Wrex & Sawyer
Miss Sawyer just turned 2 last month and already counts and knows her colors and shapes, too – even pentagons and trapezoids! Plus she is learning scriptures for every letter of the alphabet.
They came all the way from Holyoke just hang out a couple of days. It was sweet and we miss them already.
The whole fam: Wrex, Stef and Sawyer (plus baby-to-be)
Well, a more beautiful day to celebrate your birth, I cannot imagine. I know Stephanie and the kids have been scheming and plotting and you will have a whole weekend of fun and delight for they love you so. And with good reason: you are such a great daddy to those grandbebes of ours and we are so thankful that you married Stephanie almost 11 years ago now.
I totally remember dad spending some time with you and saying, “I wish one of our girls would go for him. That guy has great spiritual insight and a good head on his shoulders.” And though we weren’t really particular about which girl, we should have known, that Stephanie, insightful and sharp-minded as she is, was already discovering what a great catch you were.
So on your birthday, when you’ll be getting lots of gifts, we are hoping to get continued credit for the gift of a gorgeous red-head (or platinum blond, or raven-haired beauty, or whichever phase she is in) to be your wife. It has been a pretty fortuitous and mutually beneficial situation for all of us, I think. My daughter got the man of her dreams, who turned out to be a WONDERFUL man, at that. And the love between you has produced 3 amazingly, quite-above-average, wondrous grandbebes that light our lives. And in return, you get Stephanie and all of us. :) And we all love you so.
The proof of this has been reflected in my blogs since 2007.
Last year I tried to put my words on a “card” and the cool thing is, I could have used a whole billboard and still have filled the space. It was all true then and it is all true now.
Stephanie threw a fun soiree in the backyard, complete with a photo booth and old-fashioned root beer.
I couldn’t help teasing you for not getting that marital permission first! :)
Almost 9 years ago you married our multi-prismed, colorful, feisty, yet tender Stephanie. What a gentle treasure she’d found. What a trustworthy man, fit to hold her heart and walk along in life with her, covering her. We were so pleased then and have not ever for one second had any regret or fear about whether or not she’d done the right thing…even though you forgot to ask permission first {we really do forgive you! haha}. And you became our son. A new son – all grown up and finished (thank you Larry and Chyrl Kelley: GREAT job. Truly!).
You were turning 29 and Stormie made you a Timpano! Which I referred to as “glorious.” And of course there was a fruit pizza, which you know I love to have you request..
I also wrote 29 wishes for your 29th birthday. Here are a few:
- I wish you 50% off days at Mile-High Comics every Labor Day!
- I wish for your full talent as a musician to be recognized beyond your wildest dreams and that you be compensated duly.
- May you get all the best drumsticks and Zildjian cymbals you ever need.
- I wish for you to have good students: the kind who don’t waste your time and who will really learn from the treasure-trove of musical knowledge you possess.
- I pray that as you have dared2work at dare2share, you’ll get credit in heaven for the harvest!
- Tris, I hope you will always be strengthened by knowing that you are so well loved by our whole family.
I still REALLY wish you had taken me up on number 27. It was a GOOD wish!
But please accept #29 again, and for always:
And finally? I pray for God to bless you back, in the same kind and with the same measure with which you have loved us, shown respect to us, honored us and become a part of us. And if He answers that prayer, and I know He will, you will be blessed – on your 29th birthday and always. And I am believing for that!
In Paris earlier this year
In 2008, I said all sorts of things I loved and appreciated for you. And I made you 2 fruit pizzas. And I prayed this prayer over your life:
Grace to you, Tristan, and peace. Be blessed with provision through your giftings and abilities, both the technological and the artistic-musician sides. I pray that resources make themselves available and that your resourcefulness will become an even greater and valued commodity!
May you be preserved in blamelessness your whole life long. May your beautiful wife bring you joy and your children, great delight. May God hear all your prayers and your secret heart’s desires and answer you in times of trouble.
