The kids did well at their track meet. It was basically perfect weather for running. Not too hot, not too cold, and no wind. Josh had to drive one of the team buses, so the boys and I met him at the meet coming straight from piano lessons. Our pastor is a classical pianist and has picked up the piano students from our church that were with our former teacher, the former church organist.

I’ve tried to explain to the kids that music is one of those things that once you learn it, it stays with you your whole life. I wish I could’ve taken piano lessons as a child. Because I was in band and learning some music that way, mom thought it was important for my sister to take the piano lessons so she could get some music education as well. She wasn’t really interested in piano then.

Ballads and hymns, I told him. That’s what I want to be able to play. I’m really not getting too attached to the idea, being as I have started things like this a few times before. We all brought either books or homework to work on while the others had their lesson in the church sanctuary. The rest of us stay in the pews. I started working on the take-home final due on the last day of class.

Yesterday I was working on a paper basically all day. Then I took a nap and read a little bit before leaving for class. We’ve had these group case studies we have to do each night during class from 9-10. None of our brains are functioning well by that time but somehow we’ve managed to get done what we need to do. Last night was the last group case study and we were all very glad.

I ended up going to sit in the van during the meet. Something about the sporting events just gets me all anxious still and its worse when I am tired and have been up more. Our friends whose marriage is ending were both there. I don’t understand why they weren’t able to work it out. I don’t mean that as a judgement, more like a quiet holding that I guess this is just another one of those things.

“Then Manoah inquired of the angel of the LORD, ‘What is your name, so that we may honor you when your word comes true?’ He replied, ‘Why do you ask my name?
It is beyond understanding.'”
~Judges 13:17-18~

The kids had a scholastic bowl competition this afternoon. It was held at camp, and is apparently something the district has been doing for over 25 years. Kids from the district can send youth group teams to participate in the Bible bowl. Each year focuses on different books of the Bible. This year the two books were Judges and Ruth. For the past month or two our pastor has been quizzing the kids and adults in the first part of Bible class.

There were three teams. Two from a church about two hours away, and one from ours, consisting of two of the boys and our pastor’s daughter. I’d told the boys they probably should try to read through Judges at some point, but I can’t blame them for not having gotten that done. When I walked into the dining hall they were halfway through the first round, our team having yet to score any points. I pulled up a chair next to the other pastor’s wife and we sat in stoic silence as our kids endured the other team answering question after question.

I was starting to think how this was just another one of those things that was a complete and total waste, another one of those family sucking, Sabbath-day violating activities that we all just need to learn how to say no to. I just don’t buy it, that going to church is the way of keeping the Sabbath, that we don’t need to have a day of rest anymore because Jesus said we didn’t have to. None of the other commandments work that way.

But the kids on the other team looked to be having a good time. They were smiling at each other and high-fiving each other, concentrating on the questions and buzzing in when they could. Our team was eliminated which meant their two teams played each other. They won first and second and were taking pictures with their medals. The grandmother of three of the other team’s boys–pastors sons–was so happy and said it was so worth making the drive up to come watch. One of the wives from our former district was there.

She spoke too of a busy weekend and life season. “I love you”, I said, and gave her a hug. “Love you too”. She walked to the lookout tower back to her family. We’re family too, but in a different way. During the questions I’d turned to the pastor’s wife next to me saying you really can’t make this kind of stuff up, that Sunday afternoon we sat submissively, humiliated by the book of Judges. The kids and coach had done a wonderful job.

Today was another full and busy day. There was a baseball double-header down closer to St. Louis. Josh drove down there for it and met my mother-in-law and the boys. I stayed here. The boys’ school was having a work day. One of the things they started this year was requiring ten volunteer hours from every school family. The alternative to the work hours is a fee which I am unsure of the amount.

We haven’t gotten any of our hours in yet, so Elianna and I both went to help this morning. I’d told her not to make any plans for Saturday morning. I miss having her around since she went to high school, so it’s nice to have these times when it’s just her and I doing something. I was expecting there to be lots of people for the work day, but there were around ten of us. It’s a busy time of year.

