They went on the slide.
....and climbed!
and got dirty faces
played in the dead leaves from last Fall
and in the piles of shavings Grandpa made with his lathe.
A happy day!
Saturday, April 10, 2010
More Sugar and Spice
With Spring and warmer temperatures coming, the back yard looks so tempting. Every time anyone goes out the back door, Idgie bursts into tears because she wants to go, too. One day she napped early, so while Emmaline was at school, she and Lil had a chance to play outside at last! It was warm and a pleasant breeze was blowing...the perfect day.
They went on the slide.
....and climbed!
and got dirty faces
played in the dead leaves from last Fall
and in the piles of shavings Grandpa made with his lathe.
A happy day!
They went on the slide.
....and climbed!
and got dirty faces
played in the dead leaves from last Fall
and in the piles of shavings Grandpa made with his lathe.
A happy day!
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Sugar and spice and everything nice
The last few days we've been visiting in Colorado. Three cute little girls live there and one of them even gave up her room for us to stay in. One night when we went up to go to bed, we found this lovingly tucked in to our bed!
A daily household task is the 'doing' of hair. Even the littlest one insists on having her turn!
They often have a great time playing with one another. Empty boxes make great trains!
Sometimes it is just nice to have a comforting shoulder to lean on.
A daily household task is the 'doing' of hair. Even the littlest one insists on having her turn!
They often have a great time playing with one another. Empty boxes make great trains!
Sometimes it is just nice to have a comforting shoulder to lean on.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
More Mailbox
With our insurance check in hand, we called the brick mason to let him know we were ready for a new mailbox. He promised to be out sometime this week, probably Wednesday....weather permitting. Naturally the weather had cooled off and snow was in the forecast, so we didn't know if he would show up or not.
A bit to our surprise, when it was time for me to go to Curves, the driveway was blocked by 2 trucks, 2 brick layers and some piles of bricks. Fortunately one of them drove off, leaving the other fellow behind to do the work...and me able to get out of the driveway.
I learned several things today about laying bricks:
1. If the mortar is a bit stiff, just pour in some of your drinking water. If you run out of drinking water to pour in, just add some of your coke.
2. If you put in a row of bricks standing on end, that is a 'soldier course' or 'soldier row'.
3. If you have any trash, papers, cardboard, broken bricks, etc. left dirtying up your truck, just stuff them down inside to the side of the mailbox before putting the cap on. It's much easier than taking stuff to the dump.
Fortunately they finished just before it started to snow harder. It was done in time for the mail lady to make her delivery today!
A bit to our surprise, when it was time for me to go to Curves, the driveway was blocked by 2 trucks, 2 brick layers and some piles of bricks. Fortunately one of them drove off, leaving the other fellow behind to do the work...and me able to get out of the driveway.
I learned several things today about laying bricks:
1. If the mortar is a bit stiff, just pour in some of your drinking water. If you run out of drinking water to pour in, just add some of your coke.
2. If you put in a row of bricks standing on end, that is a 'soldier course' or 'soldier row'.
3. If you have any trash, papers, cardboard, broken bricks, etc. left dirtying up your truck, just stuff them down inside to the side of the mailbox before putting the cap on. It's much easier than taking stuff to the dump.
Fortunately they finished just before it started to snow harder. It was done in time for the mail lady to make her delivery today!
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Hoosier Hysteria
For the most part, my family could care less about sports. Still, watching a bit of the NCAA tournament this past couple of weeks has brought to mind a story from many years ago. It is easier to watch a game if it is a team you know something about. USU and BYU went out early. That left only 2 teams I cared anything about, West Virginia and Butler.
When I was pretty young, Mom and Dad took Mark and me to a Butler basketball game in their fieldhouse there in Indiana. It is a famous fieldhouse in that it is where the final game in the movie 'Hoosiers' was filmed.
"Hoosier Hysteria" is their madness for basketball, of course. Everything pretty much slows to a crawl during the high school playoffs each year.
