Summer of Four

I had great plans for this summer.  After all, it's the first summer I've had four kids, and the thought of all of them trashing my house every day was a little scary.  I was going to have a schedule for the week, with special time for each child, and lots of fun activities out of the house like using our zoo membership or going to the splash park.  I imagined all these when we were about a month out from finishing preschool.  Then one day I woke up with a sore throat, and the next day I started running a fever, and 24 days later I'm finally better. 

Frankly, it's such a novelty to have energy for activities besides subsistence, I think I could take on the world right now.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure I have time between everything that has come up this summer.  Piano lessons, speech therapy, a VBS week here and there, summer travel--I think we'll hit Titus's last surgery (August 15) before I can catch my breath.  And then school starts.  Boom.

Not to mention ALL the things that piled up when I took a hit for 24 days.  Nothing with imminent deadlines (thankfully), but still...my long term to-do list was quite neglected.

The post I wrote about plans has come to mind a lot in the last few days, and not just because that was my last thought before surgery + illness derailed everything.  I am still thinking about that same tension between order and real life, but it'll be a good summer to practice being a little more relaxed about it too.  We can definitely take this summer one day at a time, and have fun doing whatever happens to come up that day.  Like a picnic at the playground during piano lessons.  Or playing house in the bedroom while Titus has speech therapy.  Or improptu outdoor dinners with after dinner gymnastics entertainment.  This summer, we will pursue memories instead of plans.

And Life Goes On

Anyone know where June went?  I looked down and saw it's been 10 days since I last posted, but I'm sure it hasn't been that long.  :)

We thought we were done with our paperwork, but I got a call on Thursday that one of our notaries made a mistake on the notary seal.  So we get to fill out our financial paperwork again and get it notarized this weekend.

Besides that, we're really close to being out of the paper chase.  If I remember correctly, once we get logged into China, we have a great deal of twiddling our thumbs ahead of us.  But let me tell you, I'm having no trouble at all staying busy this time--three kids instead of two will do that for you!  I have a long list of projects for the summer too, most of which involve downsizing and simplifying.

First up was my bedroom.  I got rid of a bunch of clothes and set aside a few more that need something to complete the outfit (mostly skirts that need a matching top).  I know the whole 'capsule wardobe' thing is popular, but I'd rather just keep the clothes I like and make sure all my dress clothes are complete outfits instead of mix and match.  Sadly, this will involve some clothes shopping, which ranks far below visiting the dentist in my book.

The next project is a big one, and one that will require multiple weeks to complete:  food in our house.  I started with cataloging/organizing the pantry and freezer, and making a list of 'random things we should eat because I bought them over a year ago.'  Things like a quarter of a bag of orzo (probably from a random recipe) and Belgian Chocolate shells that I bought on super clearance without a purpose.  NEVER BY ANYTHING WITHOUT A PURPOSE!  That should be my new motto. 

At this point, I need to sit down and figure out how I'm going to approach meals right now.   David teases me about how I'm constantly trying to figure out an 'easier' way to do meals, yet I'm not willing to really commit to meal planning.  I want to be able to make whatever I feel like for dinner, but that's JUST NOT PRACTICAL with three little kids.  I think there must be a way to adapt a meal planning system to my tendencies, but at some point, I may have to give up on that dream and just commit.  And I really need to figure it out before Little Brother shows up!

(Also on my list: picking a name for Little Brother, so we can stop calling him Little Brother)

I-800A Progress

My big summer kick-off plans were derailed by a sore throat.  I spent yesterday laid out on the couch for most of the day, aside from feeding my children and making sure they didn't trash the house too badly.  David gently reminded me (as he does every time) that he's happy to stay home when I'm sick, but it wasn't too bad, and the kids are pretty good about dealing with sick me.  I figure, if there's no fever, we can handle it.  I just have very low expectations for the day (Pajama day!  Indoor picnic!  Dora and Diego!). 

Today we took one step closer to Little Brother and our trip to China.  Once our homestudy was finished (which we managed to do, despite some hiccups), we sent our I-800-A application to United States Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) and waited for our fingerprinting appointment.  No, our fingerprints have not changed since we last did this.  Yes, they make us do it again anyway.  (insert eye roll)

Our appointment was this morning!  It should be 2-6 weeks before we get our actual I-800A, but that's the last thing we need before everything can be authenticated and sent to China.  If everything goes quickly, we could be looking at a file by July!

