The Autumn Leaves

I have made great strides in organizing our stuff these past couple of weeks. I even threw some things away, most notably: my high-school prom corsage, my first pair of contact lenses that I'd dried out and saved in a tiny jewelry store gift box, and the hotel key from my 6th grade trip to Costa Rica. The few boxes that are left are all filled with "old papers" as our clever movers labeled them, and are stuffed into a tiny, odd room where I keep, among other papery things, scrapbook albums frozen in mid-completion, waiting for the day I will have spare time again. Ha.. HA... HA! But seriously, we have six guests (so far) staying with us for the Thanksgiving holiday and others who are toying with the idea of a D.C.-area vacation so we are very excited to be set up to receive them! I've been practicing my cookie recipes. My chocolate chip cookies are incomprehensibly delicious. I keep eating them, thinking, "They can't be that good." But they are. But they can't be. I must eat another to prove it...

Our schedule has not quite hit the level of absurdity that we maintained last year. Noemie and Gigi did start ballet, which Noemie does *not* enjoy. And last week we joined an amazing homeschool co-op where once a week the kids can take art and P.E., and participate in a handbell choir. We have finally settled into a sweet, tiny church with AWANAs, and nursing home visitation trips, and apple-picking excursions, and crock pot fellowships, and all that other tiny-southern-church goodness. And of course there's homeschooling and scouts... I guess with four kids, busyness just sort of finds you.

I have a friend who occasionally comments, "Never a dull moment in the Espinosa house!" I can't imagine why. Maybe it's because, in addition to having unrealistic time management expectations, I am surrounded by characters such as Toby, who went into a rage, spitting death threats, when he realized that someone took his first and only ever loosed tooth and exchanged it for two measley bucks while he was sleeping. There's Noemie, who organized a sidewalk-cleaning club so that every afternoon, a pack of 7 year-old girls gather to sweep the fallen leaves off our walkways. Or Gigi who will interrupt my lesson on long division to tell me that she pooped a one-eyed alien snake and it was "so gross" that she flushed it. And she had to run down three flights of stairs to tell me that her butt was still dirty. The Espinosa house is fun, challenging, occasionally disastrous, but never dull.

One of our more disastrous days happened on Danny's first Sunday on the evening shift. I came home from the morning church service by myself and Danny went from there to the office. I had an hour and a half to fill out all the scout troop registration and medical paperwork, cook spaghetti, and make sure the kids ate it before we ran back out the door in uniforms for their respective scout meetings. I was just making it. It was down to the wire. One kid jumped in the car, second kid in, third child pinched the first as he jumped in. Ignoring the developing the conflict, I ran to the other side of the car to receive Gigi and strap her down into her car seat. But she delayed. I could see her in the doorway opposite me, the play-by-play in slow motion:

She twists. Her foot slips on something. 
Her feet are in the air and she is flying, tumbling out the door, 
head first. 

Her body landed in a crumpled heap between the car and the curb, which caught her jaw. In a pile of dog poo. At this point, Noemie who had scrambled over carpet and car seats to get to the back of the car, realized that there was also poo on the bottom of her new shoes and she started to have an anxiety attack. Noemie's emotional state was really on the lower rungs of priority as Gigi's jaw started to swell. Did I mention this was my new car? After dealing with this whole crisis, we were understandably late to scouts where I found out, rather on the spot, that I was co-leader for Noemie's group. No sooner did I shuffle through the door, carrying Gigi and wondering what I smelled like, was I asked to introduce myself and tell the girls a little bit about myself. 

After scouts we went home to relax a bit before the evening church service. The kids wanted to play in the alley with their friends so I let them go. They would run by every ten minutes or so, yelling something about refugees. Twenty minutes before it was time to leave for church I went downstairs to receive the kids. Never one to be idle, I started practicing the piano at the foot of the stairs where I could look out through the storm doors on both sides of the house, intending to grab them as they ran by. Ten minutes left. Five minutes... Two minutes! We now had two minutes to be out the door! But as I looked into our private back patio, separated from the alley by our garage, I saw four small, round Asian faces staring at me through the house window. Ploop! Two more faces appeared through the storm door. Eventually my kids showed up, the Asian "refugees" were dismissed, our abandoned bicycles and scooters were retrieved, and we were off to church twenty minutes late. As we got on the highway, I was as angry as could be, (at everyone including myself,) and Gigi pointed out that she didn't have any shoes on her feet. I walked into church in that old, familiar way- frazzled, frustrated, and very late. Sprawled across a pew, all four of the kids were asleep about 10 minutes later.

North Virginia, with its cool weather and color changing leaves, gears up for autumn in a way I never saw in Florida. Besides the scores of pumpkin farm festivals with their homemade cider, preserves, donuts, and hayrides; besides the apple-picking orchards and local farm tours; there is a Halloween (or "harvest") party in nearly every church, school, and neighborhood. Even Noemie's ballet class. Kids run around in costume most of the month. We were told to prepare for hundreds of visitors tomorrow night, which is Halloween. The fall weather is also great for scouting! Noemie is in her third year with American Heritage Girls, a faith-based Girl Scouts alternative. Dominic and Tovi had the opportunity this year to join TrailLife USA, a group that splintered off of Boy Scouts when the BSA chose that they would no longer submit to Biblical authority on matters of governance. Earlier this month, the boys went camping with their new troop. It was Dominic and Tovi's first time camping! They went hiking, learned to tie knots, shot rockets, and made s'mores. But the highlight of the trip was in the impromptu beheading of a venomous copperhead snake. The head was immediately disposed of in the campfire. The next day, a science lesson was made out of studying the markings of the decapitated snake, then respectfully dissecting it. The heart was still beating! The camping trip was such a great experience that Danny, who has only been camping three times in his life, got encouraged to attempt a family camping trip. And that was how we celebrated Dominic's birthday: one night in a tent at Lake Burke Park. Being a Tuesday, we had the campsite to ourselves. I was nervous, I admit, but it turned out to be really pleasant! 

So far, our time in Virginia has been marked by sweet surprises. Perhaps we will feel different when the mercury drops, but for now we are thankful for our many friends and family that have been praying us through the transition. With bidding underway, we know there are more adventures to come. We look forward to hearing soon where we will go next!