Happy Thanksgiving! It's my absolute favorite holiday of the year and I'm so grateful to have time with what family is available to me.
I was struck last Sunday as I sat in church with an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for blessings I've personally been given. What struck me especially was the gift that music is in my life. I accompanied a group of ladies singing a lovely arrangement of a hymn, and while I was thankful for the ability to do that, what I felt most, was the opportunity to share it with others. The fact that I can play the piano is wonderful, but using that gift with and for others is even better.
Of course, I'm most thankful for my family today. My daughter's little family will be here along with several of my other children and associated grandkiddos. It won't be like last year's empty COVID table. I am blessed beyond measure. I hope you are able to spend the day with people you love!
It's Veteran's Day. Until my son joined the Air Force, I was grateful in my head for all veterans, all the military personnel to worked hard and sacrificed time away from family, and sometimes much, much more.
But after Collin joined the Air Force, I gained a different perspective. I saw first-hand how his family has moved every 2 years. I felt the anxiety a mother feels when he was deployed to Afghanistan, and I watched how hard those things were on his little family. It's true, he doesn't hold a combat role in the military, but his job is part of the military that keeps this country safe.
In the past I felt it in my head. Now I feel it in my heart.
We are semi-rural....less and less all the time with building that's going on, but our street doesn't have sidewalks or streetlights. Scads of kids don't come pounding on our door on Halloween.
I religiously buy candy every year on the off chance someone shows up. This year it was Evan's & Eric's families.
Eric has no qualms about dressing up for Halloween or any other occasion. This year it was Kenny G.
And he won the best costume award.
Elisa took pictures of her kids individually. Here's Gwen,
Caroline,
Emmett,
and Ephraim.
In Marc's family we have Isaac,
Levi,
and Jude. This is his new "Smile!" face.
And my daughter went Disney. She and her husband were Zeus and Hera.
Jack was baby Hercules,
and Leo was baby Pegasus. Can you see the cute little wings?
We gathered at Eric's house to give the kids a chance to wear their costumes again, and eat Halloween-themed food. There was "snot-cho" cheese,
and the pasta salad vomited out of a pumpkin.
Mummy dogs, pizza,
and a snack tray.
Eric also brought out his cider press. The kids cut up apples and ground them up....
and then Eric squished them and we got fresh apple juice. It was incredibly delicious. Then it was on to Hallowen charades. Do we know how to party or what?
Oh yes there were. But let's move a little earlier in the day, shall we? I mentioned in this week's food post that it was a big cooking day, and it started with making the batter for the homemade ice cream my husband begs for at every opportunity. I love him, I really do, but the recipe is a bit labor-intensive, like standing and stirring it at the stove for about a half hour until it's just ready to boil....not boiling, not simmering, but somewhere in between. It's really good stuff, but it does require some dedication.
Having done that, I moved on to something I thought the kids would really love and it was these cookies, which I will not link the recipe for, much as love the site they came from. The recipe requires jello powder in it, and the resulting cookies come out tasting like a combination of Nerds and Crunchberries. If you're into that sort of thing, these will work for you. They didn't work for most of the adults and even some of the kids, and won't be repeated.
While Eric and my husband were setting things up, Gwen decided to see how far up my red maple she could climb. Turns out it's pretty high.
Then we broke out the sparklers. Sparklers actually give my husband and Evan serious nightmares. Frequently, if they were on call on the 4th, there was some kind of sparkler eye injury they had to deal with. The kids were well monitored and generally tried really hard to stay at safe distances.
Not sure about this kid, though. I think Eric had something like 4 going at once.
Then it was time for the big stuff.
And when I say big stuff, I mean stuff like this. In Idaho aerial fireworks are prohibited for general use, so you can't buy anything that leaves the ground. That's not to say they're totally innocuous, but things aren't going anywhere but the driveway. Music was courtesy of Evan and Jan.
Eric did find this big daddy canister in the local Walmart parking lot. Look at the timestamp....it's almost 3 solid minutes of stuff going off. It was certainly Grand Finale worthy.
We had amazing driveway fireworks with the grandkids last night which is always fun. Post coming about that next week.
I am grateful for this country and the freedoms it represents. I'm grateful to those who preserve and protect those freedoms. I'm mindful that those freedoms cut both ways. For me to be able to speak, worship and gather the way I want to, I have to afford that same tolerance to others.
You might remember that I was born there, I have a heritage there, so I feel a connection. I like to put a post up on Canada Day to remind my kids of this. They have a Canadian heritage from my side of the family, and sometimes I feel like that gets overlooked a little bit.
It's true that I live in America, and I married an American, and I had American kids. I even changed my citizenship from Canadian to American.
But I have Canadian roots, and by extension so do they. Happy Canada Day!
This is the American cemetery at Normandy, France.
I've actually been here with my family and there's no way to describe the feeling, looking out at those seeming endless rows of headstones. The incalculable loss associated with each one.
Just a gentle reminder that the freedoms we enjoy come at a price....sometimes the ultimate price.
I will admit that off and on in the past, Mother's Day has just not been my favorite. I listen to people listing the perfect attributes of their mothers and think, "That's just not me." And I feel badly that it's not. Sometimes I'm able to find a pair of Big Girl Pants and realize that everyone has different gifts and abilities. I told my daughter just a month or so ago....."you didn't get the hair mom, or the house decorator mom or the mom who can't start her day without 3 hours of cardio and can only stomach paleo foods. You got the hot breakfast, meal planner mom and the piano mom." And since my daughter does love a good breakfast, that works. We all have to play to our strengths.
