Girl Raised in the South

I'm Moving Again!

2010-05-16T08:43:00.004-04:00

Just kidding. Sort of. I've told Don if I hated living in our new home I'd still stay a good ten years - moving is highly overrated and we're not going anywhere. But my blog is.

Just about every single aspect of our lives has changed in the past few months, so it seemed a good time to change up my blog too. So where? Here . What am I moving to? A new way of blogging - absolutely the real me, posts more often but shorter, generally. (Sometimes a girl just has to get something off her chest.) I won't have a site meter, won't even always allow comments if I can figure that out, won't have any sidebar links to anybody. I'll still be reading blogs of family and friends but I'm already learning time, with a retired husband at home, works very differently. On a beautiful level we have no schedules. On a maddening level we have no schedules. Time gets eaten up with sitting too long sharing morning coffee or fixing the septic system or 100 other things.

So I hope you'll feel inclined to move with me, but with no obligation to do more than sit a spell. Come listen to what life on a lake in central Texas is like - with a newly retired husband, kids around and kids sorely missed, new friends, no friends, snakes and such, bluebirds over breakfast, mostly conservatives and a measure of rednecks and racists, cranes fishing off our dock and bits of toilet paper flying up in the yard, gardens and cooking and sewing and knitting and reading books (when I find the time) - life in Texas is working out to be an adventure a minute most of the time!

Transformations

2010-05-10T21:01:00.023-04:00

This is what we started with - it looked a bit sad and neglected.

Half driveway, half crushed rock and grass that had grown in.

And there were too many trees - you couldn't even see the house.

We've pulled out 26 so far, with our eye on about 20 more that need to go.

We hired Lester to come tear everything up, and pour a LOT of concrete.

Lester is good at tearing things up. He's also good at figuring out drainage so the next whopper Texas rain storm we get, the rain should run across the driveway and onto the yard, rather than into the garage...

We didn't want the driveway to look like a Walmart parking lot, so we included two big beds, with curbing to make water go the right way.

Very exciting to see the forms going in, and be able to see what it was going to look like when Lester was done.

There's the 'tree bed' in its beginning stages - high hopes it'll turn out pretty!

Old concrete - meet new concrete! Join hands and be friends, please!

Thank you, previous owners, for leaving us crape myrtles, irises, daffodils...

Plain, but we've got plans to make it charming.

There - much better. A nice little spot to sit in the evening and wave at neighbors driving by. Or read a book. Or drink morning coffee and watch the sun come up.

Mixing up concrete for a lamp post base.

A bit of wiring. It's D.A.R.K. out here so a lamp post close to the house will be wonderful!

Last touches to line everything up just right.

Pretty, pretty. Just needs some ground cover and it's good to go.

Next - biggest bed in the front yard.

Before: WAY overgrown, falling down, and a perfect hiding spot for snakes.

After weeding: much better, but the retaining wall fell apart.

Another project we weren't planning on. But thank you,

previous owners, for that bed of cannas!

Back to the home supply store for 3,500 lbs of blocks.

"Hello Dan. Would you like to come be our slave, and learn how to build a retaining wall?"

He looked like he was having so much fun...

I decided I needed to learn to drive it too!

After: much better, and manageable. And not scary.

Hard working men - thank you Dan for being our slave for the day. xoxo

Soooo much better! Makes me happy to come out and see it in the morning!

A bird feeder next to that crape myrtle, then a bit of mulch and we'll call it good - one BIG project knocked out.

And we beat the Texas heat too!

I'm heading indoors for a bit of stripping wallpaper and painting kitchen walls (and pie safes). I'm thinking Don is going to hide out in his shop and try to avoid me for awhile.

And I can't say that I blame him. He's lost enough weight, working so hard, that he's going to need a pair of suspenders soon. He's told me, so far, retirement is harder work than work was!

A Cat for Mother's Day!

2010-05-08T08:54:00.006-04:00

I've had a cat since I was 15 years old. We've been 'catless' for about a year now, since I gave my cat, Miah, to my grandson, Landon. (Man, are all those commas right? Looks like a lot.) Anyway, now that we're at the lake I've been hinting to Don that I might need another cat. I've prayed that God would just send one my way and have been leaving a dish of food out on the deck for awhile, just in case God needs help. It's been eaten a few times, although I'm not sure if my visitor was a cat or armadillo. Or raccoon. Or skunk.

So we went shopping in Waxahachie yesterday (isn't that a fun name for a town?), and Don bit the bullet and bought me a cat for Mother's Day. I was so hoping not to get another long-haired, and I am a bit partial to a calico. But this one looked like it could use a good home.

A full grown cat. A very calm cat. I tend to think kittens are a bit over-rated, dealing with all that skittering around, clawing up the furniture, and cat-box lessons.

Who would have dreamed we'd find the perfect cat at an antique store?! $15 and she never needs shots or food or vet visits.

I haven't picked out a name for her yet, but I did buy a quart of brick red paint for this. It fit in the back of the Durango with a whole 2" to spare.

Still thinking about a real, alive, purring cat. Still praying - maybe God will send me one. In the meantime, the pie safe will be a great start to warming up the kitchen. Anthropologie has some monogrammed knobs - I think it's going to look great when I'm done.

Happy Mother's Day everybody!

Pardon the Gore

2010-05-07T00:02:00.006-04:00

But we had our first snake event at the lake today. Don was busy working on putting in some wiring for a light pole in front of our house; he left the electrical junction box for a bit, to assemble the light, and while he was gone I wandered by. There, curled up and around and all over the electrical box, was a S.N.A.K.E.

In retrospect, now that our hearts aren't beating quite so fast, we are sad to think that this was probably a harmless rat snake of some sort. I, being the thorough type, have a book called very appropriately, "Texas Snakes". But when the snake is curled around the electrical box you don't run in the house and get the book. You grab the camera and take a step or 10 back, while you watch your husband whack it with a shovel.

So - we ordered a poster of poisonous snakes that we'll put up somewhere in the garage for future reference. While I don't really want to adopt any snake for a pet, we also don't want to kill a harmless snake. Instead, brave Don will lift him with the pitchfork and carry him across the yard, setting him loose in the vacant lot next door. Even knowing he might well come back for another visit. In the meantime, is anyone out there up on their snakes? Anyone who doesn't have a queasy stomach?

I know it's not the same snake that showed up in our daughter, Sarah's barn yesterday. Hers definitely looks different. This one was two to three feet long, sort of skinny, tried to get away and only tried to strike when it was clear it was in danger.

My guesses are: Great Plains rat snake, Texas rat snake or Prairie King snake. Can anyone tell me definitely?

Just Another Day at the Lake

2010-05-03T20:40:00.004-04:00

Our day started with this - spied resting in our backyard at 7:30 am. The neighbors told us a mother deer raises her fawn in our back yard every single year. The fawn was SO little. Precious way to start the day. Precious enough that I called out to Don, "Get up, right now, you have to see this!" Luckily he thought it was worth jumping out of bed for.
I hope I didn't scare her off and she'll be back for more early morning visits.

Sarah helped me clean out a front flower bed last week, and we discovered a bush of "Knockout roses' hiding under the crape myrtles. I cook enough grits and black eyed peas and cornbread that the sign fits my kitchen. And putting anything red in this house just makes me happy. It was all pale blues and peach, so red is a step in the right direction in my book.
Finally an afternoon storm swept up, coming across the lake and sending us scurrying indoors. Impressive to see waves flying up over the seawalls all around us. The martin house Don put together for me will just have to wait til tomorrow, after it dies down a bit. It only took three trips to the hardware store to find the right fittings and poles and such. The old one was in such bad shape it literally fell into pieces when Don tried to lower it.

What you don't see is the four shrubs I dug out of the back and transplanted to the front, newly dug bed, and how nasty dirty I got doing so. Again. We're finding we're going to go through some laundry soap living out here! Working hard makes for very sweet dreams, and healthy appetites :-)

I also managed to plant three pots of herbs - cilantro, parsley and sweet basil. Still looking for chives, rosemary and one other I can't remember, but I plopped them all into clay pots buried in the flower bed. That's good enough for this year.

Just another typical day at the lake - the adventure seems to keep rolling on and we're loving it!

Groovy Grammy

2010-05-01T08:00:00.001-04:00

Sarah and Chris got a chance to get away, so I volunteered to come stay with the grandkids. We're into day two, and I'm beginning to find my grammy groove. I didn't read Sarah's notes every hour on the hour today. Maybe I should have because the kids went down for naps two hours late, and never did get an afternoon snack. News flash - if you want kids to eat really well, don't feed them as often. They'll scarf down whatever you put on the table if they're hungry enough!

Yesterday we headed out on a field trip to Target and when Grayson told me 'Target is boring' I put my fingers in my ears and pushed ahead. I haven't been in a Target for over a month so I was pretty thrilled. We did make a stop at Sonic for milkshakes to keep it fair.

Today we started off with pancakes and Caiden told me he was so happy because he 'hates oatmeal with a capital H'. Funny that I'd somehow forgotten that when you have three kids they all like and hate different things, so much of dinnertime is spent trading and shuffling. Gray will happily eat all Addie's clam chowder, and she'll scarf down Caiden's string cheese and Caiden will eat just about anything except cheese because he's apparently growing and / or has hollow legs just like Sarah's brother, Dan did when he was that age. I forget what dinnertime was like 20 years ago.

I've had fun pulling weeds and praying none of it is poisonous since my arms and legs are covered with poison sumac that I can't identify to save my life. So I'm also spending some time reading my Texas Gardening Guide while the kids ride scooters on the driveway. I've scrubbed the day's grime off their necks and legs and arms and remembered how sweet and tiny they look when they're naked and wet with bubbles stuck to their faces and every single one of their ribs show; we've read Wind in the Willows while I took in the sweet smell of freshly washed kids. We chased chickens (they're not easy to catch!), watered Sarah's garden and fed their dogs.

I've driven around town, making one wrong turn that resulted in pulling the GPS out of my purse so I could get us back home. All this makes me wonder what our mothers must have thought when we left the kids with them. Did they check them and then check them again right before going to bed, to be sure everyone was still breathing? Did they kiss the tops of their heads one more time, even though they were asleep and would never know? Did they feel every single year of their age? Did they wonder how they ever did it 24/7, 365 days a year?

It's D.A.R.K. here at night, and Papa hasn't arrived yet to 'help' us. I use that term loosely since we all know the 'God's honest truth'. Anyway, we've been alone. It would never occur to me to be afraid, being alone. I looked forward to it actually. For the first time in over two months I slept in the middle of the bed, went to sleep when I wanted, and got up early this morning for coffee and devotions while everyone else was still in bed (even if it was threats that kept them there.) I suspect my dear husband is enjoying some time alone too, before he joins us.

But last night, when I was making the final rounds, checking and rechecking the doors to be sure everything was locked down tight, one light was still on by the side of the house. I knew it shouldn't be. And I also knew to reach the light switch I'd have to go outside to turn it off. As I opened the door, and began to step outside, there in the bright yellow light sat four of the biggest toads I've ever seen, contentedly eating bugs. I just couldn't step out. No way. I realize toads won't hurt you, don't bite, but they jump unexpectedly and might have touched my feet. And that would have done me in. I guess there's still a kid lurking somewhere inside me too.

It's good to remember - what it's like to be a little kid, what it's like to be a mommy day in, day out.

Just Exactly Where Did Spring Go?

2010-04-29T22:02:00.002-04:00

The end of April - can you even believe it? I can't. We pulled into our new driveway on April Fool's Day, and the irony of that is not escaping us. A month ago. We've been here an entire month and it feels like the fastest ever. In our entire lives.

So May - let's have a talk. May flowers. And picnics. And bike rides around the neighborhood. And good books waiting to be read. And new knitting projects (finished the eternal afghan I started two years ago - hurray for Bev!). Next to June, May is my absolute favorite month, so there are great expectations for it.

This all has to happen in May because I've heard by June Texas gets so blasted hot I won't even consider being outside for picnics and bike rides and such. So I'm counting on May.

But here's the truth - May is actually going to be the month we have the house painted, shutters and faux windows installed, and gutters to deal with the gulley washers Texas gets. And find a way to get the partially torn up wallpaper off the kitchen walls and paint them before we have any official visitors because right now it looks unbearably ratty. And redo all the front flowerbeds that look like the perfect place for a snake or critter to make a little bed. And unpack the craft room, find a place for all the books that somehow made their way into our home - no way did we buy all those books! And we're hoping it's the month we are able to find a good used boat we can afford, and a golf cart for the neighborhood because that's apparently how everyone visits each other. Seriously nobody ever walks in our neighborhood. Ever. I wonder if it's hot here so long that they get out of the habit? Maybe I'll start a new trend and find a new walking partner?

And maybe, just maybe May can be a little of both? Of painting the house, then taking a day off for a picnic in some nearby state park? Of spending a day stripping wallpaper, then maybe some time riding our bikes to check out the neighborhood. And unpack all those boxes of books, one case for fiction, one for non-fiction, one for Bev's self-education and crafts, but maybe also grab one or two we've been waiting to read and curling up on the sunporch with it, just watching the sun go down on another beautiful May day in sun-drenched Texas.

Dear May - feel free to take it nice and slow. We're not in a hurry. Really.

One Room at a Time

2010-04-26T23:30:00.000-04:00

After 14 years of not moving, I'd forgotten how discombobulated everything is for awhile. We've still got a pile in the garage, the 'let's just not look at or talk about that stuff' pile. Since the first rule of organizing any room is to get out anything that doesn't go there, I'm okay with that. We're ending up with stray lamps, pillows, decor, books, etc. that just don't have a home in this house but as soon as I toss them out we'll need them. So the pile remains.

We do, however, have one room pretty well set.

Every past move, Don has helped us get into the house, then gone off to work, busy with whatever new job he had. This one - it's just the two of us, so we're doing it differently.

I let him choose the decor for this room, and am surprised how much I love it!

Every man needs a set of longhorns, don'tcha think? They're surprisingly easy to find here in East Texas. Bought at a little place called Harvey's in downtown Corsicana. That room above is our den, and hopefully a year from now there will be a half wall where the rails are, so little kids don't fall through and the back of all the furniture doesn't show. For now we'll just squint when we look up.

Have to have some Texas decor. Absolutely have to. The clock is his retirement gift from his company. Makes a lovely chime that would wake the dead.

Cowhide. This wall used to have a honkin' big straw wreath with pale blue and peach flowers. We like this much better. Took almost two hours and a thousand staples to hang. Twenty two feet up in the air, so I held the ladder while Don climbed up. They really use the entire cow down here in Texas, apparently.

But we like it. I'm on the lookout for an old branding iron and a bit of fencepost with barbed wire. Really. If I could find a board that said 'Longbranch Saloon' I'd be over the top happy.

Using the furniture from our very formal living room in PA. Same but different.

Those double doors off to the side go into my craft room that looks like a bomb went off. So we'll just keep them shut til further notice. Much further.

Plans next year are for carpet and dark tile but for now this works very well. And you can't beat the view. Nothing but green grass and lake.

When I feel the 'I'm going crazing from moving' syndrome welling up inside me, I just go sit here for a little while, look out the window and take deep breaths.

Was Easter Really 3 weeks ago?

2010-04-25T19:12:00.009-04:00

Oh my, we're so off schedule I didn't realize it'd been that long.

That's okay - the photos are too cute to miss posting them. We almost pulled off having all 13 of us together at one time, but not quite. We did, however, get all five grandkids together for an Easter egg hunt at Uncle Pace and Aunt Poppy's place.
Landon and Miss Addie were friends at this moment, but a few seconds later she was ready to smack the fire out of him for doing something boyish, and he was running for his life. Addie is three months older than Landon, she weighs somewhere around 25 lbs and he weighs around 45. Someday she won't even think of tearing out after him.

Our newest family member, Miss Jae Beth. She's not quite old enough for egg hunts, maybe next year. I think Dan and Janae gave her an Easter basket anyway. Look at those thighs - impressive, aren't they?

The perfect place for an egg hunt - the side pasture. Just have to watch for snakes in the stick piles. (Leslie, I hereby officially apologize for posting you with your hair looking so fabulous.)

Uncle D hoisting Landon and Grayson; they must think he's so big. Oh yeah, he IS big.

End of day - happy but dirty kids, all stuck in the tub together while Aunt Nessie supervises. The water was N.A.S.T.Y.

Perfect end to the day - Uncle Pace gave the bathers glow sticks - super cool!

So we're just not a well-oiled machine lately; next I'll post the fabulous photos from our trip to Fossil Rim the day after Easter (3 weeks tomorrow). Great close ups of giraffe tongues, etc.

Hasn't Looked Back

2010-04-23T07:30:00.000-04:00

As soon as this rolled off the truck, he grabbed those safety glasses of his and climbed right on. I would have had no idea how to even start the thing, but he fired it right up and took off. 'Tried it out' for about two hours...

He said he's having fun, and never thinks about work. Doesn't miss it O.N.E.B.I.T.
As hard as he's working, digging up trees, putting in flower beds, it's probably good we got him a new toy. I like the look of this a whole lot more than him driving off in a car every morning.

Frying up our First Lake Fish

2010-04-20T23:27:00.003-04:00

The men went fishing - a little retirement gift from me, they hired a professional guide who spent four hours with them, showing them the ins and outs of the lake.

Results: caught 140 fish in four hours.

Don and Dan, an entire morning of fishing together. It doesn't seem that long ago Don stayed busy untangling line and clearing up snags.

A nice sized hybrid - he said they were a lot of fun to catch.

Final results: kept 30 - threw the rest back in. Fried up some tonight for supper - happy men and yummy dinner!

Resolving Not to Cuss

2010-04-19T09:00:00.000-04:00

When we arrived in Texas we were greeted by a U-haul in the driveway and four people in our house. Within a day there were two more, not including us. A total of 7. One doesn't count because she's a baby and wears diapers, so she doesn't affect the plumbing one way or another. That's about 5 more than usual, and 7 more than in awhile. Plumbing works fine when nobody's flushing. Or washing dishes. Or clothes. Or showering. If we'd all been wearing diapers, like baby Jae, we wouldn't have had a problem.

We'd had a plumbing clog months ago, on step one of the move that took forever, and Mr. Plumber came out with his rotor-rooter thing and fixed us up. Gave us some tips on how to prevent problems and drove back to Dallas. When we'd only been in the house a few days this time, and the downstairs shower floor had a lovely coating of pooh that had exploded onto it (you're welcome for the lovely mental picture), we realized 'Houston, we have a problem.' I personally thought I had more problem than everyone else since cleaning the shower floor was my job. I think you have to be a mother, and have about 5,000 diapers under your belt to hold up to a job like that.

I phoned the home warranty people. The woman who took my call had a lovely voice and started out our conversation by asking, 'how are you this morning?' Everything in me wanted to say, 'well, actually pretty SH....Y' but unfortunately I'd made the stupid resolution back on January 1 not to cuss this year. That verse, 'Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths...' (Eph. 4:29) had been digging at me, and the nasty little habit I'd developed of not watching my language like I should.

I thought it but I didn't say it. I said, 'great, how are you?' I did wonder why she asked, since anyone calling the home warranty is NOT a happy camper and has a problem that is likely making them want to cuss and gnash teeth and such.

So they sent the plumber again - it only took THREE days - three days when we couldn't use our bathroom facilities, and we're out in the country, and don't know the neighbors well enough to ask to use the phone, let alone the potty. So after well-timed visits to Denny's and CVS and the grocery store, Mr. Plumber came out and rotor-rooted out the mess, I scrubbed the shower floor and burned my clothes (just kidding) and we thought we were good.

