Yep, it's a double WooHoo Monday. Tax season is officially over! Most of my coworkers are in Disneyland for a few days celebrating with the annual Silver Creek trip to a land far, far away. It is the first time they've gone someplace like Disney - usually it's much more grown-up like Reno or Las Vegas. I don't know how much fun they're having but I'll bet it's a lot. Just listening to their passing comments "Are you packed? Me too!" kept a smile on my face during those last hectic moments. It's not everyone who can so enjoy life and I am truly blessed to get to work with a whole bunch of such souls.
Why didn't I go? Have you ever seen a dismembered Mama? My girls have never been to Disneyland and I was fairly certain of the reaction I'd get if I suggested they stay home and do chores while Jeff and I went to frolic with Mickey. Not a pretty sight.
Instead, I had an amazing weekend, three whole days actually, after working six days a week for the past three months. Zoe is running Track and competed at Eastern Oregon University, beating her earlier time by a tenth of a second. We tease that she would have improved more if she could just stop jumping backwards when the starter gun fires. Actually, we were on a deadline to make it to the library before it closed so she may have been going top speed after all.
The next day was all about Rae as she prepares her audition tape for Performing Arts Camp. Sheesh, can you say zero to sixty in two weeks? Her Spring call to the universe this year was for the opportunity to perform. Since the Equinox, she's co-starred in the MCT production of The Princess and the Pea, will perform with the High School Drama club at the end of April and with the local Cheer Dance studio in May. And if her starlet monologue of "The Ugly Step-Sister Speaks Out" goes well enough, she'll spend a whole week performing this Summer.
Jeff staked out the boundaries of the new garden spot for the greenhouses and the fruit and berry orchard, fenced off paddocks in the quickly growing pasture, and moved our little Jersey bull from the fertility pen to his pasture-in-waiting. We love, love, love being Farmers.
When Rae took the first fall from her new horse, I consoled her with this bit of hard-earned wisdom "After you've been bucked off a running horse, lived through it, and gotten back on - again and again - something changes inside of you. You just don't scare easily anymore." Rae was pretty doubtful at the time and assured me that she didn't really need to repeat the experience. But I look at my amazing family - on great days and in the middle of tax season, or harvest season, or right after they've been bucked off - and we just don't scare easily anymore. Life is big and beautiful and hideous and hard and luscious and tender all at once.
It's a double WooHoo Monday and I am so very lucky to be alive.