This past Mother's Day was wonderful for me, though, because it was full of things showing that my family really gets me. My kids checked in which is really all I ever want for Mother's Day. My daughter also thanked me for her Mother's Day breakfast, since her husband heated up some apple pancakes I left as a freezer meal when I was at her house right after the twins were born. That made me chuckle. I also got a couple of really lovely cards from Bryce's family and Marc's family. Collin's family, you might remember is all Jurassic, all the time and sent me this Dino plant stake. When I opened it, I really just laughed right out loud. For a mom of 5 sons and Gramma Honey of 14 boys out of 16 grandkiddos, I totally get this and it's found a home in one of my pots on the patio.
Then while we were at church, the in-town kids came and chalked the driveway, in very sweet and hysterical ways. It was an event organized by Evan's wife, Jan. We started with this drawing of a cat, right at the edge of the garage. This hearkens back to when I may have very accidentally....squished....not one, but 2 of our barn cats who were trying to get into the garage. Not together, but on 2 separate occasions. It's not that I tried to, mind you. But it did happen and it's found a home in family lore.
There was a rendering of Schrodinger's cat. There is a small, but non-zero chance that this may have been the subject of dinner time discussions at our house.
And math. There was math on my driveway. My children all know my feelings about math in general and cheesecake math in particular. Someone let me know that this is the quadratic equation formula, otherwise I would have been clueless. Just give me ALL the split infinitives and dangling participles, people. Do not subject me to math.
This little dig was made especially by Eric. It's a conic sections graph (or so my right-brained husband tells me). Eric maintains he uses conic sections on almost a daily basis. I say anything beyond basic math operations doesn't live at my house.
There was even a nicely drawn suggestion for possible future dead critter display. This particular iteration will happen only over my cold, dead body.
We moved on to Mom-isms....things I said to my children when they lived in my house and I had actual control over certain aspects of their lives.
These things were uttered mostly when they were teenagers. "But Moooooooooom! So-and-so's mom is letting them do such-and-such." "Yes, but I'm not THEIR mom. I'm yours, and you will not be participating."
This was a good memory for me. Every time my kids went out of the house I would say this to them....
"Be nice, be kind, use good judgement."
And every missionary letter I ever wrote ended with that same thing, with the addition of....
"Remember, you're mama's boy/girl." I hope they always remember that they are always my boys and girl, not matter how old they get.
There was all kinds of fun artwork from the grandkids.
Marc's church happened at the same time mine did, so they sent drawings to my daughter-in-law, Elisa, who duplicated them.
Caroline produced this anatomical heart. She was just tickled to bring the medical aspect into it, along with the implication of love.
I think Ephraim had some help with this one.
There was an impressive number line contributed by Emmett.
And this pelican. They are not on the list of favorites right now, as they are making frequent trips to the ponds to eat our trout.
Edward's bee rendering. Bees made several appearances on the driveway because.....Gramma Honey.
Dragons made an appearance from Gwen.
I really appreciated the expressions of love that appeared in various places.
Honestly, I wished there was a way I could preserve all the drawings forever.
But the sprinklers have already come on and washed some of them away.
I was also really grateful that Evan took some pictures to document the event. He knows his mama.
Love all my family both near and farther away who made it a really great Mother's Day.
I got a bunch of Easter pictures from Eric's family.
They dyed lots of their happy hen eggs.
LOTS of eggs. Gwen and Caroline have started a little egg business
They celebrated Palm Sunday.
They also had an egg hunt on their place.
There are lots of places to hide them there.
Somebody didn't want to wait to eat the spoils of the hunt.
Fun times.
The in-town family got together on Sunday for our tradition Easter dinner.
There was also an egg hunt in our yard. Jude was pretty excited about that.
The kids hunted, but I think there were one or two eggs that didn't get found, which always seems to be the case. They turn up later in the year and the candy in them is either dissolved or just...gone.
Here are all the ambulatory grandkids that participated. Jack and Leo were also here, but they weren't much for the egg hunt.
In the meantime, our creature-loving Caroline managed to find a couple of garter snakes in the flower beds. I was actually really glad for this, since I weed the flower beds. I'd much rather have her run across them than me.
She and Gwen don't have the whole anti-snake thing going, and spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying (?) them, and then took them to live at their house after naming them Curiosity and Freedom.
The local families gathered for our annual Christmas Eve smorgasbord.
Marc made 6 baguettes as a vehicle for his crab/corn dip. He says just call him Maurice.
Collin sent this with David's prayer request.
One of my friends added hilarity to the evening by gifting me this little white dog.
Jude was curious and then amazed when it turned on and did a little dance.
At first he was a little suspicious, but then decided he wanted it to dance.....again....and again.
This was my daughter's very creative contribution...a charcuterie Christmas tree.
A festive and fairly socially distant time was had by all.
At Collin's house, they laid out treats for Santa and the reindeer, as well as lego creations to entertain them. David made the tags and what just made me laugh right out loud was that the Lego Santa's sleigh is labeled "slay."
There was masked carol singing.
And my daughter-in-law was able to record part of my daughter and I playing our "Sleigh Ride" duet, accompanied by much rear-shaking dancing from the grandkids.
My daughter requested orange rolls for breakfast, and who am I to deny a mama pregnant with twins?
Eric showed off his new t-shirt at dinner. If you get it, you will laugh.
Jude hadn't gotten a nap by the time present opening rolled around, so I got to cuddle him and put him to sleep for a bit. This is just my favorite thing to do while grandkids are still young enough for it.
The festivities ended with this game I happened to stumble across while I was on Amazon. A controlled chaos kind of activity. We were all grateful no one was/got sick and had to stay home, for time together and for masks.
