Easter Saturday

Knowing that Sundays have been anything but restful recently, we decided to go ahead and do Easter baskets on Saturday this year. The Easter Bunny hid eggs all over the main floor and the basement, so we'll probably be hunting Easter eggs for a good year or more. Phoebe has been finding eggs all day!

 

Grandpa & Darla's Wedding (March 29)

Big day over here today—Alexander lost his second tooth!

Just kidding!

I mean, he did lose a second tooth this afternoon, but our Big Day News is that today was Grandpa and Darla's long-awaited (and also not-so-long-awaited) wedding day. They were only engaged for a couple of months, but I had a few little flower girls at my house who have been so excited for this wedding that even that felt like a long amount of time. 

I have so many thoughts swirling around in my head about this wedding.

First of all, I'd like to apologize to my parents and to Andrew's parents for our own whirlwind engagement. Andrew got home from his mission on October 12 (2005). We got engaged on October 26 (also 2005) and were married on December 16 (also 2005). Somehow I thought that was plenty of time to put a wedding together. 

Turns out even the simplest of wedding plans still require...quite a lot of coordination and behind-the-scenes work. I'm sure our parents were losing their minds trying to pull everything together, while we blithely waltzed through the entire affair. That said, it's not like they were entirely surprised by our quick decision to get married and, in fact, were perhaps even less surprised than we were. 

To be fair, we had known each other—as friends—for several years. Continuing that friendship just made sense, even if our formal courtship was brief (and it was brief). 

There is something to be said about getting to know someone before you marry them, but I wonder truly how much time anyone needs to spend to get to know anyone else because...people are surprising. 

I mean, you can spend 18 years of your life thinking your spouse won't eat tomatoes and then one day they go to Montreal without you, are served a sandwich with tomatoes, throw caution to the wind, eat those tomatoes and find that tomatoes actually lend the sandwich a certain—as the French say—je ne sais quoi. And then next time you have sandwiches as a family you run out of tomatoes because that certain someone has taken the last slice that you had been assuming would be yours... 

See? Mind blowing stuff happens all the time!

A Walk Through Jerusalem

Our stake put on a "Walk through Jerusalem" on Saturday. They set up a village in the gym, elaborately partitioned off with sheets and cardboard to create a number of private spaces where the children could travel through in small groups to learn about the Saviour's life. 

FHE

Today for FHE we did our first quarter check-in on our goals for the year and discussed our recent "plateau" in homeschooling (where the kids do their darndest to not accomplish any actual work the entire day until I, exhausted, give in and tell them to go outside and play). 

On the one hand, we had a good discussion about procrastination (stemming from Alma 34:33):

I beseech of you that ye do not procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed.

Though Rachel accidentally read verse 35 instead, which was really a little harsh for our purposes:

For behold, if ye have procrastinated the day of your repentance even until death, behold, ye have become subjected to the spirit of the devil, and he doth seal you his; therefore, the Spirit of the Lord hath withdrawn from you, and hath no place in you, and the devil hath all power over you; and this is the final state of the wicked.

So we also talked about how grace—and the atonement—can really cover a lot of stuff, so I'm not saying the children are headed to "heck" in a hand basket simply because they procrastinate from time to time (though procrastinating repentance while banking on being saved is...a whole nother ball of wax). 

Anyway, we talked about other scripture stories this made us thinking of and the kids came up with:

• The parable of the ten virgins (five of whom were unprepared)
• The prodigal son (who wanted to play without responsibility)
• The parable of the talents (and the servant who buried it in the dirt, thinking that would be enough)
• Noah (and all the people who wouldn't listen to him)

All excellent stories to bring home the point Andrew and I were trying to make about buckling down to do your work before goofing off. Because it just makes everyone happier. For one thing, in theory the kids would get to play sooner if they simply...did their work...right? For another thing, Mom would be much happier, which would make everyone happier, right?

We talked about how doing things—using our bodies, using our minds, creating things (art! stories! gardens! needlework! clean spaces!)—helps us feel happy. Avoiding doing things (like, for example, how I'm avoiding working on the paper I should be working on right now) can make us feel happy for a time, I guess, but at the end of the day...when we think about what we've accomplished...it's...a bit depressing.

Baklava and the Case of the Missing Socks

Yesterday evening we went outside to play after dinner. Phoebe wanted to play with the big kids in the cul-de-sac, but I told her she needed to stay in the yard with me because she's still little.

"I think I'm a big kid now!" she insisted.

And I did eventually relent and let her go play with the kids (I had a meeting to go to), but not before we played a few games together to let the big kids play without having to worry about her. 

