Thankfulness and giving

Even in a good life, even in a life beautiful and full, a lot of things are hard. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that this life is indeed beautiful and full, because it doesn't always feel that way. We must keep our eyes on the author and wellspring of our peace. But here is something I am thankful for today.

Sitting in church, I try to do this delicate dance of keeping the children quiet while lifting my heart to god, being open to the words of the service while helping them to understand what they may of the songs and prayers, why we are there while keeping them from noisily kicking the pews or running around in too distracting a way. I do this mostly myself because Paul is up in the choir loft, doing his job and playing music, hopefully leading us all into heartfelt song. Sometimes Grandparents or Aunties are around to lend a hand but this morning, it was myself and Gibbie and Ezra.
To help me do all these things, I sometimes bring some special quiet toy or favorite object, certain colored pencils and snacks.
This morning, Ezra spent the first songs sitting next to our snacks, which I try to judiciously dispense so that they help carry us through the whole service. He sat next to the little bag, whispering, "me sit by apples and stuff."
He and Gibbie shared an apple, passing it back and forth taking bites during readings from the bible.
Later, during another quiet stretch, he sat again next to the snacks, with his hand on the wrapped chocolates. We got these chocolates, beautiful little chocolate bars wrapped with pictures of Australian animals, from some Australian evangelist friends of ours who visited a short while ago. Ezra just wanted to have his hand on the chocolates while he waited to get one. He said, "Hedgehog," and "Me love chocolate."
At the part of church where you can put an offering or prayer request in the plate I gave something to Gibbie to put in. I've talked to the boys about how all we have is from God, and about why we give to Him and the Church out of what He's given us, but I wasn't ready with it when the plate passed. He took our little offering and ran down the aisle to put it in the plate.
As he returned to our seat, Ezra stood up and before I could stop him, picked up the bag with our last two Australian chocolates in it, and, holding it in both hands, carefully walked all the way down the aisle to the back of the church. The people who pass the plate had passed it all through and were standing in the back with the plates, waiting for the end of a song. Ezra went up to one of them and stretched up to put his little bag on the plate. The usher smiled at him and Ezra came running back to me, beaming. "Me give to dat guy," he said, with a look of total happiness.
When the song was over, the ushers brought the plates to the front of the church, where an acolyte, or helper kid in a red robe, takes them and brings them to the priest, who says a quick prayer, offering them to God with thanks. Before he said, "All things come from you, O Lord," I saw him glance, surprised, at the colorful packages in the ziplock bag on the plate.

I was surprised that Gibbie wasn't upset that Ezra had given away our chocolates, and Ezra didn't seem to want them back.

For these children I am so thankful. May they always find the delight of giving their best treasures to our Best Friend.
All things come from you, O Lord. Of thine own have we given thee.
Pictures: none from this morning: the beautiful mushroom we found last fall at Glendalough State Park. two pictures of Ezra playing at a coffee shop; and the kids at home in our latest, but already defunct, homemade playhouse. Ezra called it his "Oma house," and it recently met its demise, being put to rest in the recycling bin this morning.

It's Getting Warmer...

Last week it didn't hurt to be outside. Being outside as a family, which was once such a regular part of our time together has been impossible for such a long time because of the extreme cold of our bleak midwinter. Last Monday, though, it was time to go back to Crosby Farm Park.Gibbie just wanted to sit in his stroller and watch the river for a long time. (A park officer had earlier looked on in wonder as I plowed our little stroller through the snow!)
Ezra was snuggly wrapped onto Mama. We wonder how many more times we'll have of an Ezra small enough to do this with.
It was a short visit, but hopefully a foretaste of much to come.

Family Coffee Date: J&S Bean Factory at Hamline and Thomas

We love our coffee shops. We used to love spending whole evenings lounging around in them, reading aloud to each other, staring deeply into eachothers' eyes, working on our own quiet projects, critiquing the art, bantering with the baristas. Ah, the happy golden days! Well, we still care about good coffee, independent ownership (we're not really herd animals, if you know what I mean), and good atmosphere.

