Home Schooling in a Large Family

Home schooling is always a challenge, there are no two ways around that, but there are particular challenges to home schooling many children at the same time with younger children in tow. The most children I have schooled at one time is eight (between kindergarten and sophomore) with a baby and many years I gave birth to a baby mid-year. Here is how I kept my head above water and hopefully it will help you do the same.

School Toys

First of all, it is important to some unexpected prep-work. When you have younger children or even babies, you need to make a plan for them to be entertained. Our children have had a large plastic bin known as the “school toys” which have always only been available during school time. Because the dynamics in my own family, with the exception of one lone girl, I had my five boys first who were followed by five girls. I know, know. I have no idea how it happened. My school toys bin started out as Brio train tracks with lots of accessories. When the shift to more and more girls happened, they added more things. The girls have dress up clothes. We have always had a very large bin of Megabloks that comes out at the same time. Babies often need small things that they can play with, too, but they are often don’t need them to be special the way toddlers and preschoolers need them to be. The youngest of my eleven children is three right now but when I still had babies, they always had a basket of things.

Secondly, the best way to keep the younger children under control and happy while you do school is the have someone older with them. I always schedule my children in half hour blocks to do their “babysitting turn”. It does not have to be stressful. In my notebook, I keep chart that is a list of all the older kid’ names down the side and a space to write dates across the top. As I go through my day, each child has to take a turn with the younger children and once they have done their turn, I put a check next to their name so that I know who had already gone. It is tempting to have some kids babysit more than others but everyone both needs to do school and learn how to take care of younger children. I try to plan it so that kids who are more reliable students start babysitting so I can make sure that the ones who are less reliable have me with them to make sure they get their work done. You can use a timer on your phone or on the oven or any other timer. Switching the kids out regularly makes sure that they kids never get tired of the babysitter.

Lastly, I think it is really important to segregate the learners. I group the older kids (who often listen to music with headphones while they study) and the younger kids who need a lot of talking back and forth to do their school work. This means that the youngest ones and the babysitter need to be elsewhere and not mingled in with the other children. If you keep everyone together, this means that you will have more interruptions and more frustrated teenagers who need to do a lot of reading. Carving out space does not need to be tricky. I have ten children at home still and we live in a 1640 sqft house. Center study areas around the dinner table, a coffee table, even a picnic table on the patio. Wherever a child sit, they can learn.

Daily Check-In Time

I have another list in my notebook that consists of a daily check in with my children. Every day they need to sit next to me and go through their work and get help and have questions answered and concepts taught so that they can move on. I make a check-list of names and any notes on things I need to check. It might look like below:

Maria 11/15·         Math: Differential Equations, stuck on lesson 12
·         Eng: Paragraph check in
·         Vocab: flash cards made?

Just keep a list of subject and make sure there is a dividing line down the center of the paper. Then keep what you need to check on one side and what needs to done the next day on the column next to it. Then you can keep the dates over the column. At the end of the day, you can transfer (no more than a half sheet, from top to bottom), of instructions into each child’s notebook. They know that you will check those items and they need to be responsible for checking them off. Once they are in fifth grade or so, make them responsible for copying it over. You have enough to do.

Grading

I used to have each child grade the English and Math of the child down in the level below their own. Now that I use Khan math, it means that they have less to grade. I like Khan because I get a weekly email that lets me know how many minutes they have spent and in what areas and where they are succeeding and where they are have problems. The children need to do 300 minutes of math a week but the upper limit is 400 (yes, I have kids who need that limit). If anyone does not get his minutes in, he gets to clean the bathroom. If you are using workbooks or texts for math, ask the child grading the work to help a younger child work through the problem. If they can correct it together, I do not count it as wrong. Helping someone learn a skill helps both children.

I can take a look at the work during the daily check ins but I also only have children do math and reading on the first Friday of the month to give me a chance to really look at where each kid is in each subject. I put on a movie and the kids come up one at a time and we really look at everything so I can make sure that each child is making the progress that they need to make. This is a great time to keep track of the reading list for high school kids. Work on their transcripts at the end of each and every semester so that it is not a gargantuan task at the end of high school.

