CHEC I Easter Egg Hunt

Thankfully, there is a very active home school group here. And by active I mean my children do less than half the offered activities and I think they get to interact with their peers plenty! From field trips to co-ops to themed parties, CHEC is a vibrant, useful, friendly group. We had an Easter Egg hunt on Good Friday and I was the designated (?) photographer. Some subjects cooperated, some did not. The photos are, of course, skewed heavily in favor of my children and my friends' kids who agreed to smile and not run away from me. The wind was blowing so hard that day that my stroller went flying down the hill and landed in the creek. Don't worry, GG3 was not currently occupying the stroller. 

Hunt, child, hunt!

This child possesses the best hair I have ever seen on a human being. Seriously. You can't tell from this pic because the wind was blowing so hard but her hair is really fantastic.

Beautiful sisters.

Younger sister to the ones above. She is also beautiful, even when windblown.

Moms! The best part of the home schooling group: fellows moms who understand me and appreciate me and don't roll their eyes when I want to discuss curriculum!

A tiny home schooler. You cannot comprehend the charm of this child. Seriously devastating.

Brand-new home schooling mom on the left, veterans on the right. We all gotta help each other out. Even when the wind is giving us face lifts.

Ballet buddies and home school friends.

GG2 got a bunny on her face. Nearly blew off in the wind but she was proud of it nonetheless.

My friend who doesn't like candid pictures. I kept trying to take a surreptitious snap but she always caught me. But with a smile as beautiful as hers, I was happy to capture it. I think one of her children is clinging to her back to keep from blowing away.

Now if these two aren't something, then I don't know what is. He has been approved as a possible husband for GG1. There is still an extensive interview process.

These two should not be left alone unsupervised.

I have lots more pics but these are just a sampling. I put the rest of the pics in the CHEC yearbook....don't worry, Moms, no unflattering shots of anybody!

Easter Eggs: Aren't you Dye-ing to do some?

Please note: I only have two children today, since GG1 and MOS are at my mother's for a few days while GG2 "recovers" from umbilical hernia surgery. I say "recovers" because the child was up and dancing a few hours after having the surgery so recovery is sort of a moot point. That child heals very well; I am grateful because the surgery is apparently painful for adults. She has done very well but I decided a few days at home with just me and GG3 for company would be good for her.

With that in mind, we went to the Wal Marts and bought eggs and an egg dyeing kit called "Eggosaurus." I've included some pics of the process. I would never, I repeat, never attempt this with all my children awake and participating. GG3 went down for a nap, I had already boiled the eggs, so all that was left was for GG2 and me to dye the eggs and assemble the cardboard dinos. I frequently am overwhelmed with feelings of inadequacy when I see the crafty stuff other moms do with their kids, home schooled or not. So I figured I would be completely honest with you and tell you this project would not have been completed if I had all my kids with me today :) Maybe you can cut yourself a break, if you tend to be like me. Last year, I bought plastic eggs and candy and let the kids put the candy in the eggs. Delish! I was disappointed that we didn't dye eggs, but I just couldn't. GG3 was just a few months old and it was too overwhelming to contemplate. The year before that, I was pregnant with GG3 and I did dye eggs with all the kids. It was not very pleasant. MOS was only a little over a year old and he was uncooperative, to say the least! I will accept my inability to multitask well, especially where dye is concerned, but I am happy that GG2 and I got to dye eggs together. And in case you feel bad about my other kids, my mom has promised that they will dye eggs at her house. Everybody wins! Especially me!

Hello there, eggies. I ate your brothers for lunch but you I am saving for something egg-stra special. 

Here's hoping the dye doesn't stain my countertops or plastic cups. We aren't always prepared here at Chez Geek. 

This girl had some serious fun dyeing eggs.  

I held, she glued. These little dinosaurs, or Eggosaurus, were complicated! Lots of folding, gluing, and taping. Ok, they were just hard for me. You could probably handle 'em much better. 

One down, eight to go. 

