Blooming Trees

This year the magnolia tree by the front deck bloomed a couple of weeks later than usual, but when it finally did, it was lovely. I say “was” because the flowers are pretty much gone already. Most of the blossoms turned brown so I suspect they got a little frosted, then the wind beat them up and took them away. It was pretty while it lasted. This photo was taken a week ago when the buds were just starting to bloom.

Out back, the ornamental cherry tree bloomed late last week. The butterflies love this tree. 

Today while Bradley and I were outside, the breeze would shower us with cherry blossoms. Made me smile.

It’s a Whole New World…

When your perspective becomes vertical rather than horizontal,

 

and then you discover the big window.

This is  Bradley’s new favorite spot now that he’s pulling himself up to stand and can see beyond the confines of the living room.

So many interesting things to discover!

Little Diggers – April

There is a children’s gardening program at a local nursery, and I was able to sign up Wyatt, Garett, and Grace to go. They loved helping their mom with her big garden last summer, so I thought they might enjoy gardening with lots of other kids, too. They liked the idea when I asked them, and were very excited to go today.

It was a little cloudy and temps were a brisk 40-something with a fairly good breeze, but they had a great time! Here they are at the entrance to the garden:

Today they sowed seeds for carrots and radishes. Stephanie is showing Grace how to spread the tiny seeds. (Stephanie is the Little Diggers coordinator.)

Next up, they planted seed potatoes. Wyatt has his fists together – this is how they told them to measure the distance needed between each potato.

Onion sets came next.

Lastly they planted broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and kohlrabi plants.

After all the planting, they got a tour of the greenhouses and were encouraged to touch and smell all of the plants. Before we left, each of the kids was given a packet of seeds. Then we headed to the greenhouses where they each picked out a pack of flowers to take home.

It was so much fun that we all look forward to going again next month when they’ll plant more of their garden. During the summer they’ll take care of the plants and then will get to harvest the fruits of their labors as they’re ready.

I think it’s just awesome that they’re learning to garden at home and at Little Diggers. Their enthusiasm was so catching that after I delivered them to their Grandma, I spent a few hours working on my own garden. Today I prepped the raised beds. Tomorrow I plant. Stay tuned…

Projects

Bradley’s beginning to have some semblance of a napping/eating schedule finally, and on good days I sometimes have a little time to do some crafting on weekdays. Usually my “power-crafting” time comes on weekends.

Here are a few things I’ve been working on lately:

A four-patch pieced quilt top. This one goes to www.quiltsforkids.com and I’ll post more when I finally am able to finish it. I need a walking foot for my sewing machine and am having trouble finding one…

A friendly greeting on the front door. This photo shows it done in vinyl, which lasted about one afternoon. I’ve traced it and am going to paint it on. More on that when it’s finished, too.

Some soldered pendants I made as gifts. Two of them are for the PIF I posted about a year ago January. Internet friends Dawn and Sharon each got one. The others will be off to their new owners shortly, and guess what? I’ll post more about that another time, too!

Next up is a sneak peek at the scrapbook I’m working on for our niece, Hannah, for graduation. These pages are from her Junior Prom. (Grace thought she looked like Belle from Beauty & the Beast!)

Lastly, Grace and I made a new decorated bowling ball to put outside. She and I worked on it over the weekend when they stayed at the end of March, then I finished it over that next week. Right now it’s sitting on the wooden shelf on the front porch:

It has silver/clear/iridescent flat marbles and really shines bright in the sunlight! There are a few more “blank” bowling balls in the garage, so, yes, I’ll post another day about how I do these.

So I guess I am getting a thing or two done around here even though it sometimes seems that all I do is feed and rock the baby (not complaining!).  In fact, at the moment, there are two babies here and they’re both being so good while I write this post. Bradley is “discovering” the CD rack and the 2 1/2 month-old girl is kicking her feet and smiling sweetly while she hiccups away. :o)  Time for me to go play!

She’s Employed!

Since the beginning of February, Jessica has been working a temporary full-time job in the office at Tabitha Health Care Services. She got the job through ASI, an employment agency, so she knew when she started that it would be just a 4-6 week stint. We didn’t know why the 4-6 weeks, but figured someone was out on maternity or medical leave of some kind. She was happy to get out of the fast food biz for at least a few weeks, and really clicked with the other people in the office.

Turns out the job was open, and after she worked there just two days, one of the other staff brought her an application and told her to apply for the permanent position. She did just that.

