Alexander is 7!

Today is Alexander's birthday. 

It's also Canadian Thanksgiving. 

And Indigenous People's Day in the United States.

Sometimes I feel bad for celebrating Thanksgiving on what was Columbus Day in the States (since both Canadian Thanksgiving and that holiday land on the second Monday in October) because that might look like I'm celebrating Columbus Day (which I'm not), which losing its footing to the counter-celebration of Indigenous People's Day (with good reason). 

Though Canadian Thanksgiving has a separate history from American Thanksgiving it's truly no less colonial in nature. And the selection of the second Monday in October—though claimed to be because it's often the last nice weekend of the season—is suspect. Canadian holidays often align with American holidays even if we're completely unaware of it.

Ever heard of Family Day? It's a holiday that celebrates families—you get a day off of school and work and there are discounts at family friendly venues and it's great fun! It's the third Monday in February...which just happens to be when they're celebrating Presidents' Day south of the 49th. 

Coincidence? 

I think not. I really think it's simply convenient for Canadian institutions to have these kinds of "bank holidays" on the same schedule that the American Superpowers have their bank holidays.

But that's just my theory. 

Anyway, we had Thanksgiving dinner for Alexander's birthday dinner and Andrew went all out because we aren't hosting Thanksgiving this year (for the first time in a long time)! 

Here's our little harvest of garden carrots that we had with our meal:

Pumpkin patch

Alexander, Zoë, and Benjamin got to sleep over at Grandpa and Darla's house, along with two of Darla's grandchildren—Noah and Minnie. Noah is Benjamin's age and Minnie is Zoë's age. Alexander was just along for the ride and loved being the odd-man out and the youngest kid around because Grandpa and Darla just doted on him.

They decorated Halloween sugar cookies, they made little corn on the cob decorations out of beads, they made a turkey craft, they watched a movie, they camped in the back yard...they had a great time!

The older kids played some Dungeons and Dragons (which also happens to be the movie they watched). 

We met them at a little pumpkin party hosted by the realtor who sold Grandpa's house recently. He (the realtor) was a good friend of Darla's husband Dave (who was also in realty, though in commercial realty rather than residential realty). Anyway, they had a bunch of pumpkins scattered across their lawn for people to choose. I think we took an embarrassing number home...but Phoebe was just so excited to be at the pumpkin patch. She wanted to take all of the pumpkins home.

She had been consoling herself with this pumpkin patch idea all weekend!

"I don't get to sleep over at Grandpa-Darla's," she'd explain. "But I do get to go to the pumpkin patch. I do!" 

She was living her best life, collecting a whole pile of pumpkins for herself.

The dentist

We took everyone to the dentist over the course of the past two weeks. Here's the low down:

1. No cavities for anyone. Electric toothbrushes are amazing.
2. My dentist really wants me to get braces to fix my bite. 
3. Miriam is having a lingual frenectomy/frenotomy this week. Apparently she's been tongue-tied her whole life and...that's true. She has. We have made fun of her inability to stick out her tongue for ages. But she never had any trouble eating. And she never had any sort of speech impediment. Apparently she's just really good at compensating. But our dentist said there's lots of new research linking tongue posture to breathing issues like sleep apnea later in life (see also: the reason the dentist wants me to fix my bite). 
4. Miriam, Benjamin, and Zoë all need to visit the orthodontist as well. Miriam is ready for round two of braces, which should go a lot quicker than round one. Benjamin needs to pull down what we call his, uh, narwhal tooth. And Zoë has several teeth that haven't erupted (but which are present and need to be coaxed down somehow). She's had gaps for years it feels like. Alexander was on the cusp of needing his gums sliced to allow his front teeth through but I think the threat of that made him will his two front teeth to start making their way down after months of that big ol' gap up front.
5. Rachel laughed at everyone because she has beautiful teeth.
6. Phoebe was so sweet and cooperative (which was a real shocker given her behaviour in the past).  

Halloween Twister

After a brief talk about traditions for our family night lesson, we broke out our traditional Halloween Twister board because...we've been playing it during October for years and years and years. It's an easy tradition to do every year because we always have the supplies on hand so it costs nothing (at this point, though I think it once cost us like $5 or something), requires virtually no prep work (aside from making the kids pick up all their stuff from the floor), and everyone seems to enjoy it (though also multiple people cried about it). 

Those are the best kind of traditions, in my opinion—free, easy, and fun (the tears are optional).

Here are the youngest three playing together (though apparently that's an offensive term to Alexander because he's a middle-aged kid):

Conference crochet

Rachel spent the Saturday morning and afternoon sessions finishing up some essays while passively listening, so that she could go to the Saturday evening watch party the youth were having without worrying about whether or not she was going to complete all of her homework. She's taking a full load of classes at BYU-I this semester. 

On Sunday she sat and watched conference with the rest of the family, bringing along her (2023) temperature blanket to work on. I grabbed a needle to start working in her ends while she was crocheting. When Phoebe saw us both working on the blanket together she came up and said, "Ooooh! Tan I be in dat banetet wif you?"

And how could we say no to a request like that?

It actually isn't Handel...it's Beethoven.

 I didn't sit and listen to Music and the Spoken Word this morning, but it was on and some of the kids were watching—Miriam in particular was sure to watch it. When I walked by the room and heard the 'Hallelujah Chorus' from Beethoven's "Christ on the Mount of Olives" playing, I poked my head in and said approvingly, "This is a cool arrangement."

"Oh, it actually isn't Handel," Miriam said. "It's Beethoven."

"I...didn't even try to guess the composer, so..."

"Oh!" Miriam stammered. "I just..."

"Did you think it was Handel?"

