Category Archives: family

We had the kind of afternoon today that you always wish for as a mother. Perfect, sunny weather, a blanket spread in the backyard. lunch, and three happy boys all playing, eating and laughing together. We needed that, badly.

We had one other incident last week that had me laughing in the emergency room last Thursday night at around one in the morning. The laughing? Because I honestly thought that nothing else could go wrong or be hard, that after dropping a boatload of money on Knittykid’s teeth and having to put him under general anesthesia, losing my father-in-law, having the Skeptic gone all the time either at the farm with his mom or at work, dealing with two constantly sick little ones and one very angry six year old, losing Gracie…what else could possibly go wrong? (And that list is just the big stuff. )

Little Man’s broken elbow*, that’s what. And when the doctor told me we would need to stay the night and he would most likely need to go into surgery to have pins put in his elbow in the morning, all I could do was sit there and laugh at the ridiculousness of life sometimes. That kind of tired, hurting laugh, the kind that comes up because you just can’t cry about anything anymore. So you sit there in the ER, watching Animal Planet with your son (who thinks it’s all very cool) and you just laugh, while you worry about surgery and if there is enough pumped milk stashed in the freezer for Spinner and wonder how in the heck you’ll pay for it all.

So the sun and the blanket and the lunch outside today were so good. Good in a way that reminded me we will be alright, that the sun and the warmth does come back and so do the smiles and laughter. Because when you eat soup on a blanket in your sunny backyard, watching your baby try to stand up, your three year old try to hit a baseball and your six year old make fairy food out of dandelions, all is somehow right with the world again.

*Unfortunately, it’s not a very exciting story. He was running around the backyard and he tripped on his pants and landed funny. I thought of making up some funny stories we could tell people, like he was climbing on the roof of our house and tried to sky dive into the maple tree, but realized he might actually try it so I decided not to bring it up.

We lost my father-in-law last week.

He had been battling cancer for a very, very long time. Nearly five years in fact, years longer than anyone ever expected him to do so. He was living with his cancer for so long that we all expected him to just keep on going. But last Christmas he was tired, very tired and the cancer was spreading. We started to think that there might be an end to it soon but not this soon. We thought there was still time for maple syrup making, taking the boys out for walks in the fields, maybe some making of this and some fixing of that. We have been caught off guard by his death and the last week has been so, so hard.

My father-in-law was the ultimate, and I do mean ultimate DIYer. Although I chuckle at that as I write it because he would probably give me a bit of a scowl or a smirk at that one and say, “DIYer? Hmfp…” But he was, and I was endlessly impressed with his ability to make and fix anything. I was saying to the Skeptic that he makes the DIYer’s on Make look like kindergartners (no offense, Little Man). It didn’t matter if it was setting up his own dark room, buying a grader to smooth out the driveway on the farm, or installing solar panels on the camper, he did it. He fixed anything that was broken, and if he couldn’t get that part he made it himself. And the research he did….right down to his own cancer, he  researched everything inside and out and was one of the most knowledgeable people I’ve known. The book of knowledge that left with him is immense.

He leaves behind him a farm full of WIP’s. Projects we are so sad to see he was never able to get to, but should have been able to because 68 is too young to go. One of the last big projects he was working on, back when he was first diagnosed, was fixing up an airplane and building his own runway out in the back field. But chemo takes a lot out of a person, especially when it goes on for years. And so the airplane sits in the shed and we miss him terribly.

This has taken a lot out of us. All the Skeptic and I can keep saying is that we feel like we’ve been hit by a large and fast moving truck. Overwhelmed would be putting it mildly. So I’m taking a blogging break for awhile. Just a few weeks or so and I’ll be back with the birthday updates, including the bear and the roundhouse and whatever I manage to scramble together for Little Man this week, as well as my annual contest.  I just need some room to breathe here, and writing about socks and vests just doesn’t feel right.