National Month of Poetry Days 13-17

Wow! What a weekend! Things have been just hopping around here! So, I don’t think I mentioned earlier that my daughter, Dot, has chosen to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She has been called to serve in the Mexico Mexico City South Mission – we are so excited for her and preparations have been fun, busy and a little crazy wild at times! (Like an unexpected jaunt up to Detroit… 4+ hours away)

This Saturday she went to the temple and it was absolutely wonderful in every way. Consequently, that filled our day and we had grandparents visiting from Utah which filled subsequent days and I got behind on my poems. So here are the past several days worth of poems (with links to the how to!)

A lot of these are just silly kids’ poems, but they tend to be my favorite kind!

Day 13

we did Triplets– you can read about them HERE This poem was inspired by my daughter, Dot (her middle name is not Rose), who really did get a rock stuck up her nose – but she stuck it there herself (and not with her toes). She was probably about 4 or 5 and we were in the Wendy’s drive through when she started hollering about a rock in her nose. I hopped out and opened the side door, pushed on the empty nostril and told her to blow & out it popped! lol

Woes of the Nose

by Julia Wagner

Jimmy, how do you suppose
Sweet little Dorothy Rose
Got a rock stuck in her nose?

It wasn’t me! I oppose!
I was washing my elbows.
I bet she picked it with her toes.

Day 14

we did Couplets– you can read about them HERE. I did two….

Turtle Troubles

by Julia Wagner

I wonder how my turtle
wound up in Grandma’s girdle?

After the Rain

by Julia Wagner

After Spring’s clouds and showers
Earth dons her robe of flowers.

Day 15

we learned about the Tyburn. You can read about it HERE. This was totally new to me and a really fun challenge!

Speedster

by Julia Wagner

Funky
Spunky
Junky
Clunky
Classy cruiser, funky spunky sped,
Now it sputters, junky, clunky, dead.

Day 16

we did a Windspark poem – a kind of fill in the blank poem. You can read about it HERE. I did this one right after writing the previous poems, so I still had rhyming in my brain, so this silly little ditty popped out:

A Frog’s Life

by Julia Wagner

I dreamed
I was a frog
Nestled in a bog
Hopping from log to log
Gleefully

Day 17

Today!!! We did Haiku– specifically a poiku, which you can read about HERE. I just did traditional haiku because my poetry brain was starting to die

April

by Julia Wagner

Month of weeping clouds
bleeding hearts, forget-me-nots
hope grows with flowers

*PLEASE REMEMBER ~ any poetry found on this blog, written by me, is my personal property and may not be used without my permission, other than sharing it as an example in a lesson or to read it to someone.

Dad 100 WCGU #59

This week we received a picture prompt. It reminded me immediately of my Dad (though he would never sit at the edge of a precipice like that). He loved the mountains and spent numerous summers living in lookout towers. He love to hike and instilled that love in his family. This post is dedicated to him.

To read other pieces or to participate, click on the logo. 🙂

Dad

The wind runs it’s tendril fingers through my hair

and presses it’s chilled lips upon my cheeks.

I close my eyes and pretend it’s him,

squeezing me tight and whispering

it’s going to be all right,

that I can make it through another day.

A single tear traces a

cool track down my face

and lands with a soft splotch.

The mountains are synonymous with him.

There was never one without the other.

I stand, dusting grainy dirt from

my jeans.

“Give her a hug for me,” I whisper

and know the words are carried to heaven

on the breeze.

Free Therapy

Nothing is quite as therapeutic as ripping out big ugly bushes.

The two little boys even lent a hand – in exchange for a wagon ride, of course.

All in all I ripped out 9 bushes.

4 BIG UGLY ones from the front by the driveway

and 5 little shrubs from the front walkway – the before picture is 2 years old, so they don’t look as big and bad then as they did now :-).

Planting Lilies for Lizy

Gaining A New Perspective

The first Monday after Elizabeth passed away I woke up between 5:30 and 6:00 in the morning. I couldn’t sleep. I lay thinking of my daughter and how much I missed her.  Paul woke up around the same time and we lay in bed talking about her and the recent events.

As the sky lightened, I had a sudden longing.

“Paul, lets go watch the sunrise,” I whispered.

