This is the Way We Wash Our Clothes....

I don't have many words for these pictures. I don't think they need many. We were privileged enough to spend the day with Grammy and Grandpa Bob and to meet up with a dear friend at a reenactment-style event where the girls were allowed and welcomed to fully participate in the activities. There are days I have to pinch myself to be sure I'm not dreaming; these days are so good.

Perhaps starting a new fashion trend? Blending the contemporary with the definitely-traditional.

Miss Mouse spent a large chunk of her afternoon washing clothes by hand. The most modern thing was the glass washboard, for which I was thankful. She and my friend had to chase down dirty laundry in the pie-baking area to keep her dirty laundry pile well-supplied. The ladies making pie over Dutch ovens in a fire pit were more than happy to supply the needed soiled aprons and dish clothes. I spent most of the afternoon marvelling at the inter-generational activity that went on so naturally. There was no separate area for children, save the hourly games that were played; the little boys chased frogs; some little girls helped. Other little girls smacked each other's faces, and their aunts working by their sides, with flour from pie crust and added finishing touches of cherry juice.

She's serious about her job.

Evidence of a hard day's work

I love thinking about a day where this was an astoundingly advanced technological breakthrough. I'm thankful to have come home to a central air conditioned home, but I'm thankful, too, for the opportunity to show our Mice what a community working together looks like, how life and work really were back in the "good ol' days", and for the chance for them to be enveloped into a group of people of all ages working together.

Swingin'

Adding to the long list of accomplishments of the summer, Miss Mouse learned to "pump" herself in the swing earlier this season. With her long legs, it came sort of easily, and she's got a lot of power behind her pumping.

She perhaps gets a bit higher than I'm comfortable with....a bit faster than I'd like...

But she loves how her hair flies in the breeze...sometimes the breeze her own swinging has created....


She's practiced at our house...at the park...pretty much where she sees a swing...

And I have no idea where my baby went.....But I sure love the bright, intense, thoughtful, energetic, hard-working little girl Miss Mouse is becoming. I thought these milestones might be bittersweet, steps away from needing me as much, but instead they are such wonderful steps towards becoming who she is as a girl, someday as a young woman....Every day, honestly every day, I am thankful and honored to be part of her life. What a privilege is parenthood! What an incredible privilege to watch and be part of these milestones!

A "Sunny" Day

With so much focus lately on the most recent accomplishments of Miss Mouse, I thought it was time for some focus on Sunny Mouse. Miss Mouse needed some 'down time' today prior to getting ready for our outdoor play, so Sunny and I enjoyed some camera time while Big Sister got ready to come outside....without hurrying.

Sunny loves sticks. This is her "big, big stick"; thankfully she's a good listener because she REALLY wants this one to come in the house with her. Instead she dutifully lays it outside the front door before we head in. I have a picture of Miss Mouse holding a pumpkin while wearing the same jacket this time of year two years ago.

This pretty flower was not planted in our yard by me. Then again, neither was the corn that we have growing amidst the hostas. Both are welcome. This happy fellow is cheerier than his corn counterparts, though.

My sweet Sunny playing in the mud. How she got big enough to look like a little girl, I have no idea. I must have blinked at some point.

This is the sweet girl I hang onto when I do toddler-battle with the whining habit she's attempting get rid of. This is who she really is, and what a privilege it is to be the one chosen to shape her and help her grow and develop.

What you can't really tell is that she's got most of her body laying in the strawberry bed and is intent on something. She must have found a ripe one in the middle of the bed.

I laughed and laughed at this expression! She didn't say a word this time, actually, just gave me this look of "what are you DOING? And why aren't you HELPING me? There's a RIPE one here!". There were actually three, bright, red little jewels. She's got a good eye!

Mouse-isms

We've had some sweet Mouse-isms around here lately.

1. The other day, Sunny woke up asking for her blanket. Daddy couldn't find it; Mommy was on a run. Miss Mouse apparently leaned over and offered Sunny one of her very special blankies since Sunny's "must be in the dryer". Sunny soundly rejected the offer, earning herself a discussion about how to be polite when a sister is offering assistance, and Miss Mouse earned much praise for her ability to share and give, even something dear to her heart.

2. Tonight as we were cuddling before bed, Miss Mouse smiled at me and said, "I'm so glad you're my mama. I really wanted a mommy named Mama." How I hope she never changes that thought. As often as I wanted to push boundaries with my parents (not big stuff - i.e., wanting to see PG-13 movies prior to age 13 or R movies before age 17...didn't really happen; wanting to drive to the 'big city' with friends at age 15, 16, 17...didn't happen; wanting certain brands of clothes...didn't happen), I never wanted them to be people they weren't; I was always proud to have them around, even at my high school events; I would have loved for my Mom to be able to have chaperoned more trips than they were financially able to have her chaperone; I've always been so glad to have been my parents' daughter, my sister's sister, my grandparents' granddaughter, my uncles' and aunts' niece, my in-law's in-law,....And I hope that Mr. T and I have that type of relationship with these Mice as they grow.

