Shav's Thing

It's not as if we planned for it to happen this way; but as it turns out, all of our children (the ones that are old enough, anyway) participate in the Shenandoah Valley Children's Choir, and then they each have another extracurricular that they're involved in--something that is their own particular interest.  For Josiah, that's NCFCA.  For David, gymnastics.  For Tobin, riding horses.

But what about Shav?

For quite a while, I've pondered something: what is Shav's thing?  And Shav himself has wondered about this, too.

I'm still trying to figure him out.  Shav is tenderhearted, extremely kind, plays very well with his little sister, would rather stay home than go along to run errands or similar excursions, gets along well with his big brothers (although he does tend to be a tiger cub--"pouncing" on them, but then shrieking and withdrawing when they "pounce" back), is a good buddy for Tobin and always has been, is creative with LEGO building and has had a long attention span and great attention to details with them since a very young age.  Shav is amazing.

For the past few months, when I've hugged and kissed him goodnight, I've often had the thought, "I wish I had had more time to spend with Shav today."  Fact is, I want to be with him.  I want to learn more about who he is.  I want to figure him out and discover what makes him tick.

He's still somewhat of a mystery to me.

As this summer approached, Shav and I were talking about what special thing he might like to do; and he announced that he'd like to try soccer.  I pushed aside my suspicion that soccer is not really his thing (my first clue it's not his thing? at home, he never grabs a soccer ball and runs outside to play) and agreed that I would keep my eyes open for an opportunity for him to do soccer.  When the local parks & rec department was offering a one-week soccer camp (an hour and a half each morning), it seemed like the perfect chance.

He's played soccer before, when he was much younger and he and Tobin could play together on a team, so this wasn't an entirely new experience for him.  He was so excited about this camp and had an unfailing good attitude each morning, even though he had to wake up earlier than normal to get to soccer camp on time.  The weather was great all week, but hot; and he would be covered in sweat when I picked him up, but he never complained.  Each day he reported what new skill he learned that day, as well as anything else of interest that happened.  His coach was friendly and encouraging, and it was a good experience all the way around.

The best part?  It was something that Shav did on his own, without following in the footsteps of any of his older brothers.

Don't get me wrong: it's a wonderful thing to follow behind people like Josiah, David, and Tobin, and Shav plays that role beautifully.  But for this time, it was fun to have this be Shav's activity--just Shav's.  

I loved the drives to and from camp with him, and I loved seeing his joy.  He is so very dear to my heart.

On the last day, I took along my camera...

At the conclusion of the camp, the coach gave each of the participants a bag/backpack that they could either decorate with Sharpies or have their teammates sign.  While they were doing that, my other kids took advantage of a playground nearby.

It was bright and hot, and Benjamin wasn't a huge fan.  He is, however, a big fan of David.  :)

Coach Long, whose first name is Shav's middle name!  :)

On the last day of camp, we used some coupons that a friend gave us for free ice cream at McDonald's and went there to celebrate.  :)

I'm so glad Shav got the opportunity to participate in this camp, and I know he is, too.  At the end of it all, I still don't know what Shav's thing is; but I do know this.  Shav isn't quite eight years old, so there is plenty of time to develop his own particular interests.  And through it all, Shav is developing the most important thing: the character that will build him into a God-honoring, people-loving man.

He's well on his way.  :)

How We Spend Our Time

When summer rolls around, my to-do list--especially the Projects I'd Like to Do around the House But Never Have Time during the School Year list--grows to be a mile long.

Not that my to-do list is ever much shorter than that.  ;-)

But the fact remains that during the free(r) days of summer, my desire to clean, organize, and beautify my nest peaks; and I get really excited about devoting time to home projects.

The past couple of days, however, have been spent, not on tasks like that, but on people.  And it has been GOOD.

Saturday, for example, we had the privilege of spending a good portion of time in the evening with some cherished friends who have blessed us tremendously through the years; and then late that night, after everyone else was in bed, Josiah, David, and I stayed up and talked until TWO IN THE MORNING.  I knew my eyes were going to be heavy the next day (and my to-do list wasn't going to get any shorter), but it was so worth it.

