Peace, Be Still

My dear in-laws took Kai and Quinn for the weekend so that I could attend a conference on Friday. It was nice to have a weekend with a little bit more downtime than usual. I got to nap for the first time in a long time! It was pretty awesome. Plus, I got to spend a little bit of time with Shawn.

Friday was a very interesting day. I went to a conference in Kansas City that was about birth trauma. It was focused a lot more on the psychological trauma babies can experience during/after the birth process than I was expecting it to be. I was hoping the speaker would spend more time on counseling women who have had traumatic birth experiences since that is an area of particular interest to me. Regardless, though, the speaker was very interesting and it definitely gave me food for thought.

I got to talk during breaks with some of the other ladies there--mainly doulas, midwives and childbirth educators. It was so fascinating to hear their stories and ideas about birth. Obviously, it was wonderful to be in a room full of women who share my same enthusiasm for birth and childbirth education.

Claire went with me and was very interested in the subject matter, as well. She kept cooing pretty much the entire day (while the guy was talking--fortunately, my baby wasn't the only one there making noise) and did not sleep much. It was a little stressful and frustrating at times because she got bored and started crying, making it necessary for me to leave and wait until she was done in the lobby. This happened a few times, but other than that, she was pretty good.

The conference made me think a lot about my own present situation. On the drive home, I started feeling a little bewildered. I am very educated about birth. I have a deep passion for it and love learning about it. But listening to the women at the conference, as well as the speaker made me start to have doubts and questions about my abilities to actually teach this stuff. I'm planning on teaching my first series of prepared childbirth classes in January (after all the holidays are over) and I'm starting to get a little bit nervous. I felt like I was in over my head.

Additionally, after Claire's birth, I have felt a bit perplexed about my own philosophy of birth. I have been re-evaluating my feelings and thoughts, as well as processing Claire's birth experience. It was a wonderful birth, but there were things about it that were not what I was expecting. There are even parts of it that disappointed me. I think God is using my experience with Claire's birth to teach me some things and to help me refine what I believe about birth. It is a much more challenging process than I expected, though.

Shawn had a lot of really encouraging things to say to me that evening when I told him how I was feeling. After talking through things with him, I felt much better about everything. I know that everything will work out for the best, but that I will be continually learning along the way.

The picture at the beginning of the post is a rainbow that I saw on my way home from the conference Friday. It is not the greatest picture because I took it while I was driving (I know, dangerous!). It was such a beautiful and vivid rainbow--of course the photo does not do it justice.

More Adventures in Motherhood

I was chilly last night, so I actually slept with socks on.

Claire is sleeping in a play yard next to our bed, so when she wants to nurse at night, I get up and bring her into our bed, then put her back in the play yard.

When I woke up early this morning to get ready for a conference in Kansas City, I noticed that I had lost my socks during the night. I figured they just got lost somewhere under the sheets and didn't think anything more about it.

After I got myself ready, I woke up Claire and started to get her ready. It was then that I noticed she was wearing one of my socks! I have no recollection of putting it on her foot, but obviously I must have. I can't imagine what my frame of mind must have been...........

Sigh......I think I'm too sleep deprived or something.

We're All Gonna Die

Am I going crazy? Does it not seem like no matter what we do, wear, eat, drink, take--we're all dying at a rapid rate. It seems like every day I read an article saying some researcher has discovered how ordinary things in life are now incredibly bad for us and will kill us.

Dairy products contain so many synthetic hormones and antibiotics that they can cause cancers and other health issues. So we can drink soy milk. Wait, what's that? Soy milk has phytoestrogens that can cause other health issues?

Clean everything with antibacterial soaps, wipes, creams and cleansers, quick! We don't want to get a single germ! Wait, what's that? Our fanatic antibacterial-izing has contributed to the strength of our newest, latest, greatest mega-viruses and bacteria, not to mention made our immune systems less able to handle the bugs? People are dying from MRSA.

God forbid we even expose an inch of our skin to the sun! We should all slather ourselves in sunblock and avoid the sun like the plague. Otherwise, we'll all get skin cancer that will kill us. But then we'll have to live with the vitamin D deficiencies and rickets. Small price to pay, I guess.

If you get your kids vaccinated, you are exposing them to unnatural and toxic substances and that could cause them to develop autism, allergies or other disorders. But if you don't, they will all get chicken pox or the measles and have encephalitis, which will cause them to have other serious problems or die. Not to mention the fact that they will all grow up guilt riddled because of all the vaccinated children they infected with their germs. (Somebody please explain that one to me!)

