Beauty For Ashes

I am constantly amazed at the different mind sets of people and how they cope with weather.  For example, I was raised in Central Oregon.  I live for the sunshine and all the fun stuff you can do in the sun.  Sun happens all year round here but I also love the warm weather that comes with summer and early fall.  I love to swim, float, splash and play in the water.  Camping is totally fun as long as there is some body of water near.  I also love to go water skiing, tubing, wake boarding etc.  In the cool of the morning one my favorite activities used to be horse back riding when I had a horse.  Now, I love to geocache in the early morning hours.  On Sundays, during the summer, I love to go to the Amphetheatre and listen to all the different bands they have come and play for “Sunday Afternoon in the Park”.  The weekends are always full with Saturday market and during the weeks we have Munch n’ Music as well as the local farmers market.  Being outside during the warm summer months is so terrific.

On the flip side of that, I really don’t like being cold but so many people come to Central Oregon for the terrific skiing on Mt. Bachelor as well as all the cross country trails and snow mobiling.  We even have some wicked sledding hills around here and when you can’t get out during heavy snow, we even have neighbors who, on occassion, attach their sled to back of their jeep and do cookies in the cul-de-sac.  During the winter, the thing we see in the sky most of the time is, you guessed it, the sun.  It’s just darn cold

Over on the West side of the state, you see clouds, most of the time with the exception of a couple of months during the summer.  We try to keep everyone thinking the Eastside of the state is the same as the west side so we can keep it to ourselves.  Shhh, don’t tell.

Okay, so here is the boggling part for me.  My husband was raised near Las Vegas where it is hell in the summer and warm in the winter.  When he see’s the the sun, he would prefere to hybernate in the house.  After living in Central Oregon for 11 years, he is still that way.  When he spends the day out in the sun, mind you, it is not hot out, he feels like he needs to go to bed.  For me, I feel like I have just been given a shot in the arm and feel full of vim and vigor as my mother would say.  The diffence in mindset is so funny to me. 

I understand that the South West is hot as hell during the summer.  I am so sorry it’s that way because, dog gone it, I live for the summer.

I guess you could say, this is my Ode to Central Oregon summers and my lament that it is at an end and I face the cold yet crystal blue winter.  Thank the good Lord for lots of blankets, a nice warm fireplace and a good book or blog.  I will eventually do some cross country skiing.  I love that but if I even think I’m cold, well…you get the picture.

Okay, so the top picture is of me.  T took it at our family reunion last weekend.  I thought it was fun and rarely do I have a picture taken of me that looks good.  I, like my Mom usually have my mouth hanging open funny when someone hits the button.

The second picture is of everyone who attended our family reunion last weekend.  We had a fun time and it was, as it always is, great to see these people.  We have been getting together for a campout every summer for 29 years.  That is so hard to believe on two different levels.  The first is simply that I can’t possibly be old enough to remember when those started but strangely I do.  The second is that it is so rare and we are so blessed as a family to be able to hold to this yearly tradition of easy going, fun loving, camping together.

We went to a camp up on the Coast Range near St. Helens.  The camp itself was rustic and had lots of potential to be very lovely.  We all had a nice time and enjoyed catching up with one another.  It was a bit coolish after being in Central Oregon with 90 degree weather, give or take 10 degree’s on any given day so we didn’t swim (darn) or anything. 

One of the highlights for our entire family was the bon fire that was built on Saturday night.  We all went around the large circle and talked about our favorite campout memories.  It was so funny and wistful to sit and listen to all the things that different people remembered.  Many things have happened and it was terrific to be reminded of them. 

Lots of memories centered around water which really is no surprise since we have camped around lakes and the ocean most of the time these have been going on.  It made me giggle to realize that my brother, Dad and I have a bit of a reputation for playing rough in the water.  So many of the cousins who are my age told about different times we would dump them off innertubes behind the ski boat or push them off a dock etc.  Many of the stories surprised me by being about things that I didn’t remember happening.  One of cousin’s favorite memory was my Dad taking her fishing.  Another was of one of my cousins going on a wild ride on a waver runner with me…apparently I scared her to death.  Other memories included difficult times, yet there was always something good that came out of it.  I love that even through the hard stuff, we are able to laugh and enjoy each other’s company.  It was a refreshing time.

