Turning eight

And then he was eight. It happened so fast, and I'm so far behind, that I haven't written his letter yet, but it's coming eventually, I promise.

In our family we have a tradition of celebrating birthday weeks. Why? Because a birthday doesn't always fall on a convenient day, or sometimes people just have bad days, or sometimes people are under the weather. Having only one day to celebrate all year long seems hardly fair. So in our house the celebrant gets a whole week of lighter chores, their choice of extra activities, and their choice of meals. It's well earned on the other 51 weeks of the year.

On his actual birthday, our newly minted eight year old chose dinner at Real Seafood Co. so he could have crab legs. The day before found us at the Food Gatherers fund raiser dinner, and the rest of the week consisted of various combinations of tacos (shrimp tacos, chicken tacos, and beef tacos). On the final day of his birthday week he had the whole family over for grilled salmon and salad and games in the yard. We took cookies to homsechool group, cupcakes to nature group, and made strawberry shortcake with family.

Perhaps it is a sign of his maturation that he had only a limited birthday list this year. Prior lists have been longer than the number of party guests, and at times audacious in request. This year's list included one outdoorsman's knife, and three different books. Without wanting to encourage greed, I asked him a couple of times, in subtle ways, if he was sure his list was complete. The upside, of course, is that he got eveything he asked for, plus some great art supplies and a totally awesome wizard's hat to go with his cloak, and was completely and utterly pleased.

And then the birthday, and the birthweek, were past, and what we had left was an eight year old. An eight-year-old in a wizard's costume with an outdoorsman's knife.

(holiday) weekend warriors

Since moving into our house, when we started by regrading the lawn and putting in one small garden, we have spent most of our holiday weekends working up a sweat in the yard. The projects have varied in type and size over the years, but as long as we were in town on a long weekend, we were working in the yard, usually with help from extended family.

Over six years this has meant a lot of change. When we moved in we had exactly one tree and the only garden was the builder's landscaping in front—everything else was grass, grass, grass. Grass that you have to water, weed, and mow. Now the house is lined with plantings and the yard bordered in flower garden; we have a total of nine trees, three raised vegetable garden beds, and one very large native plant butterfly and hummingbird garden; there are two dry rock rivers to divert the sump pumps that drain in our yard and a fire pit; and now, after this Memorial Day weekend, we now have a patio. There is still a bit of finishing work to do around it, but now we have a great new place to sit and enjoy our gardens and

The spaces between

Life is punctuated by routine.

Invariably we start the day with breakfast and an adios to Jon on his way to work. Our morning is about table work—the school lessons that we actually sit down and do, like math, spelling, grammar, geography, etc. (and not all homeschoolers do this, by the way, but my kid happens to like the predictability of it). And we squeak in piano, and some time to read, or build, or play. Then there's lunch, and a chance to get outside if the weather is good, or play games, watch videos, read, sing, build, what have you, in the afternoon. Then Jon comes home and we soak up our time with him before going to bed and starting all over again the next day.

This is our routine. It is the punctuation that keeps us on track, and punctuation is good because it keeps you on track. It's also good because it helps you tell or read the story with enough predictability that you can enjoy the unpredictable—the story that happens in the spaces between, like a surprise afternoon in the middle of a work week when our whole family gets to drop what we're doing and head to the park to enjoy the weather together. We like together.

Life happens in the spaces between.

Halloween

It was a wet one this year, but warm, and most of the kids in our neighborhood braved the weather joyfully. I'll take damp over freezing any day, but with all that drizzle, I left the camera at home this year.

Growing up, Halloween for me meant a homemade costume, usually one that made no pop-culture sense (one elementary year I turned myself into some kind of ghost princess thing that I still can't identify). It meant my parents taking the glass out of the top of our storm door to make giving out candy easier (if only our door did this, it would make things exponentially easier with dogs). It meant beef barley soup for dinner, simmering on the stove so that we could eat whenever we had the time or fancy. It meant visiting Mr. Long's house first in the evening, sometimes when it was still light out, to see just what he had up his sleeve, what fancy costume, what creepy decorations, for that year. We still talk about the year that he propped himself on the porch in a coffin and spooked the pants off all the kids that approached. We think I was the one who, after having been spooked, refused to go back up to get my candy. Sounds about right.

Every neighborhood had that house—the one with the spooky music and excessive decorations, the one that some kids rush towards while others approach more tentatively. In our neighborhood now, this house is a couple of streets away, and it never disappoints. This year's new addition to the maniacal menagerie was an evil vacuum cleaner. Who said humor couldn't be part of it? 

Christmas photo shooting

It's that time of year again.