A Week for Thanks---giving

Four days to Thanksgiving Day. . .giving thanks everyday.

“Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.”—Langston Hughes

Today I am thankful for rain. . .and it is, as my Mom used to say, raining cats and dogs!  I also happen to love rain, love the sound of raindrops on the roof of our RV home, love to watch the drops splashing and love walking in the rain – hey, I am waterproof! 

Maybe this love stems from the fact that my home has always been in low rainfall states.  I am a North Dakota native where the average rainfall is 17.8”, 43rd in ranking in the U.S., and my current home state of California ranks 40th with 22.2” per year.

It’s hard to capture rain in a photo.

The rain barrel is almost full!

 

“Into each life some rain must fall.”--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

 

“And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.”--Jerry Chin

“Don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.”— Satchel Paige had a way with words, love him.

“After the rain cometh the fair weather.”—Aesop. That’s what is wonderful about living in California, LOTS of fair weather!

“That I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil.”-- Deuteronomy 11:14

The rain may have not been the primary reason I chose this verse. . . perhaps it was the reference to wine?

And then there is this nursery rhyme which I love except that I don’t want the rain to go away. Yes, it is still raining cats and dogs. . . and I am thankful!

A week for Thanks--giving

Five days to Thanksgiving Day. . .giving thanks everyday.

Today I am thankful for this beautiful butterfly I am watching (and photographing) from my sister’s dining room.

“In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God."

Thessalonians 5:18

Our Mom gave each of us, brother Don included, this same Bible for our Lutheran confirmation.

(Special thanks to my sister Micki for use of her home for my photos.)

Who knew??

“Isn't it astonishing that all these secrets have been preserved for so many years just so we could discover them!”  Orville Wright

I have been staying with my sister Micki as she goes through Chemo.  Yesterday she received a package from our sister-in-law Lee.  In it was this beautiful multi-colored colored shawl.

This beautiful sentiment attributed to “Kentucky Mom” was enclosed with the shawl.

We admired the shawl and wondered who had knit such a beauty.  We were thinking that she must know someone who knits so beautifully.  THEN, in the personal message on the inside of the card we read:  “As I knitted I thought of you. . .” Wait a minute! Did she say “I knitted?”  Lee can knit?  Did she just learn this art?

Micki gets on the phone and calls Lee to thank her (and to find out about this knitting thing.)  Lee says yes indeed, she not only knits but learned many years ago!  We have not only known Lee since she married our brother Don over 40 years ago, but Gary and I full-time RVed with them for more than ten years.  Yes, we even hit dozens of craft and fabric stores as we traveled together all over the country for ten years and I didn’t know this little tidbit about her. 

How well do we really know the people we care about?  And, no matter how well we think we know our friends and acquaintances, how much do we really know about them?  Sal performs in a band? I didn’t know that!  Harold is Finnish!  Gary and his parents were extras in a movie!  We watch celebrities in the media and like to think we know them. Of course we don’t.

Who knew?

Where did Halloween creativity go?

Yesterday while I was buying “Trick or Treats” to mail to Stanley, Mary and Will in Fresno I noticed several aisles displaying hundreds of Halloween costumes.  And they weren’t cheap!   I can only imagine what families with several children must be spending on costumes.

Gosh, I must be getting old!  Where are the days when people and kids actually created their costumes?  When my three were growing up I kept a big box full of all kinds of piece-parts for costumes.  After Russ, Gary and Kelle decided what they wanted to “BE” they would dump the box out onto the family room floor and chose from the many items to create their costume.  If need be, we would head out to the fabric store to purchase additional items to finish out their costumes. After Halloween these new fixings would be added to the box. 

A few years later, when he was about two, I made grandson Jorden into a bright yellow M&M.  Wish I had the pictures with me to show you; I’m not at home this week and have only the photos on my laptop and flash drive to chose from. 

Seemed that they got almost as much pleasure in creating their costume as they did in the actual Trick or Treating event.  Yes, of course, they did LOVE getting all that candy!

That’s me on far right, Gary is second from left sometime in the 70’s. Our costumes were also created from the “Halloween box.”

Kelle and her brother (Was it Russ or Gary? I can’t tell!)

Gary and I.  My “wig” was a floor mop dyed red. Yes, Gary is in dyed red long-johns!

Grandson Jorden- “The Nerd”

When the kids were all costumed and ready to go out trick or treating they grabbed a grocery bag or pillow case for their stash.  This morning on the Today Show a guest stated:  “It’s over with the paper bags” and displayed various fancy trick or treat containers which seem to be the current must have.

