Meet my friend Naomi

The photo above is of course of quake damage. I took it from the website of our friends at Mercy League International, who run an orphanage in Haiti among their other faith-based humanitarian efforts around the world.

This is our friend Naomi. Her dad is the director of Mercy League International and her whole family is one of the biggest blessings in our family's lives. They were our across-the-road neighbors for the first two years that we lived here. In fact we met Naomi, Noelle and Brendan, her sister and brother, and their parents before we made the offer on this house. It sealed the deal; we couldn't believe how perfect it would be to have built-in playmates when we moved to the country.

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Naomi and Madeleine were fast friends: They share their loves of books, lots and lots of books, and art. Sarah and Noelle, also of similar ages to one another, share their sweet but mischievious temperaments. The fearsome foursome made a lot of fun trouble in those years of living within shouting distance!

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We quickly grew to love the entire family. They pastored the church across the road from us before they were called back to work in missions. You see, they had been in Haiti for (I think) three years before moving to our little quiet corner of the world. That's where Naomi and Noelle joined their family. Since living back in Oregon, both parents have pursued graduate degrees, made multiple mission trips to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, added another boy to their family (making a total of four fun children!) and they have been planning a move to Africa. Just a little busy, wouldn't you say?

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So of course the distastrous quake in Haiti is on our minds and hearts. Naomi's dad is in Haiti right now. Mercy League had a team in the area at the time of the earthquake. Everyone on the Mercy League team is safe but no one currently there spoke Creole. So our friend and father of four flew to Haiti Friday with his knowledge of the language, his compassion and all the antibiotic cream, ibuprofen and protein bars he could carry.

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I know that among his hopes of helping deliver medical supplies and aid to the people of the country, he also hopes to locate Naomi's birth family.

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I have been told that Mercy League will be shipping a container a week directly to Haiti. Time is critical. I started writing this post four days ago but my utter lack of knowledge of the workings of rescues, rebuildings and missions have had me paralyzed. We are so incredibly blessed in this country with reliable water and power and medical care and building codes that keep our families safe and insulated that I am stunned, maybe like some of you, that elsewhere mothers are struggling daily to find clean water for their babies.

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Please pray for the people of Haiti. And if you don't already have a place to send your donations, please consider giving to our friends at Mercy League as they continue to help the people of Haiti.

Story problems with no correct answers

1. If three out of four children in a family have doctor appointments on one day, and there is only one parent to attend to those children, and that same parent must of necessity take all four to all three appointments despite the only un-appointed child's being buried in at least 10 books throughout the day, how many arms will that parent need to successfully contain the children? As extra credit, answer how many Nancy Drews and Wimpy Kids that parent can fit in a diaper bag when they are confiscated.

2. If the youngest two out of those four children have three and five immunizations respectively, and if the other two children let that particular secret out early enough to cause general hysteria, how many ice cream cones will the parent need to promise in order to restore relative peace throughout doctor appointment number one for child number two (in which no needles are necessary but one CAT scan is ordered)?

3. If all of the numbers are small enough, does that inversely add up to a larger Margarita when the parent gets home? Are you sure? Even if that parent virtuously passed on the ice cream? (You know I didn't; it's hypothetical.)

What a difference a year makes

Laura at her first birthday. Just look at that little dimpled chin, willya?

Not only was the weather different at the coast for this year's birthday jaunt, but we couldn't get Laura to sit for a picture. She wanted to embrace the whole beach.

She was busy, raindrops or no.

All the girls have grown and changed so much in a year. Laura is walking and talking (and talking). She's dressing herself in her own unique style and she is sweetly opinionated on nearly any subject you care to discuss. Mother Goose? Window washing? Naked trees? You bet she has a dissertation on that one. While she's gone from baby to toddler: Grace is reading, Madeleine and Sarah are playing instruments, everyone's jeans and shoes have gone up a size or two.

And they're still the same happy gaggle of girls ready to celebrate. Happy Second Birthday Laura!

Welcome to Nice

We don't live anywhere near Nice in the literal sense. I think it's in California, although without a quick Google map check I can't be sure. (And even then, with Google maps, who knows.) We drove through this charming town on our way home from my favorite city:

We also don't live near San Francisco, not close enough to have visited since last summer.

