Summer vacation is off to a good start! The school year ended at our Waldorf school with a beautiful ceremony for the graduating seniors and the symbolic moving of classrooms for the other grades. Lucas’s fourth grade packed up and moved to the fifth-grade classroom. On the last day, all the students lined up and shook the hands of all the teachers, who wished them a happy summer. It was a day full of celebration and a great exhalation. It felt like coming to the end of a favorite book—a little bittersweet. This year has been a marvelous journey for our whole family and we are so blessed to be where we are, who we are, and with these loving people around us.

A lot of heavy, heartbreaking things have been and are going on these days among our friends. This has lead me to need to circle the proverbial wagons a bit. I am looking for ways to take care of us, myself included, in the hopes that our hearts will mend. And frankly Band-Aid solutions are totally acceptable, such as an extra glass of wine for parents, or the impulse-buy ice-cream maker, or babysitting extra kids just so we can squeeze and giggle with a beautiful baby for a while.

Never underestimate the power of Baby Therapy.

I am also counting mercies, big and small:

• my son is loving swim team this summer
• my dog doesn’t chew on my kids’ toys
• my husband feeds us so well
• we have friends in the activities we’ve enrolled in
• my flowers bloom whether I feel happy or sad, and my hydrangeas are out of this world
• my new painting class starts this Thursday
• my little son is enjoying Clay Camp, even though he was afraid to try it at first
• we have received a dinner invitation for Friday
• I’ve had some time to visit some friends going through difficult times
• most of my cotton summer skirts still fit
• I’ve had time off from work this week to help us find a new rhythm
• my boys don’t have any cavities
• I got my Mother’s Day card from Lucas on the last day of school

And so we enter another summertime. Here we are again, bumping into each other—with love, (im)patience, and familiarity—trying to figure out once again how to spend long summer days together, while adapting to all the growth and changes we’ve all undergone since the last time. We’ll get the hang of it soon. Hello, summer!

I’m catching up from last weekend. Last Saturday we celebrated Delphinia, a tradition that we have held for about 20 years. Friends come from far and wide to play on the beach at Point Reyes National Seashore and to declare that springtime has come! The time for breathing out, adventuring, travel, enterprise, and busyness has returned and we can throw off our quiet introspection of the winter months. This year, the weather was absolutely perfect! We sometimes have a chilly beach experience, but not this year.

Champagne? Why, yes, thank you!

We picnicked. The daring children splashed in the cold waves.

We played and flew kites. Sweet X has a nifty dragon kite. We had a community fire; we shared our intention and our gratitude. Two mamas are expecting. We’ll soon have two new baby friends in the world! How amazing is that?

So many of us have dogs now and we brought them along. Five dogs makes things extra exciting. This was Solstice’s first trip to the beach—as far as we know. He’s new to our family.

The guys found a giant log up the beach. They decided it was in the wrong place.

And in the wrong orientation.

Then they hatched an even greater plan. (Everyone in this photo is at least 6 feet tall.)

And brave J climbed to the tipy-top, amply proving her courage, . I watched the whole thing and I still don’t know how she did it.

Point Reyes is so lovely. This is one of my favorite places on earth. Perhaps it’s because we have been coming here to celebrate and adventure my entire adult life. It’s pretty far from home—more than three hours in the car—but it’s definitely worth the trip. As is our family tradition, we picked up garbage on the beach before we left and hiked it out. Earth Day was the next day, after all, so we worked extra hard.

We didn’t leave the beach until 7:30 in the evening!

We were tired and soggy, but very happy. And our adventure didn’t end there! Our friends, T and E invited us to camp with them in their trailer at Samuel P. Taylor campground in the redwoods of Marin county. Staying overnight there with them meant that the fun didn’t have to end, we didn’t have to drive 3 hours home at night, and we got to play and hike a bit in the forest in the morning. It was sooooo great waking up on Earth Day to all that green!

It was beautiful. Suki dog patiently tolerated all of our noise and business. We had a yummy breakfast together.

