Picking My Battles...And Just Barely Winning

Ethan refuses to wear clothes. He prefers to wear pajamas or just his underwear. Now, for a four year old, this isn't a huge problem, but when he wears one pair of pj's to bed, and then a new pair the next day, and so on and so on, he runs out of clean pajamas pretty quickly. So this morning, when he kicked and screamed when I tried to force him to get dressed, I laid his clothes out on the dressing room floor and told him he didn't get breakfast until he was dressed. You can see from the underwear-clad picture that it's not exactly phasing him. We'll see how hungry he gets in a couple of hours.

Oh, and he's standing on the chair behind me and saying, "Are you putting H's in it, Mom?"


Update 8:30 - Ethan said, "Mom, I'm in my chair. I'm ready for beckfust." I told him that he needed to put his clothes on to have breakfast, he said okay, then disappeared upstairs for five minutes and came back down again in his underwear. He is now (8:45) sitting at the table, stirring imaginary things in his bowl and saying, "Beckfust please!" and "Cerul please!"


Update 10:49 - I guess we're having an early lunch. Ethan is sitting at the table saying, "Can I have my hanwich now?" Then when I tell him he can have his sandwich as soon as he puts his clothes on, he yells "I hate cothes!" Can you see his pants and a shoe on the table? It wouldn't be hard for him to put them on...


Update 10:58 - Victory! And he's enjoying his grilled cheese right now.

Update 11:10 - He's now on his second grilled cheese sandwich. I wonder why he's so hungry?

Tombstone Tales A Success

This is me, being all ghostlike, because Megan tried really hard, but the pictures kept turning out blurry. And the next picture is Megan and the other girl playing Elaine Compton. They became fabulous friends over the weekend.

Oh, Megan and I had a wonderful weekend! Thursday's rehearsal wasn't nearly as terrifying as I thought it would be. We actually only went through the first and last of our parts so the Grimm Reapers would know what to listen for. KEPR news came out and taped a segment for Friday morning's news. Megan was interviewed for it, and she was so cute!

Friday morning was cold and extremely rainy. We had school groups come through, and they all crowded under canopies with us dead people. It was fun to see that the elementary kids came through with coats and hats, and the middle schoolers were mostly wearing sweaters.

In the second or third group through, there was a woman who gasped and took a step back when I said that my dad was hung. Surprising her surprised me so much that I chuckled, and I had to force back a smile when I was talking about my dad dying.

Friday even's session was dry, but cold. I had on two layers of long sleeved shirts, and tights and jeans on under my costume. I was so glad that we had all morning to practice on kids before doing "the real thing." It was so fun!

Saturday afternoon was great, because my parents and Grandma Yeats, and Brian's mom and grandma came through. It was a little hard to get into character in the daylight after doing it in the dark the night before, but it was still fun.

Saturday evening was the best, because we all knew what to expect, and I also had on an extra sweater and long johns. The baseball player and the military guy and I got together to talk while we weren't performing, and that made it fun. The military guy actually works as a history teacher at Pasco High, and it was fun to talk with him about which teachers still work there and what all the programs are doing.

After cleaning up on Saturday evening, we all got together at a local restaurant for dinner. Megan and I are on the list to be a part of "Night at the Museum" that CREHST puts on in February, and we're excited for that. It was so fun to have a vacation from the kids (Thanks Mom, Diane, and Christina for watching them!) and to do something completely different and new for a few days.

Jenny Koppin

Tonight is the dress rehearsal for Tombstone Tales, and then we do it for real, bright and early tomorrow morning. I think I'm ready. I've only been able to run through my part completely through from memory just a few times. I tried to go through it again last night while I was folding laundry while the kids were going to bed, but I kept getting interrupted. Alyssa needed more water and I told her to wait, Ethan started coughing so hard that he threw up, then Marcus saw all the attention that Ethan was getting, so he started coughing to try to get me over to him, which caused him to start coughing for real until he threw up, too. Once the boys were asleep, I still had some laundry to fold, so Alyssa promised to be quiet long enough for me to get through my part just once.

Since I've never been able to successfully practice while the kids are not in bed, I'm going to type out my part to you. So here we go. Ahem.

