This week was full to the brim preparing for the garden class's end of the year Harvest Fest. It is the culmination of the summer program the boys have been participating in. All their families are invited and we prepare a feast with stuff they have grown in their gardens. The menu was as follows:
*Harvest Soup
*pizza (baked in the mud oven the kids made years ago)
*poppyseed dressing coleslaw
*sweet pickles
*fermented dilly beans
*fermented zucchini relish
*veggie tray and dip
*fresh pears and plums
*bread they baked out of wheat they grew, harvested, threshed, winnowed, and ground into flour
*raspberry jam
*chocolate zucchini cupcakes (so delicious)
It was quite the feast! Ruth came to show her support which was much appreciated even though I hardly acknowledged her. I was kind of a crazy person that day. But the family has been so supportive. Small world story: I got involved with this program years ago through the Master Gardener program I participated in. We had to give so many hours of community service in a gardening way to earn our certificates. This kid's program was one of the ways to get those service hours in. Well we had a great Master Gardener volunteer this year whose name was Dan Christman. We actually connected earlier this year at a horticulture symposium. When I heard his last name I asked if he was related to any Christmans in Pocatello. A sister from my mission had married a Christman from Pocatello. HE was THAT Christman! So over the summer he brought some of his kids to help in the garden and I met the whole crew and then Rosie (his wife) came to the Harvest Fest and we got to reconnect which was a thrill! Small world, indeed.
On top of all the crazy prep for the Harvest Fest we managed to squeeze in soccer practice and games (Jack's team is undefeated), Jack's birthday, throwing a baby shower for a friend, book club, and Ian's first singing class of the semester.
Jack's birthday was a hoot! He is really into Harry Potter right now and so we showered him with that sort of thing. He went to Olivander's to choose a wand, stopped by Honeydukes for some candy, got some Harry Potter glasses, received a snitch, and also a very amazing invisibility cloak (thanks to Grandma Robin's talent). It's kind of created a problem though in that Jack keeps disappearing! He puts that on and we can't see him anymore. He also loves the soccer goals that he got from Grandma and has even set them up inside to play. That didn't last long. I had to be the bad guy and kick him outside.
Tender mercy update: When we ordered chickens this spring we ended up with more than we had planned on and 3 of them turned out to be roosters. I'm pretty sure our neighbors hate us because the 3 have these crowing wars in the morning. One starts the party and then they all go crazy, so what could be a couple nice crows to greet the morning turns into this 15 minute testosterone induced manly beating of the chest showdown. And a couple of the rooster have really sad crows. Sad but loud! Anyway, this couldn't go on so I posted an ad on Craigslist. No response so I started trying to pawn them off on anyone I knew that butchered their own roosters or did the homesteading thing. No go. So Alex re-posted yesterday that he would pay someone 10 bucks to come and take 2 of the roosters off our hands. He got a call this afternoon that someone was interested. I was pretty sure that it was someone interested in butchering them. Why else would anyone want 2 roosters for crying out loud? This devastated the boys. They tried to be brave and console themselves with thoughts of the roosters going straight to heaven and getting "real brains". They wanted to say their last goodbyes and everything. It was very tragic. So we all went and snuggled on Peter's bed when the people showed up and let Alex do the dirty deed. He came back in with some great news. It was just a young couple looking for some companions for their lonely hen. The girl opened up the box and just started gushing: "oooohhhh, they're so cute! I didn't even know what a silkie was, but they're soooo cute!" So, those roosters are going to live well at someone else's house and get all the kitchen scraps they could ever want. Happy ending indeed. Jack said "Heavenly Father sure blessed us."
Just like he always does.
We had Stake Conference today and one thought stood out to me. I'm pretty impatient with myself and have a really hard time recognizing progress because I'm never as far along as I want to be or moving ahead rapidly enough to suit my taste. The stake clerk spoke and offered this idea that I had never really thought of in these terms. He said, "incremental progress over an infinite number of days leads to perfection." I'm still thinking on it, but it struck me as rather profound.
This is super rambly so I think I'll end. Sure love you all!
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