Also, a big tip: flashcards. If it can go on flashcards, do it. I have cut apart vocab books and used them to make flashcards. The children have to make a flashcards for every term in every chapter in the science books. Group kids as much as possible and have them quiz each other every day. I check that the flashcards are made and then I quiz them weekly in groups. I go through hundreds of index cards a year and we have boxes and boxes of them. You can often use them with younger kids who do not have to go through the process of making them for themselves.(Almost) Free curriculum. Score.

Interruptions

All of my children have their own pad of colored or decorative Post-It notes. I love these things. If they have a question, and I am busy, they have to write that question down. It might look like this: Math, lesson 6, #14. They are to come put it on my notebook and not interrupt. I know immediately who needs me and what they need help with and they do not need to tell me and disturb me. This happens when I am helping a child with school, or making lunch, or changing a diaper, or even using the bathroom.

When they come to a place where they can’t solve a problem or answer a question, they are told that they skip that are and keep going. Just skip it. If it means going to the next subject, fine. They need to keep going. Now, if they have nothing else to do, then they need to work on their “Just Right Book”, that is a book they can read with no help whatsoever, or a smaller project. In the kids notebooks, I keep an area for a list of things that they need to do that are open ended like practice classical guitar, practice tying shoes, working on a model, or things of that nature. This means that they keep busy and can even account for their time when I get back to them.

When I have something that they need to get to, I write it on my Post-its. When they seem them on the first page of their notebooks, they know they need to do it. I will often post chores and things like that. By the way, there should always be a punishment attached to losing or destroying these notes. Something productive but unpleasant like rinsing out garbage cans or changing the cat litter.

Nap Time

If you have younger children or babies then someone needs a daily nap; sometimes it’s mom. So, after lunch, we have quiet time. This is a time when everyone needs to quietly read a book. I do not care if you are fifteen. Too bad. This hour is sacred. Little ones go down with an audiobook or a CD. If someone is inclined to ask repeatedly if they can get up, my solution is a CD about an hour long. When it is over, you can get up. If they fall asleep, great. Anyone who is disruptive during this time loses privileges. I have been known to give the good children ice cream at the end of the day in order to teach a child to not misbehave at this time of the day. My children know that I am dead serious about this.

End of the Day Ritual

One of the most important things that I learned about a decade in, is that we just need to stop at some point, even if we were unproductive. You will lack the strength to keep going if you don’t take breaks. We have a set time to stop every day and I don’t go more than half an hour over it. Then we have tea. We stop and have tea and put things away. It helps us switch gears. I think having a ritual is so important because we need to remind ourselves that this is behind us. Now we can be a wife and mother and not a teacher. That said, children might still need to finish work.

We have what we call “Stay Up Late Time”, which is the evening when we play games, watch movies, and things like that. If you are an older child, and what that means is flexible, then you might need to spend finishing thing you did not do during the day. Didn’t write that paragraph? See you later.

Final Thoughts

If there is nothing else that I can impart, I think the most important thing I can say is to remember that sometimes you need to be off. If you are always schooling, always thinking about school, running long days because your morning was unproductive, then you are going to feel strained and stressed. I have done that far too many times. Treat it like a job and be there all day but end it and leave it behind. Get up in the morning and get going as if you were going to a job. At the end of the day, leave it behind. You might not like getting up and staying on task but really, you will be so grateful if you do because you will be able to stop in the afternoon. There are a few ways to make that easier.

• Put an out-going message on your machine saying that you are unavailable during the day and that you will return calls after 3 or so.
• Put your phone on silent and only check social media during lunch and after school.
• If you really need to be available to certain people during the day, use a special ring tone or a “push app” so that they can always reach you without being available to everyone.
• If you have close neighbors with children who interrupt during school, put up a sign. Yes, I have done this. If you just print up something with some pictures that looks school like, even non-readers can understand it. Laminate it or cover it with clear Contact paper and use a hole punch and ribbon to make something that can hang from the knob.
• More on signs: when I was a kid my mother had signs like this for dinner time and chore time. It hung outside and our friends knew that we were not available until the sign came off the door. This is another great tip.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any

great tips or ideas or even questions I can answer.