I got to play with E’s iPhone and took this funky Hipstamatic shot of her and T.

And we got silly. Nothing pleases little boys more than allowing them time to be goofballs.

Thanks for the family photo, E! (And for all the photos!)

Naturally, I’d like to show you all the wildflowers and beautiful emerald trees but this post is getting waaaaaaaaaay too long …

Oops. They sneaked in here anyway. Ahem! So, I’ll skip our stop at the Mission San Rafael on the way home. Perhaps I’ll write about that another time.

For now, I need to clean my house and get ready to have family over for a birthday party this evening. Lucas turns 10 on Tuesday!

Easter was a little different this year in that we celebrated on two different days: One Sunday at Grandma and Grandpa’s house with family and one Sunday at our home.

We had a family meal and hunted for eggs on this glorious spring day.

It’s kind of tough to find eggs in Grandma’s big backyard. Sometimes little guys need some help. Thanks, Daddy!

Big guys can take this sort of thing pretty seriously. If they do, they find the lion’s share.

It was a gorgeous day and my children enjoyed themselves. The older cousins seem to be doing well and that’s a pleasure to see. It was especially fun having three dogs there. Grandma and Grandpa have a dog, Tolly, and Ian’s sister and her husband have a dog name George. We brought Solstice along, too. This makes for a Big Dog Party.

A week later, on Easter morning, we enjoyed our own peaceful family ritual. As usual, the kids were up bright and early.

The Easter Bunny brought traditional goodies: fruits, flowers, eggs to find, and Easter baskets.

There was much cavorting, despite Asher being ill with flu. There are some things a boy simply must do, no matter how he feels, and hunting for goodies at 7 a.m. on Easter morning is one of them.

But this sort of thing isn’t just for little boys. No. Bigger boys still love it, too.

(Our Easter basket grasses were just grown in enough.)

Easter Bunny brought a book for each of my sons,

a sweet bunny (matchy-matchy rainbow bunnies!), and a special new hat.

The boys were also given gorgeous new painting boards and painting jar holders for their watercolors. These are going to come in handy, I tell you!

There’s nothing quite like early morning chocolate and strawberries to make for a special day.

And, while we probably shouldn’t have risked it, we hosted my parents and brother for a little Easter luncheon outside. (They were brave to come.) We enjoyed simple croissant sandwiches, fruit salad, and pie. Ian and Asher were really not feeling well, so we kept it short. Thank goodness none of our guests fell ill afterward. All things considered, it was pretty ideal to host since we got to have a low-key celebration and didn’t have to miss out on a party happening elsewhere. That would have been so disappointing.

I mentioned before that this flu ultimately wiped us all out for more than a week. Ian is finally back to work today, thanks to the antibiotics he’s taking to treat a bronchial infection. I’ve limped through a rush editing job all week with flu. Things got a little grim around here, but I think we’re on the mend. I’m glad I’m finally able to share our Easter.  I think I had to slog through the muck before I could think happy thoughts again.

While I try to refrain from complaining here most of the time, I also know that I appreciate a little reality check once in a while. As a blog reader, I like to see writers reveal a human face. I like to see that people—even blogland-perfect-seeming people—make mistakes, struggle with decisions, have a messy house or a scattered mind. Truth. I like it.

Truth is, things are kind of a shambles around here these days. Asher got the flu last Thursday. Ian got it on Saturday. Both were quite ill through Easter. While Asher has recovered some of his bounce, both he and Ian are still a wreck, with terrible coughing. Asher is emotionally all over the place. I got the sick yesterday, complete with 101 degree fever and chills. When I woke up this morning, it was clear that Lucas finally had the flu, too.

We’ve been stuck at home now for the better part of the last five days. I got out for a bit last Saturday to see friends at a garden birthday party, which was fun. Easter Sunday was subdued. I met with some colleagues on Monday night.

Yesterday I somehow edited a 4,400 word chapter with a fever. I have no idea how well I did that work. But a rush editing job is rush, whether I am sick or not.

