Apple-Picking in the Fall

I know, I know--the world is already into Christmas mode now that we've passed Turkey Day. And I'm so behind I almost considered not posting these pictures. But as a last hurrah to fall and to the quick passage of time, here's some pictures from our visits to a local apple orchard last fall (2010) and this fall. It's neat to see how much the boys have changed! I think this will be a family tradition come late September/early October. We love it! (Especially eating the apples that we accidentally dropped. Yes, accidentally.) Few things taste as good as apples eaten in the orchard where they've grown! And next year, God willing, we'll have three little pickers to take along. :)

2010 Stonegate Orchard Visit 

2011 Stonegate Orchard Visit

 

"Da Turdy Point Buck" by EL

I'm sorry for the delay in getting this to cyberspace, especially for all of you in Larson clan. We really enjoyed Ed's version here and have a whole new appreciation for you outdoorsy folk -- happy hunting! :)

(P.S. Sorry for the long intro--this is the unedited version, so just be patient.)

Will the boys be able to handle it...?

Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. (That's code for We Ate Horrendous, Horrendous amounts of food.)

YUUUMMM!

 What a terrific Thanksgiving we Olson's had! Early to rise (but later than normal); I made the rolls and fed the boys breakfast while Papa prepped the turkey for the roaster and got 'er started. Then he magnanimously offered told me he'd make everything else. Since I made the pie yesterday, I said I'd make the green bean casserole--one of my favorites--and, okay, he could make the rest. :) So before 10:15 a.m. he'd made the mashed potatoes, the stuffing, the glazed sweet potatoes; prepped the corn and the gravy to make later; set the table; and washed all the dishes. I KNOW--he's amazing!

Then, after I got the boys and myself dressed between reading stories and watching some of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (isn't that a tradition?), we all piled into the car and drove to Good Sam, where Papa led the residents in a short Thanksgiving Day service. It was terrific. Everyone was very kind, and the boys behaved wonderfully. We were glad to see some shut-ins from our church and talk to other residents, too. We enjoyed it so much, we hope to do this every year if it works out.

Then we headed home to EAT. And eat we did! Everything miraculously turned out--there's always some snafus that make us think something isn't going to taste right--and all of us, even the little guys, spent the first ten minutes after the prayer stuffing our faces and not saying anything. Which, if you know us at all, almost never happens. So the roughly four hours of prep paid off in the roughly ten to fifteen minutes of eating. The return doesn't seem great, but with enough leftovers to last us a week (and mighty good leftovers, too!), we'll take it. Especially since Mama did so little work. :)

P: Did someone say "TURKEY"?! S: Gimme some milk.

Ready to dig in!

The Menu:

Roast Turkey
Stuffing
Mashed Potatoes
Glazed Sweet Potatoes
Lydia's Schnitzel Beans
Buttered Corn
Cranberry Relish (from the can, per Papa's favs)
Beth's Best Buns
Milk
Pumpkin Pie (not pictured)

Papa, a.k.a. The Chef, spooning up. No, that's not his plate.

 

Then I cleaned up most of the remnants while Papa took the boys downstairs to start watching the DVR'd Packer/Lions game. The little guys went down for naps after a bit, and so did Mama, while Papa spent an enjoyable few hours watching the Pack beat on the hapless helpless hopeless downtrodden Lions. (He then spent the rest of the day telling me how great of a game it was. It really made his Thanksgiving!) Then we drove over the the Smidt Family Thanksgiving and saw and visited with lots of lovely people while we ate dessert. They invited us last year, so this is becoming somewhat of a tradition, too--what a blessing!

It reached almost sixty degrees, which has to be near a record. At any rate, it was gorgeous out, so we all played at a nearby park before we headed home and started getting out the Christmas decorations. I've put my Christmas dishes in the hutch--one of my favorite seasonal activities is to switch out dishes and flowers; nerdy and old-school, but I can't help myself--and after some shopping yesterday, we rearranged the living room furniture (hey--I helped push the couch a few inches--once), which always precludes the annual Christmas Tree Decorating Extravaganza. I love this time of year!

We're so thankful to God for all of His gifts. And, as S said on Thursday, "Happy Thanks" to you all.

So. Long. Yet So Short.

We're entering the final turn of pregnancy with Baby Girl. I can honestly say we've prepared the nursery (pink sheet and all), though all of our Christmas decorations are stacked neatly in it just now because the plan is to decorate the house come Friday. I say "the plan" because, of course, all that could change in the next few days, tomorrow, even in a few hours.

It's a weirdly unsettling feeling, knowing that our lives are about to change momentously as we move through our daily schedules. We get up in the morning, I work a few hours, Papa takes care of breakfast with the boys and dresses them--yes, he is priceless!--he heads off to church/visits/Bible Study, we do whatever is on The List for the day, mixed with reading stories, doing puzzles, listening to music (St. Paul's Children's Choir, The Civil War soundtrack, any number of Wee Sing albums), making a tent house out of the kitchen chairs because I need to clean the floor and this is a great way to keep the boys corralled.  Voluntarily, of course. We eat lunch (lately, peanut butter on whole grain, pretzels, pick your fruit, and milk. And maybe Halloween candy for dessert). We nap. We play/work again until Papa comes home. We eat supper, do baths, read stories, do a shortened version of "Close of the Day" from LSB (I almost wrote TLH... old habits. :)), the little boys go to sleep and Papa and I finish projects and/or take a bath to relieve our my aching back. We sleep.

It's remarkably simple, even mundane. But no day is alike, and I never know when P is going to look over at me suddenly and say, "Ya know, Mama...I like ya." Or S is going to tell me in his half-jabber, half-articulate wording that he's got "Duncan on choo-choo tacks." Or they're going to make up a game involving their fold-out Thomas the Tank Engine, climbing in and out of its doors, all the while laughing hysterically and saying "Stinky fish!" I really, really can't make this up.

