two oh one three

Twenty thirteen was not a bad year.
Here are some of the highlights:

time with family at a reunion in Natchez
our annual sisters trip (the second in a row and my second trip to Natchez for the year.

Finally attending the Audubon Pilgrimage in St. Francisville, Louisiana  and having my sweet nephew Cole meet us there.

Attending the new Disney movie "Frozen" with my grandbaby and her adorable cousin from the other side of the family. Attending "The Nutcracker" ballet and sitting with my grandbaby's other grandmother, Mimi.

Attending the second Hobbit movie. "The Desolation of Smaug" with more of my favorite people.

I got a manicure and pedicure with a good friend.  (This was after she sang in a Christmas program preceded by a childrens performance and flanked by one of the best Christmas sermons I've ever heard.)
The drive to those performances was amazing.
Those are just the highlights. So am I worried about the New Year not living up to its predecessor?! Not at all!
Two thousand and fourteen is going to be an exemplary year. I just know it.  Just you wait and see!

holiday mani/pedi

There isn't much I love better than a manicure. Unless it's a pedicure. It's a very relaxing yet energizing thing to do. When a dear friend suggested we somehow fit in both before Christmas Eve it didn't take a whole lot of convincing. We had time to chat a while during the pedicures. And we shopped a bit after the manicures. It was one of the best things I decided to do, last minute, in a while!

What to do on a Saturday morning

I woke up early. It was especially early for a Saturday. The grandbaby spent the night and at some point had crowded the Hub onto the couch. I woke to her beside me trying to get her Tinkerbell music box to open without using the key. The good/bad news is that the music in the box works quite well. A little too well for my taste on a Saturday morning.She has the best/worst bed head on the planet (with the possible exception of her two paternal aunts.) Taming it this morning was hard word but the Hub, who she calls "Granddad" took the task head on (pun intended. I helped dress her and then he drove her to art class. He had her there by 9.
When he returned home with the mail, I sorted through it, had a biscuit with the scuppernog jelly we got as a Christmas gift and I crawled back into bed. That is where I am right now. I've sorted some of our Christmas pictures for uploading. I've done a bit of reading. Now I am blogging. I might try to catch a couple more winks before it is all said and done.
I feel a bit guilty about this because the Hub is will be attending basketball practice with the Grandbaby after he picks her up from art. Then he will drop her off to her mother at dance class. I will likely still be in my pajamas(and maybe even asleep) when he gets back home and wonders what we are doing for lunch.
I could get up and whip up a pizza from the kit on the counter (another Christmas gift.)
I could use some of the Christmas ham to make sandwiches. I could even,  gasp, bathe and dress and go to the market to get ingredients to make soup or chili since it is a bit chilly outside.
I could take down the tree and undeck the halls. But usually I wait until after  epiphany. I could finish up some projects I did not complete in time for Christmas.
I might need to rest and reflect on these options.
Perhaps I could ponder. Or mull over them.
yes, that sounds about right...

the story of gwendolyn

 

The doll to the right in the photo above is named Gwendolyn. She was the first thing I bought for Christmas this year. I had big plans for her. Some of them even came to fruition.
She was to be given to my grandniece Lilliann, who I call Buttons. I bought the doll because she looks so much (to me) like the darling little girl she was purchased for. I intended that she be presented to her recipient together with a tote bag full of office supplies.
You see, Lilliann, aka Buttons, loved to go to "work" with her Nana, who is my sister. My other sister, who is called Gogo (we really like unusual nick/names in my family) also works in the same place. They work for my brother-in-law, who we call "Kelbo." (told ya we like unusual nicknames.)
Kelbo says that our nicknames remind him of dog names, but I digress. This is about Gwendolyn.
I chose the name Gwendolyn for the doll because Buttons' other maternal great-aunt loves the name. She wanted to be named Gwendolyn when she was little. She probably still does. When we played dress up or school, she always wanted to be called Gwendolyn. She does not have a grandbaby girl (though she does have a darling grandbaby boy.) But I digress again.
I found some soft, butter-yellow chamois fabric that goes well with Gwendolyn's hair. I intended to embroider "Lilliann/Buttons" on one side of the bag and "Gwendolyn" on the other.
I bought lined yellow pads in regular and mini sizes. Matching writing instruments aka pens, in regular and doll sized versions, some mini and regular markers, etc.
I even found matching "Issues" notebooks. Issues notebooks are what we called the old school speckled primers I give to my eldest daughter to record the things she needs to discuss with me and//or her dad. But I digress, yet again.
Thanksgiving weekend, just as I was finishing up all the embroidery projects I waited to late to start on, my embroidery machine broke. The Hub took it in to the shop to see if there was some quick fix that would get me back to gift making. The fix was not that hard, they told him, but it would require a new part.
The next day, more bad news. The part was not to be had until after New Year's. So much for Gwendolyn's bag being monogrammed.
I determined to put a note inside the package with the fabric and the office supplies explaining that I would personalize the bag as soon as my embroidery machine was up and running again. Gwendolyn, I planned to tied on top, in lieu of a bow.
The good news is, Gwendolyn sits beside me even as I right this. The bad news (worse even than the embroidery machine issue) is that I cannot find the box containing the office supplies.
Somewhere in the glorious mess that is Christmas morning, there is a box with regular and doll sized pens and paper wrapped in a lovely, butter-yellow chamois fabric. But I cannot find them. I have looked eveywhere I can think to look.
I cannot bring myself to give the doll to Buttons without the accessories. I have improvised with a toy that I hope she will like. It is the duplicate of a gift bought for my own Granddaughter  from her wish list in duplicate. I am so glad we never got it back to the store for a refund or exchange.
I hope Buttons will be happy with her gift. Since it is a thing longed for by her cousin, I expect she will like it. Perhaps she will be happier with it than she would have been with the Gwendolyn doll and accessories. I am just happy that she has a birthday in April. Maybe I can find the rest of the Gwendolyn's gear and my embroidery machine will be fixed by then!

