Memorial Day

We have been having some pretty wet and wild weather around here of late. Flooding is still going on. New snow in the mountains, and lower, will bring more run off.

It is a good water year.

But with the flooding come some unexpected plan changes. One of those things that had to be rethought was the rendezvous.

It was moved to a location where it was much easier access for city folk like myself to reach. I fear the weather kept a lot of people away. What with winds reaching 90 miles an hour laying tents and tepee's flat faster than they could be layed down to help prevent damage.

It went on regardless and a good time was had



Made me think about how much I like my modern conveniences I can tell you!
I admit I would like to get a Capote, with a hood. I think I could get some good use out of that year round.
I came home and looked around and thought of those who did live through those kinds of days, with no hot bath and warm bed waiting at the end of the four days.
The ones who did lay down their lives, so that I can live and raise my family in a free country.
I thought of the ones who taught me not only how to live through hard things, but to do it with some form of grace in the doing.
I thought of my tiny Grand son who gave more than anyone I have ever known. My parents and grand parents. And those before them. And found myself wondering...
How did they do it?!
Then I remembered the things we are going through right now. The things I see my children and grand children being strong through and I wonder...
How do they do it?!
I don't need a rendezvous, or storms or a special day, to think about all those who mean so much to me.
You see, I think of them every day.

Ruts & Routines

January is usually the coldest month of the year in my neck of the woods. So it's the month of doing things inside to stay as warm as possible. I try to finish up old projects and line up new ones to start.



I'm doing a little embroidery while I gear up for a few bigger projects this year.

I'm also very deep in my rut of routines in January. I'm a typical Pisces in every other way, but for these darn things.

I have a love / hate relationship with ruts, but can enjoy a good routine.

I love that laundry day is usually Monday, I hate when it takes until Wednesday to get it done. I look forward to the clothesline being used!

I love that there is a rhythm to doing dishes by hand, an order to the chaos, I hate drying them. The dish washer with just two at home, isn't used unless we have company. It just takes to long to fill it :/

I love eating, I hate exercising...can't I just wake up thin again?

So while I grapple with these, and many other dilemma's, with the accompanying order and routines, I am shoving some ruts aside finding a sunny window much more appealing, gathering a book or some embroidery to disappear from my life for an hour, or more if I'm lucky...then it's back to my rut...with frequent bursts of pandemonium sprinkled liberally throughout the day's.

Today, I believe I shall begin to replace one morning rut, for a new routine that involves a morning cup of yoga...

Here's wishing us luck on breaking out of some ruts this year and finding more enjoyable routines and may God bless.

Resolutions vs. Dreaming

Well last night when I went to bed it was Twenty~Ten, this morning when I woke up it is Twenty~Levin...Just like that another year was done and gone and a new one here.



Some interesting things happened last year. Interesting because they were new to me and I got the opportunity to learn how to live with them and through them...it is purely hindsight that allows me to say they were interesting.

 In my learning I found that life, my life, needs to be lived, not just trudged through daily, but to be enjoyed to its fullest. I don't want to just go through the motions anymore. So I figure that if God can do this, with a few minutes in the morning sky...

I think he can, and will, help me with my dreams. Some I have had tucked away for years, some I've just about given up on, some are brand spanky new...and some are as of yet undiscovered by me.


I've heard life described as 'our own personal mountain's to climb', complete with all the terrain you would find on a mountain.

 The first time I remember really traipsing around a mountain was at midnight, in October, with my not yet husband as my guide to the top. Where we were meeting a group of people and there were tents and food and best of all a fire.
It took us five hours to reach our destination-all of it with only a small flash light to use, sometimes, and the rest was with the light of a beautiful harvest moon.
 Riight.


I did not know what I had gotten myself into.

 I had seen these mountain's for years, and year's. I had ventured into them for car trips, a picnic and things...I knew the mountains.
Traveling by foot, in the dark, was not the same. I came to know the mountains! With the help of my wonderful, patient, and often laughing at me guide, I made it to the top. And later back down.