It’s not all rotten. Just mostly rotten. We have watched more videos in the last four days than in the last several months put together. Today we finally managed to get the dishwasher and the clothes washer going. Together, like a shamble of zombies, we folded four loads of clean laundry that were stacked up and beginning to topple over, so that it was getting hard to tell clean from dirty on the floor. We are keeping the chickens and the dogs and ourselves fed. Last night’s rain meant that I didn’t have to try to water today, which is something I doubt I could have done. Lucas has practiced his piano.

I missed painting class. I have taken no photos since Easter. We’re eating ramen and egg salad sandwiches and fish sticks.

Ian plucked up his courage yesterday and did a couple of errands. He went out to buy me a new nebulizer because mine is broken, in anticipation of some bad wheezing brought on by this illness. That’s true love, man.

Did I mention this is Ian’s and the kids’ spring vacation? Yeah. Sucks. In the midst all of this, we’re wrestling with a pretty big decision. Tempers are short. And yet, we carry on.

Well, it’s Friday evening. Good Friday, in fact. It has been a good Friday, if I look at it from the right sort of angle. Life doesn’t always (read: almost never) follow according to plan, you see. So when it doesn’t go just how I expect and I manage to roll with it, I consider that a win.

We had some dear friends over for a sleepover. Alas, poor Asher fell ill right at dinnertime. The party went on around him, and he tried his best to stay cheerful throughout. A touchy tummy and a mild fever can weigh a boy down, though.

And while I don’t like exposing other people’s children to our germs, and tend toward feeling really guilty about this sort of thing when it happens, their sweet mama said, “I’m not worried. It’s too late to save them from germs, so they might as well have some fun.” So, although Asher had a couched and run-down kind of day today, Lucas was able to carry on playing and enjoying himself and his friends.

We visited and made some Easter cookies—at least, we got some baked before our friends had to go home. The boys and Ian and I carried on decorating them ourselves. As you can see, we pulled out all the stops.

We have plans for the holiday weekend, but we’ll just have to see what happens. Poor Asher has just been sick all over.

We have been reading Eggs for the Hunting, by Reg Down, which we got from A Toy Garden. I was inspired by Reg’s drawings in the book and I wondered if I could emulate them on some wooden eggs (also from A Toy Garden) to make my own story eggs. I had seen story eggs made by Mama West Wind who writes at Chocolate Eyes, and they were so beautiful I had to try to make some myself. (You can find a full tutorial by Chris Willow how to do this here at Rhythm of the Home.)

This seemed the perfect time to try the wood-burner for the first time. Plus, I had this nifty, super-dandy lathe thingy that Ian bought me for Christmas to try out, so a little project was born.

My first wood-burning attempt. I dig it! I used the pointiest tip and was pleased with the results.

I painted the flowers with some watercolor paints. I liked being able to see the wooden egg, so I left the natural wood.

Emboldened by my first success, I tried one of Reg’s designs on this large wooden egg.  This was trickier. It felt important not to mess it up. I just worked slowly and took lots of deep breaths while using the wood-burner.

Then I painted it with Stockmar watercolors. The illustration I was emulating is in black and white, so the colors here are my interpretation.

I finished it with a nice coat of beeswax furniture polish.

My Tiptoes Lightly isn’t perfect, but I think she’s a fine first attempt. I hope to make more of these story eggs before Easter comes. My kids haven’t seen this egg yet and I’d love to have two finished for their Easter baskets.

Since we had some smaller wooden eggs, too, I let the boys paint them.

What fun things are you doing to enjoy Easter?

This year I decided to try a product called Eco-Eggs. I bought it from A Toy Garden, which is my favorite place to buy Waldorf and sustainably made, fair trade gifts and art supplies. Eco-Eggs is a egg dye kit made from natural pigments. The dyes are made using natural plant, fruit, and vegetable extracts from annatto seed, curcumin, purple sweet potato and red cabbage.  This kit includes three natural dyes (orange, blue, and purple).

