Wholehearted living somewhere in the middle of all my years.
Aging parents, grown kids, and grandbebes everywhere!
Married to my love and lifelong best friend, Dave for 33 years now. We raised 5 kids and lived to tell about it.
My life's mission is to declare the great faithfulness of God to the next generations, especially those in mi familia!
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I snapped this shot of a leaf that fell from my front tree a couple of years ago in late October. It somehow managed to swish and swoosh its’ way up onto my porch near the front door. It was so big and colorful it made me happy, even though I always hate the passing of summer. I am so glad I took the picture.
Which brings this: Isn’t it really amazing, I mean, I know we have been doing this for over a hundred years, but still – aren’t we oh-so-blessed to see something that we like and be able to take a picture of it for later? Just SNAP! Got it! That is just the coolest thing ever!
I have been looking through images from 2011 because the digital age, for all the ease it has brought in making good photo-taking available to the masses has also saddled us with a whole new place to organize and purge from time to time. Bleh. But anyway – there was this shot and really, what the heck am I going to do with it, anyway. But the fall season always brings out a deep, romantic mood in me and I feel the need to read poetry and re-visit my favorite seasonal quotes and sing songs about autumn and just sort of feel the fall in whatever way my senses and emotions can grasp it.
The Marilyn Monroe quote.
First, I feel about internet quotes like this:
Hahahahahaha! Isn’t that hilarious and just truly the thing?
But, several websites say Marilyn said this, so it has to be true, right?
“Designers want me to dress like Spring, in billowing things. I don’t feel like Spring. I feel like a warm, red Autumn.”
What did she mean? Well, I can’t ask her, but I assume she meant:I feel things more deeply at this ripe and fruitful time of my life. I feel like a full-grown woman, as opposed to some foolish girl, a woman who knows her mind and risks her thunderous-beating heart to more vulnerability and tenderness than I’d have allowed when younger. And my experience in life and love and heartbreak and second chances have made me more deeply passionate and compassionate and warm. I’m old enough now to understand the rich treasure my nurturing provides for those who are lucky enough to be planted in my heart and the wildly increased ability I now have to love.
Yep. That is what I think she was trying to say.
I feel the same, Norma Jean. I feel like a warm, red Autumn.
Elise-the-Niece got married two years ago this week.
I had always imagined getting to go make her a cake, but I didn’t get to be there. *sniff:(
The other day, I was looking through photographs on my computer and ran across some images Stormie snapped while in Aberdeen for the wedding. I selected a few that are just tooooooo cute not to see. These can be inspiration shots for other brides-to-be.
Her venue in Aberdeen S. Dakota
The sign (held by the cutie-patootie, Christiana ~ sister-of-the-bride)
The truck: it held the gifts!
Brown-paper bag lanterns.
The guest book table.
While the wedding party got pictures…
This one was from the actual photographer, of Elise and her maids.
Then the real celebration of love began…
So congratulations to Matt and Elise on two years of wedded bliss.
The P.S.
It was also Elise’s birthday this week. AND their baby, the darling-adorable little Blake Matthew was dedicated to Jesus this past weekend. He is 4 months of beauty and oh-so-beloved by all. They are loved and highly favored by God and their Aunt Jeanie.
Love you, Elise, sweet niece, you and you familia!
Here are my {humble and extremely astute, hahahaha!} observations on what happens when a lot of rain comes quickly…
Nothing profound or scientific here. Just my thoughts running downstream…
You may be praying for it (in arid, semi-desert areas, we often do), but it shows up in the night while you are totally unprepared, sleeping, minding your own business.
Rocky and Jovan had no warning, when at 3 am, their electricity was out and within 20 minutes they watched water rise from the second step to just a couple of feet from their main level, reaching nearly 6 feet high in their basement. They couldn’t drive out of their cul-de-sac because the street was already rushing and deep, but had to pack quickly for three baby girls. It can be sudden. It was in this case.
It rips your belongings from their places and they just float away.
The next day, Rocky went to his house and everything downstairs was just floating around on its side: furnace, hot water heater, washer, dryer, computers, musical recording equipment and sound systems. All of Rocky’s guitars and instruments (the ones he learned to worship on), were soaked and floating or submersed. Material things float away in a flood, in an abundance of rain.
It fills the creeks, the rivers, bursts through dams, flows down it’s normal contained path in ever-rising power then through streets and places that cannot contain it.
