Give and Take

Ever since my Mom moved back to our area, we have been taking her to her house on the Indiana dunes every couple of weeks. This means that one or two weekends every month we lose time to spend on our house, yard, garden. It means a much longer drive to Large's dance classes at the Academy of the Joffrey downtown. It means we have to arrange for someone to take care of our menagerie. In general, it is a disruption and has added another layer of complication to our lives.

On the other hand, we get to spend time in one of the most beautiful places in the Midwest. We get to stay in a comfortable house at least twice the size of our own. We get to cook dinner in a kitchen that affords us the opportunity to see an amazing variety of birds out the window. We wash dishes while watching hummingbirds at the feeder. In summer we get to see lizards run around outside, frogs perch on the windows at night and enjoy our selves for hours on end on a deserted beach.

So, we don't complain. We are learning how to work around the disruption to our domestic routine. As long as the house is important to my mother, she should be able to keep it and visit it whenever possible. She wants to have more big family gatherings here, even if her days of cooking dinner have passed her by. She gets confused in the house, misplacing things. But she knows it is hers and it reminds her pleasantly of my father. Just after he died, it was hard for her to be in the house he built. Too many ghosts of his long decline were lingering to disturb her sleep. She focuses more now on the happy memories now that some time has passed. As do I.

It is always a big homecoming to my mom when we drive up. She thinks it has been months since she was there, when really it has just been a few weeks. She marvels at how clean everything is, forgetting my efforts to tidy up when we leave and ignoring the dead bugs everywhere. She checks on the fish, who are always happy to see her and be overfed. She asks me to build a fire. The house brings her a lot of pleasure, but also some anxiety. It's size is overwhelming, she's always looking for clues around the rooms to remember what she is supposed to be doing. She's always anxious about leaving, about getting the day and time right to leave. In a way, it's probably a relief to her to go back to her apartment, to her other home which also doesn't quite feel like home.

The kids enjoy their time there. When it rains, they read, use my father's art supplies or play wii. When it doesn't rain, they are outside exploring or on the beach. It's a magical place for them, an integral part of their childhood. They are so lucky.

Mothers

It has been six months now since my mother returned to the area. She went to stay with my sister in New Mexico after my father died, but came back for a visit and decided to stay.

At first she lived with us. That was a challenge in many ways, but we knew it was temporary. We found a Continuing Care Retirement Community for her nearby and she was placed in assisted living. While physically very active, she is declining mentally and needs help with many little every day things.

Her apartment is 25 minutes away from my home. There are many, many places she could have lived in that were closer. Some of those met her first two basic requirements: no religious affiliation and no buy-in. But her biggest requirement was to live in a place where she can walk every day the weather cooperates. Most of the winter, I bemoaned the fact that the drive to see her was longer than I wanted it to be. Now, I am grateful and believe we made the right decision.

My mom isn't one of those little old ladies who is content to walk to the duck pond and back. She wants to go for a few miles, walking nearly an hour at a stretch. Her community boarders a large park system. Her walk takes her past baseball and soccer fields, a skate park, water park and huge community park with two ponds and a creek, picnic shelters, nice hills, beautiful flowering trees and some wildlife. She loves her walks. Because I can't be there every day to walk with her, we have hired help to take her out. This walk is essential to her well being, the days she only gets to the exercise classes or the fitness center are not good days for her.

I really enjoy the days when I am able to walk with Mom, particularly now that I am not as worried about how cold she is. Sometimes we have a three generational walk with one of my kids along, most of the time it's just the two of us. We catch up on our news and then mostly walk in silence, Mom walking a step or two behind me. I think she does that to make sure there is nothing to trip on, no matter how I alter my gate, she remains a bit behind.

We saw a family of geese the other day and many nesting ducks. We also heard chorus frogs near the tennis courts. Mostly we just walked in silence and enjoyed the day. I am glad to have her living close to me.

Frogs and Tadpoles

Small had a class at the Morton Arboretum the other day. The rest of us went along to check out the wildlife around one of the lakes. Mark met us there on his lunch break.

We took a hike down the long hill to the lake. I looked along the shoreline for frogs and saw this fine specimen sitting peacefully. It was only after Mark reached to retrieve a fallen water bottle that the frog hopped back into the water. Medium noticed some things swimming a short distance to the shore and asked if they were tadpoles. I don't know my tadpoles like I know frogs, so I said I didn't know, but doubted it. The bigger frogs haven't mated yet, the chorus frogs are only about 1 1/2 inches full grown and these things were already a couple inches long.