I didn't always notice how beautiful the mountain was, instead I was focused on the dirt, mud and ice puddles I was walking through, the branches on the tree's, I didn't always see, until it was evident beyond reason that they were there. I would get discouraged.


My Honey would stop me and have me look up at the sky to see the beauty of the Milky Way blanketing the vast universe above us and softly tell me the view was better from the top.


So this year. 2011 Twenty~Levin, I am going to try to remember to see the beauty of my mountain's instead of focusing on the ground.


I'm planning to look up, even if I walk a little crookidy at first.


Because there are dreams for me in them thar hill's!!!

This is going to be a year of dreams instead of a year of resolutions...



What are some of the dreams you have tucked away?
Maybe this is the year you can dust them off and try them out with me. Maybe you are stuck in a brier patch, or in a valley where the sun is not shining right now...Maybe this is the year we can climb our mountain's individually, together!


And may God bless us.

The Homemade Gift

Decaf instant Folger's,

Muslin,

a little bit of thread,

Crayola crayon's,

hot glue,

a saw,

some do-dad's,

and a touch of watered down white paint.

And Viola!

***

Most of our Christmas decoration's are home made.

Not all made at our home,

but homemade none the less.

A few years back,

I was on an embroidery kick again

and made a bunch o stuff

starting with this Nativity I fell in like with...

I don't remember when it was that I gained my appreciation for homemade things. Must have been from the time I was a little one.

Momma made most everything, and what she didn't Daddy and Grampa did. The Aunt's all did the same. 

A few store bought things would show up now and then, but it wasn't a regular thing, and it really wasn't the big treat that you might think.

The homemade gift holds a lot more than you at first may see when you look at it.

Sure it's purty, an might be useful, might be decorative, an frilly.

But do you see the time that was put into it? Do you see the laughter and fun that might have gone along with the makin? Do you see the love that's oozing from it?

Do you know how much you were thought about while it was being made?

So here's how a homemade gift goes;

First you think of the person you are going to give 'the gift' to. What it's for. Is it Birthday, Christmas, Thank you...or what-have-you.

Next, is one of the hardest parts; What to make.

Once you have that figured out, the battle is half won.

Then you set to work gathering the things you will need to make it. Thinking of the person's favorite color, how the person might use it, where the person might use it, and for how long...and ton's of other stuff.

Now comes the time part. Some things are made that take a lot of time, some times it's hours, or day's, could be month's...and in some cases year's, to finish. And the beauty of that is the fact that you are thinking of the person all the time you are making it!

Once you get your gift finished, you think of the person while you are wrapping it up, boxing it, putting it in a fancy gift bag and filling the top with three sheet's to much of tissue paper just for good measure...you got it...you are thinking about the person.

Then you give the gift, and hope that all the time and love you focused on the person while making the gift, is somehow able to wrap around the person and that every time they look at it they will think of you, and that you loved them enough to make something for them.

But it goes a little farther than that.

How? You might ask.

Well I'll tell you.

You also spend time thinking about the person who made the pattern that you are using. If it wasn't a pattern that you made. And the time they put into making it so that you could understand the how-to's of it all.

Homemade gifts are a circle of love...

Be it from a garden, a sewing room, a 'shop' in the back. From knitting needles to crochet hook's, or tin and some wood. Might be from leather, or 'something whipped up'. Maybe it's quilted or tied, pom-pomed, stitched, painted, or even starts with a key...With no one in  mind more than you!

May God Bless

Ode To The Youngest

This picture of Honey and I was taken sometime in September 1985.

I was about nine months pregnant and 25 years old.

I was young, and my hair was long, and no gray in it yet...

*sigh*

We were expecting our third baby,

due date : October 31st

No way was I going to have a baby on Halloween!

Back when water was almost new, we didn't have ultrasounds

so you never knew who was coming until they got there.

With two handsome boy's, and knowing this was our last baby. I was so sure we were having a girl, that I refused to pick out boy names...nagged into picking just one, it was Fairfax.

Honey wanted to name a girl Tabitha, if she was born on Halloween.