Two days later there was another lovely film on the shower floor. We got out the yellow pages, called a septic system person of random choosing, who gave us a quick lesson in how a septic system works, or doesn't. They told us to call the pooper pumper people. Within hours the pumper pulled up our driveway (don't you know the neighbors were standing inside their houses peering out of their mostly closed blinds, watching us and praying we didn't come knocking on their doors.) He proceeded to poke around our yard with a metal thing, dug up our yard, found the cleanout, and we all stood there looking down at gallons and gallons of grey horribleness. After he'd pumped (literally) 1000 gallons out, he shoved his BARE hand down our horribly nasty tank and found a plastic elbow broken off, telling us we did indeed have a problem. Mr. Pooper Pumper finished his job, my husband paid him and then he stuck out his hand toward my husband, to thank him for the business. I watched in pride and horror as my husband shook that man's hand, then the minute he drove off I suggested he either cut it off at the wrist or go into the shop and scrub it 1 or 99 times with something that burned, to be sure he'd killed the majority of the germs that were surely on him. I'm pretty sure God made Lava Soap for moments like this.

This is our lovely septic field and our friend Lester tearing out the redbud that caused all the problems. Septic systems do not love tree roots living overhead.

So we called our new friend, Lester, who we'd hired to pour some concrete. He can also tear things up and out. He came over with a big piece of equipment and ripped out what used to be a lovely redbud, planted right over our septic tank. In pulling out the tree we found two more cleanouts and another vital part had broken off and our raw sewage was seeping through the dirt under the surface, trickling into the tank, rather than flowing as it should.

The next day my dear hubby (who may be ready to go back to work rather than have all this fun retirement is offering him) proceeded to dig up what used to be a lovely 15 x 10 flowerbed. About halfway through, with sweat dripping off his nose, our son-in-law, Jeremy, who now deserves to have a statue erected in his honor, grabbed an axe and a shovel and began to dig. When they found the final, biggest of all, problem, a broken off white plastic pipe that was wobbling like it shouldn't, Jeremy pulled it out of the ground and what it was covered with was not for the faint of heart. As I stood there watching from a safe distance, (I gave birth three times - no way do I have to help with this job) Bless His Heart Jeremy laid down on that ground, pulled on my yellow plastic cleaning gloves and proceeded to muck it out and put it back together temporarily.

We've now spent almost $1000 to put our septic system back together. It's pumped, repaired, and running well. The repairmen assure us it's working well now. Still, after cleaning out that shower floor THREE times, we've come up with a system for using our facilities that we lovingly call 'The Texas Two-Step'. Do your business. Flush. Apply paper. Flush. Just get over the fact that anyone in the house, hearing the toilet flush twice, will know exactly what you've been up to. Much better than having one of us out in the yard digging up the evidence.

So right now I'm much more appreciative of our plumbing. I'm feeling thankful for plumbing that runs well, thankful for clean shower floors, thankful that somebody decided when they grew up they'd be a septic cleaning person, and thankful I only made the resolution not to SAY cuss words. If I'd resolved not to think them, I'd be in deep pooh myself.

We now have a nice bare area to plant with grass. Only grass. Grass roots make septic systems happy. We plan to put a glider right over it, so we can sit at night, over our septic tank, and enjoy the sunset. Classy, huh?

Life at the lake the past couple of weeks has been crazy. Lovely, peaceful at times, insane at times, exhausting, refreshing, and not a single moment has been dull. We had a driveway - very large driveway - poured last week. At one moment we had 13 men in our front yard and none of them were related to us. The driveway looks wonderful, but we were without phone or internet for four or five days because previously mentioned Lester accidentally cut the main phone line to our house, just a few days after the lovely pooh incident.

Right now we have a big black cable laying across the lawn. As long as no varmit chews it into in the middle of the night during the next week or so til they come out to do a more permanent repair, I'll be back in a few days with photos of our currently crazy life.

For the Family - Papa's New Wheels!

2010-04-13T08:20:00.005-04:00

We've been up to our elbows in septic systems (eewwwww!) and are about to tear out the front yard, but for now I wanted the kids to see Papa's new wheels.

At 59, this is his first 'new' truck. When I texted the men in the family, they wanted the scoop - so here it is:

2005 GMC, 1/2 ton, 2 wheel, big enough engine to pull a boat up a 45 degree boat ramp, heated leather seats, Bose sound system for his George Strait CD, captain seats for the first two fishermen, with an extended cab for the rest, sprayed in bed liner, some kind of lid on the bed that locks so you can put your fishing rods in there while you go to Waffle House, new set of tires. White so it doesn't show the Texas dust so much. One owner truck. He said it's exactly what he was looking for and I was tickled pink to follow him home, watching him drive that truck down that two lane road. One happy man!

We were happy to buy local, from two salesmen named Ennod and Jamison. Loving Texas more by the day.

Over the Meadow and Through the Woods

2010-04-10T08:54:00.007-04:00

Pulling out of the driveway, the car loaded for bear, felt surreal. After planning for this move long enough to throw in a Leap Year, it was finally happening. It's hard to describe how leaving behind a chunk of your life feels. Good, bad, happy, sad, memories that come flooding in. But life is made up of constant motion - the ebb and flow of days and weeks and years - the people that come in and go out of your life. We wanted a big adventure and it was finally time to begin. So no tears, no looking back, just drive.

Our daughter phoned right after we hit the road to tell us the grandkids were following us on a US map and would we please give reports throughout the day.

PA - done. West Virginia was a blip and then we hit Ohio. Columbus, Cincinnati and we meandered our way into Kentucky. Is there anything as lovely as Kentucky in the spring? Acres and acres bordered with white fencing and newborn colts playing tag with each other, pausing from their play for a moment to nuzzle their mothers' undersides for a sip of milk. We met our ~~driver~~ son-in-law in Bowling Green for dinner. He'd agreed to drive the Uhaul for us, all 1300 miles bless his heart. By himself, nobody to give him a relief from the driving. After filling him up with warm bread and a large steak, he climbed back in the truck. He'd keep going - we turned in for the night. He's 30 years younger than we are; those days of driving after the body begs to stop are behind us.

We sipped morning coffee while crossing Nashville and then drove through Memphis. All signs in Memphis seemed to hint that Elvis had NOT left the building but was still very much present. Then into Arkansas. Driving into Arkansas has a unique feel to it - the terrain changes quickly, and so does the pace. Crossing Arkansas takes a chunk of a day, but it's a pleasant chunk, and I thought of my friend, Diane - her love for gardening and camping - as we drove across. A beautiful state with miles and miles of woods coming up to greet you on each side of the car as you drive along. I can imagine camping in Arkansas. Or gardening. That red soil is bound to be good for growing tomatoes and such.

Every single state we entered greeted us with a billboard - 'Welcome to....' except Texas. After waiting almost four years to move there, and finally, finally hitting the border, the 'Welcome to Texas' sign had been taken down while they were busy putting up a highway. Seeing the lone star symbols embedded in the side of the retaining walls of the underpasses, we still took a moment to high five each other - 'we did it! We're finally here!'

Having reached at least the right state of our destination, we found a hotel and were under the covers as fast as possible in Texarkana, Texas. The next morning we ate breakfast in the hotel lobby, listening to a broad-shouldered man who already had his cowboy hat on, talking about the ins and outs of breeding cattle. The size of the buckle on the belt holding up his well-worn jeans told me he knew what he was talking about.

Pulling into the driveway of our home, that has been sitting semi-vacant for the past 1 1/2 years, looking through the carport and seeing nothing but blue lake, indescribable. My home state, my favorite state, the beginning of a brand new life that we're hoping will be bursting at the seams with family and good times and friends and memory making - indescribable. Seeing our son and a daughter and son-in-law and one sweet three year old grandson running through the yard - truly indescribable. This will be home. The beginning of carving out a new life that will be whatever we make of it.

We're not in Texas, we are officially Texans!

Good Night Nurse - Moving is a Whipping!

2010-04-08T20:30:00.003-04:00

So we're here - after leaving Pennsylvania 9 days ago, we've added 1900 - yep, NINETEEN HUNDRED miles to our car.

And you won't even believe what all has been going on - just as soon as I find my brain I'll tell you all about it. I seriously could use a venting session on 'why moving is ALWAYS a whipping'.

I am thanking the Good Lord that we have internet, however. This fifteen year old house just entered the 21st century!

You Could Get All Blubbery Over Laundry if You Let Yourself

2010-03-27T11:29:00.006-04:00

14 years ago, two days after Christmas when we were poor as church mice because we'd tried to put together an extra nice Christmas for my MIL who was very recently widowed, our dryer died. Completely. With three kids living at home, a dryer wasn't a luxury and we couldn't go more than a few days without having one available. I still remember calling the appliance guy, even recall the name of the company. He came out and told me it was dead. Done. No hope. Not worth fixing.

So we bought a brand new Maytag for right at $500 we did not have. Paid cash we did not have. Because who has $500 you didn't plan on the day after Christmas when you have three kids at home. I remember writing the check and thinking it'd be a real challenge to figure out how to come up with the money to cover it next payday. Rob Peter to pay Paul sort of thing.

We still have that dryer and it still runs great, and I'm not holding a grudge against it for needing a couple of CPR sessions. It's still a champion at drying a load of blue jeans in 45 minutes.

The washer was bought when our son was still living at home, and still bringing home those white nylon football practice pants that refused to let go of that green smear on the knees. Sweaty nasty things that I'd try not to touch as I tossed them in, but I had to use a bar of my MIL's homemade bar soap to get out those stupid stains. He had to have the pants ready for the next day, and for some reason I thought they needed to be pristine white every single day so he could destroy them again, and bring them back to me.

So we're finally, finally making the move that is possibly going to go down in the Guinness Book for taking the longest time to finish. The house we're moving to came furnished. Some of the stuff is great, some is awful and some is in between. Some we sold, some we gave away and some we kept. The washer and dryer at our lakehouse aren't anything to write home about - they aren't the super cool front loaders, with the neat box on the bottom to hold powder and such. They aren't in fun red or blue or anything - they're white. And I actually despise the buzzer on the dryer that we can't seem to disable, so that it sounds like a fog horn going off to tell me the towels are nice and fluffy. It's a bit like someone with a horribly screechy voice yelling at you to tell you dinner is ready. Good news delivered badly. But they work, at least as well as what we have here, if not better because they've had even less use than ours. So we may as well go with them and not take our PA ones with us.

Our last kid moved out 7 years ago, and since then we've done two loads of laundry a week. Except the weeks when I tried to be a Martha Stewart and did the sheets, and don't ask me how often that wasn't. It's my least favorite chore, even after cleaning bathrooms. I've said before if I was wealthy I'd have someone change the sheets daily and fix my hair every single morning. But I'm not, and it shows in how seldom the sheets get changed. (And possibly in how my hair looks...) I remember the days when I did two loads a day and still couldn't keep up. How times change.

As we laid in bed last night, talking the talk that comes right before you drift off, it was to the sound of jeans bouncing around in the dryer. The very last load in the dryer that our kids' clothes were in. And dippy as it may be, it felt like a right of passage.

Not that I was overly sad about it, just recognized that it'll never pass this way again, those days of knees stained with freshly mowed grass, or cheerleader uniforms that have impossibly small waists, or countless socks that can't find their pair for anything. No more loads and loads of towels because a teenager decided they need a fresh one for several different areas of their body, all after the same shower.

We're giving away our washer and dryer today - the washer to a girl who was in my small group years and years ago. She went to prom with my son when his ankle was broken and there was no hope of dancing - what a girl! She's now married and expecting her first child, and their used washer is giving up the ghost. The dryer is going to a couple in our church who have three young boys - and she said she has to dry everything three times to get them done. Great places to pass them on to! It tickles me to know kid jeans and too many towels will go through them for a few more years. Baby clothes will be washed in that washer - how fabulous is that?

And our washer and dryer down south? They'll have swimsuits from our grandkids playing in the lake, or my husband's nasty fishing clothes, or his sweaty t-shirt from mowing the grass in the Texas heat, or my jeans, with mud on the knees from planting and weeding my garden. Or baby burp cloths from our newest family member, or sheets and sheets and sheets and towels and towels and towels from having all our family come to play with us. I do believe I'll feel differently about washing those sheets.

Great stuff to think on happy times ahead. That's what we're about right now.

We're pulling the plug on our internet in just a day or so and won't be connected to the world for about two weeks. I'll be back soon to share how feathering our nest is going. And in the meantime, hope you all celebrate the best holiday of all - Easter, Resurrected Life and fresh starts.

Bluebirds and Walks and Lucky and such...

2010-03-25T21:54:00.008-04:00

Things I'm thinking about:

My old library (average of 3 visits a week) has 138,886 volumes.

My new library (30 minutes away) has 63,375.

Book nerds check out things like this. The new library doesn't have the relatively new fiction book I'm reading. That tells me I may be reading more classics and less NY Times Bestseller list, not necessarily a bad thing. Possibly we need a hammock somewhere on the property to curl up with those books we're going to read. Or maybe in the sunporch with the ceiling fan.

Sonic is 10 minutes away here, 30 minutes away there. Being newly retired, we now have more time to go to Sonic, and more time to work it off on the ellyptical - a good trade off I think.

The only place I've seen bluebirds in PA is on our walking trail or in the state parks. Bluebirds like open fields and our home had woods behind it. Good for cardinals, goldfinches, woodpeckers and many other birds, but not Eastern bluebirds. There is a family that seems to make a habit of building their nest in a box mounted on the previous owner's volleyball pole. I'm not sure there's a better way to start the day than sipping a cup of coffee on the deck, watching bluebirds feed their little ones.

I love that we already call our new home 'the lakehouse'. We want it to be the place the entire family comes to get away from it all.

I'm excited that we'll get to know life on the lake, be able to tell what the incoming weather is going to be from the look of it. We'll hear fish jumping in the early morning and evenings as the sun is setting.

I'm going to love the sound of Don saying, 'I think I'll just throw out my line a few times' and I can tell him, 'that's fine, I'll call you when supper is ready.' And he'll be 100 yards from our back door. And I can watch him fishing from our kitchen window.

Our neighborhood is relatively flat and the road makes a big winding circle, perfect for bike rides or early morning walks. Probably a good way to meet the neighbors.

Spring is the perfect time to move into a place, to check out what's coming up in the beds. Discover the gifts of perennials the previous owners left for us.

There are fried catfish feeds every single Friday night within ten minutes of any direction we turn. One is at the local gas station turned mini restaurant - I love that. We plan to take all our family members to eat at the gas station. Hope they love that.

I'll be planting a garden, for the first time in twenty years, sometime in April. I've already bought the labels for the salsa I'm going to make from the tomatoes I'm going to grow.

Our bed is already made, the coffee pot is already in place with our favorite mugs in the cupboard, waiting for us. Thank you, God, that we already did the big move last summer so this time won't be nearly so overwhelming. Or hot. And we're related to the one driving the van this time, so I know when he says he'll be there Wednesday night he'll be there Wednesday night. I'll feed him a steak for being on time, and hug his neck too.

It's going to be nice to have it feel a teensy bit like home when we walk in the door. Most of our family will be there, waiting for us, when we pull up. The rest will be two hours away, waiting for us to show up to celebrate Easter together. The first time in three years that we'll all be together, and there's a new baby to celebrate this year too!

I'm thinking I may just need a cat. Or two. Possibly an older, male cat that nobody wants and I'll name him Lucky. Maybe he'll eat the lizards for me.

How am I gonna talk Don into building a tree house for those grandkids? Grandpas never want them because they're questionable when it comes to safety, but every little boy wants a treehouse to play in. And we need a tire swing too, I'm pretty sure.

I can't wait to hang the sign I just bought for the boathouse "Swimsuits optional beyond this point." It should scare the neighbors a bit and make our kids wonder about us.

Looking ahead and dwelling on happy thoughts of what's waiting down south.

We're Down to Six Days

2010-03-24T19:48:00.006-04:00

So we move in 6 days. After 1 1/2 years of preparation and really it's something more like 3 years, we're down to 6 days. The condo is a bit of a mess with boxes everywhere, and most of the charm has been packed away.

We took down the little bed our grandson slept in when he'd stay with us. And I didn't cry. We took it over to his other grandmother's so he can enjoy sleeping in a familiar bed there. Our church called us down front, gathered around us and prayed for us a week ago, and we cried a bit over that. I went away for a weekend with my five best friends, and mostly we laughed. Only a few tears.

But inside I'm a bundle of emotions - not wanting to turn loose of our family here, excited to be heading out to the life waiting for us in Texas, to being with family there. The smallest thoughts turn me into an emotional puddle, and I'm mostly holding it all in check.

And that's exhausting. We're plenty busy with moving preparations, but it leaves little time for blogging, or surfing the web, or putzing or even reading a book, except that the last book from our library is due the day we leave, so I'm feverishly reading every night trying to get it done.

Moving is over-rated. Leaving family behind is over-rated. The blessing of being with kids you've lived away from for 7 or 11 or more years can't be measure. And finally being with grandkids you haven't spent any time with - the same.

It still doesn't make it easy. I'm finding myself thinking about those days when we'd climb in the family car, drive to college, and drop off one of our kids. I'd literally cling to them and sob, and it didn't help one bit that I had others at home. It was for the best, I knew that, but it still didn't make it any easier.

So I know it's probably blasphemy to even compare, but when Elizabeth Elliott's husband was killed by a spear while trying to evangelize a tribe somewhere I don't remember, and she got word that he'd died, she said she stood at her kitchen sink and felt God telling her to 'do the next thing.' Stay busy, keep moving. One thing at a time.

That's what we're doing here - busy from sun-up to sun-down, and steeling up for all the goodbyes each day holds. Looking toward the welcoming hugs waiting for us down south and getting ready to tell one chunk of our family goodbye. How did those mothers of daughters heading out on wagon trains do it?

Annie Get Your Gun!

2010-03-20T08:00:00.002-04:00

A week from now we're moving to the middle of nowhere, pretty much. Ten miles from town and that town has 203 people, not including us. So 205. Not that they ever really update those signs. The next nearest town is 30 miles away and that's where Walmart, the bank, doctors, hairdressers and church will be. Being a city girl most of my life, Walmart being 30 miles away qualifies as 'middle of nowhere'.

Middle of nowhere, we've been told by the neighbors (we do have 120 of them) will include the following:

deer, skunks, raccoons, armadillos, possums, 300 lb feral pigs, coyotes, and snakes. Lots of snakes including water moccasins (that, BTW, do not stay in the water), rattlesnakes, coral and one other poisonous kind I can't remember, in spite of reading an entire book called "Texas Snakes". Most snakes, it ends up, aren't poisonous and if I could get good enough at identifying them, I would lean toward leaving them alone.

My husband seems to think a hoe is the perfect way to deal with a poisonous snake. Just take an Alice in Wonderland approach and yell, "Off with her head!" or maybe he won't yell it, but he'll do it. Chop their heads off with a hoe.

I'd die of a heart attack first.

So he decided we needed to buy me a gun. I rarely even kill bugs, am terrified of lizards, and struggle with the idea of hurting any animal, which includes the squirrel that had already been run over and was flopping in front of our house. It needed to be run over again and I just wasn't brave enough, and have felt bad ever since that day. 'Put it out of misery' continues to ring in my ears but I just couldn't do it.

So this will be a stretching experience for me. But, by golly, I now have a gun. After a few trips to Cabelas and such, we ended up at a gun shop and bought me a 4-10 shotgun. I now know the difference between a shotgun and a rifle, and the different sizes they come in. It was pretty important to my husband to buy one that would not shoot across the lake, but would reach the end of our property. Hmmm, I wonder why?

