Pieces of Us

Getting Away

    I am away on a scrapbooking retreat this weekend and I have to say it was a much needed respite!  Who knew there were entire houses available for rent solely for the purpose of scrapbooking?  I certainly didn't!  So, here we are nestled in a cozy (just kidding...this house is 4000 sq feet!) house and I am getting lots done.  Of course I miss all my crew terrible but I received this photo last night and it was water to my soul!

 Don't you just love them?  They are having a great time with their daddy and had plenty of things to do to keep them occupied.  I've taken lots of pictures of this grand house and will post them later.  For now I will leave you with a sneak peek at some of the layouts I have completed this weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Hub

    She was a respectable lady and she never wore shorts. For all the years I knew her, I never saw her legs. Possibly a smidgen of that was vanity but I liked to think that she was proper. She lived in a small house with her husband for all of her married life right in the middle of our small town. I thought of it as the hub. Everyday we all went about our daily lives, rushing through school, activities and appointments, until 3pm when we would all stop by 'the hub' and visit with Grandma. 

    She would be sitting there in her old recliner, always in a respectable blouse and colorful pants. Her hair tinged with blue and sprayed neatly. Oprah was on the tv, or her 'programs' flickering in the background. In my earlier years I would crawl up into her lap and she'd use her long bony fingers to tickle around my ears and make me giggle. Or she would bounce me on her knee singing softly,

Ride a cock horse

To Banbury Cross

To meet a fine lady

Upon a fine horse

With rings on her fingers

And bells on her toes

She shall have music

Wherever she goes

She sang that song to all her children and grandchildren.  I am sure of that. 

    While sitting with Grandma you never knew who would pop through the door next.  It was a constant stream of family, cousins, aunts, uncles, second cousins. This was the only time we often saw these members of our extended family other than at Christmas time. We would sit around the living room and catch up on our daily lives, and she would sit there and listen, interjecting her own tidbits of opinion or advice, stopping periodically to redirect a wayward child who was picking up a glass object from an old marble table.

    Some days she would teach us card games, so we would make our way from the living room into the small dining area. Sitting around it she would show us how to play Kings in a Corner or Hold the Phone, eyes watching us like a hawk and occasionally a reprimand from her lips, "I see you slipping cards!" she would say.  Nothing got past Grandma. She left us with silly nonsense phrases such as, "I'm just sitting here with my teeth in my mouth!" or "Look, she's going to town!" 

    Occasionally one of us would spend the night at Grandma's, sleeping in one of the twin beds with the quilted aqua coverlets, she in the other. She would always be up before I could crawl out of bed, no matter how hard I tried to get up before her.  I would stumble out at 6am and she would be in the warm little kitchen in her bathrobe whipping up some delectable morsel. She would make up the most delicious hot meals, lunch was always a hot  like a warm tuna salad over toast.  And oh the toast! I think if I look back on my memories of Grandma the toast is at the forefront.  Silly it seems, but to us it was the Holy Grail. After school we would race into the kitchen and fight over who got to open the oven to see if there was a leftover piece of toast from breakfast still warm in the oven. The oven would have dried it to a hot crunchy crouton of a piece and it always promised to be delicious.

    Grandma's house did not have air conditioning.  In the summer months it would be stifling but it never stopped us from our visits. We would shuffle out to the covered patio with the alcove of hanging ivy and plants and she would turn on the drip line that hung above it and feel the cool mists spray us as we sat in the wicker chairs and leafed through old copies of Ladies Home Journal. In our hearts we knew that when Grandma was gone we would no longer have 'the hub'.  We would grow apart from much of our extended family without this center of congregation.  And we did. But the memories still linger.  The sound of the box fans humming in the doorways and Grandma sitting in her recliner, the tv flickering.  Her pants were pinned up ever so slightly to cool her legs because she was a respectable lady and she never wore shorts.

Happy Birthday Great Grandma Spangler

We miss you.

 

I found a window into the past

This is going to be a long post.  While looking for something on my old computer I found something I had forgotten about.  Before I ever blogged online regularly I would occasionally journal a bit and just save it to my computer.  This entry was a period of two days where I logged what my life was like hour by hour.  I am so glad to have found and read this.  It makes me appreciate how much easier my life is now! During the time of this post Maddy and Gabby were 6, AJ was almost 3 and Genevieve was 4 months old.

