A Big Thing

Every so often I take it upon myself to prove my mental instability by painting something.

Sherwin Williams sends out these emails that go something like this:
"Paint and all paint supplies are 40% for the next three days.  Sell us your soul.  Painting is easy and extremely fun.  Zero hard work and you will love every minute of it.  Hurry in and make the best decision of your life."
Or something like that.

Remember the Great Paint Project?  Check here: GPP Eve and GPP1 and GPP2 and GPP3

Summary:  I don't do well with change or lack of order.  At all.

I wanted to paint the trim in the playroom.  This wood stuff:

I thought it would be no big deal - like a one night and done thing.  Fun little project after the kids were in bed.  This is how Sherwin's ad brainwashes you.  So I didn't clean up the toys, check the calendar, alert Ryan....nope, just dug right in.

While I was taping, I realized this project should include the desk, doors, trim in the entry, all that too.

That right there is the moment this became The Stupidest Idea I Have Ever Had In My Entire Life.  Especially because this is a busy busy busy week with the other stuff of life, and I'm hosting a baby shower here this weekend.

deep dispair.
lots of swearing.
hopeless, endless painting
tears

But People, listen up:  This is why I preach community.  A few days before, I ran into Brittany - we grew up together a few houses apart.  She mentioned living there for a little while, looking for work and HELPING OUT WITH HER MOM'S PAINTING BUSINESS.

So I called her.  She showed up a couple of hours later and rescued me from the pit.

She brought her mad painting skills.  And bigger than that, she brought her kind way, her stories from when we were little, her patient suggestions, and her presence.

I wasn't happy when I took this picture.  I was freaking.  But I was at least breathing and moving and working and feeling a teeny bit kind.  

I do fancy things like organize conventions, produce worship services, mama my kids, and all that.  A paint project should not be a big thing, but it always turns into A Big Thing with me.  The changing and the not knowing if this will work and the things out of place everywhere stretch me to my limit.  I realize that in the scope of both big and little things going on all round us, its nothing.  Nothing. But when I'm in it, its really something for me.

But ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh we. made. it. through.  And this morning, I am one happy girl.  

Ok.

Remember this picture...

Now look!...

So there life went and once again brought to the light my new mantra:

"All things are inventions of holiness - some more rascally than others."  (Mary Oliver)

Indeed.

come on in

Oh my goodness, its really really here.  Thank you, Fall, for showing up.  Just when we needed our days to be shorter, our tempers to be longer, our breath to be deeper, and our hoodies to be zippered!

We let Fall in this weekend with rugby, fires, and sleep.

Ryan's playing on a Wichita club team, and wow they mean business.  I don't understand the game at all, but here's what I do know: Big guys run and run and don't stop, and they often tear each other down to the ground, and no one wears helmets or pads, and sometimes they yell words like "scrum, bind, engage," and there's a big ball that kind of looks like a football, and they wear short shorts, and LOOK AT THEIR SOCKS!  Seeing Ryan in those made the club fees and evenings he's gone totally worth it.  Hi.lar.ious.

Look at that big guy on the left.  Please, Goliath, don't break my husband.

We didn't camp at the Winfield bluegrass festival this year, and good friends - knowing I would be gloomy about missing out - called and suggested an UnWinfield Hotdog Roast.

If you listen closely enough, I think you could truly hear things slowing around here.
I don't just love this season, I love the changing that happens in these few weeks.
Fall, you are good good good to us.

gone

I'm on our community library board.  (See previous ramblings about that here.)

I love the library, but it has been taking me away from home for way too many meetings this last month.  We are trying to hire a new director, so I get to play Grown-Up when I call their references and interview them.  Its all very surreal and fun and strange.  

I looked through the camera today and found what happens when I'm gone and why everyone loves it so much...

1.  They skip picking up the toys or wearing pants (you can't see, but Sage is pantsless), and watch rugby!

2.  Eva gets to use my fancy camera while Dad and the littles are distracted...

Actually, its interesting to me to see what was important enough to the Chachi Band to be photographed...

Mom being gone must also mean 

3.  They eat chocolate.

I think Eva likes her life and her home.  Me too.

on purpose

No despair of ours can alter the reality of things, 

or stain the joy of the cosmic dance

which is always there...

We are invited to forget ourselves on purpose,

cast our awful solemnity to the winds,

and join in the general dance!

- Thomas Merton

Sorry its been awhile.  I've been busy dancing.  At least trying.  On purpose.  And eating tostones.

Mom ate these when she was a child in Puerto Rico, and they are one of my all time favorite treats! See that blurry hand?  People wouldn't keep their mitts off.

Here's how you do it....

1.  Buy those funny banana looking things at the store called Plantains.
2.  Let them get super ripe.
3.  Slice them and spread them out on a cookie sheet sprayed with Pam.  Spray the bananas with Pam too, and sprinkle with salt.
4.  Bake them for 10 minutes at 425 degrees.
5.  Flip them over and bake them for 10 minutes longer.
6.  Salt them again.
7.  Eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat.

