Dear readers of my words,
I didn’t know I needed it. Did you know I needed it? That I needed to hear from YOU? You must have known. I sometimes find myself gulping nostalgic memories of when things felt gentler on the internet. And I also appreciate the challenge to hold steady and true in the midst of so much noise. You gave me and this space a wholesome boost and I am so appreciative. So, THANK YOU. For reaching out and telling me how you are. I wanted to know, and I read your words in solidarity.
With love,
Nici
:: :: ::
Mama! Come here!
I’m making coffee. She hollers from her bed, under her polka dot comforter, quilt made by Gram. I step over bright, decomposing piles of leggings and leotards. She says
Do you know what I love most in the morning? I like it when I wake up and you are already in the kitchen with the radio on and making breakfast. I like that the best.
I lift her sleepy big sister from the top bunk and she wraps her legs around my waist like she has since her little ankles barely reached my hip bones. Now, she can easily cross her ankles at my tailbone, her elbows hinge over my shoulders, her arms drape halfway down my back. She is heavy. I think I will miss this more than anything as my kids grow. The day I can’t carry them.
Mama? I feel like I will cry. But I don’t think I am going to. I feel sad. I don’t know why. I just do. It’s uncomfortable.
I know that feeling my love. We don’t always know why we feel like we do. We just feel it. And try to help ourselves feel better.
Squishy grapple pours from plum clouds. Ruby says the mountains look like they are sleeping. She says they are tired and just leaned over to take a nap.
We spend spring break at home. Sure, we’d love to go somewhere warm. It seems like most everyone we know is somewhere warm. Maui, Mexico, Moab. All their friends are talking about it so it becomes a thing. We explain it to the kids 12 times and they still ask why we can’t just stop working and write a check for the plane tickets?! I might be overly Pollyanna-esque but my kids are used to it by now. I tell them we must imagine our best week here at home. We all must focus on gratitude and the big adventures that await – if we choose to see them.
There are groans and no fair!. Later that night, Margot disappears into her bedroom to write, as she does. And emerges with a piece of paper, a smile and these words
Mom. I decided we will have a wonderful week. Here you go. Look.
Spring Vacation Ideas!!!
(1) cabin!
We make the short drive to our friend’s cabin. It takes hours and hours to get out the door, on the road. It is our first trip of the year that requires camping stuff, so I go through all our bins and remember and restock what we need. Just us girls. It is hard work to hike into the cabin with all our gear and food and generator and 27 stuffies. I am impressed with my kids. They hike in and out four times carrying big loads with me. Mabel runs and bounces down the trail that was so familiar to Alice. It feels wonderful and painful at the same instant. Andy joins us the next day. We hike, make food, make fire, stay one more night.
(2) Little!
We finish The Long Winter. In addition to the death of Jack and the excitement over candy at Christmas, this episode of the Ingalls’s lives has a great impact on my kids. No warmth, no food, no play. Just gutsy survival and love and hope. When the wheat is low and they run out of firewood, things seem grim. Margot is pensive and then softens with a realization: Laura definitely lives because she wrote these books!!! And there is no way she could live alone as a little kid so I bet her family survives too!
(3) eggs! pante!
(4-6) Quinn’s! picnic! nail polish!
These things don’t happen. Instead I get some work done while the kids watch How to Train Your Dragon on my studio floor. Instead we clean their room and take walks up the hill. Quinn’s is a local hot springs. Here’s a snap from our last visit – the Old Perma Store, a stop we love along the way.
(7) sewing!
We do several small projects but the favorite for all three of us is Margot’s hoodie. She turns her drawings into clothes.
(8) jump rope!
All day, every day.
(9) friaend dinner!
We do breakfast instead.
(10) new chicks!
Doesn’t happen but will tomorrow.
(11) ski!
This last month we gardened in the mornings until the sun warmed the south facing mountain slopes and skied in the afternoons. We kept thinking it would snow again. We skied those faces until the last bits of snow gave into the spring earth. Our last few runs are sunny and slushy and required us to take our skis off to hike down over patches of mud, tiny creeks racing to the valley floor. Margot snowboards for the first time.
They say our snow pack is 80-90% of what it was but that it is only above 7000 feet. They say we are the lucky ones with snow compared to our neighboring states. They say our winters will be a full month shorter and our summers a full month longer in 50 years. My daughters will be 55 and 57 and I wonder how the forests will stand? I wonder where bears will wander and what our favorite swimming hole will look like?
Read this piece by my friend Rachel Turiel.
(11a) In an effort to save cash money, we tried to avoid the post-ski beer/shirley temple stop and instead have those things at home. Also I try really hard to be groovy with occasional bits of food dye and corn syrup but it doesn’t come naturally to me. I have been told that my shirley temples are way better than any Shirley Temple anywhere ever. Ahem.
