It's been a while...
Lots has happened...
My feelings are kinda all over the place...
Welcome to summer at the Evans house with 4 kids 14 and under AND a mom who seems to have cultivated too many summer-specific passions! It's almost like she grew up in a warm, sunny place with year-round agriculture...like southern California, maybe?
Where do I even begin?!
Pictures are a safe bet. Let's start there.
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Covid Monday Night Fun activities, especially during the winter, usually meant family screen time or playing games together in the house. No longer! We now have outdoor options like James' idea here called "Will It Burn?" The answer is yes. Eventually. And it will create nauseating stenches you can't erase from your memory. Especially old bird and insect nests. Yuck.
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We got to meet Milo, the Bill-Kristin-Evans' family puppy! If there were a dog boarding place or shelter that would allow 8-year-olds to care for (and play with) their animals, James would never leave it.
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Alice graduated from middle school! Here is her graduating class minus one girl who finished her school year remotely from the Middle East. So many feelings about this. We have since set Alice up with a checking account, taught her how to use a debit card, and sent her off to BYU for a 2-week workshop on Sketch Comedy. She's hardly had time to respond to my texts, which I take as a good sign. And I'm crying on the inside.
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Alice's drama teacher made these fancy cakes for each of the graduates. Alice had slowly eaten halfway through it over 2 weeks or so when we accidentally discovered that wheat/gluten seems to have been a factor in her chronic nausea and episodes of night waking (sick to her stomach, can't fall asleep again for hours) for the last year or so. No worries, she sold the rest of the cake off to her brothers piece by piece :) It could be Celiac's disease. She got nauseous after only a dime-sized piece of bread. She's not eager to take the blood test for Celiac's, though, since it involves putting gluten back into her diet for a while (e.g. chronic nausea, bad sleep) and then getting blood drawn. She has, however, consented to a double-blind gluten trial at home once she's back from her workshop. We'll slip her some gluten without her knowledge and hopefully parse out how much of this phenomenon is psychosomatic.
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We discovered another nest of baby bunnies. These guys were much older. My research indicated that mother bunnies would not be disturbed by human smell on their babies, so we ventured to hold them once or twice. When I held them, they writhed and screamed. When James and Robert tried, they instinctively held the babies in a way that made them calm and quiet. Even after the babies were old enough to leave the burrow, Robert and James would find the baby bunnies in the tall plants nearby and give them another snuggle now and again.
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Rachel and I completed a 50-mile ride in Georgetown, Kentucky as participants in the Horsey Hundred. Green, grassy, rolling hills, miles and miles of horses at pasture. We were lucky it was overcast and a little drizzly. That kept the humidity on our side :) We've lined up 5 more 50-mile rides for 2021 (1 in July, 2 in Sept, 2 in Oct) and we'll STILL be a year behind our goal of 50 miles-50 states-50 years old. Thanks, Covid! And thanks, America, for being so so so large. This challenge is definitely a challenge.
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James found this mutant strawberry in our garden while I was away and saved it for me. He knows I looooooove mutants. Sweet boy. The garden is doing GREAT this year. I've spent all my farming stress-worry-guilt energy on the Solidarity Gardens plot at Meadowbrook Park, leaving only the fun stuff for my backyard. Fun, but it still takes a lot of time. I've harvested lettuce, spinach, cabbage, napini, cilantro, strawberries, cherries, rhubarb, honeyberries, radishes, mustard greens, kale, collards, hybrid broccoli, garlic scapes, Chinese cabbage, pea shoots, snap peas, oregano, thyme, zucchini and potatoes so far. Much more to come.
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Robert, James, and Matthew continued their white board drawing adventures. Robert took close-up pictures of some of his favorite creations. This one reminds me of a stunned goateed guy from a movie. A specific one. I think it's the thief guy from Tangled, actually *shudder*.
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This one's pretty creepy, but not violent. I got a call from the summer school director about some violent drawings James made in class one day. Gory stuff involving a retired mass murderer. I asked him about it later that day and he said flat out, "I'm not doing THAT again." The extra attention from teachers and directors was an effective deterrent. So many feelings about this experience, too.
