happy halloween!

All month Ivar has been telling me he wants to be a cowboy for halloween. I was excited because Grandpa Paul has a cowboy costume that he wore when he was just a boy. But as we continued to talk, it became apparent that Ivar wasn't talking about a cowboy with chaps and a gun. He wanted to be a cowboy. A cow. boy. A boy who is dressed as a cow.

Tonight I will have a cow and a peacock strutting around with me as we trick or treat.  I found the peacock costume for $4 at a garage sale early in the spring and love myself now for being so forward thinking.

riding in the combine

There are moments when I feel so, so grateful for our country life. Like weeknights when a friend calls to see if we want to have tater tot hotdish on the floor of her soon-to-be finished home on her in-laws farm. And if we'd like to go for rides in the combine after dinner.

We ate our dinner picnic style where her new living room will go, and I felt anxious the whole time her husband (the farmer) sat with us. He was pretty casual, but I know farmers don't have time to stop and host company. I felt anxiety from a lifetime of harvests, knowing full well that our time to talk with Uncle Jake was when we were in the combine with him. Any other time, just try to stay out of the way. These guys are busy!

Ivar got to go on the first ride with his pal Natalee. They are just the sweetest friends. And then Elsie and I went for a ride with Bennet. Elsie freaked out during most of our first pass, but calmed down for the second pass.

Ivar is just the luckiest boy...and doesn't even know that not everyone gets to hop in a combine on a Monday night.

tractors make boys very happy

Rory planted our garden this year in strips of soil with grass in between. It worked fine, but after the fence was up, it was impossible to mow, and hard to maintain. So when friends of ours let us have at their tractor, the whole game changed. In ten seconds Rory tilled up a strip with that tractor that had taken him hours to accomplish with a walk-behind tiller and a pitch fork, literally lifting the sod out of the garden strips, earlier this spring.

The tractor changes everything. Including the size of the garden. We got excited and decided to make a huge plot for next year. I frequented a farm stand this fall and got inspired. I suddenly want to be a part of the garden work. So the garden got bigger.

We tilled the plot and then went looking for cow manure.

We didn't have to go far.

This is the farm that the kids and I frequent. We stop and watch the cows all the time. I've wondered if they've ever called in my plates because we must be so suspicious parked on the little country road.

We found the farmer and he was delighted to meet us, thrilled that we wanted his manure and spoke excitedly about the need for community, especially in the country, how neighbors are a must and community is the most important thing. I love this guy.

I invited him to our second annual neighborhood Milk and Cookies party in December and he said, "We'll bring the milk! Actually, I'll make it into ice cream. That's what I'm really known for." How awesome is that?!! Local (as in a mile away) milk made into ice cream?!! I just wanted to hug him!

Rory got to work the next day. We were so excited about this manure!

I call this picture "look our below." That cat Vernon is always at hand. He's so loyal. But probably at risk of getting rained on in this photo.

october in words

(I am rarely this wordy. You've been warned.)

So I don't quite know what has happened to my blog here, but October 2013 is probably my personal worst for blogging consistency. Days have been full though. I thought I'd take a post to give an honest catch up.

We joined the Y this month and I really like it. I mostly go for the HGTV, but I'm beginning to go to more classes where I actually feel social pressure to break a sweat. I also attended a water aerobics class early one morning at the senior center pool. It's through the Y, but as I found out, attended by mostly 75-year olds. Naturally I loved it. These are my people. Our teachers name is Marilyn and that sort of sums it up. Everyone wears tennis shoes in the pool or aqua socks and I was told I should use the biggest water weights "because I could handle them." That was good for my self esteem.

We have been sort of working in manic-squirrel mode around here preparing for winter. Rory is working hard to get a ceiling in around his chimney for the stove in his office. When that's done his office will be winterized. I am on a never ending mission to organize and clean my garage so we can pull both cars in. My efforts are greatly slowed by the two cats and three chickens who delight in my presence, wrapping themselves around my legs, happily clucking after me everywhere I go.

I have been walking through a sort of revival of the soul this month. We go to a prayer meeting two doors down every Tuesday night. It's an amazing group of earnest seekers of Christ and I love every minute. We've done some book studies but now we're doing a series by Joyce Meyer on taking your own thoughts captive. She's all about taking personal responsibility for your own self, your attitude, the way you react. I'm feeling conviction all over the place. She talks a lot about self-pity and says, "you can't be both pitiful and powerful." Rang like a bell.