We then walked further along the lake. Large and I examined a egg shell and watched some geese, chatting with a friendly senior resting on a bench. Medium waited patiently, handed the 3x binoculars back to Large and said, with just a touch of attitude: "Minnows don't have legs, Mommy."

Indeed they don't. This child truly needs to be out exploring, sometimes even inside exploring. She reads every single informational sign at museum exhibits, gathers knowledge like a sponge and just never lets it go. Shortly after the tadpole triumph, she calmly explained to me and a group of schoolkids a few years younger, how the snapping turtle she had just pointed out to them and helped them to see in the murky water, catches its food. She said she read it in a Zoo Books Magazine a long time ago. Luckily, I am acquainted with the docent leading the school group and she didn't mind being upstaged by a 10 year old.

To top off that truly wonderful hour, after the snapping turtle submerged, a mink scurried across the bridge into the leaves and brush, changed it's mind when it saw Large, ran back across the bridge and along the lake on the other side. We didn't believe it could be a mink, but asked one of the naturalists, who confirmed they have mink in that location. We also looked at pictures to help our identification.

It made me a little sad that Small didn't learn that minnows don't have legs, but he heard all about it in the car on the way home.

Glorious Mud

Spring has arrived and that means it's time for our Roots&Shoots group to do some amphibian monitoring. We roll logs and rocks, look under branches and debris for salamanders, keep our eyes open for frogs and toads, check the water for egg masses. It's been a much dryer spring than in past years, but that didn't stop the kids from their primary focus - playing in the mud.

It's too late for us to find salamander eggs in the water, but we might have found some frog eggs or tadpoles. Mostly, though, the kids wanted to wade in the water and squish the mud between their toes. We went home pretty muddy, but I think this kind of exploration has as great a value as studiously hunting for amphibians. We aren't exposed to the elements the way were were 50 years ago, these kids just don't get the opportunity to get dirty. They had a great time.

We did see and catch four juvenile American toads, a skull, a patch of fur, a tooth, a lot of golf balls, may apples, jack-in-the-pulpit and trillium. It was a good day, even if we did lose five of the kids on the way out of the woods. Next time I'll know the path of the stream better and ask the kids to stay out of the water until our way back. That way it will be muddy behind us instead of in front of us and we have a chance of seeing something interesting lurking on the shoreline.

Back Home, Part Two

Returning home from vacation always leaves me longing to be back on vacation. Reality has a tendency to just smack me in the face. Today I find myself wanting to see some of the friends we made at our campsite and in the state park. The Cooper's Hawk was a favorite, coming by frequently to find a meal, possibly for his young. He started the Orioles off screeching each time and then would just hang out, scanning the weedy area on the slope down to the lake for easier fare. He wasn't so easy to photograph and was majestic when the swooped through the campsite.

Reality hit in the form of a broken dishwasher.

Oh, let's not wash the morning dishes. We can just put them in the dishwasher when we get home. Except that that dishwasher, a trusty 9 year old thing with far more bells and whistles than we need, wont wash. It dies mid-cycle. All that crusted on scrambled egg had to be washed the old fashioned way. The repair guy came out one afternoon and the thing worked just fine for him. Then he left, running an empty cycle and it didn't work. Sputtered through part of the wash and stopped. Red indicator lights angrily blinking "Wash Cycle!", "Energy Saver Dry!", "Rinse Aid Empty!"

When there was no satisfactory response, it would start up again, get to another point in the cycle and start screaming at us again in it's red light way. Next morning the repair guy, Alan, came back and pronounced we need a new heater element/on board computer kit that would cost $310, in addition to the $98 I had already spent for the service call. At least our debt-free living allows us some wiggle room of cash in our emergency fund. It feels wasteful, but I think it's time to get rid of the fancy dishwasher. We bought it when Medium was a baby and I insisted we needed the anti-bacterial wash and sanitary rinse. Hot water = higher gas bills so we don't use it.


See why I'd rather spend my time with a bunch of loud geese angrily defending their many, many goslings? Even the fox snake was more fun, gobbling up caterpillars on the bike path. Gnats are impossible to photograph, but there were lots of them too.