I pray that, while should it ever fall my lot – I would defend you to the death, may the Lord be your defender and protector and may He keep you safe on every side.
I pray that you, planted firmly by living waters, will begin to see the fruitfulness of your faithfulness before God and that this next year will bring blessing on every side, provision, new opportunities and new open spaces. I pray that we’ll see the explosion of the color of you all around, for this new time and place and new year for you and you family.
I just love reading old prayers, actual petitions before the LORD and realizing that He has faithfully and lovingly answered them fully! SO COOL! Happy Birthday to Tristan, I hear Him saying!
You actually created this blog for me in November of 2006. Sometime in 2007, I realized I could tell the world how much I loved my family. I was just plain effusive, talking about how you came to us and described what you looked like when we first met:
…I believe he was wearing all black including a leather coat. He had bleached-blond spiked-up rock-star hair with a lip piercing and those really big plug-style-earrings. But he was not frightening at all. Not in the least. Rather there was sort of this gentle uprightness about him…
I remembered how you reignited the zeal to worship God musically for us, and mentored Rocky past his hear-and-play methods. And about how when you got in the car accident on I-25 on an icy Colorado morning and Stephanie called me at work, quite concerned and overcome with tenderness and care, the light had dawned, me finally realizing: Ooooohhhh-my baby girl is in love, with some one she had already let us know was the “best drummer in the world.”
On Father’s Day
Yes, Tristan, I have been talking about you for years, behind your back and on my blog and hopefully enough to your face that you know I appreciate you, thank God for you and today, like always, I wish for your birthday and every single day of your life to be blessed and joyful. Also, like always, THANK-YOU to Cheri and Larry for raising a wonderful son and sharing him with us.
I just heard a song on Martini in the Morning ( the “lounge” sound, Rat-Pack music) called “I love Vegas” featuring Mr Dean himself. I’d never heard it, but guess what?!?
I love Vegas when I’m loaded,
I love it when I am not.
I love Vegas, just like Kruschev loves being indignant,
More than even my wife Jeanie loves being pregnant.
He sang my name. He gets points.
And I always did love being pregnant. :)
Omygosh! {slight scream, heart palpitations}
We brought our slightly-less-than-life-sized Jeremy Camp cut-out, the official HF-skinned guitar and the “fake” cut-out guitars Pearl and Bryan made for the Heaven Fest Smile Booth this year home from the office since Heaven Fest is moving to a new office in the city soon, and they will likely be used to adorn the walls there, just for fun.
I am wondering how many times I can walk into my house and think there is someone standing behind my couch – scaring the daylights out of me!?!! YIKES! He gets me every time.
Tara and Stormie introduced the “real” Jeremy Camp (and his famous “guns”) to the one-dimensional Jeremy Camp backstage at Heaven Fest this summer. They hit it off famously.
I roller-skated every day. I remember being upset about snow because it disrupted my skating (thank-goodness for sledding as a semi-reasonable alternative). I remember my first waking thoughts were being excited to grab my skates and roll down the bumpy sidewalk outside our house. I thought about it when I wasn’t doing it, I felt free when I was and my little brother Joe often walked alongside me. I still have major scars on my knees from falling down, but I got back up. And kept skating.
Skating was flying. One small effort and weeeeee…..
I was always losing that darn key, though.
Skipping was my transportation mode of choice when I couldn’t be rolling on my metal skates. Skipping is the next best thing to flying. If theye ever do come up with a contraption to help us all fly like birds, I bet the take-off will involve skipping, because it is, really, at its’ core, a short flight.
I was a fabulous skipper. I skipped the 4 blocks to school and the 4 blocks back, every single day – for 5 school years.
Almost unfathomable to imagine in this day and age is the fact that I was never once delivered to school by car, nor picked up that way. My mom walked me to Kindergarten my first day and was there to accompany me home, that first day only. I walked to school each morning that first year with my cousin, Diana (who was in the 5th grade), but I skipped home alone. And I sang the whole way – that is why you see musical notes on my path. From Wallace Elementary in Des Moines, Iowa to my house at 1723 York Street.