The year we went to the Butler fieldhouse to watch them play had nothing to do with Butler, but everything to do with the fact they were playing Utah State. Mom and Dad both enjoyed basketball and both were graduates of Utah State, so they decided it would be fun to go watch the game and support USU. Mark and I were along for the ride. The Butler fieldhouse was packed. One of the USU players was actually from Indiana, so on the other side of the arena, down near the USU bench, sat maybe 8 people from his family who were cheering for USU. Everyone else was rabidly cheering for Butler, including some folks near us who were flinging some verbal niceties, including some racial epithets as one of the USU players was black.
Mom and Dad were cheering whenever USU made a basket which caused some looks from the rest of the crowd around us. I was pretty much oblivious to the whole thing, but not Mark. He was mortified that Mom and Dad were cheering for the wrong team. He did not like to go against the crowd. His first move was to sort of slide under our seats so people couldn't see that he was with us. After a while that wasn't enough space, so he moved away from us to another seat! I don't know how old we were then. Maybe he was 8 or so? I really have no idea.
Anyhow...there is our Butler connection. Congratulations on making it to the final four games in your hometown.
When I was pretty young, Mom and Dad took Mark and me to a Butler basketball game in their fieldhouse there in Indiana. It is a famous fieldhouse in that it is where the final game in the movie 'Hoosiers' was filmed.
"Hoosier Hysteria" is their madness for basketball, of course. Everything pretty much slows to a crawl during the high school playoffs each year.
The year we went to the Butler fieldhouse to watch them play had nothing to do with Butler, but everything to do with the fact they were playing Utah State. Mom and Dad both enjoyed basketball and both were graduates of Utah State, so they decided it would be fun to go watch the game and support USU. Mark and I were along for the ride. The Butler fieldhouse was packed. One of the USU players was actually from Indiana, so on the other side of the arena, down near the USU bench, sat maybe 8 people from his family who were cheering for USU. Everyone else was rabidly cheering for Butler, including some folks near us who were flinging some verbal niceties, including some racial epithets as one of the USU players was black.
Mom and Dad were cheering whenever USU made a basket which caused some looks from the rest of the crowd around us. I was pretty much oblivious to the whole thing, but not Mark. He was mortified that Mom and Dad were cheering for the wrong team. He did not like to go against the crowd. His first move was to sort of slide under our seats so people couldn't see that he was with us. After a while that wasn't enough space, so he moved away from us to another seat! I don't know how old we were then. Maybe he was 8 or so? I really have no idea.
Anyhow...there is our Butler connection. Congratulations on making it to the final four games in your hometown.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Life was good in the 50s
It seems to me that being alive in the 50s was pretty good and carefree....but then what would I know of troubles. I was a kid.
Chronologically I don't know exactly what order these pictures belong in, but they are fairly close in time
When my parents first moved to Indianapolis, they rented a duplex. When I was around 4 years old, they bought their first home. To me, as a child, that meant a number of changes, one of which was adopting the world's laziest dog. I don't know who named her Candy. Some of her best tricks was getting her paws all muddy and then jumping on me when I was all cleaned up ready to go somewhere. I think this did not endear her to my mother. For some reason she preferred sleeping outside instead of in her doghouse, so she'd drag her blanket outside to sleep. When it started to rain, instead of going back inside her house, she'd cry out there in the rain on her soggy blanket. Not the brightest dog I think.
(Notice the dress styles for little girls then! Were they trying to save on fabric?)
When I was about 5 we went on a vacation. I was still an only child then though I often wished I had a brother. We got to go on a boat ride on Bear Lake.
During our vacation we visited an old friend from when we lived in Kansas. He became a professional photographer. This picture was taken near the entrance of Minnetonka Cave near our friend's cabin.
My first years of school were also about this time but were oddly divided. Because of my birth date, I started school in January instead of September. My first semester of kindergarten, the school I was supposed to attend was too crowded. They were building an addition onto the school, but in the meantime my kindergarten class was held in the basement of the Forest Manor Methodist Church. After summer vacation, the new addition was completed and I attended my 2nd semester of kindergarten in the Fall.
