As The Butter Churns

November 27th Wii Are Family

(by the light of day)

(something seems familiar)

(Leah, Quinn - not a morning person, Lauren and Ally)

(Moira and Caroline)(Diane working like the Energizer™ Bunny)

(Caroline in the game room)

(lunch is served)(Diane in red, Lauren, Quinn and Dorian)
(conference room complete with a Wii!)_
(river view)

(game room fireplace)

(Chris making the shot - darts)

(Diane with her pumpkin pies)

(William, Dorian, Henry & Quinn reading some fashion mags)

(Ally, William and Henry in the game room) (Leah and Quinn)

(Lisa and Phoebe)

(Good Night)

 

September 26th Send In the Clown

 (Phoebe lounges with her "spa" birthday party avocado & oatmeal mask)

(Facial Fun)

(BELOW -Tom puts peanuts on Phoebe- when told of her ridiculous appearance, she just shrugged - "that's my uncle")

     Tom is the birthday party king. Not that the rest of us (Lisa, Chris and I) are any slouches when it comes to making refrigerator mazes for toddlers and safari excursions for rough and tumble kindergartners, but every year he does something to make the kids’ parties special – if he can. One year he made a sixteen-foot wooden elaborately painted she-dragon with eyelashes to stand in the Donaldson’s yard for Quinn’s “princess party”. Another time he created a 10-foot long python cake, face painting became a staple, caricatures and anything else the kids could dream up. As Quinn and Phoebe discussed who'd had better birthday parties because of Tom, they suggested that if he got tired of advertising and Fort Flashback didn't work out, perhaps he could make a lot of money as a birthday party clown. (Pea - as tattoo Ernie) (getting ready for a swirly tattoo)

This year, he didn’t really think he’d be involved, as Phoebe had decided for her eighth birthday party to have a “spa” theme. This meant soak in the Jacuzzi, manicures, facials and sundry other spa related activities. Little did he realize he would become “Ernie” the airbrush tattoo artist specializing in butterflies, ladybugs and the occasional gecko (my Peabrain and Quinnderella with her new geko tattoo)

(close up - with sparkles)

Quinn takes to these parties like a duck to water dancing around, clapping "I want all my butterflies to lie down now"as she snaps. "I'm talking, I'm talking, are you listening? Clap if you're listening."

    She and Lisa were fabulous as the manicurists.
I heard Lisa asking questions like "Are you married?"
    "Ahh no. I'm eight."
    "Is there someone special?"
    "Ahh no. I'm eight, but there is. . ."

I handled the warm avocado masks (avocado, oatmeal, lemon juice and honey) which I applied liberally with a basting  brush. I was told it was ewy, gooey and very relaxing. Luckily, I wasn't at the rinsing station.

Chris handled the service end of the party - batting clean-up.  His birthday is next. Hmm?

By the end of the party, Pea had that airbrush cranking which meant Lisa and I got crazy great tattoos. Lisa got a tortoise on her chest while I chose the snappy looking tri-color gecko

(Lisa presents the party cake - strawberry shortcake  ala' Nana) (Quinn indulges)

July 20th Our Big Backyard

(Craig heads out to the field)

   

More work and more trips to Lowes™ and Wayne back for more made this day seem like any other day except for when the entertainment committee arrived, our neighbors Kristi and Stan. They came roaring up in their big shiny truck with food. For no particular reason, they sat on the edge of their truck as we worked and chatted. NASCAR, drag racing, tubing (down the river) and guns were mainstays of the conversation. We’re talking serious county. I asked Stan if he wanted a beer and he said “No. I have one in the truck.” (Stan)

(Craig gone native)

    These are two are salt of the Earth. The type of people you call in an emergency and you know, no matter what time it is, they’ll be there. Kristi and Stan laugh easily, feel as comfortable as an old pair of work boots and you don’t have to fuss. They’re people who know who they are, in fact they knew each other only eight weeks when they got married. When it’s right it’s right.

