Procrastination

As a wise man once said..."Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday"...or in my case with the last year and a half!

So what does one do when one is so far behind?  I'm not sure I know, but I guess I'm just going to jump in where we are, and let what can catch up...

Lucky enough!

If you're lucky enough to have a 10 year old boy, well then you're lucky enough.  

But if that 10 year old loves to make a fire every night in September while you're watching the sunset, and bring s'mores to you--well, that's simply a little heaven on earth!

Class of 2014

At our house, the class of 2014 is Rachel.  

Quite literally, a class of 1. 

A class of her own?  

The classiest one?  

I guess, as a homeschooled student, you get to be all of the above.

Rachel can hold her own in a much larger class however. She has taken classes at the local high school for the past two years and has exercised her competitive side all the way to the top of every class she has taken there.

I honestly figured that Rachel would pursue studies in some creative field, or perhaps in writing (she did have an almost perfect SAT in that particular subject after all), but--after a lifetime of providing her with art supplies,crafting hobbies, and endless notebooks for her writing rather than toys to play with--she discovered a previously well-hidden interest in mathematics. She has been accepted into the Engineering program at the University of Maine in Orono to follow that interest.  In fact, her academic ability has landed her a very nice merit scholarship from the University.

Rachel will spend the next two years in an integrated engineering program which UMO began a couple of years ago and has a limited enrollment of 25 students.  We are particularly happy about that since that means we get to keep Rachel with us for a couple more years before she has to move away to complete her program.  We aren't quite ready to part with her yet.  She is only 17 after all, and is a lot of fun to have around with her quick wit and kindness to her siblings.  And besides that, who would keep me up to date with what is hip and stylish?

While I can't say that Rachel is perfect, or even nearly perfect in every way-- she takes after her parents that way-- it has been an amazing experience to see how God's grace has been infused into her life.  It makes me very thankful.

I'll leave you with this short mystery that Rachel wrote for her Creative Writing class last semester.  I thought it was a unique twist on the assignment, and cleverly done.  And also this little peek into her photography project this semester:  https://sites.google.com/a/hs.rsu5.org/rachel-hollen/photography

I press my face against the edge of the world and look out at what doesn't exist. Blurry shapes move back and forth just out of sight. The only thing that is always in sight is just outside the barrier and down, so I have to crane my neck to see. I look at it often, but all I can make out is a black number nine. I pull away and start back to town.  As I pass the "Welcome to Maine" sign, it starts to snow. It's silly that we even have a sign- there are no visitors here.

    Multicolored flakes settle on the water, held up by the surface tension till my fish drags them under. I sprinkle in more and wonder if he can see or recognize me. Maybe, through the glass, all he can see is blurry movements. Maybe his understanding is confined to the bowl that holds his world. I think of when the local loony ran around screaming that we lived in a globe. Everyone knows you can walk straight from barrier to barrier without so much as a rise in the ground. It never occurs to me to question my own world.

   The next day, as with yesterday and the day before that, I'm sitting at the edge again, back pressed against the hard wall of the world. I zip up my coat as snow begins to fall. It has snowed every day of every year that I've been alive- of every day of every year that anyone's been alive. But today something is going to change. The world grows dark and then the sky cracks. The snow flies out of the barrier as if it had been imprisoned. Drops of blood the size of buckets rain down from the broken sky instead of the fluffy white flakes of earlier. The wall of the world falls away and I take my chance. As I run, I realize that for all of my existence, I haven't really known where I was.

That's our Rachel, and we love her! Oh, and we're a little bit proud of her too.

How did we get here already?

February!

And here I am with unposted baseball stories still rattling around in the back of my head.  

The irony of this season of life that I attempt some record of here, is that so often it keeps me so busy that the recording of it gets lost in the shuffle.

After changing my farm house cover photo to a more seasonal one, ahem, I will move on to catching up on some of the happenings of life here.

In the meantime, a family photo from a Mt. Abram ski trip last month.

skool

"Wiy dose Math half to be so konfoosing?"

I don't know, Gus, but spelling is pretty hard too.

Something Completed

Since this summer has been so busy with so few visible results for the busyness, I decided to paint the front door.