If we don't eat a very specific and complete organic diet--some will tell us we are going to die. Have a craving for some KFC? Don't--the MSG will kill you. It's so important to eat the "right" things. It's so important to take the "right" vitamins. In another year or so, the "right" foods and vitamins will turn out to be bad for us, too.

The parabens in your hand lotion will probably kill you. Ditto on your lipstick. It might be best to just never bathe or use cosmetics at all.

Our tap water is contaminated. Buy a carbon filter. Wait, just read those can be harmful, too. Okay, so buy bottled water, but make sure the bottle is BPA free and the source is not some random municipal water supply (as is often the case with bottled water). Scratch that--just don't drink the water at all. It will kill you.

Have you spent your life ingesting and absorbing toxic chemicals and the "wrong" foods (as well as not having organic cotton sheets)? Are you sick now with cancer, autoimmune diseases or chronic allergies? Well, I hate to break it to you but you can't take any medications for it--they will kill you, too.

How are we all surviving, if this is all true? No matter what we do, it seems we are all hastening our own deaths. I, for one, am sick of all the fear surrounding just LIVING. How can we actually LIVE our lives if we are constantly fixated on all that can cause DEATH or harm us? The truth is that we will all die, no matter what we do.

Ugh, just thinking about all of this gives me a headache. I would take some Aleve, but it will probably kill me after trashing my kidneys, liver and stomach. Not to mention the fact that I can't wash it down with a full glass of water per the instructions because the water is contaminated.

Safety Fair

Yesterday, there was a Safety Fair type thing at a nearby home improvement store. They had several activities going and Shawn and his co-workers were there handing out safety literature and other fun items. There was a petting zoo with cute little animals that we took the kids to. Here is Kai feeding the baby kangaroo.

Quinn looking on at the animals.

I gave some animal feed to Quinn to give to the animals, but she didn't quite get the whole feeding thing and ended up eating the animal feed herself. My guess is she thought it was some sort of funky granola.

Quinn's face after eating the animal feed. Johnny, one of Shawn's co-workers, said she would have a nice, shiny coat tomorrow.

Safety Fair 2

Kai feeding some sort of cow-like animal at the petting zoo.

Shawn and Kai feeding the baby camel and baby zebra at the petting zoo.

Kai getting ready to feed some goats at the petting zoo.

A miniature bison at the petting zoo.

Safety Fair 3

Shawn at the Fire Department's booth, sitting with Claire. You can see one of Shawn's co-workers, Duane, holding Kai on his lap. Kai has a face-painted mustache on!

H'ville's ladder truck.

Claire was tired and wasn't too happy about the whole experience.

A picture of the baby zebra and baby camel at the petting zoo. So cute!

Our Beans

Wednesday morning I spent time getting some green beans from our garden ready for canning. This is the beans boiling before being put into jars for canning.

Here is the end result; 4 pints of canned green beans! It went better than my first attempt to can and I think it will be easier as I practice more.

A Busy Wednesday

Yesterday was a day filled with all sorts of adventures, some good....some not so good.

I had taken some green beans from the garden and was going to can them. I got up and got the children going in the morning, then started working on laundry, dishes and getting the green beans prepped for canning. Once I got the green beans all prepped and in the canner, just awaiting the actual canning, I heard Claire waking up upstairs. We have wood floors which can be quite slippery and I was wearing socks because my feet were cold.

On the way back down the stairs, after getting Claire, my feet just came out from under me and I ended up bouncing down the last four stairs or so with little Claire in my arms! It was terrifying because I was trying to be careful not to drop her or let her hit the ground. What resulted was me not catching myself and my full weight on my lower back and butt. It was pretty unpleasant.

Right after it happened, I was panicked about Claire. I think on the very last step, she bumped her head a little bit. I tried to keep her head from hitting, so I think that she did not hit it very hard. Regardless, I was still checking her over in a frenzy. She cried for about half a minute until I nursed her, then she seemed 100% fine after that. That's when I noticed that I was not feeling so fine. My sacrum and tailbone were hurting really badly and I was not sure what to do. I called Shawn and asked him if he could come home for a minute. After he got there, he insisted that we go make sure everything was okay.

Our dear friends took our two older children for the afternoon while Shawn and I went to the ER. They were packed, so we were waiting for a couple hours before I was seen. In that time, I have to say the pain was pretty bad, which made me worry even further about my back and butt. I started thinking, "If I broke something, how am I going to manage the house, kids, etc?" It was a very unsettling feeling. I guess I didn't fully realize how much I NEED my body to be in working order to do my job!

