Tribute to Nana

Our beloved Nana was released from this life to the next on May 23, and we will soon gather to celebrate her life and legacy as the matriarch of our family. We have been reminiscing and sharing photos. She was with this world for 102 years, and she is so deserving of Eternal Peace.

In her honor, the night of her passing, I went for comfort food....fried chicken (which we ate for many a Monday night when she spent the night with us as I was growing up), and a very small glass of wine, kept nearly full for a good part of the evening.

Farm Life

Miri and Aleaha helped put in another pasture.

Teensie the Goat. Such a cutie-girl! Doesn't everybody want a goat?!? We love 'em.

Little Miss Buckin' Horse.

Brothers

Funny masked boys up on the hill.

Sisters

Enjoyed the gift an an unusually warm mid-May to wear sundresses to school. Miri's footwear choice is typical.....simply unexplainable.

Make your own pizza night. (You'd think after making it exactly to their own stated specificications, they'd want to actually eat it. But that's not a given.)

Give Us This Day...

We were reciting our prayers the other night, and it had been a while since my children had done this. I said The Our Father and The Hail Mary, and then I reminded them of the familiar and child-friendly bedtime prayer of Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep.  Miri listened with ears wide open, soaking it all in.

The next night, Aleaha wanted to recite the bedtime prayer herself, and she did so very nicely. But Miri quickly exclaimed with heavy criticism in her voice, "You forgot the part about the bread!!"

Where they get their antics....

I was given a surprise of the piano being moved into the house last Friday - yay! Daddy and the crew took a moment to prove what the little bench by the water feature out front was built for....

Helping and Having Fun (aka Being Totally Silly)

Shuckin' corn

Artsy shots by Aleaha, taken when Mom didn't realize her camera/phone had been absconded.

You can't hear the music, but imagine some good 70s disco goin' on....

Little Girls in Prairie Dresses

We have been reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder "Little House" books for several years now. I was reminded that our girls are just about the ages and sizes when Kelly and I wore the "prairie dresses" that GrammaBon made for the 1976 US Bicentennial celebration parade. These girls were totally into them too.

In fact, Miri insisted on wearing the little one to school today. How could a mom say no to that?

Mother's Day Weekend - Ride on!

Mom and Dad were visiting over the weekend, and it happened to be the time of year for the OSU Equestrian Drill Team's annual poker ride. We can't do the OET poker ride in June that we love to do, because of other scheduling conflicts, so Chris and I thought we would do this May ride together, with GrammaBon and Grampa watching the kiddos that morning. Turns out Chris couldn't go due to workload, but that allowed Teri and me to go. So we were the dynamic duo in the saddle for a Mother's Day ride, with great weather and well-behaved mounts (well, Arby tossed his head a bit, but we made it without walking or any unscehduled dismounts). Fabulous! Our thanks to the village of support personnel who made this possible.

For future reference, here is the ride map (took us 3 hours). Starts from Decker Road. I might want to print this and repeat the ride with Chris someday.

Hitchhikers

If you look closely, you can see that Arby has one bird on his back and Shorty has two.

Who, me?

Someone was very quiet at the breakfast table after everyone else had left.....turns out she was applying blackberries to her lips like lipstick. An attempt to wipe it off didn't really work.