This evening gave me another opportunity for special people time.  As the sky grew dark, rather than staying inside to clean up the kitchen like my Martha side was tugging at me to do, my Mary heart sent me outdoors to sit around the fire pit with my family, and then--unexpectedly--with one of the neighbor girls Wanita when she wandered over, drawn by the noise of the kids frolicking on the yard.

But before all of that, I got to spend an hour with my mother, and it was an hour that was filled with sweetness.

I had intended to go see my mother before this, but once again, sickness delayed my visit, since passing icky germs along to her and the other residents is the last thing I want to do.  But this evening, it worked out for Moriah, Benjamin, my dad, and I to go over to be with my mom; and as it turned out, it was the perfect time for that.  For one thing, my mother was awake and alert (sometimes when my dad goes to visit, she's sort of sleepy and groggy).  For another thing, there weren't many other people around, so we had the freedom to let Benjamin and Moriah wander around, zooming back and forth across the large common area, and adventuring out onto the screened-in porch.  And for yet another thing, since there were no other residents in that area, Dad turned off the TV and I eventually sat down at the piano with a hymnal to play a little.

As I flipped through the pages, the old tunes I've known since childhood with the words that are so ingrained in my soul as to be truly formative in who I became as I grew to adulthood--those were the ones that stood out to me.  And so I played them--My Jesus, I Love Thee; I Need Thee Every Hour; Trust and Obey; Come Thou Fount; Be Thou My Vision; Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus; I Am Thine, O Lord; Take My Life and Let It Be; Blest Be the Tie that Binds; and more--while my Dad sometimes sang and sometimes whistled, and my mom sometimes hummed along, and my two youngest children happily played nearby.

For a span of time, I forgot the fact that my mom can't really walk, can't really talk (this evening she would say things like "well, there's..." and "it is..." but then she wouldn't be able to get any more words out, so of course I couldn't understand what she was trying to communicate), can't really feed herself, and can't really do much of anything.  All I was thinking about was the music flowing over us--the music that she taught me to love and taught me to play--and the words of those dear old hymns--the words that have sustained her and me through difficult times in the past and will continue to do so in the future.  It was a precious time--the best visit I've had with her for a while.

Before I sat down at the piano, I took a few pictures, which I love to do every time we go to visit her. 

 Someone made this activity blanket for her, which is so neat!  She spent a lot of time holding that black cord that has some chunky wooden beads on it.  Moriah liked the family of little pigs best.  ;-)

I may not have been able to cross anything off my lengthy to-do list tonight, but I go to bed with a full, happy heart, knowing that for this night, the choice to spend time with my beloved mother was the very best thing I could have done.

The Night the Fire Alarm Went Off

In the annals of Fisher history, there are a few nights that will never be forgotten.  Last night was one we can add to the list.  ;-)

As the evening wore on, I realized that I was really not feeling well; and when I finally decided to check my temperature (using an old glass & mercury thermometer, since our new-fangled battery-operated one requires a working 9V battery, which I didn't happen to have), I realized it was 100.7.  That's not a terribly high temperature, but as I've gotten older, I've become more affected by fevers--even low ones--and I felt awful.  So I did something I never do: I went to bed while there was still light in the sky.

For my Canadian and Alaskan family and friends, that's nothing unusual, since their long daylight hours in the summer lend themselves easily to such a feat.  But for me, even though it was the longest day of the year, it was still a far cry from my norm to go to bed when the hour was still in the single digits!

But to bed, I went, as soon as the younger four children were all in their beds, and I quickly fell asleep, hoping to escape the misery I was feeling and wake up refreshed in the morning.

It didn't quite work out that way.