Why not Samantha, Or Endora?!?! (just breath) He wondered about Chantilly...

The night I went into labor, I about got left at home...

Honey loaded the boys in the car with their overnight bags,

climbed in and started honking the horn.

Meanwhile, I, was stuck in the house trying to get my shoes on!

Every time I would bend over I'd have another contraction!

Finally, I slipped them on, smooching down the backs, slipped a sweater on that was to small to fit around my middle, and waddled out the door, to see Honey starting to back out of the driveway with the passenger door open?! Calling, from his open window for me to "hurry up!"

I started laughing and that didn't help matters much.

So true to form, we didn't wait until the due date to meet our youngest child...our earliest arrival...our tiniest baby...

Our baby, who came home from the hospital with strep throat and ear infection at 24 hours old, loaded  down with antibiotic's, a few extra receiving blankets, with orders to "keep her warm"...

I named her after my oldest and dearest friend...

The boy's will swear to you she is the spoiled one.

This morning I was reminiscing, as parents tend to do when their children reach "milestone" birth dates...

She is turning 25!!

I remember when she had such lofty goals of becoming a "Highland cow (he-lee-an coo) farmer" OR a pencil maker, who would wear a yellow jumpsuit and a pink pill hat, tilted, just right...

*sigh*

She has an amazing sense of humor, a prankster from the get-go,

She is loving and compassionate, friendly, strong, smart, people are drawn to her, she is just a smidge sarcastic...and lots of other stuff.

She still hates doing dishes and comes to my house to make her cookies...she can sew better than I ever could, spin a yarn that will have you laughing for day's,  and she can draw most anything...

She once told me, "Mom, I'm the barnacle on the ship of your life".

I'm sure glad of that!

I was the mom.

Now she is the mom.

One day, she will look at a picture of herself, then realize that her daughter, is the same age she was when...

Happy Birthday!!!

Smile and remember;

We're fool's whether we dance or not. So we might as well dance.

Japanese proverb

Ode to a Root Cellar

I'm an old fashion kind of girl.

I like the way things are done the old fashion way...

Dishes by hand at the kitchen sink.

Laundry blowing on the line out back as they dance dry in the sun.

Gardens weeded in the early morning or the cooling part of the evening.

Playing...I mean working with the irrigation water...

Bottling and drying produce *when it's on*. The reward of a hot job well done and seeing the beautiful results.

It gives me a chance to slow down for a few minutes in an ever hurrying world.

I have noticed a little building to the side of an old house we pass, every time we go over the hill to visit the valley, last time we stopped so I could take a few pictures. (Honey gets a little embarrassed when I do this sort of thing) I walked up to the door and knocked, no answer, so I walked around the corner of the tree shaded abode to see if I could locate an owner, to ask permission.

There was a younger-ish woman folding clothes just inside the back door calling out to her children playing in the back yard. I made myself known from a distance, so as not to frighten either of us, and she smiled as she brought her folding out to visit. I asked if I could take some pictures of the root cellar, she told me that around back was a door to get in the top part and smiling gave me the tiny tour. 

Later we asked Honey's Mom about the little structures. Some, like my Grampa's, were humble dirt holes with a dirt covered roof, complete with trap door, a rickety wooden ladder the only means of entry leading into the depths of the cool chamber, others more elaborate structures, often mimicking the house it went with. She told us that when she was little, she would hide in the top part of her Gramma  Pherson's root cellar, but can't remember what, if anything, was kept in there. The cement room half was lined with shelves holding assorted jars of produce from the family's combined garden's, orchards, and berry picking outings from the year. Along with barrel's filled with sawdust, hiding carrots, beets and other assorted *roots*, with net bags overhead filled with onion's, apples or bag's of flour and other necessities.

 

A store against want.

Many things from the past have gone by the way side, sadly, root cellars are one of them. Every now and again you can glimps on of the all to often unkempt skeletons standing as silent monuments of sorts...yet they are still very much alive and well in hearts, minds, and maybe even a yard or two, of the old fashioned folk...

Smile and remember;

We're fool's whether we dance or not. So we might as well dance.