Trick-or Treating (2024)

The last time I was here, I said that I'd never been a real Halloween enthusiast.  After I published that post, I realized that it made me sound like a bit of a curmudgeon, as if we didn't let our boys enjoy the costumes and the candy back in the day.  My husband and I definitely let them do so.  We never put on costumes ourselves, or planned big family theme costumes.  Well...that happened just a few times, I suppose.  (As you can see in this old post.)

Anyway, suffice it to say that the Pearl boys definitely trick-or-treated.

I’ve just never been a fan of the bloody, scary costumes, the skeletons and vampires and all that dark stuff.  I like cute.  I like kids dressed like Disney princesses, or animals, or dinosaurs, or policemen.  (That was a popular one around here this year.  We saw about a dozen trick-or-treaters, both girls and boys, in blue uniforms with silver badges.)  The scariest costume among the nine grandchildren who came over to celebrate at our house was the Grinch.  Its wearer was a so-not-scary four (going on five)-year-old girl!

I REALLY like the All Saints Day costumes kids wear at Catholic elementary schools, so much more than most Halloween costumes.  Here's our grandson Junior, dressed as St. Augustine on November 1 over at his school.

Less Freddy Krueger; more St. Augustine.  Please!  But the string of Pearls (and a few of their friends) who came over to trick-or-treat in our neighborhood on Halloween were a pretty cute, non-scary bunch.

Before the gang hit the mean streets in search of sugary goodness, we had chili, Buffalo chicken dip, hot dogs, mac and cheese, and spiced cider available at our house.  (And a really awesome Oreo trifle dessert--a family favorite fondly known as "Heavenly Dirt"--for afterward.)

While the kids were off trick-or-treating, my husband and I did as we always do: we sat together out front with cocktails and handed out candy to the hundreds of kids who were out and about.  Our neighborhood is truly Halloween Central.  It’s such an ideal place to trick-or-treat; the many houses are close together, it’s well lit, and people around here really get into it, with all the decorating and so forth.  Word must have gotten out that on October 31, this is the place to be, because families from other neighborhoods come in and the parking lot at our neighborhood pool/clubhouse gets filled up.  Two of our VA boys' neighborhoods are less-than ideal for trick-or-treating (too rural, or too hilly with houses too far apart), which is lucky for us, because we get to have their kids come here each year!

Those cheap Walmart jack-o-lantern t-shirts are about as close as we get to wearing Halloween costumes!  (We are not those fun parents, like our son #3 and his wife, who love to dress up right along with the kids!)

My favorite part of Halloween every year since we've been here in VA is when our grandchildren come back to the house with their booty after a hard night's work.  Some of them go to the basement to play; but without fail, there are always a few of them who want to sit out front in the dark with Papa and Grammy and help to hand out candy while their parents visit inside (until our supply inevitably runs out, for no matter how much we buy, it's never quite enough!).  And it seems like it's different kids outside with us each year.  Those feel like magical times to me--unplanned and organic, simple yet profoundly sweet--and I hope that when they're older it will be a special memory for them.

Our Annual October Trip to Wisconsin (2024 Edition)

I can't believe it's November already!  (Time for my monthly check-in at the blog...)

October was a busy month for us.  There was a trip to Wisconsin, for one thing.  It's a two-day trip, but my husband and I love taking long road trips together, so we didn't mind that a bit.  We were able to spend a week with our oldest son and his family, including seven children from age 13 down to not-quite-one.  Our boy has six daughters and one son, and they've been homeschooled since day one (our daughter-in-law is quite the rockstar homeschooler!).  They lived near us here in VA for about four years, and we miss them terribly, so it was a joy to spend time with them at their relatively new homestead out in the rural Midwest. Incredibly, they own about 20 acres, and have two large outbuildings. They garden and raise chickens, and our son has become a beekeeper.  Over time, they hope to add more animals to their place.

Our son's two-year-old daughter is a hoot (that age is so much fun!).  She's a devoted mama to her twin baby dolls, and even "nurses" them.  She is incredibly verbal and has some of the funniest sayings.  ("What the heck in the world?!" is our new go-to, after our sojourn in WI.)