Aside from that I have conference things to do, issues to resolve, decisions to make. All volunteer positions can get so personal, I'm learning. I have been endowed with all sorts of new responsibilities to accomplish with one hand tied behind my back because there isn't an efficient system for knowledge and responsibility transfer. No succession plan. Bad. Would never work in the business world, at least not successfully. There is no doubt that it will all work out, and I have plans to fix the system so that the whole she-bang doesn't depend solely on the dedication of a few kind-hearted souls who eventually burn out from the pressure and burden of it all. That's the plan anyway. We all know about roads paved with good intentions.

So, I took refuge in the comfort of friends and enjoyed that so very much that I organized a whole slew of park days and outings for our little homeschooling community this summer. Turns out everyone had an idea of where we could happily spend our time and all I had to do was gather the information and post it. Now that's the kind of job I like. Plus, I'm ensuring my social needs are met. Oh, and I guess the kids social needs too.

Home Again

Because we can't fit all four bikes and Small's afterburner trailer on the back of the Volvo, we took two cars camping last week. This meant we could take more stuff! Here's what our stuff did on our vacation.

Some of the toys mostly stayed in the tent. Happily, they were safely in beds or in pockets when the rain came, so most of them didn't get more than damp.



Swano and Wolfie spent some time working on their laptop. The stump of this beautiful white oak was sad to see when we pulled up into our favorite spot. It affected the afternoon shade, but not enough for us to want to change spots next year.

Bobber fell in the lake within an hour of our arrival. He enjoyed hanging out with the dish gloves for a while, but ended up getting progressively wetter as the days passed and the rain came. He finally dried out on the last day.

The sketch books and pencils got a nice workout, we need to make more time for this activity in the future. We go for five days and four nights after Memorial Day, so at least one day is rained out. Sketching can be difficult in the rain.

Adjustment

Mark, that great stabilizing and equalizing force in my life, the most consistent, calming and confirming husband a woman could dream of, takes a lot of pictures of plants. He can take 20 pictures of the same plant with different apertures, light, focus, until he gets what he wants. He rarely deletes what he doesn't want, however, leaving me with a folder labeled May 2009, insert-your-favorite-nature-spot-here and 53 pictures of the same bleeping Solomon seal from 9 angles.

At least it's digital, right? Before it used to be box after $20 box of prints. But when I look under May 2009 to find pictures of the defining moment of the month, I see file folders of how Mark has spent his lunch hour and early weekend morning bike rides - Arie Crown, Braidwood Savana, I&M Canal, Maple Lake, O'Hara Woods, Ted Stone, Warrenville Grove and West DuPage Woods. There is a folder for Mother's Day and a smattering of dumped, un-foldered photos that I took of my Roots&Shoots group and science lab. But not one picture of the mostly dead tree. Or the plants we are moving underneath it.

Not one shot of a wild geranium or bellflower lovingly transplanted from the woods around my childhood home when my parents moved 12 years ago. Instead, I found this fallen no swimming sign, which I hope is a signal of the future of our backyard now that the rain garden is in. We moved many a wild geranium, hyacinth and bellflower in the past week. I'm feverishly painting one wall of the garage in order to move the scorned and despised non-native hostas and ferns to the only shady place left in our yard. All the native stuff we can salvage has been moved and transplanted to other areas of the yard, but it looks dreadful. And I've spread nearly 2 cubic yards of mulch to protect what we've put in.

I just hope the apricot's enormous stump is ground down soon. That's one image I'd like to be rid of. And once the sanctioned and native Hill's Oak we plant nearby is in the ground, I'll believe our life is moving forward. It's the limbo I can't stand.

Beyond Ribbit

We've been doing our amphibian monitoring, now that spring seems to be here and found this lovely specimen recently. It's an American toad, not the most attractive of our native species, and not particularly endangered. It does have one of my favorite calls, though. It's a long trill, lasting nearly 30 seconds. Strangely, this guy was out ahead of schedule. We heard him at night and found him in the morning. Don't these animals know we have a schedule for them, understand the temperatures they like and predict when they'll be around for us to observe? He's about a month early and the frogs I should have heard - chorus frogs, spring peepers, leopard frogs, etc. - were no where to be heard. Oh well, at least he was there.

We went on a bike ride as a family yesterday, using Small's new tag along trailer on the back of Mark's bike. It worked like a charm, mostly Small did no peddling, but got the hang of hanging out on a bike. And I saw a muskrat in the water! That was exciting. It was too windy for our warty friends, and a bit too rainy for some of those on the bikes, but we had a wonderful time.

Slip Sliding Away

The winter is half over. The kids and I love winter, love snow and all the winter activities surrounding snow. We do not, however, love cold. And this winter it seems like every weekend has been too cold to enjoy the great, snowy outdoors. This weekend will be no exception. So, it's likely we'll miss the dog sledding demonstration at the Morton Arboretum.

