everyone has a story to tell

....about yesterday's earthquake that rattled the Mid-Atlantic. We East Coasters aren't used to such phenomenon. I was on a conference call with my Babycenter pals when the whole house started to shudder. And of course, earthquake wasn't even in my frame of reference, so I immediately thought, "This is it. This old farmhouse has finally had enough. It's falling down.This must be what it's like."

I was relieved all the girls were outside "babysitting" Birdy while I was on the phone. I ran outside, staring up at the house expecting to witness the walls and roof give way. And I thought, "Shoot. I'm still in my grey pajama pants {in my defense I'd been cleaning all morning}. My hair is a mess. I have no make-up on. And the baby is wearing soaking wet clothes from playing in the water tub."

Of course, I was slightly mistaken. My house wasn't falling down, we were just experiencing the tremors of the quake in Virginia. (Which also happens to be almost EXACTLY where we were on vacation. We even stopped for ice cream cones in Mineral.) 

And now that the earthquakes have subsided, we've moved on to the next natural disaster, waiting to see what this hurricane stirs up over the weekend....

But alas, let's discuss something much cuter....meet, Girl.

She was the special project that was included in our farm-sitting duties at my uncle's farm. Rescued when she was just a day or two old, she's been bottle-fed and cared for by their family ever since.

We saw her on her first days home, when she was refusing to take a bottle. Her legs like little twigs. I never imagined them to be so fragile. But now, having mastered the bottle, she's thriving. 

Girl hangs out in the fields around my uncle's farm and comes in around the same time each day when she's feeling hungry. Some days she'd be eagerly waiting on the front porch, another day I only found her by the tiny brown ears sticking up out of the bean field. 

These are the moments when I want to take my childrens' little faces in my hands, look them square in the eyes and say, "Do you realize how special this is? Do you realize how blessed you are, to be doing this?"

If there's one thing I want to instill in them, it's gratitude for these moments they experience almost every day, for the views out our kitchen window, for the open spaces to explore and run. For the closeness they have to the natural world around them.