My Dad tells me you need to stand at least 12 feet away from a skunk before you shoot it. He learned this after pelting one with a big rock, and coming home to have his mother strip him bare naked in the front yard and put him in the horse trough before she'd let him back in the house. I'm taking his word for it when I deal with the skunk we've seen on our carport twice already.

It seems I'm to become a bit of an Annie Oakley, target practice is scheduled for me and hopefully within a short time I'll be able to put my money where my mouth is if most critters come into our yard, and I'll be able to decrease the number of poisonous snakes around our property. I told my daughter, Sarah, this morning that I think I'd be a better shot if I had a leather skirt and jacket, complete with fringe, and a cowgirl hat that had a chin strap to hold it on my head. She made me promise if I ever do get said outfit, I won't wear it when her kids are visiting. I personally think it would endear me to them forever - Granny with a gun!

Feral pigs.... I'm pretty sure if one of those comes into our yard, my Daddy will hear me yellin' my head off, 900 miles away! I don't think I've got that much stretch in me.

You're Never Too Old for Kid Day

2010-03-18T07:45:00.007-04:00

A good twenty years ago I read somewhere about Kid Day. I think it may have been Sanity in the Summer, by Linda Dillow and Claudia Arp (a fabulous book by the way for all you moms with little kids.) The book was chock full of ideas on how to invest in your kids' lives during the summer months and not lose your mind.

I'd set aside little bits of money all year long, then when June came we'd take one day a week just for fun. Rarely did I allow the kids to bring along friends. Kid day was just for us, and for them to bond as siblings. A good thing since, being typical kids, they spent much of the other 6 days a week doing the typical bickering and blaming. I'd start summer with a list we'd made together - activities we wanted to do.

There were picnics by the pond, followed up with catching tadpoles in jars. Taking their first ride in a cab from Walmart to home. Entire days spent at the lake, swimming and playing in the sun. Local museums. Visiting residents of a nearby nursing home. History lessons were squeezed in at an indian mound near St. Louis. Putting on a play in the backyard and inviting the neighbors. All three kids still tell me they have great memories of kid day, and our girls have reenacted it with their own children.

So I realized a few days ago we can do kid day again, just Don and me! Now that he's retired we have an entirely open calendar if we're smart enough to realize it. We can also get so busy remodeling the house, working in the yard, running errands, that we work ourselves to death. So we agreed - a weekly kid day will be just the thing to keep us light hearted and having fun together. It'll also give us a great opportunity to learn the area we live in, and sometimes kid day might spill into two days so that we wander and explore all day, grab a B&B somewhere along the way and head back home the next day.

Last week was full of doctor appointments and errands and bills and laundry and such. So today is our first official kid day. We're headed to a famous german micro-brewery on the south side of Pittsburgh, for lunch alongside the river, then to see a matinee (we can do that now!), back home to grab a sandwich for dinner and then end our day by taking dessert to our daughter's house. Next week is our last one here in Pittsburgh, so we'll do something local again. Maybe drive up to Ohiopyle where we went camping so many times. Check out the rapids, grab an ice cream cone and head back home.

We're thinking future kid days will be to local antique stores, maybe wander into Louisiana or even Oklahoma, down to Waco, and sometimes just to take off in a direction and see where we end up. That might be the most fun of all. We've also gotten several mailings from the state of Texas that direct us to their local haunts and highlights. Where's the best barbeque? The best bluebonnet show? The best bird watching? (I might have to pay Don to do that last one with me.) Heck, we may even have a picnic by a pond and scoop up tadpoles to bring home for our grandkids to watch.

It's supposed to be sunny and in the 60's. Way too pretty to be inside working. Summer will be here before you know it, so if you have kids, check out the book. It's new for $29.00 or you can snatch up one of 29 copies for a PENNY. Even if you're the (pretty big) kid, go for it! It's been years since I rode in a cab!

Riviera Maya - Last of Photos

2010-03-17T11:01:00.006-04:00

Our 'celebrate retirement / birthday / 29th anniversary' at Riviera Maya was at an all-inclusive resort for one week. We figured a couple of excursions would be a good break but not make it too hectic or expensive.

The first trip we took was by ferry to the island of Cozumel. I wore a patch and bracelets and they assured me the ferry was huge and would not be a problem. They lied. But I survived. Having a history of motion sickness it has to be somewhere really spectacular to abide the ride. Cozumel was worth feeling like dirt for 45 minutes each way.

The island of Cozumel sits right across the bay from Cancun, has grown like crazy in the last five years and now has 90,000 full time residents who live in the upper 1/3 of the island. The middle 1/3 is all mangrove forests and they provide a break from the hurricanes that tend to hit here. The bottom 1/3 has no homes or hotels, but does allow day trips to enjoy snorkeling, scuba diving, beach combing, etc.

We took an open-air ride with a narrator that lasted all day. Our first stop was to see some Mayan ruins then we pulled off the road, to check out the lagoon, across from the beach.

One very large male and two female crocodiles lived there, and sure enough - when the narrator whistled they came close. The male was over 10 feet long, and the females pretty close to that too. The creepiest part was that when they went underwater even a few inches you could not see them at all for the color of the water.

Here you can see the lagoon on the left and the beach on the right. The most beautiful white sand beaches and look at the color of the water! It looks like my grandson, Grayson's eyes. The water was too rough that day for snorkeling - they told us it was only 30% visibility but we were still able to walk the beach, have lunch in some hut they set up, and I was able to grab a gorgeous pink conch shell out of the waves that came up on the beach. After being unsuccessful I watched a woman whose arms were full of shells. She put her back to the water, stood with her eyes peeled for the surf coming in, and once she saw a shell wash up she'd reach down and grab it before it washed back out to sea. That pretty pink shell is sitting on the ledge of my tub.

Here Don's sporting his birthday gift - I was able to hurry into the hotel lobby shop and grab this straw cowboy hat that he'd had his eye on. $29 american money and he loved it. The narrator and his helper sang Happy Birthday in Spanish, and the entire bus sang it in English - so a pretty fun birthday overall. Don got so tanned on this trip natives were asking him if he was from Cuba. Nobody asked if I was a native.

The narrator told us the water was about 50 feet right where we would have snorkeled, then it went into a black hole - bottomless. Nobody had gone down far enough to find bottom. Isn't the ocean just amazing?

Back in the town of Cozumel we were given an hour to shop and browse, finding fun items for our grandkids' Easter baskets. Mexico is such a colorful place - bright splashes of color anywhere they can put it. It was fun to watch shoppers deal with the sidewalk hawkers, striking a bargain. They love to bargain with you. If you say no to their price they tend to come after you with another offer.

We came across this group of young girls, skirts swirling as they did the Mexican Hat dance.

The other excursion we went on was a bit crazy. We asked our hotel concierge about a 'romantic lobster dinner cruise' and they immediately yelled, 'Captain Hook!'. We ended up going on a five hour ride of figure eights around the lagoon while everyone drank tequila, did salsa dancing and we did indeed have a lobster dinner below deck.

Posing with the skeleton heads before we boarded.

Not sure where we'd put this if we framed it. Doesn't it look like we're at tribal council on Survivor? Where's Jeff Probst?

Once dinner was over another boat, much like ours, pulled close and started firing on us with cannon sounds and big puffs of smoke. Pirates started swinging through the air, landing onboard where our Captain - Jack Sparrow - had a big sword fight with their captain - Captain Hook. Our grandkids would have loved this part of the trip. Not so much the three hours of very loud salsa music and tequila and complete strangers grinding into each other. We were ready to get off once we pulled up to land, but overall it was fun. Headache inducing but fun.

Our hotel was one of five Iberostar's - all grouped together within security gates so we could feel comfortable walking the grounds. At the end of the resort, near the golf course, was a shopping center with lots of shops and restaurants. They also had this gorgeous carousel for the kids to enjoy and at night it was lovely. The center courtyard had a mexican version of a jazz band playing, and we sat and enjoyed that for awhile. That horse in the background is completely made of blocks of wood - it was beautiful up close.

Our final night - we chose the mexican restaurant (they had mediterranean, japanese, italian and steak too). You could buy the hats but we chose to just pose for one photo with them. Mariachi singers serenaded us during dinner - the perfect touch to end the evening.

Early morning - time to get up and head home. One last glimpse of palm trees silhouetted in the rising sun. Fabulous, fabulous trip - we'll be back for sure.

Family Photo Album - Riviera Maya

2010-03-15T15:41:00.010-04:00

Update: Raccoon creature is a coatamundi. Still working on the bird...

A welcoming touch to our room... ate the chocolate wafer, admired the covered grapes.

Views from our second floor room...

Coconuts abound!

Pedicured toes taking it easy by the pool that went forever.

That is absolutely not a high spare tire around my middle. It's a crease in the photo.

Hot Caribbean trip companion!

A pair of swans swimming by every morning during breakfast.

Lovely start to every day - mexican coffee and breakfast buffet which included vast amounts of pastries.

Some people called these raccoons. One lady called them the 'cute mexican bears'. We called them lemurs but honestly who knows. They were everywhere there was food and very friendly.

An albino peacock. I managed to get one of his longest tail feathers (already removed from his body. I did NOT pull it out.)

The sixth one is missing, but these guys live their whole lives in one little pond. Very pretty. Reminded me of my sister, Barb who happens to love them.

This guy visited everybody, walking up and down the pathways. There were no closed doors - everything was wide open all the time.

No idea what this guy is - but he sure was pretty.

Iguanas - not my favorite. Hard for me to believe people pay money to have these as pets.

Every day someone had made a fabulous sculpture out of sand. I loved this one.

Our beach was a good mile long, and the perfect place for an afternoon walk every day.

Huge pelicans that stooped here, looking for lunch.

More of my raccoon buddies, as we were walking back to our room.

It's amazing how many show up when you pull out a bag of cheese nips. I got to feed them from my hand and only one was a bit feisty. Most of them were sweet and gentle.

We're as busy as a one-armed paper hanger right now, getting ready to move south in two weeks, but I'll post the rest of the photos in a day or three. We're busy but we're reasonably rested, tan as all get out and happy as clams to be together.

Adventure 101

2010-03-09T23:25:00.005-05:00

We're back home - in our nest. Which is now clean enough to be sanitary, but not fabulous. And we have non-curdled milk and yogurt with dates that haven't expired and lunch meat that isn't slick and slimy. And clean underwear.

And we've been home together for two whole days living the retired life and haven't killed each other yet.

It feels weird - good but weird. We forget what day it is - vacation does that but not having to get up and go anywhere does too. Rolling over in the bed at 8 am and seeing a man lying there scares the beegeebees out of me then I remember, oh yeah, he lives here, he's mine, and he doesn't have to go anywhere. I don't know if I'm going to recognize this man once the bags disappear from under his eyes, they've been there so many years.

Breakfast comes and we don't know what to do - this man who used to eat breakfast at his desk over morning emails now sits at the coffee table with the paper. He still eats the same thing and I'm pretty sure he's already wondering where the bacon and eggs he dreamed of went. And he's drinking more than his share of the coffee which is a good thing but still strange.

Today was clean the apartment day. Twenty-nine years ago Don told me his part of cleaning the house would be to not get it dirty. So I warned him last night I was going to clean this morning, and he manned up (I'm pretty sure he was terrified he'd joined the cleaning crew and I'm pretty sure he'd rather go back to work than clean bathrooms and vacuum) and asked me at 9 am how he could help. I asked if he would please straighten the garage, make sense of all the moving boxes, find out if we need to buy more and then could he please take the car and fill it with gas, pick up prescriptions and check out renting a U-haul for our upcoming move.

I figured it would give him a break from me for a good few hours, and after about ten days straight of looking at me I was pretty sure he would be ready to be gone for awhile. We're down to one car now, having lost the company car he drove for the past 29 years, and I quickly told him he can have ours. It can be his - feel free to keep it clean, oil changed, current on maintenance and full of gas. I don't really need a car, just a driver most of the time!

At 4:30 this afternoon I started to make supper and realized I was three hours early. This evening we watched three episodes of Lost and two of American Idol. Because we can. And we sat and just talked a couple of different times, about finding a church, trading in a vehicle, whether to have a pet, physical therapy, finding doctors, etc. etc. etc. Talk is good - lots of talking will keep us together, knowing what the other one is thinking. Thank you, Pastor Ron, for your marriage class five years ago. We're reaping the benefits of it now, listening to what's on each other's minds. Sharing fears, concerns, dreams.

So we're not very good at this yet, but there's hope. We're cutting fresh paths together and enjoying staying up too late, sleeping in, making plans.. This path we're on has a few potholes in it, but that's okay. A road that is completely smooth makes for a pretty boring ride. That's half the fun of life, isn't it - not having it figured out all the time. Maybe this is what being a Newlywed felt like and I'd just forgotten - Adventure 101.

Two nights from now I've got an evening out with 19 girlfriends for dinner and a play. I'm certain I'll have a blast. We'll giggle and talk and eat and sing. And that newly retired man of mine? He may take his car to the back parking lot and do donuts, or drive to the steakhouse by himself for a manly meal. Or zap a TV dinner, stay home and watch a dozen episodes of CSI. A bit of absence that'll make the heart grow fonder, then we'll come back together for yogurt and coffee and the newspaper while we figure out another day. So far we're loving it!

A Brave New World..... of Retirement

2010-03-07T08:00:00.002-05:00

Is it vacation if you don't have to go back to work? When we walk off that plane, gather our luggage, find our car, and drive home, but Don doesn't go back to work on Monday - was it a vacation?

Weird, very weird this new life we've just embarked on. Deep, crazy, flying around my head thoughts about it all - and not at all figured out yet.

I am now the owner of a husband who no longer has an office, or blackberry, or email address, or company car. He's all mine, whether I'm ready for it or not.

He may be thinking he's the owner of a wife who has a cell phone, a car she's used to driving when she pleases, two email addresses, girlfriends, and stuff to do. Wonder what he's thinking about all that?!

I've joined the ranks of women who take their husbands grocery shopping, and neither one of us is sure what we think about that.

I've joined the ranks of women who wake up because the room grew light and I look over and he's lying there too, and we just stay there for a few minutes, talking about our day, then both of us head to the coffee pot, pour a cup and amble over to the sofa to read the paper, sip coffee, and I suspect one of us will say, "what do you have going on today?"

Weird, weird. Nice. Still weird. It's a new world - a little direction please, God?

The Power of Half - Update

2010-03-02T08:00:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I posted about how moved I was over a story I read - a family who sold their house and gave half the money away, and moved into the smaller house and lived happily ever after. Really. So we decided to give away half of our grocery budget for the month of February.

For two paychecks, I stashed away the money, and shopped with the other half. I also made an effort to use what was in our pantry and freezer.

We had more than plenty and it's nice to have that Christmas ham (given to us by Don's company) out of the freezer. You know the saying about two people and a ham..... Ice cream tastes fine, even with a bit of freezer burn, with a little chocolate syrup on it. Superbowl snacks were easy to come up with - just pull out all the boxes in the freezer and consider it nice variety to have taquitos and super pretzels, and such. Our freezer and pantry are a bit more lean, and with moving 1200 miles south just a month away, that's a good thing - less to move.

So finally, finally yesterday we had a Saturday afternoon when there was time to go shopping. With a mental number in our head, we drove to the nearest discount grocery and started down the aisles.

Don't you sometimes have a conversation with someone, seemingly random and you know one comment will stay with you forever? Talking to someone awhile back, he told me the food at food banks is, in general, of very poor quality. That's it hard to use some of it, hard to take ingredients and put them together to come up with something. So we wanted to shop towards a goal of giving items like pancakes with syrup, or chili that had beans and diced tomatoes, or spaghetti with sauce. Peanut butter with grape jelly. And no ramen noodles.

As the cart began to fill to the top, we still had money left and so we added about a dozen packages of cookies because in spite of the problem of overweight kids in America, we still think a kid needs a cookie now and then. And we threw in toilet paper and laundry soap and bath soap and dish soap because if we're not mistaken, food stamps only cover food items, but everybody still needs to do laundry and dishes and take baths.

We don't know who will end up with any of these groceries - it might surprise us to see them. We do know there are kids out there who will have cereal or pancakes for breakfast before they head to school, who will come home to a hot meal, and maybe a parent offering a cookie and a listening ear. Maybe, just maybe it's easier for a parent to lend a listening ear when someone else helps them provide the basics for their family.

We did not give til it hurt, we didn't even give til it cut into our own needs being met, and honestly it felt so good to give that I'm not sure it could be counted as giving anything away at all. We were much more on the receiving end with this one. I imagine that's how the family who gave away half their house felt too, on a much bigger scale. We're already thinking, listening and looking around for where we can give away half again - soon. I'll keep you posted.

Just Hate Me and Move On...

2010-02-28T07:46:00.001-05:00

This is where I'm at right now. With my freshly retired better half.

See Don, See Bev - that's us, the two thin, fit people further down the beach. We're up early running our mandatory five miles barefoot in the sand, to keep our calves perfected toned. You just can't start your day any other way. No way can you just lie in bed, ridiculously late, then waddle off to the breakfast buffet. You absolutely will not find us sitting under those tiki umbrellas, being blissfully lazy.

That's me - absolutely me - lying in the hammock. But only because I needed a little rest from all that beach running. I managed to fit in 2,000,000 sit ups in the past nine months. I'm thinking of the yoga exercises I'm going to do as soon as I get out of this hammock.

So sweet - Don asked these guys to sing us a song or two, and we understood every single word. So we just started singing along, and they told us our pronunciation was spot on! If I wear one of those outfits, I'm going with the striped pants, because they're so slimming.

We're busy swimming laps up and down every single foot of these pools. It's nice that they're connected so we can do that. I'd never want to just hang onto the side of the pool, waiting for someone to bring me a little drink with an umbrella tucked in it. Or claim one of those poolside lawn chairs that barely dips into the water so you never get too hot. Just lie there reading some meaningless novel. I'd much rather swim up and down, up and down.

We figured after Don had worked for 33 years, it was okay to head down to Mexico for a week, as long as we worked at it - no goofing off, no sirree!

We absolutely are not going to eat a lot of fattening food, sip cold drinks, sleep in, walk the beach, dance in the evenings, check out the snorkeling in Cozumel. Not on your life. It's all work for us.

A Job Well Done!

2010-02-27T00:12:00.003-05:00

You have to take a photo, walking out the door to your last day of work.

I'm not sure he always smiled this big while sitting at this desk.

One last phone call from the boss, receiving well wishes.

Good for you - job well done!

Lunch Box Love Note....

2010-02-25T07:53:00.005-05:00

February 25, 2010

Dear Don,

It seems appropriate to put a note in this very last lunch I’m packing for you to take to work. The very last one. I wonder how many there have been? Literally thousands I’m sure.

It’s ironic that packing your lunch was never my favorite chore. Leaning too hard to the efficient side, I liked it more once I realized I could pack several at a time. There’s something extra tender about this last one.

I want you to know today, as you spend your last full day at work, how much it has meant to me - to know the man you are, what you are made of, what you invested in your job; I was always aware that it was for us, even when it didn’t feel good. When I didn’t love the long hours I did love the reminder that you are a man who gives his all to whatever task is at hand.

I respect you more than any man I have ever known. I love you, but it’s nice to respect you too. I am immensely blessed to be your wife, to have you as the head of our family. You are leaving everything that is familiar, and a place that you have found your worth in for over 30 years. I hope you can walk away with your head held high, knowing you gave it everything you had, you treated people with respect when they didn’t deserve it, you looked out for those under you, you were kind when others weren’t, you swallowed your pride more times than you care to count for a higher goal.

Our family gave up time with you while you were working, but even when you weren’t home with us, you were giving our children a priceless example of work ethic, pride in self, a respect for authority. You showed them what being responsible looked like, and how to persevere when you wanted to quit. You enabled me to give our daughters an example of how to support their husbands in their career.