Enjoy!

January 23, 2004

8:00 p.m.

Mike is getting ready for work and the kids are off to bed. A.J. is lying there awake, his arms behind his head. Maddy is asleep, she has a fever and is irritable and tired. Gabby is lying on the floor in her sleeping bag reading with a flashlight. Genevieve is asleep in her crib.

9:00 p.m.

All of the kiddos are asleep, Mike is heading out the door to work. I am folding laundry.

11:00p.m.

I am off to bed. I am sooo tired. I put the t.v. on for a little noise and start my bedroom routine. Checking all the locks twice and picking up the living room. Putting all the dirty laundry in a pile in the garage and making sure I switched the load over to the dryer.

I climb in bed with a book and read for awhile.

11:30p.m.

I turn out the light and promptly fall asleep.

What was good about this day?

I accomplished a lot of laundry and cleaned the garage. I read to Maddy and Gabby. All in all it was not a good day for family togetherness as Maddy felt sick and I was worn out. We didn’t have school because everyone was under the weather.

January 24, 2004

12:20 a.m.

Genevieve wakes up and it’s time to nurse. I get up and put her into bed. I fall asleep while I nurse.

1:30a.m.

I hear A.J. crying in his room. I get up to investigate and he asks for ‘Cold Milk”. I give him the prepared response of ‘NO Milk in bed.’ I then retreat to the kitchen and put some water in a sippy cup. By the time I get back to his room he is snoring. I set the cup on his headboard and climb into bed.

1:45a.m.

Genevieve wakes up to nurse again.

2:20 a.m.

I wake up and see Maddy standing in the doorway. She is shaking and sobbing and her forehead is on fire. She asks me to take her temperature. I do, it is 103.7 degrees. I put her in bed and head back to the kitchen for Motrin and cough medicine. She goes back to sleep. So do I.

4:30 a.m.

Maddy is up again claiming she is still hot. I climb in bed with her to lie with her for awhile until she calms down. I fall asleep there.

4:55 a.m.

I hear Genevieve crying in my bed and I leave Maddy’s room to go nurse Genevieve again. I put her back in her bed after she fusses and fusses. I fall asleep in my own bed.

6:45 a.m.

I hear Mike come home and hope he will crawl in and warm me up. He doesn’t realize Gen is not in bed with me and so he heads to the living room to go sleep.

7:30 a.m.

I hear Genevieve rustling in bed and cooing so I get up and decide it is time to start the day. A.J. greets me in his room where he has been playing. The girls are still asleep. I go in to check e-mail and start coffee.

8:00 a.m.

Maddy comes out of bed, Her fever is down.

8:30 a.m.

Gabby is up now. We have cereal for breakfast. I nurse the baby.

9:00 a.m.

I start a movie for the girls and A.J. I get dressed and start cleaning the kitchen, bring in the table and start a load of laundry. I get A.J. dressed and lay out clothes for Maddy.

10:00 a.m.

Cleaning time. I go through A.J.’s room and the girls room and do a general straightening. I nurse the baby and dress her.

11:30 a.m.

Back to checking e-mail. I get the mail and have a bowl of beef stew. A.J. has a tntrum over a movie he wants to watch. He cries in my lap.

Noon

I begin to get ready to attend a baby shower. I do my hair and make-up.

12:46 p.m.

I wake up Mike so he can get up and watch Maddy and A.J. while the rest of us go to the shower.

1:05 p.m.

We are running late. I get Genevieve fed and in her car seat. I put on Gabby’s shoes and load the Einstein gym in the car and the gift. I spend ten minutes looking for Gabby’s shoes and Genevieve’s left bootie. I clean out the trash in the car. I change A.J. and we leave for the shower.

1:15-5:00p.m.

We are at the shower.

5:10 p.m.

I run home to bring some lasagna to the rest of the family.

5:40p.m.

We go to Aunt Kathy’s. Genevieve has been fussy all day long.

7:45p.m.

We get home from Kathy’s. Maddy greets me crying because she missed me and she is hot. Her fever is still up. She asks for a Popsicle and I give her one. A.J. gets one too and I change Genevieve and nurse her while they eat them. A.J. asks for a bath and Maddy goes to lie down on her bed. Genevieve goes down for the night.

8:10 p.m.

