March Faces

I broke my promise to not take pictures of Will until all his hair fits into a ponytail. Sorry dear. I'm asking your forgiveness, which is much easier than permission, especially now now that I have this adorable picture posted online. Anyway, by the time you read this post your hair will be in an cool manly ponytail. (Note the nude genius baby playing with math manipulatives in the background.)

The pink thing is a yoga mat which gets more use as a dividing wall/floor/ceiling etc. of kid huts and now has curious gauges and BITE marks in it. I keep saying it's MY yoga mat, but they look at me like "Who are you kidding? Go away." 

William now wears a hat 24/7 because I gave him a dorky (handsome crewcut) haircut. He only takes it off in church, and then he sits in the back where he thinks no one can see him. 

This blog is a place for me to share my personal favourite, happy, sweet, joyful details of daily life. 

The real shit happens outside the screen where we 6 are working out our salvation in fear and trembling. (I don't know where that quote is from...the Bible somewhere...but it totally captures everything: our confidence in the love of God and his salvation, but dang, when I look into my heart it's clear there's still so much WORK to do.)

We have to dig down deeply every day to find the patience we need to keep going, to build a relationship, to forgive each other. 90% of the time I'm pretty sure I wasn't cut out for this job. Tempers flare, tears flow, I threaten to throw in the towel with this home schooling business. 

I just re-read this ludicrously positive and idyllic homeschooling post and I had to wonder: what planet was I on? Did I really think this was the way it was going to be? 

The real challenges of our life, the real personal growth, the really scary reality checks, the real spiritual awakening, the real painful transitions from small-and-selfish-person to bigger-kinder-person, never make it into writing. 

But this life is moulding me into the woman I am. We have a friend who is the director of St. Benedict's acres, a community farm nearby. I introduced him to our boys as 'the man who runs the farm.' He laughed and said, 'I would say that the farm runs me.' How true! I would say that this family runs me. These beautiful people, with all their idiosyncrasies and fights and struggles and strengths and needs, they keep me from getting lost in myself, from the awfulness that would be the Single Me.

Changing the subject, Will has his major fields exam (comps.) coming up this month, so everything else has come to a halt. I promised him a clean, tidy, quiet house so he can study, which if you know me is pretty much an olympian feat. I have reluctantly shut the door to all visitors. The exam date is March 17th, known to some as green pistachio ice-cream day. Praying friends: please pray for us! The rest of you: warm fuzzy feelings are greatly appreciated too. I wouldn't even say no to karma.

XOXOXO from a clean, tidy, quiet, studious house. (Everyone is asleep).

The Much-Maligned February

Dwellers in northern climates have given February a bad name. We start grumbling shortly after New Year's—it's so cold, it's so dark, I'm tired of snow gear, I'm tired of shovelling snow, when will it be spring?

Not me! February is the month I perk up. Our little planet tilts toward the sun just enough for a magical change of light. February skies are an intense blue, the snow crisp and deep. Goodbye pale winter sun, hello serotonin!

February marks fresh starts at our house. After Christmas is packed away, it feels good to clean house, purge house, reorganize, make new exercise and home school goals.

I kicked off February with some chalk board paint and laid some love on my pantry. I'd never used chalkboard spray paint before, but I have good things to report. You really only need one coat, it really gets in the cracks. I  painted some labels (the ordinary paper kind) to use on food storage bins. See above. They look deceptively like I'm an organized pantry person and they're aesthetically pleasing too.

new cultures started: kefir, kombucha, apple cider vinegar

Will and I started cross-country skiing every day. We have several kilometres of nice trail in the vacant property behind us. There have been days when twenty minutes of solitude in cold air was my only  link to sanity. But I always come away grateful for the beautiful, if snowy, home we've chosen.

The boys were skiing begrudgingly until Will cut a new trail and invited them to ski with him. Suddenly skiing was cool. 

One of my most cherished memories of this winter is turning around on my skis and seeing a whole line of goats following me up the trail, followed by dogs, followed by cat. 

And that brings me to the freshest, newest, and most wonderful news: another little person is among us! 22 weeks today and feeling (mostly) fabulous.

We are all rooting for a girl of course, but we have to wait for the ultrasound to tell us.

Candles

Candle making is surprisingly difficult. I had a dickens of a time getting all that sticky beeswax out of the mold....I froze it, whacked it, used unmolding oil....I had to remelt and start over so many times that in the end I decided that dipping was the way to go.

They turned out lumpy but kind of adorable.

I also had a beeswax candle burst into flame in the oven. I was melting it slowly on a cookie sheet in the wood-stove oven when someone came and loaded up the fire. I came downstairs to see flames shooting out of the oven door. For the first time in my life, as they say in the novels, I knew what fear was. I actually wept from fear as I envisioned a river of flaming wax flowing out of the oven door, over the wooden floor and throughout the wooden house, engulfing us in fiery death. I saw the whole woodstove plummeting through the floor and exploding before I could even throw my children out the upstairs windows.

Of course none of these terrible things happened. A useful fact to remember in case you accidentally set fire to a beeswax candle: it burns up quite fast and more-or-less in one place. The worst thing that happened was I had to clean the oven.

While I was busy incinerating candles, Mr. Mischief took the whole upstairs apart.

Not our finest hour, and I think I'm done with candle making for a while. Till next Christmas.

Soap

We made soap. It started as an idea for fun and frugal Christmas presents, but there's no going back for me, I'm hooked.

The recipe came from the internet, but the real lore came from my good friend Jen of Two Trees Soap who gave me a full, chaotic, hilarious day-long soap-making tutorial in exchange for some negligible housework which I still haven't delivered...yep, she's a generous girl! The tutorial was invaluable as Jen has been making soap her whole life. She proved that making soap is about as complicated as making cookies, and yet the product is beyond beautiful. Jen comes from a soapy family: sister Anna sells gorgeous soap online at Roots Soap Co. and brother Evagrius is making soap in this unlikely corner of Italy, apparently. 

I used the essential oils I had on hand and botanicals from my kitchen: lavender and oatmeal, anise and ground cloves. I also made my first goof. Apparently clove essential oil melts your soap! However, I used such a tiny amount and mixed it with such panicky quickness that no harm was done.

My soap is a standard blend of coconut oil, tallow (rendered beef fat), and olive oil. I melted it together on the woodstove, then slowly drizzled a carefully-measured water and lye mixture while stirring. This second part happened at night as I didn't want my kids anywhere near the lye. But the boys helped me cut and mold the warm, fragrant soap by hand, a tactile pleasure indeed! 

I have a feeling this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship! 

Yuletide Crafting

It's the most wonderful time of the year! House explosion!

Now that gifts have been given I'm free to expose the chaos and fun of yuletide crafting.

In order they are: as-yet-not-ironed tweed aviator hat with bear ears. A tobacco pouch for papa's Christmas pipe tobacco (the boys tell me I've made quite a few of these over the years. What?) Christmas gnomes for Christmas stockings.

Hugh's gnome is also in league with the tooth fairy, since we've discovered that the traditional under-the-pillow method doesn't work. He left a message, carefully printed and adorably misspelled: Tooth Fairy where are you? My tooth has been under my pillow for weeks. I need some money.

(Aw shucks, tooth fairy, you're breaking my heart!)

So Hugh's gnome took the precious little tooth under his care, and Hugh has been well compensated for his patience.

Yuletide