My Old Kentucky Home

I haven't been back to Kentucky very often in recent years. Whenever I get there, I start singing My Old Kentucky Home involuntarily in my mind.  I learned it at school in 4th grade.

Weep no more, my lady.
Oh weep no more today.
We'll sing one song for my old Kentucky home.
For my old Kentucky home far away.


Right after Finn was born, we enjoyed a quick family trip.  And now that Mimi is getting older and that mean old dementia is taking her prisoner, when Ava begged to see her as a birthday present, we couldn't dream of turning her down. So we arranged for her and Jack and me to spend a few days in Kentucky.  We all love Mimi so much.  And Mimi loves all of us, she loves everyone.  But she especially loves Ava. And Ava especially loves her. As the trip drew closer, I just kept praying that Mimi would be able to remember Ava when we visited.

Now that my parents are off of their mission, they have been staying with Mimi.  The kids and I Facetime them nearly everyday. And everyday, Mimi asks my mom who we are.  Except Ava.  It's remarkable, really.  As soon as Ava's face appears on the screen, she exclaims, "Ava! There's my Ava!"

My worries were in vain, because she absolutely remembered Ava.  Me, on the other hand, she knew she loved me, but she couldn't keep straight who I was exactly.  Of course Dan wasn't with us, but she remembered him, though not his name.  She talked about him everyday.  She called him her "jack in the box" because he always makes things so fun.  And she told me she'd never get over the way he treated his children. She promised me that they would never forget it either.  When she Facetimed him with me, she told him she was glad he was still so handsome.


These girls really were so happy to see each other again!

It's been terribly sad to me that Mimi and Goodgran sold the beautiful old home they had lived in my entire childhood.  It was one of the only homes that was constant for me, since we moved so much. It had nooks and crannies for discovering, secret closets for hiding, and a terrifying basement. 

At least some of the treasures have moved over to this new house, and Ava happily played for hours with a basketfull she found behind some quilts.

I finished my second round of whole30 the day we left for Kentucky.  (I really do love it, I feel so much better when I eat that way) but I would be lying if I said I hadn't thought often, in sweet anticipation, about getting alone with a Magee's cake.  

And I did.  

And I liked it.  

Jack is a man's man.  He loves me, I'm sure of it. But when he gets a hold of Dan, he can't stop kissing him.  

It was the same with my dad.  All the kissing pictures are on my dad's phone. I'll have to see if I can snag some.  But they sure were a cute pair. 

Grandma and Mimi weren't left out though.  He has plenty of love to go around.

Mimi was thrilled with having a baby in the house.

There were a few things I insisted we see on our short trip.

One was our old house.

I have mixed feelings about this house.  It's on 10 acres, with two big horse paddocks and barn.  We nailed up every plank on the fence and built the barn.  It's beautiful. But I don't have a lot of happy memories there. We moved to this house right after my brother Aaron died and every thing about life at that point, felt absolutely wrong.

Still, I go back and there is a longing in me for that place. I am a giant contradiction.

We went to Ft. Boonesboro, the fort established by Daniel Boone, because we knew it would be right up Ava's Alley.  She wishes she had been a pioneer.

Seeing the different cabins and demonstrations was cool, but my favorite part was seeing these two, like this everywhere we went.

 If Mimi was awake, they were never too far apart.

Of course seeing Grandma and Grandpa was wonderful too.

 One of the other places on my list was Raven Run Nature Sanctuary.  When we lived in Lexington, this was a place I never tired of going.  And this is my preferred type of nature.

I really love being outside, but at the top of my list, the places that thrill me the most, are the ones with a lot of trees and a lot of green.  I tell Dan often, that I love Colorado, and the mountains, and the red rock of Utah, but I am an Eastern girl and my heart is happiest in this landscape.



I'm 100% sure I ran down this same trail when I was this age.

I wished so badly  Dan was walking by my side.  He would have loved it.

These pictures are nice, but I knew as I was taking them, that they were not doing justice to what I was seeing.

Ava was in heaven.

Along with everything else, the pudgy legs dangling by my sides were making me really happy.

 I love my parents.

The only down side to hiking down into the river bed, is that you have to hike back up when you're done.

My last request was to eat on a blanket in Henry Clay's yard and take pictures, including a 4 generation picture in the garden there.

Henry Clay's house is directly across the street from Mimi and Goodgran's old house on the main road of Lexington as you approach downtown.  I have spent so many hours in the grass of this old estate over the course of my life.  It will always be one of my favorite places.

Jack was starting to get a little fussy at this point and I felt really lucky to have lured him into sleep so that we could take our garden pictures. 

Before we were to meet my very talented aunt at an art gallery opening where some of her paintings were on display, Jack really got to screaming.  I could tell he was in pain and I feared it was his ears.  The last thing I wanted was to take him on a plane the next morning with an untreated ear infection.