But I have my ten thousand two hundred and forty eight pictures to comfort me. And my sense of Nice. As in, nice to be home. (Even when the cabin fever is causing some of my over-abundant head of hair to thin. I'm sure of it.)

***

So this morning I was putting some split pea soup ingredients into my slow cooker. Who doesn't love a slow cooker? Honestly. And homemade soup at the end of the day? Too good.

Grace Hannah (5) passed through the kitchen and gasped as I emptied half of my canister of dried split peas into the Crockpot along with diced carrots, onions and a ham hock.

"What's for dinner, Mommy?"

"Split pea soup. Yum, yum." Because you know if I don't add that she'll never grasp that some people prefer their legumes without a fuss. And the additional bribes of grated cheese and homemade biscuits and a big glass of fresh milk. Right? EveryMom is with me on this. I'm sure of it.

"Oh, okay." Wait for it. "But when you're out of the peas can you pleasepleaseplease buy more?"

"Of course!" This is the moment when my deranged or at least deluded homemaker self believed she's come to enjoy pea soup or at least to appreciate a well-stocked pantry.

"Oh, good. I need those for gluing to things at craft time."

Welcome to Nice. Where we build bridges to food appreciation in innovative ways every day.

The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Farm G. Suite

Yesterday ended our Christmas vacation here at Farm Suite. All three big girls (11, 9 and 5) were eager to return to formal (as it goes around here) school. They sat down, breakfast eaten, fully dressed and chores done, at a couple of minutes after 8 a.m. to master personal challenges ranging from multiplication tables eight and nine all the way through creating a book of alphabet sounds.

Laura (2 in a few days!) is finding that school mornings are a perfect time to create trouble. It seems I just get her set up with toddler-size Legos or crayons when I turn to help with a long division problem and then she's off and spreading someone's Polly dolls all over the staircase or pouring out an entire bag of cat food into the litter box. I must say, I've never parented such a busy baby before. On the other hand she knows her alphabet song and many of the letters (and their sounds!) by sight so she is undoubtedly picking up on Grace's kindergarten work.

After lunch it was a beautiful, sunny 55 degrees outside so I declared recess for all four of them. I used that time to clean up worksheets and books and set up our art project for the afternoon -- we have decided to do science experiments, art and other potentially messy projects while Laura naps. It's self-preservation mainly, plus we get to have fun without distraction of the toddler type.

Speaking of outside, we finally clipped the hens' wings. I know, I know, it sounds cruel. But the real cruelty was in letting them wander across the road after flying effortlessly over their six-foot fence. (Why does a chicken cross the road?) Anyway it took the help of Madeleine, Sarah and their 12-year-old friend Zoe for me to catch all nine hens one at a time. The first few were easy -- they are tame after all -- but after two or three they seemed to "catch" the general hysteria and their evasive techniques got fairly creative. Katie the Rhode Island Red even hid at the back of the compost pile before her haircut. Yuck.

So now the hens are all safely inside their chicken yard again. The rooster can still hop the fence with ease but he doesn't tend to go far when his harem is cooped up. (Har har. Cooped up.)

Seven, Madeleine's horse, is sold to a lovely neighbor who keeps her gelding Sun at the boarding barn. You might say he's the boy next door. So Seven's not actually paid for yet but after just word-of-mouth advertising for a week we feel blessed that she'll go to Michele, who's loved Seven for the past year but despaired that we'd never sell her. And a year ago, I wouldn't have. My love for Seven was all wrapped up in her resemblance to the horse of my teenage years, a black Polish Arabian named Shamarrh. Seven and Shamarrh shared that certain dreamy big-dog quality of appearing to listen. They also shared a love of coffee breath and granola bars. Shamarrh had to be put down when I was 17 after a dog ran her through our fence and her front foreleg was broken along with my sense of all-is-right-with-the-world.

The moment that I saw Seven five years ago, I knew she was mine even though she wasn't for sale -- just a beautiful dishy dark filly head peeking out of a stall at a property I was showing. I immediately felt a rush of (mushy and ridiculous alert) youthfulness and joy. That is what Seven is. But you really can't go home again, no matter what Bon Jovi says.