I skipped to and from my school, rain or shine, snow and even sleet. Kindergarten, first, second, third and fourth grades. Five years of skipping and singing. And roller skating when I got home…IF I could find that darn key!
It was aqua – how divine is that? Not blue, not teal – aqua! The back door opened out, which was an amazing development in station wagons. And there were 2 fold up seats facing each other, so wonderful for after-church girl talks with my best friend, Debbie.
That car was a ministry car, for sure! We picked up 2 other families for church in that thing. The Rogers family: Don and Irene and their 2 young children Timmy and Laurie (and sometime Irene’s teen daughters from her first marriage, Brenda and Sharon), and the whole Sable clan, Evelyn and her 5 kids (and occasionally her husband) along with my parents and their 5 kids. I’d say that car averaged about 17 people to and from the Highland Park Church of God in those days. There were no car seats but we probably could’ve rolled 20 times before any of would have been dislodged!
Above: This is not the right color, but the shape of it and the direction I often saw of it as I skipped in to the house from school – this is it.
I recall coming home one day, and there it was, in the driveway. We took her for an introduction spin in the early evening (late spring, I think) and picked up my Grandpa Baker to show him. Never before or after was I in a vehicle with him. He and my dad looked under the hood and Grandpa approved. :)
It was warm out, during this first ride in our fabulous new station wagon – the windows were down and the breeze flew through my hair as if I were in flight – and that is an experience I still love to replicate to this day.
Warning: This post is full of non-cussing cussing. But the intent is for it to be the worst cussing ever. So if you know as well as I do that you can say the word “matchstick” and mean it in a cussing way? Then maybe you’ll want to avoid this post.
Omygosh!!! Grasshoppers are horrible, evil, cannibalistic (it is true – they eat the carcasses of their dead) pieces of muscular-mingy-frack-eyed-teetering-chutney-chewing crud-bums.
They seriously climb to the top of my beautiful heirloom tomato plant and eat their way down whole vines, like they finger-licking own the joint! At this stage and full-development, the only recourse is to actually catch the disgusting sons of buffalo-burgers and beat them senseless with a baseball bat.
Yesterday I sprayed one with wasp killer and it just kept going…4 wasp-kill soakings and it kept going. Finally it hopped and landed upside down in a spider web. Dave told me I should pull its’ jumping legs off, but I thought sure the web would hold it. Seconds later the little trundle-teeter flew past and yell “Sucker!”
I hate grasshoppers.
I was winning until I left the week of Heaven Fest. Each day when I go out to water, they dart every which fleeting-flagging way and charge my head in anger while hosts of bees wave a friendly hello and keep right on doing good work in the garden.
But not the honking-twonk-monster-rowlocking-farcists wasps. Oh, no. They get all territorial in MY garden.
I currently water with the sprinkler wand in my left hand and a can of KILLER in my right. Taking down about a dozen a day. O yea.
In other news, as I passed from the kitchen through the dining area, my late summer garden caught my eye and called out, “It really has been an OK, summer. Everything is going to be fine. Life goes on. Enjoy.”
That was a sweet thing to say.
The 12-year old me truly had no idea what this album back-cover might be referencing. I may or may not have sort of screamed a little when I pulled it from the collection the other day and flipped it to see the song selection on the “David Cassidy – Rock Me Baby” album. The light dawns…
No comment.
Before Lady Gaga hit the radio airwaves with her, “Telephone,” and long before “Call Me, Maybe” was all the trendy, silly rage, I loved and sang-along on songs about telephones and phones calls and calling some one or getting a call. I know, I know – you’re thinking Jeanie never answers her phone. Ok. I am not a phone person (grrr), but I love the songs about phone calls. That counts, yes?
“When I call you up, your line’s engaged. I have had enough, so act your age!” -The Beatles. And in my head, Anne Murray.