Kindergarten was not for academics! Certainly we had no homework. Parents were told they should NOT try to teach their children to read...or even let them learn on their own. Parents were not trained and apparently not thought to be smart enough to help their children with academic work. I don't recall learning letters or numbers at all that year. We played with the toys, sang little songs while our teacher played the piano, had milk and graham crackers for snack, and endured a ten minute 'rest time' on little rugs every day.
Back then, little girls always wore dresses to school. Pants were just not proper! Sometimes I wore dresses that my grandma made for me. This dress, however, was mostly for Sunday. It was plaid taffeta and rustled nicely when I walked.
I think my school looked rather dreary. The part to the left was the new addition that was made. The bathrooms and gymnasium for the school were in the basement. The upstairs was for the older kids, so I never did go there....or want to! It was scary to think of going up there! If the older kids needed a bathroom, they had to go all the way to the basement. Of course, no child in the school was allowed to go to the restroom unattended. We were expected to wait until the teacher took our whole class downstairs together once we reached 3rd grade. The K-2 classrooms each had a restroom in room, so in those grades we could go...as long as the stop/go sign on the door said 'go'.
It is funny how some things stick in the memory while more important things fade into oblivion. The bathroom incidents always seem to stick around. When we had school in that church, we were busy working one day when a boy named Barry went into the bathroom. Soon we heard a huge crash. The teacher went running to see what had happened. Apparently Barry was a curious boy who wondered how a toilet worked. His attempt to lift the lid of the water tank did not go well and it smashed all over the floor. Another time, when we had class at the school, the sign on the door said 'stop' so we knew someone was in the bathroom. Blood-curdling screams were coming from the bathroom. Again the teacher went running. This time it was a girl named Priscilla. She had worn a special dress to school that day. It had a fancy detachable collar. When she turned and flushed, the collar detached itself and whisked right down the toilet.
The cafeteria of the school was also in the basement, but I was never allowed to eat there because we lived too close to the school. We lived only 3 blocks away. Only the few children who had to ride the bus to school were allowed to eat in the cafeteria. The rest of us were dismissed to walk home for lunch and then walk back to school for the afternoon work.
Times have surely changed.
Chronologically I don't know exactly what order these pictures belong in, but they are fairly close in time
When my parents first moved to Indianapolis, they rented a duplex. When I was around 4 years old, they bought their first home. To me, as a child, that meant a number of changes, one of which was adopting the world's laziest dog. I don't know who named her Candy. Some of her best tricks was getting her paws all muddy and then jumping on me when I was all cleaned up ready to go somewhere. I think this did not endear her to my mother. For some reason she preferred sleeping outside instead of in her doghouse, so she'd drag her blanket outside to sleep. When it started to rain, instead of going back inside her house, she'd cry out there in the rain on her soggy blanket. Not the brightest dog I think.
(Notice the dress styles for little girls then! Were they trying to save on fabric?)
When I was about 5 we went on a vacation. I was still an only child then though I often wished I had a brother. We got to go on a boat ride on Bear Lake.
During our vacation we visited an old friend from when we lived in Kansas. He became a professional photographer. This picture was taken near the entrance of Minnetonka Cave near our friend's cabin.
My first years of school were also about this time but were oddly divided. Because of my birth date, I started school in January instead of September. My first semester of kindergarten, the school I was supposed to attend was too crowded. They were building an addition onto the school, but in the meantime my kindergarten class was held in the basement of the Forest Manor Methodist Church. After summer vacation, the new addition was completed and I attended my 2nd semester of kindergarten in the Fall.
Kindergarten was not for academics! Certainly we had no homework. Parents were told they should NOT try to teach their children to read...or even let them learn on their own. Parents were not trained and apparently not thought to be smart enough to help their children with academic work. I don't recall learning letters or numbers at all that year. We played with the toys, sang little songs while our teacher played the piano, had milk and graham crackers for snack, and endured a ten minute 'rest time' on little rugs every day.
