the squibix family blog

Harvey is always appreciative of his finery, but Zion wasn't the biggest fan first thing in the morning; his refrain of "no Easter pants!" lasted until he realized that he would be the only one among boys and baby dolls without a matching outfit if he didn't go along with the program. Even then, he wasn't entirely happy to stand and be photographed.

But after a delightful time at "big church" (that's what the boys call it when there's no Sunday school and they come in to worship with the grownups) even he started to feel like there might be something in this Easter business after all, especially when playgrounds were involved.

Then we headed home for our giant party, which was well-supplied with food and drink by our wonderful friends and family, allowing us to begin it with a nearly clean kitchen. Our part was setting up the egg hunt and, while there was some brief unpleasantness over the unequal distribution of eggs, in the end I think we managed to provide everybody with a passable entertainment.

We didn't manage to get a good family photo this year, but we had a wonderful day otherwise and feel full of both the Holy Spirit and the love of friends and family—not to mention a tremendous lot of food too. Now why do I have to go to work tomorrow?!

Happy Easter everyone!

Our guests were the Stevenses and their friends (and ours!) Brent and LeAnna and family, who blog at The Wonders Of. It was a great time, and in preparation our house was clean for approximately four hours—of course, we were out for three and a half of those, but it's still got to be worth something.

Our activity level over recent days has been pretty taxing—especially on Leah, who's the one who makes sure everything happens the way it should—but I'm glad we were able to host everyone this evening. The kids, all 10 of them under 8, had a great time running around the yard and tipping each other off of the hammock, and the grown-ups got to sit and talk at least a little bit. And I really enjoy being able to offer hospitality, making a comfortable space for folks to come and hang out—even when everything isn't perfectly clean and prepared (though we did do a pretty awesome job in the hour and a half between church and the pond!).

There's more excitement planned for tomorrow, too: a trip to the big city. Will we survive? Who knows; right now Leah and I are sitting quietly in separate rooms engaging in mental recovery and preparation. It sure is hard being adventurous and popular when you're an introvert!

You might not know this about us, but Leah and I are not actually very good at making friends. Harvey comes by his crippling shyness naturally. And yet somehow we're now blessed with friends across the country and around the world, friends who are willing to come visit us from thousands of miles away—not to mention all the great folks we know here in our own metropolitan area. It's pretty awesome, and we're so grateful, even if we do have to retreat into our shells to recover from time to time.

I figure most of our friends will probably read this at some point, so let me say: thanks guys! You're all great! Stop by any time!

It's not that we take everyone who comes here to see the historical sights; we ask them what they want to do! But it is hard to resist the allure of Revolutionary history around here. We visited the Battle Road and the Hartwell Tavern and took in a mock trial.

JR commandeered the camera for most of the expedition, which isn't so terrible because it looked like he was getting some good thoughtful pictures. I hope to see some of them in a week or so, after the epic trip is concluded.

Next up was the Old North Bridge, and Tristan wanted to wade right in to look for shiny rocks. He's a big fan of crystals these days, but I think he would have accepted a gold nugget too.

Zion doesn't care about rocks except to eat them, so for him the appeal was the water itself. He refused all consolation until we undressed him and let him sit down in the river.

Harvey was asleep at that point, or else he would have ended up pretty wet too.

Besides the excitements pictured we also enjoyed some lunch and shopping in Concord center and ice cream treats at Bedford Farms, as well as a couple of delicious egg-filled breakfasts thanks to our once-again-fully-productive chickens. I think we were good hosts; maybe we'll be treated to another visit in ten or fifteen years!

There's more to it than that, of course—Luke hadn't written anything for the internet in a while so he saved up a lot of words. But the key point is that he's going to do something with coffee and maybe bicycles that'll help poor people in Africa. What could be finer?

If you want to help out or just keep up with the goings-on, you can get hooked up with the coffeetheory.org RSS feed, or subscribe by email, or follow Coffee Theory on Twitter. Check it out!

Our excuse is that, when presented with an opportunity to do something fun, we tend to take it. On Saturday, for example, the bizarrely warm weather gave Leah the idea of going to Drumlin Farm; when we invited our friends along it was revealed that they had had the same thought and were about to invite us. The outing was thus clearly divinely ordained, so off we went. Then we brought them home to dinner at our house—unplanned, un-prepared-for—so naturally, rather than getting cleaner, the kitchen (to take only one example) got almost unimaginably messier. (The fact that three of the homemade beers exploded upon opening did not help the situation.) Sure, this afternoon all was made presentable again, but theoretically I could have been cleaning other things had the kitchen already been done.