We were able to celebrate our firstborn's 41st birthday with him before it was time to go. My husband and I also re-strung four American Girl dolls whose joints had gotten dangerously loose.  And my handy guy was able to help our boy with a DIY project: building a fire-proof platform on which to put the new wood-burning stove they just purchased for their great room.  (He is such a handyman, I tell you--our boys are lucky to have him!  He just helped son #4 in VA put new shutters on an upstairs window, and is currently helping son #3 get all the framing and electrical wiring/outlets done so that his basement can be refinished as a playroom for his five kids.)

Our four oldest granddaughters out in WI wondered why we couldn't just stay forever when the week was up and we finally had to head home; but we had three little ones' birthdays in a row back here in VA in late October (literally, three days in a row!), which means three cakes for Grammy to bake and decorate!  (I have the best job!)  Our home was calling us, so we sadly said our good-byes.  But we took with us some wonderful memories, which I can share in pictures.

No two babies were ever more loved!

Mommy has her baby carrier on, so of course...

A freezer full of chickens raised and prepared by our boy himself!  
(I would say "slaughtered," but when I used that term on our family text stream,
I was told that it was unnecessarily graphic!) The tomatoes are also home-grown.

Not only was the chicken "farm fresh"; the potatoes were planted and harvested
by one of our granddaughters!

Our son, with the chicken's heart.  He and a few of his kids think it's a
yummy treat.  [Insert barfing face emoji here!!] 

When she's not tending to her twin dolls, this little one likes to help in the
kitchen.  She is quite the little homemaker.

Learning at the kitchen table.  These identical twins are two of the loveliest
teenage girls you could ever meet.

Papa, doing what he does.

The kids made a scarecrow shortly before we left and seated him in a chair out in front of their house.  So this was one of the last things we saw as we pulled away: Steve, the scarecrow.  Along with the six oldest, who came out to wave us off.

It's hard having people you love so much living so far away.  But they are in such a good place for them, with a large and supportive Traditional Latin Mass and homeschooling community around them.  Their kids are busy with music lessons and activities, have lots of sweet friends, and are thriving.  Our daughter-in-law's folks are less than two hours away.  It's all good.  I wish our son and his wife could have stayed here near us in VA, but if they did, it is doubtful that they would be living their dream to the extent that they are.  And we are deeply grateful that despite the distance between us, we have been able to maintain such a close bond with those kiddos of theirs.  It's all good.  God is good, all the time.

I'll be back soon to do a Halloween re-cap.  I've never been a dyed-in-the-wool Halloween enthusiast; but since moving here, our house, with its perfect triick-or-treating neighborhood, has become a hub of Halloween fun for many Pearls in the area.  So I enjoy October 31 festivities more than I ever have before.  

For now, dear readers, Happy All Saints Day!  (It's also my sainted mother-in-law's birthday.  Thinking of you today, Mom, and missing you.)

Bittersweet Musings from VA

Well, it hasn't been a full month yet since I've been here at the blog.  I'm on a roll!

We've been a tad busy since we returned from our summer up north, tending to our Oyster Haven rental house and visiting with my mom and other relatives who still live in the NY town where my husband and I grew up and met in high school.  We've been to some grandkids' soccer games since we got back, helped one of our sons with his basement finishing project, done a bit of babysitting...in a nutshell, we are right back in the swing things.  Such is our life here in VA, and it is a good one.

We stay most of the summer in my husband's childhood home just down the road from Oyster Haven, which he and his seven siblings put into an LLC in 2009 when their mom died (their dad had passed away in 2003).  They all wanted to hang onto it, because not only is it a big, lovely house, but Lake Champlain is right out in the back yard.  The location is almost too good to be true.  And it's such a great meeting place for the far-flung eight siblings.  Well, they used to be far-flung...two of my husband's sisters have houses almost next-door to where they grew up, where they live full-time now; and two other sisters have bought houses in the neighborhood as well, which are mostly vacation homes at present.  But I digress.

Anyway, the idea of keeping a beloved home in the family touches me deeply.  Not one of my husband's siblings can fathom a world wherein someone else owns that house.  (I'm a bit attached to it, too, as I can still remember all the time I spent there as a kid, throughout high school, when I was dating my husband.) It was so worth it to them to keep it in the family that they bought an investment property out in South Bend some years back, to rent out for Notre Dame football weekends, in order to have the extra income needed for the upkeep and taxes at the family homestead in NY. (They recently sold that South Bend property and put all the proceeds into the LLC, and just let me put it this way: that house, which was within walking distance to the football field, was an exceptionally wise investment!)