Now it’s time to play! You’ve given your best to your career for many years, and it’s time for the next stage, when our kids and their kids will be blessed to share time with you, learn more life lessons, get to know their father and grandfather at this next stage of life.

I’m counting on being blessed to pack a lot more lunches for you, but these will be tucked into a cooler for you to take on the boat, or maybe a fishing trip on the road with your son or son-in-laws, or me. Because really there isn’t anything in life I want to do that isn’t at your side. I’ve been blessed to be there for almost 29 years and I’m counting on us being together for that many more.

I love you,

Bev

Update on the Mother of All Knitting Projects

2010-02-23T22:00:00.000-05:00

Remember when I posted that I was beginning this monumental knitting project?

A few of you asked that I update on my progress.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahaha! Rolling on the floor, holding my sides, laughing.

I started by giving the yarn a place of prominence, because really anything that cost that much deserves a classy home. So all 15 balls of yarn are sitting there, at the foot of the chair, with the needles sticking out of one ball, looking very knitty. If you stopped by for a visit, and saw my basket of yarn and needles and such, you'd think I was a knitter.

And I've learned a new cast on technique. Only took four tries. But I learned it. Had to watch the YouTube video, because the written instructions were no help. But I learned it. Then I cast on 129 stitches - if you don't knit, just trust me that's a lot of stitches. Enough that I put place markers so I could count and recount and then recount again.

I've ripped out the first row four times. And recast on. And called my ~~personal knitting coach~~ daughter Sarah three times already. The conversation has been running something like this:

"Hi Sarah, I have one knitting question."

"Okay, I'm just about to walk into the conference."

"Oh that's okay, just one little question." where I proceed to start talking in knitting language about how to count rows, and types of yarn and techniques, and finally when I was stuck at the car repair shop this week, I got out my copy of the pattern and she got out her copy of the pattern and she said, "Okay, just start at the beginning."

And I said, "Okay, well I did the 129 stitches, because I'm the fourth size on the pattern, and then I did the knit 21, and purl 5 and then cable 4 back (and I think I did that part right - it looks a little wonky but I think it's right) and then I purled 5 more, knit 2, purled 3, knit 2, purled 5, did the cable 4 thing again, purled 5. Then there was the asterisk, and I knit the 17...."

And she said, "but when you did the repeat you did the 17 again, didn't you?"

"Yep. I did. I'm sure I did. That's why I ran out of stitches. So I'll just rip it out and start all over again."

"Yep, that's what's wrong."

"Yep, you're bound to be right."

So after five tries, I got row one right. I've now flown through another four rows and am feeling quite smug. Smug enough I asked my husband to please stop for a minute and admire the gorgeous cable pattern emerging. He not only knows I've ripped this project out a number of times, he also knows what I paid for the yarn, so he was very free with words of praise. So far, so good. Thanks for asking. And I strongly suspect my daughter is about ready to block my cell phone number. And I can't say that I blame her.

About 20 years from now, when I'm a little old lady, with kleenex stuffed up my shirt sleeves to catch the occasional drool, I think this cardigan should be about done. By then it will be way too cool for me to wear, and my granddaughter, Addie likely isn't going to grow up to be 5'10", so I'm wondering whether my newborn granddaughter, JaeBeth likes the color coral.... hazel eyes, dark brown hair - it should look smashing on her.

Glass half full, that's me!

I Have Issues with Purse Organization...

2010-02-20T10:59:00.008-05:00

so it takes me forever to choose a new purse. I not only have to find a color that makes my heart happy, it has to be the right size and the right price (Good night! Purses are expensive today!). Then I have to be that hated person who takes all the stuffing out of the purse, shoves it on the store shelf somewhere, and checks out the inside of the purse. Because it has to have enough pockets to hold all my stuff. Cute just won't cut it - it has to F.U.N.C.T.I.O.N.

And I absolutely can't live without all this stuff I carry around. Sometimes when I look inside my purse I think of Monty Hall and Let's Make a Deal - where he'd end his show, eating up that leftover time, asking women to pull strange things out of their purses. And I'd know I would have won because of course I have all those things he came up with. And it all has to be with me every single time I leave the house, and be organized so I can pull it out on a minute's notice. Because you never know when someone needs to hear the Gospel or receive CPR or see what colors go best with their skin tone, or sew on a button, or repair their glasses. You just never know!

One of my dearest friends travels with a debit card in her pocket and her cell phone in the other. No purse at all! It's amazing we're friends, being cut from such different cloth! Or maybe, just maybe she hangs with me because I haul around everything she could possibly need.

Alas - I've been yearning for a mustard yellow purse. I blame it on the lack of sun here in PA the past five months - my heart needed something bright and sunny looking and since the sky wasn't producing anything other than grey, a mustard yellow purse it was. It was starting to feel like time to put my brown Vera Bradley on the closet shelf. You can't carry dark brown in February in dreary Pennsylvania.

Payless was a dismal failure. Possibly because a salesMAN tried to help me choose and made me itch to get out of the store.

T.J. Maxx provided this good solution for a reasonable price. Once you grab a purse that is supposedly a good deal at $165.00 and put it back on the shelf, you can feel quite smug with a purse that only costs $39.99. But it had inside issues -not enough pockets to hold the categories of stuff I needed. There's the TOOL category - to repair eye glasses, remove stains, etc. The FIX MY FACE AND NAILS category - lipgloss, color, nail file and mascara for when mine gives up the ghost and flakes completely off and my eyes disappear. The MEDICINAL category - really in a whole class by itself - aleve and migraine excedrin, zyrtech, solution for itchy eyes, restless leg tablets for when you're going nuts in the middle of the movie you paid $9.50 to see, motion sickness pills and bands and bandaids, and to be mentioned delicately - upset tummy issues. Or if you're not delicate you just can't travel without some beano in your bag. You never know when someone's going to offer you an unexpected bowl of chili. VISION category - glasses and sunglasses and a spare pair of reader glasses. Gum and mints and cough drops and notecards and a cell phone and keys - the list is truly endless but it all has to be in there. And pens and pencils and highlighters - have to have them in multiples of each.

So I remembered my friend, Tris - who lives at a more highly evolved level of organization - telling me about this: Pursekets. So I ordered one to fit the medium bag for around $21.00 in a color that will go with any purse I carry. Including shipping it ran about $25.00.

It'll make choosing my next purse much easier. Maybe when I've lived in hotter than all get out Texas and it's August and I just can't abide anything bright and sunny looking, so I yearn for a frosty blue purse. And it made me feel quite smug to realize I don't carry the 'large category' of purse - all that stuff only equals a medium bag. So there!

I'm wondering what's in those large bags and feeling pretty sure Monty Hall would be giving the prize to someone else after all. But by golly - go ahead - just ask me. I bet I can find just about anything now.

Brilliance is Apparently Not Inherited

2010-02-19T07:58:00.004-05:00

She's related, (and maybe, just maybe I'm not completely objective) but honestly she is just coming up with the best ideas lately! If you're a young mom or a Grammy who needs to entertain the grandkids when they come to visit, or you want to organize your winter wear - you can go check out her latest posts.

She seems to be on a roll lately. Maybe I should ask what she's eating since this brilliance I'm seeing obviously isn't inherited, at least not maternally.

An idea that ends up with a kid looking like this - has to be a great idea. He's coming for an overnight stay with us in just a couple of days, and I'm absolutely doing this with him, just so I can see his face light up like that again. When my own son was about this age, and we'd manage to wrangle him into the tub, he'd come out with the bar of soap still dry. If we'd come up with this idea I suspect we'd have been fighting to keep him out of the tub instead.

'Stay-cation'

2010-02-18T08:13:00.001-05:00

My husband leaves today for his last overnight business trip E.V.E.R. After 32 years of them, today is the last one. He and his replacement are headed to Virginia to check out a few things, probably eat something really fattening involving beef at Applebees (he always eats at Applebees when he travels apart from me) and spend the ten hours on the road talking over transferring the position from him to the new guy.

For the past three years, while he traveled, and while my daughter and her family lived here, when he was away I stayed home and did projects. Or was lazy and unproductive but attempted to do projects. It somehow never occurred to me to go stay with Leslie and her family and play. Not that I'm ever, ever scared of being alone - I enjoy a large swath of personal space and time. If I was ever going to be scared of being alone, when I was 17 years old and moved out on my own into a really questionable part of town - that's when I should have been scared, but didn't have the sense to be. So why bother now? If nobody broke in and abducted or maimed me then, it's likely not going to happen now.

So the idea just hit me last week, when I heard about this last trip that I could invite myself to their place for 'stay-cation'. So I did, and they said yes, and that's where I am now.

Here's what we're busy doing - playing in the snow, because we certainly have an abundance of it; making homemade waffles and omelets for my son-in-law; watching Julie and Julia (first time for Leslie, 4th for me) because it's about getting published and she needs inspiration to keep pushing to get published; knitting a sweater; sewing window treatments; watching the Olympics a little; watching American Idol a lot; enjoying the smell of a fresh-from-sleep bed-head kid in the early mornings; reading books; playing Candyland and Hungry Hippo and Hi-Ho-Cherrio. Great stuff.

Stay-cation - such a great idea, I wish I'd thought of it sooner. Are you stuck inside with all this wintry weather? Maybe you need to invite yourself somewhere, or invite someone else to come join you.

And a P.S. Happy Birthday to my oh-so-sweet daughter, Sarah. Wish we could spend it together, and next year, by golly, we will! Maybe next year Dad and I will invite ourselves for 'stay-cation' at your place! I'll show up with a birthday cake, guacamole and chips, and my knitting needles - you can give Dad some jobs to make him feel handy, and we'll have a blast together. How about that?

Oh My It's Nasty Out There

2010-02-16T08:37:00.000-05:00

So it's a mess here - cold and frozen and we don't even know what to do with it. This poor tree stands outside the library, looking brave but I feel badly for it.

As I drove through the McD's drive-up the manager was out with a shovel, trying to break up ice so the delivery semi could pull in tomorrow. Good luck with that. That brick building at the back is completely encased in ice.

Feel free to park your bike here....

Here's how we move snow in the east. Piles and piles and piles of snow. We're just about out of places to make another pile. Drat that groundhog, and come on March 21 already!

Stuck Inside - Bake Cinnabons!

2010-02-14T10:52:00.001-05:00

18" of snow - oh bother. Make minestrone.

Another 4" of snow - good grief! Stay in pjs and read blog posts. I read this one, by Anna, and got all inspired to bake cinnamon rolls. I haven't made homemade cinnamon rolls in five years but somehow it seemed the perfect thing to do. I mean, if you're stuck indoors you may as well bake something gooey, right?

So I went here and found this recipe. One of the appliances I brought to the apartment is my bread machine. They've come down in price so much from the first ones - you can likely find a decent one for under $50 and they're well worth the money for how easily you can whip up a loaf of bread. Or homemade cinnamon roll dough. They take all the work out of it. Rolling them up and slicing them into these fat circles is not only easy, it's fun - it'll make you feel like a domestic diva!

From when the ~~obsession with something gooey~~ thought struck me, to this - under three hours.

I took a plate of two rolls, steaming hot from the oven, to the older couple who lives next door to us. At 5:30 in the evening, he answered his door, looking like an aged, portly Dick Van Dyke, in blue flannel pajamas. That just made me smile. I told him, 'these are for dessert or tomorrow's breakfast. They're fresh from the oven.' He said, 'how about now?' Absotootly, as my grandson, Landon would say. Absotootly! Eat 'em up.

Then I ran back inside, and grabbed one for little ole me! With a cocoa/leftover coffee combo that involved whipped cream and caramel syrup drizzled over the entire concoction.

So sad, I didn't have white frosting, so I had to get by with coconut pecan - dabs of coconut pecan icing slathered on the top so it melted and ran down into the circles on top of the rolls. So sad.

Bake some, for the neighbors, for yourself. Even if it's not snowing like there's no tomorrow.

Knitting and The Little Engine Mentality

2010-02-12T08:00:00.003-05:00

My daughter, Sarah recently made the most gorgeous cardigan. I've knit hats and scarves and bears and even a baby sweater, but making yourself a cardigan or sweater - well, that's a REAL knitter in my book, or at least that's the bar I set for me to feel like I can say I'm really, really a knitter.

I've been looking for the perfect pattern, one that's not too intimidating but not boring. It can't make me look bulky or matronly. It has to look cute with jeans or nice slacks, be worn almost year 'round. That's gonna be a challenge, moving to Texas.

Alas, I just couldn't find the perfect pattern. But look how cute Sarah's pattern is! So I decided to copy her, make the same one she did. Not that I'll ever wear mine while standing next to her, wearing hers. She's tiny and a much more advanced knitter. But at least she can answer the 99 questions I'm bound to have once I start clicking needles to make this. (I've found this theory to work well with cell phones and computers too - buy exactly what your kids have and they can answer all your techy questions.)

Drats! They stopped carrying it here in the States. What? Order internationally? Oh my, I've never done that! Then I decided there was probably no good reason I couldn't do just that, since they seemed to have the pattern in abundance there (where it originated.) I went online, found it, saw the price but had no clue how much '4.90 pounds' including shipping was. L.O.V.E. Google - within seconds I found out it was $7.65, which ends up being less expensive than what Sarah paid here in the States. (I did have to pay an additional 90 cent foreign rate exchange fee on my credit card bill.)

It arrived in a little over a week! All the way from England! with super fun postage on the envelope! Getting this envelope in the mail is the closest I've come to relating to Princess Diana who I had a deep, abiding affection for. (And yes, I know I'm cheesy, but every little girl has a princess hiding somewhere inside her.) I walked to my mailbox and there it was, easy as pie.

Yesterday I went to my favorite local yarn store and with some help from the owner we decided on 15 balls of this beautiful yarn. It's Gedifra yarn in the color 'Fiorista red', light worsted mostly cotton. Perfect! The color is a rich coral. I'd been saving my allowance for this purchase, and was very happy to cash in my filled up frequent shopper card. I somewhat understand what the owner did with her calculator to figure out how much I needed. That lesson can cement better another day. Learning to knit can be a bit like peeling an onion, one layer at a time. I don't have to peel away all the layers today.

Actually knitting it - that's a whole 'nuther ball of wax (or yarn.) Just like the little engine, pulling up that hill, (with someone pushing from behind) I think I can..... I think I can..... I told my daughter, aka knitting teacher, if I die anytime soon, please tell Dad to let me leave this world in the sweater, since the yarn cost more than anything else in my closet. It should look fabulous with a cream t-shirt and my favorite jeans.

Updating the Baby Photo Album

2010-02-10T08:36:00.000-05:00

Good grief, a new grandbaby and I haven't updated the photos in awhile.

What's not to love about a sweet little one covered up with as much pink as possible?

She and Daddy seem to like each other a bit... or maybe he just tells really funny jokes.

At this point in babydom it's always hard to say who is more tired, the baby or the parents. She's busy growing, they're busy coping.

A visit from her Aunt Nessie - two pretty girls for sure. Don't you know they had fun discussing motherhood.

There, much better!

February Sunset

2010-02-09T08:34:00.005-05:00

PA is beautiful about six months out of the year. The rest of the time it's drab, drab, drab. The trees lose their leaves, and from November on there's a bareness so heavy that somedays it takes all the fight you have in you to keep it from seeping inside.

We're stuck in the middle - winter is more than half over, but spring still feels a long ways off. This time of year I'm so impatient for color I start poking in flowerbeds with snowy boots, looking for signs of encouragement. Surely there's something under all that dirty grey snow? It's a little early for daffodils and such. I know that. I know they're more patient than I am, lurking just under the ground, waiting to make their grand appearance. Once daffodils and tulips and hyacinths start strutting their stuff I won't be paying much attention to skies.

Right now, when there's no color to be had, on an ordinary grey day, the sun starts to set with reds and yellows that take my weary of winter breath away. A sky that looks like it should be in Santa Fe with saddle straddling cowboys lined up across the horizon. But it's not - it's here in bare, grey PA. Fifteen minutes of brilliant color, enough to get through a few more weeks of stuck in the middle drab.

I Have a Bit of a Crush on Ben...

2010-02-08T08:57:00.002-05:00

I posted awhile back about reading through some of the classics this year. You know, you don't just happen to read Walden (my husband swears nobody really reads it anyway!) or The Iliad, so I decided to be purposeful about it. My plan was to read 12 this year, and figuring if I do that for the next 9 years I'll have made it through over 100 of them. A good goal, and very doable I thought. That's one a month. (And if I make it through one classic each month, I'm free to read anything else I want for fun - right now: The Underneath by Kathi Appelt.)

It's February 8 and I've made it through three already! Ethan Frome was okay - interesting to me the story line of someone who chose poorly in marriage, then regretted it, and went to dramatic measures to rectify the situation, only making matters worse in the long run. Some things just don't change, do they?

I have to admit I didn't love Kidnapped - maybe you need to be a ten year old boy to really enjoy it, or have it read to you by someone who's willing to change the voices, making themselves sound a bit like Johnny Depp. But I read it all the same. (My favorite quote from it, BTW, "‘keep your breath to cool your porridge." which I think equates to today's 'don't waste your breath'.)

Next I read the Autobiography of Ben Franklin - I LOVED that book! When I'd tell my husband, for the ninety-ninth time that I hearted it and the man, he'd ask, 'is it exciting?' Well, not exactly exciting. But really, really interesting. I think the ten year old boy in him would have preferred Kidnapped. Like everybody else I'd heard the stories, and seen the pictures of him standing out in a lightning storm with a kite and a key. Somehow I didn't realize he started the first library, the first hospital, the first fire department, and many other accomplishments we benefit from and take for granted today. He was as much an inventor as he was a politician, and I loved reading of his efforts to end slavery.

I didn't realize he invented bifocals. The first thing I check out, when we move, is the public library. When our current town was building a new one, I drove by many, many times just to check it out - you'd have thought they were putting in a new outlet mall or something. But if Ben hadn't invented bifocals I wouldn't be able to look across our grocery store at the labels on the aisles to find a certain product, then once there be able to actually read the ingredients on the label, those written in the right size for a mouse. With the same pair of cute green glasses. Bifocals are just cuter if you get them in a fun color or get animal print on the templates or some such thing. So thanks, Ben, for bifocals.

Here's what Ben had to say about starting the first library:

“I drew up plans for a public library financed by membership fees. …. It took a lot of work but I managed to find 50 people interested in reading and wealthy enough to pay the 40 shilling initiation fee and commit to paying 10 shillings a year thereafter for the next 50 years. Thus our library began with meager funds. … Later reading became fashionable and libraries began to benefit from the donations of wealthy patrons. As the colonies lacked public amusements like theater or horse racing, many people chose to read in their spare time. After a few years, visitors observed that the colonial people were generally more intelligent and more literate than people of the same class in other countries.”

Poor Richard (Ben) also said, “The noblest question in the world is What Good may I do in it?” I'd say he did quite a bit, much more than I realized. Great read, highly recommend it. Believe it or not, I had to put my name on a waiting list for it at our public library - which seems quite appropriate to me.

If you want to know more about him, read the book, or go here for a quick overview. Then read the book.

James 4:13-15 and one Heck of a Snow Storm

2010-02-06T16:16:00.000-05:00

Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that."

We thought we had all sorts of plans today. See that line at the top of the photo. That's the interstate, with N.O. C.A.R.S. on it.

That is a measly ruler - 12" of ruler isn't going to touch this.

After snowing for 24 hours we ended up with 18" of snow. That's a lot of snow.

It IS beautiful. Looks like a winter wonderland out there.

