Going, Going, Gone

Yesterday, we spent a few hours helping Derek's sister and her family move.

Here's the great thing about helping other people move:  You get to do the easy part, the carting boxes from house to truck or truck to house, and then you leave.  You get thanks and appreciation without even having to do the sucky parts, like pack every last one of your possessions into cardboard boxes or staring wonderingly at all your stuff, trying to figure out where all this crap came from.  And don't even get me started on unpacking.  You're already tired from packing and driving and cleaning out the new space so it can be all spick and span and ready for your own family to spread its own unique brand of filth around- now you get to unpack and try to find a place for all this junk.  And by "junk," I mean the stuff belonging to every other member of your family.  Their stuff is crap.  Yours is treasure.

The other marvelous effect helping others move has on me is that when I get home, I am in hardcore purge mode.  What if we have to move soon?  Do I like all these things enough that I'd be willing to ask friends and family to move it from here to there?  Is this Thing so important to me that I want to wrap it in newspaper, put it in a box, put that box in a truck, send it on a long voyage, take the box off the truck, take the Thing out of the box, unwrap the newspaper, and find a place to store it yet again?  I mean, criminy, our children are barely worth all that work, let alone my second-best medium-sized saucepan.

That is why, last night, I could be found rummaging through our kitchen cabinets and DVDs and bathroom cupboard, looking for things to be rid of and muttering vague nothings to myself about minimalism and possibly something about the Swedish.  Are they the minimalist ones?  I can never remember.  One of those cold places with ugly modern architecture.  (I can almost promise you Derek is either wincing or pursing his lips or both right now.)


The thing is, we don't have that much excess stuff to get rid of.  I did a major, whole-house, several-month-long purge a year or two ago, the first time I read the book 7:  An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess.  (Hey, guys, remember when I wouldn't stop talking about that book and peer pressured/coerced/forced all my friends to read it?  Man, that was fun.  For me.)  Loads of stuff went out our front door, and it felt incredible.  I highly recommend getting rid of your stuff.

As I went around the house last night and today, however, I realized the value in making a second pass over all your precious possessions and your family's junk:  You may be less attached to it now, you may not use it anymore, or you may pull that cast iron snowflake mini cake pan out of your kitchen cabinet and say to yourself, "Hey, Self, remember when you refused to get rid of this a year ago because you swore that this was going to be the winter you made darling little snowflake-shaped cakes dusted with powdered sugar?  This makes... what, six years in a row that that didn't happen, right?  Make your peace with a future devoid of little cakes, because this sucker is gone.  Farewell, miniature snowflake cake pan!"

Then you'll put it in the Adieu pile, and it will be like a spell breaking.  Why on earth were you so attached to that thing?  You hardly ever make cakes, anyway!  You're more of a cookie or pie kind of woman, and if you do make cakes, you use your humble 8-inch round pans like God and your Better Homes and Gardens cookbook intended!  BEGONE, SNOWFLAKE CAKE PAN.  YOUR POWER NO LONGER HOLDS SWAY HERE.

Banishment forthcoming

I'm going through the kids' toys tomorrow.  Please ignore any wailing or tearful pleading you hear issuing from our house.

Birdies

Last Saturday Derek and I announced that we had a special treat for the children:  We were heading to the golf course after church the next day for an afternoon of family togetherness and fun and bonding and stuff.

The boys cheered.  Adelaide did not.


Sunday morning I packed a mess of food in a cooler, forced our children to look more or less presentable, then headed to church, where Derek had already been for several hours pushing buttons and working with cameras and telling people how to push the buttons and work the cameras.

We did our church thing, I passed out food, everybody ate, and we arrived at the golf course.  The boys were squirmy and excited as we slathered them with sunscreen, Adelaide looked like a character from Dickens, right up until she realized what was happening.

Derek, Atticus, and Caedmon were heading out into the heat and humidity to golf.  Adelaide and I were not.

Not golfing.

The two of us were staying on the cool, shaded veranda to read and watch the swallows and sit in the comfy Adirondack chairs and, most importantly, not golf.

Before we discovered the Adirondack chairs could be dragged into the shade.  And not golfing.

The swallows were particularly fun to watch, as the male and female took turns sitting in the nest, one swooping out to stretch their wings and grab a bite to eat when the other flew in to relieve the first.

