Jet lag anyone?

Last weekend we walked across the lane to a little-known international airport.

A few dozen neighbors and family members joined us on our flight.

Head stewardess Madeleine announced that we needed to keep our trays and seats in the upright position because we were to expect a whilwind tour of what took the girls months to absorb and repackage into a travel brochure come to life.

Sweet friend Lyndsey set up her German souvenir shop while Grace, Sarah and Madeleine did the same for their respective countries of study: France, India and Mexico.

The Brementown Musicians performed.

Lady Liberty recited. Ghandi spoke too. Beethoven played. Geronimo was on hand to tell tales of war. Marcel Marceau performed a riveting mime.

A trip to the Palais de Fines Artes in Mexico City was a treat, where we witnessed some spirited dancing as well.


All the countries we visited had traditional dancing, even with some "tourist" participation. Papa and Grandma danced. Friends Cameron and Quinn and cousin Maiya danced and took part in a quirky French "fashion" show. The girls acted as tour guides and I have never enjoyed a trip around the world quite so much.




In India the snake charmer was a big hit while the air sitar played and Sarah shared some facts about ancient spice trading.

But the big hit of the day, not surprisingly, was the international food court.

The girls' and my favorite part of their end-of-year cultural program was the food, and more specifically, the desserts. Sopapillas (Mexican pillow pastries), gateau au chocolate (French chocolate cake), lassi (Indian sweet yogurt), chai tea, stollen (German braided bread with fruit and cardamom) and more exotic choices that I frankly can't spell weighed down the cafe tables while family and friends feasted after the performance.

There weren't very many leftovers.


But we were certainly left with fun memories.

I always say that the only thing I miss about traditional school is the chance to see my children perform in programs. I love the moments of stage nerves. I love the rehearsals and the messy prop creation. I love the camaraderie and the confidence gained. And now I know that just because we homeschool we needn't miss out.

(I also know those teachers at traditional schools are grossly underpaid and overworked when it comes to such events. Because people? I'm tired. And I'm now storing several lovingly transformed appliance boxes that somewhat resemble an elephant, an Austrian cottage inside and out, the Eiffel tower and some cactii. Sans prickles, thank goodness.)

Thanks for joining us! I hope to be all rested and returning to your regularly scheduled hodgepodge of farmgirl philosophy and crafty goodness very, very soon.

Tan lines and tutus

barefoot ballerinas

blackberries on the vine

baby in a basket

summer closes its doors softly

autumn peeks through textbook pages

produce and memories preserved

Happy campers return

Gracie said she didn't miss them. And it's true that while Madeleine, 11, and Sarah, 10, were gone to camp Grace, 6, was princessa numero uno of the household. She happily took over chicken and kitty cat duties while I was in charge of horses and rabbits and the big girls' gardening chores in addition to whatever else I could squeeze in between Salvador's nonstop nursing nonschedule.

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That boy will weigh 10 pounds at his one-month check in today. You heard it here first.

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I missed the big girls so much, and not just when I was stalking them. I mean delivering care packages to camp. I recognized, not for the first time, how much they do at our mini farm and I appreciate even more who they are as fantastic individuals. My favorite part of picking kids up from camp is the chattering that goes on from the moment they disembark the bus. Sarah didn't stop talking for 36 hours and Madeleine corrected every single story she told. It's wonderful and hilarious, this stage of girlhood. How did I get so lucky?

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Since returning home tan and exhausted they have suffered through their chores once again so I have even more time for feeding the unfillable newborn. They've returned to their art notebooks with a vengeance. Madeleine's got a short story going on but I'm not supposed to know about it. The neighbor children have all been over for a run through the sprinkler and our children have all trekked down the road to those neighbors' new pool. Exciting times in the boondocks.

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We were planning a big blueberry outing with friends this morning but we have to take Salvador in for his appointment this afternoon and I am finding myself still a little handicapped in the multi-event day category so we're home instead. Let's just say there are no triathlons in my summer schedule. In fact we're calling it a banner day when we're fully dressed. (There's an embarrassing story in there about my famous drop-in house and being braless in the afternoon, but I'll not cause you to suffer through.)