We been enjoying skating with homeschool friends in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week. Likely, the people set it up for the adults to skate around on their lunch hours, or the smattering of preschool aged kids. Before Christmas, our homeschooling groups descended on the place, making it a happy family atmosphere. Being January, less people turned out this week - they are sick, the schedules got full, they are tired of winter. We still had a great time, my wall hugging children are getting more confident and are performing fewer Jim Carey like moves on the ice.

We just want a couple of above 20 degree weekends with snow before it's all over. We'd like to cross country ski, snowshoe, sled and hike. We're taking our snowshoes to the dunes today, hoping for a bit of fun.

That was cold

Really, really cold. We took our Roots & Shoots group out to work at the Ted Stone Forest, one of the many Cook County Forest Preserves. We've been working there for over a year now, it's our on-going, long term project serving the environment. The boys (and my girl) truly enjoy cutting down invasive brush, freeing space for majestic oaks and a widening prairie. They love using real saws and loppers, aren't quite as excited about dragging that cut brush to the pile, but generally work hard and have a good time.

And then there are the hot dogs. This work day it was in the high teens, which was fine as long as we were moving. But after an hour or so, the kids were ravenous and the little fire had been heating nicely. It was much too windy to burn any of the big brush piles. I had 8 boys, 3 adults (it's good to have a high ratio with saws and things in the midst) and 32 hot dogs. Some of the boys brought their own hot dogs, so the count is really higher. Those hot dogs vanished. One fashioned a nice trident hot dog roaster with his pocket knife, and ate three at once. Others used the much more efficient grill, or single ended sticks.

Then came the marshmallows. Into the "oven of doom" as one hilarious boy kept calling it. Sticky, black, brown yummy marshmallows. That was our only real injury, marshmallows in the hair. And it mainly happened to my children, those of the long hair tendencies.

It was another beautiful day. But standing around the fire, I felt my age. And lost feeling in my toes (double socked!) and fingers (ski gloves!). Walking back to the car, I could barely grip the walking stick I brought along for stability. Kids don't feel the cold the same way we do.

See, it isn't all knitting around here!

Discovery

Three things I discovered, or rather, rediscovered today.

1. Still can't talk about it. I had hoped that by now, three full days after the elections, I could get through a conversation about it without tears leaking from my eyes. Nope, no can do. The emotions are still too raw, I'm still in the unbelieving stage. Did we really elect a smart, capable, inspiring leader? Oh, here I go again...


2. Being with my husband, even in public, for more than a few minutes at a time restores my soul. Mark is off on his, sadly, annual outage, where he is gone for 15 hour stretches six days a week. Today we juggled things to be home in time to sleep enough to join our Roots&Shoots group at the Ted Stone Forest Preserve. Chopping down invasive brush restored his soul, being in the same general vicinity of him restored mine.


3. Delivered pizza is better than grocery store pizza. No explanation needed. Thanks, Mark, for working the outage night shift and giving us the extra cash to splurge. I'm fighting every urge not to analyze where that $15.95 should have gone.
   
   Life is good.

Anniversaries

I passed my blogaversary with no Internet access, which seems a little appropriate. I had a chance to reflect on how much I enjoy blogging and how much it has changed my life. Mark says I blog about the things that keep me up at night. And it's true I'm sleeping better. Blogging is good for the soul.

Another anniversary today. September 11th.

Yesterday the kids and I took a hike in one of our favorite forest preserves. As we were heading down the wide main path, Large and Medium started talking about 9-11. They had watched a Brain Pop about it. They have no memories, which is to be expected because they had just turned two and three. All my anxiety over warping them by having the TV on, showing the planes crash in over and over again was for nothing. They don't remember how distraught and depressed I became, how I put them in a morning out program at a nearby church. I told them how they witnessed it on TV and how concerned I was about it.

They asked what we did that day. We bought shoes. It's what we were planning to do. The shoe store was right along the train line in a neighboring town. It's not there anymore, but they had a horse carousel for the kids to ride and you could look out the windows to see the trains. The trains that day were full of folks coming home from work downtown. The city was evacuating, sure that another plan was heading for the Sears Tower. The people were jammed like sardines, the doors opened and they all piled off, dazed. It was 11 o'clock in the morning, a bright and beautiful day. Train after train came in as we tried on shoes. Light up or not? Ties or Velcro? Mundane decisions made impossible.