He nodded his head and checked to see when sunrise was supposed to be – we had 3 minutes, so we got dressed and went to stand in the drive way.

We faced east and waited.

And waited.

The sun rose, but it was overcast, and while it was pretty, it was difficult to see much. Honestly it was a little dissapointing. There were a few tinges of pale pink and gold that crept around the heavy clouds, but nothing like what I imagined. I leaned my head on Paul’s shoulder and sighed. I wanted more.

Then, Paul turned and looked behind us – towards the west.

“Look!”  He said, and I turned.

Behind us the clouds were bathed in golden pink light. My heart thrilled and I felt close to my little Lizy.

I thought about that beautiful moment many times in the past week. How often do we become focused on what’s right in front of us or on a single moment and fail to notice the beauty behind or all around? How often do we fail to see the little miracles, or even bigger ones, because we are focused on one major, specific event?  How often do we not notice how blessed we are because they come from unexpected places?

Life can send us many unexpected events. We can miss the blessings in these events if we only focus on where we expect the blessings or joy to be. We need to have a 360 degree perspective to really find all the joy in life. We never know when it might be right behind us.

Lizy’s death was tragic and unexpected, and we miss her SO very much, but just like our surprise sunrise in the west, we have witnessed so many unforseen blessings and miracles through this.

We have felt sorrow, yes, but also peace and immense, powerful, joy.

The sun will always rise on our sorrows….. if we let it.

Our Summer in Pictures Part 2

We went swimming at Houston Woods State Park a few times

Cincinnati Fire Museum

Serpent Mound

We went Canoeing at White Water Miami Forest

and at Houston Woods

Jacob participated in his first Raingutter Regata

Finally, we made a number of fun zoo trips to the Cincinnati Zoo.

Our Summer in Pictures Part 1

Okay, well our summer plus a little extra. 🙂

Liz’s Birthday – She had a reverse, upside down, inside out party 🙂

Dot’s Birthday

We worked on clearing a trail in the woods in our back yard. Here are the beginning stages.

Jacob joined Cub Scouts and got to attend Tiger Treks

We explored the Clifton Mill and went hiking in Clifton Gorge

We went hiking at Shawnee Lookout

And we explored the Gorman Family Farm

We hiked around Clifty Falls State Park in Indiana

Jacob got to go to Twilight Camp – cub scout day camp that meets in the evenings. 🙂

Emily had her 9th birthday

and Paul and I got to go on a couple tours exploring Cincinnati

Here Comes the Rain…

It’s been raining…

A LOT

Our lawn is a soggy muddy lake that squelches up around your feet and threatens to suck your shoes off. The usually dry little ditch in the back yard is a steady stream, and, after particularly hard thunderstorms, washes over our little wooden bridge. You can stand out side sometimes and be drenched to the skin in a matter of seconds (which is pretty cool, actually).

I don’t mind it, after all I am no stranger to rain. I lived in Oregon for close to twenty years and sometimes we had weeks of never ending rain, whether it was a light drizzle or a heavier rainfall. But, while I tolerated the rain before, out here I love it. It is a warmer rain, with big fat juicy drops that splat as they hit your skin. It just begs to be danced in. And it’s frequently accompanied by thunder and lightening – I love thunder and lightening!

As I watch the rain fall outside, I am reminded of a *post I wrote about five years ago, about how much I missed the thunderstorms I was accustomed to as a child. I never dreamt then that I would be a mere five hours away from my childhood home, enjoying the thunderstorms again and being the one telling my kids to hurry inside “before they got fried.” It’s pretty cool, actually, and I know I am where I’m supposed to be. I think, once all the kids get home from school, we’ll have to have a rain dance!

*From Thunderstorm written in January 2006:

A burst of thunder announces the rain before it even arrives and lightning splits open the sky. With a squeal of delight I dash outside to our front porch. Rain falls to the earth in sheets. Darting into the rain I fling my arms wide spinning in giddy circles. I turn my face to the rain and let the raindrops splash against my tongue.

“Hurry back up here to the porch before you get fried!” mother playfully calls at the second roll of thunder and strike of lightning. I settle myself into my favorite spot to watch the show, under the old table on the porch. As the rain pounds the earth incessantly, the intoxicating scent of damp earth washes over me. I enjoy nature’s fireworks accompanied by astounding sound effects.