It gets dangerous. It shows up where we were glad to have it and where we weren’t. But it is the nature of abundance. It’s everywhere. It rains on the just and on the unjust, in good ways and in ways that we were not expecting and don’t know how to handle.
Everybody wants to claim they got more of it than some one else.
I don’t want to say too much about this for fear I’ll end up totally snarky. So let me just say, if you lost anything at all, if you are now faced with mold growing where the basement flooded and your childhood keepsakes are gone – it is a loss. It is horrible. And I hope you have some one in your life who will acknowledge that and let you say why the loss affected you and how sad you feel. I really do. But there were people whose houses stayed completely dry who acted like they had been banished to a completely undeveloped third world country because a road half a mile away couldn’t be transversed for 24-48 hours. Keep perspective and get into gratefulness. Maybe the next big tragedy will be all about you – won’t that be nice? There! See? I got into snarkiness. I cannot be trusted.
Some people will lose a lot and then be recompensed with piles of pious platitudes.
Mourn with those who mourn. Maybe what they lost didn’t mean anything to you, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t mean anything to them. They are tired. They have a lot of work ahead. When they say, “Oh-I just found out I lost {some, silly, ridiculous, sentimental, inconsequential thing} in the flood,” we should commiserate, we should sympathize, and maybe if we know what that is like, we should empathize. For how long? Until they are done. My conjecture is that if we’d stop and mourn with those who are mourning, their mourning would turn into dancing a whole lot sooner. Sometimes what is lost isn’t recognized right away anyway, in the shocking aftermath of a new normal, of material loss. Encourage, literally give them some of your courage. Listen, let them tell you why that {silly, ridiculous, sentimental, inconsequential thing} meant something. But refrain, pleeeeeease, from pious-sounding-cliches and especially from a “knowing look” that God sent this hard thing to work something in their lives that you totally knew they needed. Because you will not want that coming back on you!
The rushing water brings a cleansing, but cleansing strips away things we didn’t count on, too.
It is a heavenly do-over. Now what will we do with it? It’s a chance to right wrongs, fresh slate, build better, travel lighter, haul away the concentrated, contaminated mud for good.
But in the cleansing – I have one friend who lost everything including her home in Lyons. There is nothing for her to even go back to, her home and those who lived near – all gone. The land will be cleared and maybe eventually that will seem fine, safer for the future, but right now – it represents many families, people who have nowhere to call “home.”
So? A fresh slate can be good, it is also very empty – much work to do!
If the water gets stuck in one spot, it will become stagnant.
There is so much contamination throughout our state now, as the rain has ceased and the rushing has subsided and is sitting still. I have read about the revivals of old, Azusa, the Welsh Revival. Powerful moves of God flowing through and changing the landscape, were eventually dammed up, “named”, coined phrases were assigned to them for categorizing the flow of the Holy Spirit. The rains can be administrated and basically contained…to death. Choose life from this wet mess!
The bug population will suddenly be crazy after it happens.
Because even where the rains have made the grass and trees greener than ever in our state at this time of year, when the good stuff is increased, the annoying stuff {fatigue sets in, bickering, backbiting, distrust, unrest, eye-rolling, offense} increases around it, too. Be aware. Be wary. Be on guard. They seek to destroy the green-life we are enjoying.
See? Nothing profound or scientific. Just a bunch of thoughts rattling around, things I see.
The Bible says where the river flows everything will live. This will eventually probably be one of the most beautiful autumns Colorado has ever seen {both in the natural and because it is bringing people together to do good for one another}. It will take time to rebuild, to get “back to normal,” to regain what was lost. But even now, are we not seeing clearly the great grace and love of God, His heart poured out in love towards us, His great grace at work through His people. He is good. We know this now. But – in the looking back someday, how amazed we will really be, I am sure of it!
~~~~~~~~~~
Zumba, baby!
Meanwhile, the amazing Tammy Brown (the outrageously gorgeous woman married to the ineffable Lewis “Proxy” Brown, yes THAT Tammy) is doing a fitness-fundraiser {how fun is that?} to help Rocky and Jovan as they work to recover their losses! It’s a ZUMBA-thing! You should ALL come! Seriously! THIS kind of abundance – it’s a love-rain!
Thanks to so many who are helping so many others and especially those who are loving on my familia.