It amazed me to realize on our hike yesterday that my children are learning about 9-11 as history. In an unschooly way, they learned it on their own by clicking what interested them on Brain Pop. And, typical for the unschooly way, they remembered everything about that segment. It sparked them to ask questions because they knew they were alive but didn't remember it. I'm so relieved I climbed out of my depression that time and reversed my decision to put them in school!

Stupid Parent Tricks

I took Medium to the beach the other day. Large and Small were beached out from the day before and chose to stay at my parent's house. I keep telling these kids that they are lucky to have grandparents who live on the beach. At least we have a nice place to go and time to swim when we are there helping out. Didn't have my camera, so this is an old picture.

We went to the more private of the private beaches in their community. The one where you can't usually see another soul. This beach has a more gradual drop off than the other beach and the waves didn't seem as high as they had been the week before. Medium loves being pushed ashore by the waves, jumping them and swimming through them. I remember doing the same things on the same beach as a child. All this led me to the decision that she could go beyond the drop off, but not above her waist in the water, which would be too far out for me to help her. She wasn't' all that interested in getting deeper, the waves were up to her neck when they crashed in. She just likes to be a foot or so offshore, splashing in.

I pointed out a helicopter up the beach from us - is that east or north? The lake confuses me there, as a Chicagoan the lake is always east. In Indiana, all that changes. I thought it had been painted to look like Nemo. As it slowly made its way down the coast, I saw it was just a coast guard helicopter. Then we saw an Indiana DNR helicopter, patrolling farther off shore. In all, we saw three helicopters going slowly back and forth. After we had been there about an hour, we saw a man on a dune buggy, slowly driving along. I don't think I had ever seen a dune buggy kind of thing on this beach, but again, no alarms were raised. Medium was playing in the sand, the dune buggy went way down the other direction - south or west, practically to the steel mill.

About half an hour later, he drove back and stopped his buggy. Medium was in the water, playing. He said "I guess you know about rip currents." Yes, I do, but the waves didn't seem as bad today. Have there been rip currents spotted? I had spent time researching rip currents after someone drowned a few weeks ago and felt confident I could spot one. Yes, was the answer. Oh. And there are so many patrols today - three helicopters and you driving on the beach. He was wearing a state park uniform. "Yes, we're looking for a body. A drowning off Porter Beach."

Chills. Serious hair standing on end kind of chills all over my body. I stood up to get us going. Porter Beach is likely less than a mile up the end of this private beach, it's another private beach adjoining the State Park. The state park beach was closed to swimming because of rip currents. There are no warning systems for private beaches.

So, a new rule for our family. If we can see waves from the kitchen window, we call the state park before heading to the beach. If that beach is closed for swimming, we don't swim. We aren't a real rule oriented kind of family, but this one seems necessary.

Unwanted bed partner

I keep telling everyone who will listen (and even those who wont, or can't) that I've been sleeping with a toad. I've even renamed my parents storage/utility room the "toad room." But while lookng for pictures for this post, I realized I've been wrong. I've been sleeping with a cricket frog.

Don't get me wrong. I love frogs, toads, salamanders, etc. I've spent hours listening to their calls, walking in the woods to identify them and am genuinely concerned for their health and welfare. I just don't want them in my bedroom, you know what I mean?

My father was taken to the hospital in an ambulance three days ago, after suffering a fall and being unable to get up. I don't think we'll ever get the whole story about it, my mother isn't very lucid. I'm not sure who called the ambulance, but am grateful to whomever did. I got a call from one of their neighbors as I was on my way out there for the day and have been here ever since. The hospital scene is grim, but improving slightly every day.

It helps to have a sense of humor. Fortunately, my sisters and I do. My brother - not so much. When we got to the house, I had Large with me. We put food in the fridge, mapquested where we thought we were going and, tried to lock the front door and went to the hospital. We got there at 1:30. Many things transpired and we came back to my parents house at 11 p.m. The front door was open.

My parents live on top of the tallest sand dune in their sparsely populated community of huge homes. The literally live in the wild. We've seen fox, unbelievable quantities of dragon flies, deer, raccoon, you name it. The front door was open, had been open for some time, inviting the wilderness in. The sheer volume of bugs swarming the house was astounding. Large and I put on Deep Woods Off just to sleep. He slept while my mom and I had a glass of wine.

