better.

This weekend allowed me to make a big old checkmark on my list of things to do and people to see before we move.  That made it all bittersweet, because hurray, I got to see so many people I love!  But oh, no, when will I see them again?

Loved ones like my sisters who aren't afraid to hug not-a-hugger Adelaide.  She will tolerate this kind of behavior from very few people.  Her aunts are two of them.  (No Adelaides were harmed in the making of this photo; just made to feel momentarily uncomfortable BUT NO DOUBT LOVED, DAUGHTER.)

Sunday before we left we got in plenty of tree climbing, because although she is not a people hugger, she most certainly is a tree hugger.

There most definitely is a Daughter in that Ash.  Click to embiggen and see if you can spot her.  Hint:  look for the serial killer face lurking amongst the leaves.

She also conquered the Sycamore, which was decidedly more difficult, not having a handy fork a few feet off the ground.

Yep, she's in that picture, too.  I'm also happy to report that years of calmly reciting, "You got yourself up there, you can get yourself down," often in the face of twenty feet high hysterics, has resulted in her being able to monkey herself up and down with ease.  

The boys were more excited about the afternoon's entertainment, which I'll post about tomorrow.  It was larger and a little more ostentatious than a morning of peaceful tree climbing, but also involved fewer ticks, for which I think Adelaide has an increasing sense of appreciation.

Spirit Trees

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but any season, I love the view out our bedroom window.

From green leaves with yellow berries one week to yellow and red leaves with yellow berries the next, this tree is ever-changing and ever-beautiful.

This scene often makes me think of one of the latter books in Orson Scott Card's Ender series, where the humans encounter an alien species who, at the end of their lives, are planted, and they then get to live another life as a tree.

Naturally, this leads me to another question:  What is my spirit tree?

As ever, I can't decide on a single selection for myself.  For example:  During the coldest, driest part of winter, I am most certainly a birch.

For real, though:  That up there is the closest tree-depiction I've ever seen to my own two legs at the height of eczema season.  Dry?  Check.  Peeling?  Check.  Grotesque?  Check.  If the branches on this tree were by turns obsessively applying thick lotion and itching itself to death, we'd have to just go ahead and name this tree Kristy and be done with it.

This is my spirit tree in April and May, when I'm transitioning from running tights and capris back to shorts but my poor skin hasn't seen the sun in months and is recovering from the above eczema madness.

This was my spirit tree when our kids were small and believed that my most important role in the universe was to act as their own personal jungle gym.  Poor tree.  What it needs is a nap, maybe a shower, and for her kids to get a few more birthdays under their belts.  

And this is MOST CERTAINLY DEFINITELY me when someone is attempting to communicate with me without prior authorization early in the morning:

I think chirpy morning people who inflict themselves upon others absolutely deserve to have apples chucked at them.  

I was one of Bob Ross's happy little trees this week when my friend used her apples for good and invited us over to pick a few from her own generous tree, which I then turned into crock pot apple crisp with New York Vanilla ice cream.  Question:  What is New York Vanilla ice cream?  It was right next to the plain old vanilla, but Caedmon chose New York.  I couldn't taste a difference, but then my taste buds are somewhat less than professionally trained.



Tell me, people of the internet:  What is your spirit tree?  Can you pick just one?  If so, how did obtain this superpower otherwise known as decisiveness?

You Get What You Pay For

I've spent most of the past week decorating our house for Christmas.  This is something I love to do, and it's always extra-fun for me, as I seem to forget half of what we own between the months of January and November (having an inconsistent memory makes life so fun sometimes!).  One of my favorite parts is pulling different items out and recalling how much I didn't spent on them- as with so much of the other things we own, I buy most of our Christmas decorations at thrift stores and garage sales.  This, of course, means there's often... let's say tweaking that must be done before I'm willing to set them out.

Take the wreath that's not gracing our front door because it's -2 degrees outside right now and Jesus Himself would have to be knocking on our door in order for me to open it.  I bought that wreath at Goodwill (and it will go up, just as soon as it gets somewhere above ten degrees, which might not even happen tomorrow) for $1.99 because I could see it would be a good, basic green Christmas wreath just as soon as I removed all the early 90's-era plaid ribbon and flocked cardinals missing most of their velvet skin.

But easily the weirdest and best Christmas item I've found was at a garage sale:

See?  Three primitive Christmas trees (if I call them "primitive" it sounds like they're supposed to be scraggly) for a dollar apiece.  You can see they now have applesauce cinnamon ornaments the kids and I made hanging from their branches.  I put those on only after removing all the tiny baby figurine ornaments that came with the trees.

Excuse me, I misspoke.  I removed all the naked glow in the dark baby figurine ornaments hanging from their branches.

If that isn't bizarre enough, upon closer inspection of their little naked glow in the dark backs, I was able to see that once upon a time, there were wings attached (okay, so I'm assuming they were wings- I suppose they could have been... whatever else grows out of babies' backs).  To me, this means someone snapped the wings off of all those little cherubs, which makes me think this family was purposely going for a fallen angel theme that Christmas, complete with festive games like pin-the-horns on Satan and Red Rover but instead of clotheslining the member of the opposing team running toward you, you'd be lined up in front of a burning fire pit and they'd run into that- unless your theology runs more toward Hell is Eternal Separation From God, in which case you'd just have to designate a little area behind you with this sign hanging up:

Purchase a slightly different version of this sign here!  Or just click to embiggen!