A.J. gets out of the tub and asks for some turkey roll-ups. Maddy is up again, crying about her fever. I give her some ice water. A.J. has some Gatorade. I put on A.J.’s jammies. Gabby is still at Kathy’s house.

9:00 p.m.

I clean the kitchen, unload and reload the dishwasher. Scrub and bleach the sink. The laundry has stopped so I switch over the loads and take out the trash. Mom calls and we talk while I clean. I clean out the refrigerator and throw out the stuff that is post date.

9:30 p.m.

I put A.J. to bed and fill his sippy. Maddy is in bed and I bring her her blanket and Baby. She is not sleepy yet, but I am. Mike is asleep on the couch. He doesn’t work tonight.

What was good about today?

I had such great quality time with Gabby. I think she thrives on having a little time with mom all to herself. She is a great little girl!

9:35 p.m.

Gabby is still not home and Maddy and A.J. have not fallen asleep yet.

10:00 p.m.

Gabby is home and I finally get to relax for a few minutes in a hot bath. I fill up the tub and get Gabby’s jammies on and tuck her in. I grab a book and sink down in the bath. 5 minutes later I hear Genevieve cry and crawl out of the water to replace her binky. I get back in and read for another 5 minutes until I am accosted by two little girls who need to use the potty. Maddy comes in and tells me she thought someone left the light on. Then she says it was a ‘little joke’. Later she asks if she had diarrhea and says it was ‘another little joke’. They leave finally. A couple of minutes later I hear Genevieve again and decide it must be time to get out of the tub. A.J. is still awake as are the girls.

11:00p.m.

Everyone is finally asleep except A.J. who is on the couch with Mike. I realize that I never ate any dinner so I make myself a Lean Cuisine and sit in front of the fire to read

January 25, 2004

12:00 a.m.

I am still reading in front of the fire. I hear Genevieve crying from the other room. I go and nurse her and she falls back asleep. Mike and I sit on the couch and talk for awhile. This is the only time of day we have to talk together without any kids bugging us. A.J. finally fell aseep.

12:30 a.m.

Mike and I go to bed and try to get some sleep.

12;45 a.m.

Maddy wakes up crying and yelling into our room for us to take her temperature again. She is quite hot 103.5. I get up and give her some Tylenol and Ice Water and put her back to bed.

1:15 a.m.

Genevieve wakes up, I get up and give her a binky so she will fall back asleep.

1:22 a.m.

Genevieve wakes up again, I give her a binky again.

2;24 a.m.

Maddy wakes up crying again, I shuffle her back to bed, explaining that there is nothing I can do. She has to wait out the fever.

2:32 a.m.

Genevieve wakes up to nurse. I feed her and fall asleep with her in bed next to me.

2:47 a.m.

I wake up because Genevieve is fussing next to me, I put her in her crib and let her fall asleep in there. She fusses a bit and settles in.

4:00 a.m.

Maddy is up again. She is crying. I pretend to ignore her as I am finally asleep. Mike gets up with her and tells her she needs to go back to sleep and wait out her fever. She is not happy about this.

4:45 a.m.

Genevieve wakes up to nurse. I get her up and feed her. Falls asleep next to me.

5:20 a.m.

I wake up and put Genevieve back in her own bed.

5:48 a.m.

Genevieve is fussing, I replace her binky.

5:52 a.m.

Genevieve is fussing, I replace her binky.

6:21 a.m.

Genevieve is fussing, I replace her binky.

6:23 a.m.

Genevieve is fusing, I replace her binky.

7;30 a.m.

A.J. comes into our room. He is up for the day and I guess I am too.

7:35 a.m.

Maddy comes in to the Living Room, whining, complaining and hot again. Her fever is down to 100.1. I make her some ice water and sit her in front of the t.v. with a wash rag. A.J. is eating lunch meat and I am checking e-mail.

8:00 a.m.

I put on some oatmeal for breakfast and make a bowl for mad. I switch over the laundry that I forgot last night. A.J. asks for eggs so I scramble up some eggs for him. I nurse the baby.

8:30a.m.

Gabby wakes up and asks for eggs too and Maddy also wants some so I make another batch. I sit and eat my oatmeal.

9:15 a.m.

I go in and shower and get dressed for church. I get Gen ready for church as well. I put away some laundry from last night.

10:20 a.m.