I am looking forward to next years reunion.  It should be a great time.

This last week was a busy one for me.  On Wednesday last week I began an intense lesson in what happens to a house when it has no roofing and it rains all night. 

My parents were having their house reroofed and the roofer didn’t look at the weather forecast and didn’t bother to put tarps over their roof when he left for the night.  It rained for quite a few hours and soaked the inside of their lovely home.  They were in Portland and so I was called to assess the damage.  It went from what I thought was really badly soaked (the carpet needing replaced and their wood ceilings refinished) to shocking within about a 48 hour time period.  I called my Mom home (Dad had flown to Alaska) and the insurance company was called.  They sent out a restoration company to assess the damage and begin drying things out and that is where my education really began.  I had no idea how much water can be wicked up walls and soaked up by ceilings and floors.  I was right in thinking the carpet, baby grand piano and some of their furniture was lost but didn’t realize that most of the drywall in the house has to be removed as well as some brand new, beautiful, hickory kitchen cabinets that my dad made, some of the barnwood that covers parts of their walls and the hard wood in the kitchen are all needing to go.  Almost all of their atiques were damaged in some way, some totally lost while others superficially damaged.  It is estimated that the house won’t be restored for at least 2 months, possibly up to 6 months.  Amazing!

The other thing about last week was that I got to help my siste in law bind her Europe books.  She and my parents and brother all took a month long trip to Europe last fall and she wrote a book about it and had it printed.  She called and asked if I could help her bind them, which I jumped at because I love doing that.  Here are the results.  I am so proud of the job we did!

 I have so many more pictures of the things we have done this summer to show you but for now, I will leave you with my fun project.  Hope you enjoy the pics.

or should I say, “Oh, My Gosh!  It’s crazy already”. 

This is the last week of school.  I am very excited to have my kids home for the summer.  We’ve got grand plans but….and this is the oh my gosh part…..that will have to wait until after Grandma and Granpa come.  In the mean time, I have 3 pages of things we need to get done between now and next Friday.  Thankfully, I am sane enough, barely, to prioritize them and I think the list, as long as it is, is doable. 

We are planning to head to Portland to celebrate M’s 9th birthday.  Her best friend moved to PDX and M is missing her so bad that we thought it would be fun to pick M’s friend up for the weekend and go do all the fun Portlandy things we haven’t gotten to do in years.  M wants to go to the zoo for sure and from there we aren’t sure what we will do.  We have many things to choose from.  It’s going to be so fun. 

 We will come home on Sunday and then Monday, M’s actual bday, will be celebrated with Grandparents from Nevada and here.  It should be interesting and if the truth be told, after the last time the Nevada Grandma visited, I am a bit nervous and defensive.  I am determined to make it a pleasant time for all, so there. 

For now, I will leave you with some pictures of M singing in her final choir concert and both M & C testing for their orange belt in Taekwando.  Enjoy.

Until next time.

Memorial Day weekend has been relatively mellow around our house.  We spent lots of time working in our yard and being with family.  This morning I decided to drag my entire family (hubby, 2 kids and grandparents) down the river trail that I walk with my friends sometimes.  We didn’t go as far as I would have liked because my kids have short legs and they tire out fairly easily.  We saw plenty of wildlife and I got some terrific pictures over the weekend.  I am very excited about being able to share them with you.

This is a pretty typical day at Grandpa’s pond for C and Abbie.  He loves to lay on the dock that was made especially for the kids, look at the water and watch the fish swim by.  Abbie loves to run around the pond chasing birds and sticks the kids throw in the water for her to fetch.  It is a lovely picture don’t you think?

I have no idea what these pretty little flowers are called but they are so beautiful.  Right now the high desert has them in full bloom.  The color on them is absolutely real.  Can you believe it?  If you know what they are called would you let me know?  Jana wants to find out to.

Here is a field of them.  Beautiful, non?

