And they danced

The girls finished nine months of six-day-a-week dance classes with this thing called a recital.

I cried through nearly the entire thing.

From the second row the click of the Nikon shutter
punctuated their steps.

Madeleine was in ten different pieces.

Sarah and Maddy both had their first pointe performance.

Hip hop was a surprise favorite.

Tap was a crowd pleaser.

I love this stuff.

And I try not to count the recitals we have left

stretching before us in beauty.

(When classically trained ballet dancers

go hip hop it will surprise you.)

 Grace was a bookish ballerina.

Considering carefully a year of quiet work.

Laura was a ballet diamond in the cutest deck of cards.

And a teddy bear tap dancer.

Grace also got jazzy.

We have a vocal recital before summer starts in earnest.

Then a few dance intensives and a couple of theatre camps

and a lot of backyard camping.

A wedding.

Swimming in the creek.

Playing with the ponies.

Summer.

Merry and bright...

 When the light twinkles just so.

 And the performances are all done.
(Nutcracker and It's a Wonderful Life, two icons of Christmas, checked off our list.)

 Time for silly cousins to have some fun.

 Remembering the reason we love, the reason we live.

 It's quiet at the farm.
For two weeks (minus a day or two) we had no drama, no dance, no classes.

Just scrumptious board games and naps and archery practice in our little woods.

Oh! And I read several books that have been on my list including
Morton's "Forgotten Garden" -- lovely; and Smiley's "Barn Blind" -- an author who amazed me again.

 We, like many of you, opened some gifts.

That girl does not like her bear. She loves it.
And her nightgown, sewn with love by her grandma and passed down by her sister.

 It's been a deliciously slow end to another fast-paced wonderful year.

I am not making resolutions but I do like to reflect and redirect at this time of year.

How about you?
I wish you a beautiful 2014.

If I Were August

If I were August I'd make a note.

Summer is notoriously fleeting.

I wouldn't want to miss a minute.

Calendula and yarrow, dance and baseball, sewing and sky watching.

These notes of August make summer a poem woven of dried grasses and lake days.

I'd try not to make a paragraph, even.

Because in formation of a thesis one could lose the essence,
whole and sweet like a raspberry warm from the vine.

 Rather to jot those notes on whatever paper or palm lies nearby.

If I were August I'd make a note to revisit on days of mist and cool.

That the summer, days of wine and roses, could warm that later moment too.

A time capsule of sunshine.

Backup. No, back up.

 I don't write here very often or very regularly but every once in a while I remember the days -- do any of you? -- when I wrote many times a week. When my teens were small and I made a lot of doll clothes and organic purees. Thanks to the "you may also enjoy" feature that I somehow managed to add to the blog I sometimes see a baby picture of a toothless Laura, who is now 5 years old and reading, writing, running (our lives) or a paragraph or two about how Grace, now 9 and a pianist, seamstress and outdoor enthusiast, loved to play "finger family" and had named all of her digits and assigned them specific personalities and habits. Being the middle child in a family of five must make for a creative kid.

 When I blogreminisce like that I get a little frisson of panic, you know? Not just the passing of the years but the sheer volume of digital/electronic/interwebby family history I document here and notsomuch in a physical scrapbook.

For instance, Salvador,turning 3 this week, was photographed in the palm of his daddy's hand just days home from the hospital. Now he is a member of the hay crew. Well, with crayons and a hot dog in the tow vehicle. But still. (B)logged here.

 Our relationships with dear neighbors at the church-home of my heart, blogged here. Our ups and downs with barrel racing, horses, free range children, penned-up chickens, lonely ewe lambs and dearly departed Golden Retrievers. Blogged here.

 Might I take a side road, just a minor detour, to introduce to you Harold and Linda, our neighbors at the new FarmSuite homestead? He is 86 and still making hay. She is "in her 70s" and still riding along. (Blogworthy.)

My girls' theatrical and dance escapades, all chronicled in photos and a minimum of whining about the price of gas and the late hours of rehearsal.

                                      
When considering the massive volume of valuable-to-me farmy and not-so-farmy Suite family history I today undertook the BLOG BACKUP. Dun-dun-dunnnnnn.

It was a three-click procedure that didn't preserve the photos within the posts. But still. Have you backed up your blog lately? I bet your children and your vegetables and your life -- all growing. And if any of y'all or your tech-savvy friends know how to back up the blog without losing the photos, would you be so kind as to share that information with me?