My name is Jenny Crawford Koppin. I was born back east in 1858, but when I was small my family and I headed South. My father was a newspaperman and printer. Naturally, he kept up with current events, and the Civil War captured his constant attention. It didn't take long for Father, a sympathetic man by nature, to feel that the South was being misrepresented in print. When he expressed his views, he was branded a Southern Sympathizer and became an outcast in his own community. Southern Sympathizers were never welcome and rarely safe in Northern towns. Well, ever the determined optimist, and despite protests made by mother, Father decided to pack up the buckboard with his printing tools and supplies and see if he could offer his services to organize publicity and make more appropriate posters for the Confederacy.

Father knew that to make his plan succeed he would need to go straight to the top. But Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis were hard men to request an audience with. Security measures had been tightened considerably, so we drove the team as far south as we could, avoiding any Union posts, and finally made it to the Confederate line. The guards of the outpost weren't exactly the cream of Southern aristocrats, and father, despite a very thorough explanation, was apprehended by them when they didn't agree with his self imposed mission. And he was lynched. Right then and there, without a trial or anything.

Mother and us were put on a horse and told to ride outta there as fast as we could or we would meet the same fate. Mother was beside herself, as you can imagine, with where to go, so she did the only thing she could think of, and that was to go to our nearest relatives, which were in Minnesota. We ended up staying there for quite a while. I completed my education at Winona college and taugh school in Minneapolis. My brothers grew into fine young men with a pioneering spirit. They had been wooed by the cheap land being so attractively advertised in the west, and they convince mother and me to go with them.

We traveled to Ellensburg in the new state of Washington in 1890 by the Northern Pacific Railroad. What an experience it was to see new lands as they flew by the window. Ellensbrug had suffered a great fire the year before, but it was a progressive town, and had already made impressive strides in rebuilding. A new college opened the next year, the State Normal School, which I enrolled in for a certificate to teach in Washington. School was different then. Tuition and books were free, and I got room and board for four dollars a week.

My brother, Johnny, had been out prospecting a suitable homestead in 1892, and he found us a nice piece just North of here at Waluke Slope. We built a cabin out there, but planned on spending most of our time in Ellensburg, visiting the farm only as necessary. It was on one such visit that a young German man knocked on our door and asked if he could join us for a meal. This was not an unusual occurrence, as people were often stopping by on their way through. Frederich Koppin was his name. I took an instant liking to him, and as his passes through our area became more frequent, so did his visits to our farm. He would often spend several days with us at Waluke. He was a kind man, and we always looked forward to his visits.

Well, in late November 1892, I became Mrs. Jennie Koppin. Frederich decided that rather than move us to his homestead in Idaho, that we would remain here, among family. I was forever greatful to him for that decision. How I woul have missed my mother and brothers had we moved. We spent the first few years of our marriage in Ellensburg, but after Mother died, we came to live permanently in Waluke. The Ellensburg house was much more comfortable, I can asssure you, but after visiting Waluke one time and finding the back door broken open with our belongings strewn about and several items missing, we felt the move was necessary.

It seems strange to think now, but when Frederich and I first met, he couldn't read or write. Even his English was broken. I guess it was providence that brought me, a teacher, to him. We spent long hours together pronouncing grammer, and practicing spelling and reading. Simple book at first, but as Frederich progressed, so did the books. He was a good student and a smart man.

Frederich became quite the farmer out here. He was of the opinion that anything would grow if we could only get water to it. Of course, irrigation was always a problem. Even if we dug the ditches deep, and long enough, the soil was so sandy that the water would leech out of it before it could reach the crops. But once we started using sprocket wheels to move the water from the river, we could reliably grow more. Lets see, we planted fruit trees, butternut trees, all sorts of vegetables, peanuts, berries, sugar cane, maize, alfalfa, and all sorts of flowers. Frederich was proud of all these, but his pride and joy was the Black Lily of the Nile, and extraordinary flower with a very unpleasant odor.

While Frederich enjoyed experimenting in the garden, I taught school part time at White Bluffs. You see, at that time, once a woman was married, she was not allowed to work more than part time outside the home. I made up for it by tutoring in art. I was actually the first teacher at the new White Bluffs school, which was made entirely out of driftwood logs retrieved from the Columbia. At first White Bluffs was part of the Yakima School District, and the superintendent and I exchanged words on more than one occasion about his views on education. I had to write several searing and poignant letters to him until, thankfully, we became part of the Franklin District.

Waluke was a pretty desolate place. Our nearest neighbor was nigh four miles downriver. We kept a raft on our banks, and if the flow was right, I could reach them in about 40 minutes. Then, if I needed to, I could borrow a horse for the return trip.

