Do-Over?

Lately, I have been reading through the new handbook and reading or listening to talks by Church leaders that are especially directed to parents raising young families. And, I sometimes think I would like to have a “do-over” with raising my kids. At other times, when chatting with my visiting teachers and discussing the challenges we face today (compared to what the early Relief Society sisters faced), I think, “whew, I am so glad I am NOT raising a family today”. But, the bottom line is that my kids are now all adults and my parental duties are greatly diminished. And, thankfully, I can say that I am extremely proud of how ALL of my children have turned out. Their work ethic, for example, is remarkable. And, I believe that much of that can be attributed to paper routes: Our Sunday-Wednesday family paper route and the daily routes that many of them had. So, I would like to reminisce and honor my children here with some photos of them on the paper route……

This is when we won Carrier of the Month in the summer of 1990

Steven with a load of papers! (he is only 8 here in summer 1990)

Elise on the route in the summer of 1990

This is in January of 1996. Sarah and Kirsti (with her little home-made carrier bag) taking Butler with them on the route

January is wrapping up and that means that Steve and I are celebrating another wedding anniversary. 36 years! See how we looked so long ago:

To celebrate, we went out to eat on Friday night. Since I had to be down at the Lake of the Ozarks that evening to play in a string quartet that accompanied the 5^th Grade All-City Honor’s Choir in their performance at Tan-Ta-Ra for the Missouri Music Educators Association, Steve joined me and we thought we would find a restaurant down there. Steve let me choose the place and, weirdly enough, I really wanted to go to Golden Corral. It is so difficult to go out to eat with celiac disease and I know I can find lots of plain meat (mmmm – steak) and vegetables (I love Brussels sprouts and broccoli and cauliflower) at Golden Corral. Plus, it is all-you-can-eat! The perfect choice – only, there is no Golden Corral at the Lake. There isn’t even one in Jefferson City. So, we had to drive all the way back up to Columbia to eat. Happily, there is a Culvers at the Lake and a raspberry concrete with cashews was a perfect appetizer until we got to eat “real” food.

Also with the end of January, it means all my snowman décor goes back in the attic for another year. I love all my little snowmen and here are some of the many.

We drove to St. Louis yesterday – caught the 9:00 temple session and had some quality time with Noah afterward. We brought back several tubs of baby clothes that were being stored in our garage and, as Steve and Joe were carrying them in from the car, Noah noticed our gold Volvo and said “that’s a cute little car”. Just like that. How hilarious. Emily had a photo shoot and a lunch date so we didn’t get to see much of her but, in the little window of time we did have, she showed me two trash bags FULL of adorable baby girl clothes (many brand-new, never worn) given to her by a good friend. Wow. I can’t believe that Lucy is going to be here in less than three months! I better get busy on that blessing dress, hadn’t I?

SNOW DAY!

As you can see, we have had snow again and the ruler puts the amount between 9 and 10 inches! Notice how the snow is peaked on the bird house? Thank goodness for our Nissan Frontier with four-wheel drive! I took Steve to work this morning and had no problems navigating - even the roads that hadn't been plowed (like ours)


The snow has stopped now and the sun is out and everything looks so beautiful!

When we visited Emily last Saturday, Noah had to try on grandpa's hat......


Sarah left behind Sadie's little bed (which she never used) and I decided to put it on the purple couch to see if Alfred would adopt it. As you can see, he has. And, it saves be having to vacuum the other couch for cat hair.

January Birthdays

Before Kirsti left for BYU, we had a birthday dinner for her. Here are some photos from that meal.

Smile, Kirsti!!!

One week later, we celebrated Jason Bell’s birthday on Friday, the 7^th, with a lovely meal where Jason provided and prepared the main dish – paella (a dish from Spain, of course). The missionaries, Steven, Tamara, and Beckie were also present. On Sunday, the 9^th, we celebrated Melanie’s birthday.

