A perfectly perfect pet

My sister commented, during our outdoor tea party at cousins camp this weekend, on how well behaved the Hub's pretty blonde lab was. The yard, after all, is her domain. Kind of.
We've had such extreme weather of late that she's spent a good deal of time indoors. Neither I nor the baby daughter nor the grandbaby can stand to have her look at us with her big ole sad eyes their the back door and not admit her over the protests of the Hub.
He was going to make a duck dog out of her. Instead, she is the perpetual playmate of the grandbaby, her friends and cousins. She will allow snap barrettes to be clipped onto her ears and not infrequently, to be ridden like a small pony. She's about the size of one.
She has a deep, serious bark but that's about as deep and serious as she gets. She's still not gotten over having an extra large litter of extra large puppies. She still gives to the hip that has ailed her since she carried that load.
She still lounges upon the bench under a big tree in the backyard, when she is not in the house of scratching her back on the fence or begging with her eyes at the back door to come in.
And yes, she is fairly well behaved.
And no, she will not likely ever make a duck dog.
She is too timid and too much a pet. But for out purposes, she is a pretty perfect one.

Cousins camp? I' m calling it a sucess!

There were several spills, a couple of melt downs. The baby almost ate a hand full of dog food he snagged from their bowl. An elbow scrape (child) and a glue incident (adult) but every one survived and even had fun.
It's been more than a dozen years since our last cousins camp.
This was a whole new crew.
A much younger one.
Designing crests and monograms was put of the question.
Embellished initials  and picture frames seemed simple enough.
There weren't that simple.
I underestimated. I was overly ambitious.
Still, we managed the manners and etiquette lesson albeit a brief one.
It was nice enough that we had snacks outside.
Aunt Kitty brought cream horns and cheese bread.
I should have made a cheese ball and homemade limeade but I had the Hub pick them up at the market while I over did the decorations.
Some of the more ocd oriented "helpers" wanted to direct the frames. They wanted all bugs, or all sea animals or all Disney princess, not a child selected mix thereof. I am not naming names but suffice to say that particular helper was tasked elsewhere.
We  realized, too late, that we should have taken a group photo before we began instead of after we finished as some tired little campers are pictured in tears in the official photos.
One of them cried because her mother would not let her hold a piece of the pink duct tape she used on her  letter "L" embellished with buttons. The other cried because she did.
We'll know better next time. There WILL be a next time. There has to be. Now it's a family tradition.

we'll all have tea

 

I am still working on the blog post for cousins camp. In the meantime, I am sharing one more sneak peak post. The darlings above insisted on pouring their own tea. My middle sister, who is called Kitty by one of them and Nana by the other, was the gracious assistant for those endeavors.
While she did that, my other sister, the baby of our family, was getting hugs and kisses from her grandbaby, our Pierce who turned one last week.

cousins

 

A sneak peek of the fun we had at Cousins Camp. Details to follow!

wrapping paper tradition

Today I am making gift tags for Christmas.
The bad news is that my vacation time is winding down. The good news is I have gotten a lot of the things I wanted to do done. I am feeling pretty good about the projects I've completed. Making gift tags using the Avery site templates would be a small thing to some people but not to me. To me, it is huge. I feel so scientific!
Before I am done, I plan to make tags for friends and family... for gifts we mail and gifts we deliver ourselves.
Who I will not need to make gift tags for is my children. Nor my husband. Nor the grandbaby. No tags are required for their gifts. They will be able to pick them out pretty much on sight.
That is because I follow my Mother-in-law's lead and select a single print for each member of the family to wrap their gifts in.
She started this with my nephews, her two oldest grandsons, before my husband and I had children. I thought it was a charming tradition then and I think so now.
I loved watching them figure would which paper was theirs and then collect the packages from under the tree into piles all their own. They would arrange them and stack them and shake them.
They would return again and again during the days immediately before we opened gifts on Christmas eve to build small towers with patterned wrapped boxes.
She selected wrap surrounding whatever was going on in the child's life at that particular time. I recall Sesame Street character paper and Disney. Then there were comic book characters and finally sports motifs.
I follow the same plan.
For my oldest daughter, I have used pooh, purple, angels and the nativity. She would recognize anything with those as hers immediately.
For my son,  nutcrackers has been the most often used print ever since he outgrew cartoon characters and super heroes.
The baby daughter's paper usually has involved her activities: dance and tennis and piano and cheerleading. Last Christmas, with her in last year law school, I went with a book print. Other times, her "signature" has carried the day.
For the hub it's been Coca Cola Santas, alligators and pelicans (he's from Louisiana) or bulldogs (the mascot from his high school and college alma maters.)
The grandbaby, there's been kitchens and puppies and Disney princesses. I found a print with crayons for her kindergarten year Christmas last December.
As much fun as it is, and always has been for the kiddos, I admit, it is fun for me to select a new pattern every year. I just hope  my mother-in-law has as much fun when she was following her own tradition.

