All in the Family

I guess I took a little vacation from the blog world. I still read but have not blogged in quite awhile. I guess we all go through that. I have not blogged because I am having so much fun.

For the week of the fourth of July I had all of my children and grandchildren in my home for an extended period and it was wonderful. Not all of them were with us at one time but at one time all were here during that week. Carl and Lisa came first and stayed the longest, from Tuesday evening until Saturday morning. Leann and Randy came on Wednesday night and left Thursday to attend a funeral in Randy's family. Ryan and Jenny came on Friday and stayed until Saturday.

A house is never as happy as when it is full of sounds of laughter among your family and we had it....seven children, eight grandchildren.....heaven. No worries about whether the house was clean or the meals were on time....just enjoying being together.

We are just one big family....brothers and sisters and sons and daughters. Glued together because we belong to each other.

Looking back I am not sure when the line separating those children born to me and those who married into the family blurred. At some point it just vanished and became children by choice.

Life is So-o-o Good

Life is so-o-o good!
I am still making my way through the jungle of junk.
My rental property was completely furnished....completely....kitchen stuff...linens.....toaster....coffee pot...everything....we even found a few items we would not touch. My new renters wanted an extended contract and they had all the furnishings they needed so all of that stuff had to be moved. For just a minute I considered starting a new "staging" business but nixed that quickly. Any business that involves moving furniture around from house to house is too much work for me.
While it is a relief to get a long lease contract the move was difficult.
Timing was difficult.

I never thought of myself as a pack rat really because when the kids were little I threw things out without even thinking twice about it....

"Yes, dear, you did get that at McDonald's but we will go again...."

"What are you looking for....hum-m.....don't know where that could be...."

"But honey, you had so many of those and you weren't using them."

"Your aunt who made what?"

....but as you age things you get are often things from your past like my grandparents sofa table that my grandfather used to stabilize himself while he sawed his boards for some project he was working on. The table still bears the scars from that day. I can see him standing there doing it. He was a great man. He has been gone since Caleb was born so there are few things left of him.

Then there is my grandmother's small table I can not part with. I have no memories of it but she gave it to me while she was in her nineties and I refinished it. And of course the bakers rack has to come home. Carl welded it for me and it is beautiful. But even if it were ugly it represents him and my heart melts when I think of him welding it together for me. Several of my big furniture pieces have been made or refinished by my dad so they must stay in the family.

The garage is packed with the boxes I had to bring back from the rental house. I will make it through the boxes one at a time until I can see the walls of the garage again. Anything garage sale worthy goes into big plastic containers to keep the little critters out or bigger critters.

Last night it was a raccoon going through the garage sale stuff. He has been a regular lately. He thought he had hit the jack pot when he found last falls pecans in buckets still being stored in the garage. He left his crumbs everywhere.

I long to see an empty garage.

I hear a car can be parked in there sometimes.

Jungle of Junk

I am refusing to rent a storage unit to organize/hide all my stuff.
If it has to be stored in a storage unit I don't really need it.
If I need it I want it close so I can find it.

I find that I am not alone in this jungle of junk. There are more garage sales going on every weekend than one could possible attend. Closets bursting open with so much stuff that if you tried to put one more thing in, the contents would topple outward into one big, huge, jumbled, heap into the room. The goal is to stop before it pours outward.

One of my chores this summer is to finalize my move out of my furnished rent house. Where did all this junk come from?

Sentimentalities, mementos, antiques, garden stuff, decorative items, and just plain things I could not do without. I even have saved all the gourds that had ever grown on my vines there for decorating.... like I did not have enough stuff to use to decorate. But I think it is so charming to use things from nature to decorate. And they were free.

Now two years later (today) I am bringing in things I have not even seen since I left there. Things I thought I needed but have not missed. And the worse part about it now is that as I try to combine the two houses now into one I see the stuff and still think I need it.

I have begun to nail things to the wall, rearrange things in closets, drawers and have even considered the attic in an attempt to get junk out of boxes and off the floor in an orderly fashion.

I have a garage sale pile, a pile for drawing props for school, things my kids must need and a little bitty pile called trash.

What does this say about me?
And I thought I was not materialistic.

Don't miss my garage sale now, you may find that one thing that will complete your decor!

Where'd You Get That Sense of Humor

We are made in His image.
We have a sense of humor.
So does God have a sense of humor?

I read Dana's blog and immediately recognized God's hand in the situation and saw the humor in it. It reminded me a situation I had just this week that I saw God's hand at play in my life.

I was neither in a bar nor watching people but I thought it a time that I saw God's sense of humor. Tell me if you agree.

It was after school and the only rush I felt was in that my car was sitting on empty and had binged the last three short trips I had made in town traveling only a mile or two at a time but now, I was pretty sure that this was the time that I could not push it off another minute therefore I headed to the gas pump instead of stopping in at Caleb's shop. Earlier in the day I had run to Subway, picked up a salad, used my debit card and had returned to school to finish cleaning out my room. Now tired from working at school, I felt a sense of exhilaration at the prospect of school ending. I sat at the pump and felt a rush of uneasiness because despite dumping out the entire contents of my purse into the seat of the car my debit card was gone. I looked twice but still did not find it.

Well, of course in a case as this who do I turn to....I said a quick,
"please, God help me find my debit card"......
"don't let it be stolen".......
as I turned my car around and headed to Subway's parking lot just a short distant down the road. I put the car in park and reached over to the seat next to me to begin to reload the contents of my purse which were now spread all over the passenger side seat cushion. As I picked up the first object, a calculator with a booklet like enclosure out dropped the debit card. I was stunned and in a split second I recalled a time when one of my children would play a hiding game with me and say, "ha ha! I tricked you".