Last photo is of Sawyer Park.  We stopped to use the potty and ended up just hanging out and enjoying the beautiful view.  While we were there we were buzzed by a lovely little hummingbird.  My mom loved, loved that.  We also saw one of the biggest rock chucks I’ve ever seen in my life.  I couldn’t get my camera to catch a picture of him.  There were also tons of fishermen out enjoying the sun and hoping to catch a fish, or not.

 Hope you enjoyed the pictures.  If you want to see more, you can go to my flickr account and check them out.

 Have a great Monday!

I am processing late as I usually do when someone close to me passes away.  My Grandma died about 3 weeks ago and it’s just now sinking in.  She lived a very full life, experienced much and died a loved woman.  I just wanted to write a little tribute to the my Grandma Dorothy.

One of the things that comes to my mind first about my Grandma was her creative abilities.  She was a seamstress, one I have always wanted to emulate.  I can still smell the lotions she would slather on her hands so her skin wouldn’t snag the fabric she was working with.  The whir of a sewing machine always brings me comfort.  She sewed beautiful things and when my grandpa died many, many years ago she made her living as a professional semstress.  I asked her once if this was her dream and she looked at me like I had lost and said “No, honey, this is what I have always done since I was a little girl.  My dream was to be a nurse but I just didn’t have the money to go to college and, well, your Grandpa came along and I married him instead.” 

My Grandma loved little kids.  She lived across from one of the greatest kid parks in all of the world in my opinion, and I grew up going to visit Grandma and spending most of my days in the park across the street.  She loved to sit at her sewing machine and watch us play.  Her love of little kids extended to her Great Grandchildren whom she delighted in.  She seamed to especially gravitate toward little boys and thought my little C was one of the best cuddlers in the world. 

She had three kids, my Dad his brother and his sister.  For many years it was the joy and delight of everyone to head to grandma’s house to see all our favorite cousins, hang out and play at the park together.  Christmas was centered at her house and while she made it clear she was not a religious woman, she loved Christmas and all that went with it.    She spent hours baking cookies and candies, decorating her little 2 bedroom home and preparing for the crowd.  I still cannot eat a chocolate crinkle cookie without flashing back to all the fun at Christmas time. 

Grandma’s family certainly was not and is not to this day without drama.  We are a scrappy brood with a pentiant for a good fight, throw in some whining and manipulation and you have our family.  Grandma was always right in the middle of it giving her opinions and when she wasn’t being listened to she would throw in a curse or two just to get the point across.  When T and I were dating, my friends and I were driving around the Portland area and decided to drop in on Grandma.  T and I were trying to sit together and another friend was also trying to pare up with T.  Because I am a bit naive I didn’t give it much thought but when I got back to my dorm room that night, I got quite a wake up call in the form of my very worked up Grandmother giving me warnings about that girl who wouldn’t keep her hands off my boyfriend.   

Strays were Grandma’s thing.  They could be stray kids or stray animals but they had a place to call home with her.  She had three children but she also helped raise a number of my Dad, Uncle and Aunts friends who did have a place to rest there heads or the place was so horrible they left it.  She was also known for her exotic animals.  Cindy, the Capuchin monkey, her many squirrels, a couple of dogs, a cat or two and the racoons, Snidly J was one, that called her place home.  She passed her love of animals on to my Dad at a young age and he became a teenage falconer (I don’t know if that’s what you’d call him.)  He had a beautiful red tailed Hawk named Sheba that he worked with as well as a barn owl and a couple of small falcons.  He still has Sheba’s jessies and bells. 

She loved to travel with my Grandpa, go for long drives in the car, head down to the sugar pine forests and collect giant pine cones, swim and camp.  As a little girl we would spend about a week each summer at Prineville reservoir picking burs out of our feet, sailing on my dad’s catamaran, falling of floatation devices, laughing, fighting and having a wonderful time with my Aunt, Uncle and cousins.  Grandma was always in the middle of it all.