Noah had his third birthday back in November and I baked him a train cake at that time. Recall that his birthday week was when Emily was going through all her physical difficulties and Noah spent several days with me. Beckie drove him back home to St. Louis on his birthday and took his cake with him so I didn’t get to see him blow out the candles. It is a small cake pan and I had lots of leftover batter so I baked another train cake thinking I would decorate it for Thanksgiving. Well, with too many goodies that week, I kept it frozen until last Friday when I pulled it out and decorated it. The next day, Steve and I drove to St. Louis (to the temple) and then to the Southerlands. I brought in the second train cake and Noah was quite excited to celebrate his birthday again – complete with song and candles.

Finally, Steve’s birthday is today (and so is Kirsti’s) but we had his birthday dinner last night. He wanted an ice cream pie – mmmmmm.

You will remember that Steve and I gave each other (with the help of kids) a flat-screen HDTV and here is how it looks out of the box and on the bookcase.

During Christmas, because the tree was in front of the bookcase, we had to put the TV on top of the stereo where we have been displaying the beautiful Christus statue. It seemed to send a wrong message – that we worshipped the television instead of the Savior – so now, Christ is back in his proper place (notice that, positioned in front of the seascape my dad painted years ago, it looks like he is either creating the world or calming the seas) and the TV looks very nice nestled in the bookcase. (However, don’t look too closely or you will see that Steve and I lacked the proper tools to make the shelves look professional).

As for the rest of the week, I have been canning venison - 21 pints worth! A friend shot a deer for us (with a bow and arrow right next to Target at the Mall!) and we took it up to a meat processor in Centralia to have it cut into roasts, tenderloins, stew meat, and the rest was ground up. I cooked up a huge crockpot of venison stew on Friday and shared it with the Southerlands. It turned out really tasty.

Snow fell Monday afternoon and into the evening (totaling six inches) so we had a snow day on Tuesday. And, surprisingly, on Wednesday, too. But, I had to drive to Fayette on Wednesday to begin my third year of teaching at Central Methodist University. Fortunately, by that time, the roads were not too bad.

So, all in all, it was a pretty good week here.

Trissy’s Favorite Things

by Steve Lambson

(with apologies to Oscar Hammerstein II)

Digging in gardens and getting all muddy

Breathing on Jeanne ‘cause I think she’s my buddy

Rolling on dead stuff to make my heart sing

These are a few of my favorite things.

Barking at squirrels and barking at Norma

Barking at golfers is strictly pro-forma

Running downstairs when they put me to bed

Favorite things dancing ‘round in my head

Going outside and then coming right back in

Going outside and then coming right back in

Going outside and then coming back in

These favorite things would make any dog grin.

I will not bite, I will not growl,

I won’t be perplexed

But when I’m subdued I will simply dream

Of which favorite thing comes next!

Departures

The week between Christmas and New Year held great promise but then, I got the flu Tuesday night and I was sick all the rest of the week. I have not had the flu in probably 20 years and it knocked me flat. Added to being sick was everyone leaving. Julina left Monday. Elise left Wednesday (although not after she had to linger for many hours waiting for her cat, Tonks, to appear from her unobtainable-to-human-hands hiding place behind the furnace. Tonks must really hate to travel in her pet carrier because this is not the first time she has hidden whenever she sees Elise making ANY packing preparations. In fact, Elise actually drove away and we planned to rendezvous with her mid-January. It was then that Tonks decided to come out. Kirsti heard her on the stairs and grabbed her and stuffed her into a bedroom and called Elise. Fortunately, Elise was only about 30 minutes away so she turned around and came back to retrieve her BAD CAT.

(yes, Tonks, hide your face in shame)

Sarah and Sadie left on Thursday for their epic journey back to Maine. Before leaving, however, Sarah had to get a different car as her old Saturn was just not worth repairing. Thankfully, before I got sick, we were able to locate a newer car – another Saturn, interestingly – and get all the paperwork done before departure day. Here is Sarah with her new car packed to the rafters.

(put some shoes on, Kirsti!)

And, on Monday, Kirsti left to go back to BYU. Notice that she is standing in front of another gold car which is not Sarah's.

That would be our "new" car - a 2001 Volvo that our neighbor was selling. He has a foreign car repair shop and had this vehicle he had fixed up and was ready to sell it. I LOVE it and plan to have it for a LONG time.

My last photo is of Sadie looking at me from Sarah's car as they get ready to pull away. SNIFF....