   

Unfortunately they had other plans and couldn’t stay for our barbecue out by the pond. Just as they were about to leave, Annie, Quinn, Phoebe and Winifred showed up. Tom whipped up his father’s chicken recipe that’s being handed down through the family and we didn't dally getting our party going -"shee-it"

 after all it's Saturday Night. (Tom, Annie, Craig and Wayne - seated)

Our last but not least important guests didn’t travel far, for our barbecue at the pond. Kristi (another one) and Olie (short for Olerud- Kristi is a baseball fan) her dog a Katrina Rescue walked over from their new home in Grandpa Horn’s old place, which means I finally have a neighbor lady – like on Califa Street when I had Anice and Nona.
(Annie watches the meal being prepared by the menfolk)
    We gorged on chicken, corn, watermelon (ala ‘Big Lu” with Pico de Gallo and lemon), potato salad and fresh crab Wayne caught out of the bay the other day. While the kids fished, the pack of dogs played and we sat enjoying the day turn into evening.
  (Wayne's dog - Abbey showing all the other pups how it's done) (Phoebe & Henry go fishing)
  (Perplexed Henry actually catches a fish as vegetarian Quinn screams "throw it back before you kill it's little trout spirit" and Phoebe shrieks for no real reason other than it seems called for)

    Annie and I noticed smoke. We were all amused to find out it was a campsite. Our pond is close to one of our property lines and there were campers on the adjoining vacant land. It felt absurd to be in your backyard and  see people really camping not just kids pitching a tent in the neighbors yard, but really truly “getting away from it all”.  I feel extremely lucky.

(There is so much stuff and so many dogs - Wayne drives the food back to the house with Craig and Quinn following behind)

July 4th Freedom Can Be Frustrating

   

(fireworks provided again this year by the Donaldsons)

   

Freedom of speech is obvious in theory. I’ve always explained to my students that in order to have freedom of speech we have to endure things that we ourselves might find repugnant Nazi rhetoric etc. A tough lesson to learn.
(Some of my former students re-creating the Second Continental Congress)

    Recently, I had to learn the lesson again myself. The other day I encountered a situation where I found what some people were saying completely distasteful to me. They thought their words were irreverent and funny. I didn't. The entire exchange really got under my skin and I said something I shouldn't have

    Although, I realize, I certainly had/have the right to express my feelings, just as much as anyone, I also realize just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

    I later explained to Henry. I am not anyone else’s mother but his. And really I am not going to convince anyone who thinks and talks so differently than I do - of anything. So in retrospect I should have listened to my mother  instead of my indignation : “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” A good reminder for me today when Independence, hot dogs, pie, Civil Rights, corn on the cob. watermelon, Freedom of Speech, and gingham tablecloths blend together to create such a wonderful holiday.

(The kids took turns setting them off - you've got to love being out in the middle of no where) (Everyone joins in - Lisa, Phoebe, Chris, Quinn, "Pops" - Chris' dad, Rory & Henry)

(things heat up)

(red glare) (bursting in air)

(Quinn a sparkler expert)

June 13th A Good Time

   (Henry's teacher's gift)

    This morning I woke up very early and began trolling dew-covered ditches, hillsides and the pond for wildflowers. My trusty companion, Irish, trotted along next to me chewing on my reject pile. When I was done I was soaked, but I had created Henry’s teacher’s gift. I couldn’t afford much, but I picked up the vase at TJ MAXX™ for a song.

Creativity, I am convinced, is born of poverty. When I bought my first home I couldn’t really afford to do much, but I couldn’t stand it the way it was, so I had to get creative. I ripped out the bathroom and went around collecting broken tile from different stores – stuff they were going to discard. Toby and I went to Home Depot™ and got a little pamphlet on how to tile and set to improving my bathroom. Much to everyone’s surprise – especially my mother’s -  it looked fabulous. Thus I realized, if I’d had the money, I never would have gone to the trouble.

The day has rambled on. Henry had his “fifth grade culmination”, which was actually a small award assembly. He went on to a swim party on Lake Whatcom while Tom and I raced back to the house to get ready for our celebratory barbecue. With barely a word to each other we furiously tidied, cleaned, marinated and set up tables.

We’d decided to have our dinner out by the pond so we could enjoy the evening, rain or shine, thanks to our covered pavilion. This meant hauling Tom’s new half-gas half-briquette grill out there in the truck. He loves it because it looks like a steam locomotive.

Meanwhile, Mike and my father are down at the hospital in Mt. Vernon. My father is having a biopsy for bladder cancer. It is an outpatient procedure so he should be home by this evening. Mike’s happy because he can sit and read while he waits and avoid having to clean the house. He calls in every few hours to update us on my father’s condition. “He’s still sleeping” seems to sum it up.

    The  “guests”, meaning Lisa, Chris, Annie, Quinn, Phoebe and Henry, as well as Diane, Jordan and Lauren all arrived late. Thank the Lord.

    Despite our best efforts, we haven’t gotten the Mosquito Magnets™ up and running so we scattered tiki torches filled with Citronella™ around. This was not terribly effective, but we made do.

