In the frosty air

Last Friday we had some beautiful hoar frost, and since we were headed out to the Elias farm for the morning I brought my camera along and took a walk on their trail for some really great shots!  I should note that it looks like there's a decent amount of snow, but that's just in among the trees.  Out in the yard, and on the fields, there's hardly any snow; and probably on a normal year you wouldn't even be able to get out onto the Elias's trail without snowshoes.  My father-in-law says it may be the warmest winter he's ever seen in his entire life!  Not long after I took these photos the sun warmed up and the frost started flying off the trees in big soppy flakes.  Isn't the Winter sky gorgeous?  Blue blue blue.

Happy Chicken Day: do not look closely at the following photos if you get queasy at the sight of blood

It is Thanksgiving here in Canada, and we found an appropriate way to give thanks.  Butchering our own chickens.  Our friends, Mark and Katie Elias, raised chickens this year and we bought some of them.  We visited the chickens once or twice this summer and watched them growing.  Then on Saturday, we participated in their demise.

You might be surprised to learn that I was expecting something a little more unpleasant than what we encountered.  The hardest part for me was training myself to think of the dull thud of the hatchet as just chopping wood.  My first experience cutting off chicken heads (when I was twelve or thirteen) was rather traumatic, and I vomited, and somehow the sound is what stuck with me.  But once I got over the sound, the entire experience wasn't so bad.  Without their heads, they're really well on their way to the table and it's very easy to impersonalize the experience.  I think I just made up the word impersonalize.  But it's what I mean.  And you should know that it's much easier to get over chopping their heads off when you remember that they poop in their own beds, lay their eggs in that poop, and often peck weaker chickens to death for no apparent reason (hence the term "pecking order").  It's way easier than killing a thoughtful, hygienic, cuddly creature.  And when you think of the delightful dinners we will enjoy on the other end of the experience, it seems worthwhile.

There is much more to say about this experience, but for now I will leave off by stating my conviction that everyone ought to experience the process and understand where your food comes from.  It will remind you that the food you need to survive comes from the earth, not from the grocery store.

Developed!

Film

Oh film. 

You make my Pentax jump 

through flaming hoops of glory,

Make me proud.

Make me remember.

Sue Sorensen in her office at CMU.  This was the day I did the author's photo for A Large Harmonium, her first novel.

 

Wieners!

Visiting Norman and Ann in Rosenort.  Norman and Ann are in our care group.

Playing in the fountain at Bethel Heritage Park on one of our last really hot days.

A surprise photo!  My first belly shot - from my first pregnancy!  The beginning of the roll was from four years ago.

Baby Luke on the left,       Baby Seamus on the right!
Same roll of film.

Baby Luke - a little older.

Mara's birthday cake.

The Carl Man.

Jumping on the trampoline at Mara's birthday party.

Jack and Luke at the Morden Farmer's Market

We have such good oral hygiene at our slumber parties!

Dearly Departed

I write today to celebrate the bond that's grown between our families.  To celebrate the little pieces of your souls that match pieces of our own.

Greg, Beth, Cordell and baby:
    You shake the dust from your shoes and move to a new phase of life, but you cannot shake our affections for you.  We applaud your bravery; the courage it takes to turn down an unknown road with children in tow, and hope.  You hope for inspiration, for knowledge, for health, and for discount prices on baby clothes.  We hope for you to be healthy, content, to feel affirmed in your vocation, and for the U-Haul truck to finally arrive.

    Your friendship has encouraged us in a place where we were unsure we would find sympathetic hearts.  We were surprised and have been delighted to recognize in you shared passions for books, for theological discussion, for delicious food, for bargain prices, and for family and friends.  When Derek and I first met, he was surprised that I knew the rhyme "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream", since we'd grown up 2,000 miles apart.  Somehow, realizing that we had a silly little rhyme in common made us feel like partners right from the start - a mutual empathy.  We feel that with you.

    We are sad to see you go, but tell ourselves it's only for a time so that the tears don't overtake us.  My dream is to live on a circular plot of land with all my friends and their children, with our individual houses on the edge furthest from the center and in the middle will be a park where, whether the sky rains or scorches, we and our children will eat and play and pray together.  We will go home at night and be with our children and as we put ourselves to bed, we know that we are not alone as parents, or as children, but are part of a greater circle.  People who are excited to share a recipe, who are enthusiastic about our children's achievements, who are praying for us when we're feeling crappy, who will share their books and insights, who will come and look for us if we don't show up for a gathering, who will take their turn to clean up the dishes, who won't judge us when we answer the door in our pajamas at 2 in the afternoon, and who love to hear our stories,and feed us when we're too tired to make a peanut butter sandwich.

    For a short while, we got to be part of the same circle.  It was my pleasure to haul boxes up from the basement, and be "taken for a walk" to induce my labor with baby #2, and to dump sand out of our boy's underwear after an evening spent visiting in the shade eating BBQ.  If you stayed, we would have many more days to learn about you, to meet your new baby, to get so deep into conversation that we lose track of the time, to learn (ahem) how to glue handles back onto coffee mugs, and to drag our children on long walks so that they sleep and sleep and sleep while we finish off the bottle of wine (we didn't do that one yet, did we?).  But you must go, and though we grieve, we understand.

    We celebrate the time we had with you, and look forward to a day when we can share life with you again - whenever that may be.

    Dear friends, you, your lives, and the life we had together, will be missed.

A (temporary) solution

Still looking for other options for posting photos, but in the meantime I deleted a bunch of photos from my picasa account to make room for the blog. Could I put the blog on my web address for A Tree to Call Home? Can I do that? Hm.

Oh I have SO MUCH to catch you up on! I'll have to do a little bit each day. Today you get to see some of the fun we had celebrating my father-in-law's birthday in the back yard. The two newest additions to the family side by side: Seamus and Cole. And some photos from a trip out to the Elias farm. There's many more from our trip to the farm, but I will save some for a post dedicated solely to that because the purpose for our evening out there was a going away party for some dear friends....that deserves its own post.

Mom and Baby, by Katie

I don't have many pictures of just me and Seamus.  Usually I'm behind the camera!  Last night we had some good friends over and Katie grabbed my camera and took a few photos of me and Seamus, and then lots of photos of our boys (they have Viktor and Jack).  It was such fun going through the photos this morning and seeing the evening from a different perspective.  Thanks, Katie!