Nine

Exactly nine years ago, we met our son Lukas for the first time - in a big tub filled with water boiled on the wood stove. It was originally designed to hold water for cows or horses. I wanted a home birth and a water birth, and since Steve and I didn't want to spend money on a birthing tub, we went to the local farm store and bought a stock tank. It worked great. Lukas slipped into this world in this tub, in the middle of the kitchen, in front of a roaring wood stove fire, looking like a wrinkled old, but wise, man. (I would have liked to show you a photo from the birth in this tub, but they are all sort of... graphic.)  He made his personality known right from the start. He is a lot like me, with fire under his ass, as some of my friends delicately put it.

Lukas is the one out of my three children that I have worried about most, probably because he is the one that we could have lost at one point, when he contracted Kawasaki disease. But like everything in his life so far, his spirited warrior soul battled and conquered the disease, and I want to believe that he is all the stronger for it. It sure made me appreciate him more, and gave me perspective and patience to put up with his challenging fiery personality (more about it here).

Today, we celebrated his birthday with a hike, which, according to the hiking book, was supposed to be amazing with knock-your-socks-off kind of views. The only views we got, however, were deep layers of fog and clouds, with the occasional snow flake thrown in for good measure. Lukas and Kai had fun despite the cold, since we packed lots of treats, and since they got to throw snowballs at each other.

After the hike, we took ourselves to 5b's Bakery, the new gluten-free bakery in Concrete for even more treats (hey, you can't have enough sugar on your birthday, right?). It's an awesome bakery, and every local person who reads my blog should go there and support them.

On the subject of Lukas: He and his older brother Kai performed their first ever public music gig a couple of weeks ago. Lukas on the key board, Kai on the fiddle. I can't tell you how proud I was when they got up on stage at the Marblemount Market, surrounded by quite a crowd of people. They did great, with not too many mistakes, but a lot of gusto. I couldn't get over their stage presence – they both were relaxed, interacting and joking with the audience, and jovially tipping their hats at the end of the performance. The crowd went wild, and they boys collected over $20 in Kai's violin case.

A week later, they repeated their show at the “Grub and Groove”, a local get-together where people share a meal, music and stories. What a rich social life we have!

This week was a busy one: I harvested all of our pumpkins and squashes, put the garden to bed, and sowed cover crops that were immediately eaten by the blue jays. I also want you to know that we grew pounds and pounds of watermelons, and I want you to be impressed by that, will you? This is Marblemount, after all, where we get 100 inches of precipitation a year. We pulled it off, thanks to growing transplants on black plastic. I also spun a lot of yarn and made goat milk soap to stock up my inventory for Christmas sales. One of the soap making days coincided with a power outage, which wasn't good since I need the electric stick blender. So Steve started up the generator in the wood shed, and I hauled my supplies out there, lavender essential oil scent in my wake, and made soap in the wood shed – with ear protectors on to drown out the noise of the generator.   

We also harvested a little munchkin we found in the pumpkin patch.  

Soap making outside, with Pluto looking on.  This is frozen goat milk, melting in the lye.

My friend, the generator.

Here's proof that you can, indeed, grow watermelons in the Upper Skagit.

I will leave you with pictures of Lukas when he was very little. I got a little teary looking through photos of this time. He is so tall now, and although still cute, not in the little boy kind of way.

Have a great week, and if you have children still at home, remember to hug them and appreciate them, even if they are a pain in the butt sometimes.  Pretty soon, they will be asking you for the car keys, or go off to college, or move to another country, like I did, and like my children hopefully never, ever will.