Category Archives: memories

what i did on my summer vacation

so last week i went on vacation, a trip to missouri and to kentucky then back to missouri

i will now regale you with stories and pictures from said vacation.

i flew to saint louis and got in my rental car, all very uneventful other than the fact that my suitcase was the first on the baggage claim thing and then the rental car shuttle was pulling up to the curb as i got there. so that was cool

i got in the car and hooked my phone up to the fancy ass bluetooth thing and got my gps directions map up and running and headed out. about 2 hrs later i stopped at public house brewing in st james, missouri, drank a few tasters and loaded up on their fruit ciders, a peach ale and of course revelation stout.

Hard Cider

Peach Ale

after that i headed to my cousin angie’s to be amazed by how well she is doing on her weight loss journey.

and then on to colton’s to meet my friend jamie that i initially met in one of my facebook groups, she was on a road trip of her own and we managed to coordinate meeting in the great metropolis of rolla, mo.

we had a great dinner and i caught up a little bit, each meeting with her (this is our second in real life) is like hanging with someone i have always known and there is no awkwardness we just keep on talking like it hasn’t been 2 years since we had dinner together the last time

after that i headed on to that ‘blink and you will miss it’ town of my early childhood, and got to my mom’s just about bed time.

we got up bright and early for our road trip to kentucky. it was time to meet the newest great nephew and his mom, and see my nephew.

we left the house around 5:30 am and headed out. my mom, awesome person that she is, knew of a dunkin donuts on the way so we stopped there to fuel up on sweet coffee and donuts.

as we drove, we laughed, told stories, ate junk food

DQs 5$ meal box is delightful

and just had a fabulous time, we also stopped at a few tourist attractions

Boomland was a favorite i think

do you need a pink camo high heeled chair? if so they have them at boomland!

We got to our destination that afternoon and i got to meet my new niece (by marriage) and she was just as awesome as i expected her to be, and of course my new great nephew who will learn that i am the fun aunt and have no real rules.

Nathaniel napping on Aunt Tiggy

Great Grama and Nathaniel

my nephew came in from work a little later and we had a wonderful time catching up.

as always there is never enough time and on Saturday morning after letting the new parents sleep in a bit and getting a picture of the new family with grama/great grama we headed back out to Missouri, this time my 13 yr old nephew joined us to go back home as he had been staying with his big brother for a few weeks.

Road trip fun!

There is nothing like being with family and definitely nothing like being with them at the river.

snack time!
learning to throw rocks. *not aunt tiggy’s best idea

tadpole!
what a morning

dad likes to chase people with crawdads…
tiny fish that try to eat my little sister

After a few days at the river, there was rain and lots of it in the forecast so we loaded up and headed to mom and dad’s house.

They promptly put me and baby buttercup to work shucking corn. i am not a fan of those little worms that live in corn, so at one point i pulled the husk down and screamed and hit the corn against the side of the bucket and jax decided that was how it was done, so he started screaming and hitting the corn every time, it was quite entertaining.

Later that day i headed over to visit my aunt but she wasn’t home, so i just spent a little time at the pond, enjoying the rain drops on the lily pads (she came to mom’s to see me later in the day)

and then more family!! my nephew and his kids came to visit

It is impossible to capture everyone and everything, but i hope you enjoyed this little glimpse of my vacation!

february is such a fucking roller coaster

i hate february. i love february. i hate february.

Day 6

still making better meal choices. We had dinner out friday night, but once in a 5 day period is honestly unheard of for us. we rarely cook even one meal at home during the week.

spent the afternoon today with the kid, we cleaned and decluttered the desk and shelf unit in my old office room and then i helped her sort through a bunch of boxes she had stored here in her old room. we made great progress! what a feeling of accomplishment!

there were some tears as we stumbled across things that would evoke a sudden memory of some we have lost (a rock of all things was my kryptonite today), but that was tempered by finding silly forgotten things like this…

and these fangs! and bow tie!

and i still can’t find my pecan…

Giving Thanks

I was lucky enough to spend Thanksgiving ‘back home’ with my parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews and a random of assortment of other family and friends.