Too soon it ends and steals away as quickly is it came; torrents fading into drips. The sun forces its way through the clouds and the only remnants of the storm to be found are giant puddles in the fields. We bound through the fields from puddle to puddle. They become wading pools as we splash and play in the summer sun the water lapping at our waists. Too soon the life is sucked out of them and we wait, anxious for our next thunderstorm romp.

We’ve been busy…

First, Jacob had a birthday! He turned 6 last month and we celebrated with a construction party. I had fun doing a crazy cake, but I think my cake decorating skills detiorate with each additional kid 😀

We had two camp outs in the basement – one for the girls and one for the boys (so cool that our smaller tent fits in the basement!)

I took the kids to Krohn Conservatory during spring break – It’s hard to take good focused close-ups of plants – or anything! – when trying to keep track of six kids 😀 So, I put up very few plant photos – I’ll get better ones when Paul is with me 🙂

Spring is finally springing! And its so exciting to discover what’s been planted in our yard. The kids fully enjoyed a gorgeous day last week. And we got our lilac bush planted!

Plus, Paul went on an adventure to see how big our yard really was and how far into the woods it goes – then he gave me a tour – it’s hugely awesome! We are excited to clear debris out and make more portions of our woods available to the kids. There are some really cool domed clearings where the trees have grown over making a natural little home. It’s beautiful! We’ll take photos of that stuff as we get back in there and get things cleared up – there are a lot of beer cans, broken bottles, tires – even an old swingset back there. So, we have lots of work to do!

Finally, Robert is 7 months old! He’s been eating solids and rolling and for the past month or so he’s been doing the army crawl – and getting faster by the second! The last couple days he decide to get on his hands and knees and will sit and rock back and forth – taking one crawl forward before flopping down and commando crawling where he wants to go.

Today he even pulled himself up to a shakey stand – always hanging onto my hands of course!

*for whatever reason the pictures don’t show up sometimes – if you still want to see them, you should be able to if you click on the white non-picture

Miami Whitewater Forest

Our stake has this awesome thing where every second weekend of the month is Family Friendly Weekend – no meetings or activities except for church on Sunday can be scheduled on that weekend to encourage families to spend more time together. As a result, we decided that these Saturdays would be our outing days.

Right now we’re having lots of car trouble so we chose to go someplace close to home – an nice little county park about fifteen minutes away. They have a few nice nature trails, plenty of picnic areas, a park, and lake – when the weather warms a little more we’ll take our canoe out.

This time we decided to go on a hike – the longest one was 1.6 miles so we did that one. It ended up being perfect for James who was on his first “walk on your own” hike. For just turning three at the end of December I thought he did pretty good. We’re hoping to have him up to close to three miles by the end of the summer. Though it was a short hike, we had all the kids wear their backpacks (except James) and pack their own water and snacks, so as we get ready for longer hikes, they’ll be accustomed to it.

One of the favorite things about hiking is finding the perfect walking stick – All the kids quickly become obsessed with finding the perfect stick – in fact, James was often carrying two or three sticks. 🙂

We love bridges on our hikes! Especially because trolls can often be found lurking around them.

“Fee Fie Fo Fum!”

“Who’s that tromping over my bridge?”

And this bridge is infested with trolls!

Then there’s the ever so popular activity of racing ahead and hiding behind trees to spring out at the unsuspecting hikers still to come. My dad did this with me when I was little, and so the tradition continues. The kids pick up the activity quickly – unless this tree just happened to sprout arms, feet, and a backpack!

Another favorite hiking tradition is tree hugging. I suppose it all comes from being the kids of a botanist, but this started when I was little. As you can tell, I am teaching my kids well. 😀

I thought they had been attacked by the trolls, but they informed me they were napping while waiting for James to catch up.

Little legs give up.

And stubborness sets in.

Finally I tell him he can be the troll at the next bridge we find, and miraculously it gets him moving.

Wait for us Dad! The boys hiking together

Back at the parkinglot/picnic area

I looked over while eating my apple to see my five oldest kids lined up by age hanging out the little windows of our picnic shelter.

Robert and Dad couldn’t be left out!