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So that's all the news that's fit to blog around the Suite place. How are you passing your summer?

More summer loving

Laura said it's time to come in!

But the big girls didn't want to come in... because they were enjoying KL's homemade ice cream, delivered into the water just like our rural version of a swim-up bar.



Meanwhile Salvador slept in his basket.

And the junior lifeguards went back to their duties.

While Gracie denied being tired. Or hot. Or anything but quiet.


Someone was always ready to pick up the baby.

And ice cream lured Grace and Cameron back out of afternoon exhaustion.

Sweet friend Emily turned out to be a baby whisperer.

And food. Oh, the food! Pulled pork sandwiches, pesto pasta salad, watermelon and berry salad.

We hated it to be over. And that's why you have to suffer through two posts about the big birthday bash at the lake.

After the water adventures the big girls returned home with us to attempt to stay up late in our glamper (Glamorous camper? Glamper? Anyone?) with movies and snacks.

They slept like puppies in a pile and woke to homemade waffles and more blueberries. Also to the little girls clamoring to join them.

Don't you just love summer?

What are your traditions that let you know it's summertime for sure?

A decade, one-tenth of a century, ten years of joy

Sarah is 10. But she's not really as short as she looks in that picture with her friend Charlotte. She is, actually, that happy.

We spent her birthday afternoon doing Sarah's favorite things: splashing in the water, playing in the sun, and eating yummy food in the shade. The truly short ones shared an inner tube. That's Laura, friend Emme and Grace floating (sort of) in the blue water of contentment.

And from left to right: the goofing-off oldest sister Madeleine, friends Nicole and Zoe, the birthday girl herself, and Charlotte in the goggles. Doing their synchronized sunbathing impersonations?

Madeleine, Sarah, Laura (who used the life vest for an impromptu nap pillow) playing in the shade while Salvador slept in his basket. The day could not have been more perfect. We enjoyed the company of friends and the last day of Grandma and Nana's visit, and then we threw the paper plates in the trash and came home a little sun pink but a lot relaxed.

It was a good day. It's been a great decade.

And my water baby is prepared for many, many more days at the lake.

Happy Birthday, Sarah!

It must be the mud

(Photos by the girls' friend Katie. Thanks, Katie, for the evidence.)

The horses come in from the paddocks each evening.

They rub their crusty, muddy selves all over the barn.

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They further shed mud on the girls.

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The girls help the process along with curry combs and, on warm afternoons, with water hoses and sometimes with my kitchen towels. (Hah. They thought I didn't notice?

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Then my daughters bring the mud in to my laundry room. It's not an intentional transfer of property, but it seems to me that they're moving an awful lot of soil. Possibly they could find a way to put that directly on the garden on their way back to the house?

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The next morning the horses go back out and roll themselves in mud like it's a spa treatment. They graze in the sun, moving along with it all day until the mud bath is cracked and caked like a facial.

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As the sun gets low in the sky and the maple trees cast long shadows, the girls call the horses in.

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They cluck over their charges and mildly chastise Dolly and Two Spot for their errant mud-seeking ways. As spring blooms, my girls inhale the essence, the best parts of my childhood: warm horses, hay-seed-dusted barn floor, saddle soap. It's odd how comforting those scents are to me today, even in the face of the laundry pile. Maybe especially in the face of the laundry pile.

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So the girls transfer the dirt from their horses and I transfer my girlhood joys to my daughters.

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Lather, rinse, repeat.

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Last night I was visiting with a mom from our community. She and her husband are raising three boys and a tiny daughter. Her days, she said, are full of footballs and wrestling gear. Calls to insurance agencies over sports injuries. Carpools for three sons in three sports apiece. (Her daughter, still a preschooler, has yet to assert any extracurricular interests.)

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I wonder whether our fifth child is a boy or a girl. I wonder whether this baby will love horses. Or books. Or ATVs or firefighting or something equally foreign to me. I wonder how this child will change our family in ways I can't imagine now. And I wonder what little parts of my childhood, and my husband's, we'll relive with this new life.