I found some flying insect Raid, held my breath and sprayed. Instead of just killing brain cells, I decided to jump on the fireplace ledge, spray near the track lights that were attracting thousands of flies and mosquitoes and hop down again. It was the hopping down that did me in. I was tired after an emotionally exhausting day. I looked through my reading lens on my trifocal and misjudged the distance. Should have looked through the distance lens. Landed on my good foot and proceeded to sprain that ankle. Actually, I'm not sure what I did. Every toe is bruised from 1/2 an inch below the base to the second knuckle, the inside of the foot is bruised, particularly around the ankle. The outside of the foot has a dark purple bruise, there are a few bruises across the top of the ankle tendon and I have several on the leg. The whole foot has a purple-ish, greenish hue. It's very ugly.

And it hurt. So much that I threw up. I iced it until about 1 in the morning and went to bed, using my father's cane to get around. I got up at 1:30 to use the bathroom and saw this frog/toad hopping down the hallway carpet. I tried to catch him, but was not fast enough on one sprained and one previously broken ankle. My attempts to shoe him out the back door made him flop right into the room where we were sleeping and under the dresser. All night long I heard, or imagined I hear, flopping noises. At 3, I saw him flop across my mother's chinese carpet to the light of the computer. Or it could have been a second frog, or a third or a 20th. Who knows?

Irrationally terrified of this "toad", I didn't sleep well. Probably wouldn't have anyway, but the prospect of being flopped to death by a frantic frog was enough to kick the insomnia in. By the end of the night I heard, or imagined I heard, frogs all over the room. Except that I thought they were toads.

Now I have real guilt. I looked for it in the morning, as did Large. And then Mark and Medium looked when they got here to bring me clothes and pick up large. Cricket frogs are fairly rare, although probably not as rare here in the wilderness as they are in suburbia. And here I've been unable to rescue one when I had it in my sight.

At least it wasn't snake.

Life's a beach

We've been spending a lot of time at my parent's house this week, they are in a weird downward spiral health and wellness-wise, which we are trying to correct. Although it has been a stressful week, we've made it to the beach twice and hope to do so again today.

The water is a cool 60-ish degrees. Not freezing on the feet, but certainly not welcoming to adults. My three and their two cousins were not put off by the cold and ran right in. They warmed up by rolling in the sand afterwards and then went back for more. Unfortunately, all this in and out of the water, coupled with quiet reflection, worrying and crying on my part, led to some mild sunburn. A serious failure to re-apply the sunscreen. Medium, the amphibian of the group, was the hardest hit. We may have to wear pants today.

The beach is a nice respite from the tensions in the house on top of the dune. Getting old is not for the weak, degenerative diseases are truly for the brave. Both parents are declining, but in different ways. While my brother-in-law, the ER doc, has been able to restore basic life functioning to my father, the future is bleak. It's a strange balance of youthful living and slow dying. I need to get better at handling it.

Dancing in the rain

Here are our happy dancers after the big show this Saturday. Tired, a little sweaty and proud of themselves for giving it their all. It always amazes me, how the chaos of dress rehearsal turns into the beauty of their recital. Small forgot some of his steps and was a bit mesmerized by the lights, this being his first recital. Medium and Large, however, remembered their dances perfectly and even smiled!

At the dress rehearsal, I was sure Small wasn't going to go on the stage. He hated the cat ears, had to wear socks on his hands because of his eczema and generally was in super clingy mode. I reminded him, not so gently, that his Grandma and Aunt and Uncle were coming to the big show and they wanted to see him perform. He reluctantly went on stage, but didn't move unless prodded. By the time of his dance on Saturday, and especially by the time of the bows, he was in great form!

Our dance teacher is kind and wonderful. Her show is set up so the really little kids (like Small) are in one short show, the little kids have a slightly longer show, the middle sized kids (like Large and Medium) have a long show - three dances each, 1 1/2 hours in length - and then the advanced show is later. That way parents and grandparents don't have to sit through hours and hours of production. It meant going to the theater twice, but we had a nice long break in between. Small made friends with all the girls backstage for the later show and we got to watch Medium and Large on the video monitor.

All in all, it was a great day. We planned to go back for the advanced show, but the kids were all too tired. We visited with family and all had a good night's sleep.

Next morning a huge storm blew in. Huge. Dark, black, menacing clouds and much wind. It blew a rather large branch off our 80 foot maple in front, leaving it perilously dangling between our house and the one next door. Right over the neighbor's van. He was packing up to leave for vacation with his family. We called him to move the van, he parked it on the street and then came up on the porch to survey the damage to the tree. As we were chatting, the branch cracked in two and fell to the driveway. Right where his van had been.