Back then, little girls always wore dresses to school. Pants were just not proper! Sometimes I wore dresses that my grandma made for me. This dress, however, was mostly for Sunday. It was plaid taffeta and rustled nicely when I walked.
I think my school looked rather dreary. The part to the left was the new addition that was made. The bathrooms and gymnasium for the school were in the basement. The upstairs was for the older kids, so I never did go there....or want to! It was scary to think of going up there! If the older kids needed a bathroom, they had to go all the way to the basement. Of course, no child in the school was allowed to go to the restroom unattended. We were expected to wait until the teacher took our whole class downstairs together once we reached 3rd grade. The K-2 classrooms each had a restroom in room, so in those grades we could go...as long as the stop/go sign on the door said 'go'.
It is funny how some things stick in the memory while more important things fade into oblivion. The bathroom incidents always seem to stick around. When we had school in that church, we were busy working one day when a boy named Barry went into the bathroom. Soon we heard a huge crash. The teacher went running to see what had happened. Apparently Barry was a curious boy who wondered how a toilet worked. His attempt to lift the lid of the water tank did not go well and it smashed all over the floor. Another time, when we had class at the school, the sign on the door said 'stop' so we knew someone was in the bathroom. Blood-curdling screams were coming from the bathroom. Again the teacher went running. This time it was a girl named Priscilla. She had worn a special dress to school that day. It had a fancy detachable collar. When she turned and flushed, the collar detached itself and whisked right down the toilet.
The cafeteria of the school was also in the basement, but I was never allowed to eat there because we lived too close to the school. We lived only 3 blocks away. Only the few children who had to ride the bus to school were allowed to eat in the cafeteria. The rest of us were dismissed to walk home for lunch and then walk back to school for the afternoon work.
Times have surely changed.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
7 Years Ago
Seven years ago we were anxious to welcome a little grandson to the world....and he made us wait all day, too!
Happy Birthday to you, Robert!
Isn't he a handsome devil?
Happy Birthday to you, Robert!
Isn't he a handsome devil?
Rhubarb is up---It must be Spring!
Here is one of my favorite harbingers of Spring!
As a child in Indiana, most of our neighbors called it Pie Plant, but we always just called it rhubarb.
It seemed to love the cool Alaskan summers and grew into large, beautiful plants. Some brave souls in the family thought it was tasty freshly picked with no sugar to sweeten it. I was not one of those souls.
When my parents first came to visit us there they were astounded at the size of our rhubarb plants. Mom wanted to take one particularly lovely stalk home with her, uncut, to show the rest of the family. Once the leaf was cut off, the stem was 28 inches long. Doesn't take many stalks like that to make something out of.
As a child we mostly made stewed rhubarb, brought to a boil with a little water and some sugar. We ate it for breakfast like a bowl of fruit, although it is really a vegetable. Some of our friends made a thicker sauce from it and served it over ice cream.
In Alaska our rhubarb plants had a history. We brought the starts from the homestead where woodworker grew up. We brought the starts to our little house in Anchorage, and later from there to our permanent home in Wasilla. In Wasilla we planted our rhubarb starts, but they really didn't do very well. For several years we struggled to grow spindly little plants.
In the meanwhile, there was an area of our yard that used to be an old stump row from clearing the land. The topsoil was better there. That is where we put our garden. Next to the garden we had a little greenhouse and a small building which was divided into 2 sections for chickens and some pigs. The pigs and chickens each had their own little yard.
Eventually we quit raising pigs. That is when we suddenly realized the best spot to relocate our struggling little rhubarb plants. Once the plants were put into the old pigpen, they took off. They loved that fertile soil.
When we decided to leave Alaska, we took starts from our rhubarb with us to our new home. We didn't know how they would do in the dry, hot desert climate, but fortunately the cool nights here seem to be agreeable to the plants...along with being planted near a water source.
