For real that is where we were this weekend.  The girls and I grabbed the leashes and headed down to the trail late afternoon.  The woods are coming alive again. They have not completely thrown off winter as you can see by the trees. But, it's starting and it's beautiful.  

This has been a week of outside which is awesome but I have barely had time to bless myself as my Gram would say.  About half (ish, sorta) of my household to-do list is being done….as the painter has no doubt noticed. Still, the sun is shining.  Who can stay inside long? 

The stream and path alongside run behind a neighborhood whose homes back up right to the water's edge. They sport deep backyards with lovely landscaping.  As so many homes in the area do, there are daffodils planted in clumps in the lawn.  

Beautiful evening with my girls.  I have such a sense that these days are numbered as each month passes by, bringing them both closer to leaving the nest for good. I take not one of these walks for granted these days. 
 

It's been many years since I woke up to a window like this. Temperatures have been in the single digits here in the great white north.  

We were walking from the car to the restaurant tonight and Brendan says, "Hey Daddy, look!  I'm a factory!"  "I am too!" the little girls piped in.  They were blowing with all their might, sending great smoke stacks of steamy breath into the frigid air and intermittantly laughing hysterically. 

I grew up here. I shouldn't freak out over single digits. I think you acclimate though.  And then stop being acclimated when you leave.  But I promised myself I would not be one of those tiresome bloggers who write about the weather.  

(insert long pause while I think of something else to say….)

Fortunately there IS a lot of wonderful to share because cold as it is outside the house, the inside held every one of my children. All of them.  Together in one place.  Do you know it has been four long years since every one of them has been in the same room? I am so very grateful I did not know four years ago how long it would be. 

We have been working diligently to finish last minute tasks – assembling favors, stitching slippers, gathering supplies. Mostly though, I am just soaking them all up.  

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

more moments at Amanda's

By all accounts it was a banner year for Halloween around here. No doubt it helped a lot that we began to think about costumes sometime before the week of.

We've seen a lot of great ideas over the years.  Every year as we follow the kids around we muse about all the potential group costumes we could pull off.  Every year we shelf those plans until we are walking around the next time.  This year we started tucking away props well in advance.  We won't always have the numbers at home to be able to pull this off so I didn't want to put off good ideas any longer taking for granted there will be other years. 

That's what my girls dearly wished to do.  But we can only freeze bits of time with the click of a camera. The rest of it marches on.  Their sweet friends have been in front of my camera more than a few times over the past three years. There have been carnivals and caeli's, movie nights and prom nights. Now they are off to  the States after spending more than half their lives on this side of the pond.  It is a big, brave, and beautiful thing these military kids do.  They care, they bond, and then they say goodbye to all that is familiar and friendly to begin again.  

"Twenty-five years.  A quarter century," he messaged very early. 

"Yes."

"It's not been a quiet one."

(laughing) "Nope!" 

Of all the adjectives ever linked to my boy, quiet does not pop up too often.  A fearless toddler, a wildly adventurous child with boundless energy, a teen who pushed past limitations… as well as pushing envelopes and pushing my buttons.  He was destined for big things – big trouble or big opportunity.  In the past quarter century he has seen some of  both.  Such is often the case for those with great drive, great intensity, great vision.  

His mind was and is still always brewing up a great idea or seven. He has been gifted with the fortitude to see those ideas through come heck or high water.  This year he is a college graduate, working fulltime, with a beautiful fiance, coach of a team of inner city basketball players, and partner in a new business. I don't know where the next 25 will take him but it will probably not be quiet because this boy of our's certainly lives out loud. 

Because he also lives on another continent my heart is a little heavy tonight. This morning when we talked he said I just want a birthday blog post, mom.  Make it a good one!  Since this morning I was remembering this story.  It is our story in many ways. So here you are Z.  Wish you were little enough to read to again.  In lieu of that, I wish you were here tonight.  The house is far too quiet without you. : )

Finton came into our lives one hot, muggy late 70's summer.  My grandparents had few neighbors and we knew them by name.  Just down the road was a retired university professor.  He wore a starched white button down shirt and suspenders while driving his tractor.  His adult daughter had seen much more of the world than most of us in that isolated pocket of Wisconsin farmland.  On her travels to Ireland she had befriended a family with a son not much older than I, whom she brought to the farm for the summer.

Since the neighbors had no children, Finton found his way over to our place quite regularly where he quite regularly drove.me.crazy.  He had a round freckled face, a head full of black curls, and bright blue eyes that danced with mischief.  All summer I was hyper alert, never knowing what lay around the next corner.  He might well be poised with one of the horses' water buckets ready to douse me.  He was always asking about 'the wee lass' a nickname my family adopted with glee.  That drove me nuts too.  They teased that he was sweet on me.  I was sure he had dedicated his life to tormenting me.

Finton loved British comedy and his family would send him little cassette tapes of his favorite comedians. I didn't really get it.  He said it was a British thing and urged me to just listen one more time.  I still didn't get it.  Some 30 yrs later I wish I could tell him my guilty pleasure is Mrs. Brown's Boys ; )) 

Finton was a Catholic and our neighbors were Protestant. I didn't realize at the time what an incredible cross-cultural connection was happening there, nor how incredible the whole exchange was, given 'the troubles' back home for him.  What I knew was that Gram and I took Finton to mass with us that summer.  On the drive back home one day the sky turned dark and Finton went quiet.  

The neighbor shared with us later that he was dreadfully afraid of our wild summer storms, the tornado sirens, how the sky could go from blue to yellow and sickly still, then erupt.  I didn't realize then how mild Irish weather is by comparison.  I guess I thought it thundered fiercely all over the globe.  But, it doesn't. That big boy-man trembled which softened my heart some.  

I don't know what happened to Finton, but I thought about him fondly when we had our first thunder here the other day, so much closer to where he came from than from where I did.  We pulled out Patricia Polacco's Thundercake and realized we had just enough of all the ingredients on hand.  So we baked. And we talked about scary things and being little and getting braver and growing up and going to Ireland. 

And then, the sun peeked out in time for cake. (recipe here)

Read with us?  Who better to tell the story than the author herself.

Close to the top of classic simple summer pleasures is making s'mores. This night was made even better by a friendly little wager. Their Dad off-handedly said he'd offer a reward for whomever could light the fire pit without use of fuel, match, etc.  Here's a helpful tip for you, dear readers.  Do not make wagers like this with homeschooled kids. You may discover that your teen daughter got a flint set from her big brother as part of her birthday package one year (along with other resourceful items like pink hair dye and a small video camera for her dog to wear around his neck.) Girlfriend sure enough DID find her flint and in short order had a nice little campfire going.  

Oh yes she did. 

Bam.

"…you can come too, too, too," – Peter, Paul, and Mommy

I hum the verses every time I open these pictures.  Can't tell you how many times my older boys and I sang this LOUDLY in the minivan.  I grew up with Peter, Paul, and Mary.  It was fitting they did too. They also grew up with zoo trips and their little brothers and sisters have not visited nearly as many times.  We determined to fix that. 

(Someone was not a fan of large swimming creatures on the other side of the glass. ; ))

"Now close by the church, past which Piccola often romped in her play, there stood a mass of old gray stone, carved with quaint figures that told of the life of Jesus. Stiff and queerly fashioned were the figures, but they had been carved by those who loved the story, and Piccola loved it too.  As she carefully traced out all the tale, she said to herself with a heart full of reverence:

'It was Jesus who taught men to know the good God as their Father, to let His Goodness shine in their hearts, and to love one another.'"

So…Piccola had no thought but that all the earth must rejoice." 

 -American Cardinal Readers book 3