So I’ve been terribly remiss getting my pictures up and on the computer. With very little preamble, let me present to you:
– Pictures from Justice’s funeral
– Many neighborhood babies
– Apple-picking/rough-housing
– Mr. Toothless
– Adam’s birthday game night
– Thane’s fourth birthday
– Halloween
– Leaf raking
– Mocksgiving
and finally
– A trip to Plimouth Plantation (taken today, in unseasonably delightful weather)
I love graveyards. I always have. I remember being 6 and visiting the graveyard in Bonners Ferry and thinking how pretty it was, and if I died soon I hoped they’d bury me there. I used to go hang out in the Mineral Cemetery to watch the stars on bright, clear nights. My husband proposed to me in the tiny graveyard we’d walked to on the night we met. I walked around the Wyoming Cemetery in Melrose the night I was in labor with Grey, and through Stoneham’s Lindenwood Cemetery the night I gave birth to Thane. I am often in graveyards, when I play taps for veterans funerals. I find graveyards lovely, peaceful, thought-provoking and restful.
On Saturday, we arranged with Coelynn McIninch to do our every-four-years formal family portraits. Coe had taken the Camp Gramp portraits two years ago, and I’d liked her work a lot, so it was logical to ask her to come and shoot us. But it was 4 pm on a Saturday afternoon in September, with fast-fading light. It was overcast, and a bit chilly. I’d _planned_ on going to the Middlesex Fells for the pictures, but suddenly that seemed a long way away. “Why don’t we just go to the graveyard?” my husband inquired, reading my mind. And so we went.
I should also mention that we are very respectful of graves, and we teach our sons to be as well. I never forget that a place of peace of me is a place of sorrow for others.*
Folks, the pictures are AMAZING. It was very, very difficult (nigh impossible!) to keep Thane looking forward and smiling, but she did it. Grey is adorably snaggle-toothed… I’m shocked that the front tooth has held on another few days! There were some pictures of us getting wiggles out, or being silly, or just being a family with a six year old and three year old (for a few more days!) I’m super pleased with all of them – both silly** and serious – and the hard part will be to decide which ones make it on the wall and in our Christmas cards!
That’s right, folks. The last game of the regular season is on the radio, so it is clearly time to think of Christmas cards!
I’m tempted not to share, if only so those of you who actually get Christmas cards from me are surprised, but that seems too mean.
Flynn Family Portraits – 2012: by Coelynn McIninch
*There was a guy there who was learning how to drive a clutch on the cemetery hills – loudly – and someone must have called the police because two cruisers pulled in just as we pulled out. I admit to being rather glad we were safely off by then!
**The ones where the boys are being zombies and eating Adam’s brains are AWESOME. I love the “Tomb of the Living Dead” some teenager scrawled on that wall years ago.
So I got way behind on pictures for the summer. In one marathon session, watching the Olympics, I have brought them into LINE! Muahah! So here you go:
Pictures from York Beach in Maine, with babysitter, as referenced in the last post.
Pictures of a trip to see the Rampage, which I thought I’d posted but Picasa says I never did.
Father’s day, with kites.
Second camera pics from May, including camping and summiting Black Cap Peak.
Now my memory card and my conscience are both clear. Enjoy!
Thane has gone camping every summer of his life. He was born in October, and by the time his first May rolled around I decided that it was time to go camping! (As an aside: why did we NOT go camping for the 5 summers between graduation and having kids? What was I so busy doing? It’s a mystery.) I trundled the kids (and the pack ‘n’ play!) into a car and by gum, we went camping. His first camping trip was at nine months. We went camping when he was 18 months. And 27 months.