So today for afternoon projects the girls and I will be making resolution collages. We don't go too heavy on the resolutions at this time of year -- sometimes we make fun "predictions" for the coming year such as "Laura will be potty trained by June" or "we'll go to Disneyland in October" (more a wish than a prediction, I know). I think my collage will have some horse pictures. Probably not black and probably a lot slower and cooler of blood than the horse(s) of my youth. Because I'm a different girl than I was 20 (or even five) years ago, that's why.

Everybody's back to work... the farmgirl edition

The hens all went back to work just in time for the holiday baking we've been doing. If you look closely you can even see that a few of those eggs are pale green... my Easter Eggers are laying!

The New Year. The new year is an opportunity, of course, for buckling down to face resolutions and inner revolutions and the most important of all, closet organization. It ought to be for me a time of much, much writing. Lists and such. And the occassional blog post.

Instead:

Football games. (Feel free to pause a moment for the Oregon Ducks.)

A new man door f0r our detached garage (I have dreams of converting this into a schoolhouse/guesthouse. Also: "Man door" (?!) -- there must be a better word for the door through which a person walks to enter a garage.).

Selling my beloved, of late Madeleine's beloved, black Quarterhorse mare Seven. (My reaction to this event in all its swiftness, in a severely depressed horse market no less, astounds me and I just can't seem to find adequate words.)

Happy New Year to you and yours. I sure hope I can find a little time to make a resolution or two. How about you?

And to all a good night

Every year we leave Santa something like this:

And then he leaves something like this:

But the mess is okay because it's directly related to a lot of something like this:

And then the afternoon is quiet, like this:

Merry Christmas, my friends. May the peace and joy of the season of Christ's birth fill your home with all kinds of small but significant happinesses like this.

The stockings were hung... finally

Our property is graced with about seven enormous big-leaf maples and thankfully just one massive old-growth fir tree. It's a community landmark and I'm just gonna guess about it's about 300 years old. (Yes, that's my highly scientific raised-by-forester-in-the-heart-of-timber-country estimate.) What I know for sure is that the big tree is the skyscraper of our village and it drops a lot of branches. Well, I should clarify to say that it drops too many branches for my meager decorating needs. Sometimes it "drops" branches that would qualify as full-size trees in an established suburban neighborhood. One time it dropped such a branch on my husband's shop. But that wasn't very Christmassy at all.

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This year I gathered a few branches still holding on to their pretty little fir cones. Isn't it a miracle, the thousands of tree possibilities in those tiny cones?

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We put those miracles, found free in my yard, on the mantle with a string of lights. Then we added some candles, for looking at only as Grace says, and hung the stockings.

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I made our stockings, six of them, about seven years ago when our family was still just a cozy foursome and I still drove a Volkswagen. Cutting into those vintage holiday tablecloths (long-lived slight obsession with the vintage linens? check), I planned and thought of the biggest family with which we might someday be blessed. So now we have six stockings of faded turkey red, nearly pink with age, and soft sage green.

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One stocking is ever so cleverly decorated with Sarah's four-year-old lettering in Sharpie marker. I'll never know how she found the permanent pen but what was unfortunate graffiti five years ago is now the sweetest little reminder of days when she couldn't string letters together for hundreds of words on end as she does today in stories so beautiful it makes both the mother and the writer in me incredibly and inexplicably proud. (Despite my own blogsome run-on sentence problems!)

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Look what we've done, this family! Look at what a few years can bring. (Look how many stockings we can hang.) Not only are we a Suburban-filling family of six, we are blessed beyond measure. In just a few rings on an enormous tree's growth pattern, it seems we've grown more than those years would account for.

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Sometimes, especially when mired in the mundane, I look back on where we were and marvel at how life's seemingly meandering path has moved us so far. Even if I'm "late" hanging the stockings and "late" finding the ornament bins in the shop. Even if I haven't mailed my Christmas cards and the gingerbread house is still plain and brown. For just a minute I realize: today's tiny miraculous finds and even today's disappointments, when viewed from tomorrow, will be as beautiful as yesterday is to me now.

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We are decorated with the incomparable peace and love of this season. The mundane, the day-to-day, will surely pass. But we are steady as the tree out front, a landmark of our own lives growing so imperceptibly but surely in faith, and love, and beauty.

