Make Up Day & Wood Stove Initiation

 This is what you do when you home school. Chicken bones. I took this photo after giving them a hard scrub. They've been drying on the top shelf of a wire rack in the garage for a couple weeks in preparation for a back yard dino dig. 

 The beauty of this whole gig is that when you have a kiddo who's sick all week and can't get out in the crazy wind, you can still do school. You just can't do any fun outdoor activities. This activity and our weekly trip to the library were the only school things we really missed.

So... now that Mel is almost back to 100%, we dug for dino (chicken) bones today. There were 32 bones, and we found 22 before we gave up. I wonder how many raccoons will visit our sand box tonight?

Got one!

 It was fun! Even more fun to have Daddy with us for a school activity.

 This morning, we all piled into the Taco and headed toward Front Royal to pick up a small electric wood splitter. Jason carried along several logs to split, just to make sure we were buying something that actually worked. True to form, Jason made fast friends with the sellers and we met almost all the pets and people before we left. We stopped to play at an access ramp on the Shenandoah River before heading back to Hamilton to split wood. Throwing rocks and sticks into water never gets old for a 4 & 5 year old, even when it's cold and windy out.

And since it was so cold and windy out, we finally decided to try out our wood stove. It works well and we are VERY thankful to have it. 

Below are a couple pictures Jonathan took with my phone. You can see Melanie putting together little puzzles at the tops of the photos and Jonathan's Cuisenaire Rod math/ reading assignments at the bottom.

Halloween 2015

And here they are! Pictures from Jonathan and Melanie's first Halloween in Virginia. They both wanted to repeat last year's costumes, although Melanie changed her mind at the last minute and decided to wear a leotard I found at the clothing exchange and one of her spring skirts that looks a little like a ballerina tutu. 

carving the pumpkin

 The kids picked a beautiful pumpkin this year at the farm. The farmer on duty said it looked like a Cinderella variety. We received one as a CSA bonus along with some lovely winter squash. This year, I finally took some advice I heard a long time ago and cut the bottom out instead of the top. I have the face pointed toward the wall now and the pumpkin still looks completely intact for Thanksgiving.  Another neat thing about living in Virginia... the nights stay cold enough after you carve your pumpkin to preserve it. No more moldy pumpkins!

getting ready

Sometimes I find myself lamenting the fact that Jonathan and Melanie are so close in age. I almost always discover how wrong it is to lament anything. God knows. He put these two together.

 

spooky!

Spiderman moonlighting as a ballerina

Settling into the Season

There's no doubt about it. We miss Texas. Melanie mentions it almost every day.

Texas is perhaps an acquired taste. 

But we definitely feel the loss of it.

So, I remind myself and my children of all the things we couldn't do in Texas. We did not have second-story windows that we could leave open all night long. We did not have several species of brilliant maples studding our yard. We did not have piles of leaves to jump into with wild abandon. There were no mountainous hikes or kitty cats to cuddle or apples and pears to pick right off the tree. 

Skating!

 Melanie looks a little out of sorts here, but she is already skating better than big brother and shortly after this picture was taken, she asked me to sit down so she could skate by herself. The rink is not at all far from the house and the kids are thoroughly worn out when we get home. I'm thankful we've got this option with winter coming!

On Tuesday, the kids and I volunteered at our local polling place. A friend needed a few extra hands to help distribute sample ballots. For the first time ever, the kiddos came in and watched Mama bubble and submit her ballot. Work tables were set up with chairs. It was the perfect setting to demonstrate to the kids exactly how our political process works. I doubt they have a full understanding, but I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to include them.

Jonathan is quite the little politician. He was not shy at all about asking voters if they needed a sample ballot. Very few could resist taking one from an exuberant four and five year old.

Today in class, the kids dissected (i.e. stabbed and yanked all appendages off) crayfish/crawfish... however you prefer to say it. They had a ball. Naturally, Jonathan wanted to keep his specimen, so it has found a home on a wire shelf in the garage beside a very stinky turtle shell and skeleton that we found on a trail at camp. 