Although, the front door wasn't the most obvious of visible things to paint around here since everyone uses the kitchen door.  

But it has been on the "to-do" list for 3 years or so...

and it felt good to get it done...

also, it felt good to get that box of door hardware out of the mud-room and onto the door!

Sometimes it's the little things, meaning something that lasts longer than the next load of laundry, that keep me motivated.


In other summer activity:

And I'll have to catch up on the rest of summer--later.

Baseball and a Birthday

I'm half-way late with this post.  The birthday is long past, but baseball season is on-going.  And somehow, the fact that the birthday falls in baseball season is gratifyingly appropriate.

This year between the SeaDogs game, the family celebration, and the trip to Summit Adventures with some friends, the birthday celebration seemed to last a season, rather than a day.  I think one of the first things Gus could articulate was his birth date, and it has since remained a

Very Important Event. 

The other very important event in Gus's life right now is baseball.  He is playing Little League again this year, and is not only playing a league up from his age group, but actually contributing to the team as well.  He is quite proud of that and as a consequence of that has heard Proverbs 27:2 from us several times this spring.  You know the one, "Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth..."  

ahh, it's hard to be humble!

This group of kids has seen the benefit of some very excellent coaching this year.  They've come together with some great teamwork, and are *almost* undefeated!

Here he is, stealing home.  Another second, and I'd have had a shot of him sliding home.  

One of Gus's favorite positions...catcher!
Gus has made some new friends on this team that he's really enjoyed connecting with off the field as well. And apparently, word in the elementary school is that THIS is the team to beat.
  

Happy Birthday, Moriah!

I moustache you how old you are!
(Cake is Rachel's latest creation).

       Happy 11th Birthday, baby girl!!

We love you.

High Tech Solutions--

For Low tech problems...

I got a funny phone call while I was washing dishes last night.  Caller id showed my daughter calling.  Knowing she was home, I was curious about why she found it necessary to use the phone.

Me:   Hello,  Rachel?  Where are you?

Rachel:  Umm, hi Mom.  Could you bring me some toilet paper?

Spelling tests

Spelling test, Gus. Time to put your thinking cap on...

Easter

We enjoyed a fantastic dinner with great friends on Saturday evening.  They did all the work of cooking ham and lamb...I got to do desserts.  :)  The food was amazing, and the friendship one of the best.  They will be greatly missed when they move this summer.

The peeps sunflower cake for the kids, and the tiramisu cake for the more sophisticated palates.

In other spring news, we are making headway on our attempt to memorize the Sermon on the Mount this year.  Plugging away at the rate of 2 verses a week...

    Memorizing used to be much easier...

Sweet Sixteen

Sixteen is such a significant age.  It means you've been a teenager for a respectable period of time, you're out and about on your own much more, and most importantly, it means Driving.   Even though not every birthday gets a big party, Sixteen does get special recognition around here.

Rachel's plans for a skating/sledding party (back in early January, yes, that's how far behind I am) were thwarted by a thaw, so her ever-resourceful Dad came up with a fair-weather alternative.

Her friends gathered here, and we all headed down to Freeport for a scavenger hunt.

Of course, a plain old scavenger hunt with clues would have been too easy, so first they had to decipher the clues from the riddles provided.  Then to further complicate things, they had to figure out such stumpers as which way is north?

One is mangy the other's cool.  Pick the right one and you rule.  Read the clue, then go forth.  See the goal when standing at one, facing north.

  They took photos to prove they had figured out the clue, as well as physically visited the location...these got pretty goofy as you might imagine.  In fact, there were prizes for the best photos, just in case they needed any additional motivation.

Head on inn at the hairy sea cat.

If a seat you'd like to take, first the glass you'll have to break.

If you were a man made of snow, where for a doughnut would you go?

I sued the South Butt for mocking me.

Most mermaids live in the deep blue sea, but this one serves you coffee and tea.

 

I'm half a pair, and too big to wear.

Some of our teams were pretty competitive, while others took the opportunity to shop and eat.  At the end of the hunt, we'll all headed back to the farmhouse for pizza, cake with candles and a movie.  
Happy Birthday, Rachel!  We love you!!

