Autumn is here and feels great!

 We had a nice surprise last Sunday.  Emily, Joe, Noah, and Lucy drove over from St. Louis just for dinner!  Following are some photos from that evening.

 

  Lucy playing with the lamb salt and pepper shakers at dinner

 

Noah demonstrating his drinking-straw glasses

 

 Emily and Joe

 

Sarah and Melanie

 

not a great photo of Steven and Tamara but Steven was busy clearing the table

Emily and Lucy

Noah and Sarah and I had a nice little walk around the block after eating and Noah collected all sorts of nature treasures.  Oh, I love that boy.  Lucy took steps that day – her first real ones.  Hooray!

The Really Terrible Orchestra had its first rehearsal of the season last Monday.  It looks like I will be the conductor of this group – that is OK with me.  We had three violins, one viola, four cellos, one trombone, one trumpet, and one flute show up.  And, they sounded pretty good for sight reading adult-beginners.

Other highlights of the week included lunch with my long-time friend and music colleague, Kaye Miller, on Tuesday.  Alfred had a vet appointment and he has lost weight!  He now weighs only 17 ½ pounds.  And, I get to put five drops of an antibiotic in his ears twice a day until Tuesday.  He is so big, I have to lay my whole body on him to keep him still while I count out the drops.  You know he LOVES that!  I got to watch a movie (Devil Wears Prada) and sew Wednesday evening.  Oh, it was so enjoyable.  (ah, my old life)  I picked up my repaired wedding band/diamond on Friday. And, Prairie Strings had three weddings on Saturday!  Two were at the same time so I split us up in twos and found substitutes.  As you can imagine, it took a bit of coordinating. 

Finally, Steve and I did more room shuffling on Saturday morning – this time, it was our bedroom.  We moved a small couch out (I really loved that couch but the fabric was torn and frayed and stained) and traded a brown book case for a black bookcase we bought from Beckie.  We also moved the bed around and transferred my bill-paying desk into the quilt room.  Just a bit of trivia – my mother  used this desk for bill paying when they lived in Payson.  And, the same desk was in my teenage bedroom in California  only it was painted green).  My dad painstakingly stripped the green paint off after I moved out but I can still see little bits of green in some of the out-of-the-way corners.  Before California, it was in the “office” bedroom in our house in El Paso. 

Here are photos of after the re-arranging….

 

 

Sadie likes the new set-up
 
the television is sitting on a PURPLE table - I love purple but not in that bedroom.  It will get painted sometime......
 
Here is the desk in the quilt room (the hanging quilt and the front quilt on the rack were both made by my Grandma Young) 

Cleaning time

I woke up this morning with a crick in my neck – probably because Steve and I spent all yesterday morning and I also spent the evening re-arranging bedrooms, now that Sarah and Beckie are back out of the nest.  In the room that Sarah occupied, we moved the bed around and added a tall bookcase (thanks to Beckie) to house all the children’s and Christmas books.  We purged the games from the top shelf in the closet and we moved all the toys into the quilt room closet and put all the family history tubs (both Steve’s and mine) in their place.  Here are photos.  

  

 

Notice the wood chest at the foot of the bed?  It belonged to Steve’s parents and it fit perfectly in the storage well in the back of the van we rented to attend Iola’s funeral.  It is a treasure.

While cleaning, look at the mother of all dust bunnies we found!

 

 

I moved all my sewing and craft tubs into the Noah’s Ark room closet last night and then I treated myself to a couple hours at the sewing machine while finishing up watching “Newsies”.  Oh, how I have missed sewing.  It is just not going to happen very much this year, I am sad to say.  Happily, though, teaching is great.  All my ensembles are making good progress and I am always energized when I am done.  Isn’t that crazy?  I will say, though, that I was extra tired during my Thursday teaching at Central Methodist and I could NOT stay away for my first student.  Thankfully, I have a 30-minute break right after him and I just leaned my head against the cinderblock wall in the practice room and had the best little 15-minute power nap! 

Steve and I visited Jenna for Family Home Evening on Monday.  I brought my cello and played some Bach for her and her housemate and the nurses aids.  Jenna cannot talk but we are all fairly certain there is a coherent woman trapped inside that palsied body.  Columbia Civic Orchestra started up on Tuesday.  We are playing a lot of Beethoven this year – love it!  Had a stake Relief Society presidency meeting on Wednesday night.  And the annual CIS family picnic was Friday evening.  Oh, and Prairie Strings had a wedding Saturday evening at a place north of Columbia called Alpine Park and Gardens.  It is SO lovely there under the tall trees and amid beautiful landscaping (not too fussy, mostly native plants).  But the bride’s mother was not present – she and the bride had a falling out a few years back and so she was not included in the celebration.  How incredibly sad is that?????

