Christmas Music and Halloween 2022

The younger kids are downstairs (well, not down downstairs, I'm in the loft and they are just below me) dancing to Christmas music. They've pulled out Santa caps, and Mette has unwrapped her remaining Halloween candy and brought it over in a little bowl to share. They are shouting up asking for hot cocoa (Summer promising she can make it for everyone and Mette gamely saying she'll help by making it for Starling). Hans just delivered an invitation to "a play about Jesus". And Starling is happily following their every move (not even knowing how lucky she is to have older siblings who are already well-versed in holiday making). 

Never mind that our front porch is still covered in jack-o-lanterns or that they are dancing next to orange lights and mason-jar mummies. (Or that Goldie would shake her head at Christmas music on Nov. 2nd. [Hi Gold! Sorry!]) I'd promised Summer, when she asked about Christmas music yesterday (now that Halloween was over), that they could listen to some the first time it snowed. 

And this morning we woke to this:

Not an enormous amount, but enough to feel exciting (and pretty with all the red leaves still on at least one of our backyard maples). I usually pick the kids up from school as they walk home, but today I just let them make their way home without a ride knowing the extra giddiness they always feel the first snow day. And when they came in with Mette and Summer talking eagerly about all their plans for music and hats and cocoa, well, there was nothing I could do but help them connect our Christmas play list to the bluetooth speaker.

But for all of that, we still ought to mention Halloween!

Not a one of our oldest three were home this year. But Abe did send pictures of how he went about campus that day. (Darth Maul.) He seemed pleased that a security guard stopped him at the campus library to make sure it was paint and not a mask. And equally pleased when he won  his ward's costume contest. He did do quite an excellent job painting his face--though perhaps it might never have been if Daisy hadn't rushed him over some paint brushes to ready himself with.

And Daisy felt festive enough to throw on this darling witch hat with a black dress and some stripey tights.

Goldie told us she didn't manage any costuming this year, and Penny, who had made herself into Sherlock Holmes got ready at a friend's ... and had discarded most of her costume by the time she arrived home late that night, so no picture of Sherlock Penny either. But here are the rest of the kids. (Jesse felt too old to trick-or-treat this year, but he still donned his Charlie Brown shirt and went with Mike to help kids around the block.)

(Our front porch the next morning. Anders wanted the "caution/keep out" tape up--though our door sends a bit of a conflicting message with "keep out" tape and a "welcome" sign.)

(Our friend Melyssa asked if they'd come up and trick-or-treat at her house a day early while she had her older kids home for dinner. I was a little worried about sacrament meeting with Mike up on the stand, but Melyssa usually keeps most of my littlest ones by her, so ... church has been rather easy!)

It was a fun Halloween. 

And here are a few other pictures from the last week:

Jesse learning to fix bike-tire flats.

Jesse entertaining Starling with snap circuits while I try to get everyone else ready for church one Sunday morning.

Kids homeworking and coloring:

Kids in a streak of evening sunlight:

Starling making more people with arms and legs coming out of their heads:

Abe did end up doing his nine-pitch climb! It took them five hours of climbing the 1000 feet. (And then he rushed back--hiking down in near dark, frantically showered, realized Daisy had the car, so rode his bike as fast as he could the three miles to where his Saturday-evening-adult session of stake conference was being held; arriving just in time to see everyone exiting the meeting to go home. Haha.)

And lastly, Anders finding Christmas in the store on Halloween day.

Time Slipping Downhill ... And Some Misc.

I'm peeling potatoes for dinner when, out the kitchen-sink window in front of me, I see a small blonde-headed boy run by. It's near dark, and it's been raining all day so the remaining fall yellows and reds of our backyard look watercolored over in gray. It's cold. (And about two minutes after viewing this scene it will have begun hailing.) But Hans is out there. He's got a jacket that he's clearly thrown hastily on (it's falling off his shoulders) and his little feet are completely bare. He's running in circles around our mid-yard landscaping with a small kite in tow. (He's made it himself, and it's tethered to only a foot of yellow yarn [attached to one of his sisters' hair bows], so its potential for flight appears rather limited; but he harbors no doubt about its possibilities. If he just runs fast enough, it will soar.)

