The Davis Family

The Mellingers came to celebrate summer and Independence Day at our house. It was sunny and special and the kids had a blast.

On the night of the 4th of July – I checked on Daniel after dark and he was still awake and wanted to know what the noises were. So, I picked him up and he experienced his first after-dark fireworks. The new neighbors bought some ENORMOUS fireworks that went off in the sky over us in huge flowers. Daniel was so excited and enamored. He’s been asking about that ever since!!! In fact – I think he’s learned all his months now, because he’s counting months until fireworks again.

Anna has been working more on photography… learning about framing, focus, background blur, some of the camera settings and so forth. The little raised flower beds we put in the front yard were a good location for most of these!

For Anna’s 13th birthday, we gave Anna and one of her best friends an envelope of cash and a few hours at Walmart followed by a big purchase in the ice cream aisle. Then she stayed at her friend’s house for a few nights. We’ve been quarantined except for immediate neighbors and a few intermittent visits with family, so this was an especially big deal. Also, it was a great hit.

Our many blueberry plants were weeded and mulched this year and watered and…. we got so many wonderful berries! I enjoyed many quiet hours out in the sunshine, picking blueberries. Sometimes Jordan would join me and throw grass and watch the chickens, but he’s pretty naughty outside, so usually I was alone. Our thornless blackberries (which we planted in 2018, I think?) are doing wonderfully and produced some of their first berries this year! They weren’t amazing in flavor and had big seeds…. but I’m still hoping that we’ll love them. And they ARE completely thornless!

Brian keeps the backpacking gear in his office and Coco discovered an empty backpack one day…. and returned daily for awhile after! Funny kitty.

I know I have more pictures somewhere…. but Brian successfully led a whole troop of kids up Siouxan Creek for an overnight backpacking trip! He slept in his hammock (I think for the first time) and they got rained on overnight, which stressed Brian so much that he dreamed he had to hike all the kids out in the dark most of the night. Poor guy. It was a hit with the kids, though, I think. We learned a bit about what to pack (more food, swimsuits too). My dad and brother-in-law went also! Really nice to share a favorite spot with them.

Daniel was seen up at the Casey Eye Institute and the doctor did not push for a surgery to correct/strengthen/stabilize Daniel’s lazy eye. He IS still using both his eyes up close and will sometimes use them together at a distance. His last doctor was leaning towards a surgery… so this was good news. It was going to be a difficult decision for us. While lifelong improved vision by having both eyes working well together is very important… so is avoiding trauma and allowing for as much pain-free, doctor-free, hospital-free time to develop as a person. He doesn’t have a background of a stable home to lean on to get through medical stuff. Anyway – glad the doctor is not even recommending surgery at this point.

Ooh! I found more pictures from the hike!

The end of July was our annual family camping trip! We all go for nearly a week to a lakeside tent camping spot and spend the days swimming and eating and reading. We’ve been reading one Harry Potter book a year and this year, we started The Order of the Phoenix. It was a bit of a rush getting to the campsite this year… I had mistakenly put it on the calendar for the end of August, when it was really at the end of July! Ah! It worked out, though! And thanks, Sherrie, for the cot! I slept really good for camping!

There are a few reasons why I love camping… because, it is dirty, it is inconvenient, and it’s really annoying if crows wake me up in the morning.
1. I’m outside. All day. All night. It’s so cathartic.
2. The kids are outside. All day. All night. They seem to expand and relax and play is so much easier.
3. It’s beautiful. Our campsite is not that pretty… tents and dirt and over-trodden ferns, but the lake. And the sky. And the trees. Oh, it’s gorgeous.
4. Swimming. I get stuck in a rut a lot, even when I’m camping, so I make a point to jump in the water at least once a day. AHhhhhhh – it’s so fun! I love it!

This month, I had some success with my leather crafting. I bought a cheap little carving knife and some basic stamping tools for carving leather. First, I made Brian a little PNW coaster. Then I decided to try a big-to-me project and make him a leather journal cover.

I also was commissioned by Brian to replace his hiking backpack’s straps. The original strap-stabilizing-piece was broken.

Coco is growing into a little cat…. still amusing us with his fiery personality.

Coronavirus (COVID19) has us doing things a bit differently. Figuring out how to do it as a family.

Backpacking and day hikes were begun for the summer! This trip is a gorgeous day hike up Bells Mountain Trail… a steep tromp up!

This next long set is all from an overnight hike up at Siouxan Creek – up in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. It’s an older forest with big hills, beautiful creeks, and seemingly endless trails. We didn’t realize that historic fires would burn late this summer… we’re still waiting to see if this area is damaged, gone, or preserved!

We were grateful that we could still go strawberry picking even during the pandemic!!!

There are always more pictures of this cat.

A big success – Jordan is finally fitted to a new wheelchair!

I was still successfully exercising regularly – maybe 5 times a week… walking, jogging, doing home workouts and taekwondo via zoom.

We were finding a lot of comic relief and smiles-by-cuteness as Coco grew and became a mobile little kitten with a funny spiky black tail.