The first thing they has us doing was moving desks out of a classroom. The other ladies were moving chairs. I looked at the room of 150+ desks and my heart sunk a little. I really can’t lift and carry out that many desks and didn’t know how many I could. We had to find 20 good desks to keep for a Special Ed classroom they are hoping to make. The rest were being donated to a mission organization.

They collect and fix up old school supplies and then ship them out to third world countries. The men had several loads of old wooden tables to get out of the basement, up the steps, and outside into the truck. The ladies worked on the desks and chairs. I told my daughter I would sort the desks into ones to keep and others to take out. Unstacking the desks and pushing them was okay for a while.

“You good, Mom?”, she just kept picking them up and carrying them out into the hallway. When the others were done with the chairs they joined us with the desks. When they were all out of the classroom one of the retired teachers who was there helping, a petite older lady who had to have been in her 70’s, suggested we go ahead and start getting the desks upstairs and out to the truck for the men to load.

I finally had to say that I really can’t lift right now, and we found a cart where the desks coming of the elevator could be loaded onto and pulled. So I stayed at the top of the elevator and my daughter with me so that when it opened full of desks stacked one on top of the other she and I could lift the two together. Four desks fit on the cart and we took turns pulling it out and down to the truck and unloading it.

The lifting still causes this destabilization. I told my daughter though that’d it’s probably good for me to have times like this where I am doing a little more than I am used to doing. Your body needs the memories of doing something more and being okay after doing so. I still want to cry when I think about this, how it’s like this handicap I’m living with that keeps showing up. I know this is the way it has to be.

When that was over we swept the classroom floors. After that they had us put together the new Little Tykes equipment they’d gotten for the preschool. It was much less physical and done outside in the spring air. All of that added up to three and half hours for each of us, so seven hours total toward the hours that were needed. They had Subway sandwiches, chips, cookies, and water for lunch for us.

I came home and slept. Before doing that we walked over to the CGC to put the clothes in the dryer. Our dryer has been broken for the past two weeks and I haven’t had a chance to get out somewhere to pick out a new one. Before we left for the work day I’d put my son’s shirt in the washer to have it ready to wear for a prom he was going to. Dad left the games early to bring him back to get ready.

Elianna and I drove into Washington Park and he followed us. Everyone looked very nice. He was going with a local pastor’s daughter who is a part of the youth group where his friend from camp goes who is also dating another camp friend. Usually the way they do it here is that the guy gets a vest or a tie to match the color of the girl’s dress. Several of the parents were there for pictures and we took many.

I feel like lately I keep writing about what’s happening but never get around to saying what I feel about all of it. By the time I get a chance it isn’t really what I want to talk about. I think writing is actually a way of calming my feelings. I read somewhere that writing out facts works to balance out the right brain when it’s overactive. Some people say the right brain left brain stuff is a myth but I disagree.

Tonight we had a dinner auction for the high school. The kids spent the evening with Grandma and Papa and watched a Cardinals game after supper. When we’re here the kids listen to the games on the radio, so seeing them play on TV is always a treat for them. The boys are staying overnight but the big kids are back now.

People keep asking us where our son is going to college. The answer is we don’t know. He doesn’t really know what he wants to do after school. I’ve told him off and on for several years that I think he would make a great teacher and coach. He used to say he wanted to play baseball for the Cardinals. I never knew what to say when he said that.

There was a baby at the table next to us tonight at the auction. Whenever I see a baby I often mentally guess at the baby’s age. In the first year I can usually tell what age a baby is by looking at them. They were passing her around between the parents and another couple. I thought about asking if I could hold her but decided not to.

I hate when I say things here and then later when I think of it I’m like, “No, that wasn’t it.” What bothered me last night and what had kind of gotten my internal feathers all ruffled was when four different people asked me during the baseball game what we were having for supper. I actually like when they ask me this. Number one, because when this particular stereotype fulfills itself I think it is so funny. Two, it’s just an honest question about an honest need and I don’t mind that.

But I didn’t have a good answer. And so four times I had to confess my failure to have planned out any meals for the week. I didn’t know what the plan was. I didn’t know what we were having. I haven’t made it to the store this week so I didn’t even have something I could scrounge together for a decent enough meal (one of my specialties), or at least one that would fit my mental standards regarding a meal you would serve to others. We were going to have to stop by the store on the way home.