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May your season be blessed as ours has. Even if you haven't mailed your cards yet! (See what I did there? Throwing in a little forgiveness? Oh yeah. Feel free to join my procrastination station.)

As I was doing my chores

We have three sick little girls in our house this week. I think all moms will understand when I say that this adds to my load more than a little: caregiving, laundry, chores, (worry). It also reminds me how blessed I am to have a safe and warm home for my babies.

A few of my favorite things

I love homeschool with all of my heart. I love being there when a certain light of understanding dawns. I love letting the girls spend as long as they want on the subjects they enjoy. I love being done with "school" by lunchtime and leaving the afternoons free for creating art, playing, reading, making up big science experiments and exploring outside.

But last year, in our first year of having school at home, I really, really missed the community Christmas program. I missed seeing all the children of our rural area perform with instruments and voices and big personalities.

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So it is wonderful this year to be a part of the school's music program. Madeleine is learning clarinet and Sarah is playing flute. That's Madeleine in a solo (!) and I am so proud of both of them for taking on these instruments at ages 9 and just-turned-11.

And this year Grace is a Kindergartener who loves learning at home and visiting with her "school" friends on Mondays and Wednesdays for music. When we were getting dressed for the program (she was one of "nine ladies dancing") Gracie chattered on about how excited she was to see her sisters perform. When I mentioned that she would be on "stage" too, she went white and still despite two weeks of rehearsal. She hadn't realized she was in the show. Her stage fright lasted all the way until we arrived at the school gymnasium.

And then the dancing began. From the left, above: Clara, our Sarah, our Madeleine, Olivia with the smooth moves.

There's Madeleine helping Olivia up from the fall after the big dip. You can see Grace on the far right, spinning.

Laura enjoyed time with Grandpa and Grandma. She even shared the contents of her Santa treat bag.

Gracie was sure this wasn't the real Santa.

But she was sure that these are her real(ly adorable) friends Clara and Shelby. Aren't they sweet?

Beautiful to be home

Now there's a little girl who wants a tree house for Christmas. Not that she can (should) climb a ladder.

We are so content where we are, with our 1880s church-turned-farmhouse, our tiny classic Dutch Colonial one-stall barn, our little chicken chalet and huge deer-fenced garden. To continue our list of blessings: We are happy with our garage, shop, quiet country road that's perfect for ponies and bicycles. We are blessed with neighbors for chatting not to mention a church, Grange and community school just across the road so that village events always within distance for pulling the babies in the wagon.

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This may be the first time in Suite family history that the grass over there, while very green indeed, isn't all that tempting.

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Now if we can just get started on a tree house... since I don't anticipate our tight little barn exhibiting any charming tilt in the next 60 years or so.

Merry Monday

Our weekend plans:

Friday night birthday party of seven girls ages 9 through 11 (just!). Swim park, homemade individual pizzas, and a movie.

Saturday volleyball tournament of hundreds of girls and boys ages 10 through 12. Knee pads and wrist pads and concession stands.

Sunday of church and naps.

Our actual weekend:

Friday night ice storm. Four sad cancelations and one sweet neighbor (neighbor = within miles and directly related to four-wheel drive as country things go) girl to spend the icy night making pizzas into pepperoni-and-olive cheesy faces, watching movies and blanketing cold ponies. One visit to the local general store for hot chocolate with whipped cream. It's not the water park but it's a celebration in a mug, with a blazing woodstove as accompaniment.

Weather-canceled Saturday tournament then rescheduled in a hurry for 8 a.m. Sunday morning. Some victories, some defeats, some medals of honor for the wrist-weary players.

A Sunday afternoon family trip to the hardware store, the bookstore, the grocery store. (Don't go to the grocery store betwixt an ice storm and Christmas. At least with any plans of seeing your home again before dark. I'm just sayin'.)

It was good, and exhausting, and restorative... just the way I like my December weekends.

How about yours?

She makes me a proud mommy

That's my girl.

Yesterday she was 10.

And today she's 11.


With her friends...

...and her sisters

... and her horses

She is one outstanding girl on the very brink of growing up.