Bokeh makes anything interesting, don't ya think? 

Extra eggs go into my McCarty shell. Because that's what an expensive piece of pottery is for, right? (Wedding gift. I have a bigger one, too. I love this stuff.)

And now, for something completely different

I am my mother's only child and as such, I have the unique responsibility of owning no fewer than 1,257 handmade, hand smocked, hand embroidered, hand sewn dresses that were mine as a child. Most of the dresses were made by my grandmother; some were simply handmade and purchased at an upscale boutique by the aforementioned grandmother. Believe me, this burden can be rather heavy sometimes. For instance, the dresses have to be worn by my daughter (s). And they must be worn within a certain time frame, owing to the nature of the dress itself (short sleeve, long sleeve, spring, bunnies, snowmen, etc.) or to its size (nb, infant, toddler, etc.) And since there are so many dresses, I have been in a constant state of anxiety since GG1 was born in 2003. A lot of dresses, one girl baby at a time, and numerous photos that must be taken because, and I quote,"You wore that dress to ______________ and if you don't get (whichever daughter is the right age) to wear the dress to ________________ then I don't know how I'll survive" are pretty common phone calls from my mother when she assesses her mental inventory of heirloom dresses and declares that The Time Has Come Yet Again.

So the next time Key comes to our house she brings no less than eleven dresses on tiny little hangers that were also mine and she has doggedly clung to for the past thirty years. My girls, at least the two older ones, know what's coming next.  It's agonizing, to say the least.

• Step one: try the dress(es) on. And they all have teensy buttons and hems that need work and they have to be ironed and no you can't raise your arms yet because I haven't finished and stand here and where are your shoes and I think you need a slip, where is it? 
• Step two: stand solemnly while the dress is adjusted and your grandmother raves about your beauty, possibly wiping a tear from her cheek. Your mother is non-committal since she hated the dress in 1982 when she wore it and she hates it now. It was ugly then and it's ugly now. But your grandmother is more powerful than your mother and so your mother has to put up with it, too. Suck it up, Buttercup. That's my motto, especially where hand smocked dresses are concerned.
• Step three: picture time. Assemble the supplies needed to fix your hair, keep your shoes clean, and make sure your face is scrubbed. If you're lucky, we can just take pictures in the back yard. If you're unlucky, we have to go to a park or, worst-case scenario, schedule an appointment with a professional photographer so that other people can witness your humiliation.
• Step four: Troop back inside and take the dress off. And it's probably dirty now, since most likely you swung on the swing a bit while Key and Mommy were discussing what tree provided the prettiest backdrop. So now Key will spend the next three hours lovingly hand washing the dress(es) in the sink and telling stories of how beautiful Mommy looked in the dress many moons ago and how she is sure that we did not get a good picture that day and we should have gone to a different park or taken pictures from a different angle.
• Step five: picture review. When the proofs get back from the photographer, or I download the pics to my computer if I took them, we must review each and every picture and agonize over every detail that is Wrong and Not Right. I think they're all fine and my girls look perfect. Then, if we are at Key's house, we pull out the old photo albums of me wearing the dress(es), because Key is convinced that we did not capture just the right shot or take enough pictures. Oddly enough, I look the same in all the old pictures, regardless of which dress I am wearing or how old I am: stiff and uncooperative. I am grimacing and tugging, fidgeting and sweating, my hair is puffy in odd places and my socks are bunching around my ankles. Compared to me, my daughters are angels dropped from heaven in hand smocked dresses. Key sighs, strokes the terrible pictures of me, and murmurs, "So cute, but you just wouldn't do right."
• Step six: drink a beer and thank my lucky stars that hand smocked dresses are not currently in vogue for adults or I would be even more miserable right now.

