44 YEARS AND COUNTING, A LITTLE BALLARINA and A BIT OF HISTORY

Forty-four years sounds like a really long time, but really it is just a blink of an eye when you are married to the right person.  That is how long it has been since we eloped.  That's right, we really did.  No fancy diamond ring, flowing dress, nerve racking plans and storybook expectations.  We were just in love and wanted to live with each other and back in the good old days in Newton County that meant getting married.  We had no education, job, money or any plans for how to get those things.  Wow, that surely does sound scary right now.  God has been so good and gracious to us!  Here we are 44 years later.

We have raised three beautiful daughters, own a home and a little piece of land, and we all love the Lord.  What more could any couple ask for? 

Johnny surprised me with a great anniversary gift Wednesday afternoon.  Our actual anniversary date is February 25th so just a couple of days early.  I just don't think he could wait to give it to me, because he knew I would love the game camera.  Obviously he knows me perfectly.  This is better than chocolate candy and flowers.  Since he couldn't wait, neither could I.  So he got his battery powered screwdriver.  Romantic, huh? 

The rest of our plan to celebrate was a trip to Texarkana, Texas to visit with our oldest grandson Nick, wife Elizabeth, and our three year old great granddaughter Brooklyn.  Brooklyn really enjoyed the pillowcase I made for her with ballarinas on it.  She started taking ballet lessons this year and is such a girly girl that loves frills, ruffles and tutus.  She and Bop even wallowed on the new pilllow in the living room floor making snow (carpet) angels.

They must have used Brooklyn for the model.  She loved the tags on the edge of the pillowcase and  remarkably it matched her bedroom perfectly.

We decided to go from Texarkana up into Arkansas and ride the back roads to see if we could find some interesting little towns.    We did find the "tree of life."  Not really, but I did find this worthy of a picture for no particular reason.

In just a few miles we found Hope.  I knew it was a name I knew for some reason and I kept thinking it was something to do with a former president, maybe Clinton.  We happened upon the town's old train depot and there it was - Hope is the town where Billy Blythe, III was born - Bill Clinton.  Not being a supporter of Clinton, I didn't even recognize the Blythe name.  We really enjoyed viewing all the photos and memorabilia, visiting the little house where he lived as a very young child, and learning more about a former preseident of the United States.  The other thing we learned while in Hope is that former Governor Mike Huckabee is also from Hope, Arkansas.  Wouldn't it be amazing if there were two presidents who were born in a little tiny town like Hope?  Stranger things have happened.  We'll see.

 We found El Dorado, Arkansas to be a nice looking, rejuvenated oil boomtown with streets lined with trees in full spring bloom and full of oil boomtown history and architecture.  The oil boom is long gone, but it was a very nice place to visit and shop the cute shops.

The lobster trash can was "Too Cute" in front of this little shop.   Obviously everything in the shop was "Too Cute."

Nearing home we crossed the Mississippi River and stopped at the rest area on our side.  I could not help but feel patriotism and pride in our state and country as I viewed Old Glory fully extended high above the old Mississipppi River Bridge.  The five military helicopters were a moving sight.

Time to unload, unpack and wash.  I love back road trips and can't wait for the next one and more picnics on the bank of some river along the way.

For the Birds

Johnny wants to know if I think all the birds in this area are homeless.  No silly!  I still have the crafting bug and the priority right now is building birdhouses.  The weather is perfect, timing is perfect, and my yard is full of old scrap lumber such just begging to be made into something shabby quaint.  In  just a few weeks those little birds will be feathering their nests and what lady doesn't like a nice new home.

I love the weathered look of the old cedar boards which Johnny salvaged from an old fence.  The twigs attached for the birds to sit on are part of my garden thicket fence.  The hardest part was using a hand saw to do all the cutting.  I have got to get a saw that I can handle.   It is probably a good thing we live out in the woods.  City neighbors might have had something to say about my hammering until midnight last night.

While the birds are enjoying their new homes, I will be sitting and swinging in my new Christmas swing.  Johnny gave me a two-seater porch swing for the front porch.  We painted it "Roasted Pepper" red to match our front door.  It is the perfect place to sit in the afternoons and enjoy a big glass of sweet tea or just horse around with the grands.

Time for a little swinging and a second glass of after supper tea.
 

Springlike Tuesday

After the coldest winter in a long time, we are having a really nice warm spell that is just fueling my spring fever.  It is way too early to plant most anything, but I managed to plant a few potatoes in a big old wash tub late this afternoon.  They love this cold weather and besides this was a bit of therapy for me. 