Meanwhile...

The Peach Report:  We are a day away from clearing the peach tree.  Although not all of them are ripe, when it gets down this low, the gigantic green June bugs really mow through them.  I'm hoping to get enough for one last batch of peach jam.  Mmmmm.

The peaches swooped in and hijacked the blog, so I forgot to upload some of our recent adventures.  Here you go!

Washing the car!  Someone wanted to help...

...and two others were interested in a soapy bath.

My lab coat arrived in the mail, and Liz wanted to try it on.

"You'll need to memorize the entire periodic table of elements, along with all the atomic weights."

"Just kidding!"

We took our first trip to Krispy Kreme with the kids.  Brought back memories of my first trip...would you believe I ate six donuts?  I can barely make it through three now.  When the manager found out it was the kids' first time, she invited them back to the kitchen to make their own sprinkle donuts.

All geared up...

...and ready to go!

Chocolate dip and sprinkle bath.

Yum!

The Onslaught Has Abated

This has been my life for the last week.  I decided to keep track of all the peaches we processed this year, and we hit 400 peaches on Saturday.  At an average of 6 oz. each, that means we went through about 150 lbs of peaches.  I did that calculation three times to make sure it was right.  Cause that's a lot of peaches.  Now I feel more comfortable in saying we had over 1000 peaches on the tree, because we gave away a LOT of peaches (and ate a lot too!).  I still have a big bag of peaches in the fridge (hiding from the fruit flies).  Plus, out of sight, out of mind, because I am out of my mind with peaches.  :)

Sorted peaches.  In the front are eat/can peaches, in the back are pie/cobbler/peach butter peaches (bruised or slightly eaten), and in the bags are unripe peaches.  We have a lot more of those this year thanks to little hands who love to help!

The canning setup: peaches to peel, hot water for blanching, sugar syrup for canning, the "canner" pot (my stock pot), and lids in the back corner pot.

My last ditch effort when faced with a pile of peaches...peel and freeze.  Plus a bunch of peach pie bags and tubs of peach butter.  

6 pints peach salsa, 60 pints total canned slices, and lots of jam (peach, peach ginger, and peach raspberry).

Dried peaches, thanks to my friend's dehydrator.  So handy!  

5 months...will have to wait

I was inspired to restart my blogging at this point because Sunday marked 5 months that Liz has been with us.  Of course, August is also shaping up to be a super busy month...the peach invasion has begun, Katie has her preschool open house next week before starting the week after, and David may have to travel or put in some extra hours this month.  And I start teaching at the end of August--a lab I've never taught before.  So my resolve may be tested a little.

Our router stopped working too...ugh...and all the pictures are on my computer.  I'm too tired to fiddle with trying to get access to them.  So the 5 month update on Liz will have to wait, since it wouldn't be complete without the very cute post-surgery photo.  (ear tube surgery)

Many aspects of life are cyclical, and it seems like I'm either in 'put up' or 'use up' mode when it comes to food.  I've written about my freezer love affair before, and I've definitely been putting it to good use in the last three months.  It's beginning to look a little bare.  Thankfully, I feel like we're finally at the point both food- and attention span-wise (for Liz) where I can do some major cooking projects.  I really need to transition into 'put up' mode...because our peach tree is positively drooping with its precious load.

My goal is to can at least 50 pints of peaches, not to mention all the peach butter, peach pies, frozen peaches, etc.  The crop has been really late this year, so I took advantage of the delay and made some spaghetti sauce, chili, and casseroles to put in the freezer.  I'll need some easy meals when I start teaching, since I'll be getting home right at dinner-time.

DTC and the summer crops

I guess heading off into the mountains is still good for the writer's soul.  :)  Sometimes blogging is feast or famine, and this week it's a feast of potential blog posts to write.  I have some great news from the Etsy shop, an update about our weekend in Taos (hence the mountains), thoughts from a church service, and the results of our summer crops, amid a few other nascent ideas.

But first, an adoption update...we got the email yesterday that our dossier is on it's way to China!  For me, the wait is still the wait until our daughter is home, but it's nice to reach a milestone along the journey.  Our next big milestone is getting our Log-In Date (or LID), which our counselor said should take around 4 weeks. 

