Averi J ~Gemma May and Guinivere
Who loves Picnik.com? I do. I do. It is like Photoshop for dummies. I just use the free version to change exposure and crop and add effects like vignettes or 1960s coloring. Plus WORDS! I love being able to add lots of words. It is really easy. If I can do it, anybody can! I’ll share some fun little things soon.
I kinda took a blogging fast after epiphany (January 6), which I was afraid to say “out loud” until later in January {wrote about it HERE}. And I didn’t know how long I’d stay gone and there were birthdays I had to mention and a few times I couldn’t resist posting something like a link or video or quick thought. But true writing/blogging, I have not done. And how I have missed it. And how, especially right now, in the midst of the greatest joys anyone could experience and in the midst of the deepest of sorrowful things for people I love deeply, right in the middle of the messiness of life and celebration-worthy rites of passage and as the tulips are becoming glorious and the daffodils stand tall and proud – I just need to be and able to break-the-blog-fast to say, and {to declare loudly}:
So, I am back to write that ~~~ plus lots of silly things and a little opining, too. I will write about sunny days and my quest for joy and let you in on where I find it. I will sing songs and share the lyrics and write about life as I see it. And I am back to write because my mom thinks I am good at it (everyone should have such a cheerleader!) and because I want a written record for my familia.
And I am back to blogging because, to shamelessly rip off 1 John 1, I am writing about the Word of Life! I have not only heard of Him, I have heard fromHim myself, and have seen Him with my own eyes and touched Him and been touched by Him. So I want to share and tell the things I have seen and heard with my own familia and the ones God has made mine by His Spirit. My “motive for writing is simply this: [I] want you to enjoy this, too. Your joy will double [my] joy!” (1 John 1.1-4, The Message)
She is an amazing homemaker and it was cozy within days. She is also very creative and organized and it is a lovely, peaceful place. There is a giant, jetted tub in the guest quarters where the grandbebes could swim laps! Their yard connects to open space (which in Colorado is guarded like gold!) and their big window views are of the crystal-clear Colorado Rockies. They are home!
Parsonage on the left. Church on the right. Too close for comfort.
There’s a lot a-lotta pink in the girlie room!
It is cute as a dollhouse and colorful and sweet. It fairly screams Rocky + Jovan + 2 of the cutest little girls = Blue and green & lots o’ pink and JOYfully Ever After!
Aren’t the presents kids get at three just the most fun? Her Grammy and Papa hosted in Frederick and it was a sunny day full of cute kids and smiles!
We shall gather near Chicago late June. Frontier Airlines to Midway, car-to-go, please.
“Aged cheddar cheese and just the right amount of spicy seasonings create a flavor that is highlighted by the adzuki beans’ subtle sweetness. Together with its light and crispy texture, this artisan snack is the perfect better-for-you snack chip because of the adzuki bean’s natural healing and health properties.”
Thank-you Candi, for this most wondrous introduction. I shall ever be grateful…and smiling as I crunch on them.
The volunteers for Heaven Fest, the leadership and everyone who is part are THE. MOST. AMAZING. PEOPLE. IN. THE. WORLD. I love them. {Stonebrook Manor in Thornton, Jim Elliot School in Englewood, Northern Hills Church in Brighton and Rez in Loveland} Thank-you, people! www.stonebrookmanor.com
He played Grandpa Joe to the great delight of crowds of people. Stephanie had to assure her friends he did not really walk or act that old in real life, because he was so good and a local news article said the “ubitiquous Dave Rhoades” threatened to steal the show. And? Even though it was sprayed gray, he got to keep his hair (in “Annie” a year ago, CLICK HERE he was shaved bald)!
That is Colorado for you. And though March is our snowiest month, we didn’t get any. Uh-oh. Watch out, May!
Joe made red beans and rice (to-die-for, mmmmmm) and I made an ok batch of gumbo. That got better each day until it was gone.