But now child and baby-friendly bathrooms are a veritable necessity, along with toys or really fun outdoor seating. When we have the luxury; nay, the scarce but necessary time for coffee-shoppin', we look for a place Paul and I can talk (and enjoy ourselves; ixnay on the acDonald'sMay unParkFay) where the kids will have fun too. J&S Bean Factory Makes the Cut.
Things we like about J&S Hamline and Thomas: (different from their Randolph Avenue sister store, which Paul can tell you is good for high school kids in the early morning, but not so much for wee lil 'babes)
-Good toy area!
-Bathroom is closeby, with diaper changing station
-consistently good coffee, okay baked goods rockin' awesome sandwiches and soups from Acme and Xanders'
-right next to a great knitting shop (okay, only Libby cares about that, but in the knitting shop, there is a nice lil' ramp between the front and back rooms, which the kids love to crawl up and down. The shop's staff are indulgent of this wildness.)
-breastfeeding friendly environment
-real art on the walls, that actually changes every so often
-friendly, chatty baristas
-some outdoor seating
-accessible via bus: the 67 runs within two blocks and the 16 within four blocks
-accessible via bike: great bike rack (it's hidden!) and bike paths run on Minnehaha, two blocks away
Ezra loves to crawl on chairs, especially if Gib is already on them.

We're not so much into:
-not much privacy (we have a penchant for secluded nooks)
-the kids' area is a tad dim, and doesn't always have outlet covers, though outlets are covered by toys
-the kids' books are mostly lame-o, not that our kids have noticed
-If there's already someone in the play area, like, say, a parent's group or someone else's play date, it doesn't work so well, but this would be true anywhere
-there's not much not to like; we've been hitting this one a fair bit lately!
This is a "city" we built. We used every last one of these great blocks. Most of the toys at J&S are good ones, like these, that we can really play with. The key with blocks is having enough of them that you can really build something fun. J&S does. That's a score for us, as when the kids are playing happily, we can read, talk, and think deeply. When Mama and Papa are happy and get good time with each other, it rubs off on the kids and they're happier too.
Of course, we also do a fair amount of playing too. By the by, do you see that little tower Ezra started there? He can stack four blocks! Gibbs did this particular big big big one all on his own! That's his hand about to place the next story.

Battle Creek

After a quiet start to our Sunday afternoon (which included some jumping) my father-in-law Doug introduced us to a park in St. Paul called Battle Creek. The drive to get there is almost as great as the place itself. I love Shepherd Road by the Mississippi with it's water, trees, and trains. Gibbie especially loves the trains. Feel free to look at the small album of photos I took of our outing. (I like the slideshow feature.)

Libby and Gibbie played a game which I think is called "Pooh Sticks." Libby can comment on the literary reference, but I believe the game involves dropping sticks from one side of a bridge and seeing whose stick comes out the other side first. Gibbie thinks it's a lot of fun.

Purlieu Weekend

It's been a busy couple of weeks and we've got a lot of back-blogging to do! Two weeks ago we took a long weekend in Wisconsin. It started around a close family friend's graduation party and turned into a good excuse to spend a couple of days at a cabin in the woods. If I've got the history of the place right, it goes like this: Libby's dad and some friends decided to form a sort of farming co-op back in the '70's and bought some land in Dunn County Wisconsin. The whole farming aspect didn't much take off, but they built a couple of cabins and have had various projects going on the land. We've been spending time there on and off for years and love the rustic (no electricity, pluming, etc.) accommodations. Libby would come here in her childhood and thus learned to love the same landscape that I enjoyed growing up just a few miles south of here.

This was our first time bringing the boys to Purlieu (as it's called). We thought Gibbie would love it, since he so much enjoys the large wooded parks we frequent in St. Paul. Some aspects he took to right away, like the large field with a hill to run or roll down.

There was one unexpected obstacle to his nature enjoyment, however. Bugs. I guess we just have a lot fewer bugs in the city. For the first day Gibbie went around with his hands over his ears trying to block out their buzzing.
Eventually, after talking with him about it for a while, I figured out why he was so scared. He's really good at taking a concept and generalizing it. He knows that bees buzz, therefore he figured that anything that was buzzing around his head must be a bee and could hurt him. No wonder he was freaking out. He didn't completely get over the bug thing until our last day out there.

On Sunday morning we decided not to drive back into town for Church. Instead, we went down the highway just a mile or two to the Hay River Lutheran Church. I had expected this little country church to contain a handful of old people singing feebly and slowly after listening to an old pastor preach feebly and slowly. I was wrong. It was a small church, but it was full, and full of people of every age. The pastor had a wonderful conversational style of delivering a message true to Jesus' character. He also had quite an accent. Someone said he was from Colfax (another small WI town). We later learned that came from Australia before serving in Colfax! When we went downstairs after the service for coffee we met people who lived all around the Purlieu land. They knew about the land, and a little about the people who owned it. They were impressed that we knew the old farming couple who used to live next to Purlieu, in fact one of them was their niece. It was a joy to see some life in that little place, and to meet many of the friendly folks who live around the cabin.

