Shillelagh's 1st Birthday

Happy Birthday Baby! I can't believe it's been a year already. What a ray of sunshine:)

these last meetings

Today was baseball in Cheshire and we all had a really good time. Huck hit a homerun and Athena did some pitching, while Fiona wandered and played all over the playground with Shillelagh toddling behind. It was wonderful to catch up with everyone since we have been too busy to get together like we used to.

Something that I am happy for about our move is that we will be able to invite people over again! We will finally have room and the kids will get to share more of themselves with friends.

Athena had her last Knit Wit group meeting at the library this evening. She was nervous about telling others about our move, but it came out and all went well. Those ladies have been so supportive and caring to my big girl.

Tomorrow is a housework catchup day so we should be home, besides a short trip to the grocery store, all day. My main project is to find my to do list! LOL! You know things are hectic when you lose your to do list.

Tonight we visited Jesse's Aunt Maryanne and cousins Kelly and Stacey. She was so generous to feed our huge family and also celebrated all the kids birthdays with a wonderful chocolate cake. I am completely stuffed!

Stacey got herself a dog, a Japanese chin, named Rupert. He is absolutely adorable, very friendly and extremely smart.

Today I found a link to a really neat site. Not only can you download audio books, but, I could even do some reading myself! I have always toyed with the idea of reading books and taping them. Jesse, the kids, and even Dan, Jesse's brother, have said they really like the way I read a story. Karen told me about these books being available to read. Perhaps I will try it out after the move.

Packing begins

I made a decent loaf of bread last night! I am so happy that I am progressing to the decent stage. The changes I made were adding bread flour, finally, and using milk powder. I find the milk powder easier because that is what the recipe calls for and I think I wasn’t measuring the liquids correctly using plain old milk.

Yesterday was our first day of official packing. The kids were wonderful and went through all of the stuff in their room and sorted and cleaned. It’s feels good to be started, but the crazy worrying has also begun. I woke up at 4:30 this morning and couldn’t stop thinking about how I could cram all the stuff I want to do today in 8 hours with 4 kids. Ugh! So I tried to just let it all go and concentrated on my breathing. It helped a lot. Finally, this stuff is beginning to work after all the years of practice.

The one thing we are doing today is going to visit my mother and father. Fiona and Shillelagh got some new costumes from the Good Will thanks to their Daddy and they will be wearing them today. They are just so adorable it hurts sometimes.

Athena has made some plans for a get together with her best friend, Nikki and her sister Emmy. They will come over in a couple of weeks and hang out for the day. Nice and simple. Maybe we will make our own pizzas, watch a silly movie, play some games. Whatever they desire!

My bread machine

I bought myself a bread machine at Good Will. I had done some research online to limit my options and went with one that I hadn’t heard of. Of course it doesn’t have it’s manual, and while I have tried to find it on the web, I am not having much luck. But, I have found such wonderful sites for what I call bread machining! The Hill Billy Housewife has a wonderful start off page. She has so much info on her site, I use it on a weekly basis. Then I found this site that is for all bread machine users. Absolutely fantastic! There is a whole beginners section that goes through the machine, the dough, the bread, step by step. Never mind an email list to ask questions, share recipes and all sorts of other good stuff. All the information I need right at my fingertips.

My loaves are okay. That’s it, just okay. But I know that my first problem is that I am not using bread flour, just the old cheapy all purpose junk. So I went on an explore on the Internet to King Arthur Flour and fell absolutely in love. I just love a company that is so complete in their knowledge of their product and stands behind it. There is just so much for me to learn.

I thought this would be a good start because our family just loves bread. Well, Jesse did work at a bakery for 16 years! When we were first married, he always brought home bread and I had never tasted anything so wonderful. My mom always bought grocery store bread and sometimes grocery store bakery rolls and bagels. I just didn’t realize what a difference their was.

Our family favorite used to be their french baguette, but it isn’t the same anymore. It is much better than any grocery store bakery, but not as powerful as it was in the old days. Now my mission is to reproduce that glorious bread at home. While I was trying to make it by hand, I realized I just don't have the time to learn the art of making bread by hand right now. I am lucky if I get all of our regular meals cooked! The bread machine cost 20$ and I feel it will be a great learning tool.

I am off to a slow start, but I am learning so very much.

Our boy's 10th birthday

Yesterday was Huckleberry’s 10th birthday. It is so amazing that 10 years have gone by so quickly. He is almost as tall as me, wears shoes almost Jesse’s size and is long and lanky. He still has his sweet beautiful smile, tons of freckles and always looking for the joking angle! We celebrated with our neighbors with some cake and hot wings (Thank you Bill!!) and a fire. It was relaxed and fun for everyone. The weather was a little gray, but that didn’t stop them from playing tag, hide and go seek and all the other games they played. Huckleberry was very satisfied with it all! We gave him a Nintendo DS which Athena accompanied with the game Pokemon Diamond, some more Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh cards to add to his collection, a hand made bracelet, and a new play sword. Never mind spending the previous in Hartford with Bill and the boys for a hockey game.

When he finally came in at 9:30, he was covered with dirt and smiling from ear to ear. What a great day!

It's just complicated

Last night I went out to dinner with my sisters and my mother for a girls night out. It was the first time we have ever done something like this. It was very strange to be with my sisters and my mom in this way. It was almost like they were coworkers, but with less familiar knowledge of each others lives. The funny thing is, besides my mother, I was the one with the most visible gray hair!

My mother has been diagnosed with cancer, so my sister has come up for a visit from South Carolina. It all seems so strange. The knowledge that my mother’s life expectancy is shorter that ever before is affecting me in ways that I just never imagined. It is as if I am carry around this heavy load that makes it so hard to think clearly or function in a semi-detached manner. My appetite is up and down and I keep getting caught up in worry cycles of my identity.

I don’t think that it is just her having a rapidly growing cancer (her diagnosis has given her 6-12 months to live) but the fact that we are moving to North Carolina on the 29Th of this month. I was so very excited when we found out we were going to move. All expenses paid for at least a year and Jesse keeps on working. What could be bad about that? Well, my mom having cancer, that’s what. There’s this old voice in my head saying “See,the move was just too good to be true. Something bad just had to happen to even it all out.” Isn’t that some sick thinking. Or maybe just some rationalization so that I don't ever get too big in the head.

See, I told her about the move after she had been to the doctors and knew something terrible was up. Though she didn’t tell me. Instead she said that is was a great opportunity for our family and what a great experience it will be for the kids. That she was going to miss us so much, but that was just her being selfish. I should have known something was up when she said that. She waited to tell me that they found “something” until the week after I told her about our move.

Perhaps it is just her generation. I am not sure if it is denial or lack of self importance to those around you. Everything has been hush hush. Then again, everything always has been hush hush! She will let you know if you ask, but the subject is never broached. When I asked her how she was feeling the other day, she mentioned that her legs hurt at night so she took one of the pain pills they gave her. She didn’t want to take too many, she said, because you could get addicted to them. Then, when I go over with the kids, she still has the comics for the kids, ice cream, something she baked. She gets up to get the play dough, drinks, what ever the kids or I need. I ask myself, am I supposed to stop her from doing this? No. She wants to do it. If my mom didn’t want to do it anymore, she wouldn’t . Why make her feel incapable? She has been a great role model when it comes to being acceptant of what God gives you and staying strong.