Last summer, my dearest husband and I began to wonder if we even liked camping (the answer being – we definitely like it by ourselves!) It was tough camping with such little kids. And as much as I love camping, it did require toughing. At 9 months, Thane wasn’t – you know – sleeping through the night. When he was 1, he would wake up at 5:45 hungry and bored. At 2, he still so desperately needed his naps and had such a miserable time taking them. There were the diapers. The constant vigilance. The sleep deprivation. The whining. By an objective measure, it wasn’t really… you know… fun. The kids were too small to swim unless we were physically holding them. Too small to go boating. Too small to go fishing. Too small to go for more than a mile-long leisurely hike. Too small to make them do the dishes. Sometimes camping was refreshing, or satisfying. There were glorious moments. It broke the tedium of every day the same. But by the time it was pack-up time, we were really ready to go.
But I had faith that if I just toughed it out, camping with my sons would eventually be awesome. I mean, I love camping. I love the tent. I love the smell of woodsmoke. I love the call of the loons on the lake. I love lying in a dewing field watching the stars come out. I love finding sticks for kindling, swimming, hiking, reading and discovering cool spiderwebs. I mean, isn’t this what having boys is supposed to be all about, this ecstasy of outdoorsiness? All I had to do was get to that moment – that trip – where it all clicked.
And folks, I’m here to tell you THIS WAS IT. We went camping this last weekend, and it was awesome. The weather was awesome. By dint of making reservations in January, we had a truly amazing camping spot. And the kids were so fun. We skipped naps. The kids slept until 8 am. They paid attention to our “how to make a fire” lecture. They entertained themselves. Grey rode a bike without training wheels for the first time. He read a chapter book. Thane used his “playing quietly by himself” skills. Grey swam without flotation devices, made friends, and periodically wandered back to the campsite to check in. Thane went the entire weekend without any potty training accidents. My sons summitted their first mountain (Black Cap Peak). It was just great. I sat by the fire, watching the water, listening to the loons on the lake, hanging out contentedly at the beach, and eating all the s’mores myself because for some reason my crazy children don’t like s’mores.
I’m sure not every camping trip will be this awesome, but this one really was. So for those of you wondering when it’s a good age to bring your kids camping… I vote for 3 and 9 months.
No, don’t worry. I’m not going to start talking politics. And no, I haven’t undergone a personality transplant to become one of the Permanently Angry. This ragey rampage is quite cheerful and happy.
On Saturday after Aikido we headed down to Providence to attend a game of the American Ultimate Disc League’s Rhode Island Rampage. I’d been wanting to do this since it came to my attention that they existed a few weeks ago. Of course, they only STARTED existing a few weeks ago, which is my excuse. Part of my motivation for wanting to go is that one of the kids that I taught in Sunday School a million years ago is one of their players. (As he pointed out – embarrassed after the game – “In my defense, they also ran the after-church D&D game!”) There was no way I was going to miss getting to watch him play professional disc! So down we went.
It was a blast. Ultimate Frisbee is fun to watch, and the rules they’ve put in to make it more of a spectator sport worked quite well. But the distance between the players and the audience was so much less than at most college or pro sports – it felt more like high school. The athleticism of the athletes was astounding – those young men flew. And they did things with the discs that were astounding. The pacing and the scoring were good – enough scoring for American attention spans, but not an expected score per possession like basketball. It was also great for the kids, since they could wander the stands and yell cheers. One of the fun parts was that with such a young team – 5 games into existence – we were all sort of making up what it meant to be fans. A friend turned to me after the end of the third quarter and asked, “So do we sing Sweet Caroline now?” Well, maybe we do? Who knows?
And at the end of the afternoon – waning light on a warm Saturday – I was totally a RI Rampage fan. I really enjoyed myself, and I want to go again.
I had fun with my camera while I was there. The Rampage uniforms are awesome. The orange against the spring colors was very dramatic. I’ve also been digging the post processing filters on Picasa. Ok, ok, so it’s lame. I know. I’m not a real photographer, yadda yadda. But it’s fun when a picture you took of places you know suddenly looks like a pencil sketch. What can I say? Whatever artistic excesses you blame me for, I accept my guilt.
