Celebrations!

First, the livingroom is finished! We are quite pleased with the way it turned out. James is getting quite skilled at mudding the walls to get them smooth, and I am happy with the way the painting went. The last of the teal trim, inherited when the house was purchased years ago, has now been covered. We both thought Miriam would just walk through the room on her way in, but she surprised us in her delight- mostly just to have the furniture back. At the moment, the only piece on the walls is our marriage certificate above the mantel. We plan to finally frame and hang the family portrait we had taken over a year ago. We're moving very slowly to put things into the room, since we really like the uncluttered, minimalist feel it has now. Okay, so the colors aren't minimalist, but it's uncluttered!

Second, Liza (with her mother's help) has completed her application to attend Brigham Young University next fall. Let me tell you, the international aspects of this project did make it much more complicated. One challenge-her high school guidance counselor was out of school for over two weeks with a family emergency so she couldn't get the recommendation letter sent, and the office held the transcript to send both pieces together-logical. The biggest challenge we had was that BYU, being a church school, requires an ecclesiastical endorsement from the leader of her local congregation. The problem there was that Liza's membership records were in transit for months, so neither the bishop here nor her bishop there "had" her record for close to two months (pending translation, maybe???). Her bishop in Hungary was facing a challenge with the language barrier, and didn't want to do the interview until he had her records in his congregation. Then the interview itself required a translator. And then Liza had to go in to Budapest for the second interview. And by this time, it was too late to trust the mail to get it to Utah before the deadline. FedEx maybe? Not available in their small city. Just fax it, right? Have you ever tried to find a fax machine in a country where you don't speak the language? Then she found someone who tried to fax it for her, but the fax wouldn't go through (because 300 other faxes were trying to come in the same day, maybe?). So they tried emailing it to her dad so he could try, but that didn't go through either. The zip file they sent to me this morning kept shutting down my programs when I tried to open it. So a second email came with unzipped pictures, but I couldn't get them copied into a document to fax. A call to the Admissions office revealed that they could accept them via email- which I already had in hand, and the wonderfully helpful young lady who took my call even watched for my email, and sent a reply when it got there. Thanks, Andrea! Success!- with 35+ hours to spare.

Lesson learned: If either of the twins decide to go overseas prior to completing their college applications, they will have their test scores sent to BYU, Univ. of Maryland, and any other schools they are considering AND they will complete their ecclesiastical endorsement for BYU before they leave! (Love you, Liza!)

Third: Samuel appears to have pulled off another marking period of straight A's. He's certainly determined to earn that laptop! We had a bit of drama yesterday-first, elation when he showed off the midterm with the grade high enough to preserve his precarious A in Geometry (precarious after he "blew off" a quiz-learned that lesson pretty quickly), and then meltdown when he realized he forgot to turn in his band practice sheet-thereby placing his A in band in jeopardy. An email to his teacher revealed that his grade otherwise was high enough that he squeaked an A even without that, but the teacher wanted to see the practice sheet anyway. Impressive, son! Several lessons learned and strategies created to prevent a repeat of this experience. We're quite proud of Samuel's determination and efforts.

Fourth: We received word Saturday that Miriam's Christmas orphan from AHOPE , an orphanage in Ethiopia for children who are HIV+, is being adopted, and will be coming to the US. Miriam now has a new child sponsored in her name. It is such a pleasure to be able to make our small difference in these children's lives.

Fifth: Tori has a new job, doing clerical work for a construction and home improvement firm in Baltimore. It could be closer to home, but she's thrilled to be looking forward to reliable income, and they're working around her Tuesday evening class schedule. At this point she plans to continue with the waitressing on her days off from the other job. She's looking forward to visiting Liza in Hungary after the semester ends.

Final harvest of the 2006 gardening season-again

Really, it's the last harvest. I'm sure this time. . .maybe. We did pull up the remaining mustard greens, and James made some bitter greens. We had the last of the tender baby kale leaves in our dinner salad last night. The rest of the plants are now buried under the sheet mulch. (I did realize that a few greens are still growing out in the front bulb bed- if they survived the freeze.)

We finally have winter here. A bit of water left in one of the hoses after watering in the sheet mulch last night dripped out and froze. (Thought I'd done better than that when I drained it.) The pond had an inch thick layer of ice on it when I checked mid-afternoon today. Not enough to support weight, but enough to complicate the next stage of sheet mulching.

I'm glad we got so much done over the weekend. With the weather getting cold, it's been less enjoyable preparing the beds. James had to break the ice on the pond so I could soak the boxes to lay out on the big bed on the side of the house (between two layers of manure that he spread out). The cardboard layer serves as a weed barrier while the other layers are breaking down into lovely rich soil.

We've more than doubled our garden space this year. And have plenty of seeds to fill it up! I'll be starting artichokes and parsley this week. I have to start the artichokes early enough to get them outside while it's still cool- to trick them into thinking they've had a winter so they'll flower their first year. Otherwise, they won't bear flowers until the second year, and that's the part we eat. With luck, mild winters, and some loving care, I may be able to keep them bearing for three or four years. We'll see.

Other than that, what's going on? Well, we met with a group of Friends from Quaker meeting with a concern for the environment. I realized that I do care about political activism, and I'm looking at getting more involved in writing letters and maybe testifying on some bills. I also realized that I prefer other approaches to change-like figuring out how to live so that we minimize our negative impact on the earth and sharing that with others. The political (top-down legislation) action is a supplement to that, rather than the focus with personal action as a supplement.

That's two loads of s***!

James and I took a break from working on the livingroom walls to enjoy this lovely unseasonal weather. We spent the afternoon working in our t-shirts (no jackets!), moving manure, shovelling sh**, distributing dung, (laying out garden beds) and coming up with different ways to describe what we were doing.