3. This one came from Sunny. She was attempting to break into her older sister's diatribe the other day and was not getting very far. Finally I heard her shout, "I am TWYING to be youw fwend!!!" I intervened at that point, and we all had yet another conversation about how to converse. I was pretty proud of my smallest one to have been able to put her emotions and thoughts together enough to pull out a phrase like that, though, when she was so very irritated and frustrated!

Hardy Blooms

As much as I'm trying to deny this, autumn is coming quickly. Young geese are out for their work-outs on cool mornings. Tomatoes are ripening. The garden is (finally) producing. Even on an 85-degree day, we need sweatshirts in the evening. The tree that seems to always "turn" first at my in-law's has reportedly started to take on some color. Bowhunting season starts in a bit less than 48 hours.

It's going to happen. Summer is going to end.

For now, though, I choose to hang onto the warmth, the ease, the sweat of summer. Some of my sweet plants in our front bed, which has been bug-ridden and disease-ridden basically since we moved in four years ago, have joined me in my denial of autumn.

My thoughtful daylilies (I think that's what they are?) have sent out one more bloom. Maybe there will even be more to follow, if we can hold onto the glittery-golden weather of autumn a long time before the ice-blue winter covers us.

In the meantime, I took the chance on an evening without a breeze to experiment with my "macro" abilities (of which I have very little!). It was fun, though, to get outside, ever-so-quickly, and get the clearest macros I've gotten so far. Being too lazy to drag out our tripod very often has left me with very few clear pictures, so, while these are not superbly clear, they're my best so far! I'm excited about progress!

And even more so, I'm excited to see my yellow blooms and one little purple bloom on a perennial geranium, as well!

Here's to a long, beautiful, drawn-out, full-of-lawn-mowing-into-November autumn!

There are quite a few things that are "off" about this summer...the incredibly late start, the towering plants yet small amount of produce the garden has cranked out, the startling amount of water still lingering around our entire state....yet mixed amongst those oddities are unexpected moments of beauty, of normalcy, of routine.

The bees are busy....

...very, very busy....As a sidenote, I did not crouch to take this photo - that's the honest height of my marigolds.


These beautiful little creations still dot our yard. I've decided to give them a break and focus my attacks on the thistles and nightshade. It's hard for me to work up motivation to attack plants that aren't going to hurt me or kill my children and pet. These little guys really just brighten the green space, cause no one any harm, and provide some of the most unexpected beauty a Mommy will ever know. Our table has been adorned with them most of the summer, and they could just as well be bouquets of roses - they mean just as much as they come in scrunched tightly in excited little hands!


Really, I know each little fluff will create thousands of more little yellow annoyances for next spring; still, it's beautiful. This one caught our attention from inside the house during supper as the late summer sun's golden rays sunk low enough to hit our yard at just the right angle to make him glow. I might just eat him if I knew how.



Nearly every year at this time I think about my time as a college student. I can still smell the musty newspapers over which I poured, hour after hour, as the sun exploded into orange and pink outside the library, or as a cold rain drizzled down. I can see each room I lived in - all four of them are still fresh in my mind. I can feel my queasy stomach the day my parents dropped me off for the first time. My hands still remember shaking with first-day-of-class nerves, unsure whether I would have time to run between back-to-back classes across campus, unsure whether this would be the class where my professors realized I really wasn't a top student and had just been faking them out all along, the class in which I finally just couldn't produce quality work. There was an adrenaline rush in all of those uncertainties; it kept me pounding the books all semester long, paper to paper, test to test. As I type, some of the adrenaline rushes back. I love the smell of old books. I loved the rush of final exams. I loved the exhaustion of term papers. I love learning, exploring, writing, proving myself again and again. This time of year, especially, I look back on those years and remember how much I loved about them. I loved them so much I thought they'd be my life.



But I don't remember ever noticing a dandelion. And I know no one ever brought me one.

Red

Apparently we were having a "red" day in the yard yesterday!



We're going to have to check the library for insect identification books, I believe, because I'm finding myself needing to explain differences among dragonflies when I never knew there were any! Much to her pleasure, this little red guy made friends with Miss Mouse.

The most amazing strawberries in the world are flowering and producing again. It took them a few years to get adjusted here; they came from Sheldon via Enderlin via Hawley. They worked hard to get settled, and for awhile they didn't resemble the all-summer-producing patch I left in Enderlin much at all; they produced a very small crop last year. Now that they've recovered, though, and learned to love their new home, they're right back to sending us bright red jewels of sweetness from spring to fall. Welcome back, strawberries! Our whole family loves you, and I understand you all too well. Welcome back!




Definitely a red letter day in the yard!