I 

Some Christmas celebration essentials

 

Its so funny to me how some things just catch on with my kiddos. Taken Martinelli's sparkling apple cider. I do not recall when we first cracked open a bottle but for some years now, they have declared it to be a Christmas must have. They will ask, at some point, whether I have found any. It is not always so easy to find. 

They want to sip it while they watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.  They want it to be part of either a Christmas tea party, lunch or dinner, or all of the above.

Then, there's New Year's. Both at midnight and with black eyed peas the next day, they would have cider.

We clove oranges and sometimes apples and slice them to serve in the cider. This year we used clementines. The grandbaby likes cherry juice and sometimes cherries and grenadine in hers, as she says it reminds her of gingerale and that's how she likes to drink gingerale. (She doesn't know to call that particular beverage a Shirley Temple or even who Shirley Temple is, though that is about to change.)

White cheese ball puffs, marketed as "Snow Balls" are a recent big hit. The baby daughter said she "needed
 these to make merry. This means, to snack on while we watch old home movies or Christmas movies.

Then there are the cheese apples. They'll require a blog post all of their own.

Thundered Up

My sister and brother-in-law took their kids and grandkids skiing the week before Christmas. They left their courtsisde seats to the Thunder v. the Chicago Bulls with me, the Hub, the baby sister and her Hub.I am not much of a basketball fan.

 Though in high school I cheered at basketball games, I relied on the head cheerleader to call the cheers. The cheers and chants, I knew. The intricacies of the game... not so much.

None of my kids played basketball. We are not so tall, you see. The Hub played some but at a different school than the one I cheered at so I didn't learn from observing or having discussion with him.

I should have talked to someone who could have given me some idea about what I would be watching.

The seats were amazing. We sat right behind the players and two rows of guys in suits with clipboards and/or folders who turned out to be coaches.

The baby sister said we would not be eating or drinking anything because we would likely be on ESPN and be seen by our other sister, the seat owner/ticket bestower and we might not look dignified if captured doing one or the other. 

I really wanted to be on the kiss cam, though the baby sister said that would just be weird. I wasn't going to kiss her. I was going to blow a kiss to the other sister and brother-in-law, the seat owner/bestowers who may or may not have been watching from their ski resort condo in Colorado.

The food we were served before the game was likewise excellent. Yet, I could not keep from wishing I had a basket of the chicken strips I saw at a kiosk coming into the arena. It being less than a week before Christmas, I wanted to wear a Thunder Santa hat like the one my Thunder Sister and her Thunder fan family had on in their Christmas card photo. We search for one, but alas, there was none to be had. One of the information guys who my little sister befriended (or who befriended her, perhaps) said they'd been sold out "for the last four games."

I did find a Rumble hat in one of the gift shops and tried it on but the baby sister said absolutely I could not wear it on the floor in our sisters seats. Something was said about shaming her. I would never.

Rumble, the Thunder's mascot, it turns out, was my favorite. Unless you count the cool little referee who I mistakenly called an umpire. At first I thought he was a player since he had a number on his back. He about got KO'd in the first half and when I wondered aloud about him returning to the game I was told by the baby sister, who thinks she knows everything, that he was not a player. 

