Life in August....

It's been nearly a whole month since I last made a peep here.

Many days I've thought wistfully of trying to get on and blog a quick update, but alas, life has rolled on and the blog, while not forgotten, has been left in the dust! I'm sorry about that. I'm trying to get back to some sort of a schedule (that will include blogging) as September comes, and I switch gears from studying to living life in some sort of "normal" way! :)

August has been so busy, sometimes stressful, but really, really good in so many ways.
The first half of the month, I tried to do nothing but absolute necessities and studying for my midwife national board exam. Most days I tried to study, but a stream of constant interruptions kept me from getting much done.

Then I took the exam. I think I've been asked about 150 times since then, "So, how did it go? How do you think you did?!" So, I'll answer that question right here, before you all start asking. I don't know the results yet. I'm hopeful that I passed, but I'm not holding my breath... yet. I will let you know when I know something. :)

The day after I took the exam, our good friend, Ellie, and her four darling babies arrived to stay with us for a month so she can have a bit of rest and relaxation. Our house has had a steady stream of additional visitors coming through every day since. Yesterday we had 13 extra little kids from three families at our house. Today, we had 8 little kids under the age of 4 here, four kids a bit older than that, and a handful of teens/young people. I walked in the door from church and four little ones ran screeching towards me and grabbed my legs as I stepped over the boiled eggs that they had smashed all over the floor. Thaddeus wiped his runny nose across my cheek and CarolAnne shrieked, "Hold CaaarooolAnne first!"

To be honest, the dinner time sounds tonight over smashed biscuits and gravy all over the table made me feel like I was living within a monkey cage rather than a house inhabited by humans. :)
But I love them an awful lot. I just have to have a few moments to think occasionally. :)

And now these darling babies hanging over my elbows while I type are becoming a bit much to allow me to continue blogging. I think I'll try to finish another time... Goodnight for now!

Garden Abundance

Purple Hull Peas

Potatoes . . . we've dug a few thousand pounds (seventeen rows) so far.
Fourteen more rows to dig. . . oh my! Storage will be interesting. . .

The girls braided onions most of the afternoon on Saturday.
Where to put all of them is now the question.

One can only eat and preserve so many cucumbers!

And cabbage . . . it shall be forever immortalized upon our minds.
After chopping over a thousand heads of it on the kitchen table,
and having buckets and jars of saurkraut fermenting in every corner and building,
and lugging big white burlap sacks of it to give away everywhere we go,
how could we ever forget?

Living Today

My dear friend Joy has an excellent post on her blog about living in the here and now, and not the imagined or hoped-for future.

"Somehow over the brief years of my pilgrimage thus far on this earth I have had my eyes more focused on the end and have had the attitude of bracing my teeth and just enduring what was happening at the moment, thinking that soon this would be over. There would be some change in my life, surely there had to be some grand change that would make everything better. And so the days have slipped by, one by one, each day forever gone. It’s sobering to think about. And yet, there isn’t anything I can do about yesterday. And my tomorrow isn’t even guaranteed..."
Read the rest over at her blog: Living Today

Love That Hurts

You cannot love without risk of pain.
In fact, love at its highest looks and
feels like a bloodied cross.
- Dr. Andrew Selle