Each really seemed to relish flight and freedom after a long spell of sitting and parenting.  I can relate.

Derek didn't really get to golf, as having both boys golfing at the same time doesn't really allow for things like concentrating on your own game.  He can relate to the swallows, too.

Adelaide and I did abandon our respective leisure pursuits to join the boys on their final hole.

Afterward Daughter and I agreed that we enjoyed ourselves more than we ever expected to on a golf course.

Not golfing.

Then we all went and got ice cream.

The end.

Ice Cream as Motivational Tool

At the beginning of the soccer season, Coach Jeff (the other half of the undefeated coaching team that is Jeff and Derek, the latter of which Caedmon refers to as "Coach Daddy") told the players that anyone who was able to beat him in a race around the field would get ice cream.

Every week at practice the kids tried and failed to beat Jeff, possibly because he has the tiniest height and age advantage.  At the final practice, however, they managed to secure a head start on that week's attempt by working hard on their drills, and Jeff just happened to have enough ice cream for everybody in a cooler he just happened to have with him.  None of the children questioned this.

Informing his players of the astounding coincidence that is a cooler-full of ice cream + a head start orchestrated by the coach.  All they had to do was run their legs off around the field one last time.

The only rules were that they had to stay outside the white lines, and they had to run the whole way.  I'm actually a little amazed that they managed to follow these rules, as they all became a little squirrelly when they realized their relative proximity to ice cream.

There they are on the other side of the field.  This was by far the fastest I ever saw a couple of those kids move.

Atticus and friends closing in the finish line, safely ahead of the coach:

Wonder of wonders, every last kid beat the coach, who then cruelly brought them in for a congratulatory huddle before unleashing the team.

There's always a kid who just can't wait.

Then, because our other two kids were sitting there wearing the most pathetic faces in their considerable arsenal, Jeff told them that if they ran around the field, they, too, could have ice cream.  Atticus claimed this wasn't fair, as they didn't have to beat the coach.  Adelaide and Caedmon cared not one whit what Atticus thought.

Also not outside the white lines, which Atticus, of course, pointed out.

And that is how you brainwash young children into thinking running is fun.

The Same, Yet Different

Derek and our third wonder, Caedmon, at four years, nine months of age- three days ago:

Derek and Caedmon at six months of age- four years ago:

The Good Stuff: A List

• The sign outside the Methodist church in my grandparents' town:  "Church Parking Only- All Others Will Be Baptized."

• The two fat ripe strawberries I found in my vegetable/weed garden yesterday:

I ate them both standing over the kitchen sink, strawberry juice running down my hands, the way God intended.  Absolutely delicious.  

• The new pillow Derek's mom gave me a month ago.  I'd been waking up with neck pain every morning for weeks, and although I could more or less take care of it with some yoga, I'd rather just not have any pain to begin with, because I'm needy like that.  Becky offered me the special pillow, I said "Yes, please" and tried not to get too grabby, and from the next morning on, I was hooked.  Haven't had a painful morning since.  

Profile shot of Magic the Puffy Dragon Pillow

I figured, given the shape, that I'd have to sleep on my back to get any relief, which is a problem because I am not a freak who can stay in one position all night.  Also I might snore/ breathe a little bit heavily on my back.  Quote from my friend Kim when we were teenagers, after thousands of sleepovers over the course of a decade:  "Sometimes it's so hard not to smother you in your sleep because you breathe SO LOUDLY."  

• Caedmon keeps offering me a single piece of Kix cereal, which he calls a "kick."  "Do you want two Kix, or one Kick?"  I refuse to correct him, and even went so far as to physically cover Adelaide's mouth when she tried to, because our kids say fewer and fewer of these cute little people things.

Of Gourds and Grandparents

If I wanted to recap our Kansas trip in a linear fashion or even one that made any sense at all, I'd tell you about how we spent three consecutive nights in three different houses, and I would start with the first night, then second, and so on.

Instead I want to talk about gourds.


Our final night in the state of sunflowers was spent at the home of my grandparents.  I've talked about them of the heavenly gardens in the past; this trip their flowers and all things growing were just as divine, and just as bountiful.

