Babies

I really need to redo the photos on here.  That header?  Those kids don’t even exist any more.  Reagan has been through three hair colors since then, pierced her nose and added three tattoos (that I know of).  Hayden looks like a baby up there.  He’s probably six inches taller and has a beard for heaven’s sake.  Faith has probably grown that much too - her height I mean.  She doesn’t have a beard.

But a new header featuring my kids means all three in the same place at the same time in an agreeable mood with a photographer present.

So the header stays.

But here are updates on their lives:

That’s my favorite recent photo from Reagan’s Facebook page.  I haven’t seen her in person since August.  The cat is Persephone and is technically her roommate’s but they co-parent the cats.  Caspian is still alive and kicking … literallyReagan is a junior+.  If she sticks the “get me the heck out of college ASAP” schedule she’s set for herself, she will graduate next December.  I kind of wonder what the hurry is.  I suspect it has something to do with the fact that her boyfriend lives in L.A., but she says she’s just ready to get on with life and quit paying money to take dumb classes that she isn’t interested in but that a Liberal Arts degree requires.

A valid point.

In addition to the 15 credit hours she’s taking, she has a waitressing job and coaches a high school Slam Poetry team.  She’s also still heavily involved in Slam herself.  In August she went to Nationals in Oakland and competed for the Nebraska team.  The aforementioned boyfriend helps run a YouTube channel so she also gets roped into helping film events which she likes to do as it involves travel, Slam and the boyfriend.  

She’s kind of busy.  I marvel at all she juggles and miss her terribly.

This is a picture I took of Hayden when we dropped him off in August.  He does not participate in social media so I don’t have anything more recent.

Nor do I have any more than mere scraps of info about his life in college.  Here is what I do know:

• He has a roommate.  I guess they get along ok because I haven’t heard otherwise.
• The food in the residence hall is good.
• He’s going to class, not chronically oversleeping as I feared. This fact has been confirmed by other sources as well.
• He doesn’t like his Soils class.  I can’t imagine liking an entire class about dirt either.
• He says his grades are good.

That’s it.  That’s all I’ve got.  I need to see the boy soon as he’s much more forthcoming in person.

Faith is stuck up here in Minnesota with us.  That means she’s doing a LOT of adapting.  Adapting to a new town, new school, new dance studio, new church, new friends, new home, new dog … 

It’s a lot of adapting.

Most days she does pretty well, but I strongly suspect that if we were to pack up and move back to Lincoln tomorrow she would be thrilled.

Since that is not a choice, we keep pressing on.  That picture is from Homecoming.  She had vehemently decided to not go.  The thought of walking into the dance where she still didn’t know very many people (it was the second week of school) was overwhelming.  At diner the night of the dance she was scowling into her plate at dinner time, hating life. However, the young ladies who have befriended her kept bugging her until, an hour before the dance started, she decided to go.

Of course, shopping for a new dress was an impossibility so she pulled out one we bought a couple of months ago, brushed her hair, threw on some make up and was ready to go. (The friends in the athletic gear were dressed for the black lights.)

Oh to be 14 and lovely enough to pull off a trick like that.

Faith turns 15 on Saturday, which means that this post should definitely NOT be titled “Babies” but … 

that is what they will always be to me.

Autumn

I’m still here, but I don’t think a daily writing prompt will work for me.  I’m too bossy to be told what to write about ever day.

You aren’t shocked, are you?

I think I’ll try to go alphabetically instead.  A is for Autumn. This is the view off of my back patio yesterday morning:

I have been delighted by fall here.  Delighted by the apple trees in my yard and the colors of the trees.  Delighted by warm days and cold nights.  Super delighted by a normal sunrise/sunset schedule - the days of summer were LONG and it was very bright in my bedroom very early.  I prefer to greet the sun well after 6:30 a.m. when I can.

Mostly I’m just delighted that we have fall here.  It was always my favorite season in Lincoln, and I was afraid winter would come so early to Northern Minnesota that I’d miss it.  But nope.  It’s here and it’s glorious.

The only thing I don’t like is the wasps.  From mid-August to mid-September wasps are EVERYWHERE.  Seriously - it’s like an Armageddon Plague.  Makes mowing under the apple trees a dicey situation.  But they are mostly gone now which probably means winter is right around the corner. 