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(Before you decide I've lost myself with the pregnancy-mush-brain-sentimentality: I know it probably all involves mud. And laundry.)

I dunno, a flashback for some reason sounded good

You know when people tell you to enjoy the baby years because they go too quickly?

Those people are right.

As I was reflecting on our recent coast weekend I came across pictures from a similar trip of a few years ago.

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Madeleine and Sarah were still tiny enough to ride the individual ferris wheel at our favorite kitschy stop in Florence, Oregon. Sarah was finally big enough to climb the lighthouse stairs. (This is actually what got me started reminiscing about that trip: this year it was Grace who celebrated her graduation to stair climber.) Grace was a toddler not to be trusted on the shore. As a highlight in our waterfront cabin stay that year we flattened pennies on the railroad track. I think this is against the law. Don't tell anyone about our flagrant flaunting, pretty please.

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At that time we didn't yet know that Sarah is practically sightless without glasses. She would cry when Madeleine would point out whales spouting and she always missed them. At that time we didn't know how many more seats we'll eventually fill in a Suburban.

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And at that time we really didn't know what I hope we know now. It's fleeting. Before you know it those babies are reading A Swiftly Tilting Planet (with no sense of irony whatsoever for how swiftly my planet is tilting with their growth) and discussing it amongst themselves. They're campaigning for the rights to pierce ears, take a Red Cross class in babysitting and wear contacts.

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And I want to say: Just let me focus on these moments. I always miss them.

For the love of books ... and marshmallows

Sarah sewed her own bookbag with scraps from my fabric stash. Here's her pattern: Two squarish pieces measured about one inch bigger than her sketchbook. One long rectangle for the bottom and sides, double strength on the bottom. Two tripled skinny rectangles as loop handles that can go over her shoulder. She measured.

And then she got a little more confident and made an MP-3 pouch to coordinate with polka dotted grosgrain ribbon for the strap. (My favorite part of that is the big vintage button closure.) Reading and drawing and music and funky fabric combos. She must be my daughter.

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Right now Madeleine and Sarah are both reading The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. We're late to this party but it's so much fun. The book incorporates a lot of Greek mythology and we're just now entering the rise of the Roman empire in history class so there's some serendipitous school overlap. Plus I just love Greek mythology. See how easy it is to make me happy?

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And on that subject, I was in line at the grocery store this afternoon right behind a farmgirl I know from our rural village. While Madeleine and her oldest son talked about that very book my friend and I had a chance to catch up as well. Both of us, she with her four boys and me with my four girls, took guilty glances at our carts.

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The quick draw was on.

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(Now I know this woman to be a great mother. An accomplished vegetable gardener. Raises much of her own meat. Super involved with their boys' school and Scouting. In short, I admire her a lot.)

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I took inventory of my cart. She waved a hand over the conveyor belt of goodies from her own cart.

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"The boys have had sore throats," she explained hurriedly over her (clearly not everyday purchase of) pudding cups and single-serve yogurts.

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"And we're going camping," I countered breathlessly about my (uncharacteristic haul of) cheddar dogs and marshmallows.

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What a funny world. As if I would ever judge her, or any other mom, based on the contents of her grocery cart. At least not until I took the Nutter Butters out of my own eye.

Little people go out to play, or: The sun breaks through for a minute

When the sun breaks through the seemingly ever-present Oregon clouds, the little people (and their Little People) go out to play.

The ground may be too wet to set up a proper town but the front porch dries quickly and, unlike Rome, this city can go up in minutes. Perfect for in between sideways showers.

I love how everyone loves the Little People. When my brother and I were small, in the 1970s, my brother used to pack his peep-ul in his pockets everywhere we went. I was his unofficial back-up caregiver, I suppose. I'd help him search out a missing mommy or a wayward redhead boy. Today my 11- and 9-year-old girls are happy to "help" the 2- and 5-year-old girls play with their Fisher Price sets.

