Attack of the Birthday Boy

He’s THREE!

Attack of the children

I have too many cute pictures so they get an entry of their own.

Impromptu Birthday Party

Where the C-family comes down with balloons and whoopee cushions while I scramble to make a cake and hors d’oeuvre and P-daddy steals the boy away for us to shout “Surprise.”

And Dougie is surprised….

And shorn….

And so happy!

Happy Solstice

We enjoyed a wonderful celebration with our friends.

Nothing went as planned, pretty much….nothing! The cookies didn’t turn out, the food didn’t all arrive at the same time, and it rained alllll day so we didn’t do the tree for the animals.

BUT we had fun! Much laughter, and love.

But we did have 14 children opening Christmas gifts at one time. That was impressive. And then we sang Happy Birthday to and shared cake with the Solstice child, who turned three that day.

This is us prepping, earlier that day:

Lil Bit of Baking

I am really looking forward to Christmas being over.

I am not sick of Christmas decor or music, not stressed out by the gifts (much) but I can feel SAD creeping in. Unlike last year, I am not without electricity or warmth, and this year I have last year’s depression episode to warn me. I am seeing the crankiness and carb-loading for what it is. I will win. It doesn’t make much sense to me anyway, because I LIKE the changes in the seasons. I LIKE the dark, and I know it’s transitory. But my body, whoo boy, my body doesn’t like it. The spectrum light bulbs really do help, but they don’t fix it.

But anyway, I associate Christmas with the Solstice, and I will love it love it love it when the days begin to lengthen again.

Today my pasty white children and I baked pumpkin bread and roasted pumpkin seeds. They actually ate their healthy dinner of sauteed chicken and wild rice pilaf. I suppose having pumpkin bread considered as a vegetable side dish will help speed matters along there.

~G~ drew out an artistic design for her big blank wall in her room. I think it’s fabulous, and if we can pull it off, she’ll have a rockin accent wall. I am definitely going to support her in this endeavor.

Speaking of ~G~, massive trauma today. Her surviving crab is hanging out of his shell. I hear Monty Python as I type this, regrettably, but I do have to note he’s not dead yet. So he’s either dying or he’s molting. In the spirit of optimism, we returned him to his dark coconut shell house and shored him up with food and water. She got two crabs from Santa last year, and she has really taken very good care of them. One passed this summer,and she buried it under a rose bush. It would be most unfortunate to lose Flower so close to his birthday. She’s planned a party for him, complete with wrapped gifts tucked under the tree. She made him a stocking out of felt and and has it hanging alongside ours. I feel terrible for her, really do.

Little Nathan

We are praying for this boy: my dh and I, my fellow Tenters, and the many people whose lives Nathan has touched personally. Unlike many of our Junebugs, who we’ve visited or have visited us, Nathan probably has no idea who I am. He’s been sick most of his life with neuroblastoma. The doctors caught it late as far as the disease goes, when he was a toddler, and the resulting prognosis was 7 years. I remember vividly digging through the internet like a madwoman, trying to find anything to the contrary. I remember passionate conversations with Angie, Leti, Dawn and Kim about how certainly by the time 6 years was up, the researchers would have found something. He’d make it! Surely that was such a long time that the medicine would catch up!

As parents, we now know how fast that time goes past.

Most of us under the tent have children born within days and weeks of Nathan. He turned 7 years old in June. Every birthday he had, we’d celebrate silently as if it was our own child given that extra year. In a way, I suppose, it was. Every lost tooth of Nathan’s held a different meaning than our children’s. He didn’t find it exciting when chemo ruined his smile. Every picture, with new hearing aids, or fresh surgical tape pointed out to us how different his life path would become. It somehow started to seem unfair that we had healthy children. We celebrated life itself when Nathan achieved NED status, and cried in devastation when his disease returned after almost 2 years. Most of us refused to turn away, despite the pain. We kept following their lives, their story, feeling as if we could provide some invisible army, some huge community that would make Nathan’s life even bigger than it ever would be on its own.