Yesterday Amber was my right hand man and helped clean out all the leaves and other debris in my fenced garden plot.  As soon as I get the dirt broken up there are broccoli and cauliflower plants sitting on my porch just waiting to start growing.  Amber thinks we can create a business selling veggies and she should be a 50/50 shareholder in the profits.  We'll have to work on her business plan.  She is ever the young entrepreneur. 

She thought the garden looked like a man's garden until we added stepping stones leading to the bird house, a pot full of parsley and an old sign that said "Welcome to My Garden."  She then decided it was definitely on the way to being a lady garden.  More work is needed and she wants to be the girl to help me. 

We found some old bricks that are quite unusual and concrete stepping stones which have Nick and John's hands and feet prints on them.  Somewhere in my yard is the William stepping stone but we cannot find it.  They are about 15 years old and were made while the boys lived in Virginia.  The stones will look pretty when they are surrounded by the perennials that have been growing up under the birdhouse for many years.  We can use the stones to get a peek at the baby birds in a few weeks without stepping all over the young flowers.

Today was a long trip to the clinic for Mamaa to get the last of her three shots to help her cope with the pain from her broken tail bone.  She has done so well since the initial injury in October.  She was quite sleepy from the procedure and that gave me a chance to enjoy the beautiful springlike day and eat my lunch on the front porch while swinging in the new swing. 

Johnny gave me a two-seat porch swing for Christmas.  We painted it red to match our front door and finally got it hung last weekend.  This is actually the first time we could really sit and enjoy it without freezing half to death.  It is just perfect.  I could see right through the window into the living room and watch Mamaa while she imitated Rip VanWinkle.  That reminds me that "Rip" was Papaa Duke's pet name for her.  The swing so inspired me that I had to get the clippers and prune all my roses.  Yep, spring has to be right around the corner and I am getting ready.

After just one night with the game camera out in our back yard close to the house, Mamaa and I just had to take a peek and see if anything was on it.  Much to my surprise and delight, we got a nice shot of a fox just bounding by. This is right up there with the three coyotes we got a picture of a few days age (note the two in the shadows).  Maybe Danny will forget I have his camera.  It is ever so interesting to be able to see all the little forest creatures that roam all about while we are unaware.

Mamaa and I are headed to search for bargains at Belk in the morning and then home to Newton.  No time for yard work tomorrow.

Garden Fence

I think I am really getting a bit of spring fever.  I find myself thinking more and more about digging in the dirt, cleaning my yard and planting pretty flowers.    Because we live in the woods and have lots of deer, planting certain things in the yard and garden is nearly impossible.  When we plant broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce and certain other veggies, the deer nibble them down to the ground before dawn.  Expensive and frustrating.  So, we are trying to fence part of the garden in with a five foot fence in the hopes that it will deter the deer.  We will see.

After considering the cost and my fence building abilities, we opted for a wattle fence or as I like to call it, a thicket fence.  I cut down young sappling trees from our woods and wove them in and around some old steel posts which we already had.  Johnny and I worked on it for about five hours today and I love the quaint look.  It should look nice with pretty plants and flowers all around it this summer.

I think cucumbers will look just great growing all over this fence.    This needs to be a pickle making year so hopefully I can produce about 50 pounds.  I surely hope it will be a good weather year for gardening.

After we had been working for about two hours and were looking all grungy, Johnny announced that he was going to eat at Frisco Deli for lunch and nothing would do him but I go with him.  Actually I really wanted to continue working on the fence so we could finish it today.  But I finally decided to go in the house and clean up a bit and go with him.  As we were driving to Pearl, the radio talkshow announcer reminded the male listeners that Monday will be Valentine's Day and today is Saturday so they better get going so they can make mama happy.  Johnny looked at me and said "I'm goin."  I have always said that there is not a romantic bone in Johnny's body, but that really is not true.  He is just not consistently romantic.  When he is, he really is, but when he is not, he really is not.

When we got to Pearl's Frisco Deli it was closed for the day, so we opted for Ruby Tuesday's which was right behind Frisco.  He said that this was for Valentine's rather than tomorrow when it would be so crowded.  On the way home he acted really coy and stopped by Chapman's Florist to see Lisa who sings in the choir at church with us.  I couldn't imagine why in the world he thought we should just drop in and talk to Lisa while she was trying to work.  While we were talking with her, she brought out a cute container shaped like a big Hershey's Hug filled with three red roses.  They were for me and I was really surprised and pleased.  He was quite proud of himself for surprising me and being so sneaky.  He said he meant to write "Dear Jan.  Your rack is unreal." on the card.  The Faith Hill TV advertisement for TeleFloral was his inspiration.  I found his pleasure with himself extremely romantic.  Funny, huh?