Our Taekwondo instructor was able to get our postponed March testing completed via zoom! That makes the three of us yellow belts. Haven’t had a testing since, but I’m getting good workouts and still have plenty to work on anyway. I wonder if we’ll ever have in person classes? Maggie and Carrie dropped out a bit after testing… zoom classes were not very successful for many of the kids.

At some point, the weather got nice enough that we all finally were able to REALLY go outside for longer. Daniel doesn’t walk yet, so going out in the wet grass is tricky. Jordan sits down everywhere, so the mud and standing water in our yard is a bit tricky too. That and PICA, but usually the PICA isn’t too bad early in the spring when he’s not bored. But the weather was warmer and we all started getting outside. Brian even wanted to grill something… we don’t own a grill… but he found enough bits of concrete to build one!

In pandemic news, I think… this month the toilet paper was running out everywhere and hand sanitizer and maybe beans and rice. I think New York was maybe having a crush of cases?

April was a fog of kitten-induced fatigue and worry, a bit of homeschool and the hope of the sunshine… even as we navigated the uncertainty and unspoken weight of fear that came with the arrival of the Coronavirus. At some point… maybe in April but maybe not until May – Brian and I were able to articulate how heavy the stress was that was due to the virus. We were distracted and we were busy and we’re used to being home anyway… but still it affected us. Acknowledging it gave us permission to be gentle with ourselves. Didn’t fix it, but it was something.

Coco was the last surviving kitten of an unfortunate litter at a friend’s house nearby. They bottle fed him to keep him alive for a week and then I took over. After just a few days of being awake at night and struggling with constipation and worrying about his fragile tiny self that always measured a good week or more behind other kitten’s weight at his age…. I was very grateful that kittens don’t take very long to grow up.:

When Coco was too big to live in his little box, we set him up in the big bathtub. Daniel was (still is) enamored with the kitten. For awhile, he wanted his forearm crutches… because then it was like he had four legs, “just like the kitten!” He’s also fond of saying, “When the kitten bigger, THEN Daniel hold it!?”

Also this month… Maggie and Carrie did something really creative that was pretty disturbing… they made dummies and left them around the house!

I finished my first leather journal cover! I didn’t stamp it or anything and the fit was too tight… and the stitching – TOOK FOREVER. But, it looked and felt good in my hands!

Daniel’s 7th birthday!!! Happy birthday, big little man!

A look around the “farm:”

🙂

Because we couldn’t get to his orthopedist, we consulted via the internet a couple times to try and make a new plan.

More grooming at the neighbor’s house.

Blueberries look hopeful for a good year! Endless weeding going on.

And I’ll leave off my April photos with the leather coasters I was burning with a cheap woodburning tool. It seemed impossible to keep the temperature stable, but I still liked the effect of the uneven burning. (I also tried with Brian’s soldering iron, which had a slightly more predictable temperature, but wasn’t as hot/dark as the wood burner.)

Throughout January and February and now March, our house was dealing with a rather miserable cold. Somewhere in there, I developed some intense sensory hypersensitivity that was really quite difficult for awhile. But – along with March came flowers…. and the beginning of what has now been nearly a year of my oldest daughter, Anna, filling up my hard drive with lovely photography.

Here’s some of her work from March as the spring flowers bloomed:

A little bit of sunshine was VERY welcome respite from our long, gray, wet winter and we took advantage of the day and went outside:

But then…. just a bit later – winter let us know that it had one more bit of freezing left for us.

Daniel still talks about this… he says, “In winter, when it snows, then I put on big pants and I go outside and I play in the snow!” He is optimistically hoping for a repeat this winter.

We enjoyed having the doggies indoors a lot more during the coldest weather!

I was enjoying getting to groom the neighbor’s horses pretty regularly as a form of self care – on my own and sometimes with a daughter in tow:

Every time I successfully exercised 14 times, I gave myself a few dollars to purchase anything I wanted! This time – it was crafting supplies for making homemade lotion.

I also attempted my first leather journal cover…

Meanwhile, whispers of some kind of sickness in Asia are getting louder and louder and we hear that even Italy is experiencing a large impact from this Corona, this COVID, this something virus. It begins to hit here… like the sound of little raindrops on the roof getting louder and faster. Daniel’s trip to Delaware is canceled. All school and lessons are suddenly stopped. We learn what PPE means and that our commercial channels are somehow helpless to provide medical professionals with the basics and… well, enter round one of panic buying and it is, hilariously, for toilet paper.

Even ballet was able to continue via zoom! We hoped for a very long time that we’d still be able to have a recital at the end of the year, but that turned out to be pie in the sky. Anna looked so mature and Daniel so adorable (when he joined).

We experimented with social gatherings via zoom for the first time:

And a lot of cooped-up activities were explored:

I also went on several walks. Sometimes alone and sometimes I took a daughter with me.

Finally, we began to dream of gardens… and decided to attempt a container garden. Spoiler: It happened, it didn’t work very well, but we ate a few tomatoes!