Unexpected Gifts

I was laying in my bed on Saturday morning when I found these selfies on my phone. 

I started to scroll through them and found myself laughing out loud.

 Especially at this one:

Oh, Claire.

I love you so very much.

Love Day Selfies

The festive table,

balloons, table scatter,

and yummy food was good and all, 

but when I remember Love Day this year, 

it's gonna be all about 

these family selfies tonight.

Every time I look at Isaiah in this next one, he looks like #grannytown.

And it cracks me right up.

(The same time that Benj is playing thug life. They kill me.)

#stilllaughing

And in this last one, everyone's pretending they're in a romantic kiss.

Benj even has the arms going. 

Oh boy.

This throwback of Mia from Valentine's dinner 5 years ago goes right along with this theme, so I thought I'd share it again. (It's one of my faves.)

I think Audrey Hepburn had it right when she said this:

"The best thing to hold onto 

in life is each other."

#always

#happyvalentinesday

These Boys & Me

Some of the happiest (for me, anyway) photos in my phone 

from the past couple of weeks come from New Year's Eve.

We'd eaten burgers

(hello pepper jelly, BBQ sauce, ketchup, mayo, mustard, pickles, avocado, broiled meat with salt and pepper, cheese -- just give me alllllllll the condiments),

 and Isaiah and I were sitting at the kitchen table putting together a 3-D puzzle of a German castle.

Benji was hanging out with us too, 

snapping photos, 

and making smack comments that made us laugh.

I love Isaiah's amused expression above (I don't know what I'm saying to him) and these two photos where he's laughing really hard.

We were working independently and together, and sometimes I called upon his brain to figure something out because I was lost.

#smartypants

As I've looked at these photos since, I've laughed out loud and smiled.

I love moments like these where things get goofy with my boys.

And that's all.

Rhyming

Claire and I got home from dropping the kids off to school on Thursday morning. 

We ate oatmeal together at the kitchen table, and then went outside to retrieve a couple of onions and some carrots from the garden that is almost over.

Came inside, chopped them up with celery, garlic, and red bell pepper, and then threw it all in the crockpot with split peas, water, spices, and chicken bouillon.

I made artisan bread dough and stuck it on the table to rise, and then cleaned up the kitchen.

Then Little Miss and I went into another room and began sorting clothes, a project I HATE.

Let me say this: hate is a strong word, but I am totally intentional here.

When I think of tasks I don't like, this ranks right up there.

When you have to pull down clothes, decide what you're keeping, what you're discarding, what's going to DI, and then clean out drawers to make room for the next size/season of clothes, get them washed, put them away, etc.?

Excuse my French, but it's a pain in the butt.

Flat. out. tedious.

(Ugh and eye roll.) 

What's a girl to do, though?

It had to be done.

So, there we were. I'm dumping out bags and sorting, Claire is oohing and ahhing over various articles and trying stuff on.

At one point she put on a shirt, and I think it might have been made out of wool.

(And here's where I insert that they've clearly been discussing rhyming in preschool and Claire is absolutely taking it to heart. I heard about it one day after I'd picked her up and we were driving home, and another time she ran into the laundry room to inform me that sandwich and witch rhyme. Indeed.

So, clearly, it's on the brain. Hers, that is.

She's trying words on for size.

And now, back to sorting.)

She puts on a shirt.

And I hear her say, kind of muttering to herself, completely oblivious to the expletive: 

"Well this shirt is
itchy bitchy."

And you know what?

I started to quietly laugh and didn't say a word.

And I'm still laughing.

Childhood is beautiful.

#ohmygoshiloveher

This Little Sequence

We were lying in bed next to each other and I snapped these photos in succession.

And the thing I keep thinking is that this little sequence pretty much sums her up.

She is funny, inquisitive, smart, verbal, zesty, surprising, articulate, energetic, full of life, laughter, and energy.

She always wants to go and she always wants to do.

She cries if she's left behind, never wants the party to be over, loves to snuggle, and is kind of a boss.

She always has an opinion and she'll let you know what she thinks. 

If you can't find something, ask Claire. She almost always knows where everything is.

She's insightful and has a vocabulary that amazes me.

I could just eat her up.

Claire's Insight On Mothers

A couple of weeks ago at bedtime, I got upset with Claire about something.

(I've kind of been edgy of late.)

