spring – Page 2 – everything He gives

spring things

March 21, 2016March 23, 2016 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

DSC_0038 (1) DSC_0023 (1) DSC_0023 (2) DSC_0103 (1)

We were enjoying mornings and afternoons on the porch last week, snack outside, making mud pies in the sandbox. Temperatures plummeted this week and we expect another frost tonight potentially. We’ve had our foretaste of spring and we’re ready for it now! We get used to the quieter, whispered beauty of winter and then spring comes and the earth is bursting with glory and color we nearly forgot existed.

It’s amazing how much can change in one week! I’ve been watching this beautiful white cherry tree outside our living room window, taking pictures of it every day, watching the buds burst open and the tree fill with blooms in the matter of a few days. The red buds are flowering, the cherry trees, the daffodils and crocuses, pansies sprinkled around front doors. When did I become one of those people who is fascinated with buds and blooms, birds and children playing, finding such beauty in all these small things? The smallest, the things most trampled underfoot in our busy rat-race pace. Yet here they are, day after day, quietly doing what they are supposed to do, echoes of a far country. It’s holy week this week, my sister and her family is in town from British Columbia for my youngest brother’s wedding this weekend in Virginia. We will be caravanning up there mid-week and heading back home to North Carolina on Easter Sunday. The cousins are having the best time together, Phoebe and Jericho are practicing being brides all week, although they will have to settle for being flower girls come wedding day. It is so achingly wonderful to be all together and to see cousins enjoy each other. Our minds and hearts are busy with all that comes with wedding prep, and my soul is meditating on how beautiful it is to be celebrating a man and a woman covenanting in marriage around the time of year that Christ suffered and died for His beloved church. There is a tangle of meaning there that I have yet to extricate.

I finished my first kerchief/mini shawl which seems the perfect size for Phoebe and she loves it. I guess I can share it with her. 🙂 I’m pretty proud of it, already working on another shawl and a couple other knitted projects on the go. Brandon says my knitting stuff is now everywhere, taking over the whole house and I cackled with glee. I wouldn’t want it any other way right now! Books and skeins of yarn scattered everywhere! Also, Brandon let me splurge and order a skein of yarn from one of my favorite bloggers and natural yarn dyers, Ginny Sheller, and it arrived last week. I love it so much.

I hope you’re enjoying your first week of spring!

spring projects

March 8, 2016 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

This is what March is like around here. One day it’s snowing, a few days later you’re planting pansies and soaking up the sun in your front yard. I’ll take it all, but it really did feel pretty wonderful to be outside almost all day Saturday and Sunday, watching the kids zoom around the yard on their bikes, or playing on the swing and sandbox. I don’t know quite what got into Brandon this weekend, but he went to town on a few projects for me/us. He made small planter boxes for me (his own design, which I love!) so that we can have a scant amount of veggies, at the very least. The ONLY place in our yard that has light is our porch, so I plan to have a few containers this year of the barest essentials: herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, greens of some sort. It’s just the best growing food with little ones. They are so excited to see the whole process and I do believe it helps with better eating when they’ve grown and tended the plants themselves. For us, it helps some financially and nothing tastes better than our own produce. I really miss our bigger garden space but I’m thankful for at least a little square of sun.

Philippa was attempting to “help” me go through and sort clothes earlier last week, I suppose, or at least making the job easier by dumping all of Noah’s wardrobe contents on the floor. She is for sure the most mischievous of all the children so far, at 15 months old. I literally clean up one disaster, walk into the next room and find another one.

We filled up our bird feeder this weekend and rehung it and it’s been really fun watching at the windows and from the porch, spotting new cheery visitors. The warm sun made me crave getting my fingers in the dirt and seeing some bright new life, so we planted a few pansies. I was amazed at how interested Philippa was in planting flowers. She surprises me with how much she understands and how eager she is to do “big kid” things. The older two were busy rowing their “boat” through the wild seas, so she had the dirt and trowel all to herself. She filled up the little pot with dirt very slowly and plunked purple pansies down in there, smooshing them in sideways. Watering everything was another adventure which completely fascinated her.