I know its 87 degrees out today, but fall is in the air, begging to change our season.  The kids are in school, praise the lord.  And this life, it is good.  So forget yourself on purpose and dance!!!

anything

Ryan's fancy new job (read: anything but teaching in a public school) gave us tickets and we are not ones to say no to anything free.  Anything.

Exhibit A:

The State Fair

Clearly we don't get out much.  Eva was squealing.  Sage was pointing.  River had both hands on his face.  And that was from the parking lot.

The whole event is one giant study in shall we say a very unique culture.  I expected to be hot and cranky.  Instead I loved it.  LOVED it.  The food.  The people watching.  The crowds.  The loud music.  And mostly the collective decision of a group of mid-westerners to have some fun already dammit.  We're here to spend money (or in our case free tickets yay!) on fried everything and crap toys and fast rides and holy moly this is awesome.

Whenever I'm caught up in people watching and I look at the Buzz, he's doing the exact same thing.  With his mouth hanging open, silently, unabashedly watching and thinking.  

Did you know they can even do this!?  Why did I not go in and buy this. I mean just to say I tried it.  

Supper of champions.  Chocolate dipped frozen bananas for the kids' supper.  We ate carrot sticks before we left home, which I think means anything counts as supper.  You can see McCage's jaw-wink in this picture.  I love her trick-eye.  Can't help it.  I do.

Right after this picture, I threw a stick from the bananas on the ground and was treated to a lecture from my tree-hugger husband.  Something to the tune of "just because we're here doesn't mean you have to act like trash....."  Pretty sure it does actually.  Eva had to pee and my suggestion that she squat next to our table was not also greeted with enthusiasm.  It would not have been out of the norm for this venue.  I promise.

A carnie named Jedidiah is our new BFF.

This is what we did most of the time.  Open mouth watching.

Riv could not wait to get on the ferris wheel.  And pointed out that it was "even orange, Mom!!!!!"

I would like to say that I enjoyed the ride.  But I'm a pansy, a fact I owned when our basket stopped at the tip top for what had to be at least seven years, and I all but laid on the floor of the basket and squeezed Eva's hand so hard it had to have bruised.  One ride and done, thank you very much.  Eva hopped off and said she would prefer to go with Ryan for the second go-round.

The all time best ride EVAR.....

This giant swing/merry-go-round.  They swing your kids around so fast you truly can't figure out which ones are yours.

Then they get off and beg you to do it again.

She must've missed the "How to pretend to be civilized" lecture earlier in the evening from her papa.  Because when we were getting in the van, I looked over and her clothes were at her feet.  The girlie had to pee.  Hey, its the state fair and a-n-y-thing goes!!

Sign me up for 2014.

a boy and his apple

Its here!!  

River's apple tree's first apple!  And look how proud he is.

Actually its the tree's second apple because two days ago he and Ryan picked the first one and ate it before I could get my camera out so we're going to say this is the first apple ever and everyone is happy to oblige because that's how we roll around here in this chaos.

My pregnancy with the Buzz was higher risk than any of the other three.  We thought we lost him at 11 weeks gestation.  I was on bedrest in and out of the hospital for three months.  We cooked him until 3 weeks early, when the doctor said we couldn't wait any longer.

He was just under 6 pounds, and the sweetest little fighter of a man I had ever ever met.  We came home and planted an apple tree in his honor.  We had poured every last emotional reserve into growing our teeny baby and we just sort of wanted to acknowledge that we were ready to put ourselves into watching him grow and make fruit on his own.

My mama-ness is sentimental today.  All about a boy and his apple.

Yes, Buzz, I'll take one of you and your remote control monster truck too.....

My cup runneth over.

rascally inventions

Labor Day weekend was maybe 129 degrees.  The mosquitoes invited all their friends, neighbors, and long lost relatives to Harvey County West.  

So we thought, hey, let's go camping!

I sniped these pictures from Shari's blog - their family was there with us, and I was too overcome with my sweating to take pictures.  If you know me well, or maybe you just met me last week, you know that I do not do well with heat.  As in I climb into a place so far up in my brain that there is no seeing straight, saying kind things, remembering my children's names, trading of stocks, or general making of sense.

But we set up our tent at Bandit Hollow two nights early so the spot would be ours for the weekend and bribed the kids with the promise of camping for days ahead of time.  

There was no backing out.

There was only plowing through.

sweating

mosquito slapping

burned black hotdogs

grilled banana boats

tinfoil dinners that would-not-for-all-that-is-holy cook all the way through.  We should've taken them out of the fire and set them in the sun.  That would've been hotter.  

fans blowing on us as we sat around the fire.  Because you cannot go camping and not sit around the fire, even when your back is already wet with sweat.

frog catching

pond swimming

great convos about God and parenting and hot dogs

I've had this quote in my brain for the last week or so.  And by golly, its even true of camping....

Mary Oliver says:

"All things are inventions of holiness - some more rascally than others."

Those mosquitoes and that heat, they were rascally.  But...

because of great friends - Michiganders who braved Kansas camping!, the resilient laughter of our kiddos, Michelob Ultra, Bandit Hollow's awesome shade and comfort, and great burnt hotdogs...

Labor Day camping was indeed its own sweaty invention of holiness.