Thanksgiving

On odd years our extended family comes to our house for Thanksgiving.  That made this year our year.  Isn't it interesting that thinking and planning for things takes so much longer than the actual thing?  I put more than my usual thought into our feasting day.  We rearranged the house to accomodate 24 people, put out games for family bonding ahead of the meal, then set the tables with china (instead of our usual choice for mobs--paper) and even used name cards to get folks properly mixed.  Layne prepared a Thanksgiving message.  Everyone contributed to the feast.  I think it was the best celebration we have had so far.

I've been working on gratitude lately.  I've decided to make it a priority to notice all the details of my life that I should be grateful for.  It is amazing to me that I live in peace and comfort at the cost of so many who have come before me who created this wonderful condition for us in the midst of having none of it for themselves.  They worked and fought on faith that it could happen.  I want never to forget that I am not responsible for my comfortable situation and need to extend my never-ending gratitude for being on the receiving end of things.  I found a scripture in Isaiah that seems to me to sum up this idea:

                        For the Lord shall comfort Zion.
                        He will comfort all her waste places
                       and He will make her wilderness
                       like Eden and her desert like the garden
                       of the Lord.  Joy and gladness shall be
                       found therein, thanksgiving and the voice
                       of melody.   (Isaiah 51:3)

I feel like our little piece of Zion is filled with joy and gladness and the voice of melody.  Well, the inside of our Zion anyhow.  I'm still hoping for the outside (our "wilderness") to become a garden of the Lord.  But perhaps I should feel grateful for the weeds and mud also.  At least they are our weeds and mud.  At least there is enough rain to make some mud.  There is always a positive side of things, it seems.

Here's our Thanksgiving feast

Here are our three babies:  Jonathan is with Audrey on the left (and feeling much better);
Jeremiah (in the middle, in green) is Reed and Dorothy's foster
baby; Bruce sits on his mom Dorothy's lap but wants to get down;
James (son of Reed and Dorothy) is leaning in at the right.

Here is our granddaughter, Rayne (Audrey and Cliff's oldest)
and Scott (Reed and Dorothy's oldest) just after Thanksgiving dinner.

Brother Bonding:  Reed and Ben (in back) are playing
Scrabble on Ben's ipads.

Last night, while I was preparing dinner, I watched a sweet, clean Hallmark Christmas movie.  It was strictly formula; easy to see the happy ending it was headed for.  But I've decided I like happy endings best.  In spite of all the struggles of life, I believe in happy endings.  I think of Mom every day and picture her in her happy ending.  I believe she is at peace and enjoying her experience outside of this mortality.  As I get older I feel ever more keenly the shortness of life.  I now see my life in finite terms.  I see that the end of my turn on earth is not very far away.  I guess I could say that my biological clock is ticking and I don't want to miss doing what I came here to do.

Shopping Mania

My granddaughter, Allegra, asked me to take her shopping on Friday.  She has a passion for yarn so I agreed to take her to her favorite yarn store.  I seduced her into making a couple of stops along the way.  We visited a craft store and she went nuts with delight.  So did I.  I'm determined once again to get all my Christmas shopping done by Thanksgiving.  This magical store enabled me to cross a few grandchildren off my list.  Buying meaningful things for 21 grandchildren can be formidable.  I've been working on it for weeks.  But now I'm a woman in control.  I managed several additional stops before Allegra began to wonder if we were ever going to make it to the yarn store.  We did.  She showed me the yarns she has been salivating over.  One was $35 for one skein!  Wow, who knew knitting could cost so much.  We didn't buy that one.

What fun to feel so good about getting so much stuff.  I even found a couple of things for Layne, who repeatedly tells me,  "don't get me anything for Christmas; I don't need anything"  I find that sentiment  simply unacceptable; Christmas is for giving after all.  So I'm going to give some things to him whether he wants me to or not.  I'm hoping that he'll warm to my choices and be glad of a few new items.  I've noticed that he DOES need a few things after all.

Rayne, my oldest granddaughter, works at Norstrom's department store.  Once a year Norstroms has a 30% off sale for employees.  She invited me to go to Norstrom's Rack, their out-of-season discount store, on that special discount day, where we could use her 30% off on already discounted clothes.  That day arrived on Saturday.  Audrey, Rayne, Allegra and I arrived at the store at 7:30 AM and shopped there for a couple of hours.  What fun!  At that early hour there weren't very many employee shoppers so we had a ball going through all those clothes.  We all found a pile of treasures, and bought them all.  It's hard to resist a bargain.  I can't remember buying so many new things at once.  It was quite exciting.  I would say that I felt guilty spending so much money on clothes, but I don't.  That's because I used a little of my inheritance money!  What a blessing it is to have that little stash to use when the need arises.  I'm so grateful.

Later on Saturday we drove to Brentwood to see our grandson Scott perform in his marching band.  They were in a Christmas parade.  There was a great turn-out.  Brentwood is a friendly, supportive town.  It was fun to spend a bit of time with son Reed and Dorothy.  They are a noble-hearted couple.  Plus they took us out to dinner.  Mexican.  That's pretty noble.

Here's Scotty in his marching band.  He's right behind the
guy in the black T-shirt (that doesn't belong there!)

Here's grandson Bruce (Reed and Dorothy's youngest).
He's doing his favorite thing, eating.

I've been thinking of my mom a lot lately.  Every time I wear her clothes I feel a little tinge of guilt; it is as if she would mind me borrowing them.  I keep finding little corners in the house where I have stashed things to use for her.  Sometimes it feels as if she will return and fill her space in my life.  I miss her.  I wonder how she feels about what I have done with her things and how I have spent some of the money I inherited from her.  My rational mind tells me she hasn't a care for any of that anymore.  But I keep running into my feelings that, somehow, she still does.  It's silly.  I just don't want to disappoint her in any way.  I know she is happy and busy now, yet part of me wonders, is she?  Is she with Daddy?  Has she spoken to her little brother, Larry; the one whose death she mourned for so many years?  Has she met all the relatives she spoke so often about?  I feel that she has.  Still, I'd like to know. 