When the rain lessened and the worst had blown over, friends and neighbors came by to help saw off branches, one with a chainsaw and ladder came over to take down another dangling branch, and a great pile was amassed on the parkway. A day later, the chainsaw friend returned and we sawed it into firewood. Except for the remaining sawdust, you'd never know anything happened. The village came buy and picked up the many branches and logs and trees thrust on the parkways, their trucks were laden with fresh limbs for making chips. It was an amazing event or nature and community and made us happy all over again for living in such a friendly place.

Ack!

This picture reminds me of a series of really bad jokes we made in the tent on our camping trip. We were waiting out a rain shower and came up with a lot of jokes based on the Jack-in-the-Pulpit plant, which were abundant at the state park.

What do you call it when the preacher doesn't show up?
Lack-in-the-pulpit.

What's a charcoal in a church?
Black-in-the-pulpit.

What do you call a minister who talks to much?
Yack-in-the-pulpit.

What do you call it when a mosquito lands on the preacher's arm?
Smack-in-the-pulpit.

A preacher with a cough?
Hack-in-the-pulpit.

You get the idea. During the stormy day, Small, started scratching like crazy. Humidity never helps him, always makes him worse. We've had several hot, humid days in a row now, starting right after our doctor's visit. Two nights of little sleep for Mark and I. Soothing Small, restraining him, re-wrapping him, administering more Zyrtec. I just checked the 10 day weather forecast and am completely depressed about our immediate future. Chance of strong storms every day for the next 10 days.

Paradise

First off, I am changing the kids' names for the blog to Small, Medium and Large. The nicknames, while real, seem a bit forced as the children get older and we use them rarely now.

I always look forward to camping wistfully, and look back on it the same way. I keep the memories of the bad stuff - the horrible loading of the car, fighting kids in the car, the torrential rain, the cold, etc. - in the back while all the good stuff stays front and center. My memory is kind to me sometimes.


Here is the view from our campsite. We didn't get our favorite site this year - some interloper was in there. We've had that site for three years running, so it felt like ours. This site was good, too. Private, although it hardly mattered as there was no one else crazy enough to be camping in such conditions and all the other families had to go back to school after Memorial Day. Our first day was warm and damp, but a cold front came through that night with a howling wind that changed everything. By cold front I mean 40 degrees, the kind where if you leave an arm out of the sleeping blanket to, say, snuggle with your four and a half year old to keep him warm, it goes beyond goose bumps. We survived it pretty happily, though my motherly brain had worries about Popsicle children.


We also had some glorious sunshine, although the temperature never reached 68 degrees, the magical beach opening number. We played out on the dock, went for a great bike ride, enjoyed our sunshine and relative warmth. We hiked even when it was cold and explored the untended woods. So much honeysuckle and buck thorn, very few good plants for Mark to marvel at. Much, much poison ivy. With all the rain, everything was lush and green.


It got cold again that night too, so we slept with our pjs under our clothes. Small (Little Man)thought that was hilarious and kept showing us his pjs under his clothes, except when I wanted to take a picture. We had a happy, magical time out there in the wilderness.

We roasted marshmallows before the sun went down on the coldest night so that we could be warm in the tent before the darkness hit. The last day it rained and we went to the great Discovery Museum in Rockford, where we got in on a discount with our Museum of Science and Industry membership. We spent a good part of the day there, came back to camp and had a soggy, standing dinner in the bug screen over the picnic table. Everyone was good natured about the rain, convinced it would blow over and we'd be find the next day. ("Is it still a glorious day, Mommy?")

I'm sure staying the the tent was not the best idea, but our options were limited. Spending a whole night in the bathroom did not seem feasible, especially as most of the kids were sleeping. Medium (Little Missy) has a real fear of storms and was not asleep, but everyone else managed to snore a bit. What started as just a whole lot of wet rain and instructions to keep things off the tent floor where it seeps in, turned into wave after wave of torrential rain with thunder and lightening. We had another one of those storms here last night, it felt much different in the tent.

To call packing up for our departure a challenge is an understatement. I got out of bed during a break in the pouring rain and hopefully put three logs in the fire grate to cheer us up. One of our great improvements this camping trip was the purchase of a cast iron dutch oven at Costco (I kept calling it the best $24 I had spent in a while). We had biscuits every morning but the last and cornbread one night. Fabulous! I thought some hot biscuits would get everyone going happily and we'd be whistling while we worked. The break in the rain didn't last as long as it took me to brush my teeth, but the little fire sputtered on. We ended up feeding the kids crackers and fruit crisps while we loaded the car.