My secret? Soda water + sweetened pomegranate cranberry juice + lime. Boom. Healthish Shirley. To sweeten the juice, pour the entire jar into a pot with 1 cup sugar. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and stir until sugar dissolves. To make: 2/3 soda water, 1/3 juice, lime with a cherry on top.
(12) goodwill shopping!
The kids want to spend their money on new wallets at goodwill. We spend 45 minutes right here, choosing and counting money.
Ruby makes coffee. Two mud splashes on her face from the bike ride. Dirty dishes in the sink from dinner, from breakfast. That leaky faucet is like fingernails on a chalkboard. It needs to replaced after the broken deck boards are replaced, before the trim around doors. The kids argue first about the orange bouncy ball and then about the white chair, the purple pony, the pencil sharpener.
I start in on the dishes. I’m tired and I feel a bit lost, like these neverending dishes are a metaphor for the neverending pile of things I want to accomplish. I scrub melted cheese from the knife that cut the quesadilla. I push hard on the cloth, not realizing the knife has shifted in my grip. I slice the tip of my finger right off. Just the very tip. It doesn’t hurt so bad but the mental replaying of doing what I did sends shivers to my brain. It bleeds and bleeds.
At the end of the day on Easter Margot tells me that her favorite part of the day is that I am her mom. She says it’s hard to explain but she just feels it. She then pushes her face to my chest and infuses my body with her words. It’s one of the top compliments I’ve ever been graced with and I hold my breath to remember the way it is said, the place it is said. That is my favorite part of the day too.
31 Comments
Ah, your life, your home, your family. It’s always such a joy and privilege when you give us a peek into your world. You and Andy are raising some pretty special people.
Best blog. Best blog!! All the feelings. Every time. So good.
I love, love, love your words, every time. Motherhood – you’re killing it. Thanks for the reminders that the everyday is magic.
Yes. This comment says it all Nic!
I read quite a few blogs and they are lovely and informative and all good things. Your words fill me in a totally unique way. Simplicity. Love. Family. Being. Those are my daily goals and your words help, like a compass.
I am so glad you are including your girls’ writing and words here. (I cherish the ones I saved from my soon to be 31 year old daughter, but wish I had saved more.)
Great post. Inspiring words.
Thank you!
This sounds like an amazing spring break to me. Your girls are so lucky!
Oh, did someone in an earlier comment say best blog? I more than agree – I’m just looking for a superlative that is better than best. Thank you young lady for sharing your wonderful lifestyle and family with us!
MY favorite part of this day is reading this post!
I love you Burb!
Mom
This absolutely made me cry. You’re right, we just sometimes don’t know why we feel the way we feel. This was lovely.
I grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down to read all of this. I started making a list of little things I wanted to comment on, but it became too long. I love how you shared this week with us. Here are a few of my favorites:
~ The first image of Ruby with the side-ponytail? Love.
~ The list? You know I love a list. Perfection. And I love how you tried to do it all and just owned what you couldn’t. Isn’t that how life is? (and I loved all of the exclamation marks!!!!)
~ You’re recording their growth and change in such an authentic way. I get a bit melancholy that I can no longer carry my boy, but reading your words helped to bring back my own memories of scooping him out of bed in the morning and carrying him back to our bed for snuggles, giggles and talk about the day ahead of us. I love how you do this with your writing. Nostalgia-inducing and relatable (like you!).
~ 45 minutes at the Goodwill is always time well spent.
I’m still spring cleaning and going to the dump today. So it’s all fun and games over here.
xo
I think all that sounds so much more beautiful than a big expensive vacation. You guys are so lovely. Sorry about your finger though I bet that hurt loads xxx
Wow. I love your outlook on life.
I wish I could be 1/10 of how you are.
Best wishes from Switzerland!
Isabelle
You are an inspiration. I love your blog. So wonderful and authentic.
That picture of Ruby with the side ponytail is pretty awesome.
I’m a new mom and you are making it easier for me. :]
everything in this post is perfection but the sweatshirt is just the best (beautiful unicorn)!!!
LOVE LOVE LOVE reading your writing. It’s so comforting and dreamy.
We are on the middle of On The Shores of Silver Lake right now. It is definitely not as light as the earlier books. My older two have also read the book Who was Laura Ingalls Wilder and it was a bit of a spoiler alert for the rest of the books. But that has not deterred us 🙂
You are a wonderful mom. Almost every post you write brings tears to my eyes and this was no exception. Lovely to have you back…
This post made me feel so much better , I had been struggling with the never ending housework along with “to do ” lists in my head – you made me remember it’s ok not to get it all done – being in the moment so much more important . We had a mini autumn break at home this week – I needed it more than a trip away and feel refreshed for it 🙂
Nici, this is one of my favorite posts by you. I have never been a big follower of blogs, but of the few that I started reading years back, yours is the only one I now continue to read and look forward to. Your lifestyle is very different from mine in some aspects (which make your posts so interesting to me!) but your mama’s heart is the same and it’s in that familiarity that I feel connected to you. Thank you for staying honest in your writing, it’s what has kept me coming back.