I will admit that though she bossed(es) me around, spending time with her was the best part of the whole evening.  The other sister posted that we were not supposed to sit together, rather with our husbands. She thought we might get into trouble much the same as we used to in church, which is why Mother sat the middle/other sister between us.

We really didn't though. Not too much, anyway. 

We were mindful that any antics might be captured on live tv.

We resisted many urges and I don't mean just chicken strips and wearing a Rumble hat out into the arena.

But I dare not disclose more here. 

The little sister said there are things that happen at the Thunder games that should stay at the Thunder games.

Christmas cards through the years

 

spinning in circles

 

Vertigo

An artic blast has made an early December stop in our area. Last night, in anticipation of its arrival, I gathered up gloves and scarves and boots so I would not be scrambling for them this morning.
Things should have gone smoothly as organized as I was for today. I did not count on, though, on an early December (re)visit from vertigo.
A few years back I had the real live genuine swine flu. It settled in my left ear.
I will stop here and admit that there was a time when I would hear one of my elders reference something "settling" somewhere and would roll my eyes. But I now know that it really can happen. And it happened to me. Now, periodically, I have vertigo.
My daughter calls me Lucille 2, after the character played by Liza Minelli on "Arrested Development." While I wish I had Liza Minelli's legs, I do not want her character's vertigo. Alas, I have it.
It is especially bad when my allergies  flair up. It is also bad when it is really cold. Today it is really cold.
So here is how it happened. I bend over to zip my warm boots and our of nowhere it strikes. I should have anticipated it as soon as I heard the weather forecast.
The good news: I caught myself before I fell to the floor. It was ugly but there was no one around to see it but the dogs, and they aren't talking. The bad news, if I had fallen to the floor, there would have been no one to help me up. Also, I am not sure I could have lived with the shame of it if I'd broken something.

a perfect thanksgiving setting

My sister and brother in law hosted Thanksgiving dinner for the fam at their lake house.
It has to be the most perfect autumn holiday house in the world.

At least for me it is.
I decided when I was still in elementary school that this particular spot was one of the prettiest places on earth. The picture to the left is what I remember looking at when I made this particular decision.

Why I was at this particular lake at this particular time,  I am not sure.

I remember there being other little girls, there , all of us dressed up. There were growns up there, too.

I rather think it was a women's church group and that I was with my grandmother; as I was as often as I could manage it.

I remember warm apple cider with red hots.

I remember looking across the lake at the fall leaves and thinking that it was the prettiest place I had maybe ever seen.

Now I grew up in a house that sat up on a hill over looking a forest my sisters and I considered enchanted.

The walks we took  and the time we spent playing there seemed only to confirm this opinion.
The flora and fauna there were incredible to my little mind.

Looking out the great window of our house toward the woods during the months of autumn was an incredible sight. I say that to say I was used to pretty sights, especially in the fall.

Still the lake site impressed me enough that I remember it 40 years later.
This is why I feel especially blessed to be able to spend Thanksgiving there with my family.
A blessed setting. A blessed people. A blessed holiday.

thanksgiving at aunt karen's lake

In my last blog I referred to our Thanksgiving setting as blessed. I used the same description of my family and the good time had. Below you will see why and you can also see that I/we have much to be thankful for!

 

Thanksgiving tea

 

"Why does there have to be a tea party for every holiday," asked my baby daughter on the day after Thanksgiving. Look above at the smiles on the faces of her sister and niece and you will have my answer. It makes them happy. It is unnecessary and nonessential and wonderful. That is why.

Gathering Memories

A goodly number of my favorite memories are set during  this time of year.

That may be because this is when I've been able spend the most time with my family.
There was a time, when we lived several states away, when we made an annual pilgrimage at Thanksgiving to visit my folks.

In travel to and from visits with them I have seen some of the prettiest sights.

One year, on our way up the Indian Nation Turnpike a flock of turkeys flew across the road in front of us. It set the stage for our Thanksgiving. On the way home that same trip,  it began to snow the biggest flakes I've ever seen in just about that same spot. The stage was set again, we decided. This time it was for Christmas.

Last week there was a hawk sitting in the same spot as I drove to and from work. It made me think immediately of my mother-in-law, who died in 2002 and whom I still miss very much, When my eldest child was born and was in the  NICU the drives to and from the hospital tended to be pretty quiet.

Perhaps to break the silence and certainly to offer some comfort to a young, scared new mother she would say, "look for the hawk." She owned that most days she was able to spot a hawk near the same stretch of road either coming or going. Sometimes, she said, she spotted the hawk, which she was certain was the exact same one at each spotting, both coming and going. Those days, she told me, were when she was able to muster the most courage.

