Skiing Weekend

Two weeks ago, we had winter break at Ecole Vieux Pin. The previous post done on this subject would have been better named Christmas break, but oh well. We took a lovely two-day skiing trip to Stevens Pass the first day and Mission Ridge the second, after spending the night in Wenatchee.

Zaz was very excited to go skiing as we got ready, but slightly less so when it actually happened.

Cheerful smiles.

Zaz also spent considerable time studying the map. Even though it was upside down...

We had fairly good weather at Stevens, although it rained a bit at the end. Such beautiful sunshine!

Zaz skied very well

More studying of the map over lunch.

Mission was really beautiful too, especially after coming out of dry Wenatchee. Talking to friends later, we realized that we were truly blessed with a clear day. We could see Mt. Rainer and Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood was hiding a little behind some clouds.

The view was stunning. Lou got a bit annoyed at me for taking so many pictures. (i.e. taking my camera out a LOT!)

We also got to see the wing from the bomber that crashed there during World War II and learn it's history.

After lunch Zaz got to go play, and us other five enjoyed skiing together.

Plus a nice ski-patrol man took our picture together.

The way the wind has pushed the snow on the trees, buildings, and these posts at the top of the lift was really cool - and beautiful.

We are very thankful for a fun, successful trip, clear, blue skies, and enjoying God's creation. This was also only the second time we've able to go skiing this year, although Papa and Zaz are off to Snoqualmie tomorrow morning for a ski adventure in honor of Zaz's 4th birthday.

Marina

Croup

I hate croup. I hate it, hate it, hate it. I hate it more than I hate barfing, which is what I thought Zazzy was doing when he cried out at 1 a.m. Loulou never had a croup episode, but the other three at one time or another have awakened out of a sound sleep coughing, gurgling, crying and gasping for air. That awakens parents out of a sound sleep to instant terror.

We know now what to do, more or less: turn on the shower, pray, make tea, hunker in for a long damp sit in the steam with a whimpering child on your lap. It’s not as scary as the first time with Mina, but I still hate it. Mr. Pete-za once had a croup episode that took him to the ER for steroids because an hour of steam didn’t make the gurgly, blocked sound in his throat go away. All the croup entries in the books I like to call Mom’s Book of Medical Worries say important but impossible things about how essential it is that the parent to stay calm lest the panicking child pick up on the fears of the panicking parent, making the child panic more and breathe less. Much easier said than done when your kiddo can’t breathe. Once I woke up and knew something was wrong just because Manuski was talking much TOO LOUDLY and CHEERFULLY for the middle of the night. That made us all panic, so I took over baby holding duty, and he made the tea. This time at least Zazzy could breathe well enough to tell us in frustration, “It’s not working!” meaning breathing I assume. Yikes. He’s better now.

So forty, so good

Well, I feel I ought to report from the other side of forty. So far, things are not too shabby at all! The tally in the past couple weeks: one surprise party put on my sneaky, wonderful husband which surprised me most by how many people came over on a Wednesday night, on the first week of school; one weekend getaway in a fancy hotel (thanks to his company and including 3 hours of conversation in the car each way); two weeks of serious on-task schooling for all; one sprint triathlon completed where I cut down on last year’s time by a full 29 seconds; and one slumber party of girlfriends where for one night we got to be 13 all over again, with less angst and more giggling. So my forties have been super busy and a lot of fun! And now I feel fairly justified in not doing much else for the rest of the year.

Appreciation

There's really nothing that makes you appreciate your dishwasher like having a broken one for a couple weeks. I need some hand lotion on these dishpan hands!

Ballerina Chickens

Ha! That title reeled you in, didn’t it?

Well, okay, so No, the chickens have not been doing pirouettes over the lawn, but they are practicing their leaps over their fence and that is getting on my nerves. We’ve been letting them out of their “secure location” a bit this winter to free-range and eat bugs and weed seeds. But now with spring on the horizon it’s time to rein them in a bit. We’ve been thinking of inviting the little kids of our neighborhood over for an egg hunt at Easter, and we need a little time for the “manure” (as we farmer people say) to compost into the lawn. But those darn chickens are not cooperating, and Felicity and Pansy must be of a breed that still has a lot of flying capacity in them. I’ve enlarged their run but have not yet installed some sort of netting for a roof, so they just work up an energetic flap and fly over. Argghh! Then I must chase them, catch them and throw them back in. It does get me some exercise on a slow day, so I suppose that’s beneficial.

Felicity on the lam

In the chicken tractor that my sweet husband built in the fall - useful for days when we don't feel completely cooped up but not totally free range, either. Bella is to the right, sniffing for goodies.