And now about our summer crops...  Our peach tree had a rough spring/summer, so the crop was way down.  I haven't even googled peach recipes once.  :(  We've had upwards of 2000+ peaches in the past, but I doubt we even had a quarter of that this year.  I'm sorry to all those who usually come pick, as it's a pleasure for us to share our bounty.  I canned some of the better ones--thankfully not all of them were rotten--but we're practically down to the end already.  At least this year hasn't had the urgency and pressure of dealing with all the peaches, but it's still pretty sad.

I also tried my hand at canning tomatoes.  It was a lot of work for 7 pints of tomatoes.  When you hear about those people who save money by couponing, gardening, etc., remember that they probably aren't paying themselves for their time.  I'm going to make roasted tomato soup out of the next batch from the garden (http://www.tastebook.com/recipes/1952487-Roasted-Tomato-Soup-Pesto-Mozzarella-Dippers), and I think next year we'll stick with cherry tomatoes and some San Marzano for pizza sauce.

If you've made it this far, I'll end with my resurrecting eggplant.  We bought a bunch of tomatoes and one eggplant, all of which were growing quite well.  I came out one day to find the eggplant had snapped at the base (a cat, maybe?), and resigned myself to store-bought eggplant for the rest of the summer.  Lo and behold, it grew back and is now covered with blossoms!  I'm hoping to get some by the time my parents visit.

Waiting in Faithfulness

There comes a time, every summer, when I look at our peach tree and think, "they are so little! when will they get big? will they be big enough when they are ripe?"  We had one year, early on, when we had tons (and I mean thousands) of tiny peaches that weren't so great.  That was before we learned about pruning the blossoms and what truly ripe really meant.  Now we know that pruning the blossoms ruthlessly allows the remaining peaches to soak up all that energy and get really big and delicious.  And we know that there will be time enough to pick the peaches that aren't quite at the perfectly ripe stage. 
But still, I wonder.  It's not like the peach tree has promised it'll come through every year.  And even this year, it looks like we lost about 1/3 of the peaches (after the pruning) to something.  But today I saw the rosy color had appeared on some peaches, and I walked over to the tree and just like always, they seemed so much bigger than the last time I checked.  We even found one that was soft and warm, ready enough to eat!  I don't think we'll put up as many peaches as last year (55 pint jars, not to mention everything that went in the freezer), but I think we will have a delicious crop to deal with in the next few weeks.  And I'm sure there will come a time, as it does every summer, when I look at the 100+ peaches on the counter and think, "What in the world?!"

VBS and Adopting

This week is VBS at our church.  There was a time many years ago when I designed a week-long VBS program for a missions trip.  Let's just say, this one is a little more impressive.  :)  The overall theme, the crafts, the stories, the everything that comes with a packaged curriculum is pretty cool.  And we have some people at our church who did an amazing job on the decorations.  I'm doing the story time for four classes (with another person, thankfully), and even though I didn't teach yesterday, I was a bit tired from being on my feet all morning. 
Before everything got started, though, I ran into a friend who was dropping of two of her kids.  The third was too young for the program, and she was kidding about not knowing what to do with one child anymore.  And when she did have one child (as opposed to her three now), it was WAY harder.  You may remember the first time you ever packed a diaper bag--it probably weighed more than your newborn.  You had 6 outfits in case your child had 6 blowouts, along with twice as many diapers.  If you were super prepared, you even had a change of clothes for yourself.  ;)  Now, with the third, you put diapers and wipes in the car because occasionally, you forget the whole bag.  With the second on it's way, you wondered how you'll ever get in and out of the car with two kids (mine are 20 months apart, so the thought did cross my mind).  Lo and behold, I did manage to run errands. 
We parted ways and went about our business, but a similar thought crossed my mind when I was preparing dinner (from the freezer, because I was beat).  I wondered how, if I was so tired now, I would deal with a third child.  The answer is, like that first child, I would never attempt to do VBS while acclimating an adopted third child into our home.  In many ways, I'm anticipating our daughter like a first child.  I'm already thinking about all the freezer meals I'll put up, and how I'll have to fit in all my shopping in the evenings and on weekends--there will be no 'we' for shopping expeditions.  I'm trying to figure out how to survive a whole day at home with no outings (no outings = more opportunities to make messes at home).  I'm so glad our backyard is just about done, because I figure we'll be outside more often.  While all this may be overkill when the time comes, I find it's better to prepare for the worst while hoping for the best.  :)

In the Meantime, A Visitor...