Last week my baby daughter, who is the only other granddaughter of my inlaws received an award. At the luncheon we attended on her behalf, buttermilk pie was served for desert. I immediately thought, again, of my mother-in-law. She would have much preferred  blackberries to the raspberries garnishing the pie, still, having just told my daughter how proud her paternal grandparents would be of her, that pie harkened me back to happy times with them.
For me, it really is the small things that seem to bring me the most pleasure. Snow and birds and pie, among them. They are big deals to my mind and my memory. 

Ready for Thanksgiving Day

We are ready for Thanksgiving day at our house. the baby daughter, the grandbaby and I used  the leftovers from last week's law school chili contest décor to decorate the dining table
. we rolled out what was a forest floor last weekend and added the pilgrim and native american couples we've used for many years. We set the table with the few pieces of friendly village china. A few of the pieces belonged to my mother-in-law. The bulk of it, though, belongs to the baby daughter herself.
While we were at it, we set a tea table for the girls' annual Thanksgiving tea and a brunch tray for our use Thanksgiving morning as we watch the Macy's parade.
A couple of side tables are on the ready in case someone wants to snuggle up with a book and a cup of tea or cider.
My goal is to be able to sit back and enjoy the holiday and my family. So far, so good.

this week...

is one of my favorite weeks of the year. Tomorrow morning there will be a luncheon and bazaar at a local museum where I can pick up goodies for the holidays. This weekend, I will set the tables and decorate the house for Thanksgiving. Depending upon what I find at the Bazaar, I may or may not be baking. It is supposed to be cold enough to freeze the tail on a brass monkey so we can light a fire in the fireplace.
It is a week of anticipation. Of preparation. But also, always, a week of tranquility. A calm before the storm of holiday events and commitments. The pace and tone will not be so placid again until January.
I am planning to soak it in. To enjoy it. To revel in it, if I can. It will fly, as time seems to these days, but I will savor the moments so much as it is possible for me to.

the facebook numbers game

I just wasn't comfortable playing the  numbers game that  has been go around Facebook. Still, I felt kind of weird about my non-participation. I decided that if I post my answers here and provided the link to those who would care that I participated, albeit less publicly, I might be ok.
So here they are: seven things people might not know about me:

1. I am still using a pen my husband gave me in 1998

2.I am shorter than both of my two younger sisters 

3. I have three first cousins and two second cousins born the same calendar year as I. Together, as children, we were forces to be reckoned with

4.  I was born in the middle of a late February snowstorm

5. I am not quite five feet tall

6. I hate raw onions

7.  I don't watch scary movies.

Of course, readers of this blog know some of these things because I have blogged about them but this was about the best I could come up with. What can I say except my life is pretty much an open book, er, blog.

chili cook off

 

The Hub and I attended an extremely fun event this weekend. It was a chili cook off at our daughter's school.
We attended to help set up the table our little student child was responsible for.
We also met some of friends for the first time, some of the school faculty,  and oh, enjoyed sampling the chili.
There were a good many varieties.
"Our" table, feature chili make with steak instead of ground beef. It was delicious.
The Hub's favorite recipe was a chili made with poblano and other kinds of hot peppers.
There was fried chili: a chili made with hot wing sauce encased in corn bread.
I was chili-ed out by the end of the evening but seriously enjoyed the event.
I hope I get invited back next year.

for the love of apples

 

I went to the local market the other day to get apples.
The grandbaby had requested some on her last visit and  I wanted to accommodate her request so I set out to pick some up.
Trouble is, I had difficulty picking them out.
Which kind to get?
Granny Smiths? Gala apples?  Honeycrisps?  Braeburns?  Fiji? Pink Lady?
I went with one of each.
 Then I decided to make a game of it.
We did a taste test with  them to decide which was our favorite.
We like apples so the choice was not easy.
Here are the results.
For eating: the pink lady apples and the honeycrisp tied.
We decided we like granny smith's better for cooking than snacking because of their tartness.
The gala and fuju apples were ok, but just that.
Maybe, we decided, with some caramel we would like them better.
Which means another trip to the market!