    Just after everyone arrived, my tired-but-otherwise-OK father arrived with Mike. A few more guests also made an appearance. Lloyd, Matilda, Quackmire, Cleveland, Clara, Ruthie, Alfred and Mabel waddled up for their first swim in the pond. They’ve turned out to be very clingy. These geese don’t like to be left alone and always want to be where the action is. Once they arrived we all held our breath waiting to see them frolic in the pond. They didn’t. They hated the pond and were afraid of the water. Apparently, I have the only geese this side of the Mississippi with hydrophobia. We tried putting them in the water to show them how wonderful it is, but they would just flap wildly, squawking frantically until they reached land once more. Confused, stunned and full of disbelief, we left them to their own devices, not wanting to emotionally scar them. After that they flapped contentedly around the party, coming in the pavilion to check on Tom’s cooking and say hello. Weirdoes. (Lisa giving swimming lessons to Cleveland) (more lessons)

    Little Chris Donaldson showed up with Roxy, Andrea (a new girlfriend he’s had a crush on since the sixth grade), and he also brought a surprise guest – his horse. He trailered “Oz” over for Henry to ride as a present. (Little Chris & Andrea)

(Henry on Oz)

    All in all, our first summer evening was relaxed and wonderful. The kids walked the goats and rode the tractor, played badminton and floated in the boat while we ate Tom's delicious ribs, cosmic beans, corn and watermelon, sipped my sangria and downed Diane’s brownies. (Jordan and her mother - Diane)

December 31st Whooo! Whooo!

   

    Mike, Tom, Henry and I set to cleaning the house up for our “guests”. Ok we were only having Chris, Lisa and the girls, but we pretended they were company. We swept, and moved piles in attempt to confine the junk to a few places.

    We decided to have Mexican food for dinner followed by another one of Paula Dean’s recipes. Her Sour Cream Cake. Yummy in my tummy. 

    The Donaldsons arrived and helped us do the chores. Chris went on a walk with the kids while Lisa chatted with Tom and me while we fixed dinner. After we ate we all sat down for a Mexican Train tournament.

    There was yelling, laughing and barking. Tom barks at times, I don’t know how to explain it. It all started when his older kids’ high school mascot was the Bull Dogs.

   

    When it neared midnight, Chris got some fireworks out to set off. But first, we went in turned on the TV and waited for the worldwide displays that usually ring in the New Year i.e. Times Square. The local network shifted to Seattle where they were supposed to have some big display that due to some kind of technical difficulty didn’t happen.

   

    Chris decided enough was enough and went out to set up the fireworks, while he was doing that Emmett slipped unnoticed out the door. I looked out the window and saw Emmet standing on the snow. I didn’t know what to do. We all went out and started calling him, he freaked out. He dashed under the porch and just as I thought all was lost, he’d never come in. He suddenly hopped up on the porch and walked in the door. I don’t think being a Southern California cat he bargained for the cold, the crunchy frozen snow or the sound of predators looming close by in the hills.

December 25th Happy 2007th Birthday

    Christmas morning. Oh, Christmas morning. In many places, it snows, there are places where it’s hot and of course there’s rain. Here it’s dark. In the movies when you see happy children opening presents while the sun streams in the window, that’s not here. I don’t know where that is, but it’s somewhere else. It did not get light this morning until after 8:00AM.

    Dark or not, the kids wake up. They have a built in timer on holidays and it’s set early. Even our pre-teen Quinn who usually sleeps until almost 11:00 was wide-eyed awake before sunup. Luckily, Lisa set the coffee pot timer and we were ready to go.

    We sat around opening presents, drinking coffee, taking pictures and collecting the debris for a couple of hours. Tom kept wondering what we were going to eat for breakfast. The kids were nibbling on some muffins, but Tom hates sweets – except cheesecake. Breakfast never came. Tom vowed to have Christmas at our house next year, where he could get a hearty meal. I shoved a bagel in his mouth and poured him another cup of coffee.

    Lisa forgot where she hid Quinn's big present, so a treasure hunt commenced. The hitch, Lisa didn't want to tell Quinn what it was in case they didn't find it. What a circus, before the new phone was found.