I am not going to tell you which of my daughters {Stormie} got us all thinking about eyebrows a lot. I spent years {and years and years} getting mine under control so as not to allow them to take over my entire forehead.
Now I’m told to allow them to do as they wish. I don’t think so.
Julianna during ER
Julianna now as The Good Wife.
She definitely got better. And her eyebrows are quite under control, thank-you, very much.
He comes to kill, steal and destroy…and he is green ~ for at least part of his life cycle.
The hornworm.I have told you about him. He can chew through a whole tomato plant in 24 hours flat, engorged and gross, 3-4″ of huffing and puffing, swollen and green slimy-ness from the leaves he has munched through, poop piles littering his path below him as he climbs ever upward, destroying the tomato.
Eeeeeeewwww-gross!
No leaves on the plant = no tomatoes. We HATE the tomato hornworm.
But a lot of gullible people think the moth that deposits the larvae into garden soil around your plants – which becomes the hornworm caterpillar is so cute.
It is all caused by the sphinx moth/hawk moth
But – people think it is a hummingbird. Because it is large, almost the size of a hummingbird. It has interesting coloration and design, not at all bland-blah like the gray-powdery june moth that sweeps through here from Nebraska in sometimes plague-like proportions. This moth flies sort of upright like the bird and has this feathery looking tuft of something or another and is really quite huge and monstrous. This moth is the enemy of the tomato and other garden goodies. the ENEMY!
In my efforts to truly be organic and not use bug killers in my garden, this year I have taken to carrying a fly-swatter with me to put the smack-down on moths which seek to lay eggs in my sweat-composted soil. ‘Tis better, I do think, to save my crops and eat the food I have determined to grow than to let the bugs have it and a little swat and down is better than spraying chemicals or poison sprinkling granules. I admit I may look a little crazy out there, swinging a plastic aparatus at a flighty moth – but I give it a go and some days have success.
But dang the “hummingbird moths.” A kick scan through Facebook and Instagram and 82% of everyone I know is posting a picture of it and celebrating it, thinking it is a hummingbird! People think they are cute!
The other day, while I was armed and ready for battle as 4 of them were sucking juice from my Hibiscus, I caught some eyes peering out the kitchen window from a house across the way. I was swinging away. I sheepishly smiled and waved wondering if she thought I was totally crazy?
A little later Dave happened upon a conversation about all the beautiful little “hummingbirds” in the neighborhood, resistant to the suggestion that they were moths. When he told me, we realized – someone in my neighborhood now thinks I beat the crap out of hummingbirds with a fly-swatter. The word is spreading.
Great. Just great.
sphinx moth = hawk moth = hummingbird moth = heavy-bodied, strong flying insects = from full-grown hornworm larvae = gross = evil = the devil in my garden = yes I kill them if I can.
Please, say it with Italian flare ~ use your hands for passion.
Pomodoro {pomo d’oro} apple of gold. It’s a noun. It means tomato. *big smile :)
Pomodori. Tomato, but plural.
Pomodorino. Cherry tomato.
Pomodorata. Tomato throwing. I can’t decide if I MUST go to Spain to experience this one day? Or if I should never because to see so many tomatoes not eaten (and me being pelted by them) would be heart-breaking…which is it?
Bruschetta a la Pomodoro! Perhaps even more delicious the next day.
Who will buy this beautiful morningand put it in a box for me?So I can see it at my leisure,whenever things go wrong.And I can keep it as a treasureto last my whole life long?”
I failed my children in baby-booking. I did. I just stunk at it. Their entire lives, the guilt of the knowledge that I had not filled out the dates on the teeth-cutting-arrival charts gnawed at me relentlessly. Pages with the words paste photohere nakedly jeered at me, taunting my inability to create a wondrously meaningful book for posterity.
It wasn’t that I didn’t have photos to paste. It wasn’t that I didn’t delight at the clink of the spoon on a newly-emerged tooth or want to remember every single, tiny moment of their first days. I saved everything for each of my children from the second I knew they were coming. It was almost a sickness, induced, I fear, by having a dad who saved nothing. We took untold thousands of photos of these 5 incredible children.They were also often undeveloped for a really long time.
But somehow, I just didn’t do well at putting things in their books. I think my perfectionistic tendencies (aka my all-or-nothing sickness) interfered.