Someone in our family thought they were going to work today.....

and since that certain someone had rotator cuff surgery this past week, guess who's the chauffeur? (For a month but I'm not complaining. I am thinking, just a bit, "What the heck, I already retired! I sleep in every morning! Obviously God isn't done with me yet.)

After shoveling for a good hour I got the car uncovered to see that our hill had not been touched. Even a chauffeur has her limits. No way, Jose. We're not going anywhere. Putting a pot roast in the crockpot and staying inside. Sometimes it's good to be reminded Who is in charge!

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

2010-02-04T11:22:00.001-05:00

I am not great at presentation. Not great at setting a table to entertain, not great at arranging the fireplace mantle, not great at decorating the house for Christmas, and not great at putting together an outfit to go out on the town.

I still remember Don telling me we were to meet his boss for dinner at the country club that night. Not only did I dread going, knowing his boss and his wife didn't really like each other that much, but I had no clue what to wear, and there truly was nothing in my closet that was an appropriate choice. I was hesitant because I had never been inside a country club. I remember I wore a red angora sweater with a black wool skirt, and was hot and itchy all night. My skirt was too narrow and too short so it kept inching up my legs all night long. My overall memory of the evening is a combination of being hot and itchy, flashing people, and trying to have conversation with two people who obviously did not like being together. It was a blast.

That was about 13 years ago and since then I've chipped away at figuring things out - the things that I'm not naturally good at.

So I can now set a table pretty well (I have a cheat sheet in the silverware drawer for where to put all the dishes and silverware), I cut photos out of magazines for ideas to decorate the house. One of my best resources for entertaining and decorating comes from Sandy at Reluctant Entertainer. Go meet her - you'll love her and not only that she'll equip you so that within a short time you could / should be having people over and feeling bit more confident about the whole thing.

I buy books like "How to Not Look Old' and watch funny shows on TV because they truly are tremendously helpful. I have a few outfits that work for more formal occasions. They're at the back of my closet but I can grab one with short notice. None of them cost a fortune; in fact some of them are from consignment stores in our area. I'm all for letting someone else pay too much, wear it a few times, then sell it to me for half or less. That works very well for me.

So keeping in that train of thought - look what I found - shoe perfection!

Clinton and Stacey would say so, I do believe, and at $24.99 I'm pretty darned please. Thank you Payless Shoes. They are just a tish too long, but the sales lady introduced me to something called Heel Grips (For $1.79 a pair) that sticks to the inside of your shoe and takes up that extra space. These pointy, black shoes will be perfect with jeans or a nice pair of slacks.

It's about more than the shoes - it's about evolving, a process I think should never stop.

You can, in fact, teach an old dog new tricks. I'm living proof of that. What could you use a little help with? Cooking, cleaning, organizing, raising children without losing your mind - the list is endless but the resources are too.

Shopping for Shoes...

2010-02-03T09:02:00.009-05:00

is a challenge for me. Not only do I wear a size that doesn't exist, 10 1/2, (trust me on this - they go from 9 to 9 1/2 to 10 to 11, completely skipping me), but with feet that size it's hard to see the reasoning of buying a pointy shoe that makes feet look even longer. Truth be told pointy shoes look to me like add the striped stockings and you have something that looks like the house fell on it.

It's a challenge to find anything. Either the 10's hurt, or the 11's slip and slide. So I just don't buy shoes very much. Or I didn't. I started watching What Not to Wear, and seeing myself much too often, I realized I need to try a bit harder. There ARE a few stores that carry roomy 10's, and not-so-wide 11's - hoorah for Target and Kohl's and Kmart. (And if you happen to be tall and know of others, share the love.)

So I went on a 'hunt for pointy shoes' shopping trip. Everyone knows when a girl goes shoe shopping she needs a partner, to give constructive criticism. So I took someone with me. Here's what we agreed worked.

My shopping partner thought these would be a good basic with jeans. I would have preferred black and a bit more pointedy but this was the best I could find, so far.

We liked these better, being silver and goldish. I'm finding I can wear these a lot. I like the cute little bows and the height of the heel. Being 5'10" I can already tell who needs to have their roots touched up way too often, so I don't need a 3" heel on a shoe. With a husband who is 6'0", and isn't a thing like Tom Cruise, he agrees we should skip the 3" heels.

These were my favorite find of the day. No heel to speak of, but the illusion of one, and a very fun buckle. I have some very cute chocolate brown capris and a dark brown pencil skirt that might work well with these.

My shopping partner chose these. I offered him a latte but he insisted these were the payment he wanted for his shopping advice.Sure sign that he chose well - he wore them around the clock for three days, til they left circles around his ankles and I strongly suggested that we should take them off for a little while, just to let his skin recover. I do have to say I think the co-hosts of WNTW would agree they look marvelous with the outfit. Total cost of our shoe outing - $46.00 - for four pairs of shoes. Thank you, Miss Kmart!

A Month of Love

2010-02-01T00:28:00.004-05:00

I believe it was Augustus Caesar who decided to give January an extra day, extending it to 31. What was that man thinking? When January is finally, finally over it's time to celebrate. Maybe have a 'Good Riddance' party.

Ah February..... such a cute little month. The shortest. Being 5'10" I love anything short. Punxatawney Phil lives not very far north of us, and I've always wanted to be there on February 2, in spite of knowing it's probably a day of revelry brought on by too much to drink. Phil will likely see his shadow but I get to see men standing around in black coats and top hats trying to hold that 50 lb rodent. Smile maker stuff for sure, in spite of the prediction of six more weeks of winter.

February is chock full of good stuff - candy hearts with cute little sayings on them, cookies cut out in heart shapes with pink icing, little kids making valentine's boxes out of a shoebox. Remember those? I wish I still had my valentine from Danny Bacon, who lived up the street on the corner and had strawberry blonde hair that stuck out in too many directions and enough freckles to share with another kid. I thought he was dreamy. Since he was my first kiss I sure do wish I'd saved his valentine.

February is my husband's last month of work. It's our last full month to live here in PA. It's my last full month to play with a certain little 3 year old boy who holds my heart. It's also my last month to enjoy this for awhile -

I bought six bottles of my favorite creamer in late December, before they quit carrying it, but alas I'm down to the last one. It won't be back on the shelves til November. Sad, sad. So I'm going to enjoy every single morning while it lasts in this red 'Love' cup.

A brand new month means I get to flip the calendar and when it's a Susan Branch, well that just makes it more fun! I can't get enough of her. Her handwriting just amazes me. Who writes like that? Interesting that I've noticed lately my handwriting is beginning to look exactly like my mother's. Susan Branch's is prettier, but I think I'll keep mine.

February is the month we're going on a retirement celebration trip to Mexico, so this is on my fridge as a motivation photo - anyone else do that? Not that my abs looked like that even when I was 16 but a goal is a good thing - something to aim for. Maybe I could call the project 'make belly button more shallow' rather than 'develop stomach muscles.'

If February wasn't wonderful enough already, there's the Super Bowl coming up this weekend, and the greatest Survivor ever is starting next week, then the Winter Olympics for two weeks. You can go here to find all sorts of fun things to celebrate in February. Fun stuff like Grapefruit Month, Boost Self-Esteem Month, Bird Feeding Month, Mend a Broken Heart Month, Rescued Rabbit Month, American Heart Association Month (with February 5 being 'Wear Red Day'), Time Management Month, Relationship Wellness Month, Library Lovers Month, Return Shopping Carts Month, and maybe the best - Spunky Old Broads Month!

I need to get busy! Need to Tivo great shows, exercise, eat a grapefruit, be nice to me, feed the birds, hug someone hurting, eat healthy, wear red, keep my calendar, communicate with my hubby, go to the library, take back the cart, send valentines and address them in my mother's handwriting, bake cookies and ice them pink, kiss someone with freckles, and maybe my favorite - find a spare rabbit to rescue.

I'm pretty sure my husband and family would say I'm quite spunky enough, thank you very much! And we don't need a rabbit at this point in our lives, but maybe I could just sprinkle some carrots on the lawn.

What's not to love about February?

This Will Possibly Rock Your Pedicure Life....

2010-01-30T11:30:00.000-05:00

Okay. I'm a little cheap. And I hate to be bored. And I find sitting long enough to have a pedicure a bit boring. And when you add the fact that it's winter and nobody sees anyone's feet I just hate paying for a pedicure right now. But I H.A.T.E. these little elements of torture. Because they are the length of a very small person's feet, and I'm not a small person. These do not fit size 10 1/2 feet, without a lot of pain.

This is the trick! Why on earth I didn't think to do this before?

Any scissors will do but kiwi green is much better in my book. Feel free to disagree.

Look how great this works now!

And really I'd rather spend the money on books. Because I'm cool that way.

P.S. Feel free to notice the fun shade of polish and cute pjs and not the crookedy toes so much.

Blissful Blogs Part 1

2010-01-29T08:00:00.001-05:00

I mentioned here, previously, that I bought the book, Blogging for Bliss by Tara Frey. Wonderful, wonderful book - not only full of great tips and inspiration for freshening up your own blog, but it features a number of wonderful bloggers. I subscribed to a good thirty of those I visited, for various reasons. A few stood out:

Heather Bailey - a fabric designer. If you're into sewing or crafting you'll love her blog. She offers a number of free patterns that print out nicely, on her sidebar. I'm especially in love with the square deal pincushion and bittie booties. She also has tabs that allow you to purchase some of her patterns, worth taking a look at. I'm so tickled to have found this blog; on visiting it I realized I'd sewn one of her quilts, "Fresh Cuts" (it's in Texas, waiting to be finished.)

Jenny Harris' blog, All Sorts is a wonderfully creative place, full of craft ideas, sewing, tutorials, etc. This post, from a year ago, shares her craft room (photo above) with us and it's full of wonderful ideas. The craft room in our home in Texas is just waiting for some splashes of color so this was a great find for me. I don't know that I can talk hubby into this wall color, but I do think the aqua and red look fabulously fun together. And look at that oh so cute ironing board cover -way more fun than my boring beige one. I think this is such a great use of a cabinet that could easily be found in a salvage store. Hmmmmm.

And this one, Raised in Cotton - Carol Spinski - well I'm going to be looking to make new friends when we move, and I'm pretty sure I'd absolutely love Carol in real life. Because she's real. She won't be helping you arrange your craft room but you'll feel better after a visit at her place. So that's it for now - a few for you to check out, browse around, enjoy and hopefully come away inspired like I did. I'll share a few more in a week or so, after you've had time to play at these three. Happy weekend everyone!

Concert Gone Awry

2010-01-28T08:00:00.004-05:00

From One Month to Live,

'When you wake up in the morning, it's vital to start your day right by just talking to God. As Hudson Taylor put it, don't have your concert first and tune your instruments afterward.'

In my book, that's worth remembering!

The Power of Half

2010-01-27T07:00:00.040-05:00

Have you heard of the family who gave away half? Kevin Salwen, a writer and entrepreneur in Atlanta, was driving with his 14 year old daughter. They pulled up between a Mercedes and a person begging for food, and she commented to her father that if the person who owned the car would have settled with a little less car, the homeless person might have a meal.....

Back home, her mother charged her with the ridiculous question, 'what do you want to do, sell our home?' And they did. And they gave away half the money, downsizing to a perfectly fine house with the other half. And now they do weird things like play board games and talk and eat dinner together because they're in that smaller house 'stuck together'. They said they traded 'stuff' for togetherness and connectedness. Mr. Salwen said, 'I can't figure out why everybody wouldn't want that deal.'

The first time I read about this, a week or so ago, it didn't go anywhere beyond that. Then I saw it again, in this morning's paper. When God puts something in front of my face over and over, so that I can't ignore it, our pastor calls it 'God's echos'. He said we tend to make figuring out 'God's will' for our lives complicated; sometimes all we need to do is listen for repeats or echos.

This newspaper article not only shared the story of the house that was sold, it went on to say that the family who bought the larger house pledged $100,000 to charity. Which charity isn't the point; there are plenty of good ones if you look with an eye even half open. This second article challenged US, ME, whoever was reading, by saying this:

'Everyone has too much of something, whether it's time or talent or treasure. Everyone does have their own half, you just have to find it.' So that put me to thinking, what do I have too much of?

After telling Don the story of the Salwens, he agreed and we're going to give away half of our grocery money for the month of February. We need to eat from what's in the freezer and on the shelves because we're moving 1200 miles south soon, and like many Americans we have plenty in the pantry if we're just a little bit creative. Our 'half' will be the grocery money we won't be using; it'll be given to our local food pantry, and I'd probably be ashamed to know how many people it will feed, rather than just the two of us.

1 in 50 children in America are homeless. Read this article if your heart needs a little more nudging to do something. I could be wrong but I'm betting homeless means often going to bed hungry. I can't imagine any of my grandkids going to bed hungry. Giving away half our grocery money won't affect our grandkids, they'll all go to bed full anyway (unless they act up at the dinner table) but it could send someone else's grandchild to bed with a full tummy, rather than an empty one.

Thinking about this 'half' stuff, I could give away half my pajama pants, or sweaters, or shoes. Or half my time for even one day a week volunteering somewhere. I could give away half my money spent on drive through coffee for a month, or movie rental money, or half of my bathroom towels. The list really is endless. If I got really radical, maybe I could give up half my complaining for a day - even that would make our world a better place.

What's your 'half'?

Too Good Not to Share

2010-01-26T08:00:00.001-05:00

It caught my eye as I was walking by the bookstore door. The title was so catching that it, well, it caught me! One Month to Live by Kerry and Chris Shook. I'm still barely into it but there are a few quotes just too good not to share:

'God created us to take risks, in faith, and to conquer the giants that paralyze us with fear.'

'For some of you, the last six months have seemed like the longest six months of your life because you have no energy and no passion for life.' How would you describe your current season of life? Does it feel like you're buried beneath frozen tundra, emotionally hibernating? Or is it more like spring, with signs of new life in view?

'The mundane can become magnificent if we're plugged into each hour and each other.'

And last (for now)...

'If you waste your time, you waste your life.'

I'm telling you - great stuff!

Houses with the Shine Worn Off

2010-01-23T16:16:00.009-05:00

Earlier this week I got an email from a friend, telling me about a website. You could type in childhood addresses and see a current, live photo of the house.

Termites have probably won the battle with a few of the houses I grew up in; some we didn't live in long enough for them to hold more than a shadow of a memory with me, but there are two. I suppose a psychologist could give good reasons why they stand out from all the rest. I just know I loved them - and the years spent there - more than any others. We moved into the first one when I was about 8 or 9, and stayed until I had just joined the ranks of teenager.

Memories that flooded, when the photo showed on the screen, seem as fresh as yesterday. Roller skating on the driveway, with the key looped through a ribbon tied around my neck; catching crawdads in the ditch and building forts from the trees left over after Christmas; learning the sad truth about Santa, dancing all over the couches to Baby Elephant Walk and piano lessons from Mrs. Wiggins who lived down the street and whose little boy died. The ice cream truck that drew us kids to the streets every day, playing music that sounded like what I imagined a circus would. I saw the tree in our front yard - home base for nighttime games of Hide 'n Seek that included the entire neighborhood. As I traveled up and down the street with the cursor I saw the culdesac where Pepi lived. Pepi the big, scary dog that tore my brother's leg open when he tried to ride by with his newspapers strapped to his bike. I still remember that the tear was in the shape of an L. I went from child to young girl in that house, so leaving behind my Barbies and Thumbelina when we moved was probably appropriate, but given the choice I would have kept them.

The website showed the Erwin's house, right across the street.. They were the only family in the neighborhood that had more kids than we did. How did they all fit in that tiny house I didn't know was tiny? Was the neighborhood that shabby when we lived there, or have forty years just worn the shine off everything that's visible to the naked eye? That's a question for adults, not little girls 8 years old.

Pulling up the picture of the house on Emile, my home when I was too young to tie my own shoes, I was surprised to see people. A black man sat on the steps with a little boy, also black. The steps my siblings went up and down to walk to school. The pecan tree I've revered in my memories is gone, replaced by a sad little sapling. As I scrolled up and down the street I saw houses with windows boarded up, yards overgrown with brambles, abandoned cars and other signs that most people who live there have a lot of month left after the paycheck runs out, if there is a paycheck at all.

Our neighborhoods might have been segregated but the schools were not. I still remember several girls in my class, trying to teach me to do double dutch jump rope at recess. I remember their knobby hair, sticking straight out at each side of their heads in fat braids that had many baubles on them. It was a sharp contrast to my yellow curly hair and fair complexion. Not that we cared about the color of our skin - we left such things to adults. I don't know if they never came home with me because we already had so many kids of our own, or that you just didn't do such a thing. If a black family lived on Click Drive I don't remember them. It seems to me when I lived on Emile there were no black families anywhere near us, but then I was little and so was my world.

I looked at the black man sitting on the porch with his little boy, in that worn-out house, in that worn-out neighborhood and I wondered. If I stopped by, walked up those wooden steps and introduced myself, if I told him I'd lived there as a little girl, would that endear me to him, or separate us more? No answers, just deep questions.

Toots and Bedtime Prayers and Such

2010-01-21T22:25:00.000-05:00

Reasons to hang out with a little person:

'Toots' are funny, and frequent.

Listening to their bedtime prayers is priceless: 'Dear God: Thank you for my family and friends, and Momma and Daddy, and Papa and Grammy, and Smokester, even if he's a scoundrel, and Miah and Bull. Please help Momma and Daddy come back soon from their 'sweethearts at the beach' vacation. Amen."

You get to go see the Squeakquel to Alvin and the Chipmunks, even when you're 50+.

You have a refreshed appreciation for your adult children, who are busy raising your grandchildren. Thanks, God for the reminder to express that appreciation.

'Toots' are funny, and frequent. I already said that but they're frequent enough to warrant repeating.

After spending the entire day with them, you, too sleep like a baby.

Rescued / Redeemed

2010-01-20T08:00:00.008-05:00

I love stopping by our local Goodwill, looking for good deals - clothing, housewares, whatever might be recycled and reused.

But this?

And at $2.00? Just knowing how many hours someone put into crocheting these sweet Granny Squares, and seeing the colors she chose - well I'm honored to be the one to rescue it. It's begging for someone to grab it and curl up for a Sunday afternoon nap.

I think she would be pleased, having the work of her hands redeemed, don't you?

Reality TV and Channel Surfing

2010-01-19T08:28:00.003-05:00

One of the fun asides, whenever we spend time with our grown kids, is getting to see what they watch on TV. After the usual shows we share, American Idol, 24, Lost and Survivor, they go off into a world Don and I are oblivious to. Our TV viewing is pretty boring by comparison.

Who knew? There are shows about motorcycles being repaired by family members who yell at each other a lot; babies being born and born and born; men who go out in the wild, on purpose, with nothing much beyond a pocket knife and a flint, knowing ahead of time they'll live off raw, still alive fish and lizards; people who turn in people who don't have a clue what to wear and are encouraged to throw out all their clothes and start over. Families who have as many kids as those giant cartons of eggs!

There are shows about people whose houses have mold growing places beyond the shower curtain and pets who use the entire house as a litter box; wives who agree to care for bratty children, leaving behind their own well-behaved kids; preachers who yell and have crazy hair; people talking about famous people, even though all their lives are the same - make money, spend more, marry, cheat, divorce, repeat.

It's amazing to realize those 200 channels the cable guy told us about are alive and well with regular viewers, and some of the shows are fun, fun! Our all time favorite was about some guy who had a miniature horse as an indoor pet and had white carpet.

I came home from my last trip to Texas with three new shows to record on our Tivo - 'How Clean is Your House?' (not very or really, depending on what you're comparing it to).

'Man 'vs Wild'. I LOVE this show - the host, Bear, fascinates me. Why the participants of Survivor don't watch all his reruns before they head off to the island mystifies me. He clearly shows how to snap the head off a lizard, give it a squeeze then pop it down the hatch. I have to wonder if I'm the only person on the planet who knits while watching.