Soccer ended last Friday, so today we had lunch with school mates and played until almost 3 pm at the playground outside. It was so nice just to talk with new friends and watch our children play together in the woods and on the playground. We discussed the cheapest way to acquire fire wood for winter, recipes, curriculum and old movies on a perfect indian summer afternoon. What a gift.

A couple weekends ago, we ventured out towards Front Royal to George Washington National Forest. We took the kids on a bit of a hike. We may have just chanced upon the peak weekend for fall color, and we left with our hands full of beautiful leaves to press. We had some lunch at Five Guys (yum!) and listened to Jonathan complain about the length of the car ride all the way home.

I'll have to save Halloween for another post. It was a good one! Some day I will remember to take the good camera to all our events and have all the pictures in one place. What I will say about Halloween is that, although I love the way it marks the season with festivities and fun, I'm always glad to put it behind us and turn the calendar to November 1st.

Slowly we seem to find ourselves moving into a rhythm in this beautiful new place.  Preparing for the possibility of a hard winter, getting involved in local politics, putting a few more pictures in place on the walls - even cooking some of our old favorite recipes in the "new-to-us" kitchen, make this place feel almost like it has always been home to us.

Laughter

The kids and I have been discussing Abraham and Sarah at breakfast over the past couple weeks. Today we walked into our Sunday School, and guess what was on the board for discussion? Right - Abraham and Sarah. More specifically - God's promise to Abraham and Sarah.

Isaac means laughter. Before I knew that God actually named Isaac, I thought it was an inside joke between married folk. If you're not familiar with the story, Sarah laughed a bit sarcastically when she was informed that she would become a Mama for the first time at nearly a century old. I get it. I'm afraid I'd probably have responded in exactly the same way.

Did you know that Abraham laughed too? He laughed a wonder-filled, joyful laugh. Until this morning, I either passed over those verses too quickly or I just never really read them. At any rate, I didn't get it.

Something clicked into place in my heart this morning. I wanted to jump up and laugh out loud for a really long time. Instead I just sat there with a gigantic grin on my face for the rest of class. God and Abraham were friends and God told Abraham to name his long-awaited son Isaac - Laughter! The whole covenant that has remained unbroken over millennia began with LAUGHTER!

The last couple weeks I've been struggling with the realization that I'm just a big fat grumpy-frump with my kids. And bless their hearts - they have to spend all day every day with grumpy-frump Mama. I've been asking God to help me with that... when Jonathan has energy shooting out of the ends of his hair and has to punch and kick everything, and has to fall backward in his chair for effect, and stomps on my foot, purely by accident, or gives me a huge hug that feels more like a strangle hold... when Melanie reverts back to all those stages she missed laying in a hospital bed, and she starts squeezing the liquid out of her used pull up (Eeewww!), and cutting holes in the crotch of her PJs with her kid scissors.

What gets me is that I'm laughing like a hyena remembering those moments. But in those moments, I was most likely screaming like a banshee.

A free deep freezer came to us this week. Someone just needed to get rid of it. It was sitting in a garage less than five minutes from our house.

We've been grappling a bit with finances. That's a common struggle right after a move. We're not hurting. We're just trying to get it right. It nearly always takes several months to fall into place.

That free freezer will free up funds. A deep freezer has been on my heart for months, but we just haven't felt like we should buy one right away. We've had more pressing priorities for our money.

How does God provide exactly what we need at exactly the right time? How does he know our hearts? Why did he establish a serious covenant with a fallen people? Why did he establish it in Laughter? What an amazing God. What an amazing Friend. He feels so much closer now.

He comes in the big things - the big needs. He comes in the little desires. A few days ago, we added a Carolina Wren to our family birding chart. It was so sweet to watch Jonathan search to find it in the field guide and match the characteristics to the right wren - sweeter still to watch Melanie try so hard to contain her excitement as she slowly tiptoed up to the glass to capture a glance.