A few minutes before midnight, I was awakened by the harsh sound of Jeff's recorded voice blaring from the fire alarm that hangs above Josiah and David's room door.  It's the kind of alarm that the parents can use to record their own voices, in hopes that it will wake their children more effectively than a beeping noise would.  (As an aside, I'll note that it did NOTHING to wake Tobin, Shav, Moriah, or Benjamin; they slept through the whole thing.)  Jeff, who was also not feeling well, and I were instantly alert, the adrenaline pumping through our veins as we raced to find out what was going on.

As I ran into the hall, I discovered that Josiah and David were still awake, both having stayed up late to read, and they were just as puzzled as Jeff and I.  Jeff took the alarm down from the wall; and we, of course, tried to find the fire.

Except, we couldn't.

There were no flames, no smoke, no extra heat.  Just a noisy alarm.

The boys had been doing pull-ups on the pull-up bar that hangs in their doorway below the alarm; maybe the vibrations had made it go off?  Jeff set the alarm on a chair in the hall, and we went back to bed.

Only to be pulled from it 10 or so minutes later when the alarm went off again.

This time, our search for a fire was even more exhaustive, leading us into all the rooms of the house, even the ones we had checked before--garage, cellar, porch, everything.  I looked in closets, opened the windows and smelled the outside air (and while I was doing it, I noticed how the lightning bugs were showing up brilliantly in the trees in our pasture--something I would have totally missed, if not for the alarm), checked the stove and everything else I could think of.  David even crawled into our suitcase closet and opened the door to the attic to make sure nothing was amiss there.

Nothing was.

What to do?  Jeff replaced the batteries in the alarm, thinking that old batteries might have been the cause of the malfunction, and laid down again.  I said goodnight to Josiah and David and urged them to go ahead and go to sleep; then I came downstairs and decided to sit up for a while, just in case something was smoldering somewhere.  I didn't really think it was, but I just couldn't go to bed right away after that.

I actually had an enjoyable, peaceful two-hour interlude in the middle of the night, doing some clean-up in the living room that I had neglected because of going to bed so early, reading a homeschool magazine, etc.  I didn't mind being awake, especially when I thought about the (teeny-tiny, extremely-remote, really-not-even-a) possibility that we might have a fire.

And all the while, I was praising God that we didn't.

I was also thinking, "At least I can have a nice long nap tomorrow afternoon. I'll have to get up early to take Shav to soccer camp in the morning, but we don't have any plans the rest of the day, so I'll be able to sleep when Benjamin does."

But then...

As we were eating lunch (and I was looking forward to my nap), the phone rang.  It was our local orchard.  "We have cherries ready for you to come pick," the friendly voice announced.

Oh, joy.

That wasn't at all in my plan for the afternoon, but fresh, locally-grown fruit is such a prized, looked-forward-to item in our household.  Plus, I had especially been craving cherries.  So in a moment, my plans were revised, and not too long after that, we set off for the orchard.

Part of the fun of this whole experience is not only coming home with delicious fruit, it's also the climbing-the-ladders part of the process!  :)  A special delight today for Tobin, Shav, and Moriah was getting to go up on a lift that was being used to pick cherries from up high on the trees--a first for our family.

I took a few pictures to document the afternoon's activities, but focused mostly on picking, because I was looking forward to getting home and trying to sneak in a little nap yet.  ;-)  Oh, and by the way, the cherries are a yellow wax variety.

Before we left our house for the orchard, I thought, "I sure would like to be able to pick enough to have plenty to eat fresh, as well as canning 7 quarts."  When we arrived, I saw how loaded the trees were with fruit (apparently, having a freeze like we did last year leads to the next year being particularly abundant in fruit); and as it turned out, we had no problem picking way more than my goal.  In fact, we ate a lot fresh today and have a big bowl in the refrigerator for tomorrow; and we also canned 22 quarts!

Oh, and I also did get to have a nap when I got home--not quite as long as the one I had originally envisioned, but still enough to keep me going for the rest of the day.  :)

And whenever I remembered that horrifying moment in the night when the fire alarm went off and scared the daylights out of me, I said another prayer of thanks to God that it was only a false alarm!!