My new favorite - 'What Not to Wear'. I'm convinced I can clean myself up a bit if I watch enough episodes of this show, and once in awhile I feel good, knowing ahead of time, why something is awful. Right now I'm on a mission for a pair of pointed toe size 11 shoes, knowing ahead of time they will make my feet look like size 12. Even when you're 5'10" with size 11 feet, apparently the rule still stands - look as tall and thin as you can. I wonder if that means I should be wearing v-necks so my already too-skinny neck will look even skinner. I'll have to watch more episodes to find out.

Of all the shows we've watched, the least realistic to me was 'wife swap'. I can believe people will jump out of planes and eat raw lizards, they will scream at each other over motorcycle parts (I find that very believable actually), they will refrain from cleaning their house, treating it as one big potty or ash tray, they will throw away all their clothes to get a card with $5000 wardrobe allowance on it, but nobody, absolutely nobody would leave their well-behaved kids to go spend time with someone else's brats.

When I had finally trained our kids to behave in Walmart so that we could buy school supplies for everyone, or to spend time at their grandparents' home for a week and not kill each other, when we got dinnertime down to an event where nobody cried and/or was sent to bed without eating, well there's just no way I would have agreed to take on teaching that to someone else's kids again.

That's a bit too unrealistic for me.

House on Emile Street

2010-01-17T08:00:00.001-05:00

There's a new little link on my sidebar, 'House on Emile Street'. It's the house I lived in when I was six years old, and for whatever reason it evokes stronger feelings of home to me than any other house I lived in as a kid. A big front porch that swept around, all the way from the front door that had big steps leading up to it, to the kitchen door at the back where the big pecan tree stood. I spent hours playing dolls, protected from the falling rain by that big porch. Hours waiting for my older siblings to come home from school. Drawing hopscotch on the sidewalk when we weren't sprinkling salt on it to melt snails, but that's what you get when you grow up surrounded by four brothers.

If I ever write a book it'll be called 'The House on Emile Street'. For now it's the name of a shop I'm working to open on Etsy. The virtual shelves are empty but hopefully within a month or so they should have a few pretty things to offer - I'm thinking nursing covers, swaddlers, slings and aprons for mommy and me, dish cloths, table runners, potholders and casserole totes, then knitwise I'm leaning towards fun cowls and knit clutches and such. Way more ideas than time to develop them all, but that's half the fun - to make things just for the fun of creative expression and then see if anyone else would like to enjoy them.

My goal right now is to set aside money to cover taking my Mom on a yearly trip. First stop will probably be the Alamo and a ride down the Riverwalk on those guided boats, with a stop somewhere for guacamole and chips and possibly a margarita on the side.

I'll let you know when I'm ready to open the doors - for now it makes me happy just to see the photo of my all time favorite old house sitting there on my sidebar.

This is the Face of One Very Happy Man

2010-01-16T11:32:00.000-05:00

Receiving congratulations from his son, (because of this) right after he walked in the door from work, before we went out to dinner.

That look on his face stayed there all the way through the evening. Right before we went to sleep last night he said, 'five more Saturdays'. Not that he's counting or anything.

Finally the Countdown Begins!

2010-01-15T09:56:00.002-05:00

Don gives notice today. Not going to work anymore. Last day to get up at 5:45 am, grab his lunch box, warm the car and head out the door will be February 26 - that's 43 days from now.

So we're going to dinner tonight to celebrate - a nice, quiet Italian restaurant where they let you test the wine (a treat when you're used to wine from a box), the waiters have white towels draped over their arms and everyone speaks in hushed tones. Perfect for dreaming and planning and looking ahead together.

I'm giving him this little present (found at Bed, Bath and Beyond BTW),

to take to work Monday and put on his desk. A good reminder we're in the countdown mode and that's something to celebrate for sure! He told me last night he cannot really believe most women look forward to their husbands retiring. I assured him that's not the case with me - hurry up, be done - we have things to do, places to go, people to see and countless adventures ahead of us! I want to be sure he knows I can't wait for us to get started together.

Classic Reads and Icicle Impalement

2010-01-14T10:21:00.010-05:00

I've been accused of reading "How to Make a Meatloaf" and that may be because I did in fact read "How to Breastfeed Your Baby" three times, but give me a break - I had three babies. Because I tend to lean towards non-fiction and that can make for a dull, boring person, last year I resolved to lean heavy on fiction. I made it through about 20, mostly 'popular' reads and it was a fun reading year!

This year I'm going with the same resolution (fiction), choosing classic books, with a goal of 12 - one a month - surely The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin counts as much as two of the typical fiction? I went to this website to get a list of the top classic books. There are 108 and I'm happy to say I can check off 22 of them, 1/5 of the way! (I pulled up Random House's 'modern classics' but was pretty turned off when I investigated some of the books - either too futuristic or bordering on obscene - don't get me started on Gravity's Rainbow!)If I'd attended college it's likely more would be checked off this list, but alas that's spilt milk and no use spending time there.

So as soon as I finish People of the Book (leftover from 2009), I'm jumping into my first classic read of 2010. Here's my list for the year, and since January is already half over I better get hopping to it.

Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton (starting with this one - it's 70 pages long)
The Autobiography of Ben Franklin (Ben Franklin)
Daisy Miller, Henry James
Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Howards End, E. M. Forster
The Iliad, Homer
Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott
Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad
My 'Antonia, Willa Cather
Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
Walden, Henry David Thoreau

They're in no order. I'll mix up heavier and lighter, and if I finish more than one a month I can grab a popular read to enjoy too.

What are you reading? Feel free to share non-classics as I'm hoping to squeeze in a few of those too.

BTW, that's the scene outside our window this morning - the front page of the newspaper had a 'chicken little' warning to watch for falling icicles up to four feet long - crazy winter - but that means it's warming up today!

Seeing Winter's Beauty

2010-01-13T09:21:00.004-05:00

We've had snow, in varying amounts, every single day except one since December 24. (Here in Pittsburgh we call it 'Erie spit'.) My hubby makes sure to point this out D.A.I.L.Y. That there's a bit of a scowl on his face makes me think he's not seeing it as a good thing.

You can't put this pillow out in July - a little bit of winter is a good thing, don'tcha' think?

Bird houses look much sweeter with snowy caps.

It makes me smile, looking at this woodpile. Walking by houses and smelling the smoke coming from their chimneys is fabulous, especially since we don't have a fireplace right now. Who doesn't love that smell in January?

I reminded him yesterday, when you have six inches of snow on the ground it's impossible to mow grass. He was able to see the value in that. Maybe, just maybe he'll start noticing how beautiful winter can be. How about you, do you unlove winter's grey days and long for spring, or are you with me, happy there are no weedy flowerbeds to deal with for awhile, so you can stay inside and knit and sew and read and sip hot cocoa (next to a roaring fire if you're especially blessed)?

Leftover Christmas Cookies = Fat, Happy Birds

2010-01-12T12:18:00.007-05:00

Which is much better than fat, happy me :-) We ate a good bit of these, too many actually, so it was time to get them O.U.T. O.F. T.H.E. H.O.U.S.E. I think the birds will especially like the ones with jam in the middle.

There's also a bit of leftover popcorn from the tin we sort of stole from our next door neighbor, but that's another story for another day.

Blissfully Lazy Green Monday

2010-01-11T12:27:00.019-05:00

After nine hours of sleeping in my own little bed, I finally crawled out at NINE FORTY FIVE A.M.!!!! When you sleep in that late you might as well be lazy the entire day, or at least that's my line of reasoning. In my defense, I went to bed at 12:45 a.m. Poor hubby also went to bed at that awful hour and got up at 5:45 a.m., four hours before me. (Note to self - be extra nice to hubby!)

In the spirit of keeping it real, these are the shoes I plan to wear for 90% of my day. The only reason they won't be worn 100% of the day is that I plan to pull on my red Land's End snow boots later, and go build a snowman with my favorite 3 year old boy in the world, Landon. We made a 'build a snowman' date earlier this week on I Chat (!!!!!! wonderful discovery, I Chat !!!!!). Green slippers make me happy. (Note to self - thank hubby again for the green Christmas slippers.)

I probably need to wear real shoes (versus slippers) when we go out to dinner tonight. We always, always have a 'catch up' dinner out when we've been apart for a bit - no TV, no dishes, no distractions. Our 'catch up' dinner usually includes a glass of wine and italian food somewhere that isn't noisy. Maybe I have some green shoes in the closet for our dinner date?

The photo of this cup is a bit blurry, but I went with it, continuing in today's spirit of laziness. Three cups, with peppermint creamer. I bought six containers of it while it's still available in the grocery, and considering the shelf life I'm wondering if I can grab a few more and make it through March without running out before we move south. Green coffee cup makes me very happy too.

This book, Blogging for Bliss by Tara Frey. I saw it on Deb's website and found it at Barnes and Noble this week, in the craft section BTW, not computers, which made me love it immediately. Deb's blog is very appropriately featured in the book. If you haven't read it, do - it'll make you happy - promise.

I spent the entire plane right home last night reading it, underlining, making notes, etc. Buy it on Amazon and save $5.00 over what I happily paid because I had to have it then, for the plane ride home. Continuing with the lazy theme, this morning I treated myself to two solid hours of updating my bloglines with a new section - Blogging for Bliss and subscribing to about twenty of the blogs featured in the book. Beautiful blogs, inspiring blogs, creative blogs, funny blogs. That the book is soft green makes my happy cup overflow.

Blissful Monday everyone, whatever color yours happens to be!

Being Fully Where You Are

2010-01-10T10:44:00.005-05:00

After a week here in Texas with a precious new grandbaby, I fly home today. It's hard to believe that God has so blessed our family, widening our circle, from what we call 'the original five' (and 'fab five' when no one else is listening). We've grown to 13! Remembering days of the five of us sitting around the Thanksgiving table, knowing it should have been more crowded but family was scattered across the country, it's wonderful to know the table will be more crowded in years to come. We might even have enough now to put up that 'kid table' everyone talks about. That would be such fun, and call for a lot of mashed potatoes too!

I've had a few mornings, just me and this little one, sitting in the armchair of the living room, while her parents grabbed another hour or so of desperately needed sleep. Sitting here for over an hour, looking down at her face I've been washed over with many emotions.

How precious is life?! We take babies for granted. We shouldn't. They are a gift, not an automatic one, and how anyone can watch a newborn breathing those tiny, shallow little breaths, eyelashes fluttering and the teensiest smiles fluttering across their face and not see the hand of God is beyond me. God's plan to take nine months to create this new one, bring her into the world with so much labor and angst and effort, and have her be completely, utterly helpless - when a new foal is up running around the pasture in no time - obviously He had something much different and more grand in mind for we who are 'created in His image'. To get to spend a bit of time holding this little one, so fresh and new in the world, is a fleeting treasure.

Being on the sidelines, watching a couple grow into their new role as parents, oh the effort. The exhaustion. The concern. I wonder if that's how God feels about us sometimes, watching as we struggle and stumble along?

I fly home today, to my husband, and another daughter and her little family. Another grandchild who is waiting for me to build snowmen and make snow angels, and read stories and play Hungry Hippos. The mother / grammy in me is torn everytime I leave one to be with another. God, help me to be fully where I am right now. To recognize every day is laced with fleeting moments like these, that won't come again. Don't look back. Don't fret about what's ahead. Just be here, fully, in this moment.

Decisions, Decisions - Which Sewing Machine to Buy?

2010-01-08T13:25:00.000-05:00

The very first thing I purchased, after I graduated from high school, was a brand new Singer sewing machine in the cabinet. The payments were $18 a month and I was terrified to owe someone $300. Back then, in 1973 the Singer Store occupied a space in the mall, with bolts and bolts of fabric. The only credit card I had was Singer.

Call me a domestic N.E.R.D.

I had that machine - the basic straight and zigzag machine - til 1980, when it suffered a serious mishap and needed to be replaced. My husband bought me a new Singer and I used it to make maternity clothes and baby blankets and window treatments and doll clothes and little jackets for my son. It was the basic straight and zigzag, no bells or whistles, but nobody's machine really had much extra back then. My Mom sewed on a Singer so I would never haveconsidered anything else.

I sewed on that machine for about 25 years, til 2005. When I joined a quilting group, never having quilted in my life, I realized my machine sounded like a train coming through Grand Central Station and theirs all sounded whisper quiet. I cashed in the past 20 or so years of non-Valentine Gifts and asked my husband for yet another machine. I went with a Pfaff because almost every single person in the quilting group used them. I'd never heard of them and was shocked that they were so expensive. I traded in my old Singer and a serger that had been little used, and brought home a Pfaff Creative 2025. I don't remember exactly what I paid for it, but it was somewhere between $600 and $800, even with my trade ins. It's a wonderful machine, very precise and a dream to quilt with. I only recently realized I'd been given the wrong manual and have now forked over $55 for the right one! It likely does many functions I wasn't aware of, but without the manual it's hard to say. That machine is tucked away in Texas and I'm looking forward to rediscovering it, finding out what it can do.

In spite of the cost, it was still a very basic Pfaff with no extra features. No fun stitches, no alphabets, etc. With a Pfaff you are paying for the engineering of the machine and I would have had to pay well over $2000 to get one that did much extra.

The next machine I bought was a Janome Jem Gold for $300. My Pfaff was expensive enough, and heavy enough, I didn't want to carry it to and from weekly quilting, so I bought this 'portable' Janome. Janome is known for precision sewing, but this machine did even less than my Pfaff did. That's the one I just sold on Craig's List this past week. The woman who bought it is an accomplished seamstress and quilter and was delighted to buy it. I'm now down to two machines, one in PA and one in TX. One Pfaff, one Brother.

Some of you asked me about various machines so I thought I'd share here what the girls in our family sew on.

My daughter, Sarah sews on a Brother CS60001 (see it here) . She purchased it on the internet and is very, very happy with it. It's computerized and comes with 60 stitches and many extra bells and whistles. It can be purchased now for about $175 and I know she just recently recommended it to someone as a good way to go. She does everything on this one machine - sew and quilt.

About a month ago I bought our other daughter, Leslie a Singer Confidence 7463 (see it here). Loved the name since that was just what she needed, as a new seamstress. I bought it at Joann's (they never honor coupons for machines.) for $199. Singer is a great machine and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them. Leslie's machine is computerized also, offers 30 stitches and was a great choice for her - enough to allow her to be creative with projects without being overwhelmed with too many buttons and settings. There are a number of beautiful stitches that come with that machine, and it sews fabulously. This machine offers plenty of extras without being intimidating.

I wouldn't necessarily go with the least expensive Singer or Brother out there. You tend to have a lot more trouble with tension issues with the least expensive machines. My thought is it would be worth saving up the extra $50 to $75 and getting more machine and less headache. The least expensive machines will also not offer much more than the absolute basics and for that extra $50 to $75 you'll get a machine that should keep you happy for years to come.

I'd never owned a Brother but decided, after Sarah's good experience with one, to check them out. I've sewn for 47 years, and didn't want something I'd outgrow quickly, so I chose the Brother PC 420 PRW. It's a computerized machine, only available online (see it here) . I paid $499 for it, with free shipping. I went through Amazon who went through Allbrands. When I accidentally had it shipped to the wrong address (always fun the week of Christmas!) they were wonderful to deal with over the phone. I've since gone back and spent another $125 to buy three more feet, an extension table and bobbins. One of the feet is a side cutter and I'm thinking that will serve as a serger function for me, without the need for an additional machine. Another is the 1/4" foot, vital to piecing a quilt accurately. It was worth the additional $12. If you aren't interested in quilting, you'd likely be happy with this machine straight out of the box for $499.00

My Brother offers almost 300 stitches, but about 100 of them are three fonts of alphabet - none of which are large enough to do a lot with, but enough to make something pretty. If you're looking for a true embroidery machine this isn't it, but then a true embroidery machine will run you closer to $2000 and up. It also has the needle up / down function, thread cutter, and I'm already in love with it. I spent several hours with some muslin and red thread, making a swatch book of all the stitches it would do - such fun!

If you're in the market for a new machine I'd go to a larger Joann's, that offers a sewing machine section, and take a few for a test drive. Try out more than one brand, and beware of anyone who pushes one brand on you. If that's not possible then I don't hesitate to recommend any of the three I've listed here. I bought my Brother online, untested, but went on the two dozen reviews of it that were listed on Amazon. Whatever machine you choose, be sure to look it up on Amazon and read the reviews before you purchase it. Don't be steered wrong by one negative review - read a dozen of them to get an overall view.

The only other thing to consider - if you are a quilter or quilter wannabe, you might choose one of the Singers or Brothers that has the extended area between the base of the machine and the needle. Any of these other machines will likely make you gnash your teeth if you attempt quilting anything bigger than a twin bed quilt. If I piece anything larger than a twin, I'm going to hire someone to quilt it for me.

And if anyone out there has a different opinion, or machine to recommend, please jump in and let us know!

A Fun Tradition to Celebrate Grandbabies

2010-01-06T07:30:00.000-05:00

I didn't quilt when our first grandchild, Caiden was born. When I started quilting, I began a tradition - one quilt for each grandbaby God blessed us with. Caiden's has retro cowboys with navys and blacks and deep reds and tans. Grayson's ended up being Noah's Ark with the same colors. When Addie came along I pulled out the pink / girly stash I'd purchased for 'our first granddaughter', whoever that might be. It has dragonflies and purses and shoes in pink and black and other fun colors with a soft, luxurious backing.

I'm tickled to say each grandchild is very attached to the quilt their Grammy made. (I'm convinced that backing is what endeared Addie to hers.)

Until recently Landon's quilt (the most recent grandchild til 6 days ago) was in the 'good intentions' pile. I'd purchased the perfect fabrics for him but somewhere in the past two years I lost my love of quilting and gotten too busy selling and buying and moving out of and into houses that there just wasn't time for such things. But I kept the fabric with me, at the condo, just in case I got the urge to get going with it, not really expecting it to happen.

Then Sarah started sewing. And taught herself to quilt. She took such a fun approach to it - learning enough of the rules to keep her honest but not enough to stifle her creative juices. She actually made quilting look fun again. Then Leslie asked me to teach basic sewing to a group of her friends, and I fell in love with sewing all over again. Then Santa brought me a new sewing machine. And God gave us another grandbaby, this time another little girl. So I needed to make another quilt.

But Landon's wasn't done. Three days ago I pulled out the fabrics for his quilt. I can stand to be one quilt behind, but not two! Baby Jae is next in line for her quilt, traditionally to be given at the one year birthday. Right now I have 359 days to finish hers (I'm thinking pink and chocolate brown toile), so I decided to take this week of being home and jump in.

First I cut up the themed panel I'd purchased over two years ago. Rustic is the way to go with Landon since he's bound to spend hours in the woods with his Dad when he grows up.

I already had plenty of good companion fabrics, some of them with trees or pinecones or rocks or sky.

I love the way all the earthy colors look together.

Closeups of the pinecone and tree fabric - aren't they great?
I chose Alex Anderson's Rail Fence pattern - it's nice and simple, easy to finish fast, and I won't be wasting time making stars or such that would never show up anyway in such a busy quilt. It was a good pattern to jump back into quilting with - not too intimidating.

I went with a pieced border too, using the fabrics I'd already cut for the blocks to save me more time. It ended up being a nice size to snuggle up with on the sofa, or an afternoon nap or car ride. All that's left is to back it, quilt it and bind it! I'm confident now I can get it done in January. Another quilt to give to a loved grandchild will be finished :-) I'm thinking this quilt will stay with him all the way through college. Not so sure his wife will let him leave it out in the living room someday, but hopefully by then it'll be worn out enough to have earned a spot at the hunting cabin at least!