And while all of this is going on, the unpredictable predictability, the bags are packed (finally), just sitting and waiting; the kind people who have volunteered to step in when The Big Time Comes have (mostly) all been called; the must-have-dones feel mostly done. And I'm feeling pitch and roll, pitch and roll. Occasional muscle spasms, breathlessness, even some Braxton-Hicks that sure don't feel fake. P's been saying the last few days, evidently when I get a certain look on my face, "Mommy, it's hard for you to bend over, isn't it?" I told him that once, about a week ago. And he knows.

But he really doesn't know, and neither do we. Nothing--not even going through this twice before--can prepare us for the change, for suddenly holding a new life in the midst of ours, for adapting to the sleeplessness and the chaos that comes with such upheaval. If it sounds intimidating, it is; if it sounds impossible and something to be avoided, it isn't at all. Everything right now just feels so... normal. Except we look at the clock, and rewrite the to-do list, and wait.

Quite timely, then, that the reading on Sunday, the last Sunday of the church year, was from Matthew 25. The parable of the ten virgins used to strike me as an incomprehensible lesson in selfishness condoned; that was when I was about ten and didn't get that parables, like allegories, represent something other than what they tell. I just thought those wise five virgins were really stingy. But it's kind of like being pregnant and waiting for labor; no one else can take on that experience. I couldn't at the last moment say, "Hey, BF, got a little extra physical strength and fortitude you can spare?" Encouragement, yes; actual bearing, no. It just doesn't work that way. And there's Jesus: "Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour." So true. SO true.

And in the meantime, as we wait--for Baby Girl, and for Christ--life can feel so long. So incredibly, painfully long. And yet so short. We blink, and the time is here. We turn, and it's over. And I try to remember this, as I one minute wish This Could All Be Over and the next wish for a Little Bit More Time. I guess that's what this is. And, come to think of it, it's a good thing He knows when all this will happen and I don't. That way our waiting is a blessing, as we live, and sometimes groan, and sometimes relish, all that is immediately before us.

Slowly Joining the Weird

Ha.

 Birth control: these words provoke instant controversy. With yesterday's news about the Duggar family's twentieth pregnancy swimming around in my head, and with Baby Three's birth fast approaching, this CSPP throwback caught my attention:


Concordian Sisters of Perpetual Parturition: Probing the Sulvan brain


{I know: the blog is linked to the right and you could always browse its awesome archives yourselves. But sometimes its little gems are so very timely (recent news, conversation, thoughts, etcetera) that I just can't resist posting them here. So, to those who have the time to read about the weirdness that has to do with birth control, here you go.}


Rebekah provides some background about her own pre-marital thoughts about birth control which I found interesting, not least because so much of her thinking reflected how I thought and behaved pre- and early-marriage. We've learned so much even in the last years about what birth control does, specifically what it can do to early conceived children. In fact, it's not so recent: I remember a relative telling me she stopped taking birth control in the early 80s because she found out that birth control pills are abortifacents; that is, they can potentially cause early, early after-conception abortions.

Even knowing this, I used birth control in the form of the Patch the first months after our marriage. For, like Rebekah, I wanted to go to school forever and have some kind of career and just enjoy marriage for "awhile" before kids. But both Papa and I realized pretty quickly that artificially preventing the possibility of children--especially when side affects such as those mentioned above were involved--wasn't what marriage was intended for. I can't even say that we had this realization due to some great theological or intellectual break-through. I truly think God blessed us with the mutual knowledge, over time, that "be fruitful and multiply" is a blessing, not something to be avoided like the mumps. 

And even now, I want to emphasize that we're not Quiverfull followers, believing unequivocally that "the more, the better" should be every family's philosophy when it comes to children. There's far too many people we know who can't conceive and who also have been blessed with overwhelming numbers to make us fall into that ditch. Plus, we're just too Lutheran: Papa always says that if someone tells you you HAVE to do something to please God, do the opposite. He says it much more lovingly and better-theologically worded than that, but it applies here. We're not Mormons, believing that we've got some heavenly obligation to procreate (and, honestly, I wouldn't want my own planet after death that's populated with just my family. Love all you folks dearly, but... :)). Nor are we Pietists, believing that by our works--even begetting children--we are saved. And frankly, it just seems stupid to me that any of us--and that includes me and Papa at times, still--make the mistake so frequently, as Rebekah so aptly put it, of thinking that "wanting is the only language of reproduction." People say, "Do you want more kids?" like they're talking about buying apples. But that's our culture and how we think. Children are consumer-friendly objects, not gifts. And people can't help talking and thinking that way, because we've been surrounded with this kind of objectification of sex and choices and, thus, family size for at least fifty years.

So that's my long way of saying that we're slowly embracing the weirdness. I won't--and honestly can't--say what our family will look like in five years, because (see above!) ultimately only God decides whether or not to gift people with children. We're just eternally thankful that whether or not He does, He's already given all of us--the many-peopled families, the barren couples, the singles--Himself. And that gift is the weirdest one of all.

Happy (Belated) Pumpkin Day!

 Thanks to Aunt Rachel for inspiring our pumpkin face. Papa and the boys called him "Mr. Crabby Pumpkin." And, of course, we had to make faces resembling said pumpkin. P, of course, made the best face.

I think P was frustrated that he couldn't pick his nose in this picture.

May your candy-induced hangovers be short and relatively stomachache-free (ending by at least noon, when you can again resume the lovely post-Halloween practice of indulging in pre-meal, post-meal, and between-meal snackin's).