Is it ok to say that here? Well she did and he is cute (Army) and she kind of adores his muscles (Norwegian from Florida). And how sweet he treats her (prophetic intercessor). We all like him. That works out well. And since I don’t think he even knows I have a blog, I can pass all the news about them on to you. Haha.
I am not against Daylight Savings at all. It tells me gardening is around the corner. Every night, as the blue hours (l’heure bleu) get bluer and last measurable minutes longer, I sigh happily.
The Ranchin Loveland! Oh, yeah, baby! www.heavenfest.com
She is “Dorothy,” which seems so perfectly appropriate, somehow! VERY proud of our little working actress!
It’s a wonderful night for a moondance…
…the last refuge of modest people, when their soul is invaded.
One day I woke up – and there it was, spring! And I looked out the window to a sure confirmation: the garlic chives were taking over the back yard already!
Look at all the colorful dishes waiting for Dessa to finish painting the cupboards.
A 1919 bungalow. Cute and in pristine condition. Great price. The last owner {Ruby} had lived there since 1944.
She will live with her baby sister.
Sorely missed at the celebration were the Powers fam. Another celebration will have to ensue.
Yep. That is Wrex. The Birthday Singer.
The cake for the guests was a 2-tier (3 layers each), A 12″ triple-chocolate, chocolate-chip cake with Oreo-chocolate-chip mousse filling. The top tier, a 9″ confetti cake with fluffy-whipped butter-crème filling. Covered in a few pounds of fondant.
The number “1” cake was just for the birthday girl. Buttercream on confetti.
“Ring out the old, ring in the new; Ring happy bells, across the snow. The year is going, let him go. Ring out the false, ring in the new!” Lord Alfred Tennyson
“Today is New Year’s Day.
“…But taken as most people celebrate New Year’s Eve, it has always struck me as a pretty hollow attempt to to generate a moment of transcendence, a grasp by people who need to feel that something special is taking place because their past year wasn’t really all that eventful and maybe, just maybe the coming yeear will be. Hope springs eternal.
“Don’t get me wrong – I think milestones are important and I wish we postmodern Christians had a much richer tradition of holy days, feast days, days of rememberance, and such…
“There seems to me to be much better milestones for hoopla and merrymaking. How about the end of a school year and the beginning of summer vacation? Now that’s worth a party. Birthdays are worth celebrating. Anniversaries are, too. After all, a year of marriage is a feat. The fact that you haven’t killed each other is a cause for celebration. Back to New Year’s – …
“I do find it worthwhile to stop and ask myself, What do I want this year to be like? What do I want to change? – that sort of thing. All that can be very healthy. Staying up until midnight wearing paper hats and drinking too much has long lost its appeal.”
The snow has finally come to Colorado – for today and tomorrow. A small drink of frozen liquid. This is good. It is finally beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
We came. We baked and dipped and sprinkled and nibbled. We dropped from sugar shock.
Each year, us Rhoades girls get together for a big bake-off…and to dip anything that can be dipped/rolled/bathed in melted chocolate into it! Confectioners sugar, sparkly red and green sugars, Dr-Seuss-inspired sprinkles and nuts fly through the air as every available space, covered with calorie-laden ingredients gives way to platters full of pretty, delectable Christmas yummies!
Tara was in Estes this year, so it was just Stephanie and her girls, Guini and Gemma, Tredessa, Stormie, Jovan and Averi and me (though baby Amelie Belle was nearby as an honorary decorator and did contribute by popping an icing-covered mini-sugar-cookie-star into her mouth to taste test (which we ever-so-quickly removed, but not before she was able to suck the buttercream clean off it). She loved it and cannot wait to help again next year!
Goes to Stephanie’s Oreo balls. You could seriously die happy eating these, and perhaps could, for they are rich and sweet and melt-in-your-mouth amazing!
The Girl-Scout Thin mint knock-offs. They are so easy and stinking wonderful. Even though there is already too too much, we will still have to make these (and by we, I mean Tara :D )!