This week, I started out feeling pretty glum after last week. But, as I have continued to improve in health and as I have been able to tackle projects hanging over my head (putting away Christmas was a biggie), I have come out of my doldrums so that I can say that today, Saturday, January 8th, things are pretty much back to normal and life is good.

A perfect white Christmas……. that is what we had. Snow started falling early Christmas-eve morning and it fell lightly but steadily all day until we ended up with about 5-6 inches of lovely wet snow turning the landscape Christmas-card perfect yet leaving the roads easily cleared and just wet for driving. Evergreens heavily laden with white – deciduous tree branches all outlined in white. And, having all our children off the highways and here in Columbia before any precipitation fell was the best part.

The two weeks leading up to Christmas was busy, of course, but not overly insane. Fortunately, I did not have massive gifting projects by this time so I was able to savor so much of the season that often gets lost in holiday madness. In recent years, my gifts to neighbors and church friends have been loaves of cinnamon raisin bread so every day, I made a batch. Mmmmm, freshly baked bread smelling up the house is pleasant, even for this celiac. Beckie helped me pick Kirsti up from the Kansas City airport on the night of the 16^th. Oh my, that is a LONG drive! It wasn’t helped by the fact that Steve and I had driven to St. Louis that day to attend the temple. I am just so thankful that Beckie was willing to be my travel-mate. It has been wonderful to have Kirsti here. Julina and Elise joined us on Wednesday, the 22^nd. Sarah is still here so we have had a full house again for a few days. Nice.

Continuing musical highlights these past two weeks include Beckie, Melanie, Sarah, Kirsti, Steve, and me on our annual caroling (Sunday evening the 19^th) to Marcie Leubbert’s home (a church friend who has cerebral palsy). A new friend, Kelly, accompanied us beautifully on her clarinet. It was a nice touch that we may want to reprise in future years. I was asked on Tuesday, the 21^st, if I could provide some string music for Parkside Manor’s Christmas party on the 23^rd. (Parkside is a nursing home where I took my Carpe Harmonium strings earlier in the month so I guess I was on their radar) Well, in spite of the ridiculously late notice, I was able to persuade Tamara Kitchen and Kirsti to play violin and a kid named Grant Bradshaw to bring his viola and we played from my Prairie Strings Quartet Christmas music quite admirably (they were sight-reading!) Finally, our Sacrament meeting today featured a large amount of music including a piece featuring the Primary song Stars Were Gleaming with Kirsti on violin, Sarah on piano, and me on cello. And, Elise and Julina and Steve joined in the ward choir’s rendition of Silent Night with me accompanying on piano. I just love the music of Christmas…..

We enjoyed our annual trek to historic St. Charles on Wednesday, the 22^nd and treasured the presence of all of our children for the only time in 2010. Also joining us were Melanie Johnsen, Jason Bell, and Vicki and Joe Southerland – visiting the U.S. from Korea. We ate at the Trailhead Restaurant and then went on our $5.00 treasure hunt until the stores closed at 9:00. Before St. Charles, we began the day at the temple and then went to Emily and Joe’s home for a hearty lunch, Noah time and a nap. It was a pretty perfect day.

Right up there with our Christmas day. All but Emily, Joe, and Noah were here but we were so happy that Vicki and Joe could be with them and we spoke to Em three times on the phone so we didn’t miss them so much. Besides, we just saw them and will have them here for New Years. Anyway, after a leisurely wake-up and breakfast, we opened gifts until noon, ate dinner at 1:30, and then just relaxed the rest of the day.

Sadie continues to rehabilitate well from her surgery. She puts weight on her leg now at least half the time. Sarah discovered she is going to need a different car for her year in Maine. The ’96 Saturn has just too many repairs costing more money than it is worth so the next three days leading up to her departure on the 30^th are going to be kind of nuts as we search for, finance, and then license a “new” used car. Not only Sarah, but Steve and I are finalizing the purchase of a “new” used car for us. This transaction has been in the works for almost a month as we have waited for our neighbor Walter to make the final maintenances to a Volvo that he is selling from his repair shop. We will pick it up tomorrow. Car photos to follow….until then, enjoy some Christmas puppies.