You Either Have It or You Don't

Today my sisters and I celebrated my mom's 97th birthday. Of course we took pictures.

This one was taken around 1960 and you can see that my mom was the ONLY cool person in the picture.

Here we are 60 years later. 

Nothing's changed.  

She's still way cooler than us.

Happy Birthday Mom. Love you. 

It Takes a Couple of Generations to Raise a Child

  My daughter and her husband are going to Europe for an anniversary trip next month. 
 Personally I think all marriages should be celebrated with "getaways". Europe is nice, of course, but I've also had some pretty good times at Home Depot when we've snuck out without the kids.

My son in law, Nate, the bossy pants  social coordinator of our family, summoned the grandmothers over last night to make sure that the three kids will be adequately cared for in their absence. 
  
We sat with our planners,laptops, calendars and phones to cover all the practices, play performances, piano lessons and church stuff they needed to go to. Looks like it's going to take both sets of grandparents to pull off what Kara and Nate do all the time.  

  Oh, and Nate enticed us to this strategic planning meeting with a delicious dinner. We would have come without it, but I DO love when people cook for me. 

Thanks Nate!
  

Old is Good - Right?

  Yesterday I had to visit  our local social security office to enroll for medicare. Surprisingly I'll be 65 next month. 
Okay, well it's surprising to me.  

I get it -  but really! Can I be old? 

#1 I snap chat my kids instead of calling them because I'm aware that even though we pay their PHONE bill, they do not consider their phones something that you would actually make or receive calls from. 

#2 I have posted to tic toc, however I have 0 followers so no one knows that I did.

#3 Every morning I get up at 5:30am and walk 3 miles but I start dreaming of my wonderful,  soft,  amazing, bed around 7:30pm.

#4 I own no mom jeans but I find that in my 60's I'm growing a mom body.

#5 I have kids at my house EVERY day and most of them call me Grandma Kate.

So yes. Yes I am old.

Oh well....at least I get to grow old with James. 🧡

Mexican Thumb

I love gardening.
I love garden books and thumbing through seed catalogues. Essays on gardening are such a delicious read. Walking through an arboretum is intoxicating. 
I love gardening.
In theory.

In reality not so much.

I hate weeding a lot. Hot weather just makes me mad. I could erase June, July and August off the calendar and be perfectly content. Gnats, the official insect of West Virginia, are an offence when you spend any time outdoors. They have a penchant for flying halfway down your throat, fluttering their wings and causing you to hack and vomit on the ground. 

But my love for homemade salsa counters all heinous gardening tasks.
So I have a salsa garden. It's all I need.
My salsa is really that good.

Boys

Having grown up in a household of three sisters and then raising ten of my own daughters interspersed between eight sons, I know how to do girls. 
Girls make sense to me, annoy me and yet... I get them. It's been my normal.  
 And now I find myself some 40 years since that first little girl was placed in my arms, surrounded by boys. 
Teenage boys. 
It's a strange often alarming way to finish this job. 

Now, these aren't bad/evil boys, but everything is different. 

Nobody wants to sing songs with me, or go to museums or sit and talk about their feelings. 
They even eat different.
I make lots of meatloaf now.
So sometimes when I feel alone in my girl-ness, I make the meatloaf and they get to sit at a very lovely table.
One of them said tonight, "Dinner looks different Mom."
I'll take that as a compliment.

"You're Still the One" (Decided that's our theme song)

 James and I headed to the Mountain House to celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary this week. We got married when I was 18 and he was 19, so this many years later I find it remarkable that it's still our best thing. Very best.
  
Luckily we married in October so our celebration trips, which we manage to squeeze in every year, are in the fall...the best season. 


  Today James agreed to hike up to Hanging Rock Raptor Observatory in Monroe County, WV.

 I don't think he loves hiking, but fortunately he does love me. It was a briskly, chilly, sunny day - perfect for hiking. It's a short 0.9 mile hike, but ascends to 3,800 feet. 
 It was worth every rocky step and shortage of breath when we reached the top. 

The view was spectacular, although we saw no raptors. There were some serious bird watchers in the tower, but I think you'd have to have a bit more patience than me to see an eagle or hawk. I thought James was cuter than the birds anyway.

It was the best day.

Happy Birthday Aaron

Aaron is one of our 26 grandkids and today he turned four.  Luckily, he lives right across the street, so it's easy to borrow him for a few hours to celebrate.
His dream birthday included:

#1 Lunch at McDonald's where he ordered fries and a vanilla milkshake. That's all. 

#2 Trip to Walmart where he randomly threw toys into the cart and a Black Panther t-shirt. Simple enough.

We then dropped him back off to his mom because we told him she missed him and probably wanted to hug and kiss his little face. He said that "was just gross".

Grand-parenting is pretty much the best.