We leave for church. Gen fusses during church.

12;20 p.m.

Home from church. I eat some lunch and check e-mail. I work on some book inputing on the computer. Fix the kids lunch and change my clothes. I pump some milk for Genevieve’s cereal. I get Maddy some more Gatorade and Gabby some milk.

1:00p.m.

Mike gets ready to leave to go shooting. The kids are watching a movie. I check e-mail and nurse Genevieve. A.J. begs for milk in a sippy cup. The kids snack on M&M’s. I pick up the Living room and kitchen.

3:00p.m.

Grammy comes over for a visit and to plan Laura’s birthday. Genevieve screams, A.J. bonks his ear and whines and whines. Gabby gets a bad earache and will not stop crying. We sit and try to comfort the children while planning.

5:00p.m.

Mike comes home, Grammy leaves. I leave to go pick up dinner and stop at the store for medicine, Milk and Gatorade. Gabby is reaching hysteria with her ear hurting her.

5:20 p.m.

Genevieve wakes up when A.J. bust into my room. We put A.J. to bed (crying) and let Genevieve kick around on the floor. I work on Laura’s party plans. Gabby cries and says her ear hurts.

6:20 p.m.

I head off to the bath. I am in the bath for three minutes and Maddy comes in saying she had a nightmare about “a big spider coming to eat me all up”. She asks for a wash rag so I get out of the tub and give up on my bath. Gabby cries and says her ear hurts.

7:00 p.m.

Genevieve is crying so Mike puts her Jammies on and I nurse her. I put her to bed. Mike is watching a movie and I ask him where Mary Poppins is when we need her. Maddy gets up and asks me to make her a peanut butter and Jelly sandwich. Gabby comes in crying and says her ear hurts.

PostScript:

This blog was just the beginning. Eventually every person in the house got sick. Each child got a double ear infection at the same time resulting in 8 infected ears and Augmentin for all. We were not fully better for 3 weeks. In March everyone but me got the stomach flu and puked for days all over my house.

The Year in Review

or What we did all year in 12 lines.  The first line of a definitive post from each month.

January- I think I suffer from parenting amnesia sometimes.

February-    Sometimes it's the simple things we notice about our children that make our hearts swell twice the size they were before

March- Today Caleb uttered his funniest quote to date.

April- Gabby got her first HOME RUN last night during her softball game.

May- Although it does not look like there is an end in sight, I know there will be a time soon when no one in this house is sick.

June- It is well established here on this blog, the deep sickness that is my Fiestaware obsession.

July- The other day (July 3rd) AJ spent some time out at the ranch helping Grammy get ready for our 4th of July BBQ

August-     This summer the boys had fun doing some great 'guy' things while we girls were running about Portland and whatnot.

September-     So as not to upset my blog-reading public I shall now expound on the magnificent special day journey that Ginny and I embarked upon. I wish people still talked like that, it's so much fun!

October-   I am out walking with Caleb and Jillian today. We pass by neighbors, smiling and waving. 

November- It's time to kick off NaBloPoMo. 

December- Today Caleb, you turn 4 years old.