Lots of HR hoops to jump through, and they extended the ASI contract, but finally today they offered her the permanent full-time job. Yea! It’s such a great environment for her, with wonderful people and a stable company. We’re very happy for her!

Preparing

Last weekend I had the kids here for a couple of days and we dyed some eggs to get ready for Easter.

Each got their own bowl of eggs and cups of dye.

Grace took a photo of the final product.

They really wanted to display them, so we piled the beautiful eggs in a basket to put on the table. I forgot to put them in the frig before I went to bed, so these eggs were decoration only…

Bradley watched all the fun, listening and learning for next year!

Ever Wonder What a Laptop Tastes Like?

Last night I was sitting on the living room floor with my computer on my lap. Bradley crawled across the room and peeked up over the screen at me…

then he took a taste.

Yum.

Back to the Past – Easter version

 

Here is an Easter photo from 1966:

I would have been 4 1/2, Arlan – 8 mos., Alan 21 mos., Tonita 3 1/2 years. Mom was expecting Randy who would be born the next September.

One of my favorite childhood memories is when we colored Easter eggs. We always did it on the evening before Easter Sunday.

Mom would boil the eggs and make up the colored water in coffee cups on the table. I remember that we used spoons to dip the eggs rather than the little wire dipper doodad that came with the box of color tablets. We’d all gather round the table and see how creative we could get – there were a few very interesting color combinations over the years. We also used the wax stick that was enclosed with the color tablets to draw mod flowers and write our names. Mom let us do whatever we wanted, and the older we got, the wilder the eggs got.

Here we are circa 1972 or 73 on Easter Sunday.  (l to r: Alan, Randy, Tonita, me, Arlan)

The original photo was a Polaroid so there was no date. I remember the shirt I was wearing, and I want to say I was 11 years old or so…

We were on our way to Sunday School, then over to Grandma and Grandpa Adams’s for a little while to play with the cousins. It was a Sunday morning tradition to gather at Grandma’s and visit.

Lastly, we have Easter Sunday 1978.

Tonita, me, Mom on the couch, Alan on the floor in front (notice his original “Super Ducks” t-shirt. That was the first year that York’s Girls Basketball team won State. I still have my t-shirt. No, you cannot borrow it for Homecoming or Basketball season. Yes, I’ve been asked several times.) We were getting ready to go to Henderson to Grandma and Grandpa Regier’s house for Easter dinner.

Mom sewed my top and skirt as well as her own. They were wrap skirts and I loved mine.

This is me and Randy playing nice. :o)

Alan didn’t want to play… 

We don’t always get to gather for Easter anymore, though we each have wonderful in-law families to celebrate with. I will, however, be thinking of them all when I help the kids color eggs tomorrow!

Grace Makes Rainbows

Last Saturday the kids spent the day here. While the boys played Wii, Grace and I made some Rainbow Cupcakes for a spot of sunshine on a very gray and cloudy day.

The recipe is posted here. It’s from Family Fun, one of my favorite magazines for fun things to do with kids.

Essentially, we mixed up a white cake mix, divided and colored the batter, then layered it in cupcake papers.

Grace had never held the hand mixer by herself before:

She did a great job and followed all of my instructions so we didn’t get cake batter all over the kitchen.

Here she is putting one of the last layers of colored batter in the cupcake papers. This was a tedious process, but she was very patient.

After they cooled, I frosted and she decorated. She used jelly beans and rainbow sprinkles.

Garett was kind enough to show off the inside of his cupcake for the camera. They actually were a bit more striped than this shows.

Isn’t it pretty?  They definitely brightened a dreary day!

Diggin’ It!

The kids spent a good part of today at my house, but we did run to town for an errand, and on the way, we were watching geese fly overhead, and talking about Spring being on it’s way (please?).

With Randy’s and Leslie’s permission, I’ve signed up the kids and myself to participate in the Little Diggers program at a local nursery beginning next month. Little Diggers have a vegetable garden and the kids get to plant and take care of the garden all through the summer.

So I mentioned Little Diggers to the kids and they said yes, they knew about it, their mom had told them. I asked if they thought it was a good idea that we go, and they all said yes, they wanted to go. Then Grace said, “I can dig. I can dig really fast! I can dig really fast like a BEAVER!”