I also feel that it is time for a ballet update. Since my sad second beginner ballet class, I had to miss a couple due to familial illness and strife. Thursday I returned with great trepidation and still without cute pink slippers. But my friend was there and we are slowly learning and feeling less insecure together. Loulou has been coaching me on the positions: first, second, third, etc. When we were told to balance on “releve” and feel that we were growing two inches taller, I did kinda feel a little taller (always a good thing for me). And at the end when we did our little dance routine-y thing across the floor to the lovely, floaty piano music, I was concentrating so hard on the steps that I forgot to feel intimidated and instead felt almost graceful! Maybe that means that I am no longer a “chicken ballerina.” Ha!

Makin’ It Work – the Real Story of the Merovingians

Early last week as we sat down to do history, and the kids were making grumbly noises about coloring their maps, I remembered that I had been thinking we were overdue for a "craft." They do spice up history so. I vaguely remembered something in the activity book about making some sort of decorative something. Cool, I thought, they can color that while I read. "Okay, kids, today we will make Merovingian brooches," I said in my yeah, I've got it all together voice. Foolishly I said this before reading all the instructions. They said:

You will need:

• white unlined paper check
• pencil check
• gold, blue, red and yellow Sculpey, WHAT??!! Sculpey?? I thought we were coloring!
• copper wire, at least 16 gauge, at hardware stores, Copper Wire??!! When was the last time I was at a hardware store?? No trip planned today.
• hammer, okay, whew, got one of those, but what will we hammer?
• drinking glass check
• glass pie plate check
• pin back (at craft stores) um….maybe we can figure something else out…

After panicking, I remembered that there might actually be some Sculpey left unused in a crafty drawer downstairs. “Hang on, just a minute kids, keep coloring the maps.” Ah! There was indeed Sculpey! Just enough to make us some dandy brooches. Back upstairs. Ta Da! “Here kids, we shall make our Merovingian brooches out of this Sculpey! Too bad about the wire, that would’ve looked cool.” Marina, looking at me funny, “Don’t we have some copper wire? Down with the beading stuff?” Oh. Maybe we do….back down to the crafty drawers…yes, indeed some copper wire, not 16 gauge, but never mind that. From then on, I sat down, took a deep breath and read all the instructions out loud. And it worked, and our brooches turned out pretty neat.

Then of course, we needed an event to which to wear our brooches, so we hatched the notion of a Merovingian meal. Merovingians were sort of descendants of the Gaulish tribes, sort of like Asterix, right? And there was a pork tenderloin the freezer we could have for wild boar and we mixed up some lovely pink magic potion, also a la Asterix. A little historically off, but festive! There were instructions in the book for making yarn wigs, and I was just going to use the big skein of unused green yarn I found downstairs, but there was general outcry against green hair, so I caved and actually bought yarn to make the wigs, which went against my plan of using up what we have. Peter almost cried because we were making him wear a wig and no amount of telling him how fierce and manly the Merovingians were could allay his distress. In the end, he came around because Manu set a good example as Clovis. I was Clotilda, but yesterday I placed a ban on posting dorky photos of one’s mother.

Lack of Discretionary Time

I've been wondering lately where people find the time to blog. Or more specifically, where do mothers of multiple children find time to blog. Though I try not to, I keep find myself thinking that there's got to be something large that they're neglecting in order to find the time. And thinking thus, I glance around me looking for something to neglect so that I too can write witty things. Only to find that I'm already neglecting it! HA! But no, I know that it actually has to do with choices, and I suspect, a certain perfectionist streak I possess. What if I wrote something and posted it quickly and someone happened upon it and then it was grammatically incorrect?! Horrors!

A couple years ago, when my kids were very small, I chatted with a neighbor whose children were in junior high and high school. She lamented the fact that because she'd been running them around and doing stuff for them she hadn't really been able to "own the day." After a moment, when I understood the concept she'd referred to, I almost busted out laughing. "Own the Day!" What an idea! Had I any recollection of what that might mean? Had I ever really known what it meant to "own the day?" That phrase has stuck with me and makes me chuckle inside on days when every moment to do anything, even for other people, feels stolen from somewhere else. I think to myself, "I suppose I didn't 'own the day.' " Did I own part of a day? Was the part I owned between 6:30 and 7:00 when I turned off my alarm but didn't quite get up before the kids as planned?

So today I didn't own the day. Or much of a part of it. It was a good day, a full and busy and educational day, but I can't really say that I owned it. And now, at 10 p.m. this bit that I'm using to write this feels not so much "owned" as it feels like borrowed or swiped, only swiped like something that no one really wanted anyway. Like stealing someone's old socks. I am not comfortable, my clothes are too tight and been worn too long and have too much jam on them. I can't see because my contacts are all dried out and sticking to my eyeballs and filming over. But it does feel good anyway to write here, and at least say I had a day. "Hey, World! I had a day! Maybe I didn't own it, but at least I lived it!"