I'm watching him. And the leaves that keep falling off of our trees. And I feel it again: this strange, slipping-downhill sense of time that I've run into lately. And I don't mean to sound overly sentimental (as, at times, the days ahead of repeating messes, lack of sleep, and demands from small people seem an eternity through which I will never actually pass); but something has shifted in my view towards, what previously seemed, an endless bounty of mortal life and possibility ahead. I don't know if it has to do with the fact that, for decades, Mike and I have been in the business of adding people to our home and now we seem to be subtracting them; or if it has to do with a spate of recent cancer diagnoses among my siblings (all of them looking to have positive outcomes, but in the space of waiting, we all saw, with some shock, our siblings' mortalness, and, in turn, considered the possible limits of our own earth-side plans); or if it has somewhat to do with Logan and our struggles to arrange a thousand pieces to get up there in time for it to still become home to most of our children.

Never in life before have I felt that I need to get something done ... while there's still time.

And it's a strange, new sensation--this pressing down of time on me. Something I've never really felt until recently. 

But! Whatever side of earth's time I'm on, there's still plenty happening. And here is the tiniest bit of it:

Grinding and pressing apples into cider. It was a simple enough process (cut in fourths, grind, press), and pretty fun, but sticky and time consuming (with so much to wash afterwards), and I think, after all his interest in apple presses, Mike seemed a bit disillusioned in the end--unsure if it was worth all the mess and work for the amount of cider we got. I think you'd have to have your own apples (or a neighbor giving you loads of them) to have it be worth doing regularly as, if we'd purchased apples, this would have turned out to be some very expensive cider! But I can still see us maybe doing it again someday! A fun memory for sure.

This little sprite has taken to doing the dishes on occasion. The cutest.

Speaking of this little dish-washer. I'm not sure when her decided preference for pink emerged; perhaps it was there all along (and us just unaware of it because she simply hadn't yet gained the motor skills necessary to pull out and put on the two or three items of clothing she is willing to wear, or to open the upstairs blanket closet to retrieve the old, pink, sleeping-bag blanket to replace the blue blanket I'd had in her crib with her since she was born). In any case, I've never had a child with such strong feelings about color. She's 65% pink, 30% yellow, 4% purple and 1% orange. Where are my blues and greens I wonder? Nowhere. (I sometimes look at pictures of her from a year or two ago and marvel that I was ever able to just choose darling outfits of any color and then freely put them on her!) And this "blanket" (if indeed it can be termed that with all of its velcro and straps), I fear is in part responsible for why she will only let me do her hair for two hours on Sunday. She wants pink blanket always on her head, and it troubles her somehow to put in on her head with her hair done. 

And ... pink make-up. (Yes I do own pink eye shadow. I like it. I just apply it quite a bit more subtly than she has here. ...)

Abe has used his climbing knowledge quite generously--taking people from his ward etc. who seem to be feeling a little down or needing something to feel excited about. And it makes me happy to see how he uses this little thing of his unselfishly--to bring belonging and enjoyment to others. But of course it is still the most fun for him when he can use his skills as freely as he likes. He and one of his friends have recently been doing some multi-pitch climbs which take a lot more know-how to make sure it is done properly and safely but which also allow you to go ... much higher! (Those dots below the orange shoe laces are people.) These pictures were from a three-pitch climb. But they have their eyes set on a nine-pitch!

(I'm also glad that Abe is incredibly safety conscious. He follows all the proper climbing protocol and researches exactly how to do these things well before attempting them. He and his friends saw a girl fall across the canyon from them a month or two ago. It was a pretty upsetting experience. But it has reinforced in him even more the importance of not being careless.)

Anders recently played "school teacher" for several days for his younger siblings. I liked the school rules (if only they wouldn't "blurt out" so):

And there appears to have been some type of yearbook-cover design contest. (Though I never saw the submissions.)

The other day I told Hans about how much I loved unicorns when I was little--how everything about them seemed magical and good to me, and how I cried and cried when one of my brothers told me they weren't real (and how my dad comforted me by insisting they might be). Hans seemed quite touched by this. And so sweetly went off to draw me a unicorn. And here it is. ...

If I ever get to create worlds of my own, I will most definitely be populating them with herds of these fellas.

We don't have school on Halloween this year, so the kids got to wear their costumes to school today. I honestly don't think anything feels happier to me than dropping them off at school on Halloween morning and seeing all those little kids excitedly running about in costume.

And Daisy texted us this pie that she'd made with some of the apples we'd sent her back with last weekend. She really ought to have made that while she was home I think. ... (Hopefully I can talk her into making apple-cider donuts the next time she's up! After all, as you know, we have the cider!)

The End.