They took several x-rays and thankfully, nothing was broken. It is just bruised and the doc said it will hurt for a while. He gave me some mega-ibuprofen and sent me home. He wanted me to have a heavier pain med (which at this point I considered taking), but I'm nursing Claire and the only time she had a bottle, she wouldn't take it (even though it was pumped milk). I decided it wouldn't be worth the hassle, and the ibuprofen seemed to be pretty effective. Unfortunately, my second dose last night made my stomach hurt really bad, so I think today I will be taking Aleve instead.

When we got home, Shawn restarted the canner and we did end up with 4 pints of green beans from our garden. We also had a 5th can, but it did not seal. I took a rest and Shawn's mom came out to help. This morning, she watched the older two kids so I could sleep in and rest a bit. Weird things hurts today. My neck feels completely strained and my arms are bothering me, too. I also have a little bit of aggravation in my upper back. It is really strange since I don't remember hitting those spots or injuring them. I guess when you fall like that, your body does all sorts of crazy things.

The whole experience made me very thankful for lots of things: Claire's safety and the fact that she did not get hurt, the fact that I did not get seriously hurt or break anything, my family who all were praying for me, my husband who takes such good care of me, friends who were willing to help us out when we needed it, good health insurance and x-ray technology, and a mother-in-law who is here helping me now so I don't have to jump immediately back into the swing of things. I am very thankful.

A Saturday Afternoon

This weekend Shawn got the opportunity for an extra EMT shift--an instant 12 hours of overtime! Okay, well maybe not "instant" since he does actually have to work all 12 of those hours, but it's a guaranteed 12 hours. The down side is that he was at the station all of Saturday. Around lunch time, the kids and I went over to see him. They got to see the fire truck again and we all spent a little bit of time playing basketball outside the station.

Here's Shawn in the fire truck with his two miniature firefighters.

Quinn is too cool for school! The kids liked playing basketball. In their minds, it mostly consisted of running after the balls over and over.

Us hanging out.

Claire giving a little smile.

More Garden Stuff

We got this bag full of green beans and all of these carrots from our garden this evening. There are so many green beans that I will have to try my hand again at canning. It will be good practice.

Kai and Quinn playing in the overgrown bean patch.

Shawn and Kai standing next to one of our dead sunflower stalks. This is to give you a reference of the size our sunflowers were when they were fully grown. They stood nearly 10 feet tall and the heads were 10-15 inches in diameter. I made lots of nice, roasted sunflower seeds from them.

Shawn got the idea to use the de-leafed stalk as a javelin. You can see it in the upper left corner of the picture--it's the blurry thing in the air.

Our Garden--October

Here was what our garden looked like in July, back when we were only semi-neglecting it. Since then we let it grow over pretty much entirely and have only watered or weeded it once since Claire was born. Even then, we only did a mediocre job of weeding it. Yet, we can't seem to kill this thing. We still have beans growing like mad, some peppers, carrots and our tomatoes have been rejuvenated since we trimmed off the dead parts and weeded around them about a month ago.

This is what our sad excuse for a garden looked like this evening. Totally overgrown and full of weeds....yet we picked a few pounds of beans and lots of carrots today, along with a few tomatoes. We're starting to really seriously wonder about this soil. It just seems unnatural that things would be growing like this, in spite of the horrible garden tenders we have been. I mean, it's October for crying out loud!

Shawn pulling up carrots.

Shawn inspecting the pepper plants while the kids traipse around the beans.

A Poem from Grace

October 4th marked three years since Shawn proposed, out there on the Land. In honor of the anniversary of our engagement, Grace wrote this sweet little poem for us.

"A moonlit walk
three years ago
God blessed their talks
Three kids to show
The moon's the same
So's God, you see
Two hearts are one
for eternity."

GEC

Lulu Update

So last night was the first time we tried the deer meat we got from Lulu. I made sloppy joes for dinner with some of the ground venison. It's strange how the mind works because the meat tasted just like ground beef. There were a few bites that were just a teensy bit chewier than regular ground beef, but if I hadn't known it was deer meat, I wouldn't have thought anything of it.

I've always had my meat show up in a grocery store meat case, thankfully without knowing a single detail about its origin. I know intellectually it's cow meat and that some cow was raised, killed, butchered, packaged and sent to the grocery store. But I have no intimate knowledge of that process.

