Happy Birth Day

A dear and beautiful friend had her sweet baby girl today. They are such a nice family and we are all so excited and happy for them.

We lit her birth candle when we found out her birthing time had begun. The girls were so excited! After saying a little prayer and blessing, we spontaneously decided to create a birth altar for her and decorate it with open flowers. Lela was especially involved with choosing and arranging the flowers. We chose 3 of the most beautiful lilies, petunias, impatiens, rudbeckias, clover blossoms and leaves, cosmos and the first blossom for our butterfly bush.

We love you all!

music of my life

Even wild and crazy (read:bad) days can end on beautiful, blissful notes.

Today was one of those days. After a day punctuated, even dominated, by discord, the melody of our lives found a peaceful way to resolve by the end of the last measure.

By 3pm everyone was angry, bitter and tired. Especially me. So we snuggled upstairs and finished reading a book. It was actually the first book that I've read in pieces to the girls. Over three nights we read _A Water Snake's Year_ and it was such a treasure. To close the book and tell them they'd find out what happened next was magical. Even more magical was how quickly they hopped into bed to find out what the next page would bring! I'm so proud of my little chickens - even the littlest ones happily sit through a long book where there aren't many pictures.

In the last hour before Mike got home, I frantically cleaned the disaster that was our house while the girls splashed in the pool. Somehow dinner was going and the kitchen and mud room were orderly by the time he arrived. The four of them road bikes and skateboards outside while I finished up dinner.

After such a wild day, I decided that dinner should be almost an apology - well, rather, it should be a reminder that things aren't always so bad. So the table was set with many treasures - the 3rd and 4th lilies blooming from our Asiatic lilies, candle and the following loves from my grandparents' house after they moved into their new retirement community - crystal coasters for our drinks, lace doily to adorn the table, sugar bowl and spoon, dessert plates that were the perfect size for the girls. Dinner was meatloaf made from ground beef from our "meat man" at the Farmers' Market, brown rice and broccoli from our favorite family farm, Creekside Nursery.

Here they are just arriving to the table. We often now put the food on the table, because they love "serving themselves".



We had a fun blessing of our food, then while everyone was serving themselves (generous helpings!) I lead them in a discussion of where everything had come from.

ground beef from Mr. White's cow
spring onions from Mr. Wilfong
brown rice from Earth Fare
broccoli from Jenny (at Creekside Nursery)
water from the Catawba River (Mt. Island Lake) by way of the City of Gastonia

After that a special thing happened. While they were finishing up their food, Mike told them their birth stories. It was so spontaneous and beautiful - he is so sweet and loving to all his girls.

Here's what they were, briefly:
Laurel was at the bottom of a basket of rotten potatoes he bought at the Farmers' Market. He picked the roots off her feet so she couldn't turn back into a potato. But that's the reason she loves to dig in the dirt so much. If she digs a hole deep enough, she may crawl right in to be with her potato family.

Liv was a monkey he caught at the zoo. He shaved her, and taught her how to talk. This is why she is so wild. And if she is every near a tree, she may try to climb it and become a monkey again.

Lela was a little fish that had washed up from the bottom of the sea. He found her while picking up seashells. He cut her tail to make legs and taught her how to talk. This is why she loves the water so much. However, if she is ever near the ocean, she might try to jump in and change into a fish again.

Here they are enjoying the stories. (Lela says "Daddy, we all came from Momma's belly!")



Lela listening to her "birth story".


Liv making a monkey face.


Liv deciding she needs another helping of ketchup.



The view from my lap. Laurel finally decided that she needed to sit with me to finish her meal.

It was a beautiful meal together!

Henna!

I've never, ever EVER colored my hair, save a spritz of dilute lemon juice as a teenage lifeguard. My hair was blonde then, so it just made it slightly more blonde. And the chlorinated water helped it along too.

Of course, now that I'm no longer spending so much time in the sun or pool water, my hair is brown. See?

Or should I say - WAS brown!

Now with the henna, it is a fluid reddish-purplish-brown. By fluid I mean that the color seems to change with the lighting. The more light there is, the more I see the red. I'm excited to see it in the sunlight tomorrow.
It is darker than I was expecting - I was thinking I would just have some reddish highlights. But it is way darker. Still, I really like it. It has a very nice sheen that my hair has never had. It was relatively painless to apply too - took me an hour start to finish. There is some dye on my scalp, but more carely application should help with that.

(I hate the way the pictures are cropped when posted! I can't figure it out!)