Yeah! At least some people are still doing hand-made costumes. Bobbie Thomas of the Today Show has some ideas:  http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44991707/ns/today-style/.  Loved the Smurfs and Holy Cow and Deviled Egg!

I also found this site with some cute ideas: http://costumeideazone.com/ Bearded Circus Lady and Cute as a Button seem easy and fun.

OK, so creativity is not entirely dead, just lying low.

I do love how Jack O Lantern carving has taken a creative turn.  Now, in addition to the traditional “mouth with teeth, triangle nose and eyes:”

creativity has taken jack 0 lanterns to whole new level:

Happy Halloween!

BOO!

A thought on a Friday afternoon

Or rather, a lack of thoughts on a Friday afternoon!

I was browsing through the “Famous Quotes” app on my IPhone today and saw this quote by William Makepeace Thackeray:

“There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.” 

Well, taking up the pen; or, in this case, placing fingers on my laptop keyboard hasn’t  brought my thousand thoughts to mind lately!

Maybe it is let-down writer’s block caused by thirteen months on the road!  I’m sure I will recover.

Happy Friday everyone!

My Fresno Five. . .how DO they keep up?

This is a recent E mail from daughter-in-law Denise.  In addition to the small slice of life in this re-cap she is a Special Ed Teacher and our son, Russ, is busy with his job.  Oh yes, there are also two active Jack Russell terriers in the mix!

From left, Stanley, athlete extraordinaire, Mary, cheerleader and all around girly-girl, Will, just a character!

Friday: 2:30: Stanley is starting QB for Eaton Eagles Flag Football team. They played the #1 school (the GATE school) Our Eagles scored 4 touchdowns in their proud defeat. Stanley had his first bloody, busted lip. his friends ran up to me......Stanley lost a tooth! Thank goodness that wasn't true.

Friday: 3:30: Mom sold snow cones at Powers-Ginsburg Carnival and purchased home made tamales for Dad.

Friday: 7:00: Mary cheered at High School game for Hoover Patriots. The girls even danced on the field at half-time. Awesome job Lil' Pates!

Friday: 10:00: Dad to bed, Mom with feet up and kids playing (are you kidding me?)

Saturday:7:30 : Stanley and Mom to soccer game/ Stan played goalie. Mom held her breathe for two straight 20 min. periods. We lost by one. Our boy did a good job.

Saturday: 8:00: William, Mary, Kylee and Dad head to Wills soccer game. Tie. But they got donuts on the way....so we will call it a win.

Saturday: 11:00: Mary and Mom to Allison's shower. Very nice luncheon, Grandma Lisa made cakes and cookies with Aubree's name in icing. Cute cupcakes she made into rattles uses plastic shovel handles. Creative points there. Good turnout and lots of cute goodies for baby. (Grandma Mary would love all the Oakland A's attire) Mary almost won a game. She did make out with all the balloons.

Saturday: 4:00: Thomas family loads up and heads to Sanger. Mary and her crew, cheer their hearts out for the often defeated Lil Pates. We listen to Fresno State Bulldog game on radio driving home.

Saturday: 8:00: Pizza

Saturday: 9:00: Bed

Sunday: 1:00: Stanley's "bad news bears" baseball team only loses by one run to his old coach's team. A moral victory.

Sunday: 3:00: Mom's birthday dinner out..........yummy! Chicken coconut soup, favorite food on the planet!

Sunday: 5:00: Dad and Stanley jump fence at school and play tennis while Mary and Wills flag down Ice cream truck. Mom watches.....smiling

Sunday: 7:00: Mom writes birthday Thank you notes.

Sunday: 9:30: Everyone full of popcorn and showered. Resting at last. Mom hits computer!

Our lives our full of blessings. Even if we are a bit stressed and fatigued at times. 

Oh how I remember the days of baseball, scouts, gymnastics, football, 4-H, cheerleading, band, church, that Gary and I were involved in with our three and, as she states at the end, we were also fatigued and stressed much of the time. Brings back wonderful memories and also makes me tired! Thank goodness I am now the Grammie who can relax and enjoy.

 

Our three in the 1970’s, these California kids didn’t see snow up close very often:  Russ, now Dad to the above, Kelle “Mom” to two cats, and Gary, Dad to Jorden.

Heading west (home) again. . .