Next week we are visiting a new specialist at a Portland children's hospital for Sarah's continuing pain management and - breathe - a possible new diagnosis to add to her list. So I am glad the sun came out, if only for a moment, because I was looking for that rainbow promise.

Sometimes it seems as though the burden is too heavy. Sometimes over the past year and a half I've been socked in by weather, unable to navigate by sight and certainly without adequate instrumentation. I have found my Pollyanna inner self challenged into something more akin to Nellie Oleson ("it's not fair!"), my metaphors stretched beyond what words should try to do.

Financially, like too many of our neighbors in cyber and real life, we have been stretched. And that's putting it mildly. I have always been a frugal person, long before cheap was chic. But this! Owning an engineering and surveying business in this economy is juggling firesticks, folks, as client after client declares bankruptcy. As development and even public improvement spending dwindle in the face of uncertain or unattainable financing, so does our ability to employ people and pay the insurance and electricity bills. This causes some stress on either end: work that's ordered but won't be paid for, work that's anticipated and for which employees are retained but then never comes through.

And did I mention I used to be a real estate agent? Never mind that it was so far out of my comfort zone as to cause physical illness: it was an income. Emphasis on the "was." (And therein lies one of the small blessings of this economy.)

But at least we have our health. That particular phrase burns like hydrogen peroxide on an open wound. Sarah's brave march against a dozen-syllable rare disease may just be, as one acquaintance said in an attempt at comfort, Sarah's particular cross to bear, but it's horrific as parents to feel as helpless as we do. It was wonderful to be told that she doesn't have one of the lurking demons of childhood illness that we all know and fear: leukemia. But a half-dozen wonderful specialists aren't there when she can't sleep for the pain at night or when she cries silently and asks quietly whether she'll ever again be able to run with the other kids.

In fact, no one is there at those times but our family and our God. It feels a little lonely. I'm pretty sure I hit a low spot recently when one of Sarah's wonderful specialists, a mom, physician and all-around fantastic human being, hinted at me through telling her own story that there might be an element of coddling contributing to the cycle. Or maybe she was just sharing her experience with her son. But I took it personally and then where did I take it? To my family and my God. Briefly to my obstetrician, who instructed me with wisdom beyond what he could have known from my admittedly pregnant-hormone breakdown to rejoin my yoga group and my community. But did I take these issues to a friend? Not really. I wouldn't want to burden anyone. I wouldn't want to appear less than grateful for the abundant blessings my family receives. I wouldn't want to pour salt on anyone else's wounds.

I have felt alone, and lonely, in facing the trials of the past couple of years. This defies logic, as feelings for me so often do. I'm not alone at all. I have a wonderful, large family and friends to call when I feel like chatting or even whining. I have people dropping by ad nauseum to my house-that-was-a-church-and-never-stopped. And I don't fear being alone; I relish it. But sharing my burdens, my particular crosses to bear? Not so much.

Last weekend I attended a women's retreat. I must say, those two words put together would ordinarily cause me to quick-like-a-bunny make a solo reservation at the Sylvia Beach so I could have a previous obligation (to myself and solitude, I guess) at the ready when invited to spend a weekend in the company of dozens of women. It's just never sounded restful, or conducive to learning or growth, to me. In fact the last women's retreat I was roped into attended I stayed for a couple of miserable hours and then left in a hurry for a trip to Powell's bookstore and my favorite phone- and tv-free book hotel. I sent a text message to my husband about my defection. He, knowing me all too well, texted back, "Good 4 you. See you Monday."

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But this last weekend was different because... because... because I have been begging God for a friend (or, not to be greedy, a few). I have been heartbroken over the losses in our tiny village. First our favorite friends moved 12 miles away and ended the daily coffee breaks and walks. Then our favorite pastoral family moved away and started their plans for international missions and ended the play dates and moments with tea. The final blow was when the economy forced a third favorite family from our road and our hearts to move across the country.