I also got to teach for a morning at our church's women's book study. It was really fun to be in that mode again. It has been so, so long since I've done any sort of public speaking and it felt good. A bit rusty, but really good, too.

And Rory has been teaching a class at our church on Sunday mornings before the service begins. He's walking through CS Lewis' Mere Christianity, teaching from the book while weaving in discussion questions. It's so rich. Feels like a feast. Rory has a great pace to his teaching, and the material is so substantial, so articulate, and such a great reminder of the great story of God's Kingdom we are living under.

Rory and I went to the Sara Groves, Andrew Peterson and Bebo Norman concert earlier this month, followed by two nights at the Westin in Edina. The getaway was needed, wonderful, and way. too. short. We've been listening to a whole lot of Andrew Peterson ever since the concert and I can't get enough. Andrew has a way of writing songs that constantly point to the larger story that our story hangs on. Just like Lewis in the paragraph above, Andrew is always singing about the reckoning, wondering how long it will be until this earthly story concludes, singing about the loss of youth but a readiness for the eternal. And he's a poet, so the way he writes and sings makes things feel new again. Every song makes my heart beat a little harder, excited to be a part of God's kingdom work, excited to be hands and feet, excited to be His.

We have had a ton of company this month. I remember this about last October too. Somehow this is the month we seem to book up with dinner guests and visitors. It's awesome and makes our farm feel alive and bustling.

And finally, last night we had our friend Jaime come out to take family pictures. Jaime and I had talked this August while sitting on beach chairs by prior lake and I was debating if a photo shoot with a one and two year old was even worth it. Felt like such a gamble. Late in the game (this month) I decided we should give it a whirl. They're only this age once, right? So Jaime came and we laid out our colorful quilt under an oak tree back in the woods. And we set our children up and watched them wiggle away. And then Vernon, the orange cat came and photobombed for a long while. And eventually Elsie was crying crocodile tears as she shivered in the cold.

I think we got a few shots, but boy was it work.

Fast forward to two hours later when we're just back in the house and Elsie starts screaming. Her thumb is purple again (she had slammed it in the toilet seat earlier this week) and it looks out of joint. She can't pull it together and eventually lost all of the food eaten during the day. We rushed to the ER, unable to figure out why her thumb was so oddly positioned.

We got there, her thumb was "normal" again, but she had a fever of 101.7 and she continued to throw up. She was miserable. And we felt terrible. We had just spent two hours trying to "cheer her up" for family photos, bouncing her around, making silly faces at her and now the doctor was telling us he was pretty certain she had the stomach flu. He thought the thumb was just a coincidence.

They gave her a tiny Zofran, which felt full circle since I lived on Zofran while I was pregnant with her. She slept great all night, and in a sweet miracle the rest of us did too. She still has a fever and is very lethargic so we spent a lot of time today snuggling and reading board books and watching Thomas the Train. She's so active and busy that the days she wants to just lay in my arms are like a sweet gift. I'll take it.

***

I've been thinking a lot about blogging lately, wondering if it's obsolete yet. Wondering if people care anymore. But then I just had all of my posts from 2012 printed in a hard cover book and that book is like gold to me. It's the baby book I never finished for Ivar, and this blog is the baby book I've never even started for Elsie (for real.) It serves as the 10-year diary I wish I kept up with like my mother-in-law does so faithfully. And it's the journal I wish I wrote in each night. For now this medium is the only way I have continued any sort of writing life (which has mostly been a picture-describing writing life, but I hope that improves at some point too). But I finally decided that all those reasons are reason enough to keep writing.

Or maybe just for my great granddaughter who may one day crack the printed hardcover blog books open, curious about our day to day life. To her (and to you too) I'd say, "I'm so glad you're here. And I am very grateful you are reading."

abundance

On one level this can seem common sense. And if you're shaking your head and thinking, "welcome to the planet, Becca." then just hear me out. The conversation of abundance is probably the most frequent conversation Rory and I have since we moved to the country. We knew this stuff before on some level, but to see it with our own eyes, is actually blowing our minds.