It's easy to fall in love with a house when it contains so many happy memories and reminds us of the ones we love most every time we walk in the door.  We had such a house in NH, a Colonial beauty where we lived for 26 years and raised our five sons.  Our oldest was only half-way through first grade when we bought it, and our youngest had yet to be born.  It was a "forever home" type of house--not on a lake, but on a quiet cul-de-sac street in a sweet New England town, with deer-filled woods behind it and vast green yards in both front and back.  I loved that house.  We all loved that house.

Okay, looking for the above photo of our NH house (I got out my flash drives to hunt it down!) led me to this oldie-but-goodie, one of the pre-digital age grainy snapshots with which most of my photo albums are filled.  These faces!!  [sob]  If only you could more clearly see how ridiculously cute these boys are.

That picture was taken in the family room just a few years after we moved into that house, on the occasion of son #2's First Holy Communion.  Excuse me...now I need a tissue.  Be right back.

Okay, moving on!

Once our boys all graduated from college and went off into their grown-up lives, we still thought we might hang onto the NH house, that it would be our home base when we weren't traveling to see kids living in different states.  After he got his masters, our second-oldest was living about an hour away, working as a high school math teacher, and he had no plans to relocate; we figured as long as we had even one son close by, we would stay put.  But then he met his future wife at his brother's wedding in 2013 (he was a groomsman; she was a former college classmate and bridesmaid), and before long, he was moving to VA, where his wife grew up.  And where he had two brothers who had also settled in VA, about an hour-and-a-half away from his new home.

So--by 2014, we had three out of five sons living near each other in VA, our oldest married and living out in the Midwest, and our youngest still in college (but planning to go Army active duty and be stationed who-knows-where after graduation), and we had no one (not even any extended family) living in NH.  We were almost always on a plane or on a road trip to visit our boys, and we were hardly ever there.  It didn't seem like the place for us anymore.  Where would we end up?

By happenstance, we stumbled upon our Oyster Haven house when we were up visiting family in NY during the summer of 2015 and saw the "For Sale" sign as we drove by it.  We decided we would buy it and rent it out until my husband retired, and then we'd sell our NH house and that would become our new home base. 

But God had other plans for us... 

Here we are in 2017, after we'd purchased our house in VA--taking a tour of it with two of our boys and their wives, who live about 35-40 minutes away from us and only minutes from each other.  We originally thought we might have to rent this house out until we could sell our beloved NH house; but that same day, we found out that our NH house had sold--without ever having to be listed--for the price we were asking. (Everything was falling into place in the most perfect way!  There's a bit of a long story involved, and I don't want to tell it again; but if you're interested, you can read about it here.)

Anyway, I guess I'm feeling a bit nostalgic today!  The whole reason I started writing this post--before going down a rabbit hole of memories--was to talk about how fast time seems to be flying since we've become Virginians, and how in the seven-and-a-half years we've lived here, so much has changed.  We had seven grandchildren when we moved into our new house; today, we have 22 (with another on the way). I believe our daughter-in-law Braveheart (the one in the brown coat in the above pic) had just recently found out that the baby she was carrying was actually TRIPLETS.  2017 was to be a banner year: we moved, and we also welcomed five new little ones, the triplets plus two others.  It was some year indeed.  And the ones following have been very full of grandchildren and other blessings as well--such as having son #1 move to the area, shortly after we arrived, and live nearby for over four years with his growing family.  (For that stretch, we had four out of five boys here in VA, and all of our grandkids!)  It has been a ride, let me tell you.

Sometimes lately, I find myself having bittersweet feelings; I love seeing our grandchildren grow and mature, yet I want time to slow down a bit!  When we moved here, most of them were available to come to Papa and Grammy's house for frequent playdates and family get-togethers, as they were either homeschooled or too young to be in school yet.  But you know how it is once they reach a certain age: the school year starts, and suddenly there are so many activities: clubs and team sports and weekend birthday parties for classmates and so much more.  It has become challenging trying to get all three families that live nearby to our house at the same time, because they've all got so much going on in their lives.  (Which, don't get me wrong, I know is good!  Believe me, we were there once.) 