In her latest piece, “Spring Vacations Ideas !!! {sic}” (Published by Holt-CLine/Wordpress, Missoula MT 2015) Holt-Cline shines in a dramatic reconstruction of the spring break she shared with her young family, giving her audience a hardy taste of the charm, engagement and vividly candid photography that her we have grown to expect from this work- all served on the rocks of the realities of a working family, with just a twist of nostalgia.
“I might be overly Pollyanna-esque but my kids are used to it by now,” write Holt-Cline, and if this is true, then we as her audience are cheering from the sideline, hoping to gather a few pearls of positivity for ourselves. True to form, Holt-Cline does not disappoint- one walks away with the recipe for a reduced-guilt Shirley Temple, a brimming enthusiasm for list making in its highest form (my list has less nail polish and more iced coffee, less jump rope and more mountain bike, but just as much ‘cabin!’) and the desire to not just observe, but cherish, the small dashes of beauty and escape present in our own daily, stay-at-home-on-a-vacation life.
“Vacation” has left us all with one over-reaching question that the author has embedded so intricately into the word and photos, you wonder if even she possesses the answer: how are those two little girls growing up so fast? Wasn’t Margot just a toddler in a striped onesie on Christmas day? Wasn’t Ruby just a blue eyed cherub watching her mother roll out oat bars*? ”
*(Recipe available in the archives.)
-Melina Coogan, April 12th, 2015, Asheville, North Carolina
Oh Nici… this “…Margot tells me that her favorite part of the day is that I am her mom. She says it’s hard to explain but she just feels it.” … happy tears. That’s what it’s all for… the hard stuff, the dishes, the laundry… balanced by the little bits of pure light & connection. Love your words so very much!
xo
Kate
Nici- I am a lover of blogs, but it’s yours that speaks to my heart. I once sent you an email about making a working mom/life decision and you sent me the loveliest, most heartfelt response. I live in the mountains of Colorado, have three girls (my youngest is a Ruby) and so appreciate the realness that you put out there. I am inspired, by you, to have a garden and chickens and I would love to be your friend in “real life”. Thank you for sharing your perspective.
Settling into one of your posts is like settling into a warm blanket and a hot cup of tea after one of those kind of days. Then I finish reading and return to my world and realize that I notice it all that much more. The way my daughter wraps her legs around my waist as I carry her from my bed, back to hers, even when she seems dead asleep. How much I still miss our dog, how all of the memories of her came rushing back when we dog-sat a couple of weekends ago – she was a total nut, but we loved her so. All this to say – Thank you! I so enjoy your writing.
I always feel so blessed when you open your heart and world and let us take a peek inside. the girls have grown so much from standing between your legs to ski. spring break used to be about staying home with family – I thought your list was perfect. things have sure changed
Just love your words, your spirit and your world…and obviously your kids do too. Such love! Thanks for sharing.
wow, I came to you through Kelle’s post about you today. She amazes me & so do you. So happy to have found this little slice of heaven on the net. You embody everything a mom or parent or family is supposed to be & do. Looking forward to reading backward & looking forward to future posts from you. Can only imagine you & Kelle together. I loved her bold/find print comparison. I too am fine print. Can’t wait for your next post!
I sliced the tip off my thumb a year ago in the summer! There was no interval of time between the cut (chopping lettuce) and when I found myself gripping the thumb tightly with the opposite hand so not a drop of blood came out. Reflexes are amazing things. Getting a bandaid out was a challenge. 😉 It also bled for HOURS, even above heart level. And the scab came off and the bleeding began anew pretty much every day, especially when I was camping in arid Central Oregon, until I went to the doctor for something else and she gave me wicked cool wound care supplies. End result: altered sensation over a beautifully closed thumb tip.
I have to say, STOP HERE IF YOU’RE SQUEAMISH, being able to see the fat pad poking out was really, really cool.
I’ve recently discovered your blog. Beautiful.Thank you for this post.
You’re an amazing writer which is why this is my favorite blog. Can Margot design a hoodie for me 🙂 hers is so cute. Thank you for sharing!
I love your blog….really love it. My daughters are 5 and 8, and we are likely to be kindred spirits. So much of what you write rings true for me.
-I try to soak up the moment each time I hold my girls these days, because I know the days of picking them up and carrying them in my arms are numbered. I close my eyes and take deep breaths, almost like I am trying to breathe the memory into my brain.
-I so understand the list of house project priorities. This before that, and that before the other. Luckily my husband is handy as well. Oh and his name is Andy too. We call him Handy Andy. Do you ever do that?
-And I loved how your daughter put Goodwill Shopping on the fun list. Thrift store shopping is the best, and my girls proudly tell people what thrift store their belongings came from….as if it were to have come from Saks or something. Love that.
Your blog is lovely. Your family is lovely. Thank you for sharing with all of us!