Runner-up in this category is the English Toffee that Tristan and I must insist upon, by Tredessa, who spent so much time creating thousands of the perfect Peanut Butter Balls yesterday, she just could not find the strength to toffee-candy make.
I have also yet-to-make Dave’s family’s traditional “strawberry cookies,”which are not actual strawberries and do not even include anything strawberry-ish in the recipe, but are merely fomed into a strawberry shape and rolled in red sugar before being adorned with a green icing leaf and tendril, AND they are not really cookies because they aren’t even baked: just cooked ingredients on the stove top. Nonetheless, he needs them each Christmas. And the ingredients are staring at me from the kitchen counter presently.
Yet this morning my house smells sweet and chocolatey and peanut buttery and sugary all at once.
The boys are allowed to visit us at the end of these crazy-baking-hours for dinner and eating the treats. So very sweet!
Now what shall I have for breakfast? Raspberry Ribbons? Peanut Butter Blossoms? A few dipped pretzels might be nice? Or some perfectly light-crunchy Peanut Brittle? I am fond of the perfect sugar cookies, or some of Annie Hall’s amazing butter cookies (which can be used any number of ways). Oh-oh, maybe lemon bars? No-I know. MEXICAN WEDDING CAKES with my coffee. Oh my goodness: scrumptious!
Yes. Tredessa is ticked because I just threw flour in her face. I was only trying to help because she was otherwise unable to “apply” her own. Geesh.
“… we elves try to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy cane, candy corn, and syrup …” ~Buddy-the-Elf in the movie, Elf
“Keep Christmas” because that is actually one of my blog categories and is derived from the Charles Dickens quote, which you may read at the bottom.
Next there are 1960s baubles and I love the merry cheer they invoke. They were the type of ornament I grew up with and make me happy. It was a google image I happened by and I don’t recall the source. Thank-you, some random jpg-poster!
Then, I allow you a “sneak peek” at some little Rhoades Family Fun we had a few weeks back. There are some darn cute pictures that will go one our Christmas card – if ever I actually get around to doing that! The grandbebes just bring me joy!
This particular shot (used in the banner) was a split secondbefore total chaos erupted. At this precise moment, Amelie is watching her little tiny life flash before her eyes, because the donkeys just got spooked by the {giant} white calf that walked up on the right. Meanwhile, the alpaca on the left has freaked out the billy goat, who is madly ramming his horns in to a bail of hay and has caused Gemma May to run to hide behind Averi. The miniature donkeys nearly trampled the whole lot of my bebes, but it did not stop our photo shoot. Oh no, it did not. We kept right on shooting with angel-Amelie and Baby (Sawyer) Jesus crying their heads off in the frigid air. It was a hilarious sight to see.
Hunter asked if this was the last year we’d be doing a nativity. “Oh no,” I told him. “Pretty much you’ll be in a Christmas Nativity scene for my Christmas cards until you’re grown and married and have kids I can use.” He seemed to shrug that off without much surprise.
This shot of Stef holding “Baby Jesus” dressed in pink and Rocky holding Baby Jesus’ body-double cracks me up, for some reason.
The final photo is of the actual tree-topper my family used in the 1960s. “Angel hair,” or spun glass, was all the rage (we’d all tell horror stories of children we’d heard of who’d been dumb enough to run their fingers over the glass threads and began bleeding profusely on to the Christmas tree, each story topping the previous). Truthfully (true confessions) , I never knew of a single cut, yet the myth persisted and annually, we were careful-beyond-carefulto avoid bleeding out as we decorated wih the mysterious and deadly angel hair.
My mom says she picked this topper up in a grocery store, circa 1964. This is what Stormie says I have to explain: I was holding the topper at arms length in front of me because it is the story. She thought I’d just pasted it onto a blurry photo of myself. So there. You can’t see my arm much, but it was there! The ANGEL was the focus (or should I say, the “paper angel” to fully distinguish between the two of us? ;D ha-ha-ha ).