So imagine my joy this past Sunday, when all three VA families (three couples and their 14 children) were able to come over for brunch/lunch/early dinner.  I was so excited about it that I spent all day Saturday cooking and baking.

My husband started to warn me that I was going overboard and we were never going to eat it all, but then he said he stopped himself because he could see how happy the process of getting ready for our little party was making me.  (He was right on both counts!  I was happy.  And yes, we didn't eat even half of what I set out; but I filled lots of to-go containers and made everyone take almost all of the leftovers home with them.)

This has gone on too long, I suppose.  So I'll sign off here.  But not before I add a few photos from our sweet Sunday get-together. 

You cannot even imagine how happy it makes me to see these cousins hanging out together at our house!

And to see adorable little peeps like this guy eating at our table.

  

And as always, I love it when our grown-up kids can sometimes take advantage of the opportunity to snag a much-needed cat-nap on our living room couch!

Our VA living room is very small, much smaller than the one in NH.  But it's cozy.

I have a few more things to say about our old house vs. our new one.  But I'm going to save that for another day!  (You're welcome!  Ha ha!)

A “New” Chair for Oyster Haven

Greetings from upstate NY!

After a short stint back home in VA, my husband and I had to make another trip up north to check on our Oyster Haven rental property.  This spring we lost a chunk of our back yard, due to erosion from heavy rains.  We had to have work done to fill it in and shore it up, so that if it happens again we won’t lose our stairs that lead down to the beach.  (They’ve been removed temporarily but will be reinstalled when all is secure.) We waited to get this work started until our busy summer rental season was over.

My husband wanted to see with his own eyes how the construction project on the bank was going; but he had to make a trip back up anyway, because he still had to bring in all the kayaks and the canoe from the lake and get them into winter storage, as well as bring in the buoy and the dock.  Not to mention our pontoon boat, which has to get cleaned up and brought to the marina where it will be housed until next summer.  I was originally going to stay behind, because I’m an incurable homebody and I’ve missed being in my own VA house.  I’ve also missed our kids and grandkids who live nearby.  But the bottom line is that I belong with HIM.  I’m his helpmate first and foremost, and everyone else comes second.  Our boys all have wives now, so they don’t really need their mommy!😊

So another week by the lake it is!  And it’s been absolutely lovely here, weather-wise; it’s so warm and sunny—what we used to call an “Indian Summer.”  Just glorious.  As you can see.

In other Oyster Haven news…

Remember this somewhat recent post about how I re-upholstered my grandmother’s chair?  Well, I have another tale to tell about bringing an old chair back to life, with little more than a scrap of fabric (from where else but my mother-in-law’s attic, which is practically a small JoAnn’s affiliate, no kidding!).  And lots of TLC, of course.

Toward the end of the summer, I was thinking about hitting the secondhand shops or garage sales to look for a chair to put in the upstairs hall at Oyster Haven.  When we bought it in the fall of 2015 and started getting it ready to start renting on VRBO the following summer, we didn't spend a lot of money on furniture, aside from the beds.  We got bedside tables at secondhand stores and accepted a hand-me-down dining room table from my sister-in-law.  We had an awesome tile-topped trestle table that my husband had made for our NH house that didn't really fit in our downsized VA house, and he made a pair of glorious wooden benches to go with it for the kitchen of the rental house.  Some of the dining room chairs, a coffee table and a pair of end tables for the living room, along with a few other random pieces that we didn't have a place for in our VA house anyway, also found a home at Oyster Haven.

We were on a budget in 2015, so I ended up buying an inexpensive, nondescript little padded stool from Home Goods to fill this space in the upstairs hall, and it has been there ever since.

I must have been meant to get a new chair to replace that stool; because one August day my husband and I were driving back to his childhood home, where we stay during the summer, and out by the curb at the entrance to the neighborhood there were two dining room chairs near a pile of trash, obviously being thrown out.  And when we went to look at them more closely, one of them was in great shape, except for the fabric on the seat cushion.  (The other, a matching arm chair, had a hunk of wood broken off of it.)

After it was recovered, and cleaned up a bit, it looked quite lovely.

And I loved how it has transformed that upstairs hall!

(It would have been pretty, no matter the cost; but I especially love it when things are free!)