Had a chance to visit with cousins i have not seen since before we moved from Missouri in 1986, and catch up with others i see somewhat more often but not nearly often enough.

It reminds me to revisit an old post as part of this one. i know i say it a lot, but i don’t think it can be said too often.

I ask you now to take a moment and look around you… literally and figuratively… look at the people who are and have been part of your life. The ones who are still there and the ones who are not. The ones who are there, do you make sure they are aware of their importance in your life. Do you thank them for the things they do and tell them you love and/or appreciate them and their presence in your life? Now the ones who are not there… some we obviously can’t do anything about they are beyond our reach, lost to us and there will always be a piece of our heart missing, but some, SOME, we can still reach out to and try to mend that rift and see if there is a way to bring them back into our lives. We might not even be aware of what caused them to pull away, or we might know exactly what it was, we may need to give or ask for forgiveness.

I understand this may need some thought, and i fully understand not all rifts can be mended. It might not be something that can be decided right now, all I ask is that you look around and think about it. Can you really live without that person for the rest of your life, without that forgiving or forgiveness? Think about the part they have played in your life up to now, and what has been missing since they stopped being part of your life. Now imagine you don’t have a chance to make up for lost time.

Thanksgiving

Vacation Bible School

Everywhere i turn lately there is someone talking about vacation bible school. either their kids or grandkids are going, or they are helping run it at their church.

i am not a religious person. if i had to label myself i would probably go with agnostic (agnostic vs. atheist). but i do fondly remember those wonderful fun filled weeks of VBS as a kid. the one i went to most often was at Ohlman Church about 4 miles or so down the road from where i lived (according to Google Maps). the couple that ran our local gas station and store were parishioners there and were more than happy to take me along with them to attend VBS even though i didn’t actually go to church there. There was an entire process involved. my family lived down a mile long dirt road so to make it easier for Mr & Mrs Fields, i would hop on my trusty motorcycle and head up to their house so they didn’t have to go out of their way to pick me up.

My Honda, a main source of transportation from age 8 – 12, i got a bigger motorcycle at 12 🙂

it was just over a mile to their house, just a little past their little store , which is where my other favorite summer activity occured, the BOOK MOBILE 🙂

Fields’ Store

i didn’t have to cross the highway and would get to their house with plenty time to spare to change into my church dress from the t-shirt and jeans i wore to ride the motorcycle and there was often some tangles to get out of my hair. then we would hop into their big old car and head off to bible school. usually after we got back to their house, i would just tuck my dress up under me and head home, i just didn’t want it to get dirty before church 🙂

Mr & Mrs Fields’ house

I can still remember some of the things i made there, one year i made a thing for my dad to hang on the wall, it was a circle cut from a tree trunk and then we used Mod Podge to put a picture on, for my dad i put a picture of a big tom turkey. i wonder i they still have that thing.. i will have to ask.

Mr and Mrs Fields are gone now, and it has been a very long time since i went to church, but i drive by their old store

Mr and Mrs Fields tending the store. remember when someone came out to fill your car for you? he even filled my motorcycle tank, and took all the pennies i had scraped up to pay with.

and that church every time i go home to visit, and oh, the memories…. and let me tell you, thinking about VBS actually makes me ponder going 🙂 but i am pretty sure they wouldn’t let me have near as much fun now that i am a grown up.

I went to VBS (and services) at my aunt’s church many times as well, but that wasn’t as much as an adventure since they lived right next door and it didn’t involve a motorcycle ride through the woods on a dark dirt road 🙂

So, there i was…

standing in the kitchen looking confused, trying to figure out what to have for lunch. tomato soup was an option as was some chef Boyardee something in a can. (it doesn’t matter which variety, they all taste pretty much the same). and then as I peeked into the fridge one more time I realized I had all the fixings for the perfect meal. it doesn’t matter if you are making breakfast, lunch or dinner, all you need is an egg and slice of white bread and maybe some butter (bacon grease is better, but we don’t really have that on hand on a regular basis).. and then the masterpiece is born, just take a circle shaped object and use it to cut out a circle from the center of the bread, melt a little butter and toss the bread in the skillet. crack your egg and throw it in the little circle and a few minutes later flip it all over and wait a little longer and BOOM you’ve got a TOAD IN THE HOLE, bitches!(i definitely forgot to take a before picture 🙂 )

i can’t begin to imagine the number of these delightful little bits of food perfection i have eaten over the years, but most memorable are the ones my Grandma fixed me as a child, mine never seem to be quite as good, but once again, those memories get me every time i make one, if i close my eyes as i eat it, i am sitting on the swing in the trees, or sitting on a stool at the table, listening to the radio and my grandparents and cousins chattering away. time has a way of pushing those memories to the side, or even the back of your mind, so it is always a pleasure when i find something that brings those memories rushing to the front.