 When I climbed into bed next to her, she'd obviously been explaining my behavior to herself because she turned to me and quietly offered up this gem:

"Mothers sometimes get mad and sometimes they get irritated."

And then, to further her point, she added:

"They sometimes get mad.

They sometimes get irritated.

They sometimes can't handle things.

Those are three things that mothers can't do."

I pulled out my phone and wrote it down.

And reading it now is making me laugh out loud.

It's flat out truth.

All of it.

#winning

Special Number

Last week, Isaiah said something that left me totally amused.

Like, I was sitting in one of the chairs on the deck 

laughing out loud to myself in the aftermath.

It was the middle of the day, we were all outside talking, and Isaiah was telling me about a funny exchange I had forgotten about---something that happened at our last music night. Dave and Ryan were going to do a song together, 

and we'd come back round to them in the circle.

Dave stood up and headed through the kitchen, and I said, 

"Wait, aren't you guys gonna do your special number?" 

(I was thinking it was their turn and they were up.)

To which Dave responded, to everyone, 

"I'm gonna go do my own special number," 

as he headed toward the bathroom.

When Isaiah told the story and said Dave's line, 

he added, kind of as a quiet side note to us:

"And Benji's over there guffawing by the fire."

(About Dave's joke, of course.)

Guffawing!

I die.

(I love!, so much, that that's the word that came to his mind to describe Benji's laughter.)

And, one other thing about 10-year-old boys?

Try saying the word "balls," in practically any sort of context, 

without them considering it a reference and dissolving into laughter.

Just try it.

Welcome to my life.

Sharing a Joke

See this son of mine?

He and I shared a moment recently that I just love.

Rewind to a week and a half ago when I went to my friend's farm to shovel chicken manure into buckets. 

The flies were plentiful. 

The smell was pungent.

The horses and goats gathered round.

Alisa was kind enough to load those 4 buckets of manure into the farm truck and bring them back to my house.

So, there I was, and Isaiah came home right about this point.

He walked out to the garden with me where I grabbed a garden rake and shed my shoes.

Then I proceeded to dump the buckets across the garden. Most of it was either dry or like a dry mud consistency, but there was one wet bucket. Isaiah stood there watching me, and when I dumped that one, a big wet clump came out at the end. Splat.

It stunk.

So there we were, and I'm raking, trying to spread a few places out. I'm also noticing the flies that showed up immediately once the poop was on the dirt. 

And as I'm standing there with Isaiah watching me (and he was kind of grossed out at the smell), for some reason my dad came to mind. He was a farm boy and spent much of his childhood gathering eggs from the chickens (trying to avoid the bull snakes -- my dad hates! snakes), milking cows, tending gardens, hauling hay. All that stuff.

 (My boys planting tomatoes with my dad in his garden 8 years ago.)

Standing there, I could just imagine my dad walking in the back gate at that moment and coming over to see what was going on. I could see him standing there at the edge of the garden, taking in my bare feet, the manure, Isaiah's somewhat grossed out expression. And then I could see amusement on his face and I heard these words in my mind, in a voice that he used to use when he was being goofy:

"There's nothing quite like fresh chicken shit, Liz!"

I thought it so much that I looked over at Isaiah, referenced my dad, and then said it, exactly in that voice, commenting on how amused my dad would be.

And WE LAUGHED out loud.

I can still see Isaiah's face as it dropped in laughter.

He agreed that it was something Poppi would totally say.

(Isaiah and Poppi planting geraniums.)

Dad may as well have been standing there sharing the joke.
He is still with us, and that moment warmed my heart.

(P.S. I've gone by Elizabeth for years, and it's what I prefer. But my dad called me Liz, and this is EXACTLY how my dad would have said this and it's endearing. And makes me laugh.)

Friday Funny

Wanna hear my funny Claire story of the week?

The one that made me crack right up, look away without words, and feel such joy for her?

Monday night.

All of us had watched a couple of episodes in this series we're watching while we ate dinner, and I was finishing a little cleanup at the sink in the aftermath.

It was about 10:15 or so. 

Claire had been in the bathroom doing her business and came upstairs for me to inspect her bum. 

(This is what she does every time she poops. She does her stuff, wipes her bum, and then has me check it. It's our system.)

So, I look down at her, she bends over, and I see she is going to need a bit of assistance from me.

I'm standing there, washing a bowl, and I offhandedly reply:

"Hang on, Claire. You've got a bit..."