Finally, I have to show you some address labels we got in the mail recently.  These are the unsolicited kind from a charitable organization – you know the kind.  Sometime in the past, I requested they read
“The Lambson Family” (rather than just Steve Lambson or Jeanne Lambson because we also have PLENTY of those, too).  Well, obviously, these labels are outsourced to some foreign country because look what they came up with?  

 

 Hilarious!

Weather has turned cooler - the AC is off (yay) - leaving the horrid heat of the summer a painful memory.  

Oh, one last thing.  Many of you have seen Sadie's "welcome home" ritual.  First, she greets you on the stairs - sitting on her rump with her little paws in the air inviting you to rub her tummy.  Then, she runs to our bedroom and jumps on the couch and burrows her head between the two cushions in pure excitement.  There, she gets more petting and greeting.  This happens EVERY TIME either Steve or I come home.....even if it is just coming in from collecting the mail!  As you can imagine, with all the comings and goings I now have between all my schools, we do this several times a day.  Wednesday had FIVE.  I should try to capture this on video because it is so cute.  

farewell, Beckie

We drove Beckie and Max to St. Louis on Friday night.  She flies to Hawaii on Tuesday.  Poor Beckie had to work at MBS all week up through Thursday so she had an intense 24 hours to finish all her packing.  I helped as much as I could when I finished my teaching for the day.  Oi, her four suitcases are HEAVY.  And, she has many priority boxes full of items I will mail to her once she gets settled.  BUT, I will give her credit – she REALLY purged her life and whittled her many belongings (31 years worth!) down to almost NOTHING.  And, now, wherever I look around the house, I see things that belonged to her and I am reminded that she has really left and then I get a little sad and even weepy, sometimes. 

It got REALLY weepy Saturday afternoon.  We had left for Columbia and Beckie had gone on an errand with Brandon and she had left Max behind at the Southerland house.  Well, Max was already on heightened alert that maybe Beckie was going to leave him (packing, suitcases, leaving in the morning for Soulard Farmer’s Market – more about that later) so I am sure he felt that his person was gone for good and he set out on his own Incredible Journey to find her as soon as he saw an open door (while Joe was coming in and out).  Fast forward about two hours to first time he was missed and I got a tearful and panicked cell call from Emily to pray that he be found.  So, that is what we all did.  We prayed and wept and hoped and feared.  And, thank Heavenly Father, Max was found a couple of hours later.  He got about seven houses away around the corner and was picked up by a fellow who could tell he was pampered and valued and I guess he hoped for a reward – which he got.  I still get a pain in my heart thinking what MIGHT have been.  My testimony of the power of prayer just got even stronger yesterday.

 Sadie with her best friend, Max.

To end on a more cheerful note, we went (sans Max) to the farmer's market at Soulard on Saturday morning.....

 

Aren't these peppers pretty???








 
 Steve and me outstanding in our field...


 
Emily and Noah visit with a sidewalk musician

 
Noah and Lucy at the market


 Sadie was quite the hit at the farmer's market - she loved being carted around in Beckie's purse.


 

Thank you, Isaac!

It is so ironic that Hurricane Isaac could cause so much destruction and heartache in one part of the

country and create so much joy and thankfulness in another.  Look at what he gave us!   

 

Two days of slow, steady rain to quench our thirsty drought.  I don’t know where that puts us as far as rainfall amounts for the year and where we stand in dryness but I gotta think this put a dent in it. 

Last Sunday, I took this picture

 

And I was so thrilled that we got a pathetic half-inch of rain that day.  That was after over two months of nothing.  Pretty scary in this part of the country where rain falls regularly all throughout the summer. 

The dry conditions have caused the trees to go into fall mode – look at our deck.   

 

 This usually doesn’t happen until mid-October.

In other news, I got to my Rock Bridge orchestra on Monday to learn that we had pictures that needed to be taken ASAP.  All the other ensembles were done that day but I was given until Wednesday (since no one remembered to tell me – ah, the joys of being part-time and hardly ever in the building).  So, the first part of our rehearsal was spent trying to sort out all the tuxedos and dresses and size them to everyone.  Not all got a good fit, it turns out.  One poor cellist looked so ridiculous (he had about 10 inches too large waist and his shirt cuffs hung down below his jacket by 4 inches) that we had to hide him in the second row.  He is a funny kid – name is Alan – and he told me he IS familiar with that silly animal you-tube where the gopher looks like he is saying “Alan” and that his dad wakes him up that way every morning.  He he.  The rest of the kids in orchestra are also great.  We finally finished sight-reading and have decided which pieces we will do and which ones we never want to see again.  Since not all of these wonderful kids are strong players, we have our work cut out for us.   