Seems like I am battling the same demon that put me out of commission  for two months last fall - shingles.  There is a new patch of bumps on the back of my neck right at the hair line which itches like crazy, but hurts like the devil, expecially if I scratch it.  Now the bumps feel a bit scaley - it just has to be shingles again.  Thankfully the pain is nowhere as bad as it was the first time.  My jaw is semi-locked about 75% of the time and it is very painful to eat.  May neck and shoulders hurt quite a bit, but thank goodness for ibuprophen and Advil.  I pray the pain does not get any worse.  I am just trusting the Lord to help me through this again and to help me not think about it any more than necessary.  One of the bad things about this illness is that it is contagious if you have not had chicken pox, so I really don't want to get near Baker and Sidney.  I think they really wanted to come to Nonnie and Bop's house today.   Maybe in a few days it will be OK for me to be around them.  Here's hoping.

  

THOSE DARNED SOCKS

Today was one of those gloomy days when you just want to curl up in a nice old comfy chair with a good book and a big mug of hot chocolate.  Yet again we missed a perfect chance for snow and I am so disappointed.  Just a dusting of sneet on my front steps last night that looked like clear bb's.  They are still there because all day long it was cold as a well digger's behind.  I just had to say that because my mom used to say it all the time when I was a kid. 

After my Bible reading this morning beside the toasty wood stove, I thought about the game camera out in our back woods and decided it was a good time to go see if it had any pictures  We may not have snow, but we surely did have cold!  Much to my surprise there were 24 pics - 7 of them were of me, mostly looking right up my nose from about six inches away as I was trying to unstrap the thing from the tree.  Evidence has been destroyed.  The other pics were of a racoon, armadillo, two guys mud riding on our property on four-wheelers and about ten deer, no bucks.  I was hoping for a bobcat or a bear or something exciting like that. 

Maybe moving the camera to a new location will yield some different game.  I am looking for turkey and bucks next time.

Now about those darned socks.  Some five years ago we had guests for Thanksgiving from Norway.  They actually were friends of Paige and Joe and were living  in Montgomery while attending the Air Force War College.  Sten, who was an officer in the Norwegean military and attending the War College, Kristen and their two children spent several days with us, along with Paige, Joe and family, and enjoyed everything southern and Mississippi.  That included jumping on the trampoline and promptly breaking the arm of their seven year old daughter and spending all Thanksgiving Day in the Rankin ER.

It also  included Sten killing a nice size buck in our back yard with a bow.  It was the first time he had used the new bow and the first buck he had ever killed.  He was one excited Norwegean.  The rest of the week we all had a great time and enjoyed learning about each other's culture.  Some time later we received gifts from them and all were handmade.  Among them were several pair of hand knit wool socks Kristen had made for Johnny.  He loves, loves, loves them.  Finally he wore the bottoms out of his favorite blue pair and asked me to find my knitting needles and repair them for him.

The socks are absolutely worn paper thin on the bottom and even if I had a clue where my knitting needles are, it would take a true miracle for me to be able to just knit those babies back into wearable form.  I might add, it would take me about a month to practice knitting and studying instruction books before I could knit and pearl a single row.  So, I racked my brain as to how to mend the beloved socks.  Finally I thought about using fleece material to cover the whole sole of each sock.  I fashioned a form to stitch around out of an old enamel doorknob and spent several hours hand stitching the soles on.  Baker would love to have a pair of these because I used some of the material he picked out which has firetrucks on it.  Remember, he is going to be a fireman when he grows up.  Bop will be just precious in his firetruck booties.  When he got home from work and tried them on, he was pleased and wanted me to do the same think to the other pair.  They will just have to wait until he walks the bottoms out of them and I have another whole cold, gloomy day to do nothing but darn those darned socks.

Just a bit too big for Baker right now.

  

Day of Liberation!

Maybe it is just crazy, but today was a truly great day of liberation for me.  I am sure nobody else does this, but I am the world's worst about putting those pieces of correspondence that you get in the mail everyday, and that don't demand any real action immediately, into a holding pile.  I mean to tend to them in a few minutes and then weeks later it becomes an issue that has to be dealt with.  Now was the time to do just that!  Can I just say here that I really, really hate unnecessary mail.  I receive a "privacy policy" from each and every company I do any type of business with.  TOTAL WASTE OF GOOD PAPER.  They are almost impossible to understand and are written in such a small font that it makes my eyes cross and my heart race just thinking about who in the world would possibly be interested in my info anyway.  These worthless documents surely do nothing to ease my mind, reassure me or be of any help whatsoever.