Because I blogged here about backing up a horse trailer and I might need to refer to that one day.

In non-technical news, the garden is ENORMOUS. We are eating salads every day, twice a day, and watching the corn and beans grow before our eyes. I am excited about the coming tomato harvest (almost afraid to say it, just a little superstitious) and have set up a canning kitchen on the back patio since our new cooktop is glass. The hay is in and it was a somewhat disappointing bale count compared to last year. We are very grateful to be able to make our own hay but it does look like we'll be buying some to supplement this year as a springtime drought kept the grass from growing.

Feels like being a farmer.

Madeleine and Sarah are halfway through a three-week break from ballet and they walk around the house on demi-pointe all day to keep their, what, feet flexible? balance intact? I dunno. We are looking forward to a drama camp and some dance camps and a lot of swimming in the river this summer. Also a lot of garden produce.

I hope your June is blessed and, backing up a bit, that you make time to back up your blog.

High and low

Busy-ness visits us here at the Suite farm. 

It seems periodically I find myself in a mess of multiple and double-booked appointments, frantic mornings and exhausted evenings. Yes, it turns out, there can be too much of a good thing.

Ballet and tap and jazz and flute. Algebra and The Story of the World.

Chess class and Gypsy rehearsals.

And now the ceremonial planting of the peas otherwise known as the beginning of gardening season; 

then the attempt to wedge in dentist visits and my own yoga and fiber art classes; 

not to mention the dog-sitting and the farrier visits...

between the exceptional and the everyday....

 Sooner than later I'm looking. 

I'm looking high and low for some quiet time.

Sarah and I snuck away to the coast. 

Grace and I had a date at Sweet Life Patisserie.

Salvador and I have driven a million miniature miles on his Cars-themed play rug.

Laura and I planted those peas.

Madeleine and I read The Hunger Games.

I'm knitting while the girls dance.

I'm dancing while the children sleep.

I'm doing too much and I can tell I'm at that point where not just something but everything may give.

Give way.

So I'm looking high and low for that quiet.

Sometimes it's easy, like a spendy coffee on a rainy day or a new novel to read while I wait.

But other times it's more difficult.

What do you do when things are out of balance, to find your equilibrium again?

Homebody Monday

More snow on daffodils that I shoveled out of the new horse paddocks straight into this old wooden trug. Note the careful placement of an upside-down sprinkler.

Cousin Makayla and Sarah... very happy to find eachother at the big ballet class.

And Gracie, super tired out after plies:

The Sissonettes, freezing in their leos outside of the class.

Sarah's superthick braid. She gets her hair from me:

Eugene did it! On Sunday afternoon the girls and I helped set a Guiness World Record for the
"World's Largest Ballet Class."

We enjoyed another whirlwind weekend. It snowed ... and snowed... and rained... too yucky to be outdoors, but a great weekend for dancing in the University of Oregon's Mac Court for an attempt at the World's Largest Ballet Class. The numbers were initially a little low, so even I stood at the barre for 45 minutes, attempting plies and developes with the crowd of 580 or so. Holding Laura on one shoulder to boot! I guess I've still "got it." Plus 20 years. As one of the instructors put it, "young dancers have the bodies, midlife dancers have heart."

In other news:

Our church's search for a new pastor continues. We are eager to find the right person since the parsonage is across the road from us. The girls really miss having a family live there.

Grace and Laura and I are having a (sort of) day off. I am calling clients and writing yet more company bios today from home today. Tomorrow morning I get to show property and goodness knows what the rest of the week will bring, so we needed a homebody day.

The chicks are almost completely feathered out. I need to take more photos. Ryan wasn't able to finish the chicken tractor over the weekend, again thanks to snow.

The feedsack purses are the craft project du jour. I will post photos this afternoon, good or bad. I understand there are some sewing challenges going on in blogland. KL at http://www.katiescalamities.blogspot.com/ is determined to sew something today with her unbelievably vast stash of fabric, which I understand grew more over the weekend. Misty at http://www.mistywagner.blogspot.com/ is also (I think) tackling some sewing. Anyone else?

We were blessed last night by our good friends cooking us dinner and dessert and sharing a very special drink to celebrate our business purchase. That was fun!

I think that's all the news that's fit to post. Have a blessed day all...