Now that you have some idea of my beleaguered association with heirloom dresses, I present to you, pictures of GG3 in My Baptism Dress that was worn by me on Christmas Day, 1977, at my own personal Baptism. I was apparently a tiny dollop of a thing since all the pictures taken show my mother clutching what appears to be a gourd wearing an heirloom dress. My older girls both had to wear the dress when they were infants, as well, but I don't have copies of those pics on my computer. So you just get to look at GG3 and imagine what my older girls looked like. Pretty much just like GG3, only they were both crying in all their pics and GG3 is only moderately unhappy in some of hers. Enjoy and be happy that you are not my daughter or your number would be up next and I have a pink gingham sundress with balloons smocked into the yoke with your name on it.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, MOS escaped all of this torture because my mother-in-law did not like hand-smocked clothes for little boys so mercifully, the only clothes that she saved from GH are cute little overalls and one slightly regrettable sailor suit. 

The preparation is torture. Torture, I tell you.

I stick my tongue out at you and your pitiful photographic efforts! Thhhhbbbbtttt!

 

Reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaching for a flower. 

I am so adorable. You cannot even handle my adorableness. 

Making her escape....you won't get far, kid. Your dress will get itchy, soon. That lace is annoying.

I hope you have a greater appreciation for what I go through for both my mother and my blog. Don't worry, there are plenty more dresses that need immortalizing. Wait until I show you the ones of my older girls wearing my grandmother's dress. That'll make you tear up. And not in a good way.

When there's nothing left

I like to blog with pictures best but I don't have any pictures on my computer that show my mother during her cancer treatment, so we're gonna have to go with just words on this one. My mother was diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia on March 7, 2001. Terrible day. Obviously, she survived. However, her fight for survival was marked by many, many points, one of which I'm going to share with you today, in a roundabout fashion.

When my parents got a divorce, things were tough for a few years, as they always are after a family is divided and incomes are readjusted and the car breaks down and the kid needs new shoes, etc. Finances were difficult, but my mom would say, as she made me a pb&j sandwich again "At least we have our health and at least we have each other!" I would grumble and long for designer jeans and all the electronic gadgets that were becoming popular, way back in the early '90s. Please don't think that I went without; I never did but we were never rich. And my mom was right; we were both healthy and we had each other.

After I graduated from high school, my mom decided to go back to graduate school and get her Master degree in Special Education. So now she not only was surviving on her meager teacher's salary but all her available income went to graduate school. And her car died. And books were expensive. And multiple everyday expenses ate away at her savings and left her barely making it. But, she always said when I'd call, "I still have my health!" We'd laugh and commiserate about the agony of home work and the trials of dating. It was strange to be dating at the same time as my mom. We'd compare notes about our current boyfriends and conclude that we were lucky to have each other, even if we were poor college kids.

My mom was not yet finished with her degree when she got cancer. There she was, laid out in the hospital bed, me perched beside her, her skin pale, IV tubes running every which way. I gingerly touched her leg, but that hurt too much, so I moved down to her foot. We finally found a place on her foot that didn't hurt and I touched that. I looked at her, so sick, not knowing if she was going to live or not, and said, probably a bit tearfully, "Well, Mom, you don't have your health anymore. What now?" And do you know what my mother said to me? My mother, the person who carried me and raised me through my youth and extremely trying teenage years, reached out once again to my scared twenty-three year old self, and said, "Sweetheart, I don't have my health any more. You're right. I don't have any money, either. I also don't have a graduate degree. But you know what I do have? I have salvation. I have the promise of heaven. I don't want to die right now, because I haven't seen my grandchildren that you've promised me. But I will go to heaven when I die, and that's enough for me. That's enough."

And I realized, in that space of total emptiness and sickness and possible death, that she was completely right. Because there was nothing else at that moment. No health, no money, and we might not even have each other if she didn't beat that cancer. Nothing but salvation. Nothing but Jesus. Reminds me of the song my kids love to sing: "What can take away my sins?/Nothing but the blood of Jesus/What can wash away my tears?/Nothing but the blood of Jesus." Because for that awful nine months as my mother lay dying of a blood cancer, it was Jesus's blood which saved her. Sure, modern medicine had a part in it, but it was Jesus who had already saved her, long before she was even aware of her need of salvation. She had the assurance that Jesus was there waiting for her on the other side of that cancer, whether she beat it or not.