When we first tapped our trees for maple syrup we couldn't believe how much goodness was flowing through each tree. And yes, it was a bumper year, but this happens every spring no matter what. The snow thaws and the sap begins to flow. The trees begin to grow new life and inside every maple (and silver maple, red maple, even boxelder!) tree there are gallons of sap to be tapped.

When we plant one tiny piece of corn, a strong stalk grows that supports two or three ears with hundreds of little kernels that could be planted again. We have trees that rain down walnuts and blackberries that grow thick in our woods. There is firewood for our lifetime in our woods and eggs popping out of our chickens.

We tried to save as many seeds as we could from our garden this year and were wide eyed while digging through the "dead" sweet peas to find the dried out pods and gather the little peas that would each grow into new plants yielding hundreds of pods next year, all summer long.

I know this is elementary. But it is also wondrous. That our world is set up for abundance. That there is enough. That everything is created to reproduce and multiply. That in the natural world we always end up with more than what there was at the start.

I suppose we could go political at this point, but let's not.

There is a Creator to this beauty. And his presence is just so obvious when we're digging in the dirt. There is a joy and contentment that is deep and true. The afternoon my mom showed me how to collect my zennia and cosmos seeds my heart was full and grateful. What a wonderful world. What fun. See what great love the father has lavished upon us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

That's how I feel when I'm out digging around, peeling walnuts to be dried, tapping into trees for syrup, eating tomatoes like candy, gathering flowers to bring inside. I feel lavished upon in this world full of abundance.

october at the grovestead

+The brothers who planted our barley and alfalfa came to harvest and found the barley was still too green. But the day they came our neighbor was combining his soybeans which meant we had two john deere tractors in our field. And poor Ivar slept through it all.

+This past Sunday as I took the kids to the car I was greeted by the seventeen turkeys that frequent our yard, two cats, three chickens and some barn swallows that were swooping in our garage. I had Elsie on the hip and Ivar by the hand and I had to navigate through a zoo to get my kids to the jeep parked on the gravel. I think I have a legit farmyard.

+Rory and I booked a little getaway, just the two of us. But before we left to check into our lovely hotel I told him, "hey, I really should take care of those black walnuts before they mold on me." And he replied, "Great, I was wanting to put a roof on the wood shed." While I took the outer layer off the walnuts it dawned on me, we are my grandma and grandpa with a list of chores to be done before we can leave with peace of mind...

+We went wading through the tall weeds where the big barn used to be. This spring we had planted pumpkins, squash, cantaloupe and watermelon there but then never took care of this garden patch. While gone on vacation, the weeds grew tall and intimidating and we just let it go. So the fact that we got anything out of this little garden patch is amazing. Each orange pumpkin, green pumpkin, tiny cantaloupe(!!) and squash felt full of grace to me. I don't deserve you... 

+I did use a lot of those weeds to make a pretty swag to hang on our house. And that felt like a sweet victory over the weeds that bothered me for so long. You are now quite lovely.

+My mom helped me dig up all of our gladiolas and calla lily bulbs, cut the flowers off and knock the dirt and then told me I needed to wash them, make sure they were perfectly dry, and hang them in a mesh bag in a cool dark place for the winter. I told her, "mom, I don't think I'm in a season that can handle bulbs." Instead we planted hundreds of tulips in our raised beds (which don't have to be dug up! Ever!)

+I got Ivar his Minion hat at a local handmade art fair. He's never seen the movie, but knows minions from his happy meal toys. The hat makes me very happy.

the kittens return

Our water went out again today. It did last Thursday too. So we called Tony, our well guy who leaves the top four buttons of his uniform shirt unbuttoned. Tony is great and told us what he told us a week ago. A mouse had fried itself in the circuit box in our well house, just like last week. But this time he added that it seemed we had a serious mouse problem in the well house, not near the water, just eating our wires in the circuit box.

So we called for backup. 

Farm Cats. Velma and Verna. The kittens we have been waiting to grow into cats.  

Since we last had Velma and Verna to our house, we have learned that Verna is in fact a boy. We now call him Vernon. Or as Ivar called him today, "no, it's Burnin' like a fire!" Which is handy because Vernon is orange like a Burnin' fire. (and now you'll never forget...) 

Velma and Vernon (or Burnin'...depending on who you talk to) came back this afternoon and they are sweet as ever. They are tame, affectionate, playful and I just love cats so much. It made me miss Toonces, and grateful I have cats in my life again.

