the fair

There's something about August. There is this urgency to drink in the rest of all that summer has to offer. To suck the last bits of juiciness from these sweet summer months before they slip into the rhythms of fall and school and schedules and cooler weather.

In August the fair comes to McLean County. It comes in droves; in flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, in semi's full of disassembled carnival rides and big trailers promising the world's best funnel cake. It comes as a bright and noisy reminder that the days of summer are still alive and well.

And so the first week of August, when the fair rolled into town in all its glory, we went. The boys were captivated by it.

The barrage of sights and smells; the deep fried goodness of funnel cake wafting through the night air and the shrieks of children on the rides. The thundering engines and thick gray exhaust smoke rising from behind the gates at the tractor pull. The bleating of the sheep as they are sheared and prepared for their big show the next morning.

We got there after dinner, just as the heat of the afternoon gave way to the cool of the evening. And we stayed,

And somewhere in between the sheared sheep huddled in their stalls and the irritable carni crew, I found myself thinking that if I could freeze this night and these moments, that life couldn't get much better than this.




Than these two boys, happy wearing a cheesy plastic fair wristband and holding their mama's hand.

And staying out late because it's a lovely night and the air doesn't feel thick and sticky, but lighter and cool.

And watching my very little take his first daring ride on the Dragon Wagon and cracking up as it whizzes by us again and he is but a blond blur.

And squeezing Patrick's hand because our boys are way up there in car number 2 and I want to make sure he thinks they're going to be ok.

And hearing the laughs of these two sweet ones as they speed past us on this ride for the sixth time in a row.

We ended this perfect summer night with potty breaks and milkshakes at Steak-n-Shake. Sipping that chocolate shake and watching my boys drift off to sleep in the van on the way home, I had the same feeling of contentedness. There will be much more to our lives than the old county fair, but I'm grateful for the way something so silly and simple reminds me that it's simple things that truly make my life with my family grand and beautiful.

100 things

I have found that if there are one hundred things I want to post about,
then I will do
none
of them.

It's like that growing heap of laundry,
thirty tomatoes ripe all at once in the garden,
or the piles of boxes and junk in my bonifide Horders worthy garage.

If there are heaps and hoards, whether it's boxes or tomatoes or shirts or posts, I just get stuck. But I'm about to unstick myself and dive face first into my stuff.

I'll fold. I'll puree. I'll make salsa. One of these days I'll dig out from under that wreck of a mess in the garage. And I'll start catching up with those 100 posts {or maybe there's more?}.

I'll start today. It's going to be fun.

July twentieth

8 years ago before there were two small children and houses on farms and minivan floors covered in Goldfish crumbs,

there was this day.

There was a bride in white standing next to her groom. There were friends flanking them on both sides. There were flowers, flowing gowns and boutonnieres pinned on dapper tuxedos.

This day was the start of all that was to be.

 Bubbles were blown, pictures were taken, limos were ridden in (really junky limos we should note. Junky limos without air conditioning on this hot July day.) We ate a big dinner, cut slices of cake, danced our first dance and then bid our families and dearest friends goodbye we set off for the start of our life together.

The start of all things Mr and Mrs.

And now here we are, eight years later. Eight years, one apartment, three houses, two sweet boys, one conversion van and one minivan later.

This anniversary certainly called for celebration. This was an occasion and it called for grown up stemware. And picnic blankets in the grass.

And late evening dining in my very favorite evening spot in our yard, the place where the sun casts rays through the tree branches creating long shadows and cool shade as it dips low in the sky on its descent to the horizon.


Here we celebrated. Thankful for each other and for all of the events of life that have been sandwiched in between that wedding day in 2002 and today. And had it been our first anniversary or second or even third we would have been celebrating here just the two of us. But it's our eighth and now these two are a part of the celebration too.


The four of us ate cheese pizza from Casey's gas station in Farmer City,

and drank rootbeer from our grown-up stemware.