I laughed and said aloud, "Funny! God!" before I said a quick thank you.

Next Plan

One more test to give then the school year will officially be over and I can move on to the next plan.....

Plant swap!

I have been working in my yard every chance I get just because I love to do that as anyone who reads my blog knows fully well. I have added new flowerbeds, a dry creek bed with a small bridge and mulched pathways here and there, moved in the hot tub and have begun to landscape around it in. Things are shaping up.

Now the old flowerbeds look drab and need to be spruced up and updated. I want color in my shady gardens.

The date is set (June 7th starting at 6:30 PM) for next weekend to do a plant swap and plans are now in place to encourage family involvement. A load of play sand will be delivered in a shady location for the little children. The older guys like Caleb will give trailer rides with the lawn mower (not running the blades of course) to the little children (or whomever. You're as young as you feel) and there will be some sort of yard games for the men or women if they choose to play. And last but not least...sharing plants with each other and those who don't have plants hopefully will enjoy just being there. As the evening winds down we will watch the sunset-extravaganza-show provided by God while we sit under the shady oak trees sipping lemonade and eating dirt cake or watermelon while enjoying the company of friends and family.

I've wanted to do this for several years and finally I have put it on the calendar and it IS going to happen.

Wish me luck that it will be fun.
Put it on your calendar
Bring your lawn chairs.

Just hours from the end

Here we are now with just a matter of hours before it is all over.
Two classes completed entirely and three more to go. I will be finished with two more classes tomorrow and one on Thursday. In a mere 36 hours it will all be complete for the year.

Not that I am counting!

What Will I Do For work?

She asked me as she sat in my class thinking about the upcoming summer,
"What WILL you do this summer.....like.....for work?"

How innocent!

One of the HUGE differences I see between the young and the old-in-their-eyes is that we are never bored. In fact, I do not HAVE enough time to do all I want to do.

Gardening, painting, cleaning, organizing, bonding with grandchildren, gardening again, going to workshops for art, get my hair cut on a regular basis, finishing the remodeling job like painting, crown modeling and flooring,.........

I just want to have the time to get to do some of the things I have on my list. Instead things that eat up my time are things like house keeping maintenance, laundry, cooking lunch now as well as supper (his mother spoiled him...he wants a big meal for lunch), Go-For tasks......oh, and this year, I have to move all of the furniture out of my rent house and dispose of it or store it.....for sure garage sale.

Truthfully....

After watching a movie several months ago, I wrote a blog called Of Wars and Loves (Jan) or something. Basically I was saying that we can change a damaged relationship by our actions. Once we begin treating people kindly, in time they will respond to your kindness with a kindness and the relationship is on the road to recovery.

The whole truth is that this is one of the hardest things to do to act kindly to one you think deserves it so little....the heathen!

Remember those perpetual motion things that were on every businessman's desk in the 70's? They would just sit there and look stupid until someone reached out and pulled the ball back and began the object moving toward the other balls and then it kept up the motion until it drove you crazy and you finally grabbed it and made it stop.

Basically I am saying we must be the first ball that puts the movement in motion. THAT is the hardest step and then the others becomes easier with each step but what a difficult first step it is to make.

I find when I am hurt I want to withdraw and
lick my wounds for awhile before dealing with them.
I want to sulk awhile.
Stew in my juices.
Maybe, if I slam that door one more time....or frown a little more vigorously....
You know.....I want to own my feelings for awhile. They are mine and I deserve to feel hurt!
or angry!

Okay, I can do it! I can be the ball that starts the motion....as long as I don't have to massage any body's feet or anything.....

Just give me a little time to get used to the idea.

Winding Down the Year

It seems only yesterday that I was blogging about winding down the year but a year has passed since I last blogged on that one.
Now here we are with only fifteen more school days left in our year.
Of the fifteen days I have thirteen working days with my students,
three of those will be end of year testing the last week,
two days next week of online testing while a sub will keep my darlin's since I am the Help Desk Coordinator (what a joke) ,
which really only leaves ten more days of actual teaching time.

I am firing the last of the clay whistles my students made these past couple of weeks and
encouraging my students to complete projects they started that they did not finish earlier in the year.

Winding down, excitement building!

Now I am searching for fun meaningful projects to round off the year that can be finished in ten days.
The last week I ALWAYS do the M&M drawings for my test and give them three full class periods to complete it (and if they know what is good for them they should use every minute of it. It takes time to create a masterpiece).

I must post some pictures of the M&Ms that my students do. They love doing the projects because they think drawing circles is easy and actually it is not really difficult to draw the candy itself but the bag has to be included and it is crinkled and wrinkled not really a rectangle and requires a close examination for details. Those who are seniors and are completing the M&M drawing for the third or fourth year have it figured out and do a really nice job. In fact, I have seen at least one in Caleb's frame shop to be framed. That always makes me happy.

When I think back over the past year with my students I can remember a number of paintings, drawings and good artwork that I hope parents will appreciate enough to have framed, not just because my son will profit but because it is so good for our children when we value their work.

Like the majority of teachers I am ready for the break.
I think maybe teachers are more excited than the kids could ever imagine.
In fact as excited as the kids are to be out of school, teachers ARE more excited.

WOW, what an experience

The Ladies Spring Luncheon was a HUGE success. I got out just before 11:00 to take a few pictures of decorations and then got a few of people after we all got started eating. The pictures do not do justice to how beautiful it looked. All those little details we fixated over are not even evident in the pictures. We had just under 50 in attendance.

I loved being a part of this great experience! I am PUMPED!