When it comes to having a house, the late fall is my least favorite time of the year.  Cleaning out gutters, pulling out the garden, flower beds and potted plants.  Raking leaves is not horrible, but I am grateful that I am completely ok with mulching them and leaving them in the yard.  Its better for the grass….and helps keep my hands blister free!

This is Jack helping clean out the garden a few weeks ago.  He loved to crawl in and out of the zucchini plants and leaves.  Kind of like a little kid jungle.

What I do like about this time of the years is easy.  SQUASH!  We planted squash in the garden this year, but were hit with a squash bore bug and lost all of our pumpkins, squash and almost lost our zucchini.  2008 was the year of the great zucchini rescue, maybe someday I’ll tell you about it and how proud I was of my horitculture learnings.  In my striving to eat locally and seasonally, squash is seen pretty frequently on our dinner table.  To bad the only thing our garden produced in the way of squash this year looked like this.  Ornamental!

They do look good with Jack though!

Life moves fast.  I have already been finished with radiation treatments for 18 days.  I have not been to the hospital for two weeks.  Nate is finished with football, Jack is walking around like frankestien and the garden is all pulled out, plowed under and fertilized with six inches of manure. 

Life is also returning to some kind of normal.  I had written earlier that returning to clogging would be my “measuring stick” of normalacy.  Tuesday was my first time back and it was great!  I’ve been able to get back involved wtih different ministries at church and the family. 

I am grateful for everyone’s prayers, support, help and thoughts.  God has taught me many things through this, but one of the biggest lessons was watching the church body work as a whole.  I am excited to be an active part in that again!

I don’t know when this site will close down, but I will try and continue to post some pictures and little tid-bits for awhile.  It gives the grandma’s another chance to see some pictures of the little guy

Once again, Thank you!

Rachel

(quick thank you to Laurie for the great party title!)

We are here, the week before the big shin-dig!  I am getting excited to see and meet everyone and get the house and yard ready….well not so excited about that last part, but it is a necessary thing. 

So here is the info you need, 

Address:  3283 Brunk Road Akron, 44312

Please bring a dish to share and plan on having a fun time!  (For more info see two post’s ago.)

seriously….can you get any cuter than this!

We had a very busy weekend and I am glad that I have Monday’s to recoup and actually get everything done that I wanted to over the weekend.  Friday night we went for a LOOONNNGG walk.  We received a hand-me- down jogging stroller from a fellow teacher at Nates school.  We had been longing for and lusting after the big wheeled strollers for some time, but just didn’t have the cash to put out to get one.  Needless to say we were very excited when they asked if we wanted their old one, it makes walking so much nicer.  After Friday night I now know that they off road pretty well too!

Saturday we did some small batches of beans, peaches and pickled peppers in the morning.  I grew up with a family that canned and enjoyed gardening in the summer.  Now that I have my own family we are doing the same thing, and I am ever so glad to hear Nate say he enjoys it and likes to help.  So far this year we have canned green beans, grape juice, applesauce, apples in syrup, pickled peppers, dill pickles, tomatoes, blueberry jelly and an unsuccesful pear butter.  

In the afternoon on Saturday we went to my parents house for one of my favorite things to do.  When my parents bought their house it came with a few different things, wood stove in the basement, pine paneling in the stairway and a very very old cider press.  Along with the press came established apple trees and in the fall, after a long day of work and a sore back from bending over you have the most fresh and delicious apple cider anyone has ever tasted.  This year was a BUMBER year for apples, each tree was loaded and they were the biggest and juiciest I ever remember them being.  We stopped making cider and we still had one tree left to pick!

And now finally to the highlight of the weekend (only slight sarcasm here).  Jack first trip to….the hospital.  Okay, I guess I should probably rephrase that, Jack has been to the hospital many times.  This was the first time for him to be the patient.  Jack fell and did a classic tooth through the lip injury, long story short we were in and out of Children’s hospital in 1.5 hours with 4 stitches and an emergency room copay.  The lip looks SO much better now than it did before, as a mom I worried he was going to have a scar to rival that of some scary monster, but the sewing team did an amazing job and I think he will be just as cute with a little scar on his lip.

Don’t forget about the party on October 4th.  Read the previous post if you are wondering what I am talking about.  More details to come soon!

Sorry about the long lapse, I cannot really even tell you what we have been doing, but I promise we are busy!  Things are going well.  Yesterday was the first Friday in 7 months that I did not have chemo.  I was expecting fireworks and a 7 course dinner.  We had take out ( thank you Freespirit Cloggers) and went for a long walk in the drizzle.  Not exactly a life shattering celebration.  

