Playing catch (up)

How was your summer vacation?

I'm taking it as a sign of a good summer that I am, once again, not ready. Last week at the swimming hole I sat with a friend watching the children splash about picking blackberries from the overhanging vines. Feet in the cool water, with pebbles massaging our toes and the laughter of eight or nine swimmers entertaining our ears, we watched the first of the turning leaves float to the water's surface and skim downstream. Our shady spot will be exposed to the autumn sky in a month or two.

But we'll be inside with books and tablets and schedules to make the gas gauge sigh.

How not to make a two-month catch-up letter a series of "been there, done that?' How to capture the feeling of summer? We took some drives. We splashed in the creek and swam in our "secret" swimming hole. We went to a big family wedding in the redwoods and we went to the movies with friends.

Madeleine stretched her musical theatre skills with singing/dancing/acting camps and Sarah attended a ballet intensive and a melodrama performance camp. The big girls were in our local heritage parade too, on the Storybook Theatre float. Sarah was the blue fairy from Pinocchio, reprising her role from last spring's performance. Maddy was Tiger Lily and Grace was a mermaid, both from Peter Pan. I broke three sewing machine needles on Grace's costume but she glittered like an undersea princess. Salvador and Laura caught a lot of candy and waved at all the floats. I ran after the Storybook float with my camera and Mr. Suite was impressed with my speed in pursuit of the photo.

Then! Grace worked on a new quilt top and on her model horse barn. Mr. Suite bought her a miter saw and she uses it with more confidence than do I. Grace and Laura won ribbons at the fair. Grace exhibited a blue-ribbon bookhouse and her handmade puppet collection, also a blue ribbon winner. Laura showed a Lego coffee delivery boat of her own design (blue!) and her pony collection (red).

The whole family plus some friends hung out at the fair and watched the steam engine demonstrations. We ate caramel corn and drank lemonade and I regretted that but not in the baking hot moment.

Mr. Suite and I had a few date nights. We celebrated our anniversary -- 22 years -- with a Tom Petty concert where almost every song made me feel younger. We hiked the mountain above our house a few times and took photos at the river bar where he grew up and learned to drive. We drove over a floating bridge and visited farm stands and old haunts and longtime friends.

On the pet front, Laura has two guinea pigs. I am informed they are not rodents. Charlie the Spaniel took a brief vacation with another family whose mama works at the self-sustainability workshop on our road. He went camping by the lake and then came home and we were very, very glad. Murphy the Bernese went up the mountain with Maddy and Mr. Suite on a hike and came back down in the Suburban. I understand the hip joint pain.

Maddy and Sam cut new trails in the woods above our pasture. We made hay in record amounts and two teen boys with more energy and bigger appetites than imaginable helped get all eight tons in the loft before it rained. We picked blackberries and visited friends. We hosted a mini craft and swimming day camp for friends. We took some more drives. I am gathering rose hips for wreaths and tea. I am gathering the school books and calendars and my wits for another year of sharp pencils and sharper minds.

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.

Thawing

Over the weekend we hosted a quinceanera for Madeleine. Her great-grandmother and grandparents were there and her teenage friends helped the smaller children break the world's sturdiest pinata. It was full of sweets and the babies raked them up and carried them in their shirt tails and skirts. The renovated theater where we played was lit with twinkle lights and spotlights and Latin music and my daughter wore polka dot Converse with her dress.

Over the weekend Madeleine and many of her friends also danced in the incomparable local Rhythm and Blues Revue. My baby danced the mambo in a flirty purple dress. She tapped to live jazz music and danced to live singing -- one of our favorite playwright's -- a rendition of "It's Not Unusual."

It was full of sweets.

Over the month Madeleine and Sarah have begun evening rehearsals for "Fiddler on the Roof" while Sarah and Grace started rehearsing a children's "Pinocchio." I have been moved to tears by the rehearsals, people. My girls will tell you I cry easily and this is true.

I cried this morning in the grocery store line (I hope it wasn't noticeable) while the young, very young, couple and their infant in front of me bought a peanut butter chocolate cake and a bouquet of flowers for a friend's wedding. I cried (pretty noticeably) when Laura unearthed video of my wedding and we watched babies of 21 years ago scraping up candy from the fluffy pinata at the reception.

It was full of sweets.

Winter is coming to an end at the Suite farm. The daffodils are barely yellow in bud but the violets of one hundred years of homesteading are spread all the way to the creek. It took a while for that proliferation to be sure. I am so grateful after the icy winter we had that it is time to put in the peas. My raised beds are not even properly cleaned as I was taken by surprise by the first hard frost but we are still harvesting leeks and chard.

The tractor transmission, rebuilt last year, encountered a rock it couldn't conquer and so we may hire the tilling of the rows. We moved one horse into the barn with short turn out times but everyone else has grown fuzzy and fat with winter grain. A sure sign of spring is when the fence posts are covered with their shedding and the birds flock to steal tufts for lining nests.

We have a new family member! I can't believe I forgot to mention Charlie the Cocker Spaniel.

He's no stranger to us as we've been his dogsitter for a couple of years. Now he is officially our house dog on the farm. Murphy, our behemoth Bernese Mountain Dog, doesn't like to come inside. He prefers to romp the pastures and plunge in the pond in even frozen weather. He waits for Charlie to come outside and they run, big and little, companion and protector, each with their jobs on the farm.

Still raising kids and vegetables and a ruckus.

Full of sweets.

Funny how my world rearranges itself for weather

This weekend, first in December, forecast for the Suite family a flurry... of Nutcracker and It's a Wonderful Life. Dancing and tech rehearsals and opening nights were predicted to swirl about and sweep us into a vortex of holiday rush.

 And then the weather decided to slow us down.

 In our corner of the world, snow is cute and fluffy and always melts by noon. A three-day snow and ice storm with temps in the single digits? Unheard of.

So this year, our dance and theatre plans were laid aside and postponed and generally, blissfully, stalled in the high drifts of white space.

 Oh impassable roads how I do love you. As do I my little white picket fence by the creek. It serves no purpose except to say I live in the house by the side of the road... with the white picket fence.

Recently the picket fence spoke hospitality to a pair of lost mushroom hunters who had been in the woods all of a wet, wintry night. So it's doing its job of advertising our friendliness.

At least one of our neighbors, one who lives about a mile away, thought us plumb cuckoo to have offered hot coffee and a ride to the young couple.

I don't know. Most of your garden-variety psychopaths aren't going to knock on the door at 6:45 in the morning with blue hands, chattering teeth and soaked jeans. I'm thinking not anyway.

 It looks lovely to walk through that gate to the creek. Except under a foot of snow lies a sheet of ice and one might go down the hill sled style without the equipment. Don't ask how I know.

 The horses'  tank has a floating heater that makes their water steam in this weather. They still ventured to the pond and broke the ice with their front hooves. Refreshing drink anyone?

 Murphy the dog was born for this weather. He and Madeleine explored the pastures and hillsides like it was a North Pole expedition. The rest of us were on the second pot of hot chocolate by the time she came in, stomping snow from her boots and pink-cheeked.

We still have another day of being homebound, if the forecast is correct. I'm trying not to plan ahead. If suddenly the roads are safe tomorrow is the matinee opening of "It's a Wonderful Life" at our local theater. And if the snow and ice remain, it's a wonderful life chez farm suite.