On our way back to St. Paul we stopped for lunch at that very farm once owned by the old people I mentioned. After they moved into town for health reasons one of the Purlieu members bought their land. It's a beautiful little valley with a creek running through it.
Looks idyllic, doesn't it? What you can't see in this picture are the wood ticks. Hundreds of them. All over us. They weren't bad at the cabin, but here there was a steady crawling stream of them. When we sat down for lunch here Libby said, "Oh Paul, you've got a tick on your pants... and one on your shoulder... another on your shirt... here's one on Ezra's head..." and so on. She didn't mind it so much (that's the ex-wilderness guide in her.) It really bugged me, though, and I was already in a bad mood because the Mercedes was running funny and I was worried about making it back home. So Libby pulled out one of her tricks from camp counseling: the Tick Stick.
See that brown mass on the diaper pin? That's a stack of impaled wood ticks. They still wiggle a little like that. It's great for grossing out Junior High campers.

We did make it home in the Mercedes. It was a good trip, but I think the next one will be even better because the boys will have already gotten used to the accommodations. I forgot to mention how much Gibbie liked the "potty house"!
This last picture has no significance except that I think it's a good photo. (Check the texture on the wood and old chair.) Gibbie is being a bird in his nest on the porch of the cabin.

Monday Adventure

I'm not bloging about anything too serious today- just a photo tour of our day.We stepped out of our front door for our usual Monday morning outing. This week's adventure had an added twist caused by our recent car trouble. (Don't worry, it's nothing too serious. I just need to get around to it! I'll blog about it later.) We took the bus to Swede Hollow!
We had to transfer buses in downtown St. Paul. Gibbie's did pretty well with the waiting.
We finally made it to Swede Hollow. Much to our surprise, as well as their's, the power was out. Gibbie had a cold chocolate instead of hot, and I had a drip brew instead of Macchiato. The shop has such good natural light that, apart from the slight drink differences, we didn't miss the electricity.
Then down into Swede Hollow park we went. Libby and Gib had a great time playing by the water.
Look at the strange flowers Gibbie found. He said, "They're sticky."
Ezra needed a little snack in the woods.
He felt much better afterwords.
Here we all are. It was a difficult self portrait to take with such a squirmy family. Another freeing, relaxing day off.

Sunday Afternoon

This is Fiona (or, as Gibbie say it,"Finona"). She's Gibbie and Ezra's only cousin so far. She was a one of the benefits of our day not going according to plan. We had intended to spend today in my home town of Menomonie, WI, but the winter storm put and end to that. Instead, we spent the afternoon at Libby's parent's house.


When I told Gibbie that we were going to Oma's house, (Oma is his word for Libby's mom) he said "for my birthday?" Little did I know that he was right. She had a left-over present from last week: these great fringe pants and cowboy shirt!






Part of the beauty of being in a community of people, be it an extended family or not, is that people share responsibility. Just having someone trusted hold my baby for a while is such a relief! Here Doug is doing that for Robert and Natalie by taking Fiona for a while.



When I look back upon it, I'm delighted at how the afternoon passed without any entertainment except for each other's company. We didn't even get in a board game.If you want to read more about Fiona, look at her blog: littlemissfiona.blogspot.com

Mondays

Mondays are my day off, and they've become a very special time for our family. We usually start off at the Swede Hollow Cafe. It just goes to show how much I like coffee shops that, after working for five days in one, I want to spend the first part of our free day here.

Spending a good amount of time at a cafe takes a little more forethought than it did before our two boys. Coloring with crayons on note cards was today's activity for our two-year-old Gibbie.




Gibbie also made up his own pretending activity which consisted of lighting crayon candles with a match made out of the ripped-off top of his Crayola box. He just turned two last week, so a lot of his imaginative play is birthday themed.






The next part of our day is often spent outside and as much in nature as our urban life allows. This week, with the weather being so accommodating, we explored the Swede Hollow city park. It's an area that used to be a kind of shanty town for immigrants (Swedes being the first) and has been a city park since the 70's. As you can see, it's pretty close to being in the woods for being in the middle of St. Paul.
By the time our long nature walk is over, we're all ready for a warm bowl of Libby's home made chicken noodle soup and a good nap. All this, and it's not even quite noon. That's a good day off.