"Leaving your Birth Place" Waxing Nostalgic...

I just read a beautiful blog post on leaving the birth place.... http://www.anktangle.com/2012/04/dear-daniel-on-leaving-your-birthplace.html?showComment=1335798097098#c4948304106715130888

With our still very recent move to a new home, and then celebrating Liam's 6th Birthday yesterday this was a very touching post for me.

 I have moved from my child's birth place on several occasions before... the first time was from Ft. Irwin, Calif.  Our beautiful Sariah was our first baby born at home.  There, we were supported by a couple of friends and we had her birth in our large laundry room on a double bed we borrowed from another dear friend Tandy (who missed our birth as she had gone 'home' to TX to be able to have her baby due the same day but born two weeks apart, with a MW at a Beautiful Birthing Center in Dallas http://birthcenter.net/).

Our sweet Hannah was born at our home at White Sands Missile Range, NM.  My dear friend Tandy was able to come (from Maryland this time) and be with us for this birth.  She was a wonderful help, along with the other friend and Midwives that we had to assist us during this birth on a bright Saturday morning as well.

I remember it being a bittersweet moment knowing that we have 'lived' with those memories of where our baby(s) was born, in the house with us that we'd reflect on as we went throughout our days.

Yesterday morning dad was talking to Liam.  He asked him if he knew where he was born... he had to 'think' about his answer for just a moment and then said, "in the Kitchen!"  and he sort of pointed his finger. Yes we agreed, but not 'this' kitchen, the kitchen in our old house... then dad asked him further, and he said in a tub!  Yes, son, you were born in a pool of warm water, to the welcoming arms of your parents and your sisters who were so excited to see you and to know 'who' you were!

I watched your birth slide show again last night and tears ran down my face at the memories of that beautiful Spring Saturday morning, surrounded by family and friends.  Their love and support for me in that moment were wonderful.

http://www.west-point.org/users/usma1989/46946/liam_birth.zip 
(this is a large file, and it takes a bit to download.  The slide show with accompanying music were put together by Kristin at http://www.whispersphotography.com/ it is about 8 minutes long. For the more squeemish, it isn't very graphic at all.  What little you see, is under water, so very distorted, and a baby's head is covering most anything anyway in the pic's).

It's a bit hard, and like I said, bittersweet to move and leave the place that was so special to us. I somehow want to take just a bit of that place with us as a memory... of course, the beautiful pictures and of course YOU are wonderful reminders of that very special day! It's fun to remember, even if it brings tears to my eyes... they are mostly tears of joy at the memories. I LOVE you son and can not imagine what my life would be like without YOU in it!

Birthdays and other days...

We have had 2 birthdays since I last Blogged...
Liam turned 4 and we went to Chuck E. Cheese! He had lots of fun, other than the LOUD singing and cheering for him, and when he refused to have anything to do with Chuck E. and of course that was when all his friends were there. The birthday helper put the Birthday Crown on his head, (several times), and he kept pulling it off, with a GET this THING OFF of ME!!!!!! attitude!

Later he played and hugged Chuck E. and had a grand time. He did enjoy playing games with his tokens. He also loved opening presents. (Who doesn't?)

One of his favorite friends this year is a little girl named Elizabeth in his pre-school class. I think he's in love... she has been very influential on him this past year. When he comes home from school we will ask him what he did at school today, and he always says, that he played with Elizabeth. She loves pony's - My little pony, and that is what she always plays so that is also what he frequently plays. For Christmas we gave his classroom some dinosaurs, so now he usually reports that he played pony's and dinosaurs. ;-)

Liam's favorite color has been GREEN for a very long time! Recently however, when you ask him he will often tell you his favorite color is pink. Can you guess WHO'S favorite color is PINK?(Elizabeth)

We had talked about Liam's cake and he had asked for months to have a GREEN birthday cake. I managed to incorporate that into the Super Hero Squad theme that we went with, since that is his favorite thing these days... I put colorful swirls inside the cake mix - mostly green until I ran out of green food color. I had worked on the cake the night before his party when he was asleep, so in the morning I asked if he wanted to see it? He looked at his cake all covered in Super Hero squad guys and everything on the green grass icing, and said, "I wanted a PINK cake"!When the Birthday Helper lit the candles, Liam refused to blow them out, and didn't WANT anyone else to blow them out either. Finally a couple of sly blows later by dad, myself and possible a kid or two... the candles were out! Then we began pulling some of hte guys off the cake in order to cut it and serve it. Liam got mad and tried to put them back ON the cake. Later... he decided that licking the icing off the guys feet was a pretty cool thing, and then he got to have his new Super hero guys... so he got right to work! In May we had Sariah's 14th Birthday and she moved up to the Mia Maid class in our Young Women's program at Church. She had asked me to make her a dress for her birthday present. I worked on it all week whenever I was home and not out doing other things. I had to add 6 inches to the patern length for the dress to fit her long legs... I worked on it saturday, late into the night so she'd have it for her birthday on Sunday. We got up on Sunday - mother's day she put on the dress and it fit... then as my luck would have it... the zipper broke. We had quite a time even getting her out of the dress! Then we had a few emotional moments.