I've mentioned before that I'm not much of a gardener, but it seems to be going better this time around.  So much better, in fact, that my mistake of planting too many tomatoes in our little plot has gotten a bit out of control. 

Apparently I should have gotten 8 ft stakes instead of 4 ft ones, and I also should have gotten twice as many.  As I was attempting to impose some order on the plot, I came across a little visitor.  It's possible that I freaked out a little.  When you're expecting to grab a tomato branch and you get pretty close to grabbing this big guy instead, wouldn't you freak out too?  I'd like to point out that it was about 4 inches long and the diameter of a little Smokie.  

A Summer Project Update

At the beginning of May I posted about a few summer projects that I'd like to accomplish.  I guess if you look at the summer as a whole, I'm making good progress.  If you think about how long these tasks would take if I just buckled down and did them...well, whatever.  :)

--Bible Memory Passage book:  I'm almost done with finding and formatting the passages to print in my notebook.  Susan brought hers (which she managed to save before leaving the roost...), so I can check my list against hers and see if I'm missing anything.  I also bought the paper and binder, which is a less easy sounding task when you consider that taking the kids in and out of the car took longer than buying the materials. 

--Manipulatives for Katie:  Ha.  The 'progress' I've made is to bring home my mom's stack of felt from our homeschooling days, but I also finally remembered to buy sticky post-it tabs so I can start making some choices about projects and such for the fall.  

--More organizing:  Success!  I bought a little cubby hole shelf with bins, and that's helped a lot in terms of containing and hiding the mess.  But there's always more.  As the fall approaches, I have dreams of making the guest room closet into a homeschooling closet with everything organized into bins. 

The last big project is the freezer/meals, which probably deserves its own post.  Stay tuned!

Summer Projects

So, we're still waiting.  I feel like that's what you'll be reading for the next who knows how many months.  :)  I think we're close to finishing our homestudy, but it depends on some references getting in (outside our control to a certain extent).  We are finishing up the pictures this weekend, but we're still waiting to talk to our doctor about the medical special needs list.  I should ask my counselor if that's for their agency or for our dossier--if it's not for the dossier, it's not as pressing. 


In other news, my class is done!  I taught intro to chemistry at our local community college this semester.  It was the same class that I taught last semester, so most of my notes and homework were already done.  Even with the prep from last semester, lecture classes just take more work than lab classes.  I was also teaching two nights a week (instead of during the day), so dinner had to be ready pretty much when David walked in the door.  If I just had to show up and teach, this would be a dream job.  I really do love chemistry, and especially love seeing my students figure it out.  So while I'll miss the teaching part, I'm happy to put prep and grading aside till a later date.

Now that I'm done, I'm taking stock and thinking about some summer projects.  Oh, and I'm cleaning up all the piles that have piled up over the last month.  Here's a few things on my plate:

--Bible Memory Passage notebook:  Bible was the most important 'subject' in our home school curriculum.  We studied passages verse-by-verse and memorized them.  Although you could probably stand me up in my coffin and I'd still be able to recite Psalm 1 or Psalm 100, I'd be hard pressed to recite more than the first few verses of Hebrews (at one point, I could recite through Chapter 11...).  Although I'm excited to start the same program with Katie, she's probably at least 6 months away from it (if not longer).  In the meantime, I want to start brushing up on the passages I memorized.  Our family made a habit of reciting passages after supper, and my goal is to have a notebook with all my passages so we can start doing that too.

--Manipulatives for Katie:  I have some trusty homeschooling books from Mom, so I'm going to start with the math manipulatives from WorkJobs II.  I'd also like to go through some of the preschool craft books and find ones that are appropriate for Katie.

--More organizing:  Right now, we're making our living area the play area too.  David tells me about keeping all his toys in his room, but I don't think that would work as well with little kiddos.  We put one of the bookshelves back in Katie's room and replaced it with a bin/shelf organizer.  Now I need to figure out how to keep the top of Katie's play kitchen from being the catch-all pile place.