I don't know what variety our rhubarb is, but it is more red than some varieties and makes the prettiest pink rhubarb jelly.
I think our favorite uses though, turned out to be rhubarb custard pie and rhubarb cake.
Rhubarb Custard Pie
3 c. diced rhubarb
2 c. sugar
1 egg, well beaten
1 c. sour cream
1/2 t. salt
3 T. tapioca
Mix ingredients together and allow them to marinate while making the crust.
Pour mixture in unbaked pie crust and add top crust or lattice crust. Bake at 425ºF. for 15 minutes and then at 350ºF for 35 minutes.
Rhubarb Cake
1/2 c. shortening
1 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. white sugar
1 egg
2 c. flour
1/2 t. salt
1 t. baking soda
1 c. buttermilk or sour milk (1 c. milk + 1 T. lemon juice)
1 1/2 c. chopped raw rhubarb
1 t. vanilla
Topping
1/2 c. white sugar
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 c. chopped nuts
Cream together shortening, sugar and egg. Add remaining ingredients and then pour into an ungreased 9 X 13 pan. Sprinkle with topping and bake at 325ºF. for 50 minutes.
As a child in Indiana, most of our neighbors called it Pie Plant, but we always just called it rhubarb.
It seemed to love the cool Alaskan summers and grew into large, beautiful plants. Some brave souls in the family thought it was tasty freshly picked with no sugar to sweeten it. I was not one of those souls.
When my parents first came to visit us there they were astounded at the size of our rhubarb plants. Mom wanted to take one particularly lovely stalk home with her, uncut, to show the rest of the family. Once the leaf was cut off, the stem was 28 inches long. Doesn't take many stalks like that to make something out of.
As a child we mostly made stewed rhubarb, brought to a boil with a little water and some sugar. We ate it for breakfast like a bowl of fruit, although it is really a vegetable. Some of our friends made a thicker sauce from it and served it over ice cream.
In Alaska our rhubarb plants had a history. We brought the starts from the homestead where woodworker grew up. We brought the starts to our little house in Anchorage, and later from there to our permanent home in Wasilla. In Wasilla we planted our rhubarb starts, but they really didn't do very well. For several years we struggled to grow spindly little plants.
In the meanwhile, there was an area of our yard that used to be an old stump row from clearing the land. The topsoil was better there. That is where we put our garden. Next to the garden we had a little greenhouse and a small building which was divided into 2 sections for chickens and some pigs. The pigs and chickens each had their own little yard.
Eventually we quit raising pigs. That is when we suddenly realized the best spot to relocate our struggling little rhubarb plants. Once the plants were put into the old pigpen, they took off. They loved that fertile soil.
When we decided to leave Alaska, we took starts from our rhubarb with us to our new home. We didn't know how they would do in the dry, hot desert climate, but fortunately the cool nights here seem to be agreeable to the plants...along with being planted near a water source.
I don't know what variety our rhubarb is, but it is more red than some varieties and makes the prettiest pink rhubarb jelly.
I think our favorite uses though, turned out to be rhubarb custard pie and rhubarb cake.
Rhubarb Custard Pie
3 c. diced rhubarb
2 c. sugar
1 egg, well beaten
1 c. sour cream
1/2 t. salt
3 T. tapioca
Mix ingredients together and allow them to marinate while making the crust.
Pour mixture in unbaked pie crust and add top crust or lattice crust. Bake at 425ºF. for 15 minutes and then at 350ºF for 35 minutes.
Rhubarb Cake
1/2 c. shortening
1 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. white sugar
1 egg
2 c. flour
1/2 t. salt
1 t. baking soda
1 c. buttermilk or sour milk (1 c. milk + 1 T. lemon juice)
1 1/2 c. chopped raw rhubarb
1 t. vanilla
Topping
1/2 c. white sugar
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 c. chopped nuts
Cream together shortening, sugar and egg. Add remaining ingredients and then pour into an ungreased 9 X 13 pan. Sprinkle with topping and bake at 325ºF. for 50 minutes.
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