So how about you - mamas or grammys - any traditional gifts you make or receive on the birth of a child?

Almost More Fun Than I Could Stand

2010-01-04T08:59:00.001-05:00

You're never too old to spend a day pretending to be a kid again.

Having a kid to spend it with makes it more fun, and the neighbors won't think you're as crazy.

The kid will encourage you to 'do it again' and again and again.

Squirmy dog - optional.

In The Beginning....

2010-01-02T08:48:00.003-05:00

I've only made it absolutely, completely, didn't-skip-a-word through with reading the Bible in it's entirety in a year, twice. I've made good stabs at it, but only twice did I check off every single verse.

This year I'm aiming at it again, and with retirement just around the corner, there's no good reason I shouldn't pull this off. So yesterday, January 1 found me, at the end of the day starting at the beginning, with 364 daily readings ahead of me. This year I've chosen to read through the NIV Archaeological Study Bible - a good companion to my ongoing study plan.

I don't know how many of you have heard of her, but I'm a big fan of Anne Ortlund, the woman who wrote 'Disciplines of the Beautiful Woman', a few other books, and umpteen hymns. I still remember reading in her book that December 31 usually found her feverishly trying to finish reading Revelation before midnight.

"In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light" and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called "night". And there was evening, and there was morning - the first day."

A good way to spend a few minutes of the first day of the year, remembering how it started, and who started it. Then do it the next day and the next and the next.....

Look what the kids gave us!

2010-01-01T09:10:00.001-05:00

The tag on the gift from our kids said it was 'to keep us young' so I was guessing a new coffee pot since we all know caffeine is what keeps us going these days.

But no - it was a...

We were seriously stunned - would never have thought of it.

We had such a blast on Christmas day bowling and playing golf together. I bowled all strikes and spares but haven't given the golf a try yet and am pretty sure how I'm going to do on that one.

It should be a wonderful blessing, when squirmy grandkids come to the lake and God decides to make it rain and we're all inside for several days - a way to burn some steam is a good thing when you have five grandkids! Maybe we can have neighborhood Wii parties?

So thank you to our six kids who went together to give us such a fun gift! We were completely surprised.

Then Leslie told us they had a Wii fit and for just about the cost of one month's membership at the gym we were able to buy the board and software for workouts right here in our living room. Since we'll be moving to Timbuktoo in three months and a gym is 75 minutes away that's going to come in very handy.

Yoga / pilates here I come. BMI - not sure I want to know that yet. Thanks kids for making Christmas so much fun. Don't tell Daddy I bought him the Zelda game as New Year's Eve present - that should keep him busy while I go play with baby Jae!

Kids giving their parents video games for Christmas - how fun is that?!

Technology is such a blessing!

2009-12-30T08:55:00.004-05:00

When our first grandchild was born, 8 1/2 years ago, it took 5 days for us to see a photograph of him. That's when the hospital posted his photo on their website. I still remember seeing it come up - this tiny baby with a blue knitted cap on his head, and the flood of emotions. We didn't get to meet him up close and personal til he was five weeks old, due to September 11 and a son with an emergency hospital stay, so that one photo was manna to my soul for awhile.

Eight years later our fifth grandchild has just arrived one the scene. I get to meet her this coming Sunday, but already I've seen a couple dozen photos of her, with the first one being hours after she was born, after I texted her Daddy (who happened to be a bit busy) and said, 'We need one photo please!' and it came through a cell phone, not even a digital camera.

I've been able to post a few of those photos so Great Aunts and Great Great Grandmothers can check out this newest addition to our family - so great! Not as good as being there and snuggling her myself, but enough that it'll hold me for a few more days anyway. Thank you, brilliant people who came up with all the technology it took to let us check out this beautiful granddaughter, 1200 miles away!

And it's decided - this one photo is my hand's down favorite! Every family can use another girly girl.

Santa Clause flew down the chimney we don't have

2009-12-28T08:49:00.006-05:00

Santa said I'd been a good girl, well good enough, so he was very good to me. He completely understood that I NEEDED a new sewing machine and he even let me pick it out myself, that Santa!It was a lot of fun watching my portable Janome leave our apartment too, tucked under the arm of an accomplished seamstress who found herself without a machine. She was just tickled pink over it and I was tickled to find it a good home. It sold in one day, so thank you Craig's List, again.

I've never had a machine that offered much more than the basic stitches so this one should be a lot of fun. I went with a Brother PC-420 PRW, ordered through Amazon, and purchased through AllBrands. The one sewing project I kept here in PA with me is a two year's over due quilt for Landon. Tradition is that each grandchild gets a quilt on their one year birthday, not that I've ever hit that mark, but a girl can still have goals! So I pulled out the fabrics for Landon's quilt - fun stuff with moose and bear and elk and rocks and trees - very manly stuff for his quilt. My goal is to have it finished before we move in three months, and it'll be a great way to break in my new machine (which happens to have a stippling stitch included!) Maybe, just maybe I can have Jae's one year quilt in time for her first birthday, next Christmas. I thought I'd start with adding our names to our stockings using some of the wool I felted for the sewing classes we just finished. A stocking without a name is just sad, don't you think?

When I asked for machines to be donated by our church we got one. It's over 60 years old, the machine seems to have frozen up, there are no additional feet, no instructions, one bobbin so I gently told the person who donated it I think it's going to take more work than it's worth to get it going. (A similar machine was listed on ebay for $24 so repairs likely wouldn't be smart.) She did not ask me to return it....

But the table? The table is a huge blessing to me because I had nowhere to sew except the kitchen table, which made for a frightful mess and difficulty eating spaghetti and such.

We added a board across the top of the sewing table, rearranged the already over-crowded second bedroom and I am so tickled to have a spot to sew! Makes me feel like Cinderella - "In my own little corner, in my own little chair, I can be whatever I want to be!" (Minus the soot on my face.)

Oh, you wanted, needed to see a few more photos of our newest family member? Absolutely glad to oblige.

I can only imagine what this brand new Daddy is thinking about his brand new baby girl. Probably something like he's going to let her date when she's 25.

The ride home from the hospital. Wonder if they were terrified? I sure was when we brought home the first one, having no idea on God's Green Earth what I was doing at the ripe old age of 20. Thank you, Sarah, for making it and being patient with my ineptness.

Priceless!

Special Christmas Gift

2009-12-25T23:08:00.004-05:00

Look at our special Christmas gift - she arrived this afternoon - Jae Elizabeth Gibson, 8 lb, 14 ounces, 19 3/4 inches long.

Hours old and still a bit worn out from it all.

Mama and baby - precious!

There are her eyes!

Proud Daddy.

Thanking God for another wonderful addition to our family. Good job, Dan and Janae - she's beautiful!

Gotta Love It!

2009-12-24T10:10:00.006-05:00

This past week we spent an evening in Dallas driving around checking out the lights in the ritzy part of town (the part where Jerry Jones lives....) - horse drawn carriages filled with people, bundled up and sipping cocoa - they were as beautiful to see as the lights were. The houses - amazing, truly amazing.

A few samples:

This blurry photo is my attempt at sticking the camera out the window as the carriage was trying to pass us - didn't work - we ended up with a carriage jam. It was fun to sit there and listen to the jingly bells on the horses' reins.

And our hands down favorite:

Merry Christmas everyone!

2009-12-20T07:34:00.000-05:00

Grumpy Old Bear - my first knitted toy from Itty Bitty Nursery by Susan Anderson.

A new grandbaby is just about ready to make her appearance on the scene and this is just for her.

2009-12-18T07:31:00.000-05:00

This is three years ago, his undergraduate. This Friday he's walking again, grabbing a diploma for his MBA.

Bustin' buttons over him. Well done kiddo. xoxoxo

Deep Abiding Love for all Things Coconut

2009-12-15T07:26:00.000-05:00

If you don't share the feeling then move on, but if you do you're gonna love these. They were actually called Apricot Balls but that's just not good enough - I'd call them Apricot Macaroons instead.

2 cups flaked coconut, firmly packed
1 cup dried apricots, chopped
2/3 cup sweetened condensed milk
1/8 tsp salt

Combine ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Mix Well. Shape into 3/4 inch balls. Bake at 325 on parchment paper (dont skip this step or you'll have a sticky mess!) for 15 minutes or til golden. Makes about 4 dozen. (I got three out of it.)

If you're feeling generous you can share them; if not, hide them in your nightstand drawer... They would be pretty in those little holiday-decorated paper cups.

Saturday Stitchers Graduate!

2009-12-13T16:24:00.009-05:00

Here they are, with their final exam, the 'Mama Bag':
Leslie, teacher's pet :-0 She has several handmade Christmas gifts started, and carved out a craft room in part of her basement.

Tami - on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being highest, she told me she loved sewing a '2' about a month ago. Tami had literally never sewn on a button before we started meeting. She has 8 more 'mama bags' cut out, in various sizes to give family members for Christmas. The one on the left is hers to keep; the one on the right is going to a niece with a couple of skeins of yarn and knitting needles. She told me she's now a '12'.

Melissa, one of the sweetest people on the planet. Her great aunt gave her a machine halfway through the class, and in spite of having twin 3 year olds and a baby she has great intentions to continue sewing. She finished her bag in one session, with both of us breaking into a sweat to pull it off.

My bag, with a bit of a variation. I L.O.V.E. it! I'm sad that I forgot to take photos of Carrie, Reba and Abbey. Carrie took the ball and ran with it, going to Goodwill and buying sweaters that she fashioned into snow caps for every member of her family. She also made sets of wool ornaments and several 'Mama Bags'. I'm pretty sure there's no stopping Carrie now that she's started.
My precious thank you gift from the girls - a little Christmas tree for our apartment. It's quite happy sitting on the kitchen counter and I love turning the room lights off, to enjoy the little white lights on it. We'd decided to pass on decorating this year for simplicity's sake, but this little tree is not only a sweet addition, it will be wonderful in my craft room next year. And the next. And the next.

The glass ornaments have sewing machines and needles on them!

Reindeer with pin cushions on their backs.
Garlands of buttons and spools of thread.

The best ornament, a little mitten sewn by each girl in the class. Teaching this class was a gift to me and I can't wait to see how the girls use what they learned. Sweet stuff.

We're talking about meeting in January for a couple of sessions to uncover the mystery of using a pattern (pajama pants), using stitch witchery, gathering and a few more skills that should have them all well on their way to hours of sewing fun. I can't wait.

Popcorn Cake

2009-12-11T07:21:00.006-05:00

I've made popcorn balls, and rice krispy treats but I've never made this: Popcorn cake. It's a bit like the two treats rolled into one and cute as can be.

If you're looking for something to tuck into a Christmas box, or take to a party give this a whirl. I made several, keeping one for us to nibble on during all the Christmas movies.

Popcorn Cake

20 cups popped popcorn (I used two bags of microwave butter version - kettle corn might be fun to use too)
1/2 cup butter or margarine
10 oz. pkg marshmallows - mini or regular
1 cup candy coated chocolate mini baking bits (I used reeces pieces)
1/2 cup peanuts

Place popped corn in large bowl. Melt butter and marshmallows in the top of a double boiler. (I used a microwave). Pour melted mixture over popcorn. Stir in remaining ingredients. Press into a buttered angel food or bundt pan. Cool completely. Invert cake onto a serving plate and remove pan. Makes 12 to 16 servings (or two, depending on who's eating it!)

Patchwork Pin Cushions Aplenty!

2009-12-06T15:48:00.003-05:00

Last Minute Patchwork Gifts - by Joelle Hoverson (owner of Purl SoHo) is a great book! I was so tickled that the local bookstore had one copy on the shelf and I was able to grab it.

My daughter, Sarah gave me a patchwork pin cushion, whipped up using their pattern, a year or so ago and it just makes me happy to have it sitting next to my sewing machine. You can't see it in the photo - I think it's hiding behind my machine.

I love that those little pieces of fabric turn into these happy little circles. I added poly pellets to the bottom of each cushion to give it some weight. I think it'll make them sit more nicely.

They are supposed to take two to four hours each, but when you make them in steps you can whip up four or five in that amount of time! After making about eight of them I'm ready to move onto another project, but they will be such sweet gifts for my Saturday Stitchers when we meet this weekend for the last time. I also made one as a gift to a woman who was gracious to lend us her machine for a solid two months.

I think Joelle would agree an antique button in the middle is a nice touch.

Mama Bags

2009-12-03T12:02:00.014-05:00

Our Saturday Stitchers are still going strong. They've made a Thanksgiving table runner, and two weeks ago they whipped up snow caps from felted wool sweaters. I'm so proud of how they're doing! I keep reminding a few of them that a month or so ago they couldn't thread a needle or sew on a button and look how far they've come.

We've got two sessions left, meeting this Saturday and the next one. When we met for the first time I showed them the project we'd be making last, and when I asked how many of them doubted they could actually do it, the vote was unanimous - no way!

But they can, and I can't wait to meet with them this weekend, and see what their faces look like with a look of accomplishment on them. I sent them to the fabric store with instructions to buy a yard of whatever fabric made them happy, along with a yard of lining, and two feet of ribbon.

The first bag I made, using the directions from Handmade Home by Amanda Blake Soule was just not tall enough. It makes a dandy knitting bag, being heavy on the long side and not so much on height. Perfect for long knitting needles but we all agreed we should alter the pattern for something that would hold books, coupons, a bottle of water, etc. I decided we needed to add 8 inches in height to the pattern in the book.

Here's the one I whipped up this morning. I figured a refresher course would be good for me before I taught them how to make it. I'm glad I did, and I have a very cheery bag to give to someone on my gift list. This one was made from a tablecloth I purchased at Goodwill for $3, and two pillow cases that cost $1 each. There's tons of fabric left from the tablecloth to whip up more bags or whatever else strikes my fancy.
We also thought the bag could use a pocket or two inside.

Everything is better with pockets :-)

I lined the inside of the bag with more of the pillowcase fabric, and the pockets were cut from the tablecloth. One pocket is sewn down the middle for two smaller compartments and I left one larger with room to tuck a book or wallet in it.

And here's what I bought for the bag I'll be sewing alongside the Saturday Stitchers. We figured out putting a table in the middle of the room, with me sewing there, would work well. That way they can gather around all sides and see what's going on. I'm going to take the green and orange and split them 1/3 and 2/3 to make the outside of the bag, and who's it going to?

Me of course - it's the fabric that made me happy.

I'm pretty sure I can make good use of a mama bag too.

Knitting with Funny Faces

2009-12-02T11:16:00.006-05:00

It's been a gift to me, knitting these little purses. What started out as a scarf with a button closure ended up being these, after I ran out of yarn halfway through the scarf. Five little purses for five sweet friends. After almost fourteen years with them, it's my last Christmas here and I wanted to give each of them something special.

Each has a little felted wool pocket inside, seamed into two, to make finding keys and a cell phone easy.

I used two yarns together, and knitted an I-cord for the handles. My MIL's antique buttons added a cute touch to them. Just big enough for a few essentials, and the fact that most of them look like they have a little funny face is icing on the cake.

Good thing I determined to give them all away or I'd be darned tempted to keep a couple for myself. Gift cards to fishing and hunting stores are great, but a few girly gifts are pretty terrific to whip up too.

Delicious, if not Exactly Perfect....

2009-11-30T08:20:00.002-05:00

Thanksgiving morning, a solid tradition regardless of a wide-spread sentiment that it should be abolished - gathering for cinnamon rolls, fruit salad and Macy's Parade. Not that anyone is suggesting canceling the edibles, just the parade, but we held firm. Even if not everyone in attendance paid close attention to every single float and band and dancing act. Their loss!

Some of us didn't see the need for silverware - just dug right in, literally. I do believe he was mining for marischino cherries... The parade was followed by watching the National Dog Show, and of course the Scotty won - the Scotty always wins. I personally would have chosen the Airedale just because I love his funny face so much. In heaven I plan to have at least one airedale.

The boys played while they waited for the bird to be done. (Do you not love the little watch on that chubby arm? He doesn't even care if it works, or if it's right side up, just that he's wearing a watch like his Daddy and Papa.)

The 22 lb turkey took way too long to bake, because a certain person who will remain unnamed did not follow the suggestion on the package; she was stubborn and went ahead and over-stuffed the turkey, so that some of us ended up sitting on the kitchen floor in front of the oven door, watching the pop-up timer that was refusing to budge. We ate jar gravy but the mashed potatoes, all ten lbs of them, were real as rain. Obviously we had our priorities right!

So life in a care-free condo isn't always what it's cracked up to be. Apparently we had a 'rocking throne'. We could have called the landlords and asked that the owners send a plumber, but since Don knew how to fix it and said it would be a fraction of the cost, he took care of it.

Some things in life should not be examined too closely....

Hope your Thanksgiving holiday was as nice as ours. Not perfect but nice all the same.

Miscellaneous Thanksgiving Happies

2009-11-25T08:00:00.002-05:00

A bit of catch up - we saw 2012. Definitely a 'Big Screen' must see - the effects were great. I've also got requests in to see Amelia and Old Dogs sometime during the holidays. We watched the newer version of The Alamo on TV, checked out from the library and that may help make up for the fact that the movie tickets at the theater were $9.75 E.A.C.H.!!!!!! Good night, nurse! It WAS really cool to watch The Alamo only a week after being there.

Sewing classes are going great -

Lisabeth cutting out her table runner. I love that at 50, she decided to learn to sew - you go girl!
Tami, who tends to sew while gnashing teeth. I admire her tenacity. Tami had never threaded a needle or sewn on a button, so she automatically gets an A for attempting it.
Sweet Melissa - truly sweet through and through. Her great aunt was so pleased she decided to learn to sew she gave her a brand new machine!
This one will make you dizzy - a blurred photo of Leslie working on her table runner. It ended up super cute.

Next we felted wool sweaters and jackets to make snow caps. I loved that the washing machine looked like the Red Sea! We made these this past Saturday, and they were such fun - a one day project that taught the girls to make a dart, applique and let their creative juices flow a bit. The caps were so fast to make I whipped one up Sunday morning for a baby shower - took me all of 30 minutes start to finish and cost virtually nothing. I'll be making more of these for sure. We've got two more classes, and our next project is a 'Mama Bag' that will teach the girls to make pleats, line a bag, more topstitching practice, whip up a pocket or two as needed, sew straps - they should be able to use the bag project for many future gifts. I put a notice in our church bulletin asking if anyone had old machines tucked away in closets that could use a new home. Hopefully we'll get one or two to give to the girls who don't own a machine yet. Wouldn't that be great?

Here's a great recipe to use up your leftover turkey. Pumpkin Turkey Chili from allrecipes.com - the woman who cooked it told me about a fabulous website - www.supercook.com - type in the ingredients you have and they come up with a recipe. The pumpkin in the chili was not really discernable but did give it a nice thickness and would also probably make it go further and be a healthier version. It should be perfect for all those football games, and the men don't need to know about the pumpkin.
My car is a cross to bear for my husband - not horrible but not great. I keep telling him it's my traveling purse but it makes him groan to open the doors and peer within. So I bought this at Target this weekend - the Eddie Bauer car organizer. I paid around $10.00 - it has two cooler pouches - for bottles and snacks and they might come in handy on road trips or errands when I want to pack a lunch rather than grab McDonalds...

Did everyone else know that you can't go into the store and pick up a jar of Mentholatum? Not only that, if you go to the pharmacy counter and ask anyone under 40 they probably don't even know what it is and you'll have to spell it for them to look it up in their computer. Bless the heart of the pharmacist at CVS who told me he orders in a jar about once a year, for $4.50 and that it would be in the next day, because Don's mother raised him with it, and you can't even start to tell anybody that the way their mother nursed them is anything less than perfect. Since the ointment has a shelf life of about 25 years I ordered two - that should hold us this side of heaven.