    We all eventually got dressed as friends and Mike were coming over for Christmas dinner. Our menu consisted of fondue, prime rib and sundry other dishes. Henry obsessed with Paula Dean decided we needed to make the blueberry dumplings we saw on the Food Networks Holiday show. Just as the company was about to arrive, it became clear we didn’t have enough bread or crackers for the fondue. Tom and I volunteered to find a market and get supplies. We drove all over Bellingham and back looking for an open market. It was getting ridiculous there was absolutely nothing open. We couldn’t believe it. I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised by Bellingham is both a nice sized town and a ridiculously small town at the same time. There are several large market chains here and none were open. We finally found a tiny little market doing a cranking business that had a type of bagel chip we felt would be acceptable. Tom got a snack still muttering about the lack of food served by the Donaldsons this year.

    When we returned we found that John, one of Lisa and Chris’s friends went home and actually baked some bread they had. We never opened our measly bagel chips. The fondue was great, the meat was delicious and the dumplings were yummy. Even Tom was no longer hungry.

    The rest of the night was a good time; we played a game I’d never heard of before called Mexican Train™.  Diane and John had it and Tom had played it with his brother. It was fun and we could all play.

 

    When we finally drove on to Mosquito Lake Road at around 11:00PM we felt like we drove into a snow globe. Snow was falling in big gloppy flakes. The snow was thick on the road with no evidence of car tracks. The moon was shining as we stood in the dining room listening to Bing watching the magic, the perfect end to our first Washington Christmas.

December 16th Cookie Party

   

    We'€™ve been baking sugar and shortbread cookies of every shape and size all week in grand preparation for this the 6th Annual Christmas Cookie decorating party. Lisa started this annual event, driven by my mother'€™s philosophy that you can'€™t just make Christmas one day. You have to DO things. Over the years, it’s been a huge success. I think Tom likes it best. He doesn'€™t care what the medium as long as he'€™s creating. Unfortunately, for him and fortunately for us he won'€™t be in attendance this year – we'€™re glad, because his cookies look like they could be put directly into Martha Stewart Living. The funny thing is, Tom loves it and Chris never comes. He takes this opportunity to go on a long bike ride.

 

    In the past, I'€™ve always known almost everyone invited and this year, I barely know a soul. This year there will be Lisa and me plus at least five women and about ten or more girls and Henry.
    The cookie decorating is always fun and I can spend hours frosting a house and putting on Red Hots. I love frost the stocking shaped cookies using the little silver balls we got at the cake-decorating store in years past. It seems those aren'€™t good for you so they not readily available anymore. They made great trim and wonderful buttons on gingerbread men.

This year as I sat there listening to the women chat, I felt very removed from everything. They were very nice, but I just didn’t have anything to say. They spoke of soccer teams and girls sleepovers. I have a boy and he does gymnastics. They talked about going to lunch and I thought about hay bales and alfalfa pellets. I just didn'€™t seem to fit it. It felt lonely.

   

After the party one of the women asked Lisa if I was a loner. Wow! ME? I’m sooooo social, I’m the thrower of parties, the giver of dinners the woman with the international calling plan, but I can see how she sees me that way. It’s funny because I just got off the phone with a woman, Andrea; I’m considering buying lambs from in the spring. They're Leicester Longwools, a rare heritage sheep, and the same sheep George Washington had at Mt. Vernon. I’ve never met this woman, but as we spoke of mud and pastures and cleaning barns we were laughing and chatting like old friends. It made me realize how much I’ve changed.

July 4th The Gang's All Here!

    Well, people showed up and so did the mosquitoes. All day couples came and went, many more than I expected were from California. We were hoping to see some kids for Henry to make friends with, but alas none came. There was an interesting array of people. We met travel writers who live on an old homestead and just got indoor plumbing after 19 years. Rick and Angie, whose pioneer forebears originally homesteaded the land, roared up on motorcycles. Rick dabbles in blacksmithing. From our guests we learned the history of our house. We purchased it from a company called Secret Harbor, a place for troubled teens. Before that it belonged to a troubled family with 15 children. No wonder the house is so rundown and has a baby crib built into the wall of the master bedroom. (It looks like a very strange puppet theatre.) With so many kids and mud and animals who would have time for cleaning?

    We were going to go in to Bellingham and watch the fireworks over the bay, but we were exhausted. Luckily, my favorite and only brother-in-law Chris had the foresight to buy some fireworks at a stand. The concept scared me. In California, we’d be put in jail, but here it seems it is perfectly ok. We had a blast, literally, sitting on the porch as everyone took turns lighting sparklers, snakes and things that looked like professional pyrotechnics. I worried the entire time that we might light the place on fire and burn it down before we’ve been here even one week. Tom told me to relax, so I worried silently as I slapped the mosquitoes.