My mother could easily have died at any point during her treatment and for one awful week in July, we were all convinced she was on her way out. But she hung in there, with nothing to go on, but Jesus's sacrifice for her and promise of eternal salvation. I don't like the current (?) trend of health and wealth gospels, so I won't share with you now what good tidings eventually came my mother's way, up to and including my wonderful stepfather. Because for a good long while, as she fought the good fight, she did not know whether she would make it or not. She had no money, no health, and no promise of survival. But heaven's promises and the assurance of her salvation gave her comfort through those long months.

That lesson of what to turn to when there's nothing left is the lesson that has stuck with me these last ten years. After my parents' divorce and up until my mother became ill, I clung to people, things, situations, successes, etc. for comfort. But during my mother's cancer treatment, all those external things were slowly chipped away. I myself had to quit graduate school to care for my mother, so I no longer had my successes at school to bolster me. My marriage was extremely strained while my mother was ill; it was difficult to spread myself over both a critically ill parent and a husband at home. I am my mother's only child so most of the decisions and responsibility fell to me; my aunts helped when they could but they, too, had families and careers of their own. I did not have a church home during my mother's illness, so I had no church family to turn to. In that darkest of times, when the boredom of hospital life or the pain of seeing my mother suffer would threaten to overwhelm me, I would remember heaven. I prayed a lot, thought a lot, cared for my mother, and slowly relaxed my grip on the things that I thought mattered most. Because those things simply weren't available to me anymore. There was only my salvation, the promise of heaven, and the price paid for my redemption by the Lord.

Because I can no more save myself from the ravages of hell than I could save my mother from the ravages of leukemia and chemotherapy, I wrote on my heart the message that my mother so clearly articulated from her hospital bed. There is nothing else but heaven. Nothing else to hope for but eternal salvation. Everything else can and might be taken away. My mother's health, her finances, her career, her house, her car...everything that defined her outwardly was in jeopardy while she was ill. And, as she pointed out, she didn't have any grandchildren yet either, so there was no promise of becoming a grandmother, something she desperately wanted. Instead, she had pain and sickness and depression and an endless round of hospital stays, port lines, chemo, drugs to counteract chemo and drugs to counteract those other drugs. Not much to hold on to, not much to draw comfort from, not much to be happy about. She could not pull herself out of her sickness alone, she could not make herself feel better. She could not even get out of bed and sit in a chair for most of her treatment. Confined to bed, her world became a narrow, focused place of pain and misery. Only heaven and Jesus's promise of redemption was available to her. There was nothing left, except everything that was right and good and true. There was nothing left except the promise of heaven.

I'm glad my mother survived, especially since my four children can enjoy knowing their grandmother. I'm glad she survived because I would have missed her terribly all the days of my life. But I'm happiest that she survived to tell her story again and again to others, sharing the love of Christ that she has and telling of His gift to her. Someday I'll tell you about all the really great things that came out of my mother's bout with cancer, but for now I wanted to leave you this final thought: for my mother, and for me, Jesus was the gift of hope when there was nothing left to hope for, the gift of comfort when all comfort ceased, and the gift of rest when everything was pain and suffering. I wish I could say that I live a perfectly happy life now, full of contentment and joy and patience, but I don't. I'm a wretched sinner just like everybody else. I have to preach myself the gospel every day; I wish I could just do it once and be done with it, but I need Jesus's renewing power every day. But it does help to remember those dark days, when there was nothing and no one, and all I had was my hope in the Lord. And so I preach the gospel to my wretched sinful self once again and feel the redemptive grace of Christ poured out on me, and I can go on with my life for another day. I am glad my mother survived, but I am also grateful for her clarity and faith in the Lord during those times; she was able to share the gospel with me, even when there was nothing left for her.