It was clearly not Handel, but I had missed the introduction to the song, while she had not, so she knew it was Beethoven.

"No! I knew it was Beethoven. I thought you thought it was Handel."

"Weird," I said. "Because...once again...I didn't even make a guess."

We spent the rest of the day joking about liking things (and having those things not be by Handel). Miriam took those teasings like the champion she is. 

But then in the last few minutes of the last session of General Conference, it was announced that the closing song would be 'The Glory of the Lord.' I looked over at Miriam.

"Not that 'Glory to the Lord!'" she insisted.

And then President Nelson started speaking quoting from Handel's Messiah and before we knew it—yes!—the Tabernacle Choir was singing Handel's own "And the Glory of the Lord."

We all laughed for several minutes before settling down to enjoy the song.

A boy and (not) his dog

It's really too bad that I'm not a dog person.

Or a cat person, as it turns out. I don't know if it's because I'm "the mom" (they tell me that's what I am) or what, but our cat will come and meow and meow and meow at me like she's one of my own whiney children and it drives me nuts. She doesn't cuddle. She makes huge messes with her food. 

I have turned into my mom: "Animals belong outside!"

Like, I have enough trouble keeping up with my humans, thank you very much. 

And as needy as our kitty is, I imagine dogs to be much, much needier. They need walking and playing and they're all the time panting with their stinky doggy breath and shedding their doggy fur. 

But I can understand why people love them and it's really too bad I'm not a dog person because Benjamin is a dog person. Or, at least, he is a dog's person. 

I attend the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs!) and our mascot—evidently the greatest in college football history—is a...dog (again, Go Dawgs!)...specifically an English bulldog (Go Dawgs!). But because of the whole dog thing, Athens tends to be a very dog-friendly city. That's perhaps an overgeneralization, but I've seen dogs lots of places on campus and around town that I haven't seen on other university campus/towns. People are very proud of their dogs. 

Golden Shovels with Green Gables

We've been reading Anne of Green Gables and started a "golden shovel" poem together (ages ago). I had the kids finish up their poems drafts on Tuesday while I was on campus and it was lovely to see these come through in my email.

Basically, we took a line from AoGG, "The birches in the hollow turned as golden as sunshine," put those words down the righthand side of our page and then wrote into those words. It can be harder than it sounds to pull off!

Here's Benjamin's:

 I was meandering through the
countless birches
that made up the greenwood in
Tongass NationalForest. The
fir and maple hollow
that I found myself turned in turned
into a burning  torch as
the golden
flames reached the temperature as
burning sunshine.

Looking forward to some calmness

So much happened last week...month? 

With the school shooting in Winder at the beginning of the month, and then the hurricane at the end of the month, we have felt like our phones have been just about blowing up with public safety alerts. We were very lucky to have so little damage in the storm. Our friends in Tallahassee didn't suffer too badly either. We can't say the same for our friends in Augusta and especially not for our friends in Asheville (though I did finally hear back from my friend Emily (who taught English in Voronezh with me) and she is, at least, safe. Asheville has been entirely cut off from the world—no roads, no internet. Western North Carolina was hit very hard. 

So we've been feeling like we're in a perpetual state of panic and/or mourning this month. 

*****

Naturally, the kids all skipped out to play outside once the hurricane blew over. The neighbourhood kids were all so happy to have had such a long weekend. The grown ups were all stressed out about trying to catch up on the work they'd put off (while attending to hours of household maintenance and childcare duties they weren't necessarily planning on (I mean, we always plan on having our kids at home while we work because that's our norm, but our neighbours typically send their kids to school when they work at home (perfectly valid); and none of us had really set time aside in our work calendars to prep for a hurricane, you know? That's outside of our normally scheduled week). What I'm trying to say is...that we sent Phoebe outside to play under the supervision of her older siblings. 

Naturally, they eventually abandoned her because—let's face it—babies can get kind of boring. So the kids were all playing together and then Phoebe was just...exploring the yard on her own. 

A Wet Thursday but quiet Thursday

A minor tropical storm blew in shortly after we came inside yesterday, which identified a new leak in our roof, so that was very helpful.

I was scrambling to get some homework finished last night when I started to hear a *drip*drip*drip* behind me.

I was not too happy about it. We put a container up in the attic to catch the drips and hope that will be sufficient until we can get it repaired. It seems to be an issue with the flashing around a pipe-thingy. Ugh.

It's been raining steadily for well over 24 hours now, so the ground is already quite saturated with water, but Hurricane Helene hasn't even made landfall yet. She won't be here for hours, but promises to arrive with a lot of wind and rain (and probably thunder and lightning and possibly a tornado or two). 

The power went out momentarily this morning. We all stared at each other nervously (or ran around the house screaming in some cases) because we've been scrambling to do all the things we need to do with power and we weren't ready for it to be gone yet!

Rachel wrote to all of her professors to let them know she's unsure of her ability to hop online for the next little while and she was fortunately able to join an earlier discussion group so she can get that out of the way before the storm comes. 

My campus cancelled classes, so my in-person courses have pushed the syllabus back by a week. I don't know what that will mean when we have one less week to finish our final projects, but for now I'm happy to have a bit of time to breathe during midterms. 

Andrew also cancelled his class, which I think is good because...there are a lot of things you have to do during storms...like check containers catching drips in the attic and checking downspouts and things.

Miriam, Benjamin, and I went outside to check all the downspouts to make sure they were functional and found out they weren't. So we did some more gutter clearing and ditch digging and spout fiddling and we ended up soaked clear through our rain jackets, all the way to our skin! But everything seems to be running smoothly now.

The drain system we had installed in our basement seems to be doing its job well. Water is pouring out of the exit spout, but the basement itself is dry! 

So, that's where we're at...