We stayed outside until Patrick's rootbeer spilled all over the picnic blanket and the bugs started biting, which really wasn't very long at all.
And that night before we went to bed I went to the bathroom to find my toothbrush as I have most nights since becoming Mrs. Vance; waiting for me next to the sink with a fresh smear of toothpaste on the bristles. I'm thankful for eight years of marriage to a sweet man who takes care of our family and provides for our family and who after eight years still puts the paste on my toothbrush and leaves it waiting for me.

today is your day

The clock has struck midnight, sweet one, and today is your day.
You are five years old and when you awake the celebration will begin. You've been waiting and counting down and now your day is here.
There will be cake and streamers. Garlands are already hung. There will be gifts and a scavenger hunt to find the biggest one that's hidden in the closet.
There will be chocolate-chip pancakes in the morning and change being dug out of mason jars to exchange for a giant cookie at Grove Street Bakery later this afternoon.
This will be a full day; you'll choose the special things you want to do and places you want to go because today is for you.
It's July 22, 2010 and today you are five years old.

It's hard to believe five years separates us from that first moment when you were placed in my arms. From that moment I heard your first cry and hot, happy tears rolled down my cheeks. From the moment I realized I was a mama and you were my babe. From the moments we shared alone in the middle of the night, alternating feeding you with dozing in and out of sleep.

From the moment when he became a daddy and I became a mama.

Your first years were filled with a thousand more of those moments. Moments I can see, times I've memorized. When it seemed as if the whole world stood still. 
Rocking you to sleep. Your first bright smiles and the sound of your laughter. The way you cooed at daddy when he came home from work. Your first steps on our cold kitchen floor at Leland Street. Your birthday parties. Your first day at preschool. Watching you learn to ride your bike, first with training wheels and then triumphantly without. Learning to love; becoming a big brother and loving your little William, your friends, your family, Jesus.

And now today, sweet one, you are five.

Five years has passed since that first moment I held you in my arms. You are a happy boy. You are curious about this great world around you. You ask questions. You love baseball. You finished your first season of t-ball; and now you love to catch and pitch and practice batting whenever you can. You love books and I am confident you will love to read. You are brave. Even when new things feel scary, you'll try and I admire that in you because there are times I'm afraid of new things too. You love water and swimming and you just learned how to swim underwater. It's your favorite accomplishment of the whole summer.

You love tractors and farms and fields and crops. You plan to take over Grandpa Tractor's farm at age seven. {that is coming right up.} You love daddy and the times you spend together. You love helping him work. You love playing catch together. You love dreaming up ideas for your landscaping business you plan to start. You love telling me all of the big plans the two of you made.

You love your cousin Gabe. You wish he lived closer because you would like to play together every day. You love the same things like Star Wars and superheroes and saying silly kinds of stuff that only you two say when you're together.

You love to help. You love to do somersaults across the living room floor. You are funny and you have a fun sense of humor. You get jokes and it is so much fun to be silly with you. You are kind. You show empathy to other people.Tonight you told me that even when you're a grown up you'll still stay with me. You sweet boy. You will not do that, you will always be welcome to, but trust me, you won't want to.

Tonight I read to you as is our tradition on your birthday eve. I like to tuck you in and cuddle with you and have the last moments with you before you are another year older. Tonight I lingered. I combed my fingers through your hair and I thought over these past five years. These years so filled with the joy of all that is you. Warm tears again welled up in my eyes. It's hard to believe that days that can seem so long on their own at times, have all piled up into weeks and months and years and formed into five years. I stayed until you drifted off to sleep and wished you the sweetest of dreams. Last night you were my four year old boy and you will wake this morning a five year old child.

Happy Birthday sweet boy. I love you Henry.

a blue sky day

This summer has been brimming full of blue sky days. Gorgeous, long, sunny days where the sun shines in through the front window, coming up just over the top of the corn stalks in the morning and dips down into the horizon behind our house at night. They are days marked with nuggets of joy wrapped in tiny moments throughout the day.

 Our mornings are long and lazy. Henry wakes up first and as we both curl up together on the couch, we look out those big front windows and we notice the already blue sky. He sips hot cocoa while I sip hot coffee. We say it's going to be a great day. Henry has ideas about what we will do. Sometimes it's going to the pool, or hitting baseballs outside. Sometimes it's doing nothing at all which really means we won't drive anywhere in our van, and sometimes that's the very best kind of way to enjoy a blue sky day. That means we'll be staying in our pajamas well into the afternoon.