The family went off to Church, and we came home afterward, picked up Sariah and the picnic lunch dad had put together and had a lovely lunch at the new greenway, and then the kids wanted to go see the new playground at the new elementary school... we obliged and everyone had a fun time playing on all the new playground equipment! After we went back home the kids and dad put together my mothers day dinner. They all pitched in and helped. Even Liam... We had a yummy dinner, and an over all really nice day together as a family (minus Rebekah who called me to wish me a Happy Mother's Day).

Other than that, Bill flew up to NY to pack Rebekah up and bring her home from College for the summer. We worked on the house a little bit the weekend before, and moved Liam and his Toddler bed back into our bedroom, and put the trundle bed in his room so Rebekah would have someplace to live for the summer months while she is home. the kids all have one more week of school - they would be out already but we actually had several snow days this winter so the kids have to go extra now to make up for it now. This summer we have some things going on, the big girls will be working, Sariah is taking a trip to Europe. There will also be EFY and Girls Camp, and Hannah will be going to a softball camp for a week and then a police camp for a week, through school. Marissa will continue on with karate. Liam will be getting surgery on his hip in the middle fo June, and that will make all of our lives interesting.

I'll try to do better at keeping up with all our lives and activities.

Happy Birthday to my newest teenager...

Yesterday, Sat. May 9th was Sariah's birthday. It is official now, she is a teenager. Thirteen years ago, this amazing bundle of joy that has helped me grow so much, came into our lives.

You can read her birth story if you'd like, by following this link. http://wendyrful.blogspot.com/2008/05/birth-story.html

Sariah is growing into a beautiful young woman, inside and out. It is a joy to see the person she is becoming. She has grown so much. She has overcome a lot to be able to stand in front of others, and lead things she is asked to do in Young Women's.

She has been reaching out and trying new things this past year.

She attended a Volley Ball Camp during spring break, at UAH. She has also been on a soccer team this spring. She hasn't played as much as she might otherwise have, due to swine flu scares, and closing of schools and public parks, etc... and then there has been so much rain, that even on the days when it was not raining, the fields have been so wet, that she was unable to play... I have been proud of her for stretching herself outside of her comfort zone.

She is a very compassionate person. Particularly when it comes to young children, and to others in need. She was always willing to help with the younger Primary Children and even today, a year later, felt a little sad that she wasn't able to go up and help the young primary children when they went up to sing in Sacrament meeting. She just spent the past several days helping out a new mother with her children, and was even willing to forgo a birthday party/time for herself to help another. (So now we are trying to figure out when we can have her birthday party...) :-)

She has grown physically as well over the past year. Not that she hasn't always been tall. As a baby, she was in the 5% in weight, and 95% in Height. They were always so worried about her, and wanted me to force feed her. It was a long first year! Even then, I said, she was just going to be tall... well, I was correct. She is 5 ft. 7 now, and only her dad is taller at our house. Obviously her dad is tall, but my side of the family was tall as well. My mother was 5 ft. 9 in tall, and her family was tall. My dad himself wasn't all that tall at 5 ft. 10 in., but his dad and several of his brothers were over 6 ft. his mother however, was a somewhat short person. I don't know how tall, but even as a kid I didn't feel like she was very tall. I think I got my height, or lack thereof, from her. :-)

Today being Mother's Day, also give me a chance to think back and remember her birth, just before the day that celebrates mothers. Sariah actually attended Sacrament mtg. as a new 2 day old baby girl, so that we could be there to hear the primary children sing.

Happy Birthday Sariah! Keep learning and growing in the Gospel. You have a wonderful spirit, if you will only continue to listen and learn. We love you!

Smile... :-)

Finally, Sariah got braces! She has wanted them for some time, but we already had two children in braces, so we made her wait a little while. To be fair... the Orthodontist really wanted her to loose all her baby teeth first before he put her in braces, and she did just loose her last molar recently.