And now, I've just scared off my dear husband who poked his head around the corner and asked encouragingly, "Are you writing? blog entries?" "Trying!" I said, not so very kindly. Oh dear.

The Voyage and the Destination

I'm at that time of the middle of the night where my brain insists on the fact that it should be awake and busy even though I'm very weary and I've only slept a few hours so far. I lie there with my thoughts until the day's events, jet lag and weariness all swirl together and seem to make perfect sense of life, and I just have to get up and try to capture the profundity.

Antony and Laetitia's civil wedding was on Friday evening, down in the town hall of Boncourt. They had asked me to sing a song with the guitar to offset the officialness of it, and I did and it went off nicely. However I was struck with the fact that although it was a secular ceremony and very quick, there was still weight to it. More than I think there is to a courtroom marriage in the states, at least the ones depicted in film. The clerk who performed it spoke to the gravity of the step of marriage and its significance in one's personal life as well as in the life of the community. Antony and Laetitia sat with their witnesses at a big table with a crucifix on the wall behind them. Out of his red notebook the clerk read the Articles of Marriage as outlined by the federal Confederation of Switzerland, and even though he read them quickly, I clearly caught the vestiges of laws that were built on biblical principles: marriage as a foundation of society, marriage as an institution to build up and support a man and woman, marriage to protect and nurture children. Though secular in nature, the fonctionnaire made an effort to make it a meaningful occasion and read a poem at the end, finishing with a quote which while somewhat cliche is ever apt:

Le mariage, comme la vie, est un voyage pas une destination.

"Marriage, like life, is a voyage, not a destination."

Which made me ponder the trip here. I flew with the children a few days before Manu so that we could attend the civil wedding. I was a little apprehensive about flying alone with the kids, but not too much. I've done it before with three, and even though there's now four, the other kids are older and able to assist. What I didn't count on was the Migraine that attacks when you least expect it, when the combination of weariness, jet fuel fumes, and motion at the back of the plane combine to make you sick, sick, sick. I've been sick on a plane before and been grateful that those ubiquitous barf bags were there in the seat pocket in front of me. But this was Really Sick. So sick I used up all the barf bags in the row and the steward brought me a huge red bag marked "BIOHAZARD" in which to put my...well...Bags of Biohazard and the blanket that caught the overflow. So sick that after barf session number 4 the nice steward brought me a big can of oxygen for me to breathe to clear my head. So sick that after #5 on the next flight the eyes of my children were getting big like saucers and I could imagine them thinking, "how are we going to carry Mom off this plane?" So sick that when I got on plane #2 and found we couldn't take our seats yet because they'd put all these small exhausted children in an exit row and a middle aged Swiss guy had taken one of our seats anyway and said cheerily that I could have his window seat in the next row, but by then some other guy had taken that, and then when the breezy Swiss guy cheerily told me to talk to the flight attendant about it, I came as close as I ever have to yelling at complete strangers on a plane. Instead I LOUDLY plopped the kids down in the exit row seats that we did have, LOUDLY threw my stuff in the overhead bins and shut them LOUDLY, and while getting stares from the other passengers, said LOUDLY that now I would just stand there and look crabby. Three middle aged American Southern ladies in the row behind me started making sympathetic noises, but then one of them said something about how it was probably building my character. At that point if I hadn't been so weak I'm sure I would have started screaming and gotten carried off the plane like in Meet the Parents, but instead I just flumped down on the edge of Zarli's seat. After all, she was right, I'm sure it was building my character. Also I was wearing my cross and it entered my mind thatI didn't want to completely misrepresent my Lord.

Soon the attendant did find us an empty row into which we flopped with relief and passed out until the descent over Zurich when it was time to start barfing again. We landed, got our bags and got through customs and with relief were met by Antony. After hugs and kisses, he bought me a coffee. It came, I excused myself, and stepped out into the fresh air for barf session #6. Nice clean Switzerland, and I greeted it with an upchuck of green bile in the corner behind the bus ticket kiosk. I slept on the two hour ride to Boncourt and when we arrived, the nausea had passed even if the headache hadn't. And then the warm embraces, burdens removed and the feeling of cool cotton sheets and a soft feather pillow and the overwhelming sense of arrival and security. Aaahhhh!

