In the Midst of Chaos, Spring...

It is comforting to know that while everything else around me is uncertain in this day and age, I can still rely on spring coming and bringing sunshine and color back into the world.  Every time that I step outside my front door, or come back up the driveway to the garage, I see this beautiful forsythia.

I planted this back in 2010, and it was just one sad little stick from Aldi.  Now it is the embodiment of spring - bright yellow sunshine in flower form, boldly showing its face in the cold and grey.

Today I washed all of the windows and put the screens back in, another sign of spring on its way.

I am behind in planting seeds for my garden.  It needs a lot of work out there because JP was unable to help convert the raised beds back to normal garden last winter due to having another retinal detachment and surgery.  I sort of put things off this spring, uncertain if I would be able to garden after having foot surgery this spring.  Since elective surgery is postponed for an unknown period of time, I need to get on the ball now.

I did FINALLY finish the project that I intended to do over the winter 2 years ago.  I finished building a music box with my dad's help.  I both looks and sounds beautiful!

Enjoy spring in your neck of the woods, just practice social distancing while you are doing it!

And So it Begins...

On Friday the 13th, the Governor closed the schools for 2 weeks in order to try to slow the spread of the corona virus in our state.  Both girls were devastated - J was 2 weeks away from opening night of the spring musical, and L had just completed her first week of track practice.

JP began self isolating and using the downstairs guest room and guest bathroom 2 days later, and I was laid off from work 2 days after that.  It has been a worldwind of weirdness for our family, and (I'm guessing) for a lot of people.  

After 2 weeks off school, the Governor extended the closures through April 6th, and although we have very poor internet connectivity in our school district, the schools have made plans to begin work on line (for those who can) and handed out packets of information and lessons (for those who can't connect.)  So the girls start lessons again tomorrow.

Because it seems a good way to keep friends and family updated on how we are doing, I decided to dust off this old blog and fire her back up!

This week we decided to try to make a literary themed meal - the menu items should be from (or inspired by) a book or movie.

Literary Menu

-Danny the Champion of the World (Roald Dahl) - Toad in a Hole

   We actually made this one before - link here.

 -Farmer Boy (Laura Ingalls Wilder) - Creamed Carrots

  This recipe was found in my The Little House Cookbook.

-Percy Jackson and the Olympians series (Rick Riordan) - Blue Chocolate Chip Cookies

  I found this recipe on a blog, but I'm not crazy about it.  I would recommend that you just add blue food coloring to the wet ingredients of your favorite chocolate chip recipe.

-Harry Potter series (JK Rowling) - Butter Beer Ice Cream

  This recipe is VERY good and very simple.

-The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (CS Lewis) - Turkish Delight

  J has been wanting to try to make this for a long time, so we FINALLY did it!  It was different.  Good, but not selling my siblings out to the White Witch good.

Have you been trying anything new to make the pandemic, social distancing, and stay at home orders more fun?

An Explanation

I apologize that I have not been good at posting this summer.  Partly this is because I have been busy, but partly it is because I have not been happy.  Although we have had happy stuff go on and I continue to see beautiful things every day that I am grateful for, it is hard to sugar-coat things when it is not all light and rainbows.  I normally enjoy blogging, but having to think so hard about how to make things sound like I'm not complaining all the time makes it less enjoyable, and so I have avoided it.

We have done some other fun things since vacation.  L and I went to the Fair.

The girls and I went to the zoo.

We went down south for a weekend so I could go to one of my college friend's 50th birthday party - it was a lot of fun.

The garden continues to produce.  We are now getting corn in addition to what is pictured below.  I have also been avoiding the garden at times, because what it produces best and in abundance is weeds.  An overwhelming amount of weeds.  So many weeds that when I spend 2 hours pulling them, there are STILL an amazing amount of weeds, AND when I go back in a few days, they are back where I just pulled.  It's relentless, it's discouraging, it makes me feel like a failure.

2 weeks ago, J decided to FINALLY move in to a room of her own.  We have been advising this to the girls for a couple of years, but they have been resistant.  Since J decided first, she got to choose which room she wanted, which caused regrets by L (who finally seems to be coming to terms with it.)  The past 2 weeks have been filled with sorting through mountains of stuff collected over the past 10 years.  A lot has gone in the trash, a lot has gone to Goodwill, and some has gone into storage.  This has required a lot of sorting and stashing on my part as well.  Along with cleaning, shopping, moving, and now painting (although J is doing most of that herself.)  We were able to find a desk at the local Habitat Restore for J, as well as a bed on Amazon for much less than I had hoped.  There have been arguments, there have been tears, there has been a ginormous mess, and there has been more STRESS.  It will be good, but I am still waiting to see the light at the end of the tunnel of this project!

My biggest issue this summer, I think, is that I try to keep everyone else happy, which isn't possible, and just makes me feel more stressed and more unhappy.  I also feel very lonely up here on the hill.  The party with my friends in VA for a couple of hours last week is the first time I have spent with anyone besides my family, or at work, or at a Board Meeting for literally months.  I feel overwhelmed with everyone's schedules and the never ending list of things that need to be done.  Everywhere I look around here is a reminder of something else that I have not managed to accomplish.

So...I guess this is a farewell, for now.  I'm sure we will stay busy.  I'm sure there will be photo worthy happenings.  I'm sure we will all be fine.  But I can't do this for the time being.  It makes me feel worse.

Vacation 2019 by the Numbers

Our wonderful family vacation has come and gone, and we are back to the routine of summer...EXCEPT L has started back with soccer practice this week (2 nights/week.)

