Yada

My in-laws are visiting us for the next little while, so I might be a little absent from the blog.  Not that that's anything all that different from the usual deal around here - I'm not the best blogger, let's face it.

We spent the day in the city attending the kickoff for Operation Christmas Child (our church is the collection centre for our area) and I was reminded yet again why I should never attempt to take my children anywhere ever.  They ate food like crazy; an embarrassing amount of food.  They cried loudly during touching moments.  They played the drums on the church drum set and had to go to the bathroom and sobbed in the car because even though they had just said they didn't want to go into the grocery store with me they wanted to and I left without them.  

It was all very tiring.  And they're going to wake up soon and require water and changes of pajamas and comforting and so I had better go to sleep.

Dishcloths

I just had to share this picture; I haven't had a chance to do very much in the way of knitting the past few weeks months but as soon as we arrived here I made these for the new kitchen.

I know they're a bit spring coloured for this cool weather we're having now, but I'm loving new dishcloths all the same.  I made them smaller and tighter this time than I usually do and they're working so much better.

Looking Back Over Autumns Past

I was looking back over pictures of recent Falls, and I just find it so odd every year to see how our lives have changed, in some cases drastically.  I picked out some of my favourites taken outside over the past few years.

In Fall of 2010 we had a 6 month old and lived in rural New Brunswick, mostly overwhelmed with the challenges and joys of being fairly new parents, and completely blown away that two very average people could create the most handsome and intelligent baby either of us had ever seen.

A year later Samuel looks so very much older...

...and I was expecting Clara as well.

Fall of 2012 meant a move from the apartment we'd lived in for years and into a house better than anything we could have ever dreamed of.  It was also our first Fall with Clara, who was about 5 months.

Did you notice both babies are wearing the same hat?

And now here we are, in Fall 2013.  We're in a new town, the children are older, but life, well, life is busy and crazy and wonderful and weird.

They're so big.  Wow.

Linked up to Cari's Theme Thursday.

Nursing Home Visits, Books and Child Free Time. Hurrah.

Practically everyone I know could give me a run down on the 'abnormal normal' in their neighbourhood; the things that are just commonplace where you live, but probably are not generally standard in the greater society.  For me, here, I'm starting to see what our own brand of abnormal normal is - and it looks a lot like children.  Big families are everywhere, and I'm not just talking about the substantial Mennonite population, although them too.  I was doing a bit of visitation today at a nursing home one town over and everyone I spoke to seemed to have a substantial number of children.  Seven, eight, nine...with my two I was in the minority.  There's a family with four children who go to our church, another with five.  The family of nine is in the next town over, although I was told that one man remembers a family of twenty-four not too far from here!  Twenty four!  I just think it's so interesting that having a big family here is really quite normal.

Oh, but back to the nursing home visit; it went so well!  I was there to see the wife of an elderly congregant, and I have to admit I was a little nervous since it was my first, you know, official sort of duty - but everything was great.  On the way there I even had a chance to pop into the fabric and yarn store in the town and take a quick look around for curtain fabric for Samuel's room; I don't know if I'm just being overly optimistic or what. In fact, before you get any strange Mother Theresa like visions of me gliding gently around the nursing home ministering to people let me clear that up for you:

1)  I got to leave my children for FOUR HOURS with their father and talk to other adults.
2) Other adults who gave me chocolate to 'give to my children' (pshaw.  right.)
3) Other adults who were happy to see me, did not pull my hair or make me take them to the washroom or ask me for food.

I'm going back next week.

I did start a Christmas gift list for the children for my parents, which I'm pretty happy about - really at this stage of the game I think we need to be intentional about gifts because the parsonage has NO (I'm talking almost ZERO) storage space and I cannot stand for one more big noisy toy.  I'm hoping everyone feels an overwhelming desire to purchase books.

Driver's License

Most of life with small children is akin to running a marathon through pudding, and so when good and uplifting news comes along it's all just such a nice change.  Like this morning, when my husband passed his driver's test and in so doing tossed our family into the modern world.  We've resisted it for a long time. but here we are anyway.

And when David came home from the city he brought with him the next two colours of embroidery floss I need for my stitching.  I know, not as exciting; he also brought home strawberries that the children devoured.

Tomorrow I've got to manage to cram everything into the morning because come 1pm I'm off to visit at the nursing home - wish me luck.

Goodnight, all.