(sob) Hold me.

Things we did to celebrate fall:

Kayaking.After Hayden left, we went a few more times.  Luna even went along for one.  Honestly, though, Hayden is my best kayaking partner so I lost some steam after he was gone.  They’re in the garage now for the winter.

Homecoming:

Homecoming was the second week of school here and Faith felt like she didn’t know enough people to go to the dance so we did NOT dress shop.  That day though, she walked in the parade.

Oh the parade.

You guys - it was the BEST.  The whole town comes out for it.  They bus over the middle and elementary school kids to watch it.  There are “floats” for every sports team, club and organization.  There are floats for the royalty of course and several area businesses also participated.  They even loaded up the entire orchestra onto the bed of a semi and had them play “The Final Countdown” through the whole route. Faith walked with the sophomore class.  They were supposed to dress like what they want to be when they grow up.

Someone watches too much Criminal Minds.

So yes - autumn has been wonderful up here.  I’d like to get in one more bonfire in our fire pit before it’s too cold.  Maybe if I put that off, I can put off winter too!

Not Whining

At least I’m trying really hard not to, but I gotta tell you: it’s a struggle.  But everyone knows that moving is hard.  I know that moving is hard.  Whining won’t help and it just annoys the people who have to listen to it.

And things will get better.

Probably.

Can I just vent this one itty bitty thing though? 

I have been to Walmart more times in the last two weeks than in the previous six months because IT’S MY ONLY CHOICE and that’s really not acceptable.

Thanks for listening.

On the list of positives for the week:

1) I think we’ve found a church.  At least we’ve found a place with some promise.  The congregation is small (by our standards - I think they said around 250) and meets in a converted gas station which gets instant points for fun.  Other highlights:

-2 dogs
-a granny in leather pants
-a children’s pastor with an excellent sense of humor and full sleeve tattoos 
-a child who let loose an epic belch in the middle of the sermon
-a young pastor with a British accent whose message was well delivered and full of grace and Scripture
-a worship set with a lot of promise and musicians who would probably benefit with guidance from a seasoned guitar player

We even went to an ice cream social in the park that they held and I talked to actual people and didn’t die from it, so that’s a good sign I think.

2) I found a drunken troll.

I don’t know why that counts as a “positive” but I really feel like it does.

3) We got a dog.

Which was totally not something I planned to do, but Faith is struggling a bit with this adjustment and it was strongly suggested us that a dog was an excellent antidote.  I’m a big fan of puppies - for about 2 hours.  Then I want someone to take them and train them and let them chew up someone else’s house for the next year.  So instead of going that route, we went to the local no-kill shelter and found this charming little lady.  She’s about 18 months old and comes with no guarantees, but we’ve spent an hour or more with her each day this week and she seems smart, trainable and friendly.  She’s been at the shelter for three months and has had no behavior issues in that time.  In fact, she’s the staff favorite.  The director got teary when I filled out the adoption application.  She keeps her kennel clean, but they have no idea if she’s actually housebroken so that could be interesting.  Good thing I’m planning to tear out the carpet in the new place soon anyway.

If you’re thinking it looks like she has some Pitt Bull in her, I would agree with you.  But it also looks like maybe some collie and lab is mixed in there so I’m hoping that all together, it works out.  She really has taken to Faith.  They lie in the sun together and the dog rolls over for belly scratches.

Let’s just hope she gets along with the cats.  Right now we’re going with the name “Luna”, but that’s not set in stone.

She will remain at the shelter until we close on our house next week, but we go over every day to see her and play with her.  While we’re there, we get other dogs out to help socialize them and work on basic commands.  It’s actually pretty fun and the weather here is always gorgeous so it’s a good way to get out and feel useful.

Just don’t get me started on the fact that at this point I know the names of more dogs than humans.

Faith's Homecoming 2014

Faith is not really little so much anymore.

She’s at least 5’8” though I don’t have an exact measurement because she doesn’t want to know how tall she is so she won’t let me measure.  She’s in high school and has a high school social life.  She turned 14 last week.

14.

