This Week

It’s been a bit busy.  I think I have enough material for blogging to last me a month or so from just this week.

-Elias and Solveig are attending preschool VBS this week.

-We’re picking strawberries every other day like crazy.  The crop is huge and beautiful this year!

-We’re trying to preserve or eat up these strawberries before they go bad.  Strawberries dipped in dark chocolate, strawberry pie, strawberry rhubarb pie, strawberry jam, strawberry-rhubarb jam…it’s been busy.

-We had to take Missy to the vet to get her stitches out.  There’s a story there.  It was an adventure.

-Our basement flooded.

-We lost a huge amount of our flock of laying chickens in a predator attack.  We had tied Missy up in the barn before her vet appointment in hopes of keeping her out of the mud and the wound clean.  The predators took their opportunity of Missy missing and took many.  We’re not even sure how many yet.  Missy is so upset about it.  I can’t even begin to tell you her stress level shown the morning after.

-There was a massive, scary funnel cloud in the sky, close enough to hurry us to the drying-out basement for an hour or so.  (It never touched down, and remained no closer than 10 miles north of us.)

-Knut is extremely busy on the farm, and nothing seems to be going right in that area this year, which is an added stress.

-One of our cats had kittens.  Only 2, but they are beautiful and doing well.  We’ve been looking for them, and David and Elias found them while cleaning out the summer kitchen (toy/garden tool building outside) as a surprise for me.  They have been named Cheetah and Posie.

I’m trying, and failing, and trying again, and again, and again to live in the moment, and enjoy these precious times these kids are giving me this summer, and not get swallowed up by activities.  I’ve been saying “no” so often to things that I’m questioning all of it.  Well, part of me questions saying “no” to activities.  The other part of me thinks I’m not saying it nearly enough.

One day, when I was feeling particularly defeated, Solveig came into the kitchen where I was preparing supper and asked me to hold her.  I picked her up, and she held my face about 1/2 inch from hers and said, “Dance with me.”

“Rockin’ Robin” happened to come on our Pandora station, which is Solveig’s favorite song, and she can’t stand not dancing through it.  So we danced.  These habits are important.  She saved my evening.

Those are the sorts of things I can say “yes” to and not question one bit.