Sheet-mulching is a project that's been on our list since at least August, but we've been limited by not having a pick-up truck to collect the nitrogen rich component (manure) we needed. We used the truck belonging to the parents of one of Liza's friends to move their manure pile, but don't know them well enough to ask to borrow it to retrieve fertilizer from someone else's barn. Since our friends moved to Texas and took their truck with them (the gall!), everyone else we know with a truck is a young adult male with concerns about the damage we might do to his precious vehicle. . .not terribly conducive to the project.

Even Google wasn't much use trying to locate someone who'd bring us several cubic yards for a reasonable delivery fee, but I persisted in asking gardeners, and finally found a link to someone who would deliver!

Two loads were delivered today. Most of the first went to covering the soon-to-be asparagus bed- a very high priority since asparagus is a perennial crop, and James had already ordered 30 crowns to be delivered as soon as we can plant them here. Got to have their bed ready when they get here! The second load wasn't spread as thickly, so we got the base layers for sheet mulching the beds inside the three frames James built earlier and last season's bean beds, scattered some over herb hill, and the big bed in the back-now if we can just figure out what we're going to plant there!

The seeds are here, and I'll be starting some of the early vegetables as soon as I finish painting the living room.

Somehow, the twins haven't seemed interested in either of these projects. What's up with that? They have had fun playing tennis together. Tennis is Samuel's new sport, and he begs people to play with him whenever the weather is nice enough- and he has a much more liberal definition of "nice enough" than I do! Miriam seems to be joining in on this interest, but wants her own racket. She's borrowing mine, but says the grip doesn't fit.

Funny Liza story I forgot to include last time: Liza's Hungarian fluency is improving, but people still want to use english much of the time. So, she was talking about something, and the word "ameliorate" came up. Telling me about it, she says even her bright friends rarely use it, and that's the only word she's ever stumped her dad with, so she can't figure out why she thought she could use it with non-native speakers, but she tried. Quite a vocabulary she has developed over the years! (We miss you, Liza! I had to remind James to buy an adverb last night! "-ly") A bit of perspective, such strange vocabulary may actually appear in second language situations, because an unusual word in english, for example, may be the best translation for a common word in the primary language, but not in this case. This is just a Liza-ism.

Winter???

This is really some wacky weather we're having! Short sleeves in January two weekends in a row, with a day or two of cold in between. I'm wishing I'd gotten peas and such in the ground last August. We'd have had fresh peas for Christmas, New Years, and so forth. We did actually have a salad with greens from the garden last week. With no protection whatsoever. Next winter we'll be using hoop houses, but I can't hope for two mild winters in a row.

What are the kids up to?
Tori's between semesters, having made Dean's List last semester. You go, Girl! She's job hunting, since her current waitressing job at J Paul's, in downtown Baltimore, is providing neither sufficient income nor activity. She loves the place she's living, and has a wonderful circle of friends. It's just that job thing, and figuring out where her passion lies to direct her studies for a few years. On the horizon-a trip to visit her "little" sister in Hungary at the end of the semester. (That's a real motivator for finding a new job.)

Liza's doing the "Sound of Music" thing hiking the hills of Austria this weekend. It was supposed to be a ski trip, but they're having a mild winter also. Unfortunately for our warmth-loving kid, warm there means no scarf needed, but don't leave home without the down-filled, calf-length parka. Language skills are coming along, and she actually got text books for school this month! With her interest in the Foreign Service, and after having worked so hard to get the Hungarian language, Liza's applying to study at BYU next year. With all those missionaries, BYU has one of the largest groups of Hungarian speakers of any US university, and the Kennedy Center is a great place to study International Relations.

Kyle has lettered in marching band for his second year. That required memorizing all the music, and perfect attendance for the whole season. Good for you, Kyle! Academics still aren't high on his list of priorities, but he's enjoying the class they're doing at school to prepare for next summer's trip to Italy.

Samuel and Miriam just finished science projects- done separately, of course. And with their individual approaches. Samuel was intense whenever he worked on it. Miriam seemed to regard it more as another social opportunity.

Samuel is wrapping up the loose ends of the last few merit badges he needs to complete to make Eagle Scout. The project has been declared an April through June endeavor, with paperwork to be completed this summer. You're all invited to his Court of Honor next fall, sometime. He'll be heading to Conservation Camp at the specialty camp week at our local BSA camp at the end of July, and will wrap up most of the merit badges he needs for his Hornaday medal at that point. Then he'll have another 3-4 projects to finish for that, but no rush. He has until his 18th birthday, and is planning to do one a summer until then.
Marching band lost out to kung fu for his freshman year of high school. Testing for that is a 6-12 month process, and marching band requires so much time that he'd have a hard time doing both. He'll be trying out for jazz band, and taking classes.

Miriam considered continuing her sisters' tradition of color guard in the BHS marching band, but is leaning more toward theater. We'll see where she goes. Right now, approaching 14, she mostly goes to her room to read! I'd be concerned, but both of the older girls did that also, and I sure like the way they're turning out. So for now all I have to worry about is where she hid the book I was looking to read?!?

James is in the midst of his part of the living room remodeling project. Since he doesn't like the feel of paint on his hands (Thanks, Mom!), I get to do that after he finishes the sanding and mudding piece of the project. Then he wraps up with replacing all the electical boxes-switches and outlets- in the room. We're getting it down to a routine. The hardest part for both of us seems to be the getting started. Moving furniture, figuring out where to store things for the time it takes to work on the room, and dreading the disorder. Once we get going, it gets to looking better so quickly that we enjoy the work.