More Glorious Autumn

Sunny Baby is so incredibly excited about having just eaten a second-crop chokecherry!

An egg! Look, Mom, an egg!

Miss Mouse was so proud of that egg....and then Sunny Baby got injured. In our haste to get her checked out, we forgot to take the egg home. She's so sweet, though; she just said, "Oh, well, we can get another one sometime."

They're drumming.

For anyone who thinks that Miss Mouse is always quiet and demure.....The girl can roar! *Sidenote: It's a happy roar.

Enjoying the near-peak leaves out at Grandma and Grandpa's. We were lucky enough to spend several weekends (well, what we call weekends, anyway) with them as the leaves changed and dropped.

The apples also ripened while we were out there. Sunny Baby Mouse shoved her little face right in. Yum!

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Everyone needs their Cheers bar.

I wasn't even old enough to be allowed to watch the show when it was on, but I remember the song and can probably sing it word for word. As I've gotten older, I've realized more and more how true are the words that we all need a place "where everybody knows your name" ...

The girls and I traveled to a place like that on Sunday, a place where Miss Mouse was welcomed as a "kitchen helper" with the other two children her age, a place of community, deep roots, and deep faith. Mr. T and I were blessed enough to be part of that community for some years, and it was so special to take the little Mice to see what it is like, to have a taste of that place where everybody knows your name.

From the inside on a warm, humid summer morning, these orange-glass windows cast a glow that makes the high-ceiling-cool of the church a little warmer. In the winter, they send warm fingers into cold tummies and feet as the strains of hymns sung for generations melt the frozen tundra outside.

Melodramatic? No, not so. Mr. T's summation of this congregation is that to be their pastor, one must be okay with the fact that until you've been there several (several) years, you are not the spiritual head of the congregation - Mr. F is, and rightly so.

Hard work, devotion, leadership, and faith have been passed on here through generations, not only to those in the "founding families" but to all those blessed enough to live on the prairie near this place. All are welcome here, as long as you're willing to pitch in, perhaps clear a table, teach some Sunday School kids, take the offering, or participate in the Christmas program, which seems to have sprung entirely out of a Little House on the Prairie book (complete with, as of my last knowledge, real candles with real flames).

I never did any of those things there, but I did make some fairly cute duck cookies for the bazaar every fall. The same woman bought them every year, put them in the freezer, and gave them to her son who liked to duck hunt for Christmas. Every year. Rose is gone now, has been for several years, and I very nearly cried for how much I missed her when we were out there last Sunday. This is a good place with good people. Most places are, to be truthful. But this one is especially special because here

everybody knows your name.

"Running free" in a parking lot. Miss Mouse loved that idea and has since mentioned several times that that is the only parking lot where she can run free (it was significantly after everyone but the ladies in the kitchen had left).

We had a perfect autumn day. Crisp, cool, windy but warm. A perfect day for a bobble hat. If you ask, I'll tell you where to get one ;)

Autumn

So, I'm getting braver...yikes! For the past few months, I've had trouble looking at or taking pictures of myself from the front, showing a smile.

It stems from an evaluative appointment with a really kind orthodontist last February. He's a member of our church, and Mr. T knows him well from council. Really, he's a great guy.

Unfortunately, my evaluation, which I was hoping would land me with a simple, "yes, you should have a retainer to stop anymore trouble with your bottom teeth" or "nope, you're fine", ended with a choice of the said retainer OR major orthodontic work....when I asked why I would want to go through having two permanent teeth removed, screws put in my mouth in two areas, and two-three years of braces, "aesthetics" was my answer. I appreciated the honest answer. Yet I had never had an aesthetic problem with my smile....until then.

Since then I've had trouble looking at any pictures like this. I guess this is some kind of immersion therapy then, posting this picture.

I decided to go with the retainer - eventually. Sure, a perfect smile would be great. Maybe 15 years ago I would have chosen differently. But for the main reason that I don't want my little Miss Mouse, who would be vastly old enough in the next couple of years to take all the orthodontic work in and process it in her pretty little head, to think that to be beautiful, to be feminine, to be perfect, requires that amount of pain and sacrifice, I am living with my imperfections.....and continuing to smile each time one of my Mice gives me a flower to tuck behind my ear.

If you have a moment, check out some of the other brave people at:

A Few of My Favorite Things....Minus One

I've always loved Radio Flyers. I love them even more when I can take a half-way decent picture of them. I realize the quality of these photos is not "quite there yet", but they're so much better than anything I have ever been able to take that I'm running around like a maniac snapping pictures of everything I love....and then turning sort of mushy inside when they actually turn out!

My autumn flowers are some of my favorite things. I wait as expectantly for them as I do for the crocuses, tulips, irises, hostas, and bleeding hearts to poke their brave little heads through in the spring. These hold-outs that are hardy enough to weather the brisk fall temps are near and dear to my heart, as well.

Guesses as to what is pictured here? Hint: I did not take this one, nor have I been anywhere near anything like this in about 10 years. The last time I was, I was left on the ground by a pile of food, in the middle of a bright orange/yellow maple grove. But this is definitely one of Mr. T's favorite things.

