Living-Deliberately.com

Fall is coming…it’s still warm here but the mornings and evenings are so cool and refreshing, and there’s a little breeze with a hint that it’s direction has turned. Every day we look out and notice the hills beyond have a slight color change; little pockets that stand out in the wash of layers of blue and green.

Wheaton came to us tonight and said, “I wrote a song! It’s called, ‘I pwanted a seed’! Want to hear it?” And he sang, “I’m the best seed pwanter! I”m the best seed pwanter!” over and over…..

to have the confidence of a five year old :-).

We did school today in our newly beloved picnic spot, described at www.hutchinsons.info/ . A babbling stream, cool shade, and the aforementioned soft breeze made for fun school moments. I have to admit feeling a little proud as bicycling grandparents went by, no doubt noticing that we were homeschoolers, and hopefully thinking how lucky our children were to be outside on a such a beautiful day.

Full disclosure: the above tranquil setting was made possible do to a probable catastrophic van issue and repair. We don’t know the outcome of that situation but we are trying to look on the bright side of life. ’nuff said.

I sat outside today, recieving much needed encouragement from a new friend, and counted purple martins. It’s so fun to see so many birds right off our balcony! Those particular birds sweep and soar and look like they are really having fun up in the sky. We saw a hummingbird two days ago and have signed up for Cornell University’s Feeder Watch program. http://www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/

Little fat baby Rowan is changing so much! His hair is growing over his ears, one day flipping up in huge curls. With his chubbed out little legs and those curls he looked just like one of David’s baby pictures. He’s the first of our kids to have David’s baby shape and we never tire of kissing all that pudge! His newest tricks include shaking his head “no” over and over, making lip smacking noises, and motor-boating/spitting raspberries. What’s neat is that he’s finally realizing the connection between doing them and making us laugh!

This week has brought a surge of new routine with violin lessons, soccer practice, fencing, and homeschool. We’ve gotten over the season’s first colds. And praises be, heard from David’s family; everyone is weary but safe and there was no major damage. We pray for thier quick relief, for power, and enough food and water, and rest knowing they are in God’s hands.

One of them is whistling for mom and “tuck-ins”. Must go…

Sigh. The temptation to sit glued to the TV is strong. At times this week, we’ve become desperate for any shred of news of Laurel and our loved ones. At others, we’ve felt calm, thinking they must be okay, surviving with neighbors and waiting for power to come back on. And others, we’ve been so grief striken and weary from the images of the babies that we’ve had to just turn it off and walk away, all the while feeling guilty that we can do that and the ones suffering throught it, can’t.

So this week has been a study in contrasts. The storm hit, and while we expected it to be “hard”, we had no real concept of how bad it would be. I filled up my gas tank on Monday, Andrew had his first day of scouts. Tuesday came and we were horrified for New Orleans but still fairly certain our family was okay. Tuesday was actually spent with our friends, The Pierce family. They recently moved here in similar fashion to us, from Seattle, and we’ve become field trip buddies. They live near a wonderful natural foods store that I’ve been wanting to try called Earth Fare.

My primary motivation for going there was hearing they carried Homeopathics. For those of you in Jacksonville, Earth Fare is like Native Sun with a really big budget. It’s a beautiful store with a full restaurant. For a long time I thought it was “Earth Fair”, in a field, like a green, eco, farmers market. Our drive there was long, and of course I got lost, so by the time we arrived it was mid-morning. In my typical fashion I’d skipped breakefast and had the shakes by then. So I drove through McDonalds and got some junk to hold me over and keep me from totally blowing the budget on real food. The irony is striking. I felt soooo snarky sitting in my van eating McD’s in the parking lot of Earth Fare! But a look around, realizing that I was surrounded by SUV’s and not a one of them took bio-deisel, I figured things equalled out! After all, this was not a hard-core environment…this was a yuppy/healthy one!

It was fun shopping around. I got David a fig cake and some English Ale. I also found another variety of organic baby food. A pasta sauce using real wild truffles! And a marvelous farm fresh milk in a glass bottle. Usually when I drink milk, it’s with food and I don’t really taste it. It serves more to just wash the food down. This stuff wasn’t chunky or separated like our previous experience and it was definately something to be tasted! Soft and creamy and buttery….it was like the essense of “wholesome”. It was easy to imagine raising pink-cheeked, healthy children on this stuff. It was easy to see rolling green hills dotted with soft brown cows with eyes you could melt in. Milk….my new guilty pleasure :-).

By Wednesday I realized I was sick. It felt like the flu and Celia had a cold, so we doctored up on my new homeopathic supply and took things easy. The news was getting scary and heartbreaking and we watched alot of it. The lack of communication was like hammering at a hang-nail sized doubt and realizing we’d just cut our finger off. David started to feel desparation for his family, wanting to head down there with basic supplies. Gas prices spiked.

Yesterday was both eventful and not. The “flu” was really a breast infection, that once treated correctly is clearning up quickly. Being cooped up resulted in a noise complaint from the neighbors and management. It’s hard keeping four kids’ feet quiet on an upstairs apartment floor! Eventually I had to turn off both computer and TV, to stay away from news and from friends venting thier own frustrations. Feeling helpless can raise emotions and I needed to bring mine down a bit.

Along with the events of this week, I realized I have created a blog-monster. They are fun and addicting; even Andrew wants to start one! But please everyone, if I don’t read yours every day or comment, it’s only a time issue, not an interest one. My online time ebbs and flows, sometimes deliberately and sometimes not.

At some point this weekend I’ll post new pics of the kids. Erin and Joel are coming for a labor day visit and the kids are very, very excited about that. We are venturing out today, to use some of that last tank of cheap gas, which should make Miss Portia downstairs very happy. What we’d like more than anything else is to hear from Tom and Carol, Scott and Jennifer, that every one is okay. Maybe soon.