Sariah, along with being tall and thin... has a very narrow mouth and jaw. She has a lot of crowding. As a matter of fact along with that she happens to have very small teeth too. On a couple of them, the bracket almost takes up the whole tooth area. I am curious to see how much different her smile looks when she is all finished with the braces. She had a hard time trying to decide on what color rubber bands she wanted on the front ones. She had it narrowed down, and then had Liam pick. She has a deep purple and an azure blue, alternating. By the end of the night her mouth sure was sore. We'd been givng her tylenol and advil alternating throughout the day. We even bought some more at the store but didn't get it out of the shopping bag for her when I dropped them off for Youth. Her sister said she had something... but she only ended up having one tylenol. It didnt do a lot for the pain/ternderness.After arriving home from Young Women's (Church) Tonight, her Young Women leader dropped by with a nice cold Milkshake. That was so sweet of her! Thank you Sister D!!! Sariah sure thinks a lot of you and just loves spending time and cooking with you! O.K. so... Liam didn't get braces on his teeth, although he was pretty good most of the time whl we sat there waiting for Sariah to get her braces on. As I was taking a pic of Sariah, he stood up and smiled so cute... he kept that hat on most of the time he wore the jacket today. He was pretty cute! If I do say so myself. ;-)

Not that dad didnt' know she ws getting braces, but he won't see them until tomorrow night after he gets back home from TX.

Can't think of an all inclusive blog post title...

This past week the girls worked on thier Young Women in Excellence projects before Wed. Night. Sariah put together a poster to tell about her summer school that she did this summer. Amanda decided to make a dress. Before School started and we were school shopping, we bought patterns adn fabric to make some dresses, and skirts, and cute things. Well, the sewing machine was causing me fits, so I finally took it in and it was of course, FINE... so I was able to help sew something for Sariah, and before I could get to another thing it was messing up again. It's me and tension. So when Amanda announced what she wanted her YW in E project to be I cringed, and warned her it might not work. I put it off (o.k. life was busy, as usual, so it got put off), and on Sat. she started working on it. She did a great job, the machine worked just fine for everything she needed, and she was able to wear the dress that night (wed). Amanda did most all of it on her own. I did put the zipper in (it's been a long time since I put in a zipper, and it was hard enough to get it figured out, without having to try to 'teach' her how to do it), we were in a time crunch at the end of Wed afternoon! I need to pull it out and redo it for her to get it fitted a bit better (the dress is a bit loose right now). She looked very cute. Sariah helped her get her poster finished.
I told Rebekah she should put a poster together of all the hard work she has put in on applying for colleges and the acceptance letters she has started receiving. She did use that as one of her Personal Progress goals, and has put in many hours... she applied to 7 colleges/universities. She has received 4 acceptance letters so far, and has been offered scholarships from two of them so far. Yay!!! I'm very proud of her! It looks like she will probably be heading north (she is going to freeze her buns off!!!)
She didn't feel very good and ended up staying home (she did keep Liam, and run the little girls to Activity Day's and pick them up again, since I was at YW in Excellence). She had gone to the Dr. that day finally, (I hadn't realized how bad she'd been feeling - she'd had a fever off and on for several days, and just had no energy, and appearantly her back hurt but she hadn't mentioned that one to me...). He did blood and urine tests and called us later in the afternoon - she has a kidney infection. YUCK!
Bill had a quick trip to Houston on Wed, so he missed the YW in Excellence night. :-( He got back late on Thursday night. Not too bad, other than he's been gone for part or all of the past three weeks. It's been a busy couple of months of traveling...
Today Bill thought it might be nice to head up to Monte Sano Mountain to take in some of the fall beauty... we didn't get up there till a bit late, so it was a bit chilly, adn I think we missed most of the fall colors, most of the vibrant reds and oranges are gone already... or perhaps we were early??? but I think a lot of the leaves had already turned to yellow and brown and fallen off the trees. We had fun anyway. We took a few friends along with us, and they all seemed to have a good time. The Teeter Totters were a big hit and we all spent quite a bit of time on them. The kids were just cracking up as they sent each other up and down... It was fun. I took a bunch of pic's. I'll have to try to get to them later - the camera got left in the van I think, and it's nearly midnight and I'm not going outside! Then I took Sariah, Amanda and Hannah with me dad took everyone else home. We stopped and got Hannah a pair of tennis shoes she'd been wanting/needing, and Sariah a new hair cut. She only got it cut, not styled, so by the time we got home it had dried and was not 'cute' anymore, and so she was a bit frustrated. Amanda spent some time with her with the flat iron, straightening it out. It isn't exactly like the picture in the book, so she feels a bit sad. I think it will take a little bit for her to get used to it and learn how to fix it like she wants is all. It is quite a drastic change, so it's going to be fine, and she'll get used to it soon. I think it is cute.
Well, Liam is starting to get tired (sleeping late in the car ride does not help us get to sleep at night!), so I'm going to go see if I can get him to bed. I'm thankful for my little night owl... I jsut wish he slept a bit better.