Last, I bought this at our church bookstore this weekend. Listening to it, I found myself driving down the street trying to hold back tears enough to see the cars coming at me in the other lane. Steven Curtis Chapman's new CD about the loss of his daughter - whew - indescribable lyrics worth listening to because we all can use a reminder, now and then, of how fragile life really is. Listen to it here - a great way to spend part of Thanksgiving, remembering all God has given each one of us, and most of those blessings are wound up in those he's put into our lives. Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

It's Beginning to Feel A Lot Like Christmas

2009-11-21T15:30:00.002-05:00

So I'm a purist too, and don't decorate for Christmas til the Thanksgiving carcus is picked clean, but you can't wait that long to get started, can you? If there really were elves, wouldn't that be slick? Then we could all sit around eating sugar cookies and watching 'It's A Wonderful Life'.

But there aren't. (Although Caiden and I agree, hands down, that Elf is our all-time favorite Christmas movie.) I'm still trying to figure out why, during the craziest years, I always, always get a hankering to make most of the gifts we give. Doesn't make a lick of sense, but seems to work that way.

Have we had a crazier year than this one? Well, a few but this one still ranks up there with zooville, so of course I'm in the mood to bake and knit and sew and the list is ridiculously long.

I started knitting a scarf that buttoned, ran out of yarn before it would go halfway around anyone's neck, and out of sheer stubbornness refused to throw it away, so it's going to become a sassy lined clutch! My collection of antique buttons will be just the thing to give them some zing, all five of them, because I'm crazy that way. If I get bored, I'll use this book to whip up a few different ones.

And the file folder you see - first of all life is just too short not to use pretty file folders. Second, it holds my annual Excel Christmas spread sheet. I've used it for years and it never fails me. I just save it on my computer then the next year pull it up, rename it, revise it and I'm off to the races with Christmas plans. Years ago, when the kids were little, I wrote my list in shorthand which bugged the daylights out of all of them, which made it more fun for me. One in awhile, throughout the year, I'd make an entry into the checkbook in shorthand, but we won't talk about that.

If you happen to drop by our place for coffee, don't be expecting to find a place to sit - we're creating! And that little bear who is still missing her legs (and face), oh my goodness am I having fun making her or what? She's for someone super special.

Here are a few great links if you're in the mood to make gifts this year.

This is an adorable felted clutch - you could buy a wool sweater at the second hand shop if you're not a knitter.

Here's a fabulous link for more purses than you can shake a stick at - made up all sorts of ways. I can't wait to try a few.

These two links are for knitted caps from Lion Brand Yarn's website - one is a snowflake and the other is a snowman. I'm pretty sure I have to make one of each, or how cute would it be for all the grandkids to have matching ones? BTW, I signed up for the Lion Brand online newsletter and it's full of all sorts of free patterns you can download.

Notice to all males in the family who might happen to read this blog - not to worry. I'm well aware Bass Pro and Cabelas's gift cards beat the daylights out of anything I might whip up from a skein of yarn.... although if I did, it'd for sure be green, obviously.

Cheering on The Next Generation

2009-11-18T10:04:00.013-05:00

I can't begin to count how many hours Don and I have spent on the sidelines, cheering for kids - basketball, track, football, cheerleading, pompoming (is that a word?), and one soccer game - played by our oldest, Sarah. She was all of 9 years old, and you can see the nervousness on her face as she's biting her lip. Two notable points here - she remembers this day as having chopped off ugly hair and I'm feeling redeemed that she has a pretty braid with a pink bow to make up for the yellow uniform,

and that man in the foreground is her Daddy, sitting on the sidelines, cheering. I'm not sure if that was before or after she scored a goal for the other team. I think Sarah's kids will enjoy seeing their mama in her soccer days.

So about a thousand games later, with our kids grown up, we're starting a new tradition - cheering for grandkids.

Can I tell you how cute I think it is that Grayson's little legs don't even show with the shorts and the knee pads and soccer socks.

Caiden, waiting for his game to start, squeezing in a few more pages of his book. BTW, look at that book! He's 8 years old and reads like a whiz!

Sitting on the sidelines together, this time both of us with grandkids in lap. Indescribable sweetness.

Hugs for the opponent - how cute is that? Or maybe he was pinching him - they are boys after all. And where are that boy's socks - probably still in the dryer if their house is anything like ours was on game day.

Addie helped as line judge from atop her Daddy's shoulders.

Caiden is a bit more exuberant about playing soccer than his little brother. He ran til his face matched his uniform.

Drat that kid's arm in this photo because I could love it off the charts. I still love it quite a bit anyway.

Pep talk from the coach before Caiden takes his turn as goalie.

Good for him - he stopped one!

Last time through the tunnel, after the last game of the first season of soccer. As soon as the game was over Grayson asked me, "Grammy, will you come to more of my games?"You bet we will. We can't wait.

Riveting photos of The Alamo and River Walk

2009-11-17T08:52:00.005-05:00

Here are our photos of the Alamo and the Riverwalk, in San Antonio, Texas.

Anybody want to volunteer to break the news to my husband? When you mess with the settings on the digital camera, and you see 'no image', they mean it.

A Last Blast of Color

2009-11-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

Half a mile from our little condo. I'm thinking the Canadian Geese aren't going anywhere. The leaves however, they're definitely on the way out, but can you even stand how gorgeous fall can be?

The Circus Comes to Town

2009-11-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

It's been a long, long time since I've been to the circus. I'm not completely crazy about them, after having seen someone fall to their death during one of the trapeze acts years ago, but Don loves them enough for the both of us. So when he heard Ringling Brothers was coming to Pittsburgh he used our 3 year old grandson as an excuse to go.

Let me tell you, the circus has changed! It's all high-tech, with light shows, and semi-go-go dancers and revved up motorcycles, and fireworks, etc. but it's still the circus.

The cotton candy is a bit more expensive and they sell it in a funky, funny hat, so nobody sitting in the stands can see over the funky, funny hats on the heads of all the kids who talked their parents / grandparents into buying them bags of spun sugar.

There are still elephants and tigers and clowns and trapeze acts and jugglers and a ringmaster with a long coat and top hat, so overall it was a pretty great circus.

Interesting - the 8 tigers had one trainer; the elephants each had their own....

I loved this lady's pink legs - very cool.

The boys definitely would go back again.

When we returned Landon to his parents, their first words were 'spoiled rotten'... (they said it with a smile on their face.) I can't imagine what they're talking about. We may only get to take him once, and if he absolutely cannot live without a light up sword, then what was I supposed to do?

2009-11-12T08:00:00.000-05:00

Is there anything as sweet as a brand new puppy and a little boy?

I agree.

Sweet Trick or Treaters

2009-11-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

This is a few days late, but relatives south and west will still enjoy seeing the photos:

Dressed and ready to go - Landon's and Z's mommas have been best friends since sixth grade, so it's especially sweet to see their little ones together. (Z's name is Zion but everyone calls her Z and Landon claims she's his best friend.)

They tried the wagon for transportation, but the riders were less than enthusiastic.

Much more fun to run through the leaves down dark streets!

And of course they came home and poured all their loot out on the living room floor, for the adults to rifle through and claim, because they've been raised right!

Winner of Book and Change of Plans

2009-11-07T08:00:00.002-05:00

So Jill, of Find Us Faithful won the book on knitting toys - sounds like she's already a knitter and ready to jump into making gifts for little ones - congrats Jill.

Well, we bailed on the Mexico trip. Thank goodness we had the cash back insurance so we rebooked it for early March, and are instead headed to our house in Texas for a week on the lake. That should be super fun - the lake is full, there are no boxes to unpack, Don has yet to drown a worm in the lake and I imagine he'll enjoy that. I think he's planning to fish with our son Dan right after we land in Texas, stop for a quick shopping trip at Bass Pro and then drive to the lake. You know, men never, ever seem to have enough rubber worms!

I'm planning to pack some yarn and needles to while away hours while he's on the lake fishing and maybe, just maybe trim the front hedges that have been bugging me for a solid year. We've got steaks in the freezer just waiting to grill, there are a couple bottles of good wine in the kitchen, what else do we need?

We're talking about running down to San Antonio and seeing the Alamo for ourselves, and I think we also get to watch our two grandsons play their last soccer game of the season, and squeeze in a family dinner too - so there you go.

Being together - that's what really matters, not where we're at. It's all good! I'll be back in a week with some show and tell photos. xoxo

Hysterical - if you're a bit deranged....

2009-11-05T20:01:00.004-05:00

We booked a romantic, exotic trip for just the two of us about two months ago. Here's where we chose:

We're scheduled to arrive this Sunday mid-day, right about when Hurricane Ida should be 'brushing' Cancun. Crazy, crazy! You should not have to watch the weather channel 48 hours before boarding a flight, trying to decide whether you want to spend money to go somewhere the hotels will have their windows boarded up. What a sense of humor God has! We'll see if we get to pull this off or not. One thing's for sure - if we go ahead, it's bound to be memorable! And likely not so crowded...

A New Thing

2009-11-04T22:30:00.007-05:00

As a knee jerk reaction to a less than lovely day, I deleted my blog. After an encouraging phone call from my daughter, I republished it, making it invitation only for a bit. Then I deleted the BlogHer Ads (sad news for Don because that was my knitting money and since I'm not planning to give up my knitting addiction he's going to have to make up the difference.)

There was a blessing in it all - a reminder of the graciousness of God, that in the midst of a rotten day, he used many of you to send cyber hugs, and requesting permission to continue to read what I write. Many of you that I had no clue ever visited here. And I feel bad not saying yes, so I opened it up again.

But really - why on earth you guys read it, I'm not sure - it's just the everyday stuff of my life. The good and the not so good, the serious and the ridiculous, all the stuff that puzzles me and hurts my heart and makes me wonder why on earth God doesn't just give up on us completely. But then God isn't anything like me. He's made of much more stout stuff. He doesn't do knee jerk stuff when I blow it, thank goodness!

I've tried several times to work on a 'theme' or tone for this blog, but I'm way too easily bored, and too random to pull that off, so it's a jumbled bunch of stuff - the sharing of a love for my husband and family and life itself that I can barely contain, and hopefully a very real look at my life and what it's made up of.

So I'm going to keep on going, with a bit of a change up of content - more family directed, because that's what's really, really, really important to me - my husband and my kids and their spouses and kids. We go fun places and do fun things and eat fattening food, and read good books, and celebrate fun holidays and knit and sew fun stuff, but sometimes less than lovely things happen in our family, we hurt, we fail, and the yuck of life seeps in. So that's what it'll be about, plus those times when I'm way too analytical, trying to figure it all out - what I'm supposed to be doing with this life He's given me, making it count for eternity, and such. And of course, I'm still studying Ancient Egypt (it's fascinating, seriously!) If any of that floats your boat - great!

Enough of that - on a lighter note, here are photos of a recent trip Leslie, Landon and I took to Texas (Janae will be proud of me - there are TWENTY!) - it started with a sleepover at Uncle D's and Aunt Nae-Nae's:

Truth be told I think Uncle D enjoyed making this fort quite a bit. The fact that he'd had two hours of sleep the night before probably came in handy for sleeping on the floor next to a three year old. They were both out cold in a matter of minutes.

Here's baby Jae! Conversation keeps going to who does she look like? Unanimous opinion that she has Dan's lips. Doubt she ends up as quiet as he is, unless she's an atypical female... do we have any quiet females in our family tree?

All the ladies after the sonogram and before we went to chow down at FuddRuckers - great burgers there. I'd never been. BTW Sarah, Dad commented on how skinny you look here :-)

This lovely photo is of our plumbing cleanout - after the main floor potty plunged up in the shower floor - thank you God for rubber gloves. The shower is VERY VERY VERY clean now after I cleaned it for all it was worth. $75 later the home warranty people sent us a plumber and I know a lot more about our plumbing and septic system, and it was probably worth the $75 to have the information. I could have lived without cleaning the shower floor though.

Caiden and I had a sleepover at the lake, and that boy loves board games. We played Dallasopoly and he was tickled to be the banker. We didn't get to finish but he really was winning fair and square when we ran out of time. We'll play again, Caiden, next time you come to see us, and maybe I'll beat you! (Note the jar of candy, and the soda - that's what trips to Grammy's place are all about!)
I think Dan took this photo - a windy day on the lake, and it was full - loved seeing that.

The lake is rockin' and rollin'. Happy, happy news.

Caiden never once argued with me about wearing a life jacket. I promised him the lake was deeper than any of us, even Uncle D. and I didn't want him to drown if he fell in. Sarah and Chris, remember when we went fishing and he threw out his fishing line and fell into the lake at the same time, and Chris had to reach down and grab him by his hair on his head? Me too - I didn't want that to happen, so he wore the life jacket every single time we were near the lake. Safety first - the Gibson motto.
This little guy apparently lives on the sunporch - he turns a mauve color when we scare him, and I tried to pet him but he ran. I'm trying to stretch my comfort zones and lizards are not in it yet. Since he's obviously not leaving I'm going to have to get used to him. Maybe we should name him - any suggestions?

One morning when we were at the lake it was just like a sheet of glass. Gorgeous. Mom, hurry and come see us - we'll have morning coffee there at the picnic table. It's the perfect place to start a day.

Caiden and I managed to kill six fishing rods and reels; I told Papa we've cleaned out all the old, crummy ones and please have Santa bring me a new, pink open reel of my own, with fishing lessons. I obviously need them. I am proud to say Caiden and I put live worms on the hooks and we got one good bite. I was thankful it got away because I had no idea how to get it off the hook if we caught it. Caiden says we're going to write a book about our fishing experience because it was so disastrous. All I know is I'm so, so glad we only used crummy poles and not any of Papa's $100 bait casters!

Two boathouses down we saw probably 50 swallow nests - funny because the guy had put half a dozen fake owls in the rafters to scare them away. I think he needs to find a new tactic.

Caiden and I watched this guy fish for his breakfast by looking through Papa's telescope - very fun. We looked him up in the bird book and learned all about him (a great egret). We saw a great blue heron on the seawall and checked him out too. When they lift their wings and fly off it takes your breath away at how ancient they look. We also watched the people across the lake eat their dinner and watch TV but I explained that was probably spying and we should not do that again.

The photo is blurry but I wanted to prove to Jer that Texas does have fall. We were just a couple of weeks early to see it in all it's glory - next year I'll take photos to post again, not that I expect we'll rival beautiful Pennsylvania, but a lake ringed with reds and golds and yellows will be awfully pretty I expect.

This was on the front door of the shower for Baby Jae - very sweet photos of Dan and Janae when they were little and chubby. I do believe Dan was chubbier.

Sarah and Miss Addie were looking lovely. Too bad you can't see Addie's fire engine red boots - they were S.A.S.S.Y.!

Lots of pretty southern women and one handsome daddy-to-be. Sarah's head is missing. Did you do that on purpose or is it because you're a runt?

Caiden and his beloved Ozma. Love this photo and this little boy!

Caiden let me pick an egg right out of the nest and it was pale blue!

Finally, I know the men want to see my latest knitting project - a red cap with my first cables. I gave it to Leslie to go with her red vest and because she's always cold and she has to stay here in cold PA. She had to pull it down hard on her head to make it fit, so possibly the next one I knit, in my favorite green, should be knit a bit larger?

That's it for now - Landon and I are taking Papa to the Ringling Brothers Circus this Friday night, and we're all so excited. We've already made plans for pink cotton candy -) I'll try to get photos of it up before we head to Mexico on Sunday, and there should also be photos of the first finished project our sewing group is doing.

P.S. Don't forget to leave a comment here if you're interested in the give away (a knitting book). I'll draw a name Saturday afternoon before I leave.

This Chicken Stew Deserves a Name!

2009-11-02T22:58:00.002-05:00

I invented this tonight, from the leftovers of a rotisserie chicken that was hiding in the back of the fridge. It was sooooo good I decided to write down the recipe so I could make it again. Here it is:

No Name Yet Chicken Soup/Stew

½ a rotisserie chicken, shredded (remove skin)

1 regular can diced tomatoes, include juice

1 can sweet corn, drained

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 soup can of water

1 cup cooked wild rice

1 tsp chipotle seasoning

pinch of garlic

pinch of salt

pinch of black pepper

Place all ingredients in crockpot and set on low for 6 hours. The two of us ate this to the last drop, but it could easily be doubled, using the whole rotisserie chicken and it would feed a family of 4 – 6, especially if some were smaller children (who likely eat less than my hungry husband did.)

After we’d each had a hearty bowl, he asked, “Bev, do you want any more?” and immediately proceeded to scrape the last drop of it into his bowl.

I topped mine with salsa; he did not. I’m pretty sure my bowl was better than his. I served it with dinner rolls, one for me, two for him. Yummy! I'd show you a photo, but we ate the evidence.

A Complete Goofball When it Comes to Pronunciation!

2009-11-02T08:00:00.003-05:00

I have a thing with pronouncing words - I can't. Whatever the correct way is, I manage to come up with a variation on many that tend to send my family into fits of laughter. My oldest grandson, Caiden has asked me if I'm going to write a book called, "The Book of Grammy's Mispronounced Words". I could.

So when I was flying home from Texas with my daughter, Leslie a few days ago, she held out her book and showed me a word: macabre. She asked me, how do you pronounce that? We both agreed we knew what it meant but neither of us was sure how to say it.

I gave it a guess. Big surprise, I was completely wrong.

But now that I found this website I'll be doing better at it.

Macabre - phonetically I'd say to pronounce it this way: muh-cob-ruh with the accent on the middle syllable. My guess was mack-a-bray.

Grammy's book of mispronounced words is getting shorter all the time, but I might throw out a zinger now and then, just to make 8 year old Caiden laugh. To use this website, go there, type in a word, any word and choose the option to hear it. Great stuff for those of us who have words flying around in our heads from years of reading books but when we open our mouths it's a bit too entertaining.

It's Been Forever Since I've Given Anything Away!

2009-10-31T16:27:00.004-04:00

and I realized I accidentally ordered two copies of this book: Knitted Toys, 21 easy-to-knit patterns for irresistible soft toys' by Fiona McTague.
Any knitters out there who might like to have it? There's still time for whipping up a few of the projects and tucking them under the tree. Not that I'm mentioning being prepared for Christmas yet. Because it's still a whole 55 days away.

Leave me a comment, with a way to contact you, and I'll draw a name on Saturday, November 7 and pop it in the mail.

PS: I actually got featured in my yarn shoppe's 'finished projects' - a first for me. Hopefully I'll be stopping by soon for more photo shoots of items off the needles and ready to put under the tree...

Super Cute I think!

2009-10-30T20:42:00.003-04:00

Here's what the Saturday Stitchers are going to start work on this Saturday morning - a Family Holiday Table Runner.

I thought I better make up one before class, just to be sure I could do it. The moms attending the class will be taking home white squares of cloth and fabric markers and getting their kids to provide the art work for the center of the table runner. I had to improvise since my 'kids' all have kids of their own now. No little hands to trace, although I am thinking maybe I could get all our grandkids to trace around their hands right onto this - how sweet would that be, with their name and the year written on each little handprint?

My table runner isn't perfect but it's good enough. Hopefully these newbie seamstresses will feel more accomplished after finishing this first project. They'll have learned straight and zig zag seams, turning edges under 1/4", topstitching, turning a project inside out to have nice corners, piecing together a few patches of a quilt, and that's after they learn how to thread their machine and wind a bobbin - quite enough for lesson #1 I think.

P.S. Mine was made up using a tablecloth I found at a garage sale. The girls will be using a mocha muslin for theirs.