They spent the afternoon working out a new pecking order with the chickens. I'm not sure how it all played out, but I do know Elsie is for sure on top and then it's hard to say if it's cats or chickens on the bottom. I might order it: Elsie, Vernon, Legos, Velma, Butterscotch Cookies, and then Zumbrota.

And then they got to work, manning their post at the well house, ready to catch mice.

pumpkins and a corn box

We stopped at a produce stand today to see the pumpkins and look at what we found behind the pumpkin display: a corn box! It was better than a trip to the park. It kept our interest for an awesome amount of time. Elsie worked hard to scoop the corn into a bucket, but eventually gave up and just chewed on her shovel. Ivar was diligent to keep corn out of his rain boots, but the corn kept sneaking in. So he would empty them again. And again and again and again.

I took some time to nap on my back in the corn box. It is a lovely day here in Minnesota and you might be interested to know, similar to those fancy swedish memory foam mattresses, corn molds perfectly to your body.

It also helps stabilize little legs for better shoveling. 

We left the corn box and drove the apple orchard down the road where we ate warm donuts, honey crisp apples and wisconsin string cheese for lunch. Which sealed the deal that this was in fact one of the best days ever. 

Elsie is a Joy

Elsie learning to walk from Becca Groves on Vimeo.

Elsie is non-stop sweetness. She is so determined. So proud. So willing to try. So happy to fall down and pick herself back up again. I see a million life lessons in how she lives her days and it makes me want to be more joyful. More proud of what I do. More strong willed in what I believe in.

She only says a few words, but the ones she does say are hilarious to me.
Cheese and Chicken- she says "chs" for cheese and will kick her legs in her high chair happily until you split her string cheese in two. She says, "chi-in" for chicken and is usually the first thing she says as she lunges from my arms to the window to see if they're out for the morning.
Thank You- perhaps the most polite and gracious one year old on the planet, Elsie says her own form of thank you with a sweet "tay tu" She says these words after I give her anything on her high chair tray. Or when I give her a water bottle or a toy. She is so gracious!
Poop- a few days ago she crawled up on the ottoman with a diaper and said to me in a very high pitched, staccato voice, "poop" while tapping her hips. I was blown away. And sure enough, she had a dirty diaper.

Other than those, her most used words are Mama, Dada, and her personal favorite: Baba, which is her bottle. And now every time we open her animals book, she flips to the page with the sheep and says proudly, "Baba." As if to say, those sheep like Baba's too.

Our awesome neighbor girls come over often after school to help coach her walking. She is a happy learner, and they are so eager to be here for her first steps. Elsie will let them know she's done by laying her head on the carpet for a rest. This girl is so sweet.


elsie's coaches from Becca Groves on Vimeo.

Loving the Little Years

It's hard to find public role models in the stay-at-home world because if someone has written a book or has a platform like a money-earning blog, it means they're not solely a stay-at-home mom. They're doing something external to their mothering that would satisfy that nagging voice always inside a stay-at-home's head, "should I be doing something more?"

This little voice is the greatest challenge I have found as a stay-at-home mom. It's always asking, should I be working? am I supposed to be contributing to the world in a more meaningful way? I'll wonder these thoughts over and over and finally come to the end of myself and ask, can I stop worrying about all of these wonders and just be content where I am at for this split-second-season when they're tiny and at home?

Those wonders linger over everything. And because everyone walks through their season of motherhood differently, it's hard not to compare with how other mom's are walking this road. And wonder.

I checked out a whole stack of books from the library on mothering and stay-at-home mothering this summer. I read a lot. Some of it helpful, some of it not.  But this book, pictured above, is by far my favorite mothering book. The subtitle is Motherhood in the Trenches and it feels that way from start to finish. There is something candid and endearing in how the author writes (it's not masterful writing, but it's so honest) that you really believe she is in the trenches with you.

When I checked out this book from our library it had greasy and sticky residue all over it. I had to give it a special warm washcloth bath before I started reading it. Some mom before me had returned this book after her little one had smeared oily crud all over it.

That, is motherhood in the trenches.

Loving the Little Years is a short read, full of little stories and helpful attitude shifts that helped me refocus my days. It will be the book that I give to new mom's and especially the one I recommend when they're starting to feel the toll of being a mother.