Some more of my favorite things

 

Posting some more favorites. I don't know why they are my favorites other than that  I like them. A lot.
 I don't know why I am posting them other than it makes me happy.
Very happy.
The end.

princess dance

 

Sometimes, if you go shopping with your Auntie and your Granddaddy and come home with a Disney princess dress, you have to put it right on. And then, once your have it on, you have to put on a crown. And then you have to do a princess dance. You have to spin and twirl  until you are dizzy.  You can hum the music yourself or you can get your grandmother to hum it for you.
It's just what you have to do when you have a new princess dress.

favorite scenes from the family reunion road trip

 

 

 

the windsor ruins

I've wanted to see the Windsor Ruins, near Port Gibson, Mississippi for a while now. Ever since  I heard the story of how Mark Twain once climbed up on the roof of the massive house when he was a guest there to watch the traffic on the Mississippi River, I've wanted to see what remains of it.

It was built in 1860 and survived the Civil War having served as a hospital for soldiers on both sides at various points.
It survived in tact, only to be leveled by fire some thirty years later when a houseguest left his cigar burning on the third floor balcony. There are no photographs of the house but there is a sketch made by a Civil War soldier depicting its grand proportions.
The former sight of much activity, it is eerily quiet now there off the Natchez Trace among gnarled trees. The massive pillars that supported the five story house are some ornate railing are all that remain.
They stand like giants, there, in the thick woods. Around them, kudzu grows thick. The signs that give direction to them are simple. There is no visitors center or attendant or gatehouse. There is no charge to get in or guest book to sign. One just pulls onto a dirt road, turns a couple of corners and there they are; these beautiful massive pillars with Corinthian caps.
The house is said to have been one of the grandest in the South. The remains that give testament to its grandeur would bear that out.
I was not disappointed. My husband was likewise impressed and happy that we'd taken the back roads out of Natchez and up to Vicksburg.

an angelic rescue

My sweet friend Linda Bailey is one of the reasons I have a blog.  Her blog inspires me to write every time I read it.
When she inboxed me on Facebook last weekend and asked me about the story of an angelic rescue I experienced some years back. When I agreed to retell the story, she suggested it be on my blog. Given her excellent instincts about such things, here goes:
I was headed down to Fort Worth, Texas with a suburban full of Girl Scouts. The national Girl Scout conference was in town and these were participants.
As we were driving along that early foggy morning, one of the girls said she smelled smoke. Then another. They stopped singing rounds and everyone sniffed the air and agreed: they definitely smelled smoke.
Then I noticed smoke coming from under the hood, definitely smoke. I exited and pulled into a convenience store. I stopped right up by the gas pump. The mention of that will probably get me stricken from the rolls of former Girl Scout leaders still in good standing. It was dumb; very dumb.
I told the girls to wait right there (also dumb) and I ran into the store in search of help or a fire extinguisher or both. The attendant looked to be about 12; way younger than any of the young women in my charge. As I turned to walk out of the store, wondering what to do next it hit me that I needed to get my charges out of that vehicle and get it away from the gas pumps.
It was still foggy and I squinted  around through the fog looking for someone who might know what to do.
A man appeared. Disheveled, barefoot, no fire extinguisher. He did not speak to me or anyone else. He walked to the front of my car and raised the hood. Flames shot out. I crawled back into the driver's seat. obviously having a dumb, dumb day. He was there, under the hood, several long minutes.
As I write this, I cannot remember for the life of me what he did there. I am not sure at all. All I know is that at some point he shut the hood, nodded to me and walked away on bare feet into the fog and disappeared.
I started the engine and pulled the car in the direction he had gone. But he had gone. I waited for smoke to barrel from under the hood again but it did not. I rolled down the window and inquired whether anyone saw where "that barefoot guy" went. No one saw anyone without shoes. It's too cold for that, someone said.
We slowly made out way on to Fort Worth and the conference, without incident. I called my husband and asked what to do. He came down with a friend, inspected the engine but saw nothing out of the ordinary. "We'll put it in the shop on Monday and see what's up," he told me. 
There were no problems on the trip home. There were no problems detected at the shop a few days later. There was no explanation. There still is not. Not as far as the car and what happened.
About the barefoot guy, I needed no explanation. He was an angel. I am certain of it. No one involved tried to change my mind about that but they couldn't have if they'd tried. I knew it them. I know it now. Some things even a dummy knows. When you've been rescued by an angel is one of them.

nighty night

 

Almost as soon as we got our bags unloaded from our road trip, we tore off to the grandbaby's house to see her.Neither I nor the Hub/Granddaddy like going too long without seeing her. Since she lives close by, we don't have to.
She showed us her first batch of first grader work. She did a couple of cartwheels. We played some memory match game. She was getting ready for bathtime when we left. As we were leaving, I noticed a pile of stuffed animals covered with a doll blanket and asked her about it. She said they were all tucked in for the night.
Soon she would be, too. And us, as well. And I, for one, slept better having seen her before I turned in for the night; however tired I was from travel.