My little exuberant one. The lighting is off, but the photo captured her love of freedom so well that I couldn't help but include it.

So I may have gone a little hay-wire editing this one....the purple isn't actually that bright, and Miss Mouse does not wear lipstick, but when I look at her, this is what I see....all brightness, candy-colored-sweetness, and blue eyes.

Mr. T is missing from my short list of favorite things, not because he doesn't make it onto my list, but because I haven't had time to download and edit the cool pictures I took of him last weekend. More autumn pictures to come! Oh, and more wedding pictures, as well.....I'll have them posted by Auntie Laura and Uncle Jon's first anniversary, no doubt about that!

Short Stories

The girls have been hilariously creative this week.

Monday - Miss Mouse organized a vet clinic (quickly - I just ran downstairs to transfer laundry to the dryer). I came upstairs to see both girls in Sunny Baby's room with a plethora of stuffed animals on the floor. Miss Mouse explained, "I am the big doctor, and she is the little doctor. The animals ate chemicals, so now we have to fix them. They need to wear a bib while they are at the doctor so in case they spit or anything." For a full half hour, Sunny Baby Mouse and I carried animals, hand-in-hand, from Miss Mouse's room to the makeshift clinic. Miss Mouse would toss out an animal when it was "done", so Sunny would run as fast as her little short legs could go to retrieve the "fixed" animal and replace it with another that needed to be treated.

Quiet time - The other day during quiet time Miss Mouse came out to get me to show me the garden she had created. Under her desk she had arranged super-size legos into a square (she pointed out that it was not a pentagon; it was a square). Those were the flowers, but they were flowers that would turn into vegetables (I've created a real producing farmer). She then pointed to the back, near the wall, where she had arranged parts of a wooden clown toy, and explained that those parts held water which then made its way through the bottom of the desk toward her flowers.....so, I guess, she effectively set up an irrigated garden during her quiet time.

They provide more entertainment for me than daytime television could ever dream of providing!!!

Milestones

I've been trying to write this post for going on a month now. It's been written and then rewritten several times in my head.

For some reason, kindergarten starting was like a brick landing on my head this year. For the most part, the anniversaries of Hope's death are getting, well, not better, but they're getting to be fairly standard, I guess. That isn't meant to sound cold. I'm just getting used to the way I start feeling in April, how it builds until June 1st, peaks from the 1st to the 5th, and then starts to improve as much as it ever will as we get into summer. It's my normal.

These milestones, though, they throw me for a loop.

I don't know if Hope would have started kindergarten this fall. I'm sort of really into holding kids back until you absolutely have to throw them into the big pond and let them swim. But then again, that, as with many other decisions, would depend largely on the child herself. And so, as I tried to see if telling myself that she might not have started this year would help, I realized that it wasn't so much the starting as the fact that we would have had a decision to make. But we didn't. We have a lovely preschooler who is thoroughly enjoying learning about numbers this week (from me). We have a smaller little one who can say "one, teeeeewwww" and identifies pink and green. But we have no one of kindergarten age.

And for some reason, that fact brought me back closer to the feeling of having empty arms, an empty nursery, a quiet, baby-less house than I have been in several years.

What to do, then, what to do.....Kindergarten in the public schools started here on Wednesday, August 25. So, I informed my hubby that the girls and I would be taking a field trip of our own that day. He doesn't really completely understand the effect that milestones have on me. Not because he is cold-hearted and unfeeling, but because he grieved differently five years ago and still does now. I'm thankful he is patient and supportive of my way, as well.

But....I did start to question myself. A friend in Enderlin had shared with me, shortly after we lost Hope, that she has a hard time with milestones - graduations, weddings, etc. that her daughter would have experienced. I'm so thankful for her sharing because it reminds me that there's nothing wrong with how I feel things. But still....I started to question, if it doesn't impact him as hard, am I somehow wrong?

Enter the morning of the 25th. Dentist appointment before heading to Enderlin. At that point, I hadn't really decided whether we should go or not. Before leaving, I stopped at the front desk to make an appointment for Miss Mouse and happened to be talking to a friendly lady who introduced herself and said she attends our church. She admired my Mouse.

Then she got fairly serious and asked if we hadn't lost a baby. I said we had. With tears in her eyes, she told me that she and her husband had, as well, and that it would have been her daughter's 21st birthday in August. She said that those milestones have always been really hard for her.

It's perhaps needless to explain how we spent the rest of our day.....when the girls had finished admiring all the "pretty flowers and rocks", we left two crayons at the cemetery.

Out on a Limb....

I'm going out on a limb joining this photo challenge. I have a very nice point-and-shoot, but I don't (yet - it should arrive tomorrow!) have any type of dlsr....at least not any type I know how to use....my husband's film one is in storage under our bed.

So, I feel like I'm out on a very shaky, very creaky tree branch in posting this picture. I also found that I have much more of an aversion to photographing myself than I thought I did. It's fairly enjoyable for me to look at pictures that other people take of me - not that I think a whole lot turn out, but it's always fun to see if maybe there is one or two that are flattering. Taking one of myself, however, was much more difficult to do. But....

Here's hoping my tree branch doesn't break and send me flailing to the ground!!