Which we did. One of the boys came in and carried the basket while we filled it with a few thigs to make spaghetti and meatballs. When we came home I told them that absolutely no one was to be getting on the computers, besides the big kids. They were to practice their piano, something we recently started again. I have feelings about the piano things but I’m not going to go into that right now. I made the spaghetti and heated up the meatballs and sauce. We saved Dad a plate.

It made me happy to come out of the kitchen and see all of the boys eating their food in the living room. That is when I said, “Boys, I’m feeling a little stressed”. “Again?”, one of them said, and the younger ones laughed because it’s one of our jokes. Sometimes it’s “Sorry, boys, I’m just a little emotional at the moment” if for some reason they see me sad and shedding a few tears. “Again?”, they say, and then we laugh about it again. Everyone was happy and enjoyed having food.

I have a rather lengthy take-home final plus three papers to write over the next several weeks. Two of them shouldn’t be too hard. The one I’m more neutral about is the 15-20 page research paper about something we found interesting over the course of our Stone-Campbell Movement class. We’re supposed to have a “compelling thesis” that makes an argument. This is the kind of stuff I feel I should know already but don’t, and don’t really have a good reason other than that I was busy.

Or just doing what I needed to do to get by. The teacher was wondrously kind to not insist on the original Chicago Manual style but is allowing us to use the APA format that we’ve been using for all of the other papers. This is what I’ve liked about basically all of the teachers we’ve had in this program, they don’t expect you to be this brainiac or the highest caliber academic prodigy–it kind of surprised me. We’re all just regular people. There’s so much freedom, and I dare say, love in that.

It really is like we’re these groupies traveling around from town to town following these athletes while they play their sports. I really do enjoy it but it just kind of baffles me that we do this as parents. They always said that to be a good parent you’re not supposed to live a child-centered life where the family revolves around the child or children. Instead, it is supposed to be the parents who set the family agenda and culture, with the children being the ones who are along for the ride.

But like most everything else, there’s the theory that sounds good, and then there’s real life. I’ve always thought that if there was a sure and certain way that gets a baby to sleep through the night, then every mom on earth would know this valuable information. But kids are different, and what works for one very well might not at all work for another. I feel like most of the time our babies were pretty good sleepers. There was only one who I remember having any trouble with, but barely.

The boy I mentioned yesterday is out for the rest of the season. I didn’t want to make that call at first, but I had thought it a possibility. He fractured his hip and is to be off it for six weeks after which they can maybe start therapy. We have this GameChanger app on our phone that allows coaches and athletes to communicate in a massive group chat. I was looking on it this morning to see if anyone had updates on how he was doing. He’d put a message around 1AM letting the coach know.

I was feeling somewhat stressed this evening once we got home. Dad had to leave the game early for an important board of education meeting. He’s been the pastoral advisor for the high school Board of Ed for probably going on five years. It was a no brainer as far as deciding whether or not it was something he should do. As an alumni of the school it is something that’s important to him. They’ve had a lot to navigate with the needing to figure out what to do about the building situation.

They’re supposed to be tearing down the old school toward the end of the summer. It’s sad because it really is a beautiful campus, and because the new parts of the school were only five or so years old as they had just added on and finished a building project. They’re also looking for several teachers and a full-time principal. But I was feeling stressed just thinking about the fullness of these days. I asked the boys if they could help me by straightening up the main upstairs rooms.

Between homework, school, and sports, the big kids aren’t really available to help around the house as much and it definitely makes a difference. I was reading this Instagram post of a mom with 8 or 9 kids who has ages spread from teens to newborn. She was talking about how she was having to adjust to not having the expectation be that her big kids are just going to be her personal helpers all of the time, especially as they’re getting older. I could definitely get that.

But in the meantime it just means we’re in another one of those seasons where there’s more than I can keep up with and there’s a lot of adjusting to being okay with okay. It’s seems like one of the entire points of motherhood was to learn that we can’t do everything perfectly or even anything perfectly. I think the sooner we get over this the happier we are, but it’s an ongoing thing to have to keep getting over. This wasn’t even about me being perfect, I was just saying things I guess.