Steve and I had a music colleague and her husband over for dinner on Friday.  She plays viola in Prairie Strings and in CCO and she is the other high school orchestra director.  He played euphonium with the Army band for 20 years and now works for the hospital in Moberly.  Steve is hoping to buy his own euphonium (baritone is NOT, nor has EVER, been the correct name for the instrument, apparently) so we asked this couple over so the guys could talk shop.  Of course, the gals did too and it was a nice evening. 

Beckie continues to make progress towards her departure for Hawaii.  Our garage still looks like this...

 

  BUT, she says it is organized chaos.  I helped her take the last items from her storage unit Thursday night and she has sold several items since then.  I WISH I had taken a picture of her paper-shredding project.  Oh my, it was about four boxes stuffed with shredded documents and other parts of her life she didn’t need nor want others to paw through. 

 I cannot think of her leaving without getting misty eyed.  And, this occurs in the most random places – like Aldi!   Less than a week left with her before we drive her to St. Louis next weekend.  Sniff.

August news

        I must say that, up to now, school has been pretty time-consuming….planning meetings, setting up classrooms, preparing for classes, figuring out my schedule.  I THINK I can say that things are now pretty well set up and it will just be moving forward.  I HOPE!

         I have not begun my CIS orchestras – that starts tomorrow – but I have been contacting students and setting up size-me-up sessions all last week.  My violin class at Lange is comprised of twelve students – 10 girls, 2 boys – who range in playing ability from “pretty good” to “how did they make it through all last year?”  One girl literally received an F and yet, she is back and in my class.  Oh boy!  My Rock Bridge High School orchestra is great – 12 violins, 6 cellos, 2 basses, aaaaaaaaaand 1 viola – and he is not very strong, at that.  But, we will work around that by asking assorted violins to fill in on the viola part.  I teach six students at Central Methodist University – 3 cellos and 3 violins.  All are at the beginning level and last week was my first time to see them.  It was not as tiring as I thought it would be and I think I will come to look forward to my Thursday afternoons in Fayette. 

Since I do so much driving, I decided last spring to check out books on CD to help pass the time in the car.  I am currently listening to Huckleberry Finn and I am really enjoying it…. laughing out loud many times.   My pathetic high school English education left me without exposure to many of the great authors so I hope to make up for that this year by listening to them on CD. 

        Ruth Marshall turned 91 on Wednesday and her son, Richard, and his wife Roseanne flew out from New York to be with her.  I was invited to join them and Ruth’s sister, Rosie and her family at Golden Corral Wednesday evening.  It was a nice evening.

 Below is a photo of Siri, Julia, and Margaret - the ladies in the Prairie String Quartet - at a little luncheon we had last Saturday.  The picture was taken on Siri's deck of her beautiful new home in west Columbia.  Our quartet has many weddings booked for the fall and we needed to have a planning meeting.  We played for two weddings just yesterday!

Last Friday evening, we traveled to St. Louis to attend the temple and we stayed over at Emily and Joe's.  Here are some cute pictures of Lucy and Noah that I took Saturday morning before we returned to Columbia.  (kind of blurry, Emily, I know)

        We are still suffering from no rain.  We are supposed to get some today but I will believe it when it happens.  Sarah has moved out and into a cute one-bedroom apartment above the garage at Charles and Rebecca Lamb’s house (members of our church).  She is literally in the middle of the woods in the middle of Columbia.  Trissy has moved with Sarah on a trial basis.  We are not sure how it will work since the house on Parker has been the only home she has ever known.  And, Steve is probably her true “person” but we are not sure about that.  Steve DID discover her newest escape route yesterday.  I thought she was climbing over the fence but, no, she is still crawling under the fence by the garden.  There is a spot where she doesn't have to dig and that is how she gets out so quickly (less than 5 minutes!) She won’t do it if we are out in the yard with her (which is pretty much all the time because she is so persistent in escaping) but, Steve went back inside and peeked out and caught her “red pawed” so to speak.   