It means we'll take out tractors and drive them along the couch, being sure to properly farm the fields; first cultivating then planting then spraying and then at long last harvesting with the combine. It means we'll play games like Memory. And if we do it means Henry will collect a huge stack of matches while I have a measly few. He's really good at this game, and he knows it.

It means we'll play outside.

We'll drive the Gator and ride our bikes back and forth to their grandma and grandpa's house. This particular day Henry walked beside me as we followed behind William. I reached my hand down and he held it. I beamed beneath the hazy blue sky, clasping my big boy's hand as we walked along the road.

We'll stay outside until our shadows grow long and we'll look for toads and find them nestled under rocks and in the tall grass.

And then when we are jammied again, we'll come back outside because the sun is now setting on our blue sky day and we see this from the window,

And we'll go outside and it looks just as beautiful as we imagined.

We'll catch lightning bugs in Mason jars as we take it all in; the warm summer air, the glowing bugs, the colors of the sky as the sun bids us one last farewell.

Yes, blue sky days are our favorite kind of days. It's only July and I'm so happy we have at least two more months to drink them in.

father's day

This is the man who brings our babies home from the hospital.

Who lovingly holds them in just the right way so that as newborns they fall into the deepest of sleeps and then who sleeps right along with them because I'm convinced that he knew right from the start that the time spent holding them is more important than the dishes and tidying up and all of those other things that really can wait.

Before we were married, way back in the carefree days of college we talked about the things our future might hold. We dreamt of our babies we might one day have. We listed off names we'd call them.

And then the magic happened to us. We watched, huddled together as the little plus sign appeared on a test stick in our guest bathroom of our first house on Rocksbury. Before Henry was even born and all we had was that little plus sign and the grainy black and white pictures that showed him growing in my belly, before we ever held him, I just knew that Patrick would be this amazing father to our children.

And he is.

He is this amazing calm father to our boys. He knows just how to cure a bloody lip with ice and paper towels and how to cure an attitude with the right dose of humor. He is patient. At the times when my patience is worn very thin, his stretches and covers for my lack thereof. It's enough at those times for both of us. For me to be silent and let him clean up the spilled antibiotic white mess of liquid covering the kitchen floor and William's ankles.

There are times that I stop and watch. I have stayed inside to do the dishes, but now I am done and as I pass by the front window I pause to watch. Soaking it all in. Because this moment is just too good for me to spoil by stepping into it.

He would deny this, but he is unbelievably smart. He really knows something about everything going on in this great world around us. I love that he will load our family onto a boat, start it up and spend the day sailing it around the lake as Captain. And he tells the children things about the corn that's growing all around us. Things that make them shout excitedly from the backseat "that corn is tasseling, mama!" as we drive down these country roads. Now I can't say that I know exactly what that means, but it's amazing that my boys have a father who does and who teaches them these things. He makes their world brighter and more magical.

He doesn't worry. I spend a good part of my day thinking about falls and sprains and sanitizers, organics and pesticides, spf's and bpa's and ufo's and all of the what ifs in between. Not Patrick. He lets our boys explore and have adventures. He lets them ride on the mower with him. He tosses them in the wheelbarrow and totes them right along with the pile of mulch. He lets them jump. From high places. And he cheers and they give high fives and look at me and all laugh together when they land on their feet before they promptly say "let's do it again". He let's them hold the chainsaw, not use it just yet. But they get to hold it, to weild its power before they stand aside and watch him cut a dead tree stump into logs. And they talk about their plans to start a big fire with that wood and cook s'mores over it all while brushing sawdust from their eyes and blowing it from their lips.

 He is an amazing father alright. He loves our boys. He gets our boys. He digs his fingers into this earth and gets dirty right along with them. They laugh together when they find toads.

They fight over who will get to sit on daddy's lap and drive the van home from grandma and grandpa's. They beam when his car pulls into the driveway after a long day without him.

And even though it's a little bit late on this first day of July,
Happy Father's Day, Patrick.
We are all so very blessed.