But never mind hypotheticals. Even if you assume that I could manage two days of solid cleaning, something not really borne out by evidence, what kind of existence would that be?! A clean house is easier to live in, but the real reason we want it to stay nice is so we can offer hospitality, so it would be silly to pass up an opportunity to invite folks by now because we're getting ready for some as-yet-undetermined future visit. Also if all we did was clean we'd be even grumpier when all our work was undone in scarce moments by children and food preparation, as it invariably is.

So. We want a clean house, but not at the expense of fun times. We're working on having both. So stop by any time... and we're now accepting invitations for outings next weekend.

The adults had a good time too, and so did Harvey once he got over waking up in a strange place (he'd gone to sleep in the car), and then falling off the couch and bumping his head. It helped that he was served french fries for dinner.

[I apologize for the graininess and weird colors of the photo. I find it strange that there are people who comment positively on the iphone's camera. It is at least useful for documentary purposes.]

Rascal had fun swimming in a variety of locations: the public beach in Linconville, illicitly in Jordan Pond and somewhat less so in Lower Hadlock Pond, with the ducks in Camden, and in front of the Margaret Todd in downtown Bar Harbor.

We enjoyed breakfasting at the Cafe and walking the Shore Path, as is our tradition; creatures of habit we are to be sure.

Rascal, Zion, and I had a good time relaxing at the campsite while Mama and Harvey swam in the pool (so much did Harvey like the arrangement that he made sure to ask for it each time: "Harvey and Mama go swimming, Dada stay at the tent!"). Rascal is a good camp-and-baby guard dog.

And of course there was the hiking, which was even more fun with awesome friends along for the adventure. And since coming along was their idea this year, we didn't have to worry constantly about whether they were having fun!

Naturally, making jam was much more fun in company. True, I did distract myself with my instructions and make two mistakes in my own batch of jam, but that's why I left the students with a pot to look after themselves! Do as I say, I suppose. I think it came out fine regardless. Our kitchen is a little small for much communal food preparation, making me wish for a set-up something like the one we visited in Sandwich, but friends don't mind close quarters.

Bridget, being a good natural sweeteners sort of hippy, was a little taken aback to hear that our recipe (from Food in Jars) uses as much white sugar as it does blueberries. Hey, at least it wasn't the well-over-half-sugar strawberry jam! In my role as wise teacher I explained that the sugar both helps the jam to set without excessive cooking and also acts as a preservative. I hope that's all true!

Since we had the canning kettle going, I also did a batch of relish. Since, in order to cook it today, I had to grate and mix all the vegetables yesterday, I feel like I should be congratulated for my forethought and drive. Sure, I was working late into the night and so was not at all happy when the rest of the family decided they wanted to be up and about at 6:30, but in retrospect that's just what we needed to get out into the blueberry fields at anything approaching a respectable hour. See, everything works out.

We brought Harvey's birthday wagon with us picking, having seen and been jealous of someone else with a wagon last time we were out. It was just the thing for carrying water bottles, blueberries, and Harvey and his friend Ollie. We didn't have cameras along due to the Serious Business picking we meant to do, so the practicality and cuteness is not documented in these pages—but Bridget snapped a picture with her phone and maybe she'll share that with us. Because heaven knows we don't have enough cute pictures of Harvey around here.

And considerably sleepier, at least this evening; I tried to introduce the babies to one another—they're meant to be fast friends, of course—but while Nathan was kind of interested Z wouldn't look. Oh well, I suppose they have a few more years to figure out what they like to do together.

While we may post more than Katie and Tim, their blog is rather more interesting than ours, so we hope you're reading it. More dramatic too, so far, but I'm sure the proud parents will agree with me when I say that I hope and expect that, with Nathan home, the drama is now over. But keep reading for the cute pictures!

For Leah, the highlight was when I told her that someone had asked Alex and I if we were a couple while we waited in line together for apple crisp. That, and the apple crisp itself. Topping apple crisp with butter crunch ice cream is just decadence, but you need some way to make the afternoon's dose stand out if you've also had apple crisp for breakfast.

I think that means it was a good weekend.

We hit up Parlee Farms for apples for the first time, and having only ever been there in berry season before I was astounded at the crowds. Their trees are all super-dwarf, so if any of us were above average height we could have picked even those apples up at the tops without any mechanical aids. We got cortlands and honeycrisps, passing up the other two options—macintosh and gala—this time. Harvey made sure that our half-peck made it back safely in the hay wagon, but all the excitement tired him right out. He fell asleep in the car, and didn't even manage to finish his third apple.