A year ago last week we left the Monterey Peninsula in California for points east, south and who knows where else following the hood of the truck would take us.  And we did go to points in the south and east, in fact, all the way to the eastern-most point in the U.S.

About August, while we were in Maine I started missing “home.”  But wait a minute, I’m a full time RVer who loves the lifestyle of living and traveling in a fifth wheel RV!   For seventeen years home has been where we are for however long we are there, so why for the first time was I feeling this way?

Almost all full time RVers have a “home base”, the place where they return to periodically.  For many it is where they lived in a traditional home prior to going on the road.  This is often where their primary care physicians, dentists, accountants etc are located.  This was the case for us although Gary had elbow surgery and I had dental work done in Louisiana.  My brother Don and sister-in-law Lee kept Bellingham, Washington as their home base the 10+ years they full time RVed. Others adopt a home base along the road.  Our full timing friends Duane and MaryJane adopted South Carolina as their home base and then settled there when they were done full timing.

Ah ha, so what I am missing is not my home but our home base!  The familiar places we love to eat, our family and friends, the roar of the race cars and motorcycles at Laguna Seca Raceway, beautiful Monterey Bay, “my” Safeway market and even the summertime brown hills of the Golden State.

While home is where the heart is, it is also true that home is where the familiar is.  Of course this doesn’t mean we are anywhere near settling into a home that doesn’t move. . .not by a long stretch!

And when you are making plans, life happens

Once again I’ve been distracted from writing about FDR and Eleanor’s beloved island Campobello - who knows if I will ever get back to it!

One of our “words to live by”, “Our plans are like jello, very flexible” took on a whole new meaning last week when we received a call telling us that the grandson we helped raise was in a one car crash and was pretty banged up.  Since we are in Maine we couldn’t have been further away from Fresno, California when it happened and because of HIPPA privacy laws we were unable to get very much information about his condition over the telephone.  Husband Gary had flight reservations made for me almost before the news had fully registered and I was on my way back to California.

Jorden was wearing his seatbelt and definitely had his guardian angel (us in the family think it was our nephew Michael who was taken from us too soon) in the car with him when he fell asleep, hit a guard rail, flipped, rolled down an embankment, hit a tree and is not only alive but, after only seven days, was released from the hospital and healing.  He has a compression fracture to his L1 disk for which he is wearing a back brace for about three months, a broken nose with lots of stitches to repair the skin and which will have to be re-broken and set when swelling is gone, a bruised lung, concussion, all of which, whew, will heal with time. For now his goal is to rest and recuperate.

I won’t show a photo of Jorden but here is what remains of his Honda:

On Thursday he and I joined Gary back in Maine. We flew from Fresno to Phoenix (unbeknownst to us barely missed another haboob, one of the huge dust storms Phoenix has been experiencing this year,) then on to Philadelphia where our flight to Bangor was delayed due to weather.  While waiting for our Bangor flight we had four gate changes. Thank goodness for those electric carts that ferry those who need them!  And we were safely at home at 3:15am.

Our 49th anniversary happened while I was in Fresno, only the second time we haven’t been together on August 17th!  The first was way back when Gary was in the US Air Force stationed in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Here we are back in ‘62.

We are now watching hurricane Iris to see if it truly makes its way all the way up the East Coast as the Weather Channel say is possible.  If so, our plans will again be like jello and we will point the truck west pretty quickly --- our fifth wheel prefers not to ride out huge winds!

FDR & Eleanor. . .oops, I got distracted!

This morning I sat down to write about FDR and Eleanor’s beloved island Campobello and got distracted.  I remembered that it was time for Grammie & Papa to send the Little Ones grandchildren their yearly back-to-school shopping money.  It is usually a Target gift card which they love but there isn’t a Target here in Ellsworth, Maine so I’m sure they will be quite happy with cash.

It wouldn’t do for Grammie to just throw the money in an envelope!  UMMM-what kind of cards should I make?  I decided to make little cards and then thought, ah it’s cash, I’ll do cash gift envelopes!  I started to draw out a template but wouldn’t checking on-line for a template be a little easier?  Yep, Googled it and found a very nice template on Mirwood Designs (I bookmarked that site for future projects; it has lots of neat templates!)