The Good Old Days

    Remember back when you were a kid, Mom and Dad would launch into one of those, 'Back when I was a kid.." tales, you would roll your eyes and at the same time get drawn in to the stories of the good old days? In a frightening turn of events I realize that the roles have changed and now I am spinning those yarns for my own kids. When did this happen? I actually have 'good old days'!
    The good old days of my childhood were not filled with video games, t.v., IPOD or any of the like.  We didn't even have a computer OR a VCR! And we walked nine miles to school in the snow... nah, that part is not true, but we really didn't have a computer or a VCR or cable tv. We spent 99% of our waking ours outside experiencing the true bliss of rural living. Although it wasn't too rural, it was still a 7 minute or so drive into town so there wasn't any walking to the neighborhood store or anything like that.
    In the summer my brother and I would pack up some crucial supplies- probably Fruit Stand drinks and some candy- and head out for the entire day on our bikes. We rode all over the place, stopping at the cemetery for some solitude (yes, this is perhaps an odd aspect of our childhood but that local cemetery played a big part in our lives), heading down to the riverbed to build some bamboo forts, picking around an old deserted dump.  We never caught any dreaded diseases and I guarantee you we went all day without washing our hands.  Cell Phones were not even heard of at that time so my mom went all day without an inkling of what we were up to, just the knowledge that we'd "be back before dark".  And we would stay out all the way until dinner time. 
    Sometimes we'd meet up with neighborhood friends. Of course there weren't any 'next door' neighbors.  Our neighbors were all spread out a minimum of 10 acres away from us. But still we'd stop by and slowly collect neighborhood friends to join us on our exploits. Once in awhile we'd stop by to visit an elderly shut-in who lived up behind the cemetery and on one occasion her dog had just had puppies.  They were too little to leave their momma but we put a couple in our backpacks and roe them home to beg our parents to 'pleasepleaseplease can we keep him!".  As fortune would have it my mom fell in love with a little girl pup and a few weeks later we had a sweet little pup named Pokey who touched our lives for many many years.
    As my little sister got older she started to join us on our adventures.  I think she was maybe only 5 at the time that my mom let me take her all the way 3 miles in to town on our bicycles. I am shocked to this day that we managed to convince her that this was a good idea. We rode all the way to Carl's Jr which was our one major restaurant at the time. We made it almost all the way home without any unsavory events until we were about 200 yds from our driveway.  At that moment Laura chose to somehow get tangled up in the spokes of her bike and fling all the way over the handlebars with the bike landing on top of her. i am just glad that it happened that close to home! There was a long, deep irrigation ditch all concrete and dangerous that ran all along the road that our ranch was on. I can remember a time that my bike got the best of me and before I knew it I had ridden it straight over the edge, there I was lying there with a twisted old junkyard bike (because back then we didn't go uy flashy bikes, we just harvested pieces from old ones and made a new one out of it) on top of me. Next thing I knew I saw my brother's face peek over the edge of the ditch and he was hauling me out. That ditch claimed many victims, one morning while waiting for the bus my brother decided it would be a grand idea to leap into the ditch, except under a pile of leaves was a nice stack of broken glass.  Slit his wrist all the way up. I can remember him showing up at the door, white as a sheet with his bloody arm pressed against his chest.  He is lucky to be alive today.
    In the mornings we had to get up before the sun in order to catch the bus on time.  For some reason the buses come out to the rural routes real early. So sometimes we were getting on the bus at 6:45am even though school did not begin until 8. It was COLD sometimes, well, cold to a wimpy Californian. Anything in the 20's is cold to us! We would catch the bus down at the Methodist Church where all the Bardsdale kids would wait.  We would have so much fun running around and being kids.  One morning my brother and I decided that we did not have enough time to play at the church before the bus got there so we set our alarms really early. My mom wasn't even up yet when we stole out in the early dawn to walk down to the church, it was maybe 3/4 of a mile. Off we went, so excited that we were responsible enough to remember our lunches.  Suddenly we heard a horn blast and there was mom in her glasses and bathrobe behind the wheel of our old gray Ford Granada.  She was steaming mad.  Oops. Needless to say we did not have many more before school adventures like that one.
    We pretty much lived in the riverbed back then. It was before so many of the orchards had been removed in favor of row crops.  We could get totally lost on the paths of Eucalyptus trees that bordered the ranches.  We would hang out in the old abandoned house, our pants loaded up with rocks in case a nasty old junkyard dog came after us. i never really worried about strangers much because we were just way out in nature but I am sure there were homeless people that wandered about. My mom taught me well though. As I said before I had a junky old bike, sometimes when I was out riding the chain would up and fall off right in the middle of the street.  I would grind to a stop and huddle down to fix it so I could get back home. Once as I was doing just that a rattling old truck pulled up next to me and a man smiled and called out, "Need some help with that?" "No thanks!" I said as I hopped on, attaching the chain just in time, zillions of scenarios swimming through my head as I pedaled until I thought my feet would fall off, my heart bursting out of my chest. That was the only time that I had felt unsafe in our little community. Sure it could have been a good samaritan but I was not going to hang around and find out!
    I love telling my kids these stories, in truth I loved hearing my parents and grandparents tell their stories too. I hope everyone that reads this will share a story or two with their own kids and keep their legacies alive. Next time I think I will take you back even further into the 'Good Old Days", back before I lived at the ranch, that was the time of "Blood Alley", the Tipsy Fox, roller skating in the Catholic Church parking lot and the fruit stand.  Can't wait to share that!