Last night Shawn told Kai in regards to our dinner, "See, son, this was out running around in the woods on Friday!" For some reason, my stomach turned and I about lost it! I was like....."Um, maybe we should only talk about that directly when we're NOT eating it?" He thought my reaction was pretty funny.

All in all, I'm very thankful for the deer meat, but it will take a while to get my head wrapped around having actually seen all the steps (except the shooting part) in this meat's travels. Yuck.

Our Weekend and Our Dear Deer Lulu

This weekend was a deer hunting season, so Shawn wanted to go hunting. He invited my brother-in-law, Jamas, to go, too. Since our guys were going to be at the Cherri Orchard hunting all weekend, Celeste and I met up there, too, with all of our kids. Well, since the grandkids were going to be there, my mom and dad decided they'd make the trip, too. It ended up being quite the gathering!

Shawn and I went up with our kids a day earlier than everybody else and he went out on his first run on Friday morning. I got up with the kids around 7:30 or so. Shawn came in around 8:30, elated and.....bloody. Yuck. He had spotted 7 deer that morning and managed to shoot one with one clean shot straight through both lungs. I'm not sure what it is about men and killing things, but Shawn was pretty excited.

Here he is after he arrived, covered in blood.

More bloodiness.

Okay, so you're probably wondering why he's all bloody. He shot the deer on the back 40, so he had to carry her on his shoulders for a long way to the pasture. He had already gutted her so that the blood would drain out and it would keep the meat from becoming too "gamey." The result is that he looked like a bloodthirsty maniac.

Once he got inside, Shawn, Kai and I went in the van to the pasture to pick up the deer. When Kai saw her lying there gutted, he said, "Oh, Daddy---that deer has two big ouchies! We need to fix him! You didn't mean to shoot it, Daddy. It was an accident." When we explained that he had shot the deer on purpose so we can eat it, Kai still maintained that Daddy hadn't meant to shoot it and that it was an accident. He didn't seem disturbed by it, though.

After we drove the deer up to the Cherri Orchard, Shawn hung her up to drain. Here's a picture of him with his deer (and poor Bo).

Later that day, Shawn prepared the deer for butchering. We spent some time that day and the next preparing all the meat Shawn got. It looks like we will have some pretty good meat for a while now. Shawn and I guessed we probably got about 50 pounds of meat, mostly in ground venison, but also in some steaks and jerky meat, too.

Never would I have thought that I would be content (nay, excited!) to handle dead deer meat. I helped Shawn package it as he ground up the meat. Afterwards I decided that since we will be eating this same deer's meat for many months that perhaps we should give her a name so that we can remember to be thankful that she gave her life that we could eat. Shawn decided Lulu sounded like a nice name, so Lulu it is. We labeled all of the freezer bags, "Lulu."

It was a good weekend. Jamas, Cel, their kids and my parents all came up and Joe also came down for Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Despite several more trips out to hunt, the guys did not get any more deer after Lulu. Shawn took a long shot at a deer Sunday morning, but it was a bit too far. Celeste and I got the chance to hang out with each other and I got to meet her new purse that she is currently in love with. The kids got the chance to have a blast getting into mud and playing with toys that were a part of Grandma Gabriel's "sociological experiment."

There are two more deer seasons this year and I think Shawn will probably go hunt for at least one of those. I'll keep you posted!

Gettysburg

The NFA is near Gettysburg, so Shawn and some of his classmates went there for some sightseeing on the last day of the conference. Here is a canon Shawn took a picture of.

A view of the countryside at Gettysburg.

Some tents that were set up as people flocked there for the weekend for reenactments over the weekend.

The inside of one of the tents of the reenactment participants. I guess they take this stuff pretty seriously!

Pictures from NFA

Here is Shawn with his class members at a class picnic they had.

The location of the picnic, a log cabin on NFA grounds.

A beautiful creek near the log cabin.

Later the group went to the pub at the NFA and of course Shawn HAD to do some karaoke. Apparently he kept getting all sorts of requests. He said some went well, some.....not so well. Either way, he had a good time.

A Pink Fire Truck??

This fire truck travels around as part of a breast cancer awareness campaign. The firefighters who ride on this truck actually have pink turnout gear and everything. They have been touring around with it and people sign it for survivors that they know.

The pink turnout gear I was talking about.

Shawn signed the truck and put his aunt Mary's name above his since she is a cancer survivor. More recently, his aunt Jani also had breast cancer that she is currently being treated for.