I’ve talked a lot about what Grandma did but not much about who she was.  My Grandma was not one of those cuddly old women who is made out of sugar.  She had spunk and fight.  She enjoyed traveling and then telling the stories of her travels.  She also enjoyed a good bit of drama and at times perpetuated it especially between her kids and grandkids.  She came from a difficult life not knowing much about her Dad and wanting to, being rejected as illigitament, learning how to contribute to the family finances at a very young age.   She was quite a beauty, curvy with raven colored hair, large blue eyes a gentle looking brow and beautiful full lips.  By looking at pictures of her as a young woman she looked like one of those pin up models and from what she said she lived by shock and awe.  One of her favorite stories to tell was that she enjoyed dating boys.  She notoriously would have a date for dinner come in the front door when it was over, walk straight through the house and go out the back door for a date with another boy.  She was proud of her buxom beauty and knew how to get a date.

My Grandma contributed so much color to my life.  She is where I get my nose, stubborn streak and creative ability.  She is where I get my uneven temprament, love of animals and bent for a little bit of drama.  She gave me a dad who has overcome much and a heritage filled with colorful stories and experiences.  I love her dearly and miss much.

I love you grandma.  Thanks for the time you took with me.  Thanks for being a terrific grandma. 

I have just learned how to do something really cool!!  I finally, finally learned how to put pictures on my blog.  Now you are all in trouble!  I may never write word again. 

Anway, for Mother’s Day, my husband and children decided to take me to the Schriener’s Iris Gardens in Keizer, Oregon for the afternoon.  It was quite a drive but as always well worth it.  I loved being with my family and enjoying the beautiful flowers.  M & C both have digital cameras now and they enjoyed shadowing me as I took pictures.  M was so cute because she would kneel down when I knelt or block the cun when I blocked the sun.  I was just the cutest thing and a terrific way for her to learn how.   I had the best Mother’s Day ever.  Here are some more pictures of my special day.

My family including Abbie our dog.

Hope you enjoyed the photos.

Have a terrific Tuesday!

Okay, so the the geocaching bug has struck again.  It is so fun! For an early birthday present we (the kids and I) bought my dear hubby a Garmin Fortrex GPS.  Oh, it is so fun.  Our first trek out with the new, more accurate model landed us on top off Bessie Butte.  Bessie Butte is nearly 2x the hike my normal Pilot Butte hike is and had we known what we were getting into, well, lets just say Bessie Butte would have had a lonely day.  The kids and the dog went at least twice as far as we did, which is normal because they run back and forth and around and around.  T and I thought we our legs were going to fall off and roll down the hill a couple of times but alas, we made it to the top.  The view was spectacular and we were so glad we conquered. 

Since Saturday, we have done a number of geocaches and our new gaget has made the rock climbing (which is par for the course in Central Oregon) a whole lot less precarious due to the fact that you don’t have to climb up the rocks one handed. 

I think Abbie might even be dubbed a geodog and our kids, well, they have gone from hating the hunt to looking forward to the next hunt and the treasure at the end.

For those of you who don’t know what geocaching is, check out their websight.  It is a very fun sport!

Also, you can check a few of our pictures at my flickr sight.

It’s a new year.  I am not going to talk about resolutions because I don’t like them.  Straight and to the point huh?  I have a few things I will be working on that have just migrated through to the new year.  Again, no resolutions just continued personal growth.

I was standing in the shower this morning thinking of all the things I’m loving right now and thought I’d make a list.  (In review of my blogs, it is becoming clear that I like to make lists…hmmm, I wonder what that means about me?)  So here are a few things I’m loving right now.

T~ He is not one of those people who is unwilling to make changes.  He is the sweetest, kindest man I know and more importantly, he has proven over the years that he loves me with his actions.  He is smart and interesting.  Finally, he loves God and is learning to live his life loving God in a more public way.

M~ My daughter is awesome.  She is learning so many new things that her 8 year old mind overflows.  She is competitive, always up for an adventure and fun to be around.  She is learning to look at people and see the beauty in each one individually.  We have been talking a lot about the importance of knowlege and wisdom in the context of know that sometimes it is better to remain silent than to let everyone know how smart you are.  Her smile lights up the world and her laugh makes my day.