Speaking of celebrations, we are going to have one.  If you read the blog you are invited, if you know someone that has prayed and does not read the blog, they are invited.  If I have never met you, I would LOVE to say thanks in person for your prayers and support, and YOU are invited.  Please come!!  We are celebrating Jack’s one year birthay, Rachel being done with Chemo, and Nate’s new job.  By they way, Nate has a new job, he is teaching at our old high-school, and judging from the favorite teacher letters and notes he is receiving, this is where God wants him and it is going well.  Back to the party.  October 4th, 5:30 outdoor potluck, please bring a dish to share and chairs.  We will have games, an outdoor movie, people, fun and food and hopefully you will all be there.  Please Please Please don’t think we don’t want you here, WE DO!  

I will put more information up as the date gets closer….like where we live and such (Akron).  If you have any questions leave them here and I’ll get back to you, but please put the date on your calendar!  

In around the town news, Jack is crawling and a much happier kid, every parent will laugh when I say this, but they move SO FAST!  I didn’t know crawling had 5 gears!!  The garden is starting to wind down, but still producing some things well.  I have hyjacked my parents dehydrater and dried just about everything you can think of.  (Zucchini chips are surprisingly delicious.)  First year teachers are very busy and tired people, and the amount of work that goes into a lesson plan is crazy.  I have a lot more respect for teachers now.  

Now for the only reason some of you come here for….pictures

Thanks for stopping by, and hopefully we will get to see all of you the first Saturday in October!

It is here, the last monday before the last chemo.  The last neulasta shot, the last drug induced tiredness (I’m pretty sure there will be more tiredness), the last time I feel the need to take the neasua pill, the last dinner delivered, the last time my mom cleans my house for me.  

I happened upon a quote by someone I didn’t know and cannot remember their name or really anything other than the essence of the quote ( in that case calling it a quote seems silly).  The quote said something like this, You have finished this illness, don’t try to go back to normal, that normal is gone.  Create a new normal and live in it and enjoy it. 

I needed to find this lesson, I need to figure out what I want this “new normal” to be.  I am excited, nervous, and really excited again.  ”Normal” means so many different things to so many people, but to me it means clogging again.  I have missed my twice a week time for just myself.  I love the people, the new songs and steps and the performances.  I love the workout I get while smiling myself silly.  It has been over a year since I have been able to go on a “all of the time” basis and I CAN”T wait to start again soon.  Other things mean normal as well, like needing to use shampoo, but what do I want this new start to things to look like.  I feel as though I have a brand new start to life and everything, God has given me a second chance to start fresh.  

And any kind of normal involves these two and our new favorite backpack carrier.  This is Jack and Nate at the Richland county fair in Mansfield.

Nate and I go to a great church in Ellet.  A small, but growing church working on encouraging each other to grow in Christ and to grow others for Christ.  In the last 4 years we have had 4 woman go through cancer battles and this week we have found out about another. 

Please pray for Amber.  She is a single mother of three great girls, working hard to just make it day to day and she has breast cancer. 

My heart breaks so much for her, I want to be able to take what I know is going to be an extremely hard thing away from her and do it instead….I’ve had the practice!  Pray for her heart, healing and importantly her spirit.  Pray too that I can be a special help, friend and encouragment to her.

I am grateful and thankful for a woman I have never met, in fact she is no longer living.  I do know her name, and on some weird level I feel like I know her.  She and her husband built our house 75 plus years ago and sometime after that, she planted a blackberry patch in the backyard.  

This blackberry patch is pretty big, and very productive this year.  Considering how long it has been abandoned and uncared for I am amazed at the amount of berries I have picked.  And VERY excited.  I found the berries this spring and once a week or so I would walk to the “back 40″ to check on them.  I picked my first berries and looking at them in the freezer now….I realize it was a little early, I guess I didn’t have much patience.

Because the berries don’t all ripen at the same time I have been picking them in batches about once a week and freezing them.  I almost have a gallon freezer bag full and I cannot wait to make jelly.  If I was more of a woman I would make a pie, but that is one thing I have yet to accomplish.  I can, bake bread, cook and just about everything else, but the art of “Pie Making” is currently beyond me

So thanks to Carrie Shaw for planting the blackberries some long time ago and enabling me to have my own berry patch now.  

Jack is 10 months and two days old today.  

He eats really well….really really well.

Sunday we tried a new food. Here are the pictures and needless to say, this is another one he likes a lot.

I’ve tried to post some new pictures, but am having trouble so you will have to wait a little longer.  Don’t worry though, Jack is still cute and getting bigger. 

We had a great weekend, busy and full and tiring, but good.  Chemo was crappy, took much longer than normal and my port was acting funny, but I only have two, 2, count them two treatments left!! 

On Saturday Nate and I were able to go to Blossom with two very generous friends.  I took a nap and tried to rest in the afternnoon so that i would be up to going.  We had a wonderful time and they played my favorite composer! 

Sunday we celebrated my parents anniversary, our own anniversary and my Gram’s 70th birthday and went to a graduation party.  We had a great party and a wonderful time visiting with everyone.  It is nice to see people who have been praying and thinking of us so often and get to say thank you to them in person.

On Monday I rested.