Running...

There was a time when I joked that I was just waiting for all my children to be old enough to put on their own shoes and use the bathroom by themselves. I am almost there and it is far less appealing than I thought it would be. It is not so much a matter of not liking who they are becoming or not wanting the additional freedom but more or less the rapid onset of the awareness that these days are passing. A much wiser older mother than me once warned me that when our children are born in rapid fire succession, they leave in the same way.

I can see the dominoes starting to fall. It is more than a bit sobering. In a way it is like summer here. These days are hot (for here) and busy and it seems like I am just keeping my head above water with all the preparations for winter. I always remember that winter is coming but I need to remember that summer is here, now. I need to make sure we take some opportunities to enjoy these rare and fleeting days. 

We took all the kids to the beach by the farmhouse the night before last. On the Keweenaw, August is getting colder. The water is not really swim temperatures and usually only the children of the locals get into the water. When the water is 60F or less, it is physically painful to go in, at least at first. I watched my kids go in, even the ones who are older are really remember Colorado. The younger ones just take this cold water as a given. I decided that I live here now, and this is the only summer that I will get, and that there are an average of 200 days between 70F days here, so I best just get in it. So I did. I went into the frigid water with my children. It was so hard but in the end I enjoyed and the kids were both surprised and thrilled.

Afterwards, as I was gathering together the kids and their piles of things that they take to the beach, a woman passed by my blanket. Claudia lured her in by my pointing at me and telling her that I was Mama. She stopped and visited for a few minutes. We chatted about my kids coming out of the lake and silly, casual things like her polka dot swim dress. While looking out at my screaming and splashing kids, she said to me, "You will have grandchildren." It was more of a statement of fact than anything else. I always get uncomfortable when people start commenting on my family size so I put on my best saccharine smile and steeled myself.

"I hope so!" I chirped cheerfully.

She turned to me said, "I don't. I only had one child so it's my own fault. But you, you will have grandchildren."

We wished each other goodnight (it was ten in the evening) and we left the beach before it got dark. I married very young and I was hassled a great deal about giving up so many opportunities and not living life to the fullest before I settled down, but I think what they really believed is that I was just settling. I was giving up. This woman in a gentle and unintentional way was reminding me that I never settled, I ran headlong into life.

..and I am still running.

An empty little nest...

If you have read anything I have ever written before then you know that I have eleven children. If you have never read anything I have written before, then you know that now. Our oldest just graduated college and moved back to my home of Colorado. He is living with my mother and starting his grownup life. So there are only ten children at home. I know, ten is still a lot. But then just about two weeks ago, I said goodbye to the next three down in age and my husband drove them to Jordanville for three weeks. This morning, two more left for two weeks at Russian camp down in Illinois. I am down to just the youngest five little girls who are between three and ten years old. Normally people would think this is a lot of children but it feels so quiet! Probably because all five boys are gone. Strike that. They are screaming downstairs. While I am writing they are playing and there is some disagreement about whether they are orphans, mermaids, or orphan-mermaids.

I have never had so much time alone with so many little girls. When I first started having children, the boys came first. There was a lot more rough and tumble and Legos and buckets of plastic green soldiers. This is a whole new game. It is one filled with mermaids, orphans, dolls, and plans for formal teas with hats. It is the Apostles Fast still (for us, because old calendar, y'all) so I will be busting out my best vegan baking. Aquafaba for the win. It is a funny thing. I had wondered what it would be like when it was just girls at home and now, here it is.

I am not sure what to think about it. I have some book outlining to do and some filming for my videos series which means editing for my series. Gah. I hate editing. I hate looking at my face for that long. And listening to my voice. The work will get done because I have been steady at this rodeo for a long time. I know how to juggle all this bidness and kids. At least for two days it will be me and the littles and the farm which is more work than the writing and filming and editing. Cows and lambs and ducks (the ducklings are dwindling in number because of predator birds and it is killing my son) and that is much more work but Ben got the mowing done before he left. But what it weighing on me is what is not weighing on me.