We simply followed the instructions. It was that easy.

Pour the dye powder into a half cup of water and mix thoroughly until it is all dissolved.

Gently add your eggs so they don’t crack on the bottom of your glass. This time we used all white eggs. But I’ve saved our dye baths and plan to try them on our brown eggs as well.

The kit comes with three colors of natural dye and this handy chart tells you how to get other colors, including how long to leave your eggs in the dye to achieve your desired result. Some colors are made by just dipping the egg in for a second and then removing it, as in the case of yellow. Others are achieved by leaving the egg in as long as 15 minutes.

My kids rarely have the patience to leave one egg in a dye bath for 15 minutes, as is recommended on some of the color formulas. But we’re really happy with our colors. Lucas enjoyed dipping eggs into two colors to make three-toned eggs. Asher really liked using his rainbow crayons on the eggs before dyeing them.

It always seems like 18 eggs is plenty to dye before we get started. But dyeing Easter eggs is so fun that it seems like we run out of eggs way too quickly. If you’re short on time this year, this Eco-Eggs product will work well for you, without using a lot of commercial chemicals in the process.

Aren’t they pretty? We get to hunt for these beauties tomorrow, as we’re celebrating Easter with one side of the family a week early. xo

It is spring, and this makes me very, very happy. (This post was started yesterday and not finished in time. And that’s OK.)

This is my first lilac flower of the season. My lilac bush doesn’t have many flowers on it this spring. I don’t know why.

Sing, World, Sing!

Now in chilly places
Where the snow had been,
Wood and field and hollow,
Easter flowers begin.

Now a bud is opened,
Now a leaf uncurled;
Spring is in the sweet wind
Walking down the world.

Snowdrops in the garden,
Violets on the hills,
Cowslips in the meadow,
Dancing daffodils

Seem to lift their faces,
Softly whispering,
“Easter’s nearly here, now—
Sing, world, sing!”

These are our 12-day-old chicks. We have yet to decide on names for them. Ian, Lucas, and Asher all insist that they have the right set of names. (I happen to like Asher’s names best.) They just insist on using their own names for the girls.

New leaves are unfurling all around us. This is my beautiful Chinese Elm tree. Right now its leaves are the most gorgeous new green.

Here is the neighbor’s yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis europaea). This stuff glows! The kids eat it and call it sour grass.

This is my own sorrel (Oxalis articulata), AKA shamrock, sleeping beauty, sour trefoil. The shamrock I bought at the nursery for St. Patrick’s Day is also an Oxalis with white flowers. So all these years that I’ve been refering to this plant as our “shamrocks,” I was right!

My irises have increased!

This lovely azalea won’t be pretty for long. So I make sure to admire it every day that it blooms.

In honor of the equinox, I refreshed our nature table. With Easter just a couple of weeks away, I pulled out our bunnies and eggs.

I hung our blown eggs and egg ornaments on a huge branch that fell in a windstorm. This huge branch is frequently in Ian’s way. I feel he would like you to know that, and that he is patient with my weird hanging artworks all over our home.

Lucas dyed this handkerchief—at school? at camp? I don’t remember. I didn’t realize how lovely it was until yesterday. The spring maiden was a gift made by my friend Parnassus.

This is a mosaic Ian made: perfect balance between night and day, dark and light. I love it.

To me, our nature table conjures plenty, delight, joy, and light. It reminds me of carefree days and celebration. The spirit of the season of Ostara is enormous potential, growth, striving, peace, and fullness. I’m ready for it all.

I heard Asher singing a song: “It’s almost Easter. It’s almost Easter.” So I guess the nature table has done the trick. I think it’s lacking some spring tulips, though. I’d better get some.

It was a big time, of course. St. Patrick’s Day was fun for all of us, I think. We crafted. We decorated.

In between epic puddle splashing and a during jolly good time in the heavy rain, we set up a Leprechaun party complete with shamrocks in a vase of water, table with acorn cap cups, hyacinth flowers and bird berries.