        Beckie’s progression towards leaving for Hawaii continues.  She took a truckload of stuff to St. Louis to sell in her friend Kathy’s yard sale last weekend and made $400.00.  She will empty out her storage unit this week (it is mostly empty already) and will start living out of suitcases the first of September.  She has been working LOTS of overtime lately at MBS.  That and the hoops she has to jump through to bring Max to Hawaii have been her biggest stressers. 

        So, that brings you up to date with us here in Columbia….

It's blogging time - finally

Where did July go???  Where did the summer go??!!??  School begins in the next two weeks and there you are, “summer” is over but I bet the heat won’t be over.  This oppressive heat and drought is one of the worst on record – certainly the worst we have ever experienced.  All I do is water – trying to save the garden and all the fruit bearing bushes and trees that we have planted. 

That is what July was – watering…..and having a Lambson family reunion.  Kirsti and Ryan flew out from Utah.  Elise flew in from New York.  And Julina drove in from Indiana.  The reunion started

 with a campout at Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park - for old time sake.

 

 We haven’t camped there in seven years – not since the Taum Sauk dam burst and flooded the state park.  Heck, we really haven’t camped at all in those seven years.  So, add oppressive heat, a campground that is totally different and farther away from the Shut-Ins, and old, decaying (or absent) camp equipment and you have a recipe for a less-than-perfect camping trip.   

 

Sleeping was hot.  Eating was drawn-out because there was an open-fire ban (due to the drought) and we could only use charcoal.  

 

 

  our poor bacon trying to cook over charcoal.....

 After we learned to light little piles of charcoal every thirty minutes, cooking got easier but the first couple of meals were kind of a disaster as our charcoal briquette heat faded too quickly to cook effectively.  

 

  pie irons did OK - but look how funny the egg cooked?  Looks like a little volcano!

  of course, Noah had fun, no matter what!

and it was fun to have Papa Joe along (he was stateside for a meeting earlier in the week)

  

Only the water (which was low, but still present) saved the day.  Swimming was wonderful!

 

  Elise and Papa Joe 

Steve found one of his hole-in-a rocks

Lucy was NOT happy that she couldn't go down the Shut-Ins with mom, dad and Noah

 

Camping went from Thursday to Saturday and then we congregated in Columbia for 24 hours – enough time to have a family portrait,

 

   a family council, and  two family dinners – the first one being cooked by those who do not like to camp and stayed home (Beckie, Tamara, Julina, and Melanie) – and the second one to celebrate Elise’s birthday.   

 

 We got to attend the new Kansas City Temple twice – once before picking up Elise at the airport and again before her flight back home.  That was great.  

 

 Ryan, Kirsti, Steve, and Elise at the Kansas City Temple.

  Overall, it was a family gathering that exceeded my hopes and expectations.  So grateful to have everyone home one last time before Beckie leaves in September.

July was also grandkids.  Emily flew to Utah last week to be the photographer for Kamrie’s wedding (Jeff’s oldest daughter) so Steve and I took care of Noah and Lucy for four days.  It was great – both adapted really well to being away from their parents.  I was so busy that I didn’t take many photos except these when Noah and Lucy were on our bed.   

 

 It was Lucy’s FAVORITE thing to do – bounce on grandma and grandpa’s bed.  We explored the little-kid’s swim at Oakland Park and we returned to Stephen’s Lake Park with the spray ground and sandy beach.  

 

And, now it is time for school.  I am still teaching zero-hour orchestra Monday through Fridays at CIS.  I have six applied string students (basically private lessons) at CMU that I will drive up to Fayette to teach hopefully just once a week but I might have to split the lessons between two days  BECAUSE, I was asked late last week if I would consider teaching part-time with Columbia Public Schools again!  That was a surprise.  And, after a weekend of considering, I accepted the job of teaching a morning 7^th grade viola/cello class every day for 45 minutes at Lange Middle School and driving down to Rockbridge High School every other day to direct their orchestra for 90 minutes right around noontime.  I really believe this to be only a year-long assignment as next fall, the third high school will open and CPS will be able to hire another full-time string teacher (which I WON’T be).  SO, for this year, I will be doing LOTS of string teaching on LOTS of different levels.   OH, and remember my adult string group – the Da Capo Strings?  I have been thinking it was time to integrate them into the RTO (Really Terrible Orchestra – for people who want to play in an orchestra but are not skilled enough for CCO).  Only, the director of the RTO was ready to fold the group because she didn’t want to handle it alone any longer.   So, we have put our resources together and we will co-conduct/direct the RTO.  This is actually a lighter load for me as Da Capo Strings met weekly and this will be twice a month. But, considering how crazy my summer was, maybe going back to school will be a vacation???