Oh. Well, I DID paste on a fake Santa hat. There is that, I guess.
It was just one of those things
Just one of those crazy flings
One of those bells that now and then rings
Just one of those things
I never- ever-ever pay a lot for a candle-in-a-jar, but Target had a fall selection of Yankee Candles (the best candles in the world) near my birthday (early October) on sale for $18, down from $24.99 and when I expressed great pleasure in the “Autumn Festival” scent, Dave insisted on getting me one. You know – for my birthday.
I have burned it, and burned it and burned it. When I am home (and sometimes when I not, shhhhhh, it isn’t on purpose!), I burn it. It has burned all day long and all night long (like, ALL night long, much to Dave’s dismay). I have burned that thing for hundreds of hours by now. 300+ I’d say.
It was just one of those nights
Just one of those fabulous flights
A trip to the moon on gossamer wings
Just one of those things
Was it meant to last this long? Was it meant to make my early mornings so sweet and my evenings so romantic? Was it supposed to burn for untold lengths of time where the memory of it lingered in the air as I’d descend the stairs come morning? And as I watch the flicker this afternoon, smaller, much closer to its end, I wonder how on earth I shall ever replace this beloved candle?
If we’d thought a bit about the end of it
When we started painting the town
We’d have been aware that our love affair
Was too hot not to cool down
I have been preparing myself for the end, dreading it, yet helpless to stop it. I have been sniffing candles madly at stores, looking for my winter comfort. But so far, none can surpass my Autumn Festival – both fruity and spicy; tangy and zesty, yet mellow, rich. It has been the scent of my home as the days have grown shorter and the nights longer; as the chill has forced its way into early morning and long hours of dark azure skies.
So good-bye, dear, and amen
Here’s hoping we meet now and then
It was great fun
But it was just one of those things
It seems hard to believe another candle could ever match this one. This one. But I am fond of a deep red cinnamon scent, earthy and multi-layered…where o where is it?!
SONG LYRICS “It Was Just One of Those Things” by Cole Porter, performed by gazillions of artists, though I am fond of the Diana Krall version!).
NOTE: I used to get very teary when my mom threw out the Christmas trees at season’s end, too. They’d just made me so happy….
Patrick’s Vimeo page…couldn’t keep hold of the embed, for some reason?
Guess where I’ll be? I am directing the first-ever fundraising dinner for SkateMinistry led by Uriel Leubcke. It has turned in to quite the event, almost double in attendance to our projections. My bestie, Patrice of Patrice’s Pantry is serving Beef Wellington (I’m in!), Chicken Cordon Bleu and Gluten-free Vegetarian Lasagne. This cool video by my friend Patricko (I added the “o”) will kick off the program. The evening’s festivities will end with a professional Skate Demo and Uriel preaching it up in case any of the guests don’t know Jesus. The music will be Christian reggae and the vibe? Nothing less than super cool.
CLICK FOR VIDEO: Skate Ministry:: The Story of Uriel Luebcke from J Patrick Kennedy on Vimeo.
Running a fundraiser is kind of like doing a wedding (I did 5 last spring). There’ll be 200 at this one. There is venue, vendors, music, decor. You have to make seating arrangements, hound people about RSVPs, print prgrams and fill packets. There are catering issues (like we are double what we thought so we need more ovens) and rentals and making sure the parties involved are dressed correctly. The PowerPoint loop during dinner to inspire, and a video that will cause chills…Lighting and candles and pens that work are big deals in a fundraiser. Making sure to thank everyone appropriately and give gifts is important, too. Weeks of prep com down to one crazy-event-filled evening. There just isn’t an emotional bride given to teary outbursts with a fundraiser. Oh, wait…that is me in this scenario. *sniff, sniff
Can’t wait to spend a Saturday night with my new bunch of great friends {a lot of whom have crazy-amazing balance and unbelieveable endurance…AND love Jesus!}.