What on earth happened to this post?  I swear when I woke up this morning and promised myself to finally write down one of the dozen posts floating around in my head, it had no Microsoft paint.  It didn't even have Satanic games.

I'm now trying to engineer ways to drive by that house- the home of the naked glow in the dark fallen angel babies- just to try and look in their windows.  Who knows what other treasures they're hiding!

Over the Past Four Days, I Have:

• Cleaned up enough puke to pickle a rhino.  We have a nasty bug that's making its way through four members of our family, with me being the lone healthy survivor.  Let's all take just a moment and pray to the sweet baby Jesus that I don't get sick.  I've scrubbed carpet, child car seats, seat belts, Caedmon, a rocking chair, clothing, Cade's bed, our bed, me, and the siding on the house.  Caedmon may be the only one doing the vomiting, but he's an equal opportunity regurgitator.  

• Been used as a makeshift pillow anytime I dare to sit down.  Evidently our offspring need near-constant physical contact when ill.

Convalescing on the front porch with Daddy.

• Stumbled across our children lying all over the house and yard.  Because I've found all kinds of extra chores to do just so that I don't have to sit down and become a potential puke receptacle.

• Escaped from the house and its sick inhabitants for a few hours to enjoy a Mommy-Daughter date with Adelaide.  A little coffee shop opened here in our little town about a month ago, and I've been doing my civic duty to ensure it stays open.  When Adelaide requested we go there, I told her she was my favorite kid and off we went.

She had a chocolate muffin.  I had iced coffee.  We played checkers.  I didn't clean up puke.  It was beautiful.

• Delayed going back into the House of Illness as long as possible by looking at every possible flower in our front yard.  Adelaide joined me.

Lilacs!

Flowering Dogwood!

• Totally stole Cassi Renee's idea and had Adelaide take pictures while up in the tree.

• Spent some quality time with the fam in our basement due to the tornadoes that went through the area last night.  One evidently touched down right on the edge of town, and another was near a neighboring town.  It was a noisy night of wind, thunder, and tornado sirens.  Still, we're all okay, and I have yet to hear of any major casualties (aside from cows).

The Next Day

Our backyard Monday morning:

Our backyard Tuesday morning:

Thanks to Derek's efforts, the tree was all chopped up, the major limbs already taken care of.  All that was left was to go around the yard gathering the smaller branches, sticks, and bark that had been peeled off the tree during the storm.  This task fell to Adelaide and me.  Adelaide performed the work with enthusiasm; she enjoys helping and revels in our praise.  Atticus threw exactly two sticks into the firepit, picked up a third, and spent the next 30 minutes wandering around the stumps, hitting pieces of wood, jousting imaginary foes, and swinging his new favorite toy over his head. 

At one point, I made a rare stab at being super-mom and called Adelaide over to examine one of the largest logs.  I pointed out to her the rings in the cross-section of wood, and we discussed annual rings and the age of trees. 

We picked three different places in the wood and counted them.  Each time we got a number around fifty, but here's the thing:  this tree has one main trunk, which then forked into two main limbs.  It lost one of those limbs in the storm, so the part of the tree that we were looking at was from a place perhaps ten feet above the base, and definitely smaller in diameter than the very bottom of the trunk.  Doesn't this mean that there would be more rings there at the base?  So is the tree actually older than just fifty years?  Am I the only one who knows practically nothing about figuring the age of trees?

So what started as a bit of a natural science lesson for Adelaide ended with me scratching my head and arguing with myself.  Being used to this kind of behavior in her mother, our daughter soon wandered off to pile more debris into the firepit and sing to herself.   

Last Night

Atticus and Adelaide.  Our backyard.  Around 10 this morning.

"Awww," you're saying.  "There's Adelaide and Atticus, playing in the summer sunshine.  But wait- what's that over their heads?"

Oh, that? 



That is a tree.  Well, half of a tree.

We had some severe storms around here last night.  Right around 3 am, heavy winds, loud thunder, continuous lightning, and rain blew into town.  Shortly thereafter, we lost power.  The cessation of fans in our un-air-conditioned house, coupled with all the noise from the skies made Caedmon conclude that he was done sleeping.  Which meant I was done sleeping.  To escape the sticky humidity inside the house, Caedmon and I went out onto the front porch, which was actually cooler than inside, and reasonably well protected from the rain.  Thanks to all the lightning we were able to see that several trees in our neighborhood had already sustained damage, and multiple neighbors were shining flashlights around their yards from the safety of  porches and garages.  We were actually quite fortunate;  two houses down from us, a large part of a mature tree splintered off onto the roof of a house, creating a hole and all kinds of damage.  Reports from people walking around trickled in all day:  Most of the town was without power, one family had damage to both their roof and their van due to falling limbs, and tree damage, tree damage, tree damage. 

The power finally came back on at 3 pm.  We rejoiced, turned the fans back on, and made smoothies to help cool off. 

At 6:30 pm, just as I was writing the above sentence, 'Shortly thereafter, we lost power,' we lost our power again.  Oh, the irony.  It was restored at around 9 pm. 

Derek came home from work with a borrowed chainsaw and got right to work, dismantling the tree and doing other heavy duty stuff that make me say I'm glad I'm the woman in this relationship and I don't care if that makes me a walking affront to feminism.  After awhile one of his coworkers came over and joined in on the fun, for which we were thankful. 

After several hours outside, Derek had conquered the tree, throwing the smaller branches over the fence by the side of the road for the city to chip, and cutting the trunk up for firewood.  Again, glad I'm the female.

Let's all pray for a less eventful night.