Little girls don't each much and they go to bed early. They don't read complicated books or drive cars. So many of my children are growing up and they will leave the nest as quickly as they all piled into it. I am not sure that I am ready for all of that. There are fewer kids to read to and play with and cuddle with on the sofa with a blanket and a movie. The fact that there are very few kids (relatively, I know) to cook for will take some getting used to. I made half the oatmeal with cranberries that I would usually make and it was twice as much as I needed. This little taste of how much less there is to do is a stark reminder of how much my children have grown. Someday, not too far from now, there will be no one at home.

I wish that I had not rushed my oldest children. I wish I had not worried so much about the things they were not doing yet. I should have reveled in their need for me, even when I was exhausted, because those years are shorter than I could have possibly imagined. I know this this weekend and even into next week, I will feel strained. I know I will probably lose my temper. I think I should print out that photo of all the kids together and put it somewhere to remind me that this is an opportunity that I can't let go by. I need to remember that the time is short for when my children need me, want me, and call out for me in the night. Maybe as much as I dreaded sending all the older children off all over the country, it is a good thing, because it makes me think. All the feels. Not much time.

I'm too soft for this...

When I was a child, my father's parents kept a fair amount of animals like chickens, ducks, geese, and am occasional goat. They grew a substantial amount of their food. My mother's parents never had animals but they had a very large garden and grew enough food to feed an army. They were and are the people chasing others down to give them vegetables. They liked growing their own food so much that they felt the need to grow more than they could possibly eat. While they didn't keep animals, my grandfather was an avid hunter and fisherman and our freezer was always full of game and fish. We lived in the city and my mother only did container gardening but we spent a lot of time in the garden working for my grandparents when we visited. I can't say that anyone in my extended family thought of themselves as mini-homesteaders. They just liked what they were doing. It wasn't political. It was about enjoying the process.

I am not a gardener. I like having the garden available to me when I want to make a salad or I have the hankering to grill zucchini but I am just as happy buying it from someone else. I just hate gardening. Like a lot. I don't like digging in the soil or starting seeds or weeding. I just don't enjoy it. I know there are a lot of people who do and I cannot figure out what they like about it so much but I am pretty glad they share their bounty with us. Homegrown is pretty darn good; especially tomatoes.

I am also not a pet person. I like the idea of pets more than the pets. Actually, I am not sure I like the idea of them. Well. Maybe cats. They are low maintenance. Except our cat. He is pretty darn needy the way he likes to crawl into bed with us all but since he kills mice, shrews, and spiders, I can deal. Well, and the dog keeps the bears and coyotes away, albeit with a few injuries. She can stay. I can deal with her, too.

The photo above is one I took from behind the farmhouse here and it looks down towards the edge of the woods. If you keep going in that direction, through the woods, you will run right into the edge of Lake Superior. There is a lot of space. If I stand in the hayloft and look out the window, there is only so far that I can see because the woods block my view.The farm covers, quite literally, all I can see and then some. I went from living by the train station and a quick ride into downtown to living on a farm with more land than I can see from the hayloft. I am pretty soft. Too soft for this.

But I think that's okay. I think we all start off soft, no matter what, and maybe we stay soft. We took a frightening gamble and Ben quite his big city job and we sold our large comfortable house with the kitchen we renovated to be my ideal (*sniff*) and we moved to the family homestead and we were two soft for it. In fact I was just telling Ben this very thing. But I think I misspoke. I think we used to be too soft for this. We aren't super hearty like our neighbors who have lived out here their whole lives for generations and generations but, we are still alive and so are most of the animals.

We have taught the children how to cope with loss by loving them through a bitter period of caring for a calf that was born with neurological issues. We fed him, and stroked his head, set him in our laps, and took turns with him. We invested everything we could and then watched him die anyway but how to still invest in the next one that comes along. That toughens you up.

Jack got ducks and cared for them every single day until we processed them and had them for Nativity. He compassionately cared for these animals, knowing that they were food, He proudly served roast duck and the risotto I made with the stock from the bones. That also toughens you up.