Tooth Fairy Time

I got the call this weekend we'd been waiting on. The grandbaby finally lost her first tooth. It had been loose for a while. It became so loose before it finally came out that she despaired of eating an apple. She was terribly afraid she would swallow the tooth and thereby lose the economic advantages thereof.
The Hub did not have to ask twice if I wanted to run around the corner to see little snaggle tooth. I grabbed up the fairy house she made for the tooth fairy to rest in if she was tired while making her rounds and took it to her.
The permanent replacement has already grown in behind the baby tooth so there is no gap. Her former straight row of little teeth is offset, as the new one is set back beyond the baby teeth not yet ready to yield. Thus things are rather "snaggly" when  she smiles.
Her looks will change forever now. I am a little sad about that. She has long since lost the babyishness her face held for the longest time. This will finish off any lingering vestiges of her pretty little baby face.
Not that I don't think she grows ever prettier with time.

By any other name

My baby daughter recently told me she has always liked her name. That made me very happy.
She is named for my paternal great grandmother. I chose her name and her sister's very carefully since I have never liked my own.
Their brother's name was chosen for me, essentially, as he is the only male bearing the surname of his father's family left. My husband's aunt stressed to me how important it was to follow a long family tradition in naming a boy baby.
The girls I got to name without restriction other than a couple of directives from their Dad. He wanted them to be named what they are to be called. No nicknames. That was based on his own experience. And he wanted the spelling of their names to be ordinary. It seems his sister could never get a souvenir at Stuckey's because of the unusual spelling of her name.
I could (and did) work with those and have been as happy my children's names as I have been unhappy with my own. Then my mother told me in conversation what she almost named me. The story goes that she went to see the movie "Giant" not long before I was born and fell in love with the name of the Texas ranch the Elizabeth Taylor/Rock Hudson characters lived on.
"Reatta?!" I said. "You were going to name me 'Reatta?'"
Then she rocked my world even further by telling me she thought the middle name "Renee" would've gone perfectly with the name "Reatta."
Forget my former complaints. I now know things could have been a lot worse for me name wise.
My sister's name, by the way, is Karen Kay. I picked that name, too,  when I was three.
It came from a little  book I loved. If my sister has an issue with her name she should consider that the age of her namer. Or ask mother what she had in mind!

pretty little peacock

 Even if, under the most recent of my blog posts, you don't agree that the Hub and I make one of the cutest Frank and Bride couples ever... you must agree that the darling little peacock to the right is one of the cutest you've seen.
I would think this even if she were not my grandbaby. (Though, that status may cause me to be a bit biased.)

frank and bride

 

For several years I've wanted to be the bride of Frankenstein for Halloween. I don't remember exactly when or why this particular desire was born. I have worked hard to convenience the Hub that he could be my perfect Frankenstein. Last Halloween, attending a community event where there was costume judging for children, adults and groups, I determined that the next time Halloween rolled around, we were going to be contestants in the couples division.
I intended to go in it to win it.  I think we would have, too, had circumstances beyond my control not prevent us from attending the event. We still managed to be in costume and ready to accompany our grandbaby on her trek down the street to a neighborhood carnival. We still managed to have a lot of fun. I was finally the bride of Frankenstein for Halloween and the Hub did make, in my opinion, the perfect Frank.
On that, you can judge for yourself!

weather predicting by persimmon

I've heard stories, since I was a child, about how the weather can be predicted by moss on trees, animals coats, the migratory pattern of birds. I've also read about such things. I used to read the Farmer's Almanac with great interest and some of those methods were often featured somewhere therein.
What I had not heard, at least until last Saturday, is that weather can be predicted by looking at seeds.
My brother-in-law was telling my grandbaby and his about how there are deer eating permissions under a tree near the house most mornings when he awakes.
When he mentioned permissions, my sister recalled reading something about persimmon seeds being predictors in the fall of the weather for the upcoming winter months.
She read to us from a search on her phone that one of three shapes can be distinguished inside the seed of a persimmon.
The shape of a knife is supposed to mean the weather will be sharp and icy.
The shape of a spoon is supposed to mean much snow to scoop.
The shape of a fork is supposed to mean mild or temperate weather.
The little grand girls, hers and mine, were sent out to gather persimmons from under the breakfast tree of the deer. They came back in with their little hands full and we began the tedious process of splitting the persimmons open in search of cutlery shapes. 
With the first one, we all agreed that we had the shape of a knife. Unhappy with the result (we love snow but do not like ice) we kept searching hoping for a difference result.
My mom arrived and weighed in on the shapes at some point in the evening. She had to acknowledge the shape we found in the seed was that of a knife. Every seed told the same story. If the legend is true, we've got a sharp, icy winter ahead. I personally hope its not true.  But at least we are forewarned and have a chance to prepare just in case.