Grandparents' bounty now in Iowa.

Grandma once again came through in loading all the empty spaces of our car with gourds and crackers and sweet potato vine and pizza, among other equally random things.  When I went to display this bounty to Derek back in Iowa, I was quick to add, "Keep in mind that she tried to send me home with live ducklings."  Which she did.

I need to have her offer living, breathing animals every visit, now, because I think I could get away with wheel barrows full of plants and rusting metal as long as I preface it with, "Hey- I said 'No' to ALL the things with lungs."

I likewise did not come home with the preserved barn owl we found in a box in a shed while gourd-hunting.  Self control, thy name is Kristy!


While there I told my grandma that I'd felt like the kids and I were this massive tidal wave of energy that had just swept across southern Kansas, leaving exhausted family members in our wake.

Grandma laughed and said, "No, no, no," but Grandpa said it was "a good invasion."

And invade we did.


Atticus invading Grandma's chair- while Grandma was still in it:

Caedmon invading the gazebo with Grandpa:

Adelaide invading the smoke tree:

See her back there?

It helped that after years of herding a multitude of children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Grandma has a black belt in redirecting excess juvenile energy, as evidenced here, where you see Atticus and Adelaide shelling peas from the garden and liking it.

I told you she's good.

I almost had to drag the three kids (okay- all four of us) away to return home to the north.  Atticus in particular was loathe to leave ("But it will be a hundred years before we get to come back!"), so I handed out promises that we'd try and return sometime in the next few months.

Fall sounds like a perfect time for a good invasion.

Whistling While They Work

Our kids' final day of school was last Friday.  Because Derek was out of town for the weekend, I packed everyone up and we headed south for a whirlwind trip to see aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and pigs and cows.  I'll be telling all sorts of fun stories about that excursion soon, but today we need to discuss something far more pressing and exciting:  It's summer vacation.  And do you know what 'summer vacation' means to me?

My work force is back.

Listen, we do not live in a particularly giant house, nor do we live in a particularly fancy or fussy house, but there are five people living here, and it takes a lot of elbow grease to keep this place from descending into a quagmire of nastiness.  Summer vacation means four extra elbows here all day to help keep entropy at bay and do all the fun summer things like clean the windows and mop the floors and wash the towels.

Me with my three favorite scrubbers.  Look how excited they are to clean for their mother.

This does not, of course, mean that they aren't going to be doing fun things with their time off of school.  There will be many library visits and trips to the public garden and maybe even an afternoon or two at the pool for those days when I'm feeling up to keeping three children from drowning for three straight hours (read: rarely).  But our kids are, well, kids, and while fun things during summer are in order, I've spoken at length in the past about the word "bored" and what its utterance means around here.  I am not my children's camp counselor, nor am I their activities director, so unless I want them to grow up into useless slugs, I will not allow them to spend their collective childhood as useless larvae.  And if you think this is an overreaction, let me tell you about that time a year or so ago when a sweet college girl approached me at church about volunteering in our children's department.  I handed her the exceedingly simple application, and in return she didn't so much as reach for a pen, but instead looked at me with a facial expression so vacant I expected to see a buzzing motel sign advertising the same right there on her forehead.  It turns out her mother had filled out every application and piece of paperwork that had ever dared to drift into her precious jewel's path up until then.  I had to teach a nineteen-year-old girl how to fill in basic personal information.  I don't even want to talk about the reference section, which took up twenty minutes and 90% of my patience.

Oh, and before you go thinking that perhaps I was being too hard on her, perhaps her mental faculties are of the sort that she will always need help filling out applications?  Let me reassure you that the charm oozing out of this girl before she realized that I am immune to fluttering giggles and wide-eyed smiles told me otherwise.  I was nowhere near rude, but instead just as firm as I am with our children, and hey- she now knows what a reference is.

As for our kids, they cleaned out from under their beds today, and two kitchen drawers have been organized.  Tomorrow Adelaide gets to clean all the kitchen cabinet fronts, Atticus will be vacuuming upstairs, and Cade gets to help me clean out the art cabinet.  Then I'll make popsicles for all to enjoy while listening to Hank the Cowdog audiobooks because that is their current idea of a dream summer afternoon, and I'm not completely heartless.

SUMMER VACATION!