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.