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Robert was especially pleased with how the lips/beak and collar came out on this one. Robert has spent much of his summer reading and relaxing in his room for hours at a time. He doesn't really want to go anywhere or do anything with anyone. Bobby has lured him outside for the occasional walk. He'll come to the splash pad or pool or library with me and the younger boys. And he goes to church. Other than that, he's completely satisfied at home. Maybe not completely satisfied. When he's at home, he notices things that he doesn't agree with and mentions them. He genuinely feels like he's helping people learn manners and keep the household rules. He's also quick to correct anyone's perception or description of something. All. The. Time. He genuinely feels like he's helping people learn or avoid mistakes. Or he tries to make a side joke and it doesn't go over well because folks are expecting to hear a criticism 99% of the time. I'm convinced some of this behavior is age appropriate and some of it is purely anxiety. I wish I wish I wish my kids and I didn't have excessive anxiety to constantly keep in check. It's exhausting.
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I was making some woodworking stuff for Alice's first week of Kid Camp and James got an idea for a dog toy he wanted to make for Ruby. We had the right tools and materials, so I said yes. I managed the chop saw, but he did a lot of the power drilling himself. It was harder than he thought. Much harder than using the drill to take out screws! The toy is three natural sticks connected with a single knotted rope. I'm sorry, Erin, for the splintered wood bits Ruby will create from chewing on this. I thought it would be an outdoor toy.
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Kid Camp Minecraft Skins! And James is showing off his necklace strung with Minecraft-meaningful colors of pony beads. Alice has already successfully completed two weeks of her summer Kid Camp series. The first week was Minecraft-themed and the second week was Plants and Animals. Every minute of these camps was held outside in atypical heat and humidity for June. The kids endured it well. They seemed to have fun. Alice and I were wasted by the end of every day, though.
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Minecraft Camp armor and swords.
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James resumed piano lessons a couple weeks ago and Matthew got started. So far, Matthew loves to perform for people but hates to practice. He loves practicing with me, though, because it's a lot of 1-on-1 attention followed by a marshmallow.
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Here's the bulk of our pie cherry harvest. The cherries were SO sour that even the birds could barely gag them down. I tried to turn them into freezer jam, but, well, it kinda turned into chunky cherry syrup. Still sloppy straight out of the freezer. Bah humbug. Tastes great, though! Just remind me to make a cooked jam/preserves for the cherries next year.
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In other news, I'm still training for an olympic-distance triathlon, but not the way I planned I would be. I have a book, see? A book that lays out how much and what kind of running, swimming, and biking I can do to prepare my body for this particular endurance event. It's a 16-week course. The first few weeks are fine, the next few weeks are harder, but fine. The middle few weeks are death on a stick. What is death on a stick? I don't know. But it stinks. It's NOT motivating. It's crazy hard and I don't have TIME for that kind of training intensity. There. I said it. So, I modified my training regimen to suit my goals: 3 running periods a week, 3 cycling periods a week, no swimming. My swimming isn't going to improve much without a coach, and it's not the most intense nor the longest portion of the race. As far as I can tell, the swimming portion is there just to scare good runners and good cyclists away from competing in triathlons. It does a GREAT job of that :) I'm keeping up the running and cycling just to keep those parts of my body tough until the event on July 31st. My goal is met just fine this way, and it leaves some time/energy for other things I want to do with my life besides swim, bike, and run :) Like farming.
Matthew read a verse out of the scriptures for the first time this week. Learning to read is magical. He's quietly reading things all over the place now and asking what they mean. I love this. He was soooo excited to read an Elephant and Piggie book to his friend while they waited for her mom to pick her up. I should have snagged a picture.
A couple weeks ago, I hit my limit. I finally (again?) couldn't do everything that needed to be done in a day, emotionally or physically. The work list was endless and chronic and I had to try and do it all while managing the social, emotional, spiritual, physical, and mental health of 4 kids at home. It felt horrible. I asked Bobby to take on dinner planning and preparation indefinitely. So many feelings about this. Including, but not limited to guilt, relief, resentment, peace, confusion, joy, jealousy, teamwork, and love. Overall, I feel like it's been a very positive change for me and my family. In many ways.
Bobby inspires independence. In me and in the kids. It's one of his superpowers. I can't quite pinpoint how he does it, but it's a really important job in our family that I just don't do as well as he does. It goes like this: Whenever Bobby works with the kids in a capacity that I used to do exclusively, suddenly they are doing more for themselves than ever before. Matthew is putting on his own shoes, James is cooking his own eggs, Alice is making her own lunches, and Robert is doing his own research to see what it takes to successfully care for a crested gecko. So glad to be doing this as a team!
That's probably a long enough blog post. Congrats for reading all the way to the end!
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