We tried an urgent care but they would only treat children over 2 years old.  That was apparently the case with all the urgent cares in the area, so they recommended the emergency room at the children's hospital.  Now, I knew this wasn't an emergency but there didn't seem to be any other way to get him seen.

You know what I love?

I love spending my last hours of a vacation in an emergency room.  Especially when you're held captive in room for hours, the ibuprofen kicks in and your baby gets really happy and doesn't appear sick at all, and the doctor tells you his ears look great.  Yeah, I love that. Not.

They did say he had a lot of fluid in one ear which may have caused his pain, but there was nothing more to be done that keeping him dosed with ibuprofen.  

A couple hundred dollars, a few hours later, we were on our way.

I was so worried we 'd miss it, but Jack, my dad, and I caught up with every body else at the gallery just in time to check out the paintings.

My beautiful aunt, Ashley.

We enjoyed a delicious dinner that night and flew home early the next morning.

Upon my return, Max requested a picture of us on the couch.

And after a wonderful trip, I was content to be back with my little boys, and my Jack in the Box.  And I agree with Mimi, I am really glad he's still so handsome.

Which Nursery Rhyme Character Are You?

If I'm being honest, life is good but it has never felt so hard. I feel so lucky to have the six beautiful people that live here in this house with me, live here in this house with me.  But, man.  This is a lot of people and it is a lot of work.  And it's not just the physical work, and not getting nearly enough sleep to do it well, but it's the emotional effort and fortitude required that adds to the load.  Having four kids for me, I wouldn't have called it easy, but I wouldn't have called it hard, either.  But five? This thing is no joke. The addition of Jack has ramped up this mommy factory to max capacity. The motor is roaring and the gears are thumping and I am just hanging on. Dan appears to be doing something similar.  I find myself wondering, when things calm down in 10 or 20 years, will I still have all my appendages, or will I have lost a thumb or a leg or my heart somewhere on the assembly line? And will Dan and I even know what to do with each other besides fall asleep, absolutely spent, to reruns of Shark Tank?

In the mid mornings, when homeschool is in full swing (and overall going pretty great, by the way), when two babies are screaming, Ava is trying to concentrate, and Max wants another peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I am mentally transformed into my nursery rhyme doppelganger.

You know the one, right?

There was an old woman, and in a nice home she did dwell,
She had so many children that most days were heaven, but some days were...not that great.
She gladly wiped bottoms and served peanut butter on bread,
But by the end of the day she was completely whipped and fell into bed.




The irony of life is that the cause of my pain is also the cause of my unrivaled pleasure.

Jack has been a little slower to sit up, not that I'm complaining about that because the longer we can put off his growing up, the better, in my book.  But I was starting to suspect it was a sign that his body was ready for some real food.  It's not that I hadn't given it to him, but the fact that our baby seat was still occupied (Finn), didn't help the convenience factor, but mostly, it was because when I had given him regular food, he backed up worse than rush hour traffic.

Remind me to tell you about the time the doctor had to perform a poop extraction.  It was even worse than it sounds.

But, a new regime of Miralax and a new high chair got this little buddy in business and he was thrilled!

When he gets in his chair and the food appears, he wiggles his entire body with excitement.

He still loves a good bottle though, 

And as suspected, once he got some good sweet potatoes in him, the sitting up has come right along.

He may be 7 months old now, but the novelty has not worn off.  I think he's everyone's favorite. 

Especially, Finn's.

 Finn has a straight up problem though.

  Hello, my name is Finn and I am a paci-aholic.

Ava is making great strides with her riding and has mastered grooming and tacking up her horse independently.

I told Luke to go fix his hair the other morning before school and he came out like this.  Somebody wants to be just like their dad.

Luke had his first piano recital a week ago.  He was so excited but, not surprisingly, wanted to play it cool.  He tried so hard not to smile and he played great while he was doing it.

Meanwhile, Max was channeling Michael Jackson.

I had to snap this picture the other day.  It's not to illustrate that I make pies a lot (I don't) or to give the illusion that my kitchen table is always clean (it's not).  But this moment was a great one.

 My kitchen table was clean.  I had accomplished an uncharacteristic amount that day, including a pie, so I was feeling good.  But the greatest part, was looking at these little people around me and being flooded with the feeling that not only did I love them, I liked them.  They may be small, but they are fantastic humans.  They are smart and kind and fun and good.  And each one of them, would be people I would choose to spend time with. Which is good, because I spend a lot of time with them.
 This was a moment of being reassured that the effort is totally worth it.  It's all worth it.  I have complete faith that they will continue to grow into the kind and good humans they have already started to become. And in 10 or 20 years, when things calm down, as long as I have Dan and our reruns, and these five people, I might be short a thumb, or all my dark hair, but I'll still have my heart.