The path we lined with white stones was very inviting to the wee folk.

I had made some secret presents: wooden clothespin Leprechauns. A boy and girl for each of my sons.

Even though we made that lovely party space and put out brownie treats for them, the Leprechauns couldn’t help themselves. They pulled a small trick on us anyway and piled all of our shoes in the entry, blocking the front door. It’s in their nature, you know. They’re tricky!

They did, however, leave the boys some treasures. A set of rainbow gems for each and a note.

“Thanks for the goodies, and thanks for the laughs!

On your way outside today, did you trip over our gaffes?

We’ve enjoyed your hospitality, and so we’d like to say,

We’ve left a little gift or two to brighten up your day!

We know you like bright jewels, so shiny and so fine,

Nearly as much as we do. So, we’ll share a few this time:

A rainbow for your pockets, to keep and hold and share.

Our gold we’ll keep for now! Try to catch us if you dare!”

Apparently, Leprechauns think they are very clever.

I didn’t snap any photos of our green shamrock pancakes or piles of golden eggs. I was too busy tucking in with and enjoying my fellas. It turns out that clothespin Leprechauns are great for homemade zip-lines. Then we readied our home for a  fun party with our friends. We enjoyed a yummy lamb stew, kale salad, and soda bread (from a mix). Today, Asher is talking about his Leprechaun friends.

Hope you had a festive holiday, too!

There is a deliciously long list of fantastic things in my life lately. And because I have a moment or two, I’m savoring them. What’s not to feel grateful for?

~ Hosting friends for a kid-friendly St. Patrick’s Day party, complete with my first from-scratch lamb stew. Yum!

~ Cleaning our home for this party. A party is the best reason to clean.

~ Reveling in a surprisingly work-free weekend, when I expected to have to buckle down.

~ Watching my boys play with total concentration with their “cousins,” who are so very dear to us all. They are so comfortable with each other.

~ Observing how these children are all growing, growing, growing in myriad beautiful ways.

~ Brunching with friends most of Sunday, complete with a skip out to a nail salon with my girlfriends for a pedicure and pink/purple iridescent polish. First one in … years. So luxurious and fun.

~ Inquiring into the health of parents, backs, workouts and …

~ Listening, witnessing, offering friendship and support.

~ Having enough home-raised eggs to give some away.

~ Choosing the prudent path of getting home before it was too late to ready ourselves for a busy, exciting week. It’s a little sad when the fun ends, but letting go feels good, too.

~ Studying spelling words (Norse god names) with my son, who it going to nail them, I think.

~ Preparing for Lucas’s special week of one-on-one time with the Waldorf school’s farmer. Five extra-early mornings to greet and care for the animals of the school farm—a rare opportunity for any child.

~ Realizing that it’s OK that all the rain boots are still wet on the insides from Friday’s splashing and galloping in rain puddles. It was worth it.

~ Painting for an hour or so in my home until the daylight fled and I could no longer see the colors well enough to continue.

~ Eating a simple, delicious, fulfilling dinner with my tired, happy family.

~ Getting everyone in bed early to rest up for Monday and the early alarm.

~ Signing up for my first plein air painting workshop next month—at an iris farm, no less. SQUEE!

~ Thinking—hard—about getting more exercise. Yes, I’m slowly warming up to the idea. Mustn’t rush these things.

~ Noticing buds on my lilac, tons of new growth on my clematis vine, morning glory seedlings popping up, and growth on my new-this-year irises.

~ Balancing our many social opportunities with our need for downtime, hopefully in the right proportions, for the next few weeks.

~ Feeling excited and grateful that Lucas got the part he wanted in the fourth-grade play. It’s so wonderful to see him reach for something and catch it!

~ Rejoicing to see my little guy’s imagination blossom with Leprechauns and sweet mischief. “Shhh! Mama, do you hear the Leprechaun laughing? I think he’s over there, under the couch.”

~ Loving my husband more and more every day.