As a family have harvested apple and sold them by the hundred pound lots for canning, gotten up in the dark to trek out to the barn to milk cows, chased cows and lambs back in from the orchard and gardens when they have gotten lose and helped themselves, and we have even (twice in the last week) gone out and roped a cow so that we could tie them up and pull porcupine quills from their muzzles. The kids have shown produce at the fair. I have made more butter and varieties of cheese than I ever thought I would learn to make. We have found ourselves needing help and advice more times than I can count and, most importantly, found neighbors willing to dive in and help. We have given away homemade cheese, butter, bread, jellies, dried apples, home canned pie cherries, plum syrup, and other thing in a delicious barter arrangement with others.

I think we are still soft. We are still tired. We are still overwhelmed at times. The real measure is that we keep waking up and doing it. Maybe it isn't about how feel at the beginning, but what we have finished in the end. Maybe it is isn't about the process but about the end. That even when we don't enjoy the process, at the end we have not only accomplished something, achieved something, we overcome the greatest of stumbling blocks: ourselves.

Looking for magic...

Behold, the golden hour light on the...hose reel.

I like to take pictures. I am not really a photographer, or even a hobby photographer. I have photographer friends and they read way more and take way more classes and they always have their cameras. I often don't and if I do, I feel awkward asking to take photos or worry about looking like an idiot as I pose my child against a brick wall in a public place and start snapping away. Their photos are amazing and it is probably a lot to do with the fact that they are so  much braver than I am.

I think I also have the handicap of making the perfect the enemy of the good. I (kind of?)  know someone in my photographer group who lives in Hawaii. Oh. Mah. Gosh. Not only is she an amazing photographer but her backdrop is stunning. I mean, freaking Hawaii, am I wrong? People tell me to shoot my own home and look for the magic there. This is generally not a bad idea given that this is where I live so these are the things that I can photograph without hopping a plane to a tantalizing destination but...often they have this idea about living on a farm. It is a cute idea...just not a realistic one. It is not all Elena Shumilova. Honestly, there is a lot of poop. So much poop. Because that is pretty much what animals do. They poop and we move it.

But you know, Russia is pretty modern place. I am sure she has to shoot around plastic Homer buckets and things like green plastic garden hose. Probably? Maybe?So I tell myself? So here I am, shooting this farm and either carefully editing the photos using cropping or just plain photoshopping out things or being really careful to set up my shots so that they look all cool and magical and I guess, Russian. Sometimes it works pretty well and I am not sure if that is a good idea. I mean, how much artifice do I need to put on things? That photo at the header of the post is the well head at golden hour after a good storm. The light was amazing and it softly lit the green garden hose. I suppose I could layer the shot with one of the kids so that it looked like a child out there and I just might do that, but then it isn't real. It might not be a problem to do sometimes but I think that do only do that would be just a bit sad.

The world that we live in is a real one and I think that the images that we see are largely not real. I worry that it makes us less happy with reality. I really like this shot of the farmhouse. It was taken the same evening as the first shot but it was taken first and the sun was a bit higher. The light just cut between the house and the lilac bush and highlighted the dandelions going to seed. By the way, that kills my husband, Ben. He just cannot.Not even a little.The yard means something to him that it doesn't to me. In this shot are some pieces of reality poking through, besides the crop of weeds to come. You might notice the satellite dish that belonged to the uncle who lived her previously and though we have never had service, we have yet to remove it. You might notice the white bucket on the chimney to the furnace. We are in the 50s today, twenty degrees cooler than yesterday, but sucking it up and not heating. The bucket keeps out the rain. I debated for a long time about whether to photoshop those to death. The siding would have been tricky for me but doable but not worth it. There is a bucket on the chimney and a stupid dish on the side of the house. The photo is pretty real.

Believe it or not, this is the woodshed. I cropped out
the gas powered wood splitter and the piles of wood.

I am not totally okay with that but that is my own character flaw. I think I am going to leave them there to just be a little bit of reality. As for the dandelions? Ben is taking them out. The belly PTO mower is on the tractor and he has vengeance on his mind. Those pretty little fluff balls are going down. Good thing I snapped a photo when I did.