This list of mine is in no way exhaustive. It is just most of the ones I have liked over the years. If you know more, tell me, though. Maybe I missed some that I totally LOVE. However, for instance, Reba Mcentire had one that would have worked, but I just didn’t even like it. So, some are missing because they just don’t belong on my list.
This is just my little list. Of TWENTY-FIVE {25} songs…
Favorites are***…there are 10 of them.
266-7121, my York Street phone number in Des Moines, Iowa in the 1960s. There are numbers I NEED to know now, but have no brain-space for – because stuff like this is rattling around.
Songs in which telephone calls are made, referenced, desired or hung up on. In no particular order – just how they came to me. Click.
Echo Valley 26809, I used to call that number all the time
But the last time that I called you, we hung up cryin’
This is the song that kicked this post into being. I was listening to one of their old albums and just remembered how thoroughly, romantically swishy (is that a word?) I had been as a young girl in the early 70s when I’d hear this song on the radio. When it got to the part where David Cassidy actually, longingly and sweetly spoke, “Operator, can you connect me with Echo-Valley 26809?” Swoooooooooooooon.
That cruel, cold operator answered him “You have reached a disconnected number.” How could she? [just after 2:00 on the vid]
Oooooooooh poor David. Here is MY number, David Cassidy – you can call me {is what all of us little bubblegum-pop girlies were thinking, yes we were!}. Enjoy!
This song was actually playing around the same time as Echo Valley 26809 and was much more raw and agonizing. “And the operator says 40-cents more for the next 3 minutes...” Man, that Sylvia’s mother was a tough cookie!
I did not know until I went looking for a Youtube on this song that the lyrics were by Shel Silverstein and that there really was a “Sylvia’s mother.” Haha. Those guys look 1972-stoned!
Like x 1000, LOVE this song! This song was the bus-ride home from Harding Junior High, school year 73-74. It was Todd’s only big hit. Technically, no one ever says it is a telephone conversation, but I always imagined it was.
Hello, it’s me
I’ve thought about us for a long, long time
Maybe I think too much but something’s wrong
There’s something here that doesn’t last too long
Maybe I shouldn’t think of you as mine
Speaking of Sylvia – We lived in Kokomo (youth pastors at Central C of G 1981-85) when this local-Kokomo-girl-gone-Nashville hit it big with this song. What a clever play on words. Reminds me of early marriage, a red Honda Prelude with a sun roof, and a sweet bunch of kids we got to hang out with.
Well your nobody called today – she hung up when I asked her name
Well I wonder does she think she’s being clever.
You say nobody’s after you – the fact is what you say is true
But I can love you like nobody can, even better
It was a beloved old song by then and had been recorded by many people, but when she sang this in Central Park in the early 80s, with her big white fur cuffs and just belted this out for what seemed like an eternity, when she made this strong promise of undying love and help that she would give no matter what – well, I knew I wanted to be Diana Ross. This song deeply inspired and characterizes my deep belief that your love for your people should be able to overcome any possible obstacle you are facing – just call me. If it is within my power to do so – I will move mountains. This is an anthem, my creed.
Listen, baby, ain’t no mountain high
Ain’t no valley low, ain’t no river wide enough, baby
If you need me, call me, no matter where you are
No matter how far, don’t worry, baby
Just call my name, I’ll be there in a hurry
You don’t have to worry…
Ain’t no mountain high enough to keep me from getting to you!
Why a Partridge Family song {again}? Really? Do you need to ask me that?
You don’t have to tell me who’s been knockin’ down your door
It’s not the first time, no, we’ve been there before
I only called you to let you know I haven’t seen you and I miss you so
Hello again, hello
Just called to say ‘hello’
I couldn’t sleep at all tonight
And I know it’s late
But I couldn’t wait
Hello, my friend, hello
Just called to let you know
I think about you every night
When I’m here alone
And you’re there at home
Hello
Please just tell me you revere his voice and lifetime of work as much as me or get the heck off my blog. I LOVE him.
