Busy Hands Homestead

My breath catches and the page I am looking at blurs. Recently I started working at a little toy store, Walking Stick Toys .  It is a magical place that fills a sentimental nook in my heart.  You see, much of what is sold here is from Germany and as I am organizing toys on shelves or flipping through the books I run across things that are familiar from my childhood. Today I am looking around the store, compiling a list of gift ideas for different age groups (a work in progress, but coming soon). I am flipping through Magic Wool Fruit Children .  A picture of sheet cake, with neat rows of plums stops me.   I found it. When I was almost twelve, we left Germany in a whirlwind and contacts with people dear to my heart got lost in the mess of it all. Once a week I would walk down the the city center, ring a door bell and climb up a few flights of stairs to sit on a sofa between bookshelves lined with the most impressive stamp collection I have ever seen ...

My eyes are squeezed shut, I am gripping the sides of the car, my feet are pushing into the floorboard I am so nervous I have to pee.  I am terrified.  There was an upside down car laying in the boulder field just below the road, granted, It looked like it had been there for 40 years or so, but it instantly gave an image to what I was feeling.  I have a phobia of mountain roads and yet I regularly sit in the passenger seat while Adam patiently tries to drive while I freak out.  Why?  Well,I like picking huckleberries and I love hot springs so I find myself in the situation more often than I would like to admit.  How did I get here this time? I am entering the fourth decade of life and to celebrate we turned off our cell phones, threw food, clothes, the tent, the dogs and the kids into the car and embarked on a road trip to places we have never been before.  A loop through Idaho stopping to dip into a few of the many hot springs that dot the state a...

A gift arrived in this giant box....  and the box is just as awesome as the new sleds.  While Adam took the kids on a cold and windy sled ride. I finally finished our present for Sylvan...  and yes, it is late, very late!   Here is his very own fort kit.  At dinner every night Sylvan takes one look at his food and screams: "I don't like that!  I don't like that food!  I don't like that!"  The rest of the family is almost done before he takes his first bite of his pinto bean, onion, spaghetti squash and cheese quesadilla...  and....  a big grin spreads across his face.  He does like the food.  As a reward for trying his first bite Sylvan snapped this picture of his sister.  (She ate all her food, and half of his.)

Sylvan's arms are wrapped around my head. He hugs me tight. I dread the day he no longer cradles my head against his head. It is nap time. "I'm not a baby anymore." He giggles. We have so many benchmarks behind us. Sylvan has been out of day time diapers since last summer. I never even carry extra clothes for anymore. I had been staring at the present shaped sticker on the calendar that denotes his third birthday. I have been nursing for a better part of six years.  First Ivory, then Ivory and Sylvan and then just Sylvan...  and I was ready to move on to a new routine.  One that didn't require me nursing at bedtime, at night, in the morning.  In six years I have had two complete nights of sleep. I look at the calendar.  "We will ween then," I think, but as we neared the date I decided that weening on his birthday would be too sad for him and me.  Then Adam went out of town for a week and it seemed like a perfect opportunity to ween...

Ivory threaded the needle up and down through the button holes.  Tacking down the tulle, sandwiched between the button and a layer of sparkling felt.   I stitched the whole thing to hair clips.  There they are:  We are ready to go to celebrate a birthday!

I passed from one decade of life into the next. Cups clanked, water boiled, voices volleyed and I stared up at the dome of the tent above me. I pulled Sylvan closer. My little snuggle bug. My last baby - who hardly is confined within the parameters of a baby anymore. Ivory slept all night in her own tent. Her zippered flap just a few feet from mine. I smelled coffee - breathed deeply:  Life is good. I shimmied out from under the covers and crawled out of the tent. Loons raced across the lake. We were camping with friends and it just happened to be my birthday. After rounds of breakfast, adult canoe rides, observing never ending dizzying games of tag all the families piled into cars and set out on their respective adventures. We picked up a handful of national forest flyers, a forest service map and we huddled over the lines in the front of our car and picked a spot on the map - Morrell Falls - That is where we will go.  We picked huckleberries on the w...

Ten years ago, two days after my twentieth birthday, I met a blond pony tailed boy. He was riding his bike. I was wearing a blue dress and a white hat. I was on my way to see another man. This man: That's right - Dennis Kucinich. I was on my way to see Dennis Kucinich participate in a forum on the Oklahoma State University campus. He and eight of the other candidate competing for the democratic nomination to be the party's nominee for president (confusing) were to be present. I was rounding up people to sit in the bleachers and listen - participate in our great electoral system. (Am I writing that with sarcasm?  I don't even know.) My best friend was there..  a few good friends from high school..  and my mom, of course. We were meeting at a friend's place close to campus and walking to avoid the parking mess. I had a handful of tickets. This blond pony tailed boy rode up on a bike. Doing my civic duty, I invited him to join us. He rode on to pick up a ...

The days are sunny and long. There is no time sit down or sleep. There are morels to pick. So many morels to pick that we actually let our kiddos go over to a friends house for an entire day while we scrambled across the steep slope of the burned forest floor.  Our first day together with out children...  in - oh - 5 years or so.   There are summer birthdays to celebrate. There are amazing thrift store scores to discover.   Yes these are my new, super sexy footed pajamas. As I am climbing into bed. Adam: Are you glowing? I look down.  Me:  Yes. I. Am.  All the pterodactyls glow in the dark.   HOT.  right? There are bread baking skills to practice and share. There are more cups to etch.  There are back yard summer nights and bright summer mornings to enjoy with friends.  Somewhere in the doing and going and fun there is time to sleep and maybe the occasional moment to post ...

Previous birthdays we invited all our our friends.  We had potlucks. We sipped beers and chatted while the hoard of children played in the background.  I anxiously eyed the weather forecast.  Her birthday day yo-yo-ing between sunshine and rain.  Our home is not suited to squeezing large groups of folks into, and this year it seemed the focus should be on the birthday girl. So I narrowed the list down based on her friends rather than mine..  hoped we would have sunshine and that everyone would understand...  and made invitations. Ivory is five. This birthday, more than previous birthdays, feels like a rite of passage. Suddenly she is school aged. She is enrolled in kindergarden and after this summer I will be dropping her off into the care of another for hours each weekday.  This is a change I can hardly fathom.  While I stitch the seams of her new touch-the floor-princess dress I worry about back packs, school lunches and if she will fe...