some of my favorite folk

 

It's been too long since I've seen some of the faces pictured above (my own not included!)
Though each of them is related to me by marriage rather than by blood, you couldn't tell that by the way I feel about them. We had a grand time catching up on things with some of them and with some of them getting to know them in the first place.
Getting to meet some of the kiddos and new babies in the family was especially.special.

initials etched on the window

 

At one  point during out stay at Dunleith, my eldest nephew called me to one of the front windows. He had something really cool to show me, he said.
And so it was. There, etched on the thick glass were initials, the story of which I am happy to retell here. It seems the daughters of the house each, upon becoming engaged, scratched their initials in the glass using the diamonds in their engagement rings.
They remain now, as part of the charming history of this charming house. I am glad to have been told the story and shown the initials.
I tried to capture a good picture of them by focusing them against the white column outside. Hopefully you can make out their form.

with the fam in natchez

It is hot in Natchez in August, still some of us didn't want to leave without one last spin through town. There is no better way to spin than on a horse driven carriage. Spinning around town with some of my favorite folks makes it all the better.
Not much has changed since my last spin by carriage.
Stately Stanton Hall looks just the same, as always. The same as when I was in Natchez last March, the same as when I was in Natchez fifteen and  twenty and twenty five years ago.
The Eola, where we stayed on our first night in Natchez this trip looked pretty much the same as when we've stayed there trips before, years ago.
As we passed by the house once owned by the actor George Hamilton, once painted pink and then purple it was impossible not to notice it is now a sedate cream. One of my nephews had been to a wedding there recently.
We caught sight of a cat crawling onto the porch of the bed and breakfast near the depot owned by a classmate of the same nephew.
The churches, the old jail, the homes, so much the same that I was cheered and comforted despite the uncomfortable heat. We cooled off with tall yellow glasses of iced drinks at Fat Mama's. Some of our party ate Tamales. I settled for Chips, Salsa and Fire and Ice pickles.
It was a fun, however short and hot, time with our folks.

dunleith

I was quite impressed when I learned that my youngest Louisiana nephew was helping with the refurbishing of the antebellum home in Natchez, Mississippi considered by many to be the most impressive.  He had told my sisters and I about the work when we met him for the day in St. Francisville and attended the Audubon Pilgrimage. There he was greeted by name by people all over the place. He was known in the public and private homes on tour. He shrugged it off when I inquired.
Finally, when I pressed him, he said "they are just people I have worked with."
 

Fast forward to last weekend. I had promised the self same nephew that I would attend a family reunion he was coordinating  without fail. The reunion was to be held at Dunleith, the big project he'd mentioned when I'd seen him last Spring. I was going back to Natchez for the second time this year, which did not surprise me, given that I'd rung the bell at Rosalie in March.
What did surprise me, and pleasantly so, was that we had the run of the house. The whole thing, at our disposal, for the reunion. We visited in the parlors, had pizza at midnight in the dining room. From the top floor where the guest rooms have sloped ceilings to the grand foyer and staircases, we were in residence in this grand place, at least for the weekend. What I am trying to say here, is that the nephew hit it out of the park on this deal.




From the excellent family lunch in the Castle Restaurant (located in the old carriage house) to an early dinner downstairs in the pub where I sampled gouda cheese fries, to the rockers on the porches, the whole thing was splendid.
He'd "put us" across from his favorite room on the second floor. I was able to ooh and ahh at the restorative work on the window treatments, the period appropriate grand furnishings, the new custom carpeting.
The staff addressed him as "Mr. Cole" and it kinda of made me want to, also. Marching in tall cotton comes to mind, here. We were. Did I mention it was all just splendid?!

last day of summer

 

It took her all summer long. The grandbaby has tried and tried and practiced and practiced and finally, on the last day of summer she did it! She blew a bubble. It was a big deal around our house.
School starts tomorrow. The grandbaby is spending her last day of summer vacation with me.
She has spent part of the day getting ready for a tea party picnic for when her Granddad gets home. She has the table all set and made invitations. She loves to use  my scrapbooking tools, especially the tape gun. Those invitations gave her a perfect excuse. She also punched out some leaf stems and used stickers that had been saved for something special.

Before she went home, she filled out some First grade cards against which we will anchor pictures of her on her first day. It's been a very good summer. I hate to see it come to a close but at least we saw it out together and with Emma flair.

road tripping

 

High points on the trip to and from Natchez, Mississippi for a family reunion:
ms. packman video arcade game at a restaurant along the way, a baby chess pie, new flip flops (though not as cool as the gladiator sandals of my nephew!) straw hats, learning I can get my new favorite magazine on my Ipad, a Texas watermelon from a road side stand, corn nuts and some embroidery. What a great trip!