He has written and sang some of the best songs ever. This one? Maybe Neil’s best, although, it is hard to make a decision when I visit his website and go through his songs. It’s tough to make a definitive choice {click here to see what I mean}. If this blog post was not about to be so long, I would put the whole song here.
Tragic. In this scenario, the phone call is causing pain to Glen Frey. Glen Frey, people! This was during his solo career before hell actually froze over and the Eagles reunited and then kept reuniting when they found out that icy or hot, they could make truckloads of money as The Eagles, which is a good thing. But during their hot “separation,” Glen was my fav. For the lovers….
I heard you on the phone
You took his number
Said you weren’t alone, but you’d call him soon
Isn’t he the guy
The guy who left you crying
Isn’t he the one who made you blue
This is a windows down on a mild summer night , teen-age girl kind of riding around singing song.
Hello, yeah, it’s been a while.
Not much, how ’bout you?
I’m not sure why I called,
I guess I really just wanted to talk to you.
And I was thinking maybe later on,
We could get together for a while.
It’s been such a long time,
And I really do miss your smile…
I’d really love to see you tonight.
Yes, I left out the part that he wasn’t interested in a real relationship. Because teen-age girls {stupidly} do that. 1976. This song takes me back.
This great song comes with all the dial-tones and the anticipation and sound of a person on the other end of a land-line, people! History!
Hello? How are you? have you been alright?
All those lonely-lonely-lonely-lonely nights?
What can I say? I’d tell you everything
If you’d pick up that telephone
I was sitting by the phone I was waiting all alone
Baby by myself I sit and wait and wonder about you…
Ooooh, ring-ring. Why don’t you give me a call?
It was just the Abba era. Otherwise I probably would never have liked this. But Abba music had its’ time!
Happy. “I just called to say ‘I love you’.” How can you go wrong with a phone call like that?
There are other Blondie songs I like way more. But “call me any-anytime, call me” is fun to sing.
A song about a telephone line installer // Is there actually a more beautiful song and sentiment than this? This song contains one of those rare lyric-matches-melody-and-you-know-it-came-by-divine-inspiration moments. I just think there are some songs that have within them sacred, breathtaking phrases and tunes that marry, indelible {indelible!} seconds of consummated musical magic. This has one of those phrases:
And I need you more than want you
And I want you for all time
And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line
Harding Junior High. Again. I almost left this off, but when I re-listened to the percussion and all the instruments – just very classic.
Well-known 1960s song, the lyric of which is quite dated by that “investing a dime” on a call reference. Those were the days.
Hey remember when you could actually use a payphone without fear of contracting a life-threatening disease?
If I should call you up, invest a dime
And you say you belong to me and ease my mind
Imagine how the world could be, so very fine
So happy together
I can’t see me lovin’ nobody but you for all my life
I think I really started liking this 60s easy-listening tune when Billy Crystal was trying to reach Meg Ryan in the 1980’s blockbuster, When Harry Met Sally. She wouldn’t answer him so he left cute messages on her machine, “Call me, don’t be afraid to just ‘phone moi,'” he personalized the lyrics. :)
The queen of my vocal range remade this Beatles tune.
Fun song from the WWII era. I love how the image on the vid is a phone. :) I can remember, even looking at this now, the feeling of my fingertip dialing a rotary….
He is just calling to tell his old girl who is with his ex-best-friend that he is ok with it. But, that is not the way it feels.
Operator, well could you help me place this call?
Well, I can’t read the number that you just gave me.
There’s something in my eyes, you know it happens every time
I think about a love that I thought would save me.
Well, I know it’s kind of late
I hope I didn’t wake you
But what I got to say can’t wait
I know you’d understand
Every time I tried to tell you
The words just came out wrong
So I’ll have to say I love you in a song
Well, if you are going to call me so late, please do sing me a song. Jim Croce just effortlessly, masculinely, yet tenderly delivered his urgent message of love that could not be contained until morning.