Well That Really Stinks

 Yesterday I learned something new - you should never go to the local landfill on Saturday. When you think about Saturdays in summer, you might think people are swimming, picnicking, hiking....no! Everyone in your town who owns a pick up truck is at the dump. I drove our truck yesterday, even though I can't quite reach the clutch all the way in without semi laying down in the seat.
  The line was really long waiting to get in, and the driveway was a steep hill. Who doesn't love a wait on a hill with a clutch? By the time it was our turn to dump, the truck was overheated and the battery died.  And it was raining.
  With a little lot of assistance the truck was running and my two very capable sons were tossing stuff into the wet stinky pile. 
 I can now happily cross that experience off my bucket list. #notreallyIhatedit

My Apologies to Hopewell Virginia

I offer my apologies to the wonderful, honest people of Hopewell, Virginia. I misjudged you on my shallow perception of your character, based on my observation of your town. You have obviously experienced hard times as noted by the many closed stores, neglected homes and run down streets.
 Yesterday we ate in one of your restaurants.  There was an interesting group of fellow patrons. One elderly lady had hair color that rivaled the brightest sunset. I couldn't look away. Most were dressed in things I had never considered wearing and some people seemed as though they had worn the same clothes for a month.  I felt as if we were in a different country.
 When I got to the car I realized I had left my phone inside.  I was sure I would never see it again...because... well... you all looked very different from my family.
 Shame on me. I went inside and asked and YES, someone had turned it in!
  So to all you amazing people in Hopewell...Thank You! I'm glad to have my phone and even happier for this lesson in being humble.

Along the Road

 There is much said these days about eating clean and eating local. With such a large family we mostly eat bulk. Bulk has no clearly defined origin.  It comes in large containers often printed with the words - "New and Improved", which alone is suspect. I picture men in white lab coats sitting around a large table putting spoonfuls of cereal in their mouths, spitting into their napkins saying, "This is disgusting! I can't believe people have been buying it. More sugar.... we must improve this!"
  In the summer however, while my sweet children are sleeping, I sneak away and eat the good stuff. Our neighborhood streets are not lined with sidewalks and street lamps, but with wild thickets of various plants and bushes.
  The first two weeks of June yield beautiful blackberries. The plants are prolific but do have short thorns. I carry a pitcher

on my walk, collect them while they're still warm from the early morning sun and throw them into my yogurt when I get home. Amazing!
  Shortly after the blackberries are finished off, sometimes the deer beat me to them, the wine berries are ripe. Wine berries are the perfect combination of sweet and tart, but the plant makes you work for these treats. They grow in dense patches

and their thorns are long and wicked sharp. The picking invitation specifies formal wear - long sleeves, long pants and gloves, but oh so worth it!
  By the time the kids wake up for their breakfast in a box, I have washed the berry stains off my hands and they are none the wiser.
  I'm always thankful for God's original. local, clean food, which never needs improvement and is new every day.

A Late Fool is Still a Fool

 Every year we have our Fools in the Pool day on April 1st, but this year there was a delay. Our twenty five year old liner was starting to leak, and we knew it was time to replace it.

  
After draining all the water out, it was creepy seeing it naked.


And even worse was what we saw under the old liner.                                                                                                                                                                                         But now the new liner is on and WE ARE READY! 

So if you dare. If you feel you are FOOL enough, come out tomorrow, April 9th, 4:00pm for Fools in the Pool. 
Bring  your own towel. 
The management is not responsible for frozen children.

So It's Come to This

  I do all the wash for the boys in the house. All of it. So, I know things about my boys. Things that you wouldn't know just by seeing them on the street. The person that does the wash knows lots of things.
  I know when they sneak Little Debbies from the garage and hide the wrappers in their pockets. I know how much they spend at Walmart on food listed right there on the receipt. I know who walks looking down and finds special rocks or soda tabs. I have found lighters and love notes, speeding tickets and bad test grades.
 All of this is interesting and informative, but lately I came to realize something very very disturbing while doing the wash. THERE WAS HARDLY EVER ANY UNDERWEAR IN THE HAMPER. 
  Being a mean clever mom, I made a new rule. No screens until I see their dirty underwear from the day before. I'm hoping that this will bring a renewal of good hygiene to our home. We'll see. 

All Bark - No Bite

  This is Whit, our mean, nasty little Min-Pin.  There's almost nobody he wouldn't bite if given a reason. Or if there's no reason at all.  He likes to be mean and has been for the last 8 years.
  He's actually a family favorite pet. He really loves us and I think he only has bitten Samuel in our family, but Samuel has this thing about climbing into Whit's bed.....yeah...
  If you come over, he'll bark and growl and act like he's going to kill you. 
  But everything has changed for Whit. We took him to the vet because he really and truly had the worst breath EVER. Turns out all his teeth but three were rotten. So they pulled twenty one teeth, which was a surprise for me because I didn't know that dogs had that many to begin with.
  So now, he can growl and lunge and be hateful, but if he's going to bite you, you're going to have to be very patient, because it's going to take awhile for him to get those three teeth into your leg.

