Slumber Party!

This has become a Friday night ritual in our family, a sabbath ritual. Our faithful blog readers know that Friday night is when we celebrate the sabbath as a family, when we stop other work and take time to intentionally reconnect as a family and focus on the bigger things in life. Since it is the one night that Mitch doesn't stay up late working on the computer getting schoolwork done with the light on in the living room, it has become the one night that the girls are allowed to sleep out in the living room. Slumber Party! It always takes a different form. Sometimes they want to sleep in their sleeping bags, sometimes in their tent, sometimes the whole family is out here, sometimes just the two older girls. This Friday night they wanted to sleep on the couch together and fell asleep to the sound of their Mommy and Daddy's voices talking as we sat on the other couch drinking chai, enjoying each other's company and watching our daughters drift off to sleep.

The Show

'The Show' had no name and I don't remember the plot, only plenty of laughter on the part of both the audience and the actors, so in the future it will only be referred to as 'The Show'. My favorite part of The Show was when granny first appeared and Ruthie's chin dropped, her mouth hung open and her eyes stared big and round, unmoving, for quite a long time. Until I grinned at her. Then she moved, laughed, wiggled, walked over to me and wanted up immediately so she could grab this granny's spectacles and hat with both hands all at the same time and just eat them up.

The Show:

The Dance, part of said Show by the granny, red pajama clad baby, rip-scrunch eating giraffe and pink dog:

More of The Dance (do you know how hard it is to dance in size 16 men's hiking boots?):

The Dramatic Moment:

The end of The Show involved a puppet show:

The Audience:

I think The Audience fell asleep sometime during the puppet show, maybe The Audience hasn't been getting enough sleep lately(but don't worry, we had The Audience rolling in the aisles in laughter for most of The Show, which was good to see)


After The Show there was Apple Pie for dessert:
And pie crust chocolate chip cookies that the girls made:

Mmm Mmm Mmm.

And finally, a snuggly cozy time reading with Daddy'O and Raggedy Anne Doll on the couch before bed:

Family Sabbath

We finally had a much needed break as a family in the last day. Whew! That means that the last two weeks are over and we made it through. Mitch had an intense work load, a big midterm project due (he put in 70 hours last week on one of 5 classes, I don't even know how many hours this week). When one person in a family feels that much stress, it effects the whole family. We were busy surviving, not doing extra things like blogging. But we are all feeling more whole and connected again as a family now after a relaxing day and a half. Last night we taught the girls how to play charades (a modified version) and they had a blast acting out what they were supposed to be without any words and trying to guess what the actor was. They caught on quick how to play! It was good to laugh as a family and spend quality time together. Then we had a slumber party in the living room. We turned all the lights out and Mitch and I told stories by candlelight and then we all snuggled off to sleep. Today was another relaxing day, Mitch's first full day off in a while. We took a good family walk along the creek and played on the shore of the pond upstream from us a ways. Good times. Enjoy the following blog posts, pictures from the last two weeks that I'm finally finding the time to post.

Music and Dancing

Yay for Friday night music and dancing at the Clement house! I love it when Mitch gets out his guitar. I've never seen Ruthie crawl as fast as she did when Mitch started to play and she wanted to get over there and check out where that music was coming from. She loved it. Josie had her banjo out and Anna had her guitar, they both had their own picks (Anna's was dark purple), and they played right along with Mitch. I like it. Then they had fun zipping each other inside of the soft-sided guitar case.

Having Fun With Nona and Grandpa

-Nona made the girls their own Didgeridoo and we gave a family concert. Ruthie even played the shaker but she was done by the time Nona snapped this picture.

-A beautiful morning hike that got cut short when Anna fell and cut her knee pretty good. She was a real trooper about it, though.- A trip to the County Fair where they saw lots of horses and goats and got to drink lemonade. Anna said "They were riding the horses, Mommy! And we got to have lemonade, real lemonade! It even had ice in it and a real lemon!"

-Bath time with Nona

-Everybody with their mug of good Carolines Coffee in the evening (As Josie said, hers is actually just water) and Grandpa's reading a book in Spanish to Josie, who is so proud that she is able to repeat the words.

-Grandpa waiting for the bus:
-Here came the bus, but it was a little full for Grandpa to get on:

- And Mommy went on a retreat all day. Little Ruthie came with me, and it was a relaxing, meditative, refreshing and much needed retreat. Lots of real quiet time with God.