 

cousins in the leaves

We made an impromptu visit to my sister's house on Saturday.  My grandbaby, upon hearing that her cousin Lilliann had stayed with her Nana while the her parents took her brother to a ballgame, immediately insisted we "go to Kitty's." Kitty is what my grandbaby calls my sister. Nana is what my sister's  grandchildren call her.  I call her Karen the good, for she truly is as good a sister as anyone could ask for.
We had a good time on our little visit. Lilliann and her Nana were making popcorn balls when we arrived. The girls hit the yard before they were even cool to play in the leaves and ride on Lilliann's ATV.
They had the most fun playing in a sparse covering leaves on the rolling lawn out back. My brother-in-law keeps the lawn in pristine condition but Saturday's wind sent leaves before even he could get at them with a leaf rake.

The rolled down the sloping hills, chasing each other. They spied a trio of deer near the edge of the yard. The deer feed upon the fallen fruit of the persimmon trees near the great windows of the siting room off the master bedroom.
When the  girls ran in to tell their grandfathers about the deer, they were told that they have breakfast under the trees nearby most mornings. In the telling, my sister suddenly remembered something she'd heard recently about persimmons.
That led to another source of fun on this already fun day, as well as another blog worthy activity!

sleeping beauty

I have a laminated copy of my grandbaby's weekly schedule on my fridge.  Just looking at it makes me tired. I probably am going to get in trouble for saying this, but she does too much. Between dance and tumbling and school events, there is not time sometimes, to ride her bike or watch the clouds of just be a kid. Not that she complains. This statement is from her grandmother's perspective.
She gets cranky, when she overly tired, much like her grandmother does. Friday night, I left with her from the high school football game as soon as we saw her sister perform at halftime with the Pom Squad.
The picture to the left was taken just minutes after we go home. Granted she is just getting over some flu bug, but the child was exhausted. She spent the night and we let her sleep until she was ready to get up.  Her granddaddy commented that even taking the  time change into account (we fell back this weekend) she slept almost twelve hours.
She was much more congenial when she awoke than when she went to sleep.

 

halloween naps, costumes, carnivals and candy

 I was all excited about participating in an event called "Trick or Treat on Main Street" put on by the merchants in the small town where we live. Last year's inaugural event surpassed everyone's expectations in terms of participation. It was a lot of fun. I expected this year's to be even more so.
I was all prepared to go when an emergency issue detained me at work. By the time I was able to leave for the event, my grandbaby was already home, out of her costume.
Having just recovered from some bad bug, she claimed need of a Halloween nap before trick or treating on her own street. She didn't last long on main street, I was told, and from the looks of her on my arrival, I thought she might forego the next phase of things altogether.
I was able to exact a smile from her and then another but she did not budge from the sofa, even when her granddad arrived with hotdogs and frito chili pies.

It wasn't until the first ring of the doorbell that she decided this was no time to rest.
Little costumed folk came to the door earlier this year than I ever remember. This may be because once they finished on main street they went immediately to residential areas to continue on in their candy quests. The grandbaby has always loved handing out candy at the door. Eventually, she put on her costume and moved out to the porch to pass out treats from a big orange bowl.
Finally, we were able to coax her down the street, to a neighborhood party and stops at a few houses.
 
It turned out, in the end, to be one of the more fun Halloweens we've celebrated with her. The weather was beautiful. The baby daughter had come home from law school and was able to participate in our activities.


 

a fall fairy house

The grandbaby's first loose tooth has been something of a preoccupation with her. Add to that her recent admiration of fairies, most especially Tinkerbell and the tooth fairy, and you have precisely the reason that I spent time last weekend working on a fairy house.
The tooth fairy will be coming soon. My grandbaby reasons that the tooth fairy visit might be at my house if that is where that little lower cuspid, now barely dangling, ultimately comes loose. The grandbaby further reasons that the tooth fairy  will probably need a place to rest after she drops off picks up the tooth and exchanges it for whatever the going rate is for (grand)baby teeth these days.
Thus, it became necessary to construct a fairy house. We gathered up things we found in and around the house and yard. A plastic container,  pine cones, leaves, berries, ribbon were used on the outside. Twigs and other bits of wood became furniture and fixtures inside.
We were both please with the results, as was the Grandbaby's sleepover company who also helped. That tooth is still hanging on, but when it comes loose, we have the fairy rest station ready.