Cousin Tony

 When Cousin Tony arrives from New Hampshire for a visit (and lately there have been many more) everything gets just a little more exciting. Every regular day seems special and just sitting around talking is an event. He's loved by everyone and the visits always seem too short. The only good thing about when he leaves, is the over- the -top enormous breakfast he makes the day before. He issues an invitation to everyone he knows and then the eggs start cracking. Breakfast is made to order and I chose Eggs Benedict. 
There was french toast and bacon and homemade hash browns. It was all rather amazing and everyone left with a full belly.








And of course Cousin Tony visits Avaline, which makes my heart so so happy!~

She Seems so Light

 So this very cute small baby showed up here at our house. Well, I mean she actually came the conventional way - my daughter had a daughter and they live with us.
 Although Avaline is small in size, she's caused a large shift in life around here...there's lots more pink in this predominately boy house. 

My daughter has college classes, so Avaline hangs out with us during the day. Being only a few months old, I don't have to chase her around much. Couple of bottles, a burp and she's good to go.

I decided this morning to take her on my usual 3 mile walk with friends. Why did I think that was a good idea? We have this "wrap the baby up and wear her" thing, so I thought that might be a good way to go. The wrap was about 18 feet long and I was lost after the watching around 5 seconds of the how- to video. 

 That was when I decided to just carry her in my arms. I know that you've already figured out from reading this, what took me about a mile into our walk to understand. That was a STUPID idea.  My friend Nancy had to push me from behind just to get up the hills.

 One us us really enjoyed the walk. One of us feels like death. 

They Didn't Rest in Peace

  We have an apple orchard in our back- yard and about four years ago, we had an enormous harvest. The kids spent a week peeling and chopping apples. I made apple butter, apple sauce, apple crisp, etc. until I was so sick of apples that I threw all the rest in bags and tossed them into the bottom of our largest freezer. When you land in the bottom of the big freezer you have crossed into no man's land. You could literally live out your entire frozen apple life and die and no one would be the wiser. And I was good with that.
  Fast forward to last week. I'm looking for something deep in the freezer and I stumble across 10 bags of something. Could it be? The apples. I'm annoyed already and I haven't laid eyes on them in three years. Seriously. And worse, they didn't look dead yet. 
 So today, on this glorious almost summer day in February, while everyone was out in their shorts and weird white legs...I was canning apple sauce. And after sitting all that time, virtually ignored, they only got sweeter. Come by and try some - it's so good.

Every Boy(and their mom) Needs Some Culture

Our homeschool group has decided this year to take advantage of the amazingly convenient place we live and go to Washington D.C. once a month. The trips have been perfect. We take the train from the Brunswick, Maryland station to Union Station smack downtown D.C. and then we get walking. and walking. and walking. My fitbit has been smoking!

Yesterday our first stop was the National Gallery of Art. The boys have been studying the Renaissance artists, so we had a list of "must sees" that we wrote down.

We hit the Raphaels, Titians, and most exciting of all, the one da Vinci painting on display in all of the Americas.."Genevra de Benci".


After lunch we visited the Modern and Contemporary Art building. The boys were not as impressed, but had a great time choosing their favorite in each gallery. Why does everyone say, "I could paint that" when they see modern art?

Our last stop of the day was the Botanic Gardens. After a long day and even longer walk, there is nothing as relaxing as strolling (or mostly sitting) in the gardens. And how did so many of us not know that chocolate grows on trees.

Can't wait for next month's trip!

When My Mom says Float, We Float

That's my mom on the far left.

My mom, who turned 93 in February has been asking me to go on a river float with her for a few years.  I had some reservations, but she told me last week it was something she wanted to do before she died. How can you deny someone an adventure on their bucket list?
Since the Shenandoah River is right across the street, we decided that today would be the day.
With the help of neighbors and two of my boys, we took a float. 

                    It was peaceful and lovely and perfect.  
                          My mom is more than amazing!

School's Out!

  After 35 weeks of slogging through history and learning to write effective essays, and tackling the ever elusive lowest common denominator, we are officially done school for the year! 

  To celebrate, the boys voted that we spend the day at the mall and then head to Golden Coral for lunch. We made a quick stop at Walmart and I cut the boys loose while I picked up some groceries   It was fairly easy to track where they were in the store even though I couldn't see them.  I simply listened for the overhead announcement for "security sweep in area G".  That translates to - "large group of teen boys seen in the electronics isle".
  We'll be doing some math review for the summer, but mostly I'm dreaming of sleeping in, swimming and not teaching a single thing.


  
  

She's Driving!

After a fairly long, but successful trip to the D.M.V we have another new driver! 
Emma is about the 15th person I have taught to drive.
James decided many kids ago that he was not going to participate in driving instruction.  He obviously has a stronger sense of self preservation than I do.

It really is the absolute scariest part of parenthood. Harder than labor, tougher than the terrible twos and the closest I have ever come to looking death in the face.
Some of the kids have been harder to teach than others. I will mention no names but they know who they are and why I have grey hair.
Three more left to learn and then I'm done. I might actually survive this.