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I was alone and lonely. And then I went on a women's retreat and regained my sense of community, my sense of belonging to a group that carries one another's burdens. At a remote mountaintop former ranger station about three hours from home, I made friends. I went quilt-shop hopping. I took naps. I read. I had the best latte of my life. And the sun broke through for just long enough to set up a little village of my own.

Hardscrabble life

Our beautiful fall weather continues this week. The air is clear and cold while the same sun of summer lights up autumn leaves just turning to look for clouds.

The forecast calls for storms next week. But that's next week, and in true Scarlett O'Hara fashion we'll just worry about that... tomorrow.

Ooh! Guess what we're doing today? Go ahead and guess. You'll NEVER GUESS.

We're driving up the Columbia Gorge to see if there's a rescue kitty waiting to come home with us!

We have heard rumors ("rumor" is my word for October) that there are Maine Coon kittens at a special shelter there. In fact my husband has been corresponding with one of the staff about a certain cat, huge and furry and orange and not such a kitten anymore.

So we're going to go meet him and see if he's our family.

Meanwhile, on the three-hour drive, we'll just likely pass a few fall displays of color and possibly a couple of photo ops. Hurray for the country drive on a cold clear day in October! Three cheers for the cooler packed with roast beef sandwiches and thermoses (Thermi? I crack myself up.) of soup! Best of all it's family time.

It's a hardscrabble life but somebody's gotta live it.

Another Most Embarrassing Moment... Courtesy of ME

Here at the Suite, we strive to catalog at least three or four humiliations per quarter (Would that be approximately one a month? Oh dear.). It's small service but one we perform with a degree of... we can't say pride... with a degree of panache, if you'll agree. In fact I'd venture to add that we are nearing professional status with our (and I'm speaking of course in the Royal We which is a fancy way to say all the humiliation is mine, mine, mine) ability to turn a blush at any given moment.

Important but not embarrassing update interruption! Yesterday was a VERY big day. Sarah has a diagnosis. Hallelujah! We now know she has a twelve-syllable autoimmune and auto inflammatory condition that is exceedingly rare (one in a million: I always have said it and now it's medically true) but not as scary as some diseases the doctors flirted with and even name-dropped to similar effect as, oh, a visit the Dread Pirate Hemophilia would have on a ship of weary and perpetually seasick immigrants.

In defense of our team of specialists, I must say that Sarah's other known genetic anemia conditions somewhat obscured their view. Also in their defense I must add that they had to consult Harvard. If you want to feel special, and I guess in a good way, have your state's best pediatric disease specialists send all your images and labwork across the country to a place covered with ivy and high IQs.

In fact our favorite doctor on the team attempted to call us yesterday afternoon but hung up in the middle of the first ring from nerves and had to call back later. I love her because she admitted this. Sarah loves her because she has Wyandott chickens. We all have our reasons.

The worst part 'bout Sarah's diagnosis is that she may have periods of "moderate-to-intense" pain from benign bone lesions interspersed with unpredictable but long remissions. The best part about this disease is that it goes away in puberty. Can anyone say SILVER LINING?

Okay, now back to your regularly scheduled vicarious embarrassment.

After months of doctor, lab and imaging appointments for Sarah, yesterday was for some reason my turn. I had a long-scheduled mole check and a piggybacking knee injury to follow up on. Hey, oops, that made it sound like I hurt my knee in a piggyback incident. What I actually meant was that I had the mole appointment but hurt my knee (yeah, yeah, another joint bites the dust) and so snuck it in under the scheduler's radar. And after months and months of juggling to find someone to watch the baby and/or Grace and Madeleine while Sarah and I memorized eight-year-old copies of Golf Magazine in interchangeably plastic waiting rooms, I just couldn't find anyone to watch the baby for my mole appointment.

It was mid-afternoon. I left Madeleine and Grace glued to the Webkinz site at my husband's office. I took the baby, because she's not so much into the computer. Give her time. I took Sarah, because this is my family doctor. The doctor who's known us for years. Who lives for my kids' visits (alright, that might be overstating it, but I kinda believe him when he says so). Who kindly looked aside in my most recent [if you're only counting incidents at doctors' offices anyway] wardrobe malfunction.