Postscript: I did a search for the going rate for baby teeth  and found the an interesting article on Huffington Post. Here's the link:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/30/tooth-fairy-inflation_n_3840954.html

girls of fall

 

Sunday was a particularly beautiful fall day.  We walked to and from church. We had pot roast before everyone begin to disperse to start the new week and I snapped some pictures of my oldest daughter and my grandbaby on Sunday and included the pumpkins we decorated and scarecrow we put up with them.
 

pumpkin carving

 

When I think of carving pumpkins I think of using an old paring knife to cut triangles for eyes and a nose and jagged teeth. The were no patterns or templates that I recall. It was a messy project deemed well worth the trouble by my sisters and me because of the fun we had doing it. Even digging the messy "guts" of the pumpkin out of the shell we found fun.
At time house last Friday night, things were a bit more complicated and technical. First there were searches on the computer and a look-see at "pin boards." A pumpkin carving kit was available but was ultimately forsaken by the Hub's drill.  The good news is they moved on out to the patio before they began drill/carving their pumpkins. By then they had abandoned both old school methods and the newer ones. They had drawn and redraw patterns and shapes. 
The final products are fantastic. The one with round holes resembles a lovely luminaire. The other has two letters "X" for eyes and a appears to either have on braces.
Now comes the bad news: there were chips and chunks of pumpkin all over the place. The clean up took a while. Worse news still: there are no surviving seeds to roast.
Next fall, I plan to advocate early for the old school manner of making carving pumpkins to make jack o'lanterns.

hold your horses

 

My little grand girl is growing up too fast for me.
I have enjoyed (almost) every minute I've ever spent with her. I am thankful that there have been so many of them.
I recently heard someone say that when we are young time crawls. As we get older, it walks and then runs. As we grow older still, it flies. That is where I am.
Like my grandbaby, time goes too fast for me these days. She crawled and walked all too soon. She has always run fast and it seems to me she runs faster all the time.
Never am I more aware of how fast she and time are growing than when I compare pictures of her at various times and in various seasons to that of other times and seasons. The pictures above make the point. That's her granddad walking beside her on a pony at our local Sorghum Day festival. The pictures were taken almost exactly five years apart.
The chubby cheeked little baby in the top row is now the lanky little first grader in the bottom three.
And it has happened too fast.

lip gloss

 

There is really not a lot of write about here. The grandbaby loves lip gloss. She carries several tubes of it around with her. She applies is often. It makes her happy. It makes me happy to see her happy. The end.

barking water brew

 

We believe our friends the Tuckers made the best brisket sandwiches and lemonade in the whole wide world.  Every fall on Sorghum Day, their booth against the Seminole Nation Museum is one of our first stops.
This year, the mint in the lemonade was an especially big hit with the Grandbaby. The Barking Waters are just north and a little east of the festival site where the lemonade that carries their name is sold.
This year we missed riding the train down to the Barking Waters, munching on sorghum coated popcorn. What we did not miss were those sandwiches and that lemonade. We had our fill of those and all our smiles were a lot  like the one on the left.

scenes from sorghum day

 

This being my third post about the Sorghum Festival in as many days, you may pick up on the fact that it is something my family and I like.  My eldest child says it is her third favorite day of the year: right behind her birthday and Christmas.
It is one of my favorite days, too. Here's why:
the weather is usually perfect
it is like a combination family/class reunion/pilgrimage (people with even loose ties to the community make the annual jaunt to attend the event)
the glee and delight exhibited when the aforementioned folk run into each other
the craft booths and craft demonstrations
the various food booths (especially the roasted corn)
the sorghum mules, harnessed to the sorghum making apparatus
the live music


 

decked out for fall

 

I make myself wait until the first of October to put fall decorations out.  Up until then I use apples and back-to-school Septemberish  accents on shelves and coffee tables. I add some ornamental grasses and mums along but as soon as it is October, though, I am all about fall.
If there is anything prettier than pumpkins and gourds, leaves and hedge apples with cattails and  persimmons and cabbage, kale and pansies, I don't know what it is.
 

Chloe

Once again, it was the baby daughter who caused a dog to come live at our house. She was in high school and had gone to the mall to Christmas shop with a friend. They were selling puppies in the parking lot. Guess what we she got her Daddy for Christmas that year?!
She tied a ribbon around the puppy's neck and came carrying up the driveway. I am not sure who was prouder, she or her Dad.
He loves to duck hunt. She was determine that the puppy was going to be a duck dog. As far as I can recall, the only duck that dog every had in its mouth was a toy one a friend of mine bought her to play with.  She was a pet, through and through; like our dogs always tend to be.
She grew up to be sweet natured and beautiful.
She was always playful.  With everyone, but most especially her master and the one who gave her to him. They taught her to retrieve. She loved to swim and we took her to the lake often. But she never became the duck dog they intended. Tragedy struck first.