“Today I must focus entirely on the baby-book and fill in each line and glue the proper photos as directed,” was my heart’s desire, but didn’t happen, couldn’t happen, because life was happening. When you are deeply involved in your husband’s ministry, right at his side AND almost annually producing a new human being, leisure time to cut and paste and record gets put on the back burner – or in my case, books safely tucked into their original boxes, high on a closet shelf…{read the whole post HERE}
Life speeds up as we slow down
My really good friend {we’ll call her Amy Jo} is facing the end-of-an-era with her baby girl. Healthy babies grow and it is good, but suddenly, as a mommy, you realize – “Oh, we’ll never be here again. Something I have treasured in this season is over and it is good and it is a sign of health and blessing, but – I wasn’t ready to move on. I will miss this.” It goes fast!
Like one day you can pick your child up and twirl them around and then one day, they are too big for that. But you didn’t know that was over…
A group of us were discussing this, via social media, at dinner and through some comments here on the blog and another friend {let’s call her Heather ;) } lamented not keeping up with recording the life moments and the journals and records of her family as time is speeding by and they are growing up. We feel like we let them down by not having kept a detailed record of life. The moments rush by.
I totally understood. Why not more photos and why did we not write down every cute thing all of our kids said and why didn’t we actually journal the stories of our family regularly? We can all feel that. But I was totally reminded, in that moment of empathy seasoned with a dash of regret, of a scripture in Luke 2. The Bible says of Mary, as she watched Jesus grow:
“And Mary kept these things and pondered them in her heart.”
No missing pages. No “you-big-fat-journal-failure-you!” No. Everything is there, written in our hearts. We remember our babies as clear as a bell, their laughter, their crinkly-nosed smiles, watching their interactions and knowing what they were destined to become. How could we have captured all that with mere words, anyway?
See? It’s all right there, in your heart. You’ll still have the stories to tell and the legacy to leave. Don’t worry. :)
When I was a little girl, I hated cooked carrots. They were the orange, bane-filled mush of my nightmares. I loved the roast beef and potatoes they usually came with (I have never met a potato I didn’t love), but when my plate got down to the globs of orange, the gagging began. My parents wouldcoax…or yell at me to eat them. I’d gag them down, eyes tearing up, gulping big swallows of milk afterwards to try to erase the memory. I’d lose my breath, I’d hem, I’d haw. I’d gag some more.
One night, when I was about 8, the humongous pile of carrots on plate was just sitting there getting cold and I asked to be excused, unable to bear the thought of eating them. But my dad decreed that I would eat. every. bite. :) We all have one of these stories, don’t we?
I sat and looked at them. They looked back at me. I begged them to taste good and somehow just go down. I’d take a bite and they’d suddenly swell to this huge mouthful of putridness and the yuk would begin and I’d cry, calling out to God to deliver me, help me, pleeeeeeease. Dinner had started at 5 pm on the dot, like always. At 9:55 pm, alone in the cold, dark kitchen, with my cold dark plate of carrots – my mom finally released me to go to bed for school. I hung my head in shame. I wasn’t being rebellious not eating them, I just really thought they were that horrible.
The Redemption of the Carrot
Fast forward to a snow day when I was 11. There was nothing to do and so I pulled out the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook for Kids, late 1950s edition. I was determined to cook something for fun. But we didn’t have all the ingredients for any of the recipes – nothing, except one…carrots. Cooked carrots. Because we had the carrots, we had the honey and we had the butter.
Intrigued, I stared at the picture in the cookbook for a long time. The carrots had been cut into very long, skinny strips, “shoestrings,” and the butter was melting over them all shiny and bright. I stared and my mouth started to water. I pondered…I figured I’d give it a go.
My mom came in and asked what I was doing.
“Cooking carrots.”
“You don’t like carrots,” she reminded me.
“I’ll like these, ” I told her, by faith.
So I cut them into shoestrings. And I simmered them with a teaspoon of raw honey. Then I plated them in a pretty pile, all the strips going the same direction and put a big pat of butter on them just like the picture, a sprinkle of salt and pepper and ~ GLORIOUS! I loved them. I understood them, finally. I got what they were there to give me: nourishment and deliciousness. They weren’t overcooked and later I learned they were so sweet they didn’t need the honey. But I fell head-over-heels for my carrots on the spot and my mom was thoroughly nonplussed.
