big fun, big love

this weekend was another full one.  our kids from art performed in a circus show at the Lake Eden Arts Festival (LEAF), so we found ourselves with free tickets for the day.  and so, after ballet class on Saturday morning we skipped market and headed to the festival.

there was music, fun stuff for the kids (and adults) set up all over- stuff like stilts, art tables, mural painting projects, bubbles, hula hoops.... there were parades with puppets and jugglers and a tuba and drums, trapeze acts, lakeside fun (we just watched), a bit of drizzle, a fair amount of whining, kettle corn (non GMO, even!), a favorite local restaurant with a yummy food booth (the hearts denote locally-sourced items), more music in the barn, a pint of yummy pisgah amber ale...

and a first-time experience with bungee-bouncing for this brave girl of mine.  she shied away from getting her face painted when she saw the crowd around the table, but this she was all about.  she got the hang of it pretty quickly and bounced her way 10, 12, maybe 15 feet in the air.

and right next to her, one bouncy thingamajig over, was her main man, doing just the same.

we called it a day fairly early, before dinner, and rode the trolley back to the parking area.

this morning, Sunday morning, we went to the fire department for breakfast.  the guys were making a Mother's Day breakfast for some of the ladies in their lives.  Mike happens to be at the same station as a friend of ours and our families are pretty tight~ so we mamas caught up a bit and the kids chased each other all around and we all ate quiche and were quite happy.  afterwards Claire and I headed to the rehab hospital to see my mama.  we brought along the first bouquet of the year from in and around our yard and garden~

Claire watched Mary Poppins and ate her weight in snacks while I worked through some of the tangles in mom's hair and braided it and hung some new things on the wall in her room.  cards and a piece of her own (my mom's) artwork.  my brother came and we all hung out for a while.  the plan had been to set up a funny movie for her to watch but she wasn't really feeling it so we just talked and sat around and before I left I painted her toenails orange.  I think if I were laying in a hospital bed for months and things were generally rather uneventful and tiresome, catching a glimpse of my orange toenails from time to time might just make me smile.

I haven't really updated much here regarding her progress in the past few weeks.  for a while that was my whole world, mom in the ICU for an extended time and all that that entails, and then it was very back-and-forth for a while and so by the time I'd write an update things had already changed so it seemed silly to even bother to do so.  and now, well, now I guess I'm basking in the fact that things are a lot less roller coaster-y and a lot less scary, that she is improving and gaining strength daily and smiling a lot.  that eating and talking just might be on the horizon for her relatively soon.  that parts of my world that I was more or less looking over completely are being enjoyed again.  that this day, this holiday, was an immense joy and not something heartbreakingly different.

thank you, mama.  thank you, thank you, thank you.  thank you for being here, for your fortitude, your fight, your stamina, and for plugging along day after day.  you are incredibly strong and I love you so.



we ended the day meeting friends for dinner at a very cool place, a creekside restaurant/bar complete with volleyball court, fenced in playground, skee-ball and other games.  we ate, drank, splashed in the creek for a bit, people-watched, and then when Claire asked me to stop for ice-cream on the way home I couldn't think of a good reason why not so it was a vanilla cone and two rides on the mini-carousel.  at bedtime, Claire told me that she loved me "as big as all the days and all the nights, even the days I haven't had yet", and also that she was "tired-er than a cricket's day".  I'm really loving four-year-old speak.  big time.


*weekending with amanda