Winter Camping

February has been a snowy month in Maine, and yesterday's storm brought just the right kind of packy snow for snow cave building.



Rick dragged several unwilling kids outside as the snow was still falling, and eventually dragged them into a sense of enthusiasm about a giant cave project.

Even Zac got into the spirit of things after he saw the scope of the idea...

"You never out grow playing in the snow. It just gets more sophisticated."

Rick has done his share of snow cave survival training, and has been waiting for the chance to get the kids in on it.  They headed out at bedtime with warm clothes and sleeping bags, and I didn't see them again until this morning.  And most of them got some sleep. 
          I guess you can call that a success.

The inside of the cave, ready for sleeping.

For orientation, the sleeping bags are on a raised shelf (of snow, of course) with a lower area down by the opening so that the cold air will sink, keeping the warm air up around the sleepers.  The green foreground is just a tarp hanging down into that lower area.  

And here they are, the winter campers.  They all had a blast, and I'm pretty sure the kids all know that they have an awesome daddy!

A small renovation.

When this old farmhouse was built, back in the 1840's, the only bathroom would have been located somewhere out back, some distance from the house, the location of which I will happily leave a mystery.

Since then, there have been bathrooms retro-fitted into various nooks and crannies of the house.  One of these is squeezed into the eaves of a corner of the master bedroom.  It is a tiny little space, and has been without any aesthetic appeal whatsoever.  The only thing it has really had going for it was all the natural light that pours in through a skylight.

We recently gave our bathroom a face lift with  new cabinets and sink, and the removal of some bulky wood trim and an obsolete heater.  The heater was the suprise item in this project.  Not that it was there. The brown metal box that protruded from the wall was the first thing you saw when you walked in the room after all.  The fact that it wasn't actually an electric heater (as we had been told), but was in fact a hot water radiator was a surprise.  But at this point, we expect a surprise somewhere in every project.  You know, the kind of surprise that means more work.  It just turned out to involve plumbing this time.

Unfortunately, I didn't take a before photo, but even without seeing the horrifying leftover Home Depot-ish ill-fitting, bulky cabinet, and bright yellow trim paint, (not to mention the heater) the end result might be appreciated on its own merits.

I have really been enjoying this improvement!

Wouldn't a wide angle lens be nice?  sigh

Family Photos

Last August, we finally got around to getting a new family portrait done...after all, Gus was an infant in the last one.

                    And Precious Time is Slipping Away.

Guess Whoo?

See who was hanging out in our backyard this afternoon?

Christmas

Christmas this year was streamlined and simple...

       And the fun will last all winter!

Staying Put

Well, way back last spring I posted about new job possibilities, possible moves, life changing decisions, etc.  It didn't occur to me when I posted that it would cause anyone else to feel like I was leaving them on the edge of a cliff.  I was too busy looking over the precipice myself, trying to see the other side.  I did get some feedback however, with requests to end the mystery, and here, months later, it is.

Some decisions are long in the making.  Not because we can't see what we'd like to do, but because there are so many pieces that have to fall into place to make the way clear, or even possible.

Neither of the jobs that involved moving away worked out.  So, we are staying right where we are at the moment, with a few changes in lifestyle.  Rick has taken a different job, working with a young software company doing some sales and business development as they push into a new phase of growth.  He began in December, and is now working from a home office, and travelling considerably less. He also plans to pick up (distance education) classes again this fall, continuing to work towards a degree in Theology from Gordon Conwell Seminary.  After all, we wouldn't want that non-transferable GI bill to go to waste!

So, here we are--staying put.  

  Which is not so bad!!

Time for Boats

Uncommitted time--
                                                                                                         





An Inspirationally shaped piece of leftover wood...

A Pond...











                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                                                         
                                                                                         Happy Boys...

                                              

                                                                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                 





Happy Memories!

Happy Birthday Lydia!

Twelve is a great age.





It allows you to appreciate a new violin... 










While still having fun with the lego set your little brother gave you...

...Or maybe that's just our Lydi.

                                 Happy Birthday sweet girl.