I cannot make that trip without thinking of it as a metaphor. Like the fonctionnaire said, "life is a journey," and the transatlantic journey makes me think of our life journey towards our ultimate destination. When the kids ask me about heaven, I tell them about what I know is true from the Bible, and I also tell them that there's plenty I don't know. But I think the picture the Bible paints is consistent with the metaphor I give them: Think of the trip to Switzerland, how long that flight is, how tired we all are, how it feels like it will never end, like we'll be in that airplane for ever, and even when we land and drive in the car, it just feels like our journey will never ever end. But it does end. And what we feel when we climb those last steps and see the open warmly lit door and arms stretching to embrace us is almost indescribable. We're here, we made it. That, I tell them, I think that's what getting to heaven will be like.

Sometimes the journey of life is pretty good, and you get to watch movies and people bring you ginger ale. But sometimes life is is like that awful trip, barfing all the way. Plenty of times on that trip I prayed I'd wouldn't throw up anymore, but I still did. After #4, I felt downcast and asked, why Lord? He didn't say, but I knew anyway that He was in control, that He still loved me and I would get there in one piece.

Here is what really moves my heart. Yesterday I learned that a man I knew also took a journey on September 3rd. He finished it too, but his journey was the one where Jesus met him at the door with outstretched arms. He died early, of a fast moving cancer, and this past year his family, friends and acquaintances supplicated the Lord ceaselessly on his behalf, asking God to remove the cancer and spare his life. But God didn't, and He didn't give His reasons. Before he died he was in a lot of discomfort, but he was so certain of his destination and of who would greet him there that his wife said sometime last week that each morning when she woke him he was disappointed to see her instead of Jesus. But still he knew that though his journey was hard, God loved him and He was in control. Now it has ended. He has climbed those last steps and into the Everlasting Arms that embrace him. He's there, he made it.

One of the other 365 Days of the Year

I spoke to a friend today who had looked at the pictures on this blog and commented how lovely and wonderful it all seemed. But she's no dummy; she knows most of life isn't really like pretty pictures of garden beds and fluffy chickies. I said, "Did you read about the day where the big homeschooling lesson was 'sitting on the couch until you can get along with your brother'?" "Yes," she said, "but that's just one day -- and all the others look perfect!!"

So... here it is especially for Keiko: what today was really like, but no pictures to prove it. Too bad though, I had a pretty impressive laundry stack.

When did the day really start? At 2:30, when Manu woke me up to tell me that Peter had thrown up and then that had woken up Zarli too and that he himself was not quite feeling well himself? And my first thought, instead of concern for the welfare of my family, was, "Well, why the heck did you wake me up to tell me about it if it's all fine now??" I didn't say that, but instead grumbled something cranky and sarcastic and then tried in vain to go back to sleep. I lay awake for about an hour and a half (this is the season when the increase in daylight really makes sleep an issue). Then just as I was finally dropping off, some baby started crying. Oh yeah, it was my baby Zarli, and -- true confessions -- I think I played possum. Manu got up, but I was now awake again, and when Zarli cried again awhile later I got up. So then when my alarm went off at 6:30 my motivation to get up and exercise was nil. I turned it off and flopped over. When I finally did get up at I don't know when, Manu was finishing up breakfast with the kids and I arrived on the scene cranky and headachey and headed straight for the Allerest and Sudafed and Flonase. I made coffee and thought about what I could eat with my dairy free, gluten free diet, since I was out of granola. I started to cry because I was hungry and it just felt too hard. I ended up eating a gluten free waffle with jam that Manu put in the toaster for me on the way out the door.

The morning was spent combatting one of those ailments particular to households with small children which shall remain unnamed here, but which makes one have a hankering to actually own a steam cleaner to steam the heck out of anything that isn't moving and to go so far as to research them on Costco.com. Visions of lining the children up and steam cleaning all of them at one go waft through one's conciousness. Since one doesn't have a steam cleaner, one at least finds delight in the "sanitize" cycle on the washer even though it's an hour and half long.

When the machines were full and we'd vacuumed through a large portion of the household I told the kids, "I'm going back to bed, keep your brother alive," and I pulled a stripped comforter onto my stripped bed and curled up applying a hot water bottle to my head, cheek and neck in turns. Marina wondered aloud if the flowers brought yesterday by my dear friend might be bothering my allergies. Ah! Yes, banish them outside.

Anyway, it continued like this. The kids got their own lunch-- maybe they had quesedillas? Fed Zarli and put him down for a nap. Etc. Etc.

Now it's nearly 11 and the machines -- my handmaidens -- are still going and I'm going to bed late. There's more laundry and cleaning to do tomorrow and it's supposed to be our last official day of school. We didn't do anything academic today, except for Peter who read aloud to Evangeline, and I think maybe she practised her recital piece. I think it wafted down to me in bed.

Thankfully tomorrow is another day. But I do wish I had taken a picture of my laundry pile to post.