Today we sang a hymn that I haven't sung with a congregation or choir in ages. My heart leaped up at the recognition of the notes as the band began to play. It was beautifully executed. The guy behind me said, "Well that was new and interesting." I thought to myself, "Nope... that was old and beautiful!" When was the last time you got to sing a little J.S. Bach in a contemporary worship service? We sang another song that I remember enjoying so much at Oak Hills back in San Antonio. "Every high thing must come down. Every stronghold shall be broken." I'll cling to those phrases... I'll sing those lines in my heart this week as I grapple with anger and frustration and a temptation towards the grumpy-frumpies... as I ask for the grace to keep alive today's elation in my heart's discovery that I have a friend in God, the Illustrious Inventor of laughter. 

Hopes Realized

I added a post a while back detailing our house hunt and some dashed hopes concerning a certain white farm house out near Berryville. Well, I'm countering that post with a testimony to God's faithfulness, His omniscience and His protection of His children. 

First, as far out from Jason's work as we are now, we're finding that we have just enough time to care for 1.7 acres and keep up with the little housekeeping projects that pop up here and there. We would not have been happy campers with five acres and the addition of at least another half hour each way to Jason's commute.

Second, this is not a huge white farm house. It's a friendly yellow split-level. Our house in Hamilton is not nearly as big as the house in Boyce, but it feels huge to me, especially when it's time to clean it! It's as cute as a button, it's not nearly the fixer-upper that the house in Boyce might have been, and it's a lot less to clean.

New Favorite PJs

Dancing in My PJs

 All of the above might not seem like such a blessing until you factor in the fact that doing this home school thing is like having another job. It's a super-fun job, and one that we're all excited about, but it definitely requires a lot of work and prep.  My house just doesn't get cleaned much these days. There are a lot of "move" things that haven't happened. A lot of pictures still sit propped against the baseboards. Quite a few boxes are still sitting unopened in the garage.  However, the important things are happening.

Home Made Space Helmet

Preparing for a Trip to the Moon

Moon Cake

Violet really should have a post all her own. She's been quite a blessing to us and she makes the friendly yellow house in Hamilton even friendlier. I saw a little mouse skitter into our garage just after our household effects arrived. So, I decided to see if a "free" kitten might be available somewhere as soon as possible. By mid-summer, we'd located Violet, and not long after that, we brought her home. She is not a typical cat. She likes to be where we are, and she licks us like a dog.  Maybe that's why I like her so much. She seems more like a dog than a cat! As soon as we get her ID tag and her flea and tick treatment applied, she'll get to roam the great outdoors and hopefully keep our mouse population at a minimum. 

Third - we have community. We are close to church, grocery stores, shopping and parks in two fantastic little towns and we have excellent neighbors with kids. I don't think we managed to get pictures, but, on Saturday, we were able to attend a birthday party for a little boy whose yard adjoins ours. We drive to a larger town on Tuesdays for gymnastics, but, for the most part, everything is very close. 

How Old is this Gigantic Tree?

Rocks

 The kids and I ventured out with a picnic lunch to a "new to us" park on Tuesday. There's a little play ground there, but the huge rocky outcroppings and large fields were more attractive to Jonathan and Melanie. Needless to say, we'll be back!

I forget how slow this process can be until we're right in the middle of it again. It takes many months to figure out how the finances will work - how to find groceries at the right price, how to get the best deals on gasoline, the best routes to avoid too many tolls, how to economically heat and cool the house. It's expensive here! Thankfully, we still own the kerosene heaters that we bought when we lived up this way a decade ago. We've already used one! I'm not sure how he does it, but Jason is a whiz at computing our spending per kilowatt hour vice the burn rate on a gallon of kerosene. Typically, kerosene is less expensive, but that also depends on where you buy it.  Right now, Jason is setting up racks for three cords of wood that will be delivered this week. The Hamilton house came with a wood stove that we plan to use a lot this winter.