It was a busy weekend this weekend – even by my criteria. There were about 6 loads of laundry, 3 sets of dishes, two lawns mown, a three year old’s birthday, two aikido practices, one jello mold attempt and one 60s dance party. And that was just Saturday.
Today after church, I decided the weather was so lovely that I had to find my way down to the Arnold Arboretum for my annual sniffing of the lilacs. It was glorious weather, and glorious sniffing, for all it was two weeks before the planned Lilac Event, with the warm spring my timing was perfect. We wandered, romped, rolled, rough-housed, sneaked, ran and sniffed to our heart’s content. I realized, actually, that this annual event last year was just about the last time I walked without limping in the last year. I was much better, but very nervous on the rough ground today.
Anyway, the pictures I took reminded me that oh! I have a camera! And I should maybe download the pictures on it!
So here you are: a few pictures from recent days!
Yesterday was Piemas. For those of you not familiar with the phenomenon, Piemas, it is a complicated holiday with a long and extended history. It is a holiday we made up about 7 years ago to celebrate the eating of pie, and other pie shaped festivities. Mmmm pie.
This year, I made:
2 chicken pot pies
1 blueberry pie from farmshare blueberries this summer
1 lemon merangue pie (which I just finished – it’s my favorite)
1 pecan pie
1 Nutella crack pie (because I had an empty crust and needed a filling and I had Nutella lying around – this was a digestive bombshell)
Many other people brought many other pies. We had a 1:1 pie to person ratio, with the advantage slightly in favor of the pies. There were, as always, many delicious and exceptional pies. There was much talking, and much game playing. There were 8.5 kids, but their chaos generation fields were overwhelmed by the tumult of Adults Eating Pie. There were savory pies, sweet pies, ice cream pies & boozy pies. In an innovation this year, I also served fancy teas in my fancy silver tea pot in fancy cups, which was really fun. There were new people, and folks who’d been around since the thought first occurred that Pies were important enough to merit their own darn holiday.
The whole thing was really fun, and I didn’t make it to bed until 2:30 this morning and I regret not a whit of it, and I’m so grateful to everyone who came and brought pie and ate it with me – except for Josh was was CLEARLY cheating at 7 Wonders in order to beat me that badly. And for those of you who couldn’t be here – I missed you. Next year.
You can see full pictures of the festivities here: Piemas!!!
So I tackled the memory card issue today, in addition to getting a haircut. I have pictures of our Christmas celebration, and pictures of my brother’s ordination!
Here are photos of our Christmas:
<a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/101119887511887245332/Christmas2011"https://picasaweb.google.com/101119887511887245332/Christmas2011
And here are some really nice pictures of my brother’s ordination. It was an experience that merits its own blog post – we’ll see if that ever happens!
https://picasaweb.google.com/101119887511887245332/MattsOrdination
So I have learned through many long years that you should never, ever go apple picking on Columbus Day weekend. However, timing (and knees) being what they are… once again we found the only good weekend day for apple picking to be today – one day after Grey’s birthday party on an 85 degree October day.
It was packed. The traffic jam to get up the road to the orchard was the first of many lines. However, we eventually worked our way to a point where we could hand over our money and wander to the remoter parts of the orchard. It was a lovely (if tiring) time. And yesterday was Grey’s birthday party! There was a large number of young folks wandering around, playing with legos and hitting each other with cardboard tubes. Then I fed them large amounts of sugar. It was fun.
This is all a lead in to say… I actually have pictures. I mean, this is only like 6 weeks worth of pictures on one of my two cameras. It includes: Hurricane Irene, walking in the Fells with Laureen, first day of Kindergarten, my “Last Ambulatory Weekend” party, Grey baking my birthday cake, Grey’s birthday party & apple picking.