Jackalopes, True Loves, Recognizable Drawings, and ... Half of a Cat's Tail

Mike was telling me, after a recent late-night bishopric meeting, that he wasn't sure he was quite up to the standard when it comes to how things are run these days. He mentioned the I-pads and fancy plans for tracking things electronically etc., that the other bishopric members had. And then he showed me the pen and spiral-bound notebook he'd brought to the meeting. It think it's certainly ... nearly as sophisticated. Classic at least. (Especially considering the large jackalope one of the kids had scribbled in the front of the notebook.)

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Hans recently announced that he has a true love now. (Kindergarten seems as good a place as any to find one I guess.) When I asked for more details, he couldn't be sure about her name, but that's only an insignificant detail compared to the things he has discovered; namely that: she's smart and "reads good" like he does, she doesn't just "draw a circle for a head with legs sticking out like some kids in kindergarten do" (another superior trait they have in common), she has her ears pierced (very mature), and she's one of the taller kids in the class just like he is. Who wouldn't be in love? 

Truly though, outside of family, he hasn't been around a lot of kids his age. His primary class is quite small. And it's kind of dear to me to think of his little blonde-headed, five-year-old self suddenly taking especial note of and being impressed by this other small person. (He might even take enough note to figure out her name one of these days. :))

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Speaking of kids drawing circles for heads with legs poking out. ... Starling's drawings have always just been circles, scribbles and lines. But then, recently, I noticed those circles, scribbles, and lines had begun connecting and curving themselves into more recognizable forms. It's kind of miraculous to see kids shift in understanding of what they can create. (Though heaven knows what Hans will say if her people don't get more sophisticated before she reaches kindergarten!)

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Remember, after we saved Biscuit from the farm (even though we already had Little Gray Cat around to pester Shasta), how Abe dreamt about the bag he opened full of temple name cards ... and four more gray kittens? (Haha.) 

Well, it pretty much has come true. At least the kittens part. (Sigh.) We probably still need to get cracking to get a whole bag of temple names complete, but the kittens: Abe foretold them. (Sigh again.) 

Not long after Biscuit's arrival, some stray cat had a batch of kittens in our neighbor's backyard. (All of them gray.) Our neighbor called animal control, but they had no interest in coming out for stray cats. Unfortunately, before very long, those kittens' mother deemed them old enough to fend for themselves and, before very much longer, those kittens discovered our cats' food bowls. And, with Biscuit too little too care, and Shasta too neutered (haha) to bother with chasing off cats anymore (like he used to faithfully do), (and Little Gray just a stray herself), they just keep sneaking into our yard to eat. They aren't tiny any more, and they are feral as can be. And I feel bad for them, but I'm also not thrilled to be feeding a million wild cats (we go through cat food like crazy now). And I'm not interested in being responsible for catching the wild things and having them all fixed (like we did for Little Gray). But I'm also terrified of the potential for more and more and more kittens being born right in the bushes of our backyard!

We just need to hurry up and move I think. There's no other solution.

But! First, this small story involving the kittens: Since they are all gray (and Little Gray Cat is gray and Biscuit is gray) it can be tricky knowing which cat is actually on our deck at any given time (though opening the door narrows it down somewhat; the strays flee away and Biscuit flees in). Mike pointed out that there are two who come most regularly to sneak food. One of them, he explained, has more white on its feet than the others; and one ... is missing half of its tail! (I don't know how a cat loses half of his tail, but Mike was right, one had.) I told this to the kids so they could keep better track of which cats they saw. And then, a day or so later, Jesse came in from the backyard--carrying something gray and fluffy--and, tossing it on the counter said, "I found the other half of that gray cat's tail". And he had. Right in our backyard. And now there it was: right on my kitchen counter! (Kids! Cats! Sigh to the lot of them!)

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Anyway, that is all for now. (Though perhaps, with such an ending as that, I ought to at least add a few more photos to get that cat tail out of our minds!)

Summer and friend Eden having a little lemonade stand.

Mette dressed in a poodle skirt and some interesting headwear.

The cutest little terrarium Daisy made in her floral design class.

Mike brought home some little wooden pumpkins (or perhaps they were meant to be apples?) the other night for the kids to paint. I need to find where all the other finished ones got off to, but I got a kick out of Penny's "It's a rock fact!" pumpkin ("Over the Garden Wall") and Anders' crpytid (of course) "Mothman" (you know: the giant, winged, humanoid creature that terrorized West Virginia in the 1960s).

And we will end on that high note. :)