Steve makes brunch on Saturdays, sausage biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs, bacon, or whatever he is in the mood to make.  This past Saturday it was pancakes.  He usually makes them in the form of letters or objects and the kids think he is the best thing since Julia Child.

Sundays are almost always exactly the same for us.  A rush to get to church on time, church, where we usually teach  2 and 3 yr. old children  or  4 and 5 yr. olds, and then home.  The first thing we do is change into the most comfortable clothing we own, and then I get the big lunch ready and while the house fills with the smell of old fashioned recipes the kids start complaining that they are going to die of hunger.  After dinner we linger, Steve and I stay at the table and talk about kids, and life, and the kids run in and out showing us what they are doing or just needing an arm around them for a bit. With my feet up on a nearby chair and a warm drink in hand, we watch them while they think we are only talking.  The picture above is Steve's relaxed pose, he is most likely observing one of the kids in this shot.

Afterwards the whole house takes naps and then it is off the church again.  When people invite us over on Sundays I usually decline and this is why, I cannot imagine a Sunday without a nap, but also the family digs its roots down on Sundays.

Steve is a fount of odd information that he stores away and never forgets.  I will read a book, study it really, and then tell him about it, a year or so later we will be talking and that book will come up and I will have forgotten the details of it, but not Steve, and he never read it.

So the other day he starts telling me all of names the Native Americans have for the full moons.  I forgot them five minutes after he told me, but that's okay, I wrote it down and even if I didn't Steve would remember for me.

02/09 Full Snow Moon

03/10 Full Crow Moon

04/09 Full Pink Moon

05/09 Full Flower Moon

06/07 Full Stawberry Moon

07/07 Full Buck Moon or Full Thunder Moon

08/05 Full Sturgeon Moon

09/04 Full Corn Moon

10/04 Full Harvest Moon

11/02 Full beavers Moon

12/02 Full Cold Moon

12/31 Full Long Night Moon or Full Blue Moon (because we have two in one month this year)

Jeff is my deep thinker and at night he gets me to himself, I will lean up against his bunk bed and talk to him, and find out all that is going on inside his little head.  In the morning it is Eti's time he is my cuddle bug, he sleeps on his stomach with his knees up to his ears and his arms tucked under, just like a turtle.  In the morning I pick him up and turn him around on my lap, and he is still all curled up, more like the tip of a fern. And I rock him and whisper to him, and this dark morning I looked out the window and saw the moon looking in at us, and Eti and I rocked and looked back at it together.  I was able to tell Eti that it was called the Full Wolf Moon thanks to my brainiac husband.

Steve's parents came for a quick visit overnight.  As I was preparing for them to come I overheard the boys plotting, "Eti we have to be ready I know his tactic, he sleeps on the couch because he is tired from driving and then Grandma asks us to wake him up because he has been asleep to long, but its a trick don't do it, he's not really sleeping, he will jump up and growl and tickle you!"

This cd collection was a  great find at my library, it is worth  seeing if your library carries it just to hear Robert Frost read "The Road Not Taken" and "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening" recorded 1916.

It also has Tennyson, Browning, Whitman, Yeats, Edna ST. Vincent Millay, E. E. Cummings among others. 

The authors always read their own works best, I have other poetry on tape that I own and like to fold laundry to it. There is more feeling and better cadence when it is read by the person who had the original thought, they pause at places that I would walk past, and the subtle fluctuations of voice changes the color of the words, I hear meaning that I would miss if reading it myself.

Not to mention how good it feels to have the house filled with the sound  of literary giants while the kids draw and play not realizing that I crushed up culture and hid it under jelly and am now spoon feeding it to them.

One of my  blog friends messaged me and asked me if I wanted an old photo she had found.  I stuck it behind a nest that is on my dining room table, I am hoping to find a safer spot for it, but for now I like how the blues all work together. 

Our mothers did not have this, the friendship among women, a network of friends who for the most part have never met face to face but share and spread kindness and inspiration. 

 If I saw the antique photo for sale somewhere I would want it because it looks hand tinted and because it is rare to see a photo this old with children in it, but it is worth so much more to me because someone out there thought of me, enough to mail it.  Beauty and sentiment on a small slip of paper.