Anyway, I got all that junk sorted out and I know I weigh about 30 pounds less with that weight lifted.  Then I tackled purging my "bills paid" files for last year and starting fresh for 2011.  This was almost as liberating as getting rid of "the pile."  Then I took a deep breath and got all our income tax info ready to take to the CPA.  I know, I could use TurboTax or something, but Sandy is absolutely the best and knows how to get us as much back as possible.  This year is also going to be a doosey trying to get all my retirement related documents lined up.  More than I want to even think about right now.  I have no idea whether I checked all the right boxes on all those confusing forms back in June, but I guess the truth will come out in a few weeks.  Maybe I will not have to hock a grandchild to pay the IRS off.

All the ring binders are set up for another year of medical, insurance and financial documents.  Yippee!!!  Is this liberating or what?   

Memories of Motherhood

On Monday of last week our two year old granddaughter, Sidney, was having oral surgery to repair the broken bone in her upper mouth which holds her front teeth.  She and brother Baker were playing a game of chase through the house on late Sunday afternoon and, thanks to a misplaced bean bag and too much steam, the game came to an abrupt stop when Sidney fell into the window sill and left a permanent impression of her four top front teeth.  The 911 white firetruck arrived and questioned Baker about what happened.  He was totally awed by the firemen, but rendered speechless by the attention.  He is going to be a fireman when he grows up, you know.  After the situation was accessed, the emergency team left and mommy loaded everyone up and made a fast trip to the ER.  Three and a half hours later no service was received and a bloody faced baby was taken back home. 

Following a long, sleepless night by the whole family, on Monday morning oral surgeon Dr. Nichols operated on her mouth and removed the two front teeth and left the ones on either side in the hopes they would tighten up.  He was so good with her and had such a confident bed-side manner.  He assured everyone that she would be fine and the permanent teeth should be unaffected.  She stayed with Boppie and me the rest of the week to try to keep her from being so active and maybe reinjuring her mouth. 
 
By the third day after the surgery I was having a flashback to the days long, long ago when I was still wet behind the ears and had a house full of little feet running around under and behind me (my three girls and the two to four that I babysat every day).  God surely does know what he is doing when he doesn't give old women babies to raise.  Times have changed and so has my body.  Every muscle in my arms and shoulders ached from trying to grasp a tiny 25 pound, limp wiggle worm Sidney who just did not want to put her pants on after an unsuccessful tenth trip to the potty everyday.  About 10 minutes later we were again fully robed and had on our new Hello Kitties.  For those of us who are past the baby bearing years, those are disposable pull-up training pants so called because of the cute picture on the front.  

The favorite toy at Nonnie's house was Pootie-Tootie Kitty.  We are learning to pet the kitty gently and keep our face away from kitty's face.  This training was all but lost on Sidney.  When the moment seemed just right Pootie received an ever so sudden snatch of the tail and she quickly returned the favor with a swift swat at Sidney's face with a claw exposed paw.  Pootie thought she had won the war until she spent the afternoon outside fighting off the huge yellow neighborhood feline bully.  Pootie's fearful eyes were the size of dinner plates as she hid behind the porch swing and peered in at Sidney all toasty warm in the house sporting 2 small scratches on her forhead.   

On one of our trips to potty - no real action, just a lot of hand washing - Sidney caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.  I never saw so many monkey shines and poses as she observed the new look.  Cutest thing you ever saw as she smiled that big toothless grin.

The surgery is all but forgotten by Sidney and she is romping abound like a wild two-year-old again and cute as a button with that toothless little smile.  As for me, my tummy still lurches every time I think about the accident and what happened and, even worse, what could have happened.  God is so gracious and does truly protect his little ones.  Babies look so fragile and yet are like a piece of resilient rubber that can be bent like a pretzel.  Prayers were certainly answered and the doctors say there should be no permanent damage to her teeth.   We are blessed!

STILL GOT THE CRAFTING BUG!

The new sewing machine continues to be so much fun to use.  Just seems like there are not enough hours in the day to get the house work and cooking done while crafting.  So, that means the house work is going lacking and we are eating lots of sandwiches and quick fix meals.  When dolls clothes must be made you just have to do what you have to do. 

Then there is the scrapebooking that has to be done to document our October trip to Oregon.  There are only a few more than 2,000 pictures to whittle down to a manageable number to put on paper.  Being the control freak that I am, I only manage to get about three pages of scraping done per day.  At this rate, it may be garden time before I get finished with this project.  Heaven forbid we have another surgery type situation and it may be Halloween before I can get back to house work.  Now that would be a crying shame delaying the house work.