TGIS (Thank God Its Summer)

OK, I know it's not really summer yet (my literal boys remind me of this regularly), but it sure feels like it around here.  With the near-90 degree temps today, and the annual opening up of the cabins in Waterford last weekend (in nothing close to 90 degree temps), it's beginning to look a lot like SUMMER!  Oh how I love me a Maine summer.  And oh how I love Memorial Day at the compound. Cold, rainy weather didn't stop us from having a fantastic opening weekend, chock full of work, family fun, and fishing.  I love the feeling of community that pervades opening weekend, from the moment we all gather to put in the docks between hugs and "How are you?"s and "Happy summer!"s after a long winter apart, to the campfire (or fireplace, in this case) sing-a-longs to celebrate birthdays, to the association meetings that involve both young and old in efforts to care for and preserve this amazing resource we all share.  It's all quite special, and I try to teach my boys that not everyone has this.  Not everyone gets to gather with their huge extended family on a regular basis in an idyllic setting.  Not everyone has the opportunity to run free with their cousins, to explore trails and pirate ships and lookout towers.  Not everyone is able to easily access their ancestry and their history, through scrapbooks, and artifacts of summers past, and situations that encourage storytelling across generations.  I think if you grow up spending summers at a place like the compound, you think it's all quite normal.  But as someone who didn't, I can assure you it is not at all normal.  With every passing year, as I watch my kids engage with their cousins and truly reap the benefits of all that this abnormal wonder offers, I feel more and more lucky to call this community my own.

We spent a LOT of time here this weekend.  It was chilly!  But here's what I'm talking about regarding artifacts of summers past - check out that mantel.  We have a picture of Ben and his dad fishing from when Ben was about Ethan's age, an award we won for our costume last year, and a mounted fish that Tom caught decades ago.  There are treasures like this all over the compound.

This kid fell in love with fishing this weekend.

That is, everything except the part where you actually catch a fish. 

Check out that cast!

We let the boys spread their wings a bit more this weekend than we have in summers past.  Here they are Monday morning out on the T'Cozy dock, while the adults stayed happily inside drinking their coffee.  Ethan is casting (surprise, surprise) and Adam is dutifully listening as Ethan instructs him in all things fishing.

The next generation of NEWHATS.  This was the first Junior NEWHATS meeting our boys attended.  And while these four boys had a little trouble sitting still for the proceedings, they were a big help clearing sticks from the Green Arrow Trail right afterwards.  

Ethan was generous enough to give his brother a try or two before reclaiming the sole fishing pole.  Another fishing pole is on our shopping list.

When the clouds cleared on Monday morning, we did our first hike of the year up Tir'em. 

Other Stockwellians had the same idea.  It made for a fun party at the top.

Cousins at the top!

Adam found a friendly caterpillar that entertained the boys for quite a while.

Proud hikers at the bottom.   First hike of the season deemed a big success!  And very sore muscles for Mommy the next day, after having chased a certain little monkey who decided to sprint down the whole mountain.

Diggin' in the Dirt

Well it wouldn't be May without a post about the garden, now would it?  I'll leave Ben (ahem ahem) to blog about all the particulars of what's been planted and how lovely it's all doing, but suffice it to say, May is all about gardening in the Stockwell house.  These gardeners are funny creatures - sometime around September or October every year, I hear recurring promises to scale back, go smaller, spend less time in the garden...and it's not just Ben - I hear this from the many beloved gardeners in my life.  Then there is the long cold winter, and these gardeners start to dream...and to plan...and to collect piles and piles of seed catalogs...and before you know it, it's April and your garden is twice the size you last remembered it!  All kidding aside, I truly love the role gardening plays in our family life.  I love that both Ethan and Adam now have their very own gardens, where they can choose what they want to grow (sort of - Adam's insistence upon growing corn and only corn has been redirected), plant it, take care of it (again, sort of, with lots of help from Dad), pick it, and proudly share it with the rest of the family.  I love that starting now, I can walk out to my garden at lunchtime every day and grab a handful of lettuce for a salad or a sandwich, and that in a couple of months, we'll be relying on our garden for almost all our vegetable needs.  I love that our kids love veggies, and that some of that has to come from having witnessed the magical beauty of a plant just beginning to sprout from the earth, and having tasted a sun-warmed tomato or a crisper-than-crisp snap pea, straight off the vine.  I love that the other morning, before he'd even had breakfast, Ethan wanted to go check on his garden to see how much his plants had grown overnight.  And that Adam was only a few steps behind him.  And I love that gardening is something we can all do together.

Now about that expansion...Ben's been busy this spring replacing old beds and building new ones, including this pretty stone garden on the hill.

He and the boys also spent the weekend I was away with my mom on garden expansion detail.  I was quite impressed with the two new raised beds that awaited me when I returned!

And because I've seen how passionate my kids are about gardening, I decided this spring to co-chair a committee focused on constructing a new school garden at Ethan's school.  Back in April, we held a community work day, with a great turnout, amazing weather, and three new raised beds, built, painted, filled, and ready to be planted.

And in case Ethan just wasn't getting enough with all this gardening fun at home, he spent his April vacation just down the road at Broadturn Farm.  In addition to some time in the greenhouse, Ethan collected eggs, fed the baby cow, built many, many fairy houses, fell in the brook, played in a maze made of stacked wood, made yogurt, and generally enjoyed being a mini-farmer for a week.  Adam's there now on Thursday mornings for a preschool version of the camp, and is similarly loving getting his hands (and feet and face) dirty.

 

 

 

So now we wait.  We welcome these rainy days and hope for some sun soon and check our plants often and nibble at the lettuce and plant some more.  It's all so much fun (says the one who does the least amount of work in the garden and reaps the most significant benefits - thanks honey).  

Our compost delivery arrived at dinnertime one night.  And just like that, I was eating alone and there were three men wielding shovels in my yard.

Fun on a Sunday morning: a trip to the livestock supply place for straw.
We Stockwells sure do know how to have a good time.

Mom's the Word

If we moms were each asked to describe the perfect Mother's Day, I'm quite sure there would be much disagreement.  While I would hazard a guess that most moms enjoy a few extra winks on the morning of their special day, I don't doubt that there's a mom out there who prefers instead to greet the Mother's Day sun as it rises.  And while most of us long to put our feet up and be pampered, without guilt, for at least a few minutes, I know at least one mom (my own) who would like nothing more than to garden, garden, and garden some more every Mother's Day.  Thanks to my wonderful family, I am lucky enough to have had seven perfect second Sundays in May since I became a mom.  To me, a perfect Mother's Day involves: a few extra minutes in bed, some "me" time, some family time, a little time enjoying nature, and no time whatsoever in the kitchen.  I got all that and more this year, and ate up every ounce of love, hugs, and gratitude that was bestowed upon me.  In addition to sleeping in (a few extra minutes in bed - check), getting a pedicure ("me" time - check), a picnic and a walk at a nearby state park followed by ice cream on the way home (family time and nature time - check), and being waited on throughout the day by my little and big men (no time in the kitchen - check), I also spent some time looking at posts from Mother's Days past.  The boys loved seeing pictures of themselves as babies, and I was taken back to the special emotions I felt on my first few Mothers' Days...the excitement about finally being a member of a club I'd always known I'd wanted to join...the true understanding of the depths of motherly love...new appreciation of and gratitude towards my own mother.  Those first few Mother's Days were precious, and it was fun to rekindle those memories and reflect on how much life has changed in six years.  When you have babies, the success of Mother's Day hinges solely on a devoted husband's willingness/ability to say all the things that babies wish they even knew they felt.  But now, I get to hear it, at least some of it, directly from my munchkins' mouths.  The "I love you Mommy"s, the handmade cards, the bouquet of dandelions presented with a giant smile and a "Happy Mother's Day!"...these gifts are all the more special when they come unprompted, full of love and adoration, straight from my boys' big hearts.  Don't get me wrong - the Daddy in this house still shouldered most of the Mommy's Day duties this year, but some of my favorite parts of yesterday were laying in bed listening to little whispers of "Don't wake her up - it's Mother's Day!", or coming downstairs to giggly excitement about gifts and cards to be presented.

That's Adam and me at his school's "Muffins for Moms", which is about my favorite event of the year.  Something about sitting at teeny tables and eating homemade muffins with my favorite preschooler who is gleaming with pride...warms my heart.

The "First Aid Kit for Moms" (entirely the teacher's creation, except for the handprint) and the Adam-potted and -painted pansy warmed my heart too.  

Apparently Ethan thinks it's my 37th Mother's Day and that it will be a year of big money.  

But I must say he knows me pretty well.  He certainly knows that I am 37.

And while my wish for a whine-free Mother's Day was largely ignored, my boys did seem to understand that yesterday was all about me, and that I deserved every bit of it.  So on this day-after-Mother's Day 2013, I am feeling loved, feeling appreciated, and feeling thankful.

Thankful that this little turkey made me a mom six years ago.


Thankful to call these lights of my life my boys.


Thankful for my own mom, and all that she is to me - a confident, a friend, a mentor, an amazing woman.

And thankful that my husband understands the importance of us getting away together every year for a mommy-daughter weekend.  He deserves many more thanks than just that, the least of which is for planning a killer Mother's Day this year.


Thankful that we are able to live where we'd always dreamed of living.

It turns out a Subway picnic with my three favorite men in a gorgeous setting beats a fancy crowded Mother's Day brunch any day.

Especially when you're lucky enough to spot a tiger in the Maine woods.

And finally, thankful for all the other moms in my life.  Mother's Day always brings with it, at least for me, a feeling of fellowship and community.  Feelings of respect and honor for all the moms out there, trying their very best every single day, only to feel as if they're always coming up just a little bit (or a lot, on some days) short.  I have so many special moms in my life - a great big circle of women I am proud to know and count on and learn from as we all walk this extraordinary, mind-blowing, life-changing path called motherhood.  I salute you all, and wish you the happiest of Mother's Days.

Busy Busy Busy

I remember when the boys were very young, and I was up to my eyeballs in diapers and messy bibs and swaddles and sleepness nights, someone told me "this gets much easier, but just you wait, it also gets much busier".  At the time, I didn't believe her - how could life get much busier than it is with two boys under two?  Or two boys under three?  Or two boys under four for that matter!  The common refrain I heard when I told people I had, say, a one year old and an almost three year old, both boys, was "Oh, you must be busy!"  I just couldn't imagine how life could get any busier.  But now that we're here, now that we're getting very close to not having any kids under five, now that we're almost fully entrenched in school age-dom, now that it really has gotten so much easier, I understand what she meant.  Now I will be the first to admit that I love busy.  I get a certain satisfaction out of glancing at the calendar page and seeing lots and lots of scribbles all over it.  On the flip side, I get a little uneasy when I am staring down a weekend devoid of plans.  So I like this rhythm we're in at the moment.  Still new to this whole "soccer mom" gig, I don't yet resent my emerging role as taxi driver.  I don't yet mind shuttling the boys here and there and everywhere, and instead enjoy the challenge of balancing everyone's schedules and keeping track of who needs to be where and when.  So it's all good.  But my one complaint about this whole busyness thing is that it seems to make time fly by even faster.  I know, I know, I say this all the time, but weren't we just standing out at the bus stop with Ethan on his very first day of kindergarten?  Now he's six weeks away from first grade!  And Adam...don't even get me started on Adam.  He was adorably excited about his half birthday a couple of weeks ago, and somewhere around the time he hit that half year mark he just got BIG.

Someone in this house gets very excited about birthdays.

And I don't mean that he hit a growth spurt or anything, he just seemed to go to sleep a little guy one night and wake up a very big boy the next morning.  And here we are already at the last year of his time at home with us; a year from now we'll be planning for his very first day of kindergarten.  So amongst all this busyness, all this activity and excitement and FUN, I do need to make every effort to pause, to enjoy these moments that appear to be flying by at warp speed, to really savor this time.  Because I am quite sure we are in the golden age of childhood right here, and I don't want to miss a minute of it. 

More on what's been keeping us busy...

Wrapping up gymnastics (and swimming) just in time for...

T-BALL!

The boys are on the same team, which makes schlepping them to practices and games a whole lot simpler.  I can only imagine how much busier life will get when we are juggling multiple sporting events every weekend!  The added benefit is that they have so much fun playing on the same team.

OK, he still looks pretty little here.   

Ethan is one of the oldest (perhaps the oldest?) on the team, a role he is relishing.

We've also had recent opportunity to see friends that we don't get to see nearly enough.  First, a quick trip to the circus with the Doyles on their whirlwind East Coast visit.  

Jack was too scared of the clown to get in this picture.  Smart man. 

Oh how I love watching these kiddos bond so easily, despite seeing each other only once or twice a year

And later in April, we made a long overdue day trip down to Needham to visit the Owens clan and meet the adorable Murphy girls!  I wish I had gotten a picture of all the kids together, but at least I caught this cute moment on the see saw.

1 Ethan = 1 Adam + 1 Hannah

And our remarkably dry spring and resulting dearth of mud hasn't kept us from getting our hands (or whole bodies, actually) dirty.  The weekend before last, Ben and I competed in the Into the Mud Challenge, while Ethan partook of Oakey's Muddy Dash (the 1-mile kids' version).

I was super proud of this little trooper who trudged through mud ponds and scaled walls like an old pro.  

He was all smiles at the finish and told me "I wish I could do a mud run every day!".

This was my first mud run, and oh my, what a blast.

What made it extra special was running/climbing/diving through mud right beside my husband, who has never been, and proclaims to never be, a runner, but who approached the race with a great sense of humor, kept up like a champ, smiled big at the finish, and whined only a little bit the next day.  I think he *may* have even had a little fun.  Ben's willingness to join me in one of my favorite pastimes (okay, his agreement to go through with it after I surreptitiously signed him up), despite his wariness, dread, and downright disdain for running is just one of the many reasons I love him.  (Other reasons, like having a special weekend with the boys while I got away with my mom this past weekend, while building us a bigger garden to boot, are fodder for another post.)   

The guy throwing red chalk dust seemed to miss the memo about avoiding people's faces...

We missed Daddy when he was away for a work trip a few weeks back.

But it meant we got to have our favorite "while Daddy's away" meal...

And what's been keeping us busiest of all?  Why gardening, of course.  But that's a whole 'nother post...