Biking Sisters

I still haven't been able to figure out why my girls like to bike as much as they do. It's not like they've been indoctrinated at a young age or anything. Their parents don't like to ride that much, and I can't imagine they would still like the motion of the bike having felt it in the womb as much as they did. But for whatever reason, yesterday Josie was begging for a ride in the bike cart. Ruthie is still too young to bike so I couldn't pull Josie around since Ruthie and I are attached at the hip these days. But Anna came to the rescue and offered to give Josie a ride. Here's some photos and a video of them riding around the courtyard.

Then a little later on they had all their 'dirt toys' out and were cooking. I couldn't hear what they were making and I didn't want to interrupt their imaginations by going any closer. I just took the picture on the sly. It's not the same if they know someone's watching. But they played together making different culinary concoctions for quite a while in their 'kitchen'.

This weekend promises to be full of gardening for the Clement family. We're getting our tomatoes and bell peppers in the ground after double digging that part of the garden this morning. I even got to do some double digging! Ruthie was awake and content with Mitch for a while. And then we'll be planting our 'Three Sisters' garden. That's what we've named our second garden plot. The three sisters are (besides our three little ones) corn, beans and squash, which grow quite happily together and benefit/complement each other in a lot of ways. In the middle of that plot we have also planted a Sunflower House-Sunflowers will grow up intertwined with Morning Glory flowers to form the walls and ceiling of the girls' playhouse. We'll have to share pictures as it grows. We're quite excited to see how that one comes out. Right now I finally have three little ones asleep, Mitch is working out in the garden some more, and I'm going to work on the pants I am trying to sew for myself. Sabbath peace to you!

Saturday Morning, Pancake Morning!

On Saturday mornings we make yummy sourdough pancakes for breakfast. Mmm, mmm, good! The girls wanted yogurt on theirs this morning. You can't beat that! I couldn't believe how much Josie ate, four plate fulls of silver dollar pancakes! She's a growing girl.

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After breakfast we put on our rain jackets and headed down to the Farmer's Market, another sabbath ritual for us until our own garden starts producing a little bit more. It was fun to see all the brave souls that came out it this 39 degree rain to stock up on their week's veggies. Among other things I got some soap handmade by a friend that I know through our midwife, Karen Robinson. Coming home Anna was on her bike, Ruthie was asleep in the sling and Josie was in the ergo giving her Daddy'O snuggles. Following the creek path means coming home is slightly downhill the whole way and Anna took off for home as fast as she could peddle, a big grin on her face. She made her own sunshine around her on this gray day with her bright pink bike helmet, bright blue rain jacket and bright green rain boots. Mitch, in his bright yellow rain jacket, had to run to keep up, a bouncing, laughing Josie on his back. Quiet settled around me as I watched them disappear around the bend in the path. A rare moment in time when I could actually hear my own thoughts rolling around in my head.

Let's Party!

Wow, what a weekend we have had. Friday night and all day Saturday is our Sabbath, our family day, the day that we don't do the things we normally consider to be our work. Mitch doesn't do any school work, I let the dishes pile up (although we went into the sabbath with a pile of dirty dishes:), don't tell!) and we do the things that we find restful and enjoyable as a family. Sometimes what we find enjoyable is not always restful and we end our Sabbath more tired than we went into it, but at least we usually come out the other end feeling more connected as a family again and feeling like we got a break from the normal stressers of our daily life.
The girls got a new Djembe drum yesterday so our Friday evening was spent making music and dancing. The Djembe is what they wanted to get with the money that various people that love them had given them for Christmas and birthdays recently. They wanted this particular one because you can wear it around your neck and play while you dance or march. I can't imagine why my little girls would want a drum that they can dance with!? Mitch even pulled out his guitar last night! It has been good to see Mitch feeling not as exhausted and overwhelmed at this point in his semester as he has in every other semester. That has been one of our biggest blessing lately. Enjoy this little video from our evening!




Anna playing the Djembe:



After such a fun evening we decided to continue the fun and ended up going to the zoo today. It was enjoyable by all (I think Ruthie enjoyed her nap). It was Josie's first time to the zoo since she was old enough not to be sleeping through it all and I think the immensity of some of the animals was a new thing for her creative mind. Anna would have stayed all day if she didn't have a little sister who was ready for a nap by 1 pm.

What post would be complete without something about little Ruthie? Here's a little video of her laughing at her crazy mama. I love how she laughs with her whole body and how she laughs in anticipation of what is coming.

Here's a fun picture of Anna cutting mushrooms helping me make dinner the other night. She was so proud!

This is the end of our Sabbath, Daddy and Anna crashed out on the couch: