family week - all the other days, in photos

Somehow time got away from me.

Here, in photos, is the rest of family week: days 4, 5, 6, and 7.  Enjoy!

Because there's a rule, isn't there, requiring us to photograph our feet
& hot beverage of choice in moments of serene contentment?

There was just something about that lone cornstalk . . .

Hmmm .... lumber!?  What could be going on here....?

Spice, the resident monkey.

The first board, and a very respectable-looking lag bolt.

Counting, to make sure they're all there.

Every family week includes cats, of course.

The picture of contentment.

Vet clinic

A morning at the "bike park"

My menfolk - I love watching them together!

What's this??  A platform emerges . . .

All - those - dewdrops - !!!

testing it out

family week's grand finale

And good-night!

family week, day 3

5:20 a.m.

My Farmer's alarm clock had just rung when we heard quiet, quiet footsteps on the stairs.  Two inside, and one come up to use the upstairs bathroom??  We lay still, waiting.

A tall form entered the bedroom.  "Yes?" I queried, giving up the pretense of sleep, one hand on the snooze button of my own soon-to-go-off alarm.

Nice whispered back, "I think it's going to rain, so we came inside - except Spice, she wanted to stay out."

Well.  Okay.

They tucked themselves into their beds, smelling like campfire smoke.  We got up and showered.

It didn't rain.

Oatmeal around the fire again, and coffee, and then - so that it didn't feel too much like just an ordinary Sunday, I suppose - s'mores.

It was hard to leave our outdoor cathedral for the tables and chairs and sound system effects of a building, but we did, and talked long afterwards to old friends, a delightful surprise.

Mushroom barley chicken soup for lunch, around the once-again-revived campfire, and a few more chapters of Little House in the Big Woods.  It's Lil' Snip's first time through this series, and so much fun to watch him react to our long-time favorites.  Then, off we all go to our Quiet Time spaces: tent, hammock, a blanket in the grass.

A nice, long afternoon nap and a bowl of homemade caramel ice cream later, we are fortified to briefly attend a neighbor's drop-in party.

Supper is our Sunday tradition of fruit, popcorn, nuts, crackers, cheese, and tinned fishes - smoked mussels and kippered herring this time! - eaten around the fire.  The children disperse to their various amusements (jump-roping on the trampoline, using natural dyes to create designs on wood scraps) until Nice remembers chestnuts.  A posse is formed, and returns with a very small basket of chestnuts.  The harvest is apparently only starting, but there are enough for one (and a fraction) each, and the fire is spread out so that roasting may commence.

Lil' Snip still doesn't like chestnuts; his is given to Spice, whose nut was mostly wormy.

Then off they run to search for clusters of ripe grapes on the sprawling, still-not-trellised vine, which they eat with relish while we sing praise songs off of an old sheaf left from my pre-college mission training, the sun sinking lower and lower in the sky.  Finally, I can no longer see my yarn to crochet, and the children get into their pajamas.

Spice:  "When we sleep in the tent, bedtime is FUN!!"

I left them making shadows with their flashlights on the vinyl tent wall between the two "rooms," obediently, somehow, using their whisper voices.  The half moon is high in the pine tree (an intended support for tomorrow's project: a treehouse) and the stars shine brightly on a lone banjo player . . .

church

This past week some of us were sick, and around here we treat sickness with (among other things) rest.  By Saturday we were feeling a lot better, but more rest seemed to be in order.

As much as we love our church family, going to church is not always restful, so last night my Farmer and I decided that our family would hold services at home today.  (And although we don't operate by democratic vote, we did ask the girls, individually, for their opinions.  Sugar, Spice, and Nice each said, hopefully, that they thought they'd like having church at home).

So after the breakfast dishes were cleared away this morning, the cats and chickens fed, we gathered by the piano to sing "Joy to the World" to Sugar's accompaniment, with Spice playing along on the lap harp.  That's the extent of their accompaniment abilities at present, so we moved to the kitchen table with our hymnals and sang "Blessed Be The Tie That Binds" and "The Servant Song" and "How Great Thou Art" and a few more, till our voices ran dry.

Lil' Snip was provided with Legos and a couple of Golden Books, and the rest of us pulled out our Bibles.  Spice volunteered to take notes.  Since we were "being church", we wanted to see what the Bible had to say about it.

Sugar remembered reading Hebrews 10:24 & 25 the other day, so we started there:

"And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another - and all the more as you see the Day approaching."

We added to that Hebrews 3:13, which reminds us that we are to encourage each other daily to keep ourselves from being hardened by sin's deceitfulness.  From this, we decided that "meeting together" must mean something other than only Sunday morning church meetings, if we're to be encouraging one another every day.  Might it mean simply that we keep company with other believers on a daily basis?

We talked about how spending time with people regularly helps you to know them better, and then your encouragement can be more specific, and probably more beneficial.  That "spurring one another on toward love and good deeds" might take the form of giving vision to each other of what could be, something to move toward, like a mule moving toward the carrot dangling in front of him, getting the hard work of plowing done because his eyes are on the prize.

Sugar read 1 Corinthians 11:17-34 for us.  We decided that Paul's point was for us to wait for each other, share with each other, don't be greedy, and don't be divided.  We turned to 1 Corinthians 14:26-40 to see again that we should be orderly and take turns, that everyone has a part (see also 1 Corinthians 12:12-31), and all are needed.  Singing would be part of a meeting, Paul assumed, and teaching, prophesying, and speaking in tongues (but only as long as there was an interpretation).  We confronted those troublesome verses about women and their role in church services, reading the study notes in the Bible and talking about our own experiences.

Time was flying by, so we only looked at one more passage:  Colossians 3:12-17, which doesn't tell us what to do at meetings, but how to live with each other.  We should be peaceful, thankful, forgiving, teaching & admonishing one another.

Another hymn, a break for tea and graham crackers, and the children began to disperse.  It had been an hour and a half.  (I should blush to say it, maybe, but I don't remember our family ever sitting down together for that length of time before for anything, let alone to study the Bible together.  Our evening "family time" which does include singing and Bible reading is usually only 20 minutes, max.)

"That was nice!  The time went fast!!"  Spice said happily.  "It felt more like church, somehow."

"It was more restful," agreed Nice.  "We didn't have to hurry and get ready in the morning, and then hurry to make lunch when we got home."

Staying home, in fact, gave me ample time to make a simple - but hot! - lunch of rice and chicken, a nice improvement over our usual PB&J.  We ate early, comfortably instead of ravenously.  Going to church somehow always works up in us a terrific appetite.

After lunch, Sugar, Spice, Nice & Lil' Snip changed into playclothes, put on their snowsuits and headed out to play in the snow, a motley crew of colorfully padded roly-polies.  They're out there now, scooping up the fluffy stuff and kicking it, making piles and messages and occasionally flinging it at each other, while my Farmer and I relax a bit before calling them in for afternoon Quiet Time.

I don't know when I've enjoyed a Sunday more.

                  - - - - -   < * >   - - - - -

Do you know of other passages about Christians meeting together?  I'd like to hear them ...

un-movie night

It's happening again, right now.

A week ago I found an old VHS of Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang in a thrift store, remembered enjoying it as a child, and brought it home to show to my children.

They still haven't seen it.  Each afternoon or evening that would have been just right for a movie night - it was cold and grey, or we'd been home for "x" days in a row - I've thought of hauling out the TV (which we keep on a high shelf) and VCR (which we keep in a closet) and lining up the children on the sofa to watch a slice of my childhood ... but I don't do it.

I hate to disturb them.

It's dark outside; we've eaten our supper and are planted in the living room where the fire burns hottest.  Spice is curled up on the sofa reading a Dr. Seuss biography from the library.  Sugar plays Colorku, a beautiful wooden version of Sudoku using colored balls.  Lil' Snip is building Lego tractors under the direction of Nice (who is living up to her name instead of plaguing her brother for the pleasure of hearing him squeal).

And I just can't make myself break up all the coziness, an almost palpable sense of "we are us; we are family; we belong here together."

So the videos I bring home gather dust on the shelf, and the children ask from time to time when we're going to watch them, but they never seem to remember to ask when we could watch them .... so we don't.

And no one seems to mind.

And Sugar learns new songs on the piano,
and Lil' Snip builds a million Lego towers,
and Spice makes music on her recorder,
and Nice sings songs she made up in her head,
and Sugar teaches herself new crochet stitches from a library book,
and Nice reads the Little House series,
and Spice teaches "school" to her siblings,
and Lil' Snip drives his trucks
and the girls dress up in ballet leotards and dance "The Waking of the Spring Flowers"
and it's all too lovely to interrupt for a mere movie ...


[for more thoughts on the TV-less life, check out this blog]

happily snowed in

Well, sort of.  :)

My Farmer read me some dramatic headlines about tens of millions bracing for a storm in the northeast, so we planned to revel in some of our favorite indoor activities today - reading, reading, and more reading.  Preferably by the fire, and preferably uninterrupted by small fry begging for stories and games.  One can dream.