We left Paradise and came home immediately to this: the big, big Pet Parade in La Grange. That, my friends, is an alpaca. There were two in the parade, they didn't look so happy to be there and I'm wondering who got their fleece. Very exciting. Probably the most exciting thing there for this parade grump, it's my least favorite event of the year. The alpacas and the Jesse White Tumblers made it worthwhile for me.

I'm already planning our next camping trip of the summer. Makes me happy.

Retreat

We leave today for our camping trip. The first of the season, we prefer to go to the campground when everyone else is leaving it. It's peaceful, relaxing and a way for our family to reconnect. Funny that a totally connected homeschooling family needs to reconnect every once in a while, but there you go.

I'm trying not to obsess about how much has to be done before we pull out of the driveway. We did a lot of lugging and loading into the car yesterday, so today it's just compressing the clothes and sleeping bags, getting the perishables in the cooler, packing the medicines and off we go. After tidying up the house - I hate coming home to a messy house - taking the bird across the street and making sure the boy next door has a key to feed the other animals.

We are also trying hard not to think about poor Diamond, one of our guinea pigs, who died yesterday. She had a cold and was breathing pretty hard. I held her for a while, looked up medical care on line and learned there wasn't much to do about it. I knit with her on my lap on the front porch for a while, she just sat in the crook of my arm, breathing. Little Missy held her for a long while too. And then we put her back and continued the frenzied pace of getting ready for a camping trip - laundry, dishes (dishwasher broken), gathering supplies, trips to the grocery. I was making biscuit and cornbread mixes when I asked my girl to check on Diamond. She came running down the stairs saying the wasn't moving. Sure enough, she died between the brick and the side of her cage, under the food bowl. Should have put her pigloo in.

A sad beginning to our trip. But it would have been worse if she had died while we were gone. Worse for the neighbor boy feeding our herd, worse for Little Missy to learn of it when we got back, worse for poor Diamond who needed some extra snuggles before she passed.

We're heading to an Internet free zone, cell phones off, life in the woods. The chance of thunderstorms diminish as the day goes on, so getting out late wont matter much.

Fresh Air

The great outdoors. These past few days it really has been great to be outdoors. At the risk of jinxing spring, I'm declaring it has arrived.

Our first venture into the wild was with our Roots&Shoots groups. We had a wonderful work day at Ted Stone Forest, a Cook County Forest Preserve. It turned out to be a surprisingly nice day, after a damp and dismal morning. We did hard raking work of charcoal from the burned brush piles. The kids (and moms) made smaller piles of the charcoal to be re-burned. The work was difficult because it has been so wet and some of these burn circles were mud pits.

Then we spread seed throughout the newly cleared areas, so woodland grasses will grow where once buck thorn thrived. The kids had a great day, worked hard, played hard and managed to find two skulls and an old rusty spring. And I hope they understand what a difference they are making to the health of this ecosystem.

Mark and I then took the boys on a frog monitoring session at part of the vast Palos Forest Preserves, also in Cook County. It's a long hike with the kids in the dark, but mostly an easy one as the wetlands are close to the driveways. Our daughter was off on a Girl Scouts overnight, so she missed this one, but had adventures of her own. We heard many chorus frogs like this one, a few leopard frogs and a whole lot of spring peepers (below).

We heard the frogs as soon as we got out of the car, and the sun had just set. They were loud all the way by the road. As we walked back the sound got louder and then faded as we passed several colonies in the various wet spots. The kids had fun with the flashlights and helped to identify the different calls, listening hard for early leopard frogs, which were being drowned out by the peepers and chorus frogs.


The next day we picked up Little Missy and headed for my parents house on the beach in Indiana. Driving into their community, we heard a whole lot of frogs calling in the middle of the day. It made us wonder how many times we've just driven past with our windows up without noticing. It has been a very wet winter and early spring, so there may just be more frogs out there. But I'd like to believe that our heightened awareness of the frogs is helping us to see what was always there.

The beach was great. The temperature was in the 60s, although only the little ones ventured into the water to their knees. We didn't think of sunscreen, so our skin is a little pinker, but our souls are much calmed after two hours of beach time.

Now I'm struggling to fight off the urge to declare it summer, spend our days poking around in the woods and forget all our obligations.