I look forward to seeing that. :o)

Making Our Own Sunshine

Yes, the days are cloudy and gray. Cold today with a probability of a few inches of snow overnight. Winter is lingering, and anyone who expected differently is disappointed.

This grayness is depressing, robbing us of energy and verve. (verve [vɜːv]  n  great vitality, enthusiasm, and liveliness; sparkle)

This morning when I walked into work, I was greeted by this:

We’re done waiting for Mother Nature to restore our vitality, enthusiasm, liveliness, and sparkle.

We make our own sunshine, Man!

Back to the Past

I was browsing photos on my computer today, and remembered a photo that Aunt LaVerna and I talked about yesterday.  This photo was taken at the nursing home in Henderson of my great-grandmother, Susanna, with me, my sister, and our cousin Jackie. I remember when it was taken, though I don’t know why Alan isn’t in the photo since he’s just 6 weeks or so younger than Jackie. Perhaps it was just a “girls” photo?                                       

Tonita, Great Grandma holding Jackie, me

One of the things LaVerna brought to me yesterday was a copy of a front-page newspaper article about Great-Grandma Regier’s funeral services. Her funeral was 45 years ago today. 

She was born in 1880 and married in 1899.

Here she is with her family circa 1912. She would have been 32 years old.

(The littlest guy is my grandfather, Ferdinand.)

Her husband was Abraham. The eldest boy is Dave, the other boy is Paul. The girls are Olga and Anna, but I don’t know which is which. Dave was 10 years older than Grandpa, then there were two more children to come, Verna and Ruben. Ruben was 10 years younger than Grandpa, and was the youngest child. He’s currently the sole surviving sibling from that family.

The only thing I remember about Susanna was going to visit her in the nursing home, where she had lived since I was a year old. I don’t recall interacting with her at all, but I was pretty little.

Uncle Wendell told us that people called her husband “Abraham-Suz” because he was married to Susanna, and his father’s name was also Abraham (who was married to Sarah). That’s how they knew who they were talking about. It’s little things like that that I love knowing about. :o)

He's Going to Crawl Any Minute

Five months old and he's rockin' and rollin' all over the living room floor. :o)
(*WARNING: DROOL ALERT)

The Writing on the Wall

I love words. I like reading them, writing them, and mostly, speaking them. They’re a powerful tool when used correctly, and hopefully this latest project qualifies as such a use.

Many weeks ago at the gym where I work, we decided to add some inspirational vocabulary words to a blank concrete block wall in the gym. Rose, the fitness director, started a list, and Jess and I added to it, coming up with several dozen words that we thought would inspire our gym members to work hard and stay committed to their fitness goals.

This is not the first time I’ve put words on a wall in a public venue, but this time it was much easier. Instead of printing out the font, tracing it onto the wall, then handpainting, I used my Cricut and cut the words from vinyl. The vinyl adheres to the wall in a simple process, and will peel off without harming the paint when we’re done with it.

We started with wide expanses of purple(!) cement block walls. In this first photo, I have one word put up as a trial. I wasn’t sure how well the vinyl would adhere, but the paint has a flat finish, so it worked pretty well.

We did this wall first, putting up just a couple of words a day.

Then we moved to the other side of the men’s locker room door.

Then we went on to the other side of the wall, around the corner and down the hall.

You can see that I used several different fonts and letter sizes. Design Studio for Cricut was invaluable for designing words that fit the size of each brick.

Feedback from gym members has been wonderfully positive. When someone drags in early in the morning (I get up at 4 AM, so do not cry to me about getting up early!) I direct their attention to the wall o’ words and tell them to be inspired!

SnowBlind

“Snowblind, can't live without you.  Snowblind, snowblind, snowblind!
I’m reminded of the song by Styx when I look outside when the sun is shining.

“The what is shining?”, you ask.

Yes, the SUN!

We haven’t seen much of it lately, so when it shines, everyone’s mood is lifted and there isn’t so much complaining about this winter that will not end.

Anyway, these photos show why we’re blinded by the sun when it does shine. This is what my backyard looked like at 4:00 in the afternoon on Wednesday:

That snow alongside the sidewalk is 3 or 4 feet deep. The pile at the end of the sidewalk is still as tall as I am.

This is the end of February, and I ache for warmer temps. I want to take Bradley for walks in his stroller. I want to watch the birds and squirrels prepare to nest. I want to see green things peeking out of the ground.

I want SPRING! 

I’ll take the sunshine.