After the track meet the boys played on the baseball field for a while. We brought along a picnic supper to eat, so the grown-ups sat on a bench and ate their sandwiches as spectators. The track kids were eating right across the street at one of the local town restaurants, which is a school tradition following the conference meet.

Out of four smaller area schools, the boys team placed first which they’ve done for several years in a row. The girls team placed a close second this year. One of the runners hurt his hip during the hurdles and couldn’t finish the race. He grabbed his hip and laid down in the grass. After wondering for a moment what we should do if anything, there were soon several of us who went out to him.

His dad plus two senior boys helped to carry him out of the track area. They got him to where he was leaning on a railing and off his hurt leg. His parents went to get his clothes and backpack as well as their cars to take him to the nearby urgent care. Another dad helped his dad get him from the railing to the car. They left for Chatham.

On Good Friday afternoon we took the taps out of the trees. It was a beautiful spring day that we used for catching up on little odd jobs. We used different trees this year–I can’t remember if I said that. Instead of the bottom of the big hill closer to the creek we stayed mostly up by the camping area. There are three bigger ones up here that we also tried last year that have really good yields.

We had our family pancake meal a couple of weeks ago. We didn’t end up boiling all the sap this year, just enough to make some syrup to use. We really do need to get the taps in sooner, like toward the end of January where the trees can run for the next six weeks. Neither of us had capacity to give much time to the process but I feel like each time we still come away having learned.

I took a good half hour nap this afternoon and it still feels like I could fall right back asleep. We have class tonight with a speaker coming to talk about substance abuse and working in an outpatient rehab facility. This has probably been my least favorite class so far, plus the topic just isn’t fun. Addictions seem to be some of the worst conditions to have ever afflicted the human race.

The grass takes on a deep green this time of year. It’s been mowed at least once now and it always smells so nice those first few days after. There is a lot of grass to mow out here and each year it seems to vary on whose job this is. It’s never just up to one person to mow it. Josh does some, the kids do some, there’s often a different volunteer each year who is around to help out with it.

After church we spent the day at my in-laws house. Before my father-in-law’s cancer diagnosis, he had just gotten all of his land arrangements finalized with his farm land. They don’t own a ton, but it is enough for him to make a living farming it himself without needing a partner or a job on the side to supplement. They’d planned to build a house on the farm. They’ve met with an architect and have plans to start on the house this spring.

The remainder of the day has been for resting at home. Uncle Glenn is next door staying in a camp room for the night. He lives in Northern Illinois now and drives a truck for a living. Uncle Mark and Aunt Cyndy were at lunch today too, along with their two daughters Christina and Clara. Josh told me later this evening that he was glad we got married and had a family. I told him I was too.

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”
~1 Corinthians 15:20~

It’s been a busier couple of days doing Holy Week things. Thursday the boys and I went Easter clothes shopping. Grandma keeps them stocked up on church clothes, church shoes, tennis shoes, school shorts, uniforms, coats, and most of their clothes. But most years I try to take them shopping for new shirts. They each picked out two and I picked out a couple for my older son.

This morning we had the Matins service. Dad had to preach so he left a little early. The baseball team had an away game in Decatur, so my son left earlier this morning to ride there with Grandma. I was scheduled to help stuff Easter eggs after the service, so my daughter and I helped with that while Dad took the boys and made it over after church for the rest of the baseball game.

My daughter and I stopped by a consignment shop to look for dresses. She was looking for one to wear to prom. She tried a few on but none were quite right, which it’s harder to find dresses in a store like that. We then went to Wal-Mart for more clothing items which took a while for us both to try on. She found what she needed and I found a couple of shirts I could wear for the spring.

Next we went to County Market to get the rest of the items for the breakfast casseroles and salads. They didn’t have strawberries, to my confusion and surprise, so I called Dad to see if there were any stores where he was at that looked like they would have strawberries there (I really didn’t want to go back to Wal-Mart). He said there was a Schnucks and he could pick some up there.

The Easter Vigil was later this evening. In the past it’s started at 7 but tonight it started at 8. Dad had to read, bring the wood, and start the fire. Before that I’d made soup for anyone who was hungry. The kids cleaned the kitchen and helped me with food things. It’s becoming a tradition to worship softly through Easter morning services. I stay in the kitchen where there are works for me there.