Sarah and Laura and I went through Dutch Brothers. Don't tell their sisters. We bought: a split-shot mocha (two shots caffeinated, two unleaded, steamy dreamy bittersweet chocolate milk = heaven in the cup holder), a blackberry Italian soda (Sarah's treat of choice) and a whole milk, straight up (Laura needs the extra fat for her brain cells I'm told).

I am getting to the most embarrassing moment.

Usually I try to pick up an Irish cream latte for my doctor's nurse. This is one way we remain the favorites. But yesterday I forgot. Because I'm clearly not invested enough in the process. Or else because I wasn't sure I could carry my mocha and hold Laura's slippery chubby fingers adequately in the parking lot (notice the order in which I sadly described the priority there) if I was also carrying a latte for the nurse.

My doctor doesn't drink coffee. Because he's superhuman, that's why.

His nurse sweetly overlooked my lack of gifts and oohed and aahed over Laura's chubby legs in a Lulu dress just made for chubby baby legs. Sarah did the Highlights puzzles in her head because it annoys her when there are marks in magazines and she can't contribute to the madness.

We waited a while. Don't you always?

We waited a while longer. The natives were restless. I let Laura climb around on the exam table. (Foreshadowing alert.)

The nurse poked her head in to say the big chief was held up on a phone call.

"We're fine!" After all, I am adept at juggling four children. How could a mere two, one of whom is buried in books, be too much for me?

Twenty minutes later Laura knew every no-no in that exam room by name. She could climb up onto the exam table and shimmy down, hanging from her fingers while her toes barely barely touched the step and her tummy provided friction for a slower descent. It was an art form, a gymnastic toddler treat.

Finally! The doctor was in!

He greeted us all with hugs. I took my hand off Laura's back to shake his, basking in the glow of being called once again his favorite family. Prolly he says that to all the farm mamas, but I just don't wanna know.

Of course the very moment I wasn't looking, the very moment I was feeling all uberproud of my cute little brood, THAT was the moment Laura did a FREE FALL from the top of the exam table onto the top of her cute little ponytail. Her adorable little Lulu of a dress flung up to reveal the matching bloomers and cover her eyes.

First the clunk of baby hitting floor. Then the horrible silence of a child who's about to scream bloody murder ("Wait. Wait. My mother was holding on to me a minute ago!").

Then, of course, the screaming did commence. And it did us proud.

The doctor elbowed me aside to pick her up. I'm not kidding. He even apologized later. "I didn't mean to elbow you in the teeth."

Well, I didn't mean to allow for the brain damage. ("All of her kids are really cute, but that smallest one? A little off.")

Sarah (ever quick-thinking) ran a Dixie cup of water and immediately distracted Laura from the goose egg growing on her head. Meanwhile I just collected my pride in another Dixie cup and remembered that pride always goes before... what?

I think we're either (a) finding a new doctor or (b) bringing a lot more lattes to buy some nursely silence. Because at this point they've seen my nursing bras and they've avowed their love for my children, I think it's option b. I think.

A Little Souffle

Well.

After three weeks (or so -- I've lost track in that particular way of long vacations or ongoing insomnias) of near-daily doctor visits and too-frequent ER dashes, we still have no diagnosis.

We have an old-fashioned quarantine.

Oh, they're not calling it quarantine. There's the lack of a sign on our door. And there's a serious lack of slowing in the visits and phone calls such as you would expect in a true quarantine situation.

Not that I have any knowledge of quarantine protocol that goes beyond what you could learn in a movie (by that name, I think? Quarantine?)... anywho, I don't know the first thing about quarantine.

But I do know Sarah's on steroids for their anti-inflammatory effect, and I know we're not going to chess class, or archaeology, or the zoo, or anywhere else but stir crazy for two weeks until her next round of tests.

Sarah folds over on herself. Sarah is as flexible as a gymnast, a ballerina, a switch-hit debate star. This flexibility is her strength and her signature and a great reason in a long list of reasons to love her.