But the snow didn't come.

I had gone for groceries the night before, so the larder was stocked.  In the words of one of our children's favorite poets, Clyde Watson:

Let the fall leaves fall

And the cold snow snow

And the rain rain rain till April:

Our coats are warm

And the pantry's full

And there's cake upon the table.

But, no snow.

I took advantage of the still-clear roads and made a run to the health food store and the library, Lil' Snip happily in tow.  We made it back with our giant bags of rolled oats and stacks of books to a house smelling deliciously of granola.  Sugar, Spice, and Nice had been busy while we were gone.

Still no snow.  How were my Farmer and the children ever going to finish the igloo they'd started with last week's snow?!

We lunched on hot dogs and sauerkraut and Reese's peanut butter cup cookies (a library bake-sale find), and I finished baking the last of this year's newest addition to the cookie list:  pfeffernusse.  [baker beware:  these may not look like much, but they are dangerously delicious!!]

And still the blizzard hadn't arrived.  Oh well, we settled in and read anyway.

Finally, midday, the snow started to come.

We started a meal of comfort food - baked ham and mashed potatoes - and my Farmer lost himself by the fire, reading my library book.

The small fry mostly entertained themselves, dressing up stuffed bears, chasing each other in circles around the downstairs (which is most conveniently arranged to accommodate this impulse), coloring, and building with sofa cushions and stools.

By nightfall the snow was coming down steadily.  Sugar was devouring a book on orchestral music and its accompanying CD.  Spice was hunkered down with Louisa May Alcott's Eight Cousins.  Nice and Lil' Snip were alternately sharing the music player that Cousin R just passed on to us and getting their baths.

The candles burned, and the snow fell.

And now, supper is put away - the ham cubed for tomorrow's soup, sliced for sandwiches later this week, and some frozen for another day - the driveway is shoveled (thanks to my Farmer), the children are all tucked in bed, and the fire burns, and we are happily snowed in.

closing up camp

I'm inside now listening to the rain.  For the first time in our Family Week history, it held off till the end.  We got our fill, almost, of campfires and s'mores, tenting and outdoor living.

This afternoon Sugar, Spice, and Nice had their last Quiet Time in the tent, kitties curled up beside them in their sleeping bags (except for the ones who couldn't resist the smell of the sausages I was cooking over the fire for tonight's soup).  Then, in the wind from the approaching storm, they helped my Farmer pack up the tent.  I put away camp chairs.  Stacked the few remaining sticks of firewood against a tree.

The fire still burned - low -, a lone potato and a handful of chestnuts left on the grate.  We kept the fire going all week.  This morning's breakfast fire was the first time we needed matches since we started it last Saturday.  Even then, the ash was warm.

Every meal for a week, we ate around the fire.  Most days we cooked once or twice using the campfire:  hot dogs (of course), toast, chicken satay, grilled tomato & cheese sandwiches, hobo packets of potato and sausage, scrambled eggs, potatoes in foil, apples, onions, sausages, and more and more s'mores.  Meals took forever, somehow.  No one seemed to mind.

We didn't do anything flashy this week.  No grand experiments.  No pricey field trips.  Not even many photos.  We just lived.  Outside.

Nice found her own "poking stick" for the fire (I'm a little possessive when I've got a good one).  Spice made "pencils" to write on an old pallet, by holding sticks in the fire till their ends were blackened.  Sugar hauled firewood and cut brush for resurrecting a fire from the previous coals.

They played with corncob dolls with braided "hair".  Baked "bread" wrapped up in grape leaves in the fire, to feed the cats.  Went fishing.  Walked back in the woods to wade in a very small spring-fed "swimming hole".  We went to the tractor pull at a local fair, ate funnel cake and elephant ear.  One day we took bikes to a nearby park to ride the trails and spent the morning riding, walking, even running in the sunshine, and ended up getting pizza to eat in the pavilion.  For a very cold ten minutes on the warmest day, the children and my Farmer had the last swim of the season in our pool.

Last night after dark, we walked over the rise to catch the moon as it came up full over the cornfield.

And now the week is over.

Tonight Lil' Snip will get a much-needed bath.  We'll tuck them all into their inside beds, their pillows still smelling faintly of campfire smoke.  We'll leave the windows open a crack for the music of rain and cricketsong.

And then in the morning we'll eat breakfast sitting at the table, dressed in churchy clothes like civilized folks, and go sit in circulated air for two hours, listening to people sing and talk into microphones and surreptitiously thumb their smartphones ...

... and our week outside will fade into vapor like a dream ...