If you read my post about the outside dog named Disney, the real Dalmatian, then you know that after she was run over I said I hoped I never went through something like that again.
Well we did. With Chloe. And it was just as awful.
We were having a family dinner. Everyone came in through the back gate. The last to arrive were my sister and brother-in-law. He came through first and left the gate ajar thinking she was right behind him. Before she entered, she remembered something she needed to bring in from her car and turned back to get it. Chloe, seeing a chance to run amuck bolted out the gate before anyone could stop her.
She ran immediately across the street. The Hub and son ran after her. Sonny was out front, being the younger and faster of the two. The Hub was calling to her and before Sonny could yell "No, Dad, don't call her, there's a car coming" she turned to run back across and to her master. The timing could not have been worse. Both the Hub and Sonny say they still have bad dreams about what happened next.
They loaded her up and took her to our vet who tried to save her but without success. They brought her back home and we buried her behind the shed during the time we intended to be celebrating.
We all felt terrible but no one more than my sister and brother-in-law.
Some folks still believe she'd have made a fabulous gun dog.  The blonde lab who replaced her is gun shy. She came to us shy and nothing we've done has completely cured that. She, like my original pet, Shorty, is scared even of thunder.
We still miss our sweet Chloe, as we miss Disney. I, as much as anyone else.
I guess that makes it hard for anyone to believe I am not a dog lover, as I have so often declared.

bangs or no bang; that is the question

 

I have worn bangs most of my life. As the picture on the left shows, from the time I was very young;  I've had them. There have been times I've tried something different. Most recently, I started growing them out after I decided I was too old for them. The selfie on the right illustrates that point.
Tomorrow I have a hair appointment. Between now and then I must decide whether I continue on without bangs or go back to them.
The truth is, it feels rather odd not to have them. While it is nice not to have my sister calling me "Buster Brown" I still miss the bangs.
They grow too fast. I have been known to cut them myself with my manicure scissors. It makes the people at my office really nervous when I do that. But as you can tell from the younger of the two pictures above, I am not afraid of crooked bangs. I expect I cut them myself just before the baby picture was taken. Surely no family member or beautician did that to me.
I know that this is not all that important a decision in the grand scheme of things.
The government is officially shut down.
There is so much confusion and certainty in our country and in the world of late that I am almost ashamed to admit that I really am struggling to decide on what to do with my hair.
At least that decision is one I can make myself and bear the ultimate responsibility for.
Too bad the same is not true of some of the rest of what is going on these days.
 

Love and Marriage

 

I found this quote recently from Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. I wanted to put it into my blog so that some day, when the time is right, I can share it with my daughter. There is so much truth here, as always there seems to be when C.S. Lewis' recorded his thoughts and ideas.

Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also many things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called “being in love” usually does not last. If the old fairy-tale ending “They lived happily ever after” is taken to mean “They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married,” then it says what probably was never was or ever could be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were. Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years? What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships? But, of course, ceasing to be “in love” need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense — love as distinct from “being in love” is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both parents ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be “in love” with someone else. “Being in love” first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.

Cowgirl

The ride cost just two quarters. I dug one from my purse and her Grandad had another in his pocket.  At first she wasn't sure she was going to enjoy it. Her expression was pensive.  The horse bucked and pitched as the William Tell overture played.  Eventually a smile broke out on her face. As she adjusted to the reins and the ride and began to giggle. By the end of the ride, she was holding on with one hand. And then there was the fist pump. Not coached or urged at all by spectator grandparents.  She didn't asked to ride a second time. We could have gotten change. Maybe another time and another horse. She came to enjoy this ride but fist pump aside, by the end she'd had enough.

the last weekend of september

 

Perfect weather
cousins playing outside
pretending to be flower fairies
playing with matchbox cars
fall decorations
salsa making
and best of all
going to church to
worship

walking home from church

The church we attend is just up the street. The walk is not long... unless a little girl needs to stop and chase butterflies. Then it might take a but longer than usual...

 

 

Decorating for Fall

This weekend we pulled out our fall decorations and began to arrange foliage and berries and pumpkins and gourds, real and imitation, together into vases and baskets and place them throughout the house in celebration of the coming of fall!

 

 

some cousins and a puppy

 

The first Spring and Summer after we moved from Texas to Oklahoma my baby daughter and her cousin, Kassidy were inseparable.  They played with the puppy, rode on his four wheeler, built forts in the woods. Within days of her residence she was covered with poison ivy.
He was just next door so their mutual fun was not too far away. They swam several times a day, ran and played the way his mother and I did when we were kids. Two other cousins from not too far away joined the fun as often as it could be managed. I remember it as an idyllic summer for them. I hope they remember it that way, too.