Our Overflowing Cup

Each of our days is full to the brim, overflowing, and spilling over – sometimes literally. We don’t have the full busyness that saps your strength and leaves you dragging. No, the fullness in our lives yields contentment, satisfaction, peace and a really good night’s sleep! Each day our cup holds something different, but each day is just as tasty. For example, Sunday we had hot cocoa; “Cocoa” is now Liam’s new favorite word. “Cocoa? Mama, cocoa?” is repeated with wide blue eyes while upholding his never-full-to-the-brim-lest-I-make-a-mess cup (that cuts down on the literally spilling over). We drank our luscious cocoa at Nonno and Mima’s house (my parents) while helping my Aunt Chris (Triss) move in. The kids played in the yard with their new sled – a prize from their plundering Aunt Chris’s things – and generally ran around like a bunch of Indians, scooping gravel from the driveway (much to my father’s frustration), thieving bacon and sausage (much to my mother’s delight – that’s why she made it, anyway!), and getting in everyone’s way at least once (without and casualties and with minimal grumblings). Then we came home and set up our Jungle.

Monday, our cup held cocoa again – but the kids weren’t fooled! It didn’t taste quite as good as Mima’s and it had a distinct bite to it that Phinehas immediately identified as cayenne. Regardless of their letdown, they still drank it up and asked for more. Surrounding our Monday cocoa were school projects, Lego construction, horse riding (now the kids have 2 hobble horses, thanks again to plundering Aunt Chris’s vast array of treasures), and some time spent in the great outdoors. While outside, we went up to the Ash Tree to check on the deer lollipop (salt lick) that Andrew bought last weekend. (Liam had carried it up there, holding it in a bear hug and licking it the whole way.) After checking – and NOT licking – the lollipop we sat down amongst the Hickory Trees to soak in the sun and listen to the song of the birds and the rustling of the squirrels. The quiet didn’t last long as MY squirrels started rustling in the fallen leaves. We looked at some of the leaves and discovered that they had veins, which led to me giving a dissertation on the pulmonary and circulatory systems… all in vein, I’m sure. (Haha.) We’ll surely need to review again some other time. The last dregs of the evening brought out Phin’s engineering capabilities as he built a castle for his Papa. Fortunately, Papa restrained the Ogre so the castle lasted til morning…

Tuesday Morning brought a cup full of hot cider – but only after MORE school projects. I can’t believe how long the kids will sit drawing, cutting, tracing, writing, etc. Even Liam! He makes these fantastic pictures of minute little oblong swirls of color surrounded by what he calls letters: “Aaaee!” “EEEEeee!” Those are his favorites. Phinehas amazed me as he traced the names of the seven different shapes that he had cut out yesterday. I couldn’t believe that he stuck with it to the end! Quite a feat for a 3 ½ year old – and a boy at that! Abigail did some copy work – rather quickly, I might add – then immediately turned the page and wrote and illustrated her first story. I only helped her with sounding out the words; usually she skips sounds when she spells by herself, so I helped her keep track of where she was:

After the projects were put away and the crayons, pencils and markers were gathered from the remote corners of the dinning area, we bundled up for a hike. Even Lydia came, carried in my carrier that was handmade by someone from the Hmong Tribe in Laos. A friend of mine sent it to me and it is the most comfortable (and easy) carrier I’ve used! Ah yes, back to the hike. We ventured into the upper field where we found ‘deer party central.’ There were deer trails and spots where bunches of the ‘walking stew’ had bedded down, weaving all across the field. It looked like aliens had landed and made a faltering attempt at crop circles! Well, the kids had so much fun that they asked for a picnic so we brought our lunch to the Cedar Tree, but we only lasted for half our lunch as the wind picked up and chased the sun behind some dark gray clouds. So we went in to fill our cups with hot cider to chase away the shivers.

Today’s cup was full of pine needle tea, banana bread baking, more school projects and more fun. Abigail wrote a song. Here are the words as she wrote them:

“GOD. I LOV HIM HE IS GRAT.

I LOVE HIM THE GOD OV GOD’S THE KING OV KING THE GOD.

HE IS MIN FORE EVR AND EVR. I LOVE HIM.

HE DIED ON THE CROS. THE CROS WUS HEVEE. HE FEL.

SEE THE LORDE. I LOVE HIM. SEE THE LORD.

GOD IS MI GOD. I WILL PRAS HIM FOREVR AND EVR.”

Pretty cool, eh?

We did have fun! And of course, to make sure I didn’t have too much enjoyment, the Nemesis (laundry) was lurking around the corner, mocking me as there were (and still are) innumerable piles of clothing in various stages of the laundry cycle: dirty-unsorted, dirty-sorted, wet-in-the-washer, dry-in-the-drier, clean-in-the-basket-unfolded, clean-in-the basket-just-folded, clean-in-the-basket-used-to-be-folded-but-she-didn’t-put-me-away… my cup overflows…