100 year old lessons

This is the view from my room. 

There is a brook that runs through those trees and it is the most lovely thing to fall asleep with the windows open listening to it.  Almost always before I sleep I think of the olden days as this house and town still hold on to those horse and buggy days.  It isn’t hard to imagine the way it all looked back then. 

This morning I thought of my great-great grandmother.  Her name was Flora Sampson.  She lived to an old age and based on all the pictures and letters I have seen she was very busy on her homestead.  In one letter to her daughter she complained at how idle she had been that day having “only planted 40 hills of beans.”

This is her feeding the hens at her home in Massachusetts.   I wonder what she is feeding them as I am certain she didn’t drive her minivan to the drive thru grain store (seriously I go to a drive through grain store where you pull into their garage and pay through a window as they load it up).  Sometimes I wonder if we had to physically do more in our lives if we would all be a little better off.  Not that I want to have to do more.  You get what I’m saying, right? 

Translation: We should be closer to saying planting 40 hills of beans isn’t a big deal and farther away from watching home garden shows on tv.   But it is so hard!

ships at sea

Winter is kind of like a sea voyage.  There are lulls and storms and an occasional rogue wave.

But we get through it.  Every year, the storms and winds come and we sigh and secure the decks.

I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing.  There is serenity to be found on these quiet winter days.

Spending time spent reading or cooking feel appropriate.  I am actually watching the growth of my bulbs. A tiny bit everyday until their green shoots start to grow faster towards the sun.

The days have routines, mostly me driving busy children and feeding hungry children.

When the day comes to a close and I retire to my cozy room, I listen to the quiet interrupted only by the creaks of this very old house. Almost like that of  the wind blowing against an old ship at sea.

 

saddle up

Was it my last post I spoke of winter and staying home?  Because haha the joke was on me…my husband is tdy and the kids caught that miserable flu that is going around. After a few days Ken called and was sick and I caught it, too.

Now we are recuperated and I am so grateful to have most of us better.  It’s time to chip away at the iceberg that is winter and force a few bulbs, maybe plant some seeds.

Our warmest room in the house is the playroom—which is a finished off attic.  This is where we have mostly been.  Molly has taken a shine to sewing and stitching.  She and I do this while the little boys play cars and fisher price.  It is such a good feeling when we are up in that room playing and watching the snow fall out of the giant window.

When I was down and out I watched several french films on my ipad.  Watching them has quenched something within me, much like reading a good book.  Modern movies seem to require a lot of patience from me.  It is hard to sit still so long and not feel like I am wasting my time.  Maybe this is just me.  Anyhow I recommend this one:

The Well-Digger’s Daughter

 

OK c’est tout! Au revoir!

arctic hunger

These temps have driven me into the kitchen to keep warm.  Hadley has gone back to Texas and the kids back to school.  Maggie still has a week before her school starts up again.  We like to sit in the kitchen while one of us bakes.   Today I made a double batch of teeny cookies. Just a bite to help wind down that holiday sweet tooth that has taken over. Sawyer spends this time dragging in his ride on toys and books. It’s a happy mess!

 

 

Hope you are warm and cozy in your nest.  Winter to me means staying home, it feels too troublesome to go anywhere. 

I am window shopping through the Murray McMurray catalog—getting ready to place our chick order for February.  Soon enough the seed catalogs will arrive and I will be in full fledged garden swoon.  Spring dreams keep me going through these cold days, that and maybe a couple cookies :)

on being a daydreamer

As a girl I chased my dreams around the big grassy hills on Jackson Road.  I heard them in the waves that rolled onto the coastline.  While reading books like “Dicey’s Song” I befriended the main characters and went on their adventures with them. 

I used to dream about my husband.  It was never a question of who he was as silly as that sounds because even when I was in the single digits of age…I knew it was Ken.  I knew he would be tall and strong, that he would have dark hair and want as many children as I did.  I knew he would love it when I baked bread and wore an apron, that he would sing silly songs to make our children laugh.  I never doubted any of that.

The one thing I never daydreamed about was the middle aged years.  I knew our children would grow but I never thought about it—there’s a difference there.  Each day I wake up is a little tiny bit different than the previous, though when I wake the first thing I do is change a diaper which has been the case for  just about all of the past 20+ years. I like it this way!  What will I do when Sawyer is potty trained and can get his own breakfast?  I guess I will sleep in a bit.  And I guess when Ken’s career slows down we will spend more time together and find out even more about each other.  That thought makes me happy.

I still feel like that child with the dreams.  I hold Ken’s hand with the same sense of awe I did when we were first married.  I remember having to call him my husband those first years of our marriage and how it always made me laugh.

Now we are grown adults and that makes me laugh equally as much.  We have a mortgage and pay for our kids college instead of our own.  All those little changes each day have added up to some pretty big ones over the years. 

Still, he is the person I daydream about. 

ye olde Christmas

 

The New Year started this morning.  It’s a frigid morning with a large snow storm on the horizon. 

We had a very nice Christmas and I hope your holidays were enjoyable as well.  The pictures above are from Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, a special evening called Christmas by Candlelight.  We went with my brother and sister, as kids we grew up near to OSV.  It was a good time seeing familiar faces and  having fun to include lots of laughing and some singing.

My wish for the New Year are simple.

happiness

I’m a worrier by nature and am determined to change my ways!

Happiness also means more making of things.  I like to make stuff.

Happiness all around…for everyone! It’s on me!

 

Oh, Henry

When I started blogging my #5 was 18 months old.  I remember the day he tried to run and scraped his knees.

We lived in Illinois then.  In a pretty house that was on a golf course.  Everything was clean and neat. Even Henry…and that was what I didn’t like about it!  I missed animals and my kids bring in bugs and getting dirty.  That is where Henry was born and he asks a million questions about it.

Henry is my guy. 

He is the only one of my three sons that looks like me.  He is quirky and does the craziest stuff—which truthfully is just like his dad but the fact that he looks  a lot like me makes it funny.

This morning as I was watching him get on the bus through the window (baby it’s cold outside!) I actually got a lump in my throat as he looked so big.  My blog is really Henry’s life chronologically. 

He waits amongst the snow hills.  Sometimes he sings to himself.  He turns and waves to me many times.  He knows I am there…loving him loving me.  And that is exactly what it is.  I love that he loves me.  And I love that he loves me loving him.  He knows this because I put his blanket in the dryer at bedtime so he can get some warm snuggles. Also because when told to eat all his spinach I take a huge forkful when no one is looking.

He asks me things like “when is the first time you smiled , mom?”

He hugs me so tight with his little biceps and it keeps me strong all the day long.

This all may sound dreamy as we all know what seven year old boys are like.

While my seven year old doesn’t like to take showers and when tired his voice goes up an octave.  It’s okay.

Yesterday he was just being lugged around on my hip.  Now he smells like school, like metal desks and the heavy acrylic paint of the art room. 

He lays with me in my bed and often I hold his hand while we each hold half the book.

I watch him get on the bus with his snowpants and boots in a bag—he plays with his friends in the snow and later he tells me with great animation the play by play.  It usually involves swinging  and jumping high into the snow.   My guy Henry!  He is growing so fast, I just want to drink up these days.

Tomorrow is the Christmas party at school.  I will dress him super cute, and even I will trim his nails.  It  is that special. He will give his sweet teacher a present and when he does I am certain his cheeks will be red and he will scurry away super fast.  Oh, Henry!