...and I trailed off into silence as I swished suds around.

At which point she perked up, looked back at me, and in her sparky little voice piped up, 

"A bit of a situation goin' on?"

Yup, yup, yup. 

You could say that, sweet cheeks.

On Name Calling and Expletives

On Saturday night, the kids got home and we read a lot from 

To Kill A Mockingbird. 

(We were in the heat of the trial and it was getting intense.)

When I stopped reading, we were all clustered at the bottom of the stairs talking.

And I don't know what I was doing, but at one point, Isaiah said,

"Mom, are you hearing this? Did you hear what Claire just said?!"

I looked at him quizzically. No, I hadn't heard.

"She just called Benji a butthole."

Special.

From my cute, sweet, hilarious 4-year-old.

A few minutes later, she was laying back in my arms on my lap as we were all still sitting there and I looked down and said quietly,

"Claire, don't say butthole."

And she said, 

"Okay."

It's a term she's no doubt heard from her brothers---so I told them, again, that I don't want them using that word.

(I've always hated that word.)

I told them it was gross and beneath them.

But since we're talking about telling kids not to say stuff, let's talk about that one time last week when I was telling my boys not to swear. I was standing there in the kitchen, and as the words were coming out of my mouth, I realized what a joke it was because I've become quite fond of saying hell. Awesome.

(#motherhoodforthewin)

So Worth It

On the night before her birthday a couple of weeks ago, Claire made me laugh out loud.

We had climbed into my bed, she and I, and I was asking her what she knew about the day she was born.  

She recollected, wrongly, that she was born in the hospital.

To prompt her in the right direction, I asked her where I was when she came out of me.  

Her: "In the bathtub."

Me: "I was in the bathtub. That's true."

And then, she surprised me and I started to laugh when she offered up this little gem:

"You were like, '(Grunt)...it's SO HARD to get out this baby!'"

The grunt was accompanied by a funny, uncomfortable, grimacing expression on her face.

After I stopped laughing, I told her that's kind of how it went down---
that it was pretty painful.

But I also told her 

she was worth it.

  

So worth it.

And this picture is blurry, but it's from four years ago today, when she was just new.

She's much bigger now, and she's a bucket of sass and joy, 

but I love her so.

Sunday Funny

I came in the back door on Sunday after church, pulled an onion out of the fridge and started sautéing it with meat and olive oil.  Chopped up some fresh garlic and threw that in, too.  Added tomatoes and oregano, sliced up fresh basil leaves from my herb planter, and let the sauce start simmering and reducing.

Made bread dough and stuck it out on the deck.  Cut up fresh zucchini and yellow squash from the garden for sautéing, shucked corn on the cob.

I lay on my back in the front yard, alone, looking up at the leaves in the trees above me, and found myself remembering a story involving an expletive that a friend had told me earlier in church about a completely awkward conversation with a woman in our congregation.  It made me laugh out loud as I was lying there thinking about it again.  Sometimes people are so weird, and sometimes cultural church behavior and lingo are awkward.  And from one vantage point, it can be pretty comical sometimes.

Anyway...I put bread in the oven later, made a salad, cooked the corn and pasta, sautéed the vegetables, and we went outside in the breezy evening and ate.  A friend was over eating with us and afterward, I went inside to wash dishes.  I stood in the kitchen, cleaning up, while a game of camp ball ensued in the backyard, batting and running to bases and all that jazz.

At one point, Isaiah opened the back door and said,

"Mom, Benji just yelled, 

'HOLY SHIZ AND CORIANTUMR!!!!!!'"

And he was laughing as he shut the door and went back out.

And I stood at the counter, also laughing.

First of all, random.

Second? Wow.

Nice pairing, Sparky.

You managed to bring the Book of Mormon into a substitute swear word kind-of-a-sitch.

(#comicalimproperjuxtaposition)

Not sure what I should have thought, but I laughed.

Books and Gardening

Oh hey, blog.

I've missed you, but I've been out of steam too many nights when I've finally had time to post anything.

I'm coming back, though.

I'm marathon training right now, and when I got home on Friday night from my 17.5 mile run, my neighbor had tilled my garden for me.

Bless him.

When I woke up on Saturday morning, there was a wholelotta work waiting out there in the yard.

I went out and mowed lawns and then spent the remainder of the afternoon planting my garden.