[I have to use an aside to say why there are never pictures of the girls on horseback. After the big break(s), I just feel better without the camera when they're riding. More able to drop everything and respond. And incidentally, you should click on that post. She was so brave and so little!]

She's sure to rise to great heights.

Because she's always willing to work hard.

And she remembers where she came from.

She makes me so proud to be her mommy.

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Happy Birthday, Madeleine.

More of that winter warmth

Reading this beautiful weblog this morning made me feel as though we're one community after all. City, country, farm, high-rise, we all face those days of flitting from project to project, homeschool to diapers to phone call to errands to -- eek -- what's for dinner. And then there's a funny perspective on taking a moment for the sake of our roots from another mom of four whose blog and life I admire. Oh! And I mustn't forget the inspiration of a kind and talented quilter and knitter who encourages little ol' scarf-stuck knitting me to move on already.



If ever you, like me, feel a little isolated or unfocused these wintry days, a little clicking around might be just the companionship called for. Plus you might find a recipe for dinner or at least for laundry soap.

Staying warm?

It's nine degrees outside in our little corner of Oregon. The chickens don't know what to do with themselves: They rush out of the heated henhouse into the frigid air and hop from foot to foot before hurtling over one another to get back inside. And then they repeat the troop movements minutes later. No one ever said chickens were the brightest of farm animals.


Our outside decorations consist of a few windfallen fir branches draped over the picket fence and tucked randomly into the basket of my vintage bicycle. Honestly, I am a weather wimp or something, because a little frost won't stop me but the sub-20s will.

Inside we've been baking. It's wonderful to warm up the kitchen with the scent of gingerbread. The big girls are studying and reading a lot and Laura... well, Laura's obsessed with her Little People. She knows them all by particular names and chooses her favorites each morning to carry in her pocket.

I've also been in deep, deep denial about Christmas gifts. I have a list. And that's as far as it's gone. Maybe a panic attack over that will help keep me warm?

Homemade baking mix... no hydrogenated fat!

So much cuter than Betty Crocker. And free of hydrogenated fats, too.

All cryptic flattery of my baby girl aside, I have to tell you ladies (And gentlemen? Any?) that I have SO MANY homesteading/homemaking adventures that I just never post about.

Sometimes it's because it's a big flop, like whole wheat-oatmeal bread on a humid day. Or a dress that's hemmed cattywampus and has to be hacked off to become a swing top. Or overplanting the green beans and ending up with a new resident crow flock that won't leave. I could go on, because, as I've said before, I would get voted off "Survivor: Homestead Edition" lickety-split.

So sometimes I don't write about my projects because they don't work. But more often I fail to share my experiments and day-to-day home projects because I'm a little intimidated by all the truly talented crafters, writers, bakers, photographers, seamstresses and so on in this lovely blogosphere.

You know who you are.

But I haven't seen anyone posting this particular take on a quick biscuit mix. And since I came up with it all on my own, and since it really works for us, I thought I'd share. (Despite my worries that someone will say, "sheesh, she's a little late to the party, hunh?" NOT that any of YOU would do that. No way.) So if all the cool kids are already on board with the homemade baking mixes, just humor me. Because you're gracious like that. And because it was a little breakthrough for me, so maybe it'll help someone else.

Enough with the backing into the lead already.

I give you:

Miriam's Homemade Hydrogenated-Fat-Free Quick Mix

8.5 Cups all-purpose flour (I use half whole wheat)
1 T baking powder
1 T salt
2 t cream of tartar
1 t baking soda
1.5 cups instant dry milk
2.25 cups coconut oil (this is found in the baking aisle next to the Crisco and is solid at room temp)

In my biggest mixing bowl I whisk together the dry ingredients. Then I cut in the coconut oil with a pastry thingamajig until all the pieces of coconut oil are smaller than the size of a pea and evenly distributed. You can use your food processor in smaller batches.

This mix works great one-f0r-one for whatever you'd use Bisquick for: waffles, pancakes, biscuits, muffins. It's convenient and of course free of hydrogenated fats.

Look out, Jack Frost

If you're feeling a little sorry for yourself, there's nothing like a morning of frozen fog to snap you out of it. Glittery and crisp, the fog settles on every surface, horizontal, vertical or otherwise. This is my highly scientific explanation: It's magic.