Tin Whistle Time at CC

 We are so thankful that God plunked us down right here! We aren't in a perfect situation by a long shot, and we certainly aren't perfect. I hope I don't make it sound that way in my updates here. I want to bang my head against almost anything available more often than I care to admit. I still feel so overwhelmed by all this "new", and all too often I'm irritable and grumpy and unkind to my family. I could definitely use an extra measure of patience and love. We spend a lot of time speaking the Gospel into our children's lives, yet we don't spend enough time living it out in front of them and toward them. I am increasingly convicted on that score. But peace is coming as the finances get ironed out, as little projects that concern us get completed, and as we learn back roads to avoid traffic snarls. It's this snarl in my heart that needs the most attention. I'm increasingly aware that the church we are attending is helping us all find the discrepancies between our outward lives and the state of our hearts. We will never find perfection until we see Him face to face. We will need Him desperately as long as we live in this broken world and in these broken bodies. But I'm learning to pray, as a sweet friend mentioned the other day, for the grace that brings us to holiness in Him. 

Late Summer 2015

1st Soccer Practice

 This magical thing has begun to happen in the Allen household. A certain man child is beginning to sleep just a teensy-weensy bit later than usual. I am so glad that we didn't try to get Jonathan to do any "sports" prior to age five, but oh how glorious it is to see all this male aggression and competitiveness channeled into something productive. And he loves it! I love watching him love it!

Mr. Jonathan scored one of only two goals in his scrimmage today and kept a point or two from being scored against his team. I think he likes playing soccer! Daddy was able to come for Jonathan's first practice. Jason also got roped into helping coach that first day and that may have been the golden key for Jonathan. I text updates to Jason during the final hour scrimmages each Friday afternoon. Another bonus? Jonathan's coach is one of his AWANA leaders.

As of two Sundays ago, Jonathan became an AWANA Spark and Melanie became an AWANA Cubbie. They really seem to be enjoying the time with friends and leaders, and they are eager to learn more about being a part of God's family.

1st gymnastics class

 Melanie has been interested in gymnastics since we picked up her friend Sydney at her gymnastics classes a couple times back in Texas. We even got to visit one of Sydney's competitions. Melanie is very limber and not at all squeamish about turning somersaults or standing on her hands. Her only issue is actually listening to her coach and following directions. We're working on that. It's a lot of fun watching her enjoy gymnastics and it does double duty as physical therapy to loosen up her tight core.

 Saturday we attended a birthday party in Falls Church. Animals and cupcakes equal very happy kids. Afterward, we stopped off at the mall at Tyson's Corner and stocked up on coffee before heading up to the play area and food court. Mama got a Five Guys fix (They are awesome about cooking up gluten-free on a separate grill, and the meat is yummy... especially when you cheat and add cheese to the order.). Daddy and the kids got some Marble Slab and a ride on the mall choo choo train.

The kids were super with the animals and were very well-behaved at the party.

It was one of those days when you feel extra confident about your parenting skills and all seems right with the world.

 This, however, was not one of those days.
Nice.

Look at this sweet girl!

These pictures were taken on a Sunday at the very end of August. We headed north to Lovettsville for a free concert at their town center. Turns out, we had the date wrong. So we went just a few miles further north and took the kids on a little hike just over the state line at the C&O Canal trail in Brunswick, Maryland. Growing up in Texas, it is still crazy to me that I can be in another state within a half hour headed one direction, and within 45 minutes going the other.

 We're kind of in that murky phase where we're feeling more settled, but things just don't quite feel normal yet. However, we're just at month four. I'm hoping we'll start to feel a little more normal within the next couple months and start feeling really home shortly after that. Our new community is warm and loving and very patient with us. I think we'll start feeling firmly at home very soon.