Say peep...

Next week I will have a review up on a book to help children process death and the Orthodox services surrounding it. When I am thinking about such things because it is coming up on the second anniversary of my father's death. My father had a genetic blood clotting condition, which I inherited. It is the sort of thing that is not always a problem but decided to randomly rear its ugly head. It is a capricious little condition. Because of this when he developed cancer, it was not discovered immediately. The blood clots in his lungs just appeared to the kind that we are more susceptible to developing. But after a few months of developing more and more clots despite being on thinners, they discovered he had non-smoker's lung cancer. We children and he himself were almost grateful that it was cancer because we no longer had to worry so much about ourselves. I was pregnant at the time and my oncologist (because they are blood specialists not because I had cancer) was flipping out about keeping my blood very thin and doing constant checks. The day that my youngest daughter had her ten day well baby check up, my father discovered he had cancer. He did not want to tell me right away and I practically had to pry it out. But I knew. I could feel when I heard his voice. I just wanted to know that I was right. I knew I was, but I needed to hear it.

That said, while I miss my father a great deal, I have tremendous hope in God so I am not too sad at this anniversary. We plan to talk about the good times and the funny events like the time he tried to trick my Tita Rosa (my dear aunt Rose) in to eating a Gaines Burger. When my grandfather found out, he made my father eat it and more. There is a lot of good to remember and we have to keep it at the surface so that we don't only see the bad memories.

I realized that in our family, we like to tell stories. I think we get that from my mother's side. My mother is Cherokee. Legit. Like Indian basketball league, legit. They tell stories. They sit around and tell children stories that go backwards. They start with stories about when the child was a baby, and the when the parents were babies, and the back and and back and ever deeper. Some of the best times of my entire adult life were when my mother's parents stayed with us while my grandmother recovered from surgery for an infection in her bones. She needed to stay close the hospital and be cared for and I did it gratefully. At night while everyone else slept, my grandfather told stories I had never heard before. My husband and I and even my oldest son sat in rapt attention, barely breathing and certainly never interrupting. Those nights were golden.

In his late teens, he had hitchhiked across the country from Oklahoma to San Diego and was picked up by an ex-con and an AWOL sailor. At some point along the journey, my grandfather thought he was in over his head, took a powder, and ended up alone and stranded in the desert only to be rescued by this same duo again later. Along this trip, my grandfather learned from the ex-con how to use a string mop and janitorial chemicals to blow a safe. For reals. I will never forget those nights. I saw my grandfather in a new way. He is a tower of reliability and fortitude but he was once a crazy kid. Having been a dumb kid, I could relate. There is a book there, I know it. I want to write it. I have to find a way to string it all together and find the right narrative style. I need to do it before he leaves this place and goes where I can't hear his stories for a while. Ask me how it is going sometime. Keep me honest,

Anyway, my father's birthday was around Western Easter. He had this thing for Peeps. You know, the nasty little marshmallow things? He loved them. It is so weird and so not like him. My father was a foodie and a healthy freak. He was doing spirulina and chia cleanses before it was cool. They were his dirty secret and not many people knew. That and Slim Jims, which I have NEVER tried out of the fear that I have a genetic weakness for them, God forbid. My father would have one Slim Jim a year and then he would have a package of Peeps with cheap white wine, because how better to cut the cloying sweetness than with the aggressive acidity of flowery smelling Chardonnay? This was his birthday treat, eaten in secret. As he was dying, I gave him a case of Peeps and Slim Jims. Why not eat them now? He didn't finish them all and they were thrown away after he died but they were there when he needed them.

This Pascha, I started a new tradition. I want to keep the stories alive. I had a pretty pink peep and a glass of wine. It was good even though it wasn't really. I told the kids about my father's birthday treat. Every year I am going to do this and I am going to tell this story. This is how one's memory is eternal. That is really what it means. Memory eternal, Daddy.

Eating through the pain...