Earlier in the afternoon on Sunday Brandon told me he wanted to make me something, a surprise. I took Phoebe on a mommy/daughter date to pick out a craft she had been saving her spending money for (an “Anna” sculpture/piggy bank to paint) and when I came back Brandon surprised me with an Amish yarn swift! I felt so so loved! I put it to use right away last night and it is so much easier to use than the other methods for winding skeins that I had been attempting. Mostly, it just meant a lot to me that he came up with that idea and figured out how to make one. He honestly supports me endlessly in all my little endeavors, even when I constantly doubt myself, and it means so much. I don’t know why he seems to believe in me, but he does, and in this great big world full of critics and naysayers, one of the greatest gifts is having someone who is always, always on my side, someone who is for me, cheering me on, pointing me always toward who + what is best. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not perfect and we butt heads often, but ultimately we are each other’s biggest cheerleaders and defenders in a world full of opposition and difficulty, and for that I am grateful.

new things

March 1, 2016 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

DSC_0022 (1) DSC_0026 (1) DSC_0031 (1) DSC_0028 (1)

I wound my first skein of yarn by hand into a ball and could finally cast onto my first shawl! This yarn is truly dreamy to knit with, as so many others have said, but I’m not sure I’m crazy about the colorway. I’ll see what I think when I finish up. In some light, it reminds me of the ocean on a gray day, or of Phoebe’s little sleepy eyes, which makes me love it. I finished up a little baby hat this week in that gorgeous super soft deep pink yarn.

Philippa has been really into pointing out all the “no-no’s” this week, walking around (or climbing on my desk) and pointing and asking, “no-no?” As if she doesn’t know. She is definitely going to be our craziest little one so far. Last night after I pulled her out of her chair after dinner, I took off her pants which were covered with food. Normally we bathe the kids right after dinner. I was going to let her wander for a minute while I finished eating and next thing I know I see her naked bum walking around carrying her cloth diaper in the other hand. She yelled “da-tye!” (bath time) and went running and squealing for the bathroom as I chased her. She is hilarious and I have NO idea how she got her diaper off. She is into everything, and she loves throwing laundry in the toilet. Sigh.

The kids and I tidied up the backyard and the sandbox this morning, resurrecting it. Phoebe is pretty excited about it being mud pie season again and I hope to add a few more things to her outdoors kitchen. These past few days have been warm and sunny in NC and even though I didn’t think I was ready to see winter go, these warm days are so pleasant that I’m starting to dream up little spring projects for us. Philippa loves being in the backyard and is content in the sandbox for quite a while. We might see some snow again this week, but we’ll enjoy whatever we get, whether sun or snow or just drizzly cold. It’s all a season, it all comes and goes, and each day bears its own gift and its own rub.

We met with a new nutritionist for Phoebe last night, a specialist in our area for Celiacs. It was probably the first time I’ve felt like we really have an advocate who is able to help us, who is knowledgeable, compassionate, practical, and seems to really care. We’ve met with a few others, and this was the first time it felt right. After looking at what Phoebe is getting calorically per day, she was pretty mystified as to why her weight is dropping, even after 6 months on a gluten-free diet. In some ways that made me feel better, but it also concerned me. We should see and hope to see growth SOON. One thing I really appreciated was the fat folder of resources she gave me for local restaurants with details about each one, best grocery resources, flour recipes, coupons, etc. She encouraged us to give up oats for the next 6 months as there has been controversy recently on the processing of oats and unintended cross-contamination. We also talked about trying to diversify the grains Phoebe is eating beyond mostly rice products, so I’m really excited to have some recipes to play around with millet, sorghum, amaranth, and some bean flours which are new to me. I keep taking it a step at a time, a couple new changes at a time, which saves my sanity and makes it more manageable.

This week has felt like the first hints of spring, and I have told the kids to be looking for the very first buds on the branches. Whoever spots them first will get a little treat of some sort, so they have been looking every day.

kids + ducks

March 11, 2014 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

This past weekend we visited my husband’s family. We all went on a little walk to a pond nearby to feed the ducks. It was our kids’ first time feeding the ducks and they were so excited! I love how children help us remember that the simple + ordinary are heavy-laden with joy.