Cider House Rules (picture heavy)

Well, before we could leave for the city, Sariah wanted to go back by the farm. Randy was going to be making cider, and we wanted to watch, and we wanted another donut for the road...

First the apples are gathered, then dumped (a variety of around 5 different kinds of apples), into a machine that washes then and removes most of the leaves. Then it gets dumped down onto a convery belt type thing (that is mostly original, and quite old), and the apples are sprayed off one more time and then transported up to the third floor, where they get dropped into a machine that basically pulverizes them. Then R pulls a lever and the apple mush drops down onto the 'car', that has been prepared with a layer of a wooden pallet, then a piece of special fabric, that catches the apple mash. Then, they spread it all out and fold the fabric up around all the sides, lay on another wodden pallet, and lay out another fabric piece, and pull the lever again, so that more apple mash comes down the chute, and they do this layer after layer, until they have about 14 layers. As each new layer is added, it gets heavier and heavier, and the juice begine poouring out the bottom of the 'car' which is covered in a plastic and the juice goes down a tube and into a funnel and pours downstiars to another level, and is poured into a screen, to filter it more finely, then it pours into a very large wooden barrel, then it travels through tubes down into a smaller wooden barrel (Sariah helped clean and wash it out in preparation for the fresh cider to be made). Then the cider is run through a UV ray machine that kills any possible bacteria that migh be left, and heats it. Then the cider is run through another series of hoses to a very large cooling machine, where it is pulled into another barrel and is then gravity fed into a bottling tub. The bottles are fitted onto one of 5 nozzles, and filled. Then the lids are fitted on the bottles, and the labels placed on the jugs.

After the apple mash on the car is high enough - the 'car' is pushed down to the press. The press has a hydrolic lift that puts up to 2,000 lbs of pressure or more on the stack of pallets and apple mash, forcing the cider to pour don through the funnel into the large wooden barrel downstairs.

After about 30 minutes or so... the hydraulic press is turned off, and the 'car' is pushed out the other side of the press and the 'blankets' of left over apple mash that is now nearly dry - as the juice has all been pressed out - are undone and the leftovers lifted off (in a large flat brick of apple peels, seeds, etc) and folded up and then thrown out into the woods, where it is basically mulch, adn will go back into the ground. (sometimes hunters will come gather some of it and place it to get the deer interested and come eat it so they can get their venison).

Once we got over to the farm, Sariah didn't want to leave. She got to help with making the cider.

She also helped Kristamarie put out pumpkins in the pumpkin patch. Then we went over to the farm store, and Tricia's treat shop, and Sariah got to help make some treats, (chocolate dipped pretzels) and stock and organize shelves and then Tricia taught her how to run the register, and she spent most of the rest of the afternoon running back and forth between shops ringing up customers. She was having a blast, and it helped make her even more determined to go back next year on fall break and work the harvest at the farm. I even helped wait on a few customers and helped make and bag some carmel apples.

Then, we went back to the Cider Mill. We helped bottle and label and stack the bottles of Cider in the baskets and then took them to the cold storage room, and clean up the cider tanks, etc. I think Randy said they made a total of nearly 900 gallons of Cider that day. They do that weekly durring the fall. Amazing!

I had no idea what all went into running a farm... I can't believe that after living with R and B for a year and a half - through two fall harvest seasons, I had so little knowlege of what all they did. Granted the farm is bigger than it used to be. The farm store sells more items, they have a gift shop as well now, and then there is Tricia's Treats. That started with Tricia making several batches of homemade cider donuts in the morning, and she would be mobbed before she got them out to the shop. They have gotten bigger and bigger each year. They straightened out an old barn, and it became Tricia's Treats downstairs, and upstairs are offices. Then this past year they built onto the barn, added a storage basement, and a whole new kitchen area. There are windows so that people can watch as they make fresh cider donuts with a cool donut making machine. They also bake pies and muffins, brownies, cookies and other yummy treats. They sell it, and hot or cold fresh pressed apple cider from the farm. (I am sure I gained some weight, eating donuts and drinking cider).

After a full day - working on the farm, Sariah got to drive us around the orchards and the Christmas trees in one of the Golf Carts they use to get around the farm quickly. We took some more pic's and picked some more apples. Then we went back to the house, ate Pizza, then got on our way across the river over the Tappan Zee Bridge to Nyack, where I lived for a year as a nanny to visit with B and L and their daughter (my Amanda's Name sake), Amanda.

There is so much more to tell, so I'll do it in installments, and add pics as I go along. I may tke a few days just so people can read it, and I can take the time to write and post pic's of our adventures.