Some might prefer a white blanket of snow but I am much enamored of the fuzzy outlines of frozen fog, the thickest frost you'll ever see, weighing down each blade of grass in sparkly splendor, outlining the lawn furniture in a halo of white.

Am I going on too much about the frozen fog?

It did get me outside with the camera again, so I guess I'm a little grateful.

I realized a few days ago that my usual month of four thousand eight hundred and two photographs dwindled to a couple hundred in November. That was partly due to my (failed) attempt to complete National Novel Writing Month, partly due to rampant illness in our family (no one wants their picture taken with a red nose and handkerchief), partly due to an unnamable funk that I of course left in denial-land for, oh, 28 days of the month.

You know what else moved out of denial-land? My oh-so-naive belief that Laura, not quite 2 years old, would remain asleep while I tiptoed outside for these pictures. At the very least I was sure she'd wake one of her sisters if she woke up. Er, no.

In the space of eight minutes she did a little tiptoeing of her own and dismantled one clarinet and one art supply set.

Still it was worth it.

Many hands waving wildly

Grace and her glue stick. Construction paper and a paper plate -- "the cheap kind, Mommy, with no pictures please" -- and oh to be five years old at the craft table for an entire afternoon.

I'm not sure who decided that small children have short attention spans. In my experience, with my four children, they have extraordinarily LONG attention spans. And they hate to have that concentration broken. (I mean, since we're trying to reduce the "H" word around here, they really, really dislike and don't prefer it.)

In fact three of my children still get so lost in their reading or craft activites that they often stick the very pink tips of their tongues out in the tiniest little nerdy genetic quirk that charms me to no end. I forbid Mr. Suite to say a word about this because I am so sure it will disappear upon mention just the way that Madeleine's personal "Melmo" turned into ordinary everday Sesame Street "Elmo" when some dumb bunny corrected her two-year-old pronunciation and broke my heart in one fell swoop. Yes, it was nearly nine years ago. Nope, not over it yet.

I think I find it so charming because I know their days are numbered, these hours of breathless focus and undivided absorption. Too soon they may have to enter the world of multitasking and multimedia.

For now construction paper and a glue stick or a fat book and a warm blanket: Hours of entertainment. If I sound wistful, it's because I am. Watching my girls concentrate is a little bit time travel and a little bit entertainment of my own. Come to think of it it's my own obsession for the moment, watching them in this time of unadulterated childhood when the play is all there is.

Gosh I'm lucky that way.

Get on the bus

I'm wearing my seat belt. Are you?

Thanksgiving at our house was simple. And quiet. Other than the last-minute cancellation of our travel plans and a three-hour power outage on the morning of the big turkey, we enjoyed a peaceful candlelit day with all the trimmings. I made Mrs. G's "one fabulous" (trust me, it's that good) recipe of butternut squash, the girls' favorite cheesy broccoli (so traditionally Thanksgiving; I'm sure the pilgrims partook), an orange-stuffed bird, mashed potatoes. Madeleine made a lemon chiffon cake and Sarah the pumpkin pies. Gracie set the table with red transferware and turkey red taper candles. We missed our extended families but were grateful for everyone's health and safety.

Black Friday? What's that? Friday we stayed far away from malls or anything with a cash register. I sewed some more swing tops and nightgowns. The girls painted with watercolors and Mr. Suite puttered in his shop. Hah. Makes him sound about 80 years old. (Or just male. Anyway he had fun.)

We all spent considerable time reading over the weekend. Madeleine started A Wrinkle In Time so I had to re-visit my pre-teen Madeleine L'Engle favorites. Sarah's reading Sisters Grimm, a hilarious set of fairy tales from a sassy and girly perspective. Perfect. I finished a new favorite: Into the Beautiful North by Urrea. Talk about sassy -- three young Mexican women on a in illegal mission to return young men to their homeland. Coyotes and border patrol and love and hilarity. It was a good holiday weekend read.


But Monday was back to reality. Music lessons and packing the pumpkins and cornstalks to the compost pile. Unearthing the Christmas boxes. Listening to the first installment of the radio show "The Cinnamon Bear."

I'm on the bus called Christmas. I'm buckled in and prepared for some holiday magic. How 'bout y'all?