My bone folder is a real bone given to grandson Jorden by an Alaskan artist.I used Printmaster to find some fun back-to-school graphics.  Even though I liked the Bulletin Board graphic, when I tried to center the template over it, it just wouldn’t feature enough of the graphic so this went in the trash.Found another cute graphic, printed and cut it out. Oops!  Why does the president seems to be peeking though the cutout?  I know used the correct template!  (Had never noticed before but on older bills the president is centered and on the newer “large face” bills the faces are off center.)  Well, I figured out that, in order for the cutout to be in correct alignment, the right side of the template and the printed graphic design had to be facing when cutting it out.  Easy fix there.

Here, I have the process down and having fun making personalizing graphics for each “grand.”  Colored pencils for ten-year old Stanley, cute paint pots for nine-year old Mary and leaves, pencils and books for seven-year old Will.Finished product, loaded with a “president,” tied with a ribbon and ready to go in a mailing envelope!  That was fun for me, hope the “grands” like them too.So now I can get back to FDR and his beloved island!

Fulltime RVing: A SUMMER IN THE “BRIG”. . .

museum, that is.  

Interpretive Hosting at Farragut State Park in Idaho was one of our more interesting Fulltime RVing experiences.  My article about this experience was published in the Workamper News photo contest a few years ago. Text of the above:

Few people are aware that 4,000 acre Farragut State Park in the panhandle of Idaho was once the location of a World War II Naval Training Center.  The Brig (Navy term for jail) is the only remaining building of about 700 which were quickly built after the Pearl Harbor attack.  Farragut Naval Training Center trained 293,381 “boots” for the war effort during it’s short operation from 1942-46.

We thoroughly enjoyed our assignment as Interpretive Hosts at the “Brig” naval museum.  We felt we were caretakers of an important piece of our country’s history.  A highlight was hearing both the stories of the men and women who trained and worked at the center and those who lived during the war years.  Most often they started with “we didn’t do anything special.”

From Park Manager Bryan and rangers Dennis, Al, Jim, Tami, Keith, Pam to Park Interpreter Nancy, friendly helpful park aides, Visitor Center personnel and especially the campground hosts we were made to feel welcome and valued.

Situated in forests of ponderosa and other pines, nowadays this quiet scenic park on the shores of Lake Pend Oreille (pronounced Pond Oray) hosts campers, bicyclists, horse back riders, Boy and Girl Scout Jamborees, a shooting range, and even a special area, (formerly parade grounds for the training center) for remote controlled airplane events.  Abundant wildlife roams the park with an occasional “black dog in the area” alert.  Black dog is a code word for bear!

For the 14th time in our eight years of full timing our Workamper assignment was a positive experience. Thanks, Workamper News, for publishing the “Sears catalog” of working and volunteering on the road.

The photo of us and grandson Jorden, a seasoned “Junior Workamper,” is taken in front of the museum map of the naval training center.

The Brig is the only remaining major Naval Training Center building. Unruly “boots” would have entered through the large gates on center front of the Brig.  Brig Museum entrance is at left front of the building. Our site was tucked into the Ponderosa pines beside the Brig and entrance to the museum.Before arriving at Farragut we were unaware that the Navy had a land-locked training center during WWII.  Makes sense since it was feared that coastal locations would have been vulnerable to enemy attack.Unrestored solitary confinement cells in an area of the Brig not open to the public.  Although it is rumored that ghosts of long-gone sailors roam the Brig we didn’t experience any paranormal activity.This cell would have housed four to six inmates.  The mattresses aren’t exactly Tempur-pedic are they? And the blankets were scratchy wool--ouch.Another cell without the chain link door and enclosure.  Items on the bunks are WWII era Navy uniforms.The display board demonstrates many many sailor knots. Kids, and adults too, I must say, were attracted to the practice rail for learning knots such as clove hitch, anchor hitch and bowline. Signalman operated this signal lamp and also utilized semaphore flag signaling.  The red and white flag is a semaphore dating back to the war.A blackout headlight used on military vehicles.In addition to our Interpretive Hosting duties we took on other projects at the Brig.  Here Gary is painting a new sign for the museum.  Jorden took part in several “Junior Ranger” programs such as tree planting, bike safety and wolf education.

Are you familiar with any of these Nautical quotes?

"Damn the torpedoes, Full speed ahead!" -Admiral David Glasgow Farragut

"Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!"-Lieutenant Howell Maurice Forgy

"Don't give up the ship!"- Captain James Lawrence

"I have not yet begun to fight!"-Captain John Paul Jones

“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in morning, sailor’s warning”

“There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.” Joseph Conrad

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest -- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" R.L. Stevenson