Being that our neighbors were so far away, any chance to get together was a welcome thing. Celebrations were a big part of pioneering life. One Christmas we held a party and invited everyone in the area. We had over 20 guests that year, and they all stayed late - 3 or 4 in the morning, as I recall. No one wanted to make the long trek home in the snow to a cold, dark house. Babies were put ot sleep on the coats and wraps on our bed, and the adults became more exuberant as the night went on. George Borden place the accordian, and we began to dance. Now, there's always one stickler in the bunch. Mrs Brice was the minister's wife, and she made such a fuss at our outrageous behavior. She was incensed that we dare allow dancing in our home, and demanded to be taken home immediately. Mrs. Craig sided with her while she was here, but once Mrs. Brice was gone, Mrs. Craig readily enjoyed in the festivities.

That was the year the Columbia forze over solid enough to drive a team of horses over. The river was wide and swift and rarely froze over for more than a week at a time. I remember how eery it was to cross on foot. You could hear the water rushing under your feet. Winter was always long and cold. I would cook nearly all day to keep the house warm.

Our house was the first post office in the area. All the mail came through us, though it only came every three months or so, as we weren't on a direct line.

By 1901 there were so many new settlers in the area that we felt it was high time to form an organization of the first comers to bind us together and furnish some entertainment. It was under that pretense that the Old Settlers Union was formed. I was the first president of the club, and though the idea was not mine to begin with, I enjoyed the post. It gave us another reason to come together with neighbors and enjoy a little song and dance.


And then the Grim Reaper, who will be leading the groups around will say that I died in 1928 in an automobile accident. And then I'll do again for the next group, all day long on Friday and Saturday. I'm honestly more nervous for the rehearsal tonight than for the actual performance tomorrow. We start out tomorrow with a bunch of school groups, so I'm not worried about that at all. But tonight I'll have to do it in front of my fellow portrayers, some of which are professional actors. I know that in the end it'll all be okay, and overall I'm excited for the whole thing. If I get pictures tonight, I'll add them to the post.

A Little Bit Taller

A couple of years ago Brian got a blank wooden board for Father's Day. It took a couple of years for me to finish it, and last spring we finally had our official growth chart board. (You can see the yellow on the bird where Marcus helped when I was putting it together.) We measured the kids again on Sunday and found that Alyssa and Ethan had both grown about an inch and Marcus about two inches since last April.



We also discovered that at 1 year, eleven months, Marcus is about an inch taller than Ethan was at 2 years, 2 months. Their current height difference is about 4 inches, but people are always asking if they're twins. I guess it's only going to get worse as they grow!

Blog-crastination

Hey, did you see that? Did you see how I combined the words "blog" and "procrastination" for my post title? Yeah...I missed it, too.

So it seems like all my posts for the past while, and probably the next little while, are going to be "this is all the random things we've been up to" posts, because I keep procrastinating the little things I want to blog about. Between homeschooling, cooking, laundry, dishes, cleaning, grocery shopping...and all those fun things mothers do, blogging has definitely gotten pushed down on the priority list. I've been pretty busy with all those things I mentioned - that, and I've been spending all of my free time reading Sherwood Smith's Inda and The Fox, and they're pretty huge books.

So this is what we've been up to.


Alyssa played Princess Pansy in her Theater for Young Readers class's rendition of "The Frog Prince." She was so excited, and she read beautifully.


Brian turned 33 last Thursday. We took him out to dinner at Red Robin (Red Robins, as my kids call it). The kids and I gave him ties and an oilskin G. Loomis fishing hat, and we made Grandma Orton's Chocolate Dessert instead of a cake. After dinner, we stopped at his office, and he snuck out the leftover two pieces of red velvet cake they had at lunch so I could try it. He had to sneak it, because they were also celebrating his dad's and someone else's birthdays, so it wasn't just his cake. It was delicious.


My niece, Megan, and I met with Stacia from the Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) Museum at the Resthaven Pioneer Cemetery to go over the logistics of our parts for Tombstone Tales. Tombstone Tales is a living history tour where groups of people will be lead around the cemetery, where they will come across people like Megan and me, who will be dressed up to tell about the life of someone who lived in our area a long time ago. I am portraying Jennie Crawford Koppin, and Megan is Elaine Grace Compton, who died when she was twelve. I'm super excited about this event. I found out about Tombstone Tales when I was checking the museum hours over the summer, so I called to see how to be a part of it, and they were thrilled to have volunteers. If you're in the area, and you're interested, give CREHST a visit to get your tickets. It's going to be on the 23rd and 24th of October, and it's going to be really, really cool.