One quick addendum:I decided to recover the stool and bring it back to use in our VA living room.  It’s a small room, and we have a big family; so any extra seating that we can get—especially seating that takes up very little space—is appreciated.

Have I got enough competing floral patterns in my living room?  (Don't answer that!)

Have a great week!  And happy homemaking!

A Mother's Heart

I found this not-quite-ready post in my archives, and I decided to finish and publish it today.  Because I'm on a roll here!  I go silent for three months...and then, boom! Back-to-back posts.  You never know what you're going to get at this blog!

I have mentioned this before here at the blog, but I just love the writings of Elizabeth Foss.  She is a homeschooling mother of nine, a grandmother, a blogger, an author, and a well-known Catholic "influencer."  Just like I did, she married her high school boyfriend, so I feel a special kinship with her. She's about ten years younger than I and still has a couple of high-school aged daughters.  But otherwise, she's very much in the same phase of life that I am: her children are grown and gone (or in her case, all but the youngest two are); and therefore, like all of us women with grown children, her heart is repeatedly being torn, scarring over, and then tearing again.  Not to put too dramatic a spin on it...but it does happen. Luckily, the heart it a tough organ.  Especially when it’s a mother's heart.

Elizabeth Foss lived in VA for many years, until a relatively recent move to CT.  She still has a column in our diocesan newspaper here in VA, The Catholic Herald.  Hers is the one article that I never fail to read when we get this paper in the mail.  Foss’s piece from the June 13-16 edition was titled "Note to a grad's mom,"* and boy-oh-boy, could I relate.   It's been a while since our last Pearl family graduation (our youngest son was University of Notre Dame, Class of 2015), but the memories of those bittersweet endings are still fresh.

Yes, graduations are not just endings but also beginnings (it's an overused cliche because it's true).  And there is so much to be joyful about, watching your children spread their wings and fly.  But they fly away from you, you see.  And a mother's heart takes a beating when that happens.  It still beats, sure; but oh, it aches.  The pain can be excruciating at times.

That Catholic Herald column of Foss’s that I mentioned above was inspired by witnessing a mom crying on her husband's shoulder after their child's high school graduation ceremony and party.  Foss writes, "The words of encouragement out there for moms of graduates all focus on a job well done and they pivot to look to the opportunities to pursue their own dreams in an empty-nest future.  And of course, those should be addressed.  Raising a child is no small thing. You deserve a hearty pat on the back.  But most moms don't feel like doing a jig.  Instead, they feel like they ran out of time.  There is a nagging feeling that we have so much more we want to give to the grown child."  

Yes, yes, YES!  This is spot-on--which is par for the course when it comes to Elizabeth Foss's eloquently expressed insights on motherhood.  

She continues, "I think that mothering people in their 20s is the most challenging mothering of all...Those are the things no one says.  It's not all over.  Buckle up.  Here comes the wild ride for which everything leading up to this moment has just been preparation."  I would only amend that last quoted section to read "people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s," because I don't even have any children in their 20s anymore.  (What?!  When, and how, did that happen?!)

Foss addresses this topic again in a June 13 post on her blog, In the Heart of My Home. She writes:

As I watch younger moms juggle babies and toddlers and big kids and try to be all the things for all of them, I want to assure them that it gets easier.  But I can't.  

I don't.

Because I don't think it does get easier.  It gets different.  In a lot of ways, it gets more challenging.  It's as if all the challenges of the younger years are designed to get you fit for the ones to come.

I was talking to an older mom yesterday about the choice we make to be peaceful with the way things turned out or to be bitter.  For some people, it is easy to be at peace.  For others, the choice can be the crucible where holiness is forged.

"The crucible where holiness is forged."  Wow.  That is some powerful writing, my friends.  And something to ponder…even for an extraordinarily fortunate mom like me, whose life has been mostly peaceful, whose heaviest cross these days is having to miss beloved grown children (and their children) who live much too far away.  

Because no matter how hard we moms try to be "all the things for all of them," we don't know what the future will hold for our children when they become adults.  As they say, adulting is hard!  Life will throw them so many curveballs.  And seeing them worry or struggle or suffer, when you can no longer make it all better with a Band-Aid and a kiss, is so painful for a mother.  Yet such is life here in the promised Valley of Tears!  Without faith, how does anyone endure it all?

If you can make it through the Mother-Son dance at your boy’s wedding without tears,
you’re a better woman than I!  (This is my baby, son #5.)