She’s so young for her grade, that her age never seems that old to me.  I mean, some of her friends will be turning 15 in the next few weeks so she seems young by comparison.  But still … 

14.

Doesn’t it seem like we just celebrated her Golden Birthday?

I think so too.

Tonight was Homecoming.  We don’t let the kids date at this age so she went with a group of friends.  We found her dress when we were in Denver last month and I just love it.

It’s so cute and so flattering (though when you’re a tall, teenaged dancer there isn’t much that doesn’t flatter) and the color is just perfect for her.  It even looks great from the back so she chose to wear her hair up to show it off a bit.  This is a good thing.  Her hair is long and blonde and lovely but getting it to hold a curl is near impossible.  This is what it looked like just after we took the sock bun out.

If we could get it to stay like that … sigh.  Safer to put it into a cute pony tail which showed off the dress and if she loses her curls, will still be styled.

I really thought I’d have more pictures.  The friends were meeting at a nearby restaurant and I thought the plan was to take pictures before they went for dinner.  Turns out that even an unusually nice October day is still too chilly to stand around with bare legs in little dresses.  They stood there through a few shots and then ditched the moms and headed in.

I’m glad I got a few at home before we left.

See that scab on the side of her knee?

That’s from a zombie attack.

She went to the Pumpkin Patch with some friends last week.  During the day it’s designed for family fun, but at night everything is scary.  There are zombies who walk around and try to freak people out and one of them (who looked to be about 10) approached Faith’s friend who screamed, of course.  Then he turned to Faith who took of running … and promptly tripped over a pile of pumpkins and went sprawling.  According to her friend who was laughing almost too hard to tell the story, there were arms and legs everywhere and a group of “cute guys” sitting near by laughed.

If that had happened to me at 14 I would have made the situation a whole lot worse by bursting into tears and/or getting mad.  Faith managed to laugh along with everyone else which is, of course, the quickest way to get over embarrassment so good for her.  Not so good were the bruises on both hips and the hole in her leggings and the blood dripping down her knee.

Ah well.  It made for a good story.

And I think she pulls off the Formal Wear/Zombie Victim combo nicely, don’t you?

Faith is Baking

I am proud to say that Faith made the dessert for the rehearsal dinner last week.  We kept it simple because no matter how fancy a dessert I make, nothing pleases a crowd on a summer night more than brownie sundaes.

The recipe?

Put a brownie in a bowl.  Put vanilla ice cream on top.  Pour chocolate sauce over it.  If you’re feeling inspired, offer other toppings.  This time I put out sprinkles and pecans.

Faith made three pans of brownies that we cut up and set out and they were scrumptious.  Just the right combo of chewy on the edges and moist in the middle.  She did a great job.

It’s a good thing she’s been practicing on us first.

Like with these chocolate chip cookies she made a couple of weeks ago.

I walked in the door after work to the MOST amazing smell of freshly baked cookies.  I headed, excitedly, for the kitchen and saw these rather … round looking treats.  They were in the exact shape they had been when Faith put the dough on the cookie pans.  Absolutely no spreading had occurred during the baking process.  I tried to be encouraging and picked one up and bit into it.

The taste wasn’t bad at all but the texture was exceptionally crunchy.  Biscotti like actually.

Trying to not seem critical, I gently questioned her about what ingredients she used.  She went down the items listed in the recipe and admitted, “I wasn’t really sure what shortening is, so I used this.  I’m pretty sure it’s shortening.”

And then she pulled out the big tub of corn starch.

Corn starch?

That is really not shortening.  Actually, I’m pretty impressed the cookies turned out at all.  We dubbed them “low-fat” and they mostly got eaten.  So if you ever want a short cut to making biscotti, just sub corn starch for the shortening.

Hoping to boost her confidence after the chocolate chip biscotti, I left the ingredients out for her to make lemon cookies from a cake mix a couple of days later.

I came home to these:

There were a few that weren’t too browned to eat, but Faith and her friend had polished those off and left us with brown lemon cookies.

I may have tossed them, when she wasn’t looking.

But she had redeemed herself with the spectacular brownies.  And I am more than happy to try her baking attempts any time at all.

When it comes to baked goods, I’m not picky.