Odds and Ends

Our son Benjamin has done an excellent job of feeding my fascination with "techy" stuff.  I am now enjoying his old Apple laptop and an iphone.  I love them both even though I am far from using them to full capacity.  Lately I've been experimenting with using my iphone to play my dance music collection, stored in itunes.  Each Monday I plug in the dance music while I do my housework.  Wow, what fun.  I dance and sing my way through the chores.  I get them done twice as fast and get some good exercise doing it as I can't resist stopping to dance along my working way.   I believe it has lifted my spirits as I have been feeling exceptionally happy for the last couple of weeks.

I've also designed an organizational system for myself, to help me get things done a bit more efficiently.  I admire organization, but usually from afar.  I have dozens of projects in my mind and begin many of them.  But I finish very few.  Why?  Well, partly because I always leave those fun things for last and last never comes.  But now I have a plan for actually doing them!  Using this new system I have finished one of my projects.  I've made a Christmas book for the grandkids.  It tells the story of the birth of Christ using pictures of the grandchildren as biblical characters.  It's kinda cute.  I plan on giving them to the family for Christmas this year.  I can't quite put into words the joy that comes to me when I actually finish something.

Here is the cover for the Christmas book.  Our oldest
grandchildren, Rayne and Chase are pictured here.

Layne and I are in the thick of Nutcracker rehearsals.  We are the old folks again.  This year the woman in charge of our scene, "Miss Maria" is a beautiful young ballerina with big expectations.  Basic dance steps are not enough; we must move at just the right angle and our hands need to be in just the right position with each movement.  Maria has big ideas for Layne's solo part too.  He's not impressed.  But he's doing it.  He makes every effort to do just as she asks at rehearsals, but when we get home he isn't nearly so enthusiastic.  "This is the last year I'm doing this," he has said to me several times over the past couple of weeks.  We'll see if he softens over this next year.  This may indeed be our last experience with Nutcracker.

An 11 Day

Here's Rayne during a brief break on our hiking trail.

I simply have to say something on this 11/11/11 day!  So I am choosing to celebrate the life that we enjoy here in this promised land.  This morning I hiked a nearby trail with daughter Audrey and granddaughter Rayne.  It was exhilarating and beautiful.  Nature nurtures like nothing else.  I believe that the Spirit of God is in his living things.  We were surrounded by them this morning.  There is no better way to start a day full of 11s than this.

A Possible Yard

We have been here in our new home for 4 1/2 years now.  I love it and feel very grateful to have it.  The only scar on my contentment is our yard.  That condition is my current "bug."  It seems to have fallen on me to determine how to design and plant it.  That's the problem.  I've come up with various ideas, carefully drawn up and then, rejected.  I know for sure that this is not my gift.  So I flounder.  My eyes take in the lovely horizon to horizon view from here, and the beautiful hillsides, now filling with green from the recent rains.  All is candy to the eyes, except when they fall upon the outside space that is actually ours.  I have reached the end of my patience with it.  Yet we don't currently have the funds to buy an expert to help us resolve it.

But here is where our serendipity comes in.  Recently a friend referred a young man to us that needs a place to stay for a time.  He simply needed a spot to park his RV while he tries out a new job here in this area.  If it works out he will move his family here and get a home.  In the meantime, he will be here with us.  Guess what he does for a living?  He's a landscaper!  What a magical thing!  I told him with a smile that his rent would be his help planning our yard.  He happily agreed.  So I'm very hopeful that, before long, we will actually have some plans for our very needy yard.  It's a challenge, you see, as we have poor soil, wind, and poor water.  Not a good combination.  But Beecher, our landscape friend, seems unmoved by the problems.  I'm excited to see what ideas he comes up with.

In spite of my complaints about the yard, I am going through a spurt of exceptionally pleasant times.  Perhaps it is the time of year.  I love the rain, and the holiday season.  Or perhaps it is my new approach to housework.  I have a collection of dance music that is now accessible on my iphone.  So I plug it into my ear during my cleaning sprees and dance my way through the work.  It has proven itself to be a glorious way to move me through my working routine.  I move with more energy and the music fills me with positive enthusiasm.  Dancing just does wonderful things for me.  (I wish it did for Layne!)

For the first time ever we spotted this large two point
buck in our yard!
 

Here's Audrey trying to calm our youngest grandson
Jonathan.  He's having tummy trouble these days.

At our extended FHE I caught Cliff tossing a napkin over
grandson Bruce's head.  Bruce didn't mind a bit.

With the word getting around about Layne being a patriarch, there seems to be a growing number of requests for him to speak to youth about blessings.  This past weekend, I spoke with him on just that subject.  It was a lot of fun.  I've discovered that, if I am excited by my subject, speaking is fun.  One- shot exposure is lots easier than weekly ones; as in my sunday school class.  My usual students listened to me with interest when I spoke on blessings, but have quite a bit of trouble doing so for my usual sunday school lessons.  Hum.  What's the deal with that?

Our Halloween was a non-event this year.  Layne and I cuddled together on spook night and watched a decidedly unspooky movie, North and South.  It is a romantic English movie with a theme not unlike Pride and Prejudice (my absolute favorite love story).  I liked it lots better than trick or treating.  Sunday our local gang came over for extended Family Home Evening.  That was lots of fun.  I am going through a particular enjoyment of people phase right now.  I like it.