Well, I suppose it's time to figure out a way to wrap this all up.   

In a nutshell: yes, it can be scary having all grown children.  Worries don't magically disappear once your kids graduate from diapers, braces, and college; instead, they seem to multiply.

But so do the joys.  Case in point: check out this picture taken in July of our five boys and the five girls whom they married, and with whom they are raising 22 precious children between them (so far!).  These are ten of my favorite people on earth.  And if I hadn't let my boys grow up and leave me, they never would have given me these five sweet daughters to love.

Aren't these kids adorable?  (Rhetorical question, of course.  There can be only one answer!)

And here are a few pics of that high school boyfriend and me, after 44 years of marriage.  I'm so glad we ended up together; those five beautiful couples above wouldn't even be here if we hadn't!  (There are hardly any pictures of us together taken during the years we were dating, from 1973 to our wedding in 1980, because it was a whole different world back then--before the age of digital photography and home computers--and people hardly ever had a camera with them unless it was a big event.  Having these shots of us by the lake at Oyster Haven is very special to me!)

Life is good today.  And every day that I can wake up and say that, I feel blessed.

*That't the print copy title; online, the article is called "Note to the mother of a graduate."

Oh Yeah, I Have a Blog!

Well hey there, readers...all two or three of you who even bother to stop by here anymore!  How was your summer?

Are you surprised to see me here?  I know I am.  This is by far the longest I've been away from this blog since I opened up shop in 2011.  I believe it's been almost three months since I last posted anything.  Yikes, that beats my last AWOL stretch by about two months or so.

I've seriously been considering just closing my doors for good (but enough with the shop references already--sheesh!  Can you tell that I'm about as rusty as they come?!).  Just living life keeps me so busy these days that writing about it seems like a waste of time.

But then I stumble upon an old post in my archives, and I remember why I started this thing in the first place.  So many of my most precious memories--of my marriage, my motherhood, and now my grandmotherhood (if that's a word?  Spell check has underlined it in red for me, so perhaps not!)--are stored here on this site.  Like this oldie-but-goodie, for instance, about when my oldest son (now 40) was a new driver and started giving his younger brothers rides to school.  I read that sweet post again a few weeks ago, when my sister-in-law was talking about how her 16-year-old son was going to get his driver's license soon.  It brought back so many poignant memories!  And that post led me to this other post as well, one that tells about a treasured moment in time from my youngest son's wedding that I am so grateful to have captured.

(If you took the time to click those links and read the old posts, welcome back!)

Anyway, I'm happy for all the years I've spent adding to my online family scrapbook.  I am.  So maybe I should keep at it.  Maybe I'd miss it if I gave it up.  We shall see!

Today, I'm just feeling overwhelmed by how much has happened in the last three months that would be fun to blog about.  I don't know what to write about first. So I guess I'll just go ahead and jump in and see how it goes.

We just got back to VA a week ago, after spending most of July and August in upstate NY, staying at my husband's old childhood home by the lake while managing our Oyster Haven rental house just down the road.  Life was good up there, visiting with my 88-year-old mom and other relatives from both of our families and spending as much time as possible out on our pontoon boat.  But it's just so good to be home!

I don't know where to start, so I guess I'll just post a few pictures from our Pearl family vacation week at Oyster Haven in July (we had a professional photo shoot!  More about that later!); and then a few pictures from this past Sunday, when we had two of our boys and their families over to our house ("where we belong," as one of our precocious little granddaughters here in VA has told us) for a post-Mass brunch.  

How it was going in July (up at Oyster Haven):

Aren't those pictures fun? The photographer got many more clearer, more normal shots (some of which I will be sharing here soon, I hope!).  But these give you an idea of the awesome chaos of our week, with all 34 of us sharing a house that we advertise as "sleeps 13" on VRBO!  Like the photos illustrate, our time together passed in a blur, but it was just wonderful.

How it was going this past Sunday (back home in VA):

We're so happy that Papa and Grammy's basement playroom is open for business once again.  Things were hopping down there on Sunday afternoon, as you can see.  And we're also happy that sometimes, we can give our tired kids a chance to catch a cat-nap while we enjoy spending time with their energetic little ones!

Until next time (which will be much sooner than three months from now--at least that's the plan)...