None of us who know Susan take our children’s lives for granted. I have never written about him before because I have always felt it was not my place, not my story. But now, his family has been given the news that “Nathan has days to weeks left, rather than weeks.” They have called in hospice and the boy takes more morphine than an adult could normally handle. So I am posting because I believe in the power of positive intention, prayer, pulsing, whatever you personally call the communication your soul has with other energies. I don’t ask for him to be saved, because it is too late for that. But I am praying for his parents and their ravaged hearts. I am praying for his two little sisters, who will know a loss they can’t understand. I am praying for little Nathan, who is soon to leave the only life he has ever known. Nathan, who lies about needing pain meds so he can be awake longer with his family. Nathan, who said just yesterday that he’d rather do yard work his mom than sleep on the couch– and did it.

I am praying for Grace, for everyone involved. I hope you will send some of your energy as well.

Happy Birthday to Me

I am staying at 35 this year, I think. I forget how old I am all the time anyway, so 35 it is.

~G~ made me a cheese omelet while P-Daddy brought me morning coffee in a birthday-gift wolf mug. The kids made me home-made cards and gifts. Insert throbbing heart here.

Today we all wore our all matching tie-dye shirts and wandered around the farmer’s markets. I think we looked cool. We went to a bakery in search of a 1. safe 2. black forest cake and upon finding neither, came home and made a ghetto version. (But ~G~ told P-daddy it looked like we bought it from a bakery.)

We hung out a la familia today until ~G~ and I went to Home Depot where I bought more plants for the garden. And a new hoe.

I must be stopped.

Tie-Dye party

We had a party here for MackAttack’s 7 yo Dominator. I did the food and Niki did the tie-dye and a double chocolate brownie cake– with no dairy!
Fun! Educational! Did I mention Loud?

Thank you notes

Every year I intend to send thank you notes. Pre-children I was scrupulous about them. After children, we never received them from other families so after a while, I got into the lazy habit of ignoring that nicety. Some parents even complained that our thank you notes made them feel bad. Ugh.

This year, I don’t care. I have to go back to the thank you note situation, at least with G. She can write now and she’s old enough that I need to teach her how to be a gracious adult (eventually). My idea this year is to take shots of G using each of her gifts and print them out, having her write Thank you beneath the picture. The presents she received were each so very appropriate to her, both in her personal interests and to our lives as unschoolers.

Right now, she is painting pottery pieces into which she will plant wheatgrass for a windowsill garden in her room. Even blog readers who never met us know how perfect that is for her. Painting Pottery? Gardening?

neither rain nor sleet nor head of bed will keep us from our appointed painting

This shot is from yesterday: a music box for her jewelry. Instead of a ballerina, it’s a dragon. Yeah, just see the title to the blog.there’s a little dragon nose peering back at her

Nikirj sewed her a hooded cloak that glows in the friggin dark. COME ON! I thought I had shots of that but I don’t yet. Mwahahaha. Maybe we’ll be the freaks of the campground this weekend.

Homeschool Scouts

Typical of our birthday parties, we spend an afterglow period down at the beach.

G had two girlies for a birthday sleepover, so after a hashbrowns breakfast we all traipsed on down. It was a gloriously sunny day, a sharp contrast to the grey haze of the day before.

We set up a day camp, complete with a windbreak and a fire. The kids, all of whom are homeschoolers, did most of the work setting up the fire ring and gathering appropriate fuel, so we quipped we were the home school scouts. We must be. All the kids had technicolor hair by the end of the day point.

The morning-after glaze. Toddlerness decided that Mackattack’s daughter was her best friend and behaved accordingly. The feeling was definitely mutual.

Yes, I had her mother’s permission to do this to her hair!

Homeschooler Corp d’esprit

Day Camp. I promise I am not flipping Nikirj off.

Yes. Even the toddlers.

One learns something new every day. *I* learned that no matter how good the quality, corn dogs are still nasty to me.