Disturbing the peas (and other tales)

I'm working on putting a little fence around our garden, with the goal of keeping various critters out of it—deer mostly...perhaps the occasional rabbit...oh, and Phoebe!

Here's Phoebe disturbing the peas:

Once freshly planted in straight, tidy rows, our peas are now destined to be a "chaos crop," and will truly have follow the adage of blooming where they were planted (wherever that may have ended up being).

Particularly Pungent Pineapple

Andrew made chicken tikka masala for dinner. It was delicious but was a little spicier than he intended, the little kids suffered through a few bites of the sauce, but mostly ate plain rice and naan. Spicy bites were alternated with bites of fresh pineapple, to quell some of the heat. 

Everything was fine and dandy until I looked over at Phoebe and noticed her lips were bleeding. 

"Phoebe!" I said. "Why are your lips bleeding?!"

I dabbed them off with a napkin, trying to remember if she'd tried to get down at some point and bumped her face on the table or something. Because why would she be bleeding?

And then Benjamin said something, so I turned to look at him and his lips were bleeding.

"Benjamin!" I said. "Your mouth is bleeding, too!"

"Wait, what?" he asked, wiping his mouth with his napkin. 

"He's bleeding, too?!!" Andrew asked.

We started frantically scanning faces: "Alexander's mouth is bleeding, too!" Andrew announced.

"Is mine?" cried Zoë, who hadn't really touched much of her dinner.

Zoë was fine. 

"My mouth burns a little, but I think it's fine," Rachel said. 

Same answer for me and Miriam, both.

Andrew volunteered to be the constant for our study. "I didn't have any pineapple," he said, which launched a long discussion of which fruit he'd prefer in any given pair of fruits because he doesn't often choose to eat pineapple, apparently. 

And with good reason!!

Now, we already knew about bromelaine in pineapples, and have often joked that it's a fruit that you have to digest before it digests you, but we have never had one quite as pungent as this one!

There were a few panicky moments where we weren't sure why everyone was suddenly bleeding, but it only took us a few minutes to clue in to what was wrong. Still—so weird!

Four-leaf clover

This morning, Miriam made her goal of running a 10-minute mile. We'll see if she ever runs again (I'm sure she will, though she claims she won't), but at least she can finish her psychology class now since she achieved her goal. The purpose of the assignment wasn't necessarily to achieve the goal...but to go through the process of setting a goal and working on a goal long enough to see some progress.

Benjamin and I ran 5 miles, with our second mile at a 9:41 (and a pace of 10:30 overall). We deviated from our usual running route, which took us by a lovely tree in full bloom not too far from our house.

We are lucky that "stinky pear" season is so short-lived down here. It's pungent for a few weeks in late February and early March, but by now the Bradford pear blossoms have mostly been torn from the branches by the breeze, and they're leafing out in blissful, scentless green.

So the beautiful tree Benjamin and I ran past was not a stinky, ol' pear tree. It was some sort of ornamental cherry tree.

Later in the afternoon Rachel wanted to go for a walk (along with Phoebe (who was super grumpy because she had just given herself a nosebleed (from dig, dig, digging for gold) and Miriam). I told the girls I wanted to walk past this tree so I could enjoy it a little more, instead of just...running past it. So that's what we did.

It hangs over the sidewalk and is just lovely. 

St. Patrick's Day and Primary and Organ and Stuff

 

Today was St. Patrick's Day...and Sunday. Alexander was very excited about this combination of events (he had trouble keeping both feet on the ground).

Green Day

Alexander is terribly concerned about his lack of green church attire and the fact that St. Patrick's Day falls on a Sunday this year. He absolutely did not want to get pinched but just wasn't sure what he was going to wear! It was a real conundrum. 

So I joked that Miriam could make him a tie really quick since she's our resident seamstress.

To my surprise/delight she said that she would! So we looked up a few patterns and she was less than impressed to find out that a necktie involves very little machine sewing and a whole lot of hand stitching. I told her that I would do the hand stitching if she would do everything else—all the cutting and ironing and machine work. And we had ourselves a deal (though to be fair I ended up doing a whole lot of the ironing)!

This little project soon became two green ties (one for Benjamin and one for Alexander, since neither of them have green church attire, while the girls have plenty of options when it comes to skirts and dresses and things). When Miriam saw how much green fabric she had left after making the ties, however, the project ballooned into two green skirts (one for Zoë and one for Phoebe) and two green ties (one for Benjamin and one for Alexander).

It took us longer than we thought, but we managed to finish it all in one day (and it cost us nothing because it was all fabric I picked up from our Buy Nothing Group). We also learned a lot!