clearly my posts lately are on a full on nostalgia kick, i hope that if you aren’t one of my cousins or sisters so these posts don’t bring back a shared memory, that they at least bring you back to a place when you knew that fun and happiness were just a quick ride to Grama’s house away.

here is a picture (and recipe) from Allrecipes.com

Memories are odd things…

So i got this great new game for my laptop, Magic Puzzles, it basically allows me to turn my touch screen into a giant jigsaw puzzle. from 70 pieces to 630, and you can get multiple puzzle packs, from free to $1.49 (that one had 20 puzzles in it)

So anyway! long story a little bit shorter, I was sitting here on the couch doing a puzzle and suddenly had the strongest memory of sitting at my Grandma’s house and doing puzzles on their big hardwood bar. it seems there was always a puzzle on the bar in some state of completion, as soon as one was done another would be ready to come out of the box.

evenings doing puzzles with the accompaniment of a bowl of ice cream or popcorn, depending on the season and the whim of my grandfather’s snack requirements for the evening, some koolaid to drink, and as often as not some cousins to chat with as we worked on the puzzle. i feel like we did a lot of puzzles that were well above our ‘age range’ 1000 piece puzzles for small children you say? of course we learned quickly to sort the edges, and then the colors and next thing you know we were putting them in the right places, i don’t recall anyone ever eating a puzzle piece, but there were a few times one was set aside so the coveted ‘last piece placement’ could be won by a smaller cousin (or sometimes by the one who hid the last piece 🙂 )

anyway, it struck me as funny how a simple video game could pull me back in time like that.

you never know what little thing will trigger a memory, a sight, a sound, a smell. good memories and bad, they are all stored in your mind just awaiting the chance to pop out when you least expect it.

Hummingbirds were my maternal grandmothers favorite bird. i took these this afternoon and they always bring her to mind, she would have been 94 on feb 11, but she passed away in 2011. I am blessed to have so many hummingbirds at my house year round and i try to keep the feeder filled with sweet sugar water, because i know when i see them flitting around that she is with me. growing up she and my grandfather were just a few miles away, a trip i took many times on my bicycle or motorcycle growing up. Even as an adult after i moved over a thousand miles away, i still took time at least once a year to get back ‘home’ and visit with her.

My grandmother on my dad’s side was also a lover of animals and always had a dog around, she even once had a pet wild squirrel she rescued as an orphaned baby. She would have been 95 next month. although she passed away in 1981 I was lucky enough to live next door to her and spend time with her nearly every day for all of those 11 years.

Family is precious, you may not love all of yours all the time, but remember we only have each other for a short while and we don’t know how long that will be. So tell them you love them, and spend as much time with them as you can.

Happy Mothers Day! #photoadaymay

Happy Mothers Day to my mom, over at Oldentimes.wordpress.com. she raised me up, taught me right from wrong, then at some point had to cross her fingers she had done it all right and stand back and let me make my own choices. hopefully, i have made more good choices than bad, and she is as proud of me as i am to be her daughter.

i took this picture when she was out to visit me in california last spring. hopefully she can come back soon, cause we have a lot more trouble we can get into 🙂

a memory of a fence, post

I remember this as a gate to be opened and closed if you wanted to go past our barn. More often than not it was just climbed over, unless we were hauling trash to the dump. Funny now that taking the trash out means rolling the bins to the street, it is a hated chore. I remember when we fought to load the truck and drive down the road. A passenger had to open the gate; no driver would ever stoop so low. Once there it was fun to throw the bags farthest down the hill into the family dump.

Tara Rocks

Well, she does…