Rain threatened some of the time, dark clouds and thunder in the distance, and I caught the occasional drop on my arm.  I ignored it and put cherry tomatoes and tomatillos in the ground anyway.

I planted Lemon Boys (don't you love the rich yellow of lemon boys?) and a Cherokee Purple (hello, purple tomato!), some Big Beef, Celebrity, and Super Fantastics.

(And let me just say...they better be Super Fantastic.)

I planted every color of bell pepper: red, gold, orange, and green.

Had to plant an Anaheim chile and a couple of hot pepper plants for salsa or burgers or quesadillas or pepper jelly or spicy ranch for salads and tacos.

I separated skinny strands of Walla Walla onions and red onions, folding the dirt over them, propping them up as best I could from both sides with my hands.

Planting a zucchini and straightneck yellow squash is tradition, and I had to add butternut squash cuz it's so yummy, a couple cantaloupes, and some jack o' lantern pumpkins.  I lined the back of the garden with sweet corn.

Somewhere around the middle of the plot, I hoed a couple rows and carefully spaced beets and beans, and let me just say this: there is something about the planting seeds bit that always seems to feel like I'm gambling.  It's as though I'm scattering them with some hope and a prayer.  It's kind of miraculous to me that they come up, every year---cuz every year I wonder if they will.

But in my mind's eye, I look forward to peeling and roasting those beets with some olive oil and sea salt and pepper, and seeing their deep purple red juice ooze beautifully onto my white dinner plate.  

(But who am I kidding...it's the taste I'm crazy about.)

And you know what, this gardening bit reminds me of this passage that the kids and I read a while back.  We recently finished reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy, something I never read as a child.  And this passage moved me enough that I wrote it down to keep for thinking about, because I love it so much.

"...it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.  What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."

I love that, maybe because it resonates so much with the idea of living in the present of your simple life and doing what you can: for you, for those you love, and for those you're blessed to know.  The idea of focusing on tilling your own little plot of earth---and life.  

And then, as a final note, I planted some cucumbers, too.

And since we're talking about books, I have to quote another section from a new book I'm reading.  I honestly don't remember the last time I read something that made me laugh out loud as frequently as this book is.  

I'm that woman that's in a quiet house at night once the kids are asleep, tucked into the warmth of my bed, delightfully chewing pebble ice, and interrupting the silence by bursting-out-loud laughing.

It's this lovely memoir about a guy restoring his 1951 International Harvester, and he likes to garden.  Apparently there's also a love story coming, too, but I haven't gotten to that bit yet.

Anyway.

The other night I was reading about where he was ordering seeds from a seed catalog and has this dilemma about cucumbers.  

(Note: I always debate about cucumbers.)

And he started the whole cucumber commentary by saying this:

"Ain't no such thing as a cucumber.  You've got your Sweet Slice Hybrid.  Your Fanfare.  The Ashley.  The Marketmore, the Cool Breeze, the County Fair Hybrid, the Orient Express, and the Sweet Success.  The Diva. ...Over sixteen variations on a cucumber in the space of a single page."

Oh my gosh.  I totally get this.  I really do.  

(#totallyresonatedwithme)

But then, he had to throw in this humorous bit, and it cracked me right up.

"The seed catalogs promote several varieties of 'burpless' cucumbers.  I have yet to find one promoted as 'burp-ish.'  This is flatly a missed marketing opportunity.  Among my rural and roughneck acquaintances are no small number of folks who not only savor the art of eructation, they cultivate it.  There are guys on the fire department capable of melisma.  I have seen a woman throw her head back beneath the Jamboree Days beer tent and let loose a burp so resonant polka dancers were moved to applause.  I know men longing to belch a full-length version of 'Free Bird.'  Beer works, but it impairs your ability to play air guitar.  There are people out here who would go out of their way to plant row on row of Burp-Mor Hybrids, County Fair Honkers, and Belching Divas."

Wow.

What does one really say about that?

(the garden, and Claire's hair #forthewin)

Nothing.

You laugh, people, and that's all.

In any case, once I got those cucumbers in (Straight Eights, if you were wondering), I planted sweet basil and cilantro and rosemary in my herb planter on the deck.  Watered my lemon thyme that came back from last year.

And I'd be lying if told you that I haven't been admiring the hands-in-the-dirt work from the past week: 

the food that's started in the garden, along with zinnias in the flower bed, and several pots full of geraniums, spilling over with fuschia.

Ahhh summer, I can feel you coming on.