A Running Collection

During Thanksgiving, Grandmother Boggs brought a lovely book, The Quilt Maker’s Gift by Jeff Brumbeau. Thanksgiving came and went but the children continued to pour over the pages. One afternoon, George Wilder read it out loud to us. I don’t think we’ve ever poured over a book like this one. The pictures, the quilts, and the story captured us and took us on a long journey. The illustrations and the writing beautifully patched together a delightful tale reminding us that real happiness isn’t about getting but about giving. A great way to enter the holiday season. The children became fascinated by quilt patterns and their names. I told them that they could design their own and name it and that I’d happily help them create it. Although, I’ve never quilted in my life I figured we could figure it out. They quickly found paper and pencil and set to work. And then Amelia said, “We have to make this right now or else we will never make it.” She is right, but I wish she ...

 George was out of town and the night was young. The children had energy gushing out of their eyes and ears and mouth and legs and arms. Slow waddling mama didn’t have a gear, but if I didn’t find one, silliness was about to take us all down. We have a little tiny stage that we’ve had out here and there. They don’t use it much, but suddenly they’ll have an idea. I thought to get it out and didn’t know what would become of it, but it was the only bait I could manage to muster. They took it hook line and sinker. We had the most glorious time singing Christmas Carols as it became Amelia’s “Sing Along” stage. We listened to George Wilder recite a silly poem he wrote about moldy pizza –complete with props. And we gave William the stage to show off his paper airplane and accompanying story. Mama propped belly onto couch and baby rolled and kicked and enjoyed the music and words and sweet laughter. And then it was bedtime and we fell in filled up from the st...

So here is what 38 weeks looks like this time around, which is just the same as the others. And the time has already slipped into another week. At 39 weeks, we've reached the long long wait at the end of "any minute". Any minute turns into long hours and days and weeks and nothing happens. So we keep trucking.  To be honest, some days, I don't want to truck. I don't want to do anything but sleep it away. Some days it seems like another day can't go by, but then we get to check one more thing off the list and play  in the beautiful sunshine and it is worth the waiting.  The Christmas holidays bring activity and plans and creations and that distracts from the waddling around and hip assorting and finding something to wear in public.  Some trucking days are full swing. Long walks with the children, reading, writing, thinking, soccer in the front yard, errands, play dates, Christmas parties, cooking, sewing, picking collards and greens from the ga...

 The autumn is beautiful here. This house on the hill surrounded with beauty, surrounded with color and life is sometimes more than I can absorb. It is such a gift. Indian pipe stems even like it here. A rare plant void of green. The kids plant the front field with rye seed to fortify the soil. Wearing cowboy hats makes the job romantic.

 There is a silly rap song about overpriced items at Whole Foods. The rapper manages to mention “kale salad with a lemon twist”. That sounded really good, so I looked it up. That was two years ago. We’ve consumed a good bit of kale salad with a lemon twist since then. Now we've grown our own tremendous kale patch, so this salad is even more frequent and most refreshing and crisp in the middle of cookies and bars and breads and foods heavy with the holidays. It’s easy: A bunch of cut up kale Squeeze the juice of one or two lemons on your bunch of kale Drizzle with a good bit of olive oil. Message until the greens look super green. Salt and pepper. Eat. And we’ve taken turnips and mashed them with potatoes and that not nearly as light and crisp but will definitely add some yum to your regular mashed potatoes. Make sure to peel the turnips and put them in the boiling water five minutes before the potatoes. And the turnip greens ar...

Pancakes for breakfast, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with oranges at a picnic in the park. A chocolate cake with Lemon M’s (M&Ms). Gifts:  A spatula – very important. He scrambles eggs and flips pancakes regularly - tool of the trade. A lettuce spinner – We eat greens from the garden near daily. He has a hard time picking without pulling the plants so his job is to spin the greens after washing. Airplanes – Anything airplane. Tools - Real tools that he can use. He hammered and hammered away making a tree house. William has such character. We recently read about William the Conquerer and the Battle of Hastings. He quickly realized that Duke William was not a great guy. He made sure that every time I read his name in the story, I said, "Wilhelmet" instead of William. He is sure of himself and sure that the world is at his fingertips. He is with us in whatever we are doing. Right in the middle of it – Math time, reading tim...

If they had to, the children could do Christmas on their own. It’s a script. They’ve memorized all the details already. Amelia sings and sings the carols. She can’t get enough. They dig through the ornaments looking for their favorites.   The kitchen is a workshop of cookies and peanut butter balls and chocolate in general. They wait and wait for the moment that daddy says it’s time to go on the tree hunt. We’ve cut out snow flakes. We paint and draw cards and pictures. Manger Scenes and Christmas trees. We attempt to make pine cone garlands, but it turns into dipping them in white paint and then painting them with paint. We can’t have breakfast without singing O Come O Come Emmanuel and lighting the advent wreath. William wants to light the red one, but he has to wait one more week. Amelia repeats from her script. George Wilder is ready to go to the Bass Pro Shop to talk to Santa. He has it all clear in his mind how Santa works....