It’s a quarter after one, I’m all alone and I need you now
Said I wouldn’t call but I lost all control and I need you now
And I don’t know how I can do without
I just need you now
Dave made a video of pictures of us for me using this song a couple of years ago. He told me to watch it every night while I was on an extended trip and I thought it was so sweet. Then Tredessa told me it was a “booty call” song. Has changed it for me ever since. But I still think of it sweetly. ;).
This one is probably the most annoying of them all and all I can say is even though I don’t want to sing it and it technically doesn’t mention a phone call, I made the unfortunate mistake of watching the video when it first came out and it was just so pretty (chalk drawings, swinging chandeliers, a garden lit up at night) I could not resist. And, in the vid, they are talking on the phone. That is how the invite came;
It doesn’t matter what you wear
‘Cause it’s only gonna be
you and me there (Whoa!)
So, even when Shania does that ridiculous “Whoooooooooooooa” sliding thing she does, I am all in. I am actually wishing the whole time that Billy really will stand strong against her bold advances, but we all know it’s Shania. Resistance will be futile…
When this came out, I was just a little girl, way too naive to get the intense passion for her “baby-baby-baby-baby-baby,” but Aretha? Wonderful.
Baby will you call me the moment you get there?
Because you’re taking me with you
And I’m keeping you right here in my heart
This is one of the few 1980s songs I remember.
I hear the ticking of the clock
I’m lying here the room’s pitch dark
I wonder where you are tonight
No answer on the telephone
And the night goes by so very slow
Oh I hope that it won’t end though
Alone
Till now I always got by on my own
I never really cared until I met you
And now it chills me to the bone
How do I get you alone
O and…ONE LAST SONG: Weird, but true. I obviously put this post together over the weekend. My plan was just to hit the publish button this morning. I woke up with “I’ve Just Got to Get a Message to You” by the Bee Gees on my mind, which is weird because I love the Bee Gees, but that really isn’t a song of theirs I have ever liked that much. So just for fun (and because I was singing it and realized I knew very few of the words and that vexes me), I googled the lyric and guess what???
The preacher talked to me and he smiled,
Said, come and walk with me, come and walk one more mile.
Now for once in your life you’re alone,
But you ain’t got a dime, there’s no time for the phone.
Ive just got to get a message to you, hold on, hold on.
One more hour and my life will be through, hold on, hold on.
It shows your brain knows stuff you are wholly unaware of . Show off.
Adding it to the playlist. Now there are 26…
PeekAtTheWeek (click this, then click again when it opens to get the .pdf)
Isn’t this a pretty delightful way to start your week?
In the wee hours of Dec. 26, 2011, I awakened to this little prose-y type thing going through my mind. I have had the draft hanging around forever. I always feel silly writing such not-good-poetry. I am more suited to Dr. Seuss, who could say anything he wanted and just make up words to rhyme if need be.
This does and does not rhyme. It does and does not have rhythm. But it is what I heard in my heart that early morning and what I got from it was: Let what has to happen, happen. Eyes will cry and noses will sniffle and bodies will wear out and get tired and it is perfectly normal and ok and when you’re happy you should sing and when you’re sad you should mourn. God made you and gets you, anyway. So let yourself off the hook. Just let it be.
Let the fish, swim
The bird, fly
The dog bark.
Let the heart cry
The ear, hear
The nose twitch
The soul, sigh.
Just let it be.
Let the knee bow,
Declare, wow!
God is good.
I am just me.
He knows what I am made of. So let it be.
Let the happy sing,
The sad, mourn
The confused find,
The broken, mend.
O, wounded, heal
Frightened aimless, find.
Disenfranchised, be revived.
Let it happen as it must.
Let the seed die,
The sprout emerge,
The sun bring warmth
To shine on fruit.
Let time stand still
Make room to feel.
Let the cup be filled
Let the heart be healed.
Let you be you. Let God be God. Let life be life. And get on with it.
Ta-da.