Two Family Members With B'days Today

 

Our youngest great-granddaughter, Everly, at her birthday party yesterday.

The theme was chickens. She was the Birthday Chic.

So cute.

We weren't able to attend her party yesterday so she and her family came to see us today.

Two years old and quite the pistol. Don't those eyes and that smile tell you so?

Similar photo, this time wearing her Daddy's hat and holding on to his thumb.

It has been awhile since we last saw her, but it didn't take long for her to warm up to us.

I think it helped that big brother Oakley was along. 

This was the first time he had been to our house. 

He's such a smart and well-spoken youngster - a third-grader this coming year.

Grandson Devin with both the kids.

He is a devoted Dad.

The other birthday today is that of my son Preston.

I found this 40-year old photo to share on FB. As he is 55 years old today, I captioned the picture "Drive to arrive alive".  

Do you remember that campaign? I don't think Iowa uses it any more.

This is a more recent photo of Preston and his wife Shalea at the Grand Canyon in March.

It may have been fifty-five years ago, but I still remember everything about his birth that night. I missed my 10-yr. class reunion the night before.

Two weeks later I took him with me to his father's M.Ed graduation in Kirksville, MO. I took a whole roll of film there and turned it in for development when we got back to Des Moines. Of all the rolls of film to have lost, that one was. I still wish I had those photos.

More family birthdays to come in the weeks ahead, along with the birth of our 13th great-grandchild. Much to look forward to. 😊

July Books, Rocks and Sunflowers

This has to be a first - only three books read in the month of July and I did not go to the library at all this month!

What I did do was re-read Charles Frazier's thirteen moons, a book from my own book shelf. 

Under A Desert Sky by DiAnn Mills is one I borrowed from our club house book shelves and which will go back there. It was the first time I had been in the club house since it was remodeled. It is really much nicer.

The Wheeling Year is a book of Ted Kooser's sent to me by our friend Becky. It is a monthly journal of his thoughts and activities for an entire year. In the preface he writes that in his field book he included sketches and landscape studies which were not included in this printed copy. It reminded me of my daughter Kari's journals, how she included artwork along with her writings.

I shared three of Mr. Kooser's entries in my blog titled The Wheeling Year on July 22.

Earlier this month I read about all the sunflower fields in Iowa, two of which are in Union County, one at Three Mile Lake and one at Twelve Mile Lake. Since they are so close, we set off yesterday morning to see them. First stop, 12 Mile Lake. We drove up the west side to the boat ramp but found no sunflower field.

What we did find was an old dirt road with lots of rocks. We haven't been rock hunting since 2022. Bud's three on the left, my four on the right. It felt good to be picking rocks again.

As we didn't see any sunflower field at 12 Mile, we decided to look for one at 3 Mile. Again, no luck seeing any sunflower field(s) there. On the way back toward Creston I suggested looking on the east side of 12 Mile Lake. Once again, I thought "no luck here either" but as we turned around to go back, suddenly, "I see the sunflowers!"

I also realized why I didn't spot them at first - their heads were drooping with the weight of the seeds. With only a bit of yellow showing they weren't the bright yellow field we were looking for. Still, we did find this one and get to see one of the purported sunflower fields in Union County. And it was a nice morning for a little jaunt out into the countryside.

Tomorrow, another new month, one with a number of family birthdays and the addition of a new great-grandchild. I can hardly wait! 💚

A Lover, Not A Fighter

Kari, Douglas, Me, Preston - February, 1985

I consider myself ---
 A lover, not a fighter
  A romanticist not a realist
    A liberal in politics
       A conservative with resources

A mother who believed that giving her children wings
was more important than giving them restrictions

A grandmother who didn't bake cookies
but tried to give her grandchildren adventures

A great-grandmother who hopes at least a few
great-grands will have memories of her

A woman who values her independence
and ability to take care of herself

I consider myself ---
  A lover of the great outdoors
    As well as a warm bed at night
      A lover of poetry
        But not a poet

I consider myself---
  A mother, daughter, wife
     Who could have done better

          Yet gives herself grace

             For what she has done

Me with Granddaughter, Kathryn and Great-grandson Henri

Sunset by Rainer Maria Rilke

Sunset

by Rainer Maria Rilke

 Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth.

leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs--

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.

More Than One Middle Name

Most of us have only one middle name though once in a while I see instances of two middle names. How about five? René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke, Austrian poet and author, was best know as Rainer Maria Rilke.

Tomorow I'll share one of his poems. Today, this quote:

"Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky."

A New Poet for Me & A New Poem

 

Grandmother of the Bride

 

My niece Lorrie, pictured here with me in the backyard of her home in Arizona in 2010, was married to her husband Kevin on New Year's Eve, 1994.

Of course we were invited to the wedding which was in Kansas but we decided not to go - why I don't remember now. It might have been worries about the weather. I think the forecast was for snow. Or maybe the distance had something to do with it. 

But Mom went with her son Ron and wife, Ruth - Lorrie's parents. I recall seeing some of the wedding photos one of them a very good picture of Mom in her grandmother of the bride outfit.

I also remember buying a Mikasa vase at Younkers in Valley West Mall as a wedding gift.

It may not have been this exact design, but it was one of modern design and heavy lead crystal.

Mostly I remember helping Mom choose a new outfit to wear to the wedding. I brought her to Des Moines to shop for it. As a young woman who had lived through the great depression, she had always been careful about her spending - a trait which passed on to me. There was a consignment shop I liked to go to on Ingersoll Avenue which is where we went.

The style at the time was longer skirt lengths which I loved. Mom wasn't a big fan of shin length dresses, preferring them just below the knees, but I convinced her that longer was the current fashion. And when I found a two-piece soft pink in 'like new' condition, I got her to try it on - and then buy it - $16.00 if my memory is right.

In my opinion, my mother looked beautiful in this ensemble. This is a photo I took in her living room of her wearing it.  

When she died in December, 2003, there was a different dress picked for her to be buried in but it didn't work out.

So this is what I chose instead. It has bothered me some over the years to know she would have chosen something else.

But she looked so pretty in pink. 💗