Autumn

Despite what the days might show you, with their occasional warmth and humidity, autumn is coming; I know this because the Northern nights are getting cool.  Cool enough at first for me to open the boxes marked 'Fall Clothing For Children', and then cool enough to tuck the aforementioned children into bed with, in Samuel's case, a giant ancient plaid sleeping bag of David's that he's fallen in love with, and in Clara's case a yellow wool blanket and a quilt that once graced my own crib, and both of them with hot water bottles.  Finally I broke down the other night, gritted my teeth and turned on the furnace.

David was cleaning the cat box at the time and said he was amazed to hear the vent beside him leap into life.

This is also when I discovered that I had placed our mattress and boxspring directly over the vent in the bedroom and would have to rearrange all of the furniture.

And last night, to my disgust, while I was about the turn on the heat I discovered that an earwig had beaten me to it and was curled up (and completely inaccessible) inside the thermostat.

And yet I was expecting differences in the climate, moving from a temperate place to one more northern and cold; what I wasn't expecting was developing allergies.  I am constantly scratching my eyes, sneezing and putting into use my extensive collection of lovely handkerchiefs.  It's all very upsetting; fall is my favorite season, and here I am wheezing through it.  I'm still not sure what it is that I'm reacting to here that didn't exist where we used to live!

The first update.

It's been 15 days since my last post...and I'm sorry.  Wouldn't it have been nice to freak out alongside me for the whole awful, awful journey here?  Oh you would have just loved that, I can tell.  But it was not to be, and that's just fine because it wasn't nice, and it wasn't pretty, and it will have to be a story for another day because I can't handle re-living it right now.

So instead, let's start with 'and so they arrived.'  We got here.  Our stuff got here.  The cats and the children all got here and we were home.

The House

It's small, but not unimaginably so.  The main problem is that there is pretty much no storage space anywhere - no basement, no big closets, no linen closet, no coat storage....the result is that my linens are in the kitchen cupboards and the winter coats are currently in S's room.

The Yard

It's H.U.G.E.  Amazingly so.  There's a big, big front yard with trees and grass, then a side yard, then a back yard with a deck that is almost the size of our living room, plus a fire pit and lots of lawn, then there's MORE grass off to the other side of the house that also includes a big sand box and lots of huge climbing rocks and a beautiful hedge of lilac bushes and apple trees.

The Church

The church is well-sized for the congregation.  It's your typical little white steepled country church with wooden pews and a big hall for shared meals.  David's office is in the church and it's filled with bookshelves. It's all very nicely proportioned.

The People

I will say, in all honesty, that I never expected such a warm and loving welcome as we found here.  The congregation has been exceptionally understanding, kind, sweet-tempered, funny and real to a tired family of four with sore feet, whirling heads and sleep deprivation.  They have fed us like it's going out of style.  I'm not kidding.  In the week and a half since we've arrived I have received two shopping bags full of apples, three jars of apple butter, a tray of sticky buns, a large box of peaches, a bag of green beans, three cucumbers, a zucchini the size of my calf, a lemon meringue pie, a tray of bacon beans, a large amount of smoked ham, a margarine container of cut up vegetables, a tomato and cucumber salad, scalloped potatoes, a 10lb bag of potatoes, and have been given a huge lasagna dinner with fresh baked bread and salad.  And that's not including everything they stocked the house with before we arrived, including toiletries, milk, bacon, bread, eggs etc. Oh, and giftcards to restaurants.  We've eaten out already.

The Town

The phrase 'don't blink or you'll miss it' might have been invented to describe this little town.  What it lacks in size it more than makes up for in simply stunning scenery, though.  We're right on the banks of a gorgeous lake, the clouds are unlike anything I've ever seen before, the stars are incredibly bright, the trees..oh my heavens the trees and the hills...the vistas are just...it's breathtaking.

What We've Done...

The children and I discovered that there's a playgroup in town and last Friday we packed up and went to it.  I've only ever been to one other playgroup before so I didn't have a lot to compare it to - but this one was totally different from what I'm used to.  Also, it was packed, although the other mothers assured me that this is not common.

We all went to the local library to get cards and check out our first batch of books.  You know you're bookworms when your dishes aren't all unpacked but you've got a local library card...

Last weekend was the big fall fair for the area and I almost talked myself into getting a chicken.  I didn't, but I allllmost did.

Alright, now to bed.  The first week we were here we were in bed so early every night that the sky was still light.  Now I'm averaging about 9pm on a good night.