C~That terrifc boy of mine is the sweetest thing.  He is chivalrous, kindhearted, tough and loving all at the same time.  I cannot get over the little man he has grown into.  I love watching him immitate his Daddy.  C is deliberate and thoughtful in most everyhting he does.  Rather than competitivness he is thrilled for all who win a competition even if he looses.  Super heros light his fire and he wants to be a super hero that follows God.  Cool huh?

Abbie Too~ Our dog has brought so much joy and companionship into my life.  She is a blast to have around.  Abbie is my walking buddy, errand running partner and constant companion as she follows me wherever I go, even if it’s from one end of my kitchen to the other.

My House~ I love our new flooring, and paint.  It feels so warm and homey.  Also, I love my sunroom in the winter.  I get to absorb the wonderful sun and stay semi-warm.  This room always a room in process but I feel inspired to create when I enter in, no matter what state of clutter and mess it is in.

Nikon D80- T gave me my dream camera for this Christmas and the next 5 Christmas’s.  I so wasn’t expecting to get this camera but I am having soooo. much. fun.  I have signed up for a digital camera course through our community ed program and I just can’t wait to make this camera get up and dance!

Being home~ I have turned into a regular homebody and love just being in my house. 

Paper~ Can I yell it from the mountain tops loud enough….I love paper craft.  I’m not even going to say more.

Sewing~ I have an on again off again relationship with my sewing machine but lately I have been having sudden bursts of inspirations and desire to create stuff with fabric. 

Friends~ Well, you all know that I love you!  I can’t imagine my life without you.  I feel close to you no matter where you are.  Some of you have moved across the country and the world.  Some are moving back from across the country~Kim.  I think of each of my friends every day.  They inspire me and rock my world.  I bet most of my friends didn’t know that I create much of my artwork based on ideas, personalities and inspirations from them.  The love of great friends is rainbow colored and multi-textured.

For now, those are the things I’m loving.  Hope your Friday is terrific!  Happy Weekend!

P.S.  Here are some new photos on my Flickr sight.

I had to think of a title so “Halloween” it is though this post probably has nothing to do with today’s holiday.

We spent the weekend in Seaside and the weather was simply stunning.  It is so funny to me that the Oregon Coast, Western Oregon and even Eastern Oregon gets such a bad rap for being constantly cloudy and rainy.  I rarely head to the coast and experience foul weather.  Shhhh!  It’s our little secret, okay?  Oregon simply doesn’t get as much rain as it reputation would say.  Most people don’t have webbed feet or moss growing in their armpits.  I digress…

Anyway, our weekend was nice.  We did a lot of relaxing.  Our kids played on the beach and in the dunes.  They even played hide and seek with their Grandma F. in the dunes which they thought was the coolest thing in the world.  Relationships continue to mend and T and I are both grateful.

T took lots of naps as he prepares to begin his new management position.  He is very excited though a little worried that he won’t do a good job.  Stunning, I know!  I keep telling him he is brilliant, capable but most importantly, he cares very much for people around him.  That makes a terrific manager from everything I’ve seen in the many jobs I’ve had, all of which I have been managed at some point or other.

I had the pleasure of beginning and finishing a good book.  I have had a couple of people recomend “The Red Tent” to me so I picked it up.  It was very an interesting take on the the Biblical character of Dinah.  I enjoyed it because of it’s look at the lives of women and how we intertwine and influence one another.  In addition, I enjoyed it because it fueled my every smoldering fire to understand what happened historically.  I love finding out about ancient Biblical tradition.  I didn’t particullary care for the fact that the author really streched to the breaking point in my opinion what the Bible does say about Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, Leah, Rachel and all their sons and daughters.  It was creatively done and should provoke some interesting and fun conversations.

We came home yesterday, carved pumpkins, started decorating for Thanksgiving and looked around at my home with delight at our progress on our home impovement project and discouragement at the disaster around me.  It looks like a mischievious pixie got loose in our home while we were gone and just threw things in the air with shear abanondon and delight.  Eeeks, I have a lot of work ahead of me to get it put back together.

 Hope your week is great!