Celebrating a Life Well Lived

Our Goomie passed away this week. She was 92 and living in a nursing home.  I was sad and happy for her at the same time.  I am happy that she is free from her decaying body and mind; happy that she is reunited with her dear ones on the other side of the veil; and happy that she is still part of our eternal family. 

 Most of all I feel a tremendous sense of gratitude that she was in our lives.  She just lived a few miles down the road from our childhood home.  Close enough that we could go to her house every Sunday for dinner. And she worked for the school system so she had the same holidays from work as we did from school.  We had sleepovers at her house and went on trips together.  She was always there for us, ready to help and praise and make us feel loved. She came to all of our band concerts, plays, recitals, sports, and pretty much any milestone you can think of.  She knew what each of our favorite treats were and kept them in the cupboard for us when we would visit her. She took us to cultural activities in the community like the Mark Twain Musical Drama, to see the Budweiser Clydesdales, the Pumpkin Farm, and to see the Lipizzan stallions when they were in town. She made us each cross-stitches for our big achievements as well as one for each grand child that says, "Goomie loves (fill in the child's name) "    I think that was the message that came through the most as we shared our memories of her during the memorial. She was a constant in our lives, always making us feel special and loved.

 All my siblings came for the memorial as well as many old family friends and colleagues of Goomie.

 The church's Relief Society sisters prepared a delicious lunch for us.

 I met my nephew and my kiddos were happy to see what a new-ish baby looks like.

 Grandpop took some fabulous pictures while we were together.

 Big sister A practiced her baby holding skills.

 Brother S copied Grandpop's model cars.

 Daddy and the two older kids played an epic monopoly game.

 A few of the shots taken by Grandpop:

 Aunt S played with A's hair.

 It looked super when she was done:

  We had a wonderful visit with lots of time for conversation and catching up in between events.

 

 Miss L looks like she could be my sister S's daughter. She found that necklace and matching clip-on earrings in Goomie's jewelry box. Some days she is a tomboy and some days a diva.

Pinewood Derby: Race Day

 This week the kids (with a little help from Daddy) completed their pinewood derby cars.

 Saturday was race day and they all headed over there first thing in the morning.

 Big Sister A's car took first place in every heat of her den and Brother M's took first place in almost every heat of his den. Brother S and Miss L took 2nd and 3rd in overall in the "sibling" heats.

 In the overall pack races (top 3 from each den) M's car was 4th and A's was 13th. Lots of improvement from last year.  They are excited to get their prizes.

Un-illustrated week: This week was full of a lot of boring doctor appointments.  Brother M had his first orthodontic consultation. We all went to the chiropractor for our monthly adjustments and I had a routine check-up with the midwife (27 weeks).  Big sister A had a late night (8-10pm!) ice skating activity with the kids from church and we had a fun playdate with some homeschool friends.  The other mom and I worked on making 100 little paper flags for table top decorations at the upcoming cultural night activity at church while the kids made stop-motion animation videos. We also had our usual round of music and swimming lessons.  I was hoping to get a lot done on the brush clearing project, but only managed to get 5 hours in on Saturday.  We had rain every day this week and FIVE tornadoes touched down in our area on Friday. They were smallish, just enough to tear up trees and rip off shingles.  Our house was not affected luckily.  I did more planting and transplanting of seeds/seedlings and bred 4 pairs of bunnies. Two of the pairings are chocolate/chocolate coloring so we are hoping to have some lilac colored (so exciting!!) rabbit kits come from those matings in about a month. This is what the lilac colored kits should look like:

Farm Fresh: Woolen Mittens, Cakes, Seedlings, and Clearing Part 2

I have spent years unwilling to try knitting mittens.  I think it had something to do with the anxiety that my usually tranquil Goomie had over the homemade ones getting lost. Maybe that led me to thinking that they were hard to make?  I remember her making sure that they were connected with a knitted cord so that at least the pair would stay together. And then there was all the trouble of sticking the corded mittens through coat sleeves.  

 And yet the kids needed more mittens and lots of folks seem to love this chunky "Magic Mittens"  pattern.  They said they were quick and easy... and wowy! They were.  I was able to knit at least one hand in the morning during homeschool time and finish off the other in the evening.  Side note: I forgot how well knitting and homeschooling go together. As long as I park myself in the den with my knitting everyone else gravitates to that spot and gets their work done.  I cannot knit while I am reading things aloud per se, but almost. It works well when I am doing dictation, listening to early readers, and standing by to help with math questions.

Big sister A made a cake for the scout Court of Honor later today. They all continue to improve in their independent cooking and baking projects.  All the way down to miss L who "makes herself a quesadilla" (grates the cheese on the tortilla) and then bugs one of the older two to fry it up for her.

 This cookbook has surely been worth the money for all the child friendly illustrations and instructions the older two of my kiddos have been able to use it for.

 This is the cake that big sister A made today and she also makes homemade mac and cheese from it about once a week for the kids' lunch.

We are up to 700 seed pots going now -- 15 trays of 50.  Lots of herbs and flowers. I have a bunch of special seedlings from the pile of seed packets gifted to me by my dear French sisters: so far it includes chervil, carnations, and fancy marigolds. I also seeded 8 trays (400) tomatoes yesterday.  About half of those are for the Relief Society. Giving tomato plants for Mother's day was a hit last year and they asked me to do it again this year.  It was a pleasure to hear from so many ward members about how well their tomato plants were flourishing. 

 Asparagus, rhubarb, and artichokes are doing great.  Some are ready for transplant to the bigger 4 inch pots.  I plant to sell most of those at the plant sale in April.

And an update on our brush clearing; We made a lot of progress this week.  I spent about 15+ hours out there hacking away at the brambles and hauling them out.  Then hubby spent Saturday cutting down the smallish trees.

 I will work on hauling out the rest of the branches and logs this week and then we should be ready to schedule the take down of 3 big trees.  I am impatient to get this hillside planted with rows of raspberry bushes, but clearing the big trees will need to be done in phases since hubby can only cut up so many big trees in a single spring.  I also plan to prepare (mulch and manure) my rows in the interim.  Hubby can rake/mow around the area with the tractor and hopefully those two things will check the weed growth.

  The brambles that I cleared were about half wild blackberries and sun-starved/untended forsythia. The other half were invasive plants; mostly Japanese honeysuckle, multiflora roses, tree of heaven, and mile-a-minute.  I was thinking to myself as I worked that it was like uncovering The Secret Garden, except that instead of having been left untended for 10 years, our forest area seems to have been abandoned for 30 years.  The worst weed to deal with were the tenacious and viciously prickly greenbriar vines.  Glad that part is mostly done! Here is my burn pile:

The unillustrated parts of our week: Homeschooling, piano lessons, guitar lessons, swimming lessons, taught another goal setting class (YW this time), made a yummy cashew version of pad thai, and hubby had some long hours on a work project. The kids also sanded, put weights on, painted, and decorated their pinewood derby cars.