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| Fall2011 |
When you get out of the habit of frequent posting, you get tongue-tied. There’s a pressure behind your speech, of all the things you meant to say that are unsaid. This blog is part friendship, part letter home, part baby-book, part journal and part sanity check. But it also only touches a portion of my life. There are realms of my life that go unsaid and undocumented here. For example, I rarely talk about work in any but the vaguest of ways because, uh, not to put too fine a point on it but it’s really dumb to talk a lot about the details of your work in your personal blog. (See also: Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
Why haven’t I written very much lately? There are a few elements. First of all is the sheer time/energy factor. I’m really crazy super annoyingly busy. I just simply don’t get much downtime between a full time job, obnoxious commute, small children, real dinner, housework, church work (another place I’m horrendously behind/lax) and needing 8 good hours of sleep a night.
Second is, truly, that tongue-tied factor. It’s harder to restart than it is to continue.
Third is the stoooopid leg. OK, a bit more story here. We all remember how I brilliantly busted my knee leaping off a 5 foot stone wall. Right. Then we all remember how much BETTER I was getting. Well, about a week and a half ago, doing yoga as prescribed by the orthopedic surgeon to restore my flexibility before I hurt myself, I stretched the opposing tendon to my injured one. It seemed minor. I went to PT the next day and we got some stretches to work on that. Look how GOOD I was being people! Then on Thursday night I went to dinner with people I totally didn’t know. It was fun. I sat with my knee bent, which was sort of novel and fun because I hadn’t really been able to sit that way for two months! When I went to get up, uh, I couldn’t. I really, really, really couldn’t walk. I couldn’t put any pressure on that leg. I needed help to get to my car, which sheesh. Talk about embarrassing! Then my knee blew up to balloon size.
I did the only logical thing I could do. We left the next morning to go camping.
Then my stoooopid lower back which I’ve totally had completely under control since Thane was born decides that one bum joint isn’t enough. I have kept my lower back issues under control with a combination of massage and core strength. With the enforced inactivity, the core strength has been compromised, and the additional pulling off of significant limpage has caused some serious back issues which infuriates me past speech.
So yeah, things have taken longer than they usually do and I’ve been in pain.
And fourth? Well, there are big things afoot in the parts of my life I don’t talk about here. And that’s where I’ll leave that, in incredibly tantalizing and confusing form. Best of all, from an annoying-my-readers point of view, if this thing doesn’t pan out, you’ll never know what it was! Muahahahah! If it does pan out, it’s too big to not be mentioned here. So you should cheer for success with it (which makes it clear, I hope, that the THING is an opportunity not a threat).
So what haven’t I told you? Well, we went to The Gloucester Fiesta with our neighbors the weekend before last, and had a complete blast. Watching our kids play together in the surf (in their diapers, the weather was supposed to be awful but turned amazing!) in the foreground while the walking of the greasy pole went on the in the background totally made my day.
Grey has started summer camp. It seems fun, but extremely tiring and logistically challenging. Each day is different and requires different gear! On the other hand, they get two fantastic field trips a week!
I am on my third batch of jam for the summer. So far there’s two strawberry and one strawberry rhubarb.
We went camping for the 4th weekend (see also: things that are challenging with one leg). I took no pictures. Our Saturday was fantastic. Our Sunday was good. We came home Sunday night, and then had fun watching fireworks with Crazy Unka Matt on the 4th proper. Grey fell asleep in the kitchen chair eating a post-fireworks snack.
The meeting I was at when my knee conked out was a really neat one about setting up a Presbyterian Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program in Boston focused on food justice. The best part was all the locally sourced dishes that were fed to us there. YUM!!!! Or maybe the best part was the fun and interesting ideas tossed around. It’s hard to pick.
We’re getting ready for our summer vacation. My knee has BETTER behave, but I find it oddly prescient of myself that for once I opted NOT to go backpacking this summer. Instead, we’re going to Ashland Oregon. We’ll be seeing 5 plays in a week for our vacation, and I can’t wait.
OK, those are the big things I’m willing to talk about. What’s going on with YOU?
My Truant Pen 