We spent another week up in Erie the end of July.  After 2 summers of going up in June and being unable to go in the water due to it being excessively cold, we decided to go a month later, which was a good choice.  We also decided to take our dog, Stella, along this year.  She has been notorious for being extremely carsick, so we have been taking her on short car trips all year long to help prepare her.  We also dosed her liberally with Dramamine.  She travelled well, but was so anxious the entire time we were there, that I don't think we'll be doing that again.

The weather was lovely for most of the week.  There were 2 mornings of clouds and rain, during which we visited The Tom Ridge Environmental Center/Museum and watched a big screen movie about volcanoes one day, and chilled at the house watching movies on the other day.

The girls and I also took a couple of long bike rides - one day we rode over 7 miles and met JP at one of the beaches, where we hung out for awhile.  Another day, we rode around the entire peninsula of Presque Isle (over 13 miles) and met JP at a diner for lunch.

Even Stella got to go to Presque Isle, we walked with her on the trail there too.  We declined to take her on the beach, though, as we were concerned that her Velcro like poodle hair would collect too much sand.

We walked up 78 narrow stairs to the top of Presque Isle Light House on one day, and up 132 steps in the Tom Ridge Environmental Center look out on another.

We played some games, watched some movies, ate a lot of good take out, and enjoyed just relaxing.

Unfortunately, I managed to fall down the stairs at our house on the first day, and to fall off my bike on the 3rd day, so I am still healing from 2 giant bruises on my left thigh.  Luckily all my bones are still intact.

As enjoyable as our vacation was, it is good to be home.  We harvested all of the hens, with my parents help, on the day before we left on vacation, so there have been fewer chores and more quiet on our hill since we've been home.

Now it is time to gear up towards the start of school, although it is still a couple of weeks off.  We have bought school supplies, and I think we are good on school clothes until it starts getting cold.  L's soccer cleats still fit (thank goodness), so we are good on sports equipment as well.

Enjoy the last few sunny days of summer!

Surprising Things Growing

I was working in the garden over the weekend, and noticed that the garlic that I planted circa 2010 appeared ready to harvest.  I dug a few heads last year as well, but nothing happened all those years in between!

JP told me that while he was mowing, he noticed pears in one of my trees.  I have effectively given up on my orchard, where most of the trees have died and been replaced multiple times and then died again or still don't bloom or produce fruit.  These pears, however, are growing on one of the trees lining the driveway that are supposed to be decorative pear trees.  This one tree has always looked different than the rest, and never bloomed until this year.  Again - I planted all those trees around 2010, although several of them also had to be replaced.

I'll take it, although I wish that tree with fruit was a peach tree - yum!

July 4th Weekend

Just finished binge watching "Stranger Things" Season 3 on Netflix.  Whew!  It was nice having a lazy day today after working hard for the past several days.  It was nice to have JP home as well!  He worked 9 out of the past 12 days, and is still trying to catch up on rest, after spending his first day off mowing for 5 or more hours.

I baked Red, White and Blue Scones for breakfast on the 4th.  They were pretty, but otherwise not amazing - too bad.

The blueberries have been picked again.  I now have 6 gallons + frozen.  I also baked 2 loaves of blueberry bread to freeze for when my whole family is here this week.  I canned another 5 quarts of pie filling as well.

This is going to be a crazy week - work, appointments for the girls, family coming on Wednesday, and reunion this weekend.  I'd better go get my beauty sleep while I can!

Vacation and the Rest of June

Some how most of June passed me by without me posting regularly.  We have stayed incredibly busy, which is part of the issue.  There are many days that I don't manage to get anything done between getting the girls where they need to go and life in general.

We did manage to take a long weekend mid-month to visit Lost River State Park in WV.  It is a beautiful mountainous and wooded park, that JP selected especially so the girls could go horseback riding.

J on "Fred"

L rides "Skipper"

The first day we rode for about 45 min to the top of a mountain.  Beyond the little building, you can see about 270 degrees!  The second day, we rode through the woods, up and down mountains for 2 hours.  It was gorgeous, but a little scary at times - I forgot how high up one is when seated on a horse!

We stayed at a B&B nearby that was pretty nice.  Unfortunately the caretakers both smoke, so we had to wash and febreeze EVERYTHING when we got home.  The B&B had a nice game room, and we spent a lot of time playing Foosball and darts.

We saw a little building out back, which looked like a hobbit hole, so we checked it out.  It was not populated by hobbits at the moment, but perhaps they'll be back soon?

We were actually staying very close to our college town, so we stopped in before coming home.  The first thing we did was get ice cream at Kline's.

L had her second basketball camp of the summer the week after we returned, and continued the league games at the Rec Center every Monday night.  Her last 2 games were this week.

J started her summer job at the Library on Monday as well.  She often has fun stories to tell about patrons that she meets, or brings home movies to watch.  Her job runs for 6 weeks, and she finishes up the end of July.

Meanwhile, the strawberries finished in the garden, and the peas and blueberries have started.  I picked 5 gallons of blueberries this week, and spent about 4 hours weeding around all of the bushes.  I finally finished taking care of all of them this weekend, and it is time to pick again, so I have recruited a couple of friends to help out tomorrow.

On Friday morning, L and I drove North to the surgery center, where she  had her adenoids removed.  This occurred after a year and a half of snoring accompanied by apneic episodes, and a thorough evaluation by her family doctor, the allergist, the ENT, a sleep study, and finally the ENT again.  She is doing very well, but fairly uncomfortable because of the swelling and soreness in the back of her mouth.

In July, we are having a family reunion.  My brother from TX and I have been calling each other about once a week in preparation, as we are in charge of the planning.  My youngest brother won't be at the reunion, but his family will come here for a few days before hand to visit with everyone.  I will have 8 extra people sleeping at my house, and 10 extra people for meals for a couple of days!

I'm sure the blueberries will need to be picked several times yet before they arrive!