We had the usual things in our Pascha basket. You know, bacon, red eggs, salt, cheese, hrutka cheese, Pascha bread, wine, a butter lamb, and chocolate. Then we had some Colorado love. Well, actually New Mexico, but still like back home--so close enough. Abouna Moses from Holy Resurrection in Wisconsin had driven through New Mexico late last year and loaded up on a ridiculous amount of New Mexico green chile, something I miss profoundly since moving to the hinterlands of the north. Abouna is one of those people who instantly becomes everyone's friend and knows how to make them at home. He had me pegged from the first time that I met him. The way to my heart is always food and cooking. We saw him and Jessica from Every Home a Monastery in the last week of March, right after Western Easter, because our kids' school was on break. Since Ben teaches, we have to take advantage of these days off. God bless Abouna! When we went back home, we brought with us his homemade bacon, European butter, and chiles he had roasted himself.

I have a love affair with green chiles. When we first moved here, I was shopping and sending kids in all directions to fetch things in different parts of the store. I sent the oldest, then nineteen, to get green chiles, which is properly pronounced "chee-LAYS". When he couldn't find them, he asked a clerk. Three times Joseph tried to tell him what he wanted. Finally he took Joey to the shoe department, which kind of freaked him out a little bit. Once there, he showed Joey some green shoelaces. I am not even kidding! Joey laughed and thanked him and then found me. I didn't laugh long. No chiles. Like none. Now real, whole, raosted green chiles from home make me cry.

Growing up in Denver, I love the smell of chiles. The whole west side of the city smells like roasting chiles all August. the trucks come up from southern Colorado or New Mexico, full of glossy green chiles. The Mexicans and Mexican-Americans sell them all along Federal Boulevard. They have blow torches and giant metal spinning baskets that like the ones from the Bingo halls also all up and down Federal Boulevard. They ask how many bushels you want and then they are dropped into the basket and while it is spinning, they are roasted by the fire from a blow torch. I love this. I love the heat and the smell of chiles and sound of the skin crackling. I miss it so much that I literally weep for it in August. I miss it so much it is a painful stabbing feeling in my throat when I think about it.

I am so blessed to have so many beautiful friends that every fall, someone buys a large box and fills it with unroasted chiles (so they can be shipped). Getting a box like this makes home feel a little less far away. So I take my chiles outside and we fire up the grill with hardwoods from the trees here at the farm and we roast them over oak or maple. It is the strange fusion of here and there, of now and then, of my husband and of me.

At Pascha, we had chiles in the basket which confused the priest. I told him that even though these were Lenten, it represented something I missed profoundly, something my children miss profoundly, something that we needed. Last night I made deep fried chiles rellenos and a green chile sauce. Since one of my kids is allergic to tomatoes, I used whiskey soaked raisins instead and it was amazing. I will totally do that going forward. Father Alexander and Brother Anthony came over and we had plates piled high with rice, rellenos (plain cheese ones for the little people), green chile sauce, and sour cream. Father brought wine and we talked and laughed. These chiles were so hot that our faces were red, we were sweating, and our eyes were watering and had to pause between bites. It hurt a bit but in a good way. The best way, really. I was completely in the moment. I did not take even one picture, I did not even knit a single stitch. It was nice to put aside everything for a little while and just enjoy the food and the wine and the company while the little children ran in and out of the big farm kitchen.

 I think that is the Christian journey.

Eat through the pain.

Yesterday, some friends were chatting over Facebook about needing to introduce some veggies and fruits back in after a few days of feasting. One of them said the other option was to eat through the pain. That is pretty much what we did last night. We ate through the pain both literally and figuratively. I am not sure that the place I live could ever really be home to me but it certainly is the place God had put me. When I miss home, I bring it out in my kitchen, but in this kitchen here on the farm. Eating chiles for me is eating through the pain and I come out on the other side happier even if I cry up until that moment. In the end, I think that is the Christian journey. Eat through the pain. The other side is there, waiting, and it will be bliss even if every moment between then and now is bound up in the physical, a mixture of tears and joy.

And if you are experiencing any, um, slowed digestion because of all the cheese you have been eating, drop on by  my house. I have some leftover chile sauce. That'll clear that right up for you, Compadre.