What does this have to do with Jamie Oliver?
Well-it’s his zeal. He believes it needs to start in the home, that the home is where we should begin to pass on cooking again – for the health and welfare of generations to come. Because the last several generations have increasingly gone to processed, convenience foods and eating out – a lot! And it is literally killing us, killing our children. And he says when you learn to cook it yourself, you love it.
It was true for me. With carrots, people!
Exponential power to change the future for the next generation is in our hands~ By good-old-fashioned home-cooking!
“Passing it on is a philosophy for me it’s quite romantic, but it’s about: If one person teaches three people how to cook something and they teach three of their mates, that only has to repeat itself 25 times and that’s the whole population of America.
Romantic? Yes, but most importantly it’s about trying to get you to realize that every one of your individual efforts makes a difference.” -Jamie Oliver
So, this is a call-out to the grandmas and grandpas out there and to the mommies and daddies for that matter: drag out the family recipe books, take the kids to the store to buy fresh ingredients, and show them how to cook.
I’m guilty. I didn’t teach my kids to cook like I should have, but was lucky they are smart enough to have pursued it and are good at it. But it’s not too late and it’s a chance to pass on heritage and family stories, too.
And hey – I like this organization {The Family Dinner Project}, “A start-up grassroots movement of food, fun and conversation about things that matter.”
But we all have to take back our food. I’m on a kick because of gardening-and eating what you grow…Eat fresh, eat local (when possible – I mean, I have to get my oranges from Florida, people), and grow your own, as much as possible-try it!
My husband was raised on casseroles. Any meat you could scramble and stir in some cans of Campbell’s Soup and top with Tater Tots, that was supper. My family was meat and potatoes. We had a meat (breaded and fried pork chops or breaded and fried chicken or fried hamburgers) with potatoes (you guessed it-usually fried) and a veggie…out of a can.
Our parents had been sold post-war convenience and were doing the best they could to put healthy meals on the table-quickly . And by sheer convenience they were less healthy, but the one thing they got right was cooking at home day in and day out, feeding their families meals seasoned with love, and eating around the table nightly, and if you were really blessed: good talk.
Dave and I provided our kids with frozen veggies and thought we were doing pretty well, better. But we failed with TOO MUCH eating out! No bueno!
“We’ve got to put back what’s been lost.” -Jamie Oliver, Ted Talks, Chew on This!
It’s romantic and do-able. Cooking more at home for life.
Tonight: Some one is bringing the salad, some one else the soup and yet another, the dessert. My part: Italian-bread BLTs (whole grain for those who feel less guilty eating it that way, thought if you’re eating a bunch of bacon, I say: go all in), heavy on the B and the T. And Bruschetta a la Pomodoro and Chiabatta w/Walnut~Basil Pesto. All easy. All garden-fresh.
***Remember to keep on praying for those who have lost so much in the flooding here in Colorado. They are TOTALLY exempt from this post. Volunteer to help in the clean-up; donate if you can! www.convoyofhope.org
The last time I flew there were signs and notices all over about the new laws for carry-ons. And basically no one {NO ONE} cared one-iota.
Plus which when they brought a personal item plus TWO carry-ons anyway, they were “rewarded” with early boarding or upgraded by being willing to “gate-check” their extra bags. H-e-l-l-o??? Where is the justice for us law-keepers?
It never ceases to amaze me how much people will push the carry-on envelope when flying. I have seen business men shoving an entire living room furniture set into the overhead compartment. Ok, so maybe I exaggerate.
Nonetheless, this is the L A W, people!
One bag. One personal item.
Now here is the deal. The personal item can be a purse. Or a briefcase. Or a laptop computer because you cannot check a computer. It can be a diaper bag or any item similar in size to the aforementioned items. It CANNOT be a purse and a laptop and a briefcase and a diaper bag. The one personal item must fit under the seat in front of you and not obstruct the 3 1/2-inch space I might need to crawl over you to get to the “powder room.” Do you get it now?
This is what the American Airlines site shows: one small carry-on plus one smaller personal item. Look up the word small…
The luggage you may have for the overhead compartment? The ONE piece? It may not exceed 45 linear inches in combined length, width and height, including any handles and wheels – INCLUDING handles and wheels, doggone-it!
Scale back on the carry-ons, people, for the LOVE!