Chatting with Helen was very nice, even if I did manage to restrain myself from asking about her writing. Which, of course, I highly recommend you should read: The Last Samurai is a fantastic book, even if you don't get a copy that is personally signed by the author and inscribed "Next year in Jerusalem". I can't take credit for the second part: it was her idea.

Biblical-type Flooding: The Return

The storm that wetted Leah's lower parts also caused widespread havoc up and down the east coast, as well as in our cellar. Actually, we were rather better off than most people because we don't care so much about the water that found it's way in: we hadn't managed to clean up from the last time, so all we had to do was turn on the newly-acquired pumps and send it right back out again. Well, that and stay up all night Wednesday night keeping an eye on them, but that's just how it goes. We're very happy to not be living in the path of a river, as photographs I've seen suggest that riparian flooding was quite a bit worse than what we had to deal with. And now it's going to be 80° tomorrow. The climate is broken, and folks don't mind because "at least it's not snow" and they like warm weather. Oh my.

The Coming Festival

We have made it through nearly all of Lent and the associated Leap of Faith, and did it ever seem long. Not onerous at all, just long: as if time in February and March was passing slowly. It does tend to, perhaps. In any case, I did quite well with the Bible-reading discipline, and less well with the prayer. We have not, for example, seen a ten-fold increase in unique visitors to this blog, nor have I found a new job for next year. I don't feel let down: the problem, if there is one besides needing to wait a bit, lies with me. At church this evening we pretty much celebrated Easter on Good Friday. and we've also run out of Matzah: two signs that the celebratory season of spring is upon us. I will of course continue praying, maybe even more than before!

Hopefully more blogging than before as well: I've got to keep up with Leah!

To celebrate, we enjoyed our first pond day and first ice cream cones of the season (though I didn't enjoy the season's first tick bite, much earlier than usual). We also got a fair start on our spring cleaning, and have already enjoyed more success than we usually do. We were spurred on, I believe, by the fact that friends (including frequent commenter Luke) were coming over to join us in the ponding and ice-cream-coning; that kept us from falling in to the usual trap of making everything very much messier in the name of "organization" and then getting tired and giving up. That may yet happen tomorrow, but so far so good!

We stopped an awful lot, actually, in the first section of the ride; how could we do otherwise, when there were British regulars in the middle of the road?!

This portion of the ride was through Minuteman National Park, so the presence of old-timey folks was not entirely unprecedented, though of course no less delightful for that. Ditto old houses. That was on rock dust; thence we headed, on modern roads, into historic Concord center, where we shopped for a bit. Then down Monument Street to use the bathroom at the Old North Bridge, before hopping on a dirt trail to give the folks on the mountain bike tandem a chance at real off-road riding. Here we all are at the end of that section of trail.

After that it was just getting home on the paved bike path, with Leah speeding ahead of us for milk-production reasons. Actually, it wasn't really getting home home, because we had left Harvey at Grandma Beth's and had to head over there to pick him up. It really brought back memories, riding up the hill on Oak Street when I would much rather have been off the bike eating dinner. As nostalgic as it was being back in the old hood, I much prefer the flat approach we have to our current residence. Scenic over there, though.

Not that we're going to stop posting entirely, though, even though my last post may have given you that impression. I'm sure you all had visions of us tossing our computers in the basement, and instead spending pleasant evenings reading or singing hymns together in front of the fire—when we're not out partying, of course. Not gonna happen. We did talk about trying to limit "screen time" in the evening—it is suggested that staying away from the cathode rays (or whatever it is they put in fancy flat-screen displays these days) is conducive to better sleep at night—but that lasted about one evening, for me at least.

Now if we had three hours of commute time a day, like our friends over at Factinis & Factomlettes (totally awesome blog, btw) we might be able to get our internetting in then, but, you know, we don't. I'm doing the bike thing, so being on the computer on the way to work probably isn't that safe (though I am rockin the Economist audio edition through one iPhone earbud, or was until my phone stopped working), and Leah's commute is the 2.5 seconds it takes to walk down the stairs. So evenings it has to be, for recreational online time. That is, again, when we're not out partying.

I was going to post something to this effect on Facebook (more briefly, of course), but Leah pointed out that that wouldn't be really good for my street cred: yeah! We played a board game at Bible study! So I write it here instead; if you're reading this blog, you already know I'm not in any way cool.