But right now Sarah doubles over like a crepe, golden but much more fragile than your workaday pancake. She folds in on herself as a morning glory does at dusk, exhausted in retreat from the beauty of the day. She's a souffle', sensitive to temperature and sound and the moods of those around her.

She's been ultrasounded (now that's a funny made-up verb) and X-Rayed and EKG'd and poked and prodded and annoyed as all get out by (apparently) falsely cheerful RNs. Her blood's been drawn too many times to count and I want to shout at the medical profession to please plan accordingly. "How much blood can the anemic girl spare?" Katie wanted to know. I want to know too.

Staying home for two weeks sounds restful. But now that I've had a day of it? One day? I'm exhausted. I am strung out like a strand of costume pearls on thin elastic. I am run through a wringer washer and hung to dry with the wrinkles getting crackly in the dry heat of a desert day. I am possibly just now sifting through the half-dozen doctors' ideas and concerns and oft-conflicting recommendations. Did we really just do all of that? Did I remain standing for that? Did we all?

Why didn't someone warn me to sit down?

In these past few weeks I have given so much thought and prayer to the concept of chronic illness and disease. The need to remain cheerful and calm for my children and myself is prime, but the inner dread and worry that I feel is somehow projected outward to the thousands of families who face debilating and life-threatening problems. How does one march forward? How does one maintain grace and hope?

I want to know.

Oh, and this brings me to another point. Everyone else wants to know as well. Everyone wants to find out what's causing Sarah to be so sick. The doctors are working very hard, following thin leads, trying to alleviate her symptoms while we're at it. Our families are also very supportive. But it's maddening. It's easy to fall into the role of armchair quarterback, backseat driver, Doogie Howser, M.D. Every medical site on the Internet has been attacked by Sarah's extended family, every symptom searched, every known illness cross-referenced. There is an answer, and I am confident it will be found soon. I'm frustrated though. I'm ready for her to be better. A miraculous healing would be fine by us.

As soon as I tucked the girls in bed tonight I went looking for something to read. And Barb did not disappoint! I am so grateful for my front-loading washing machine and my stocked freezer and my pea plants peeking out of the soil. I'm so grateful for modern medicine and for the Internet (although sometimes the Information Age is overwhelming).

I've missed my friends here. Thanks for all of your prayers and emails. We'll be back to your regularly scheduled farm frolics just in time for spring and summer gardening season.

Surfin' Safari ... Farm Style

The Suite girls were spirited away for the day by my lifelong friend Carolyn today.
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We visited a nearby wild animal park for a safari adventure, then enjoyed a picnic of sorts in the car while we waited for the sun to warm up the not-quite-spring air. After lunch we walked through the small animal farm and zoo exhibits. It was exactly the getaway we all needed.


Look over there!

Shall we look through the guide to identify the creatures or just marvel at them?

Those are zebras for sure.

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Sarah's doctor's office only called twice during our road trip.

I answered it the first time and after that I let them leave a message about her next appointment.

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The weather was gorgeous and the animals were stunning... especially the over-friendly emu who scared the living daylights out of me by sticking its beak in the car window. He looked a little interested in the chips the girls were eating so I sorta-kinda took off in a hurry. Man, that was a big beak.

We saw these signs everywhere, but no one took them literally until an apparently benign little duck took a chunk out of Carolyn's hand.

The monkey was on the lookout. But he was behind glass. We learned that it's been proven that primates can plan ahead. I guess they're one up on me already.

There weren't any warning signs about the spitting though. Sarah and Madeleine were sprayed with such a huge amount of llama cud that they smelled like alfalfa even after showering this evening!

I know y'all were craving a picture of Laura's toes. The girl will not leave her socks and shoes on. And don't get me started on her hair bows.

The park had a life-size cow to practice milking on. After nursing four babies it sort of hurt my feelings. Or offended my sensibilities. (Is it too late at night to be writing this post? I think so.)

It's good to get away. And it was, as always, great to come home to our own private zoo.