joy dare twenty-two

Day 22: One grace wrinkled, one grace smoothed, one grace unfolded.

One grace wrinkled: Old pictures. I love pictures, and black and white shots of my mom and her brothers and sister or of my great-grampa shoveling a pile of snow twice his height or my grandparents when they were young and love was new are among my favorites.

One grace smoothed: Seashells have always reminded me of how creative God is. I especially like the ones that have been worn almost completely smooth. I wonder how long it took them to get that way.

One grace unfolded: I have a box with almost all the personal letters I've been sent through the years. It's so nice, once in a great while, to pull those out and read notes from my friends from the days when we set up a "mailbox" between our yards. I'm especially grateful for the two or three I have from my Grammy. She very rarely wrote because her hands hurt her so much, but usually if I wrote her she would write back. I'm so glad I have those.

joy dare twenty-one

Day 21: one thing in the sky, one thing from your memory, one thing that's ugly-beautiful.

One thing in the sky: Not a bird. Not a plane. Not Superman. Have I mentioned yet how much I love stars? Pricks of brilliantly beautiful light that are really thousands of suns far, far away. What a gift!

One thing from my memory: Trips to Maine. I've probably blogged about them before, but long car rides are never a big deal to me because of going back and forth from West Virginia to Maine for all those years. I think it's been said that we only remember the good from certain times in our lives- that's the only reason they're the "good old days." Well, I remember fights with Zoe and fidgety-ness and soreness from the trip. But what I remember much more is singing for the last hour of the way home. All seven of us, singing silly songs and eventually praise songs and hymns until we got home. Those memories are a blessing. 

One thing that's ugly-beautiful: Hmm... There have definitely been things that I have looked at and thought "Yikes. That's so ugly it's cute" (don't ask me why). I think bulldogs can fall under this category. They're sooo ugly. They're sooo pretty. And yes. I am thankful for bulldogs.

first anniversary

One year. It's been one year since we moved- pretty much to the day. One year ago tonight was our first night in the new-to-us parsonage.

On October 13th, 2010, a bunch of church family came to our house in West Virginia and helped us empty the contents of our house into the back of a 22 foot truck. We spent that night at Mawmaw's, surrounded for most of the evening by aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings. It was quite the surreal experience.

The next day, we drove. Dad drove the truck, Mom drove the Vibe. I rode with Dad, Zoe with Mom. We spent the night at a hotel. I think we may have gone to bed an hour or so after dinner- we were all exhausted.

On October 15th, after a second day of driving, we got here! Yay! Haha. :)  When we pulled in, we were slightly surprised to see lights on in the house- but not unhappy. We went inside to find Lori and Cheri painting. They had painted almost the entire downstairs, in colors that Mom had picked out. They were finishing up as we got there, and it was awesome to arrive to smiling faces and an atmosphere of loving welcome. Alex and Kayla had even made us a sign welcoming us to New Hampshire.
Our first night in Hampton was the first night that my brother and his whole family had dinner with us and our whole family in our home. Ruby, who was about 6 months old, had never been to West Virginia. We ate together and were joyful. We were thankful to be together.

The next morning, we got up early. Our family and people from the church came to help us unload the truck. It was an all-day process. Just about everyone who was able-bodied started unloading the truck, and then the women started unpacking all the kitchen stuff, and beds were being put together and furniture was being shoved through windows and fathers were questioning why on earth mothers had chosen to bring that all the way from West Virginia. In other words, it was very loosely organized chaos.
That was a good day. We were happy to be here, and everyone else was just as happy that we were here. There's always something about working together that brings people closer together.

On October 17th, Dad gave his first sermon as pastor.
It would be ridiculous to say that, that first Sunday, we were all completely comfortable with one another - from the very start. Because we were not. But again, we were glad to be here and they were glad that we were here. So that was that.

A lot of things have happened since that first Sunday we were part of the church instead of just there. We've begun to form strong relationships that, at this point, look like they can only get stronger.
Getting here has taken a while. It's been roughly two years since Dad said aloud that there was a slim possibility we might move up here. And they've probably been the most difficult two years of my life so far. But they've also been the best. I am so glad that God has brought us here.

atomic fireballs and the new hampshire smell

The other day, I was biking to the beach with Mom and Dad, and I smelled New Hampshire. Yes, I know, I live in New Hampshire, so technically I smell it all the time, but this was a whiff of that pine-y, fresh scent (maybe there were blueberries in there?) that was exactly how I remember things smelling at my Aunt Gail and Uncle David's camp on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. I don't know, it was just nice.


There were blueberry bushes all around the camp. Aunt Gail would save the plastic containers from butter and sour cream and things like that, and poke holes in the sides to thread yarn through. That way, we could just hang the containers around our necks and fill them with blueberries. I liked picking blueberries. :)

The camp was right on the water, so we could run into the water any time we wanted (for we little girls, as long as there was someone else out there). We would swim, take rides in the paddle boats, and go fishing. I remember one specific time when Dad took 3 or 4 of us kids out in a little boat that didn't have a motor. We fished. It started raining while we were still on the water, so we turned around and headed home, singing a Patch the Pirate song. I remember the episode that song was in (about a boy who didn't want to be at camp), but only a couple lines of the actual song:

I wanna go home
Please, Mama, come and get me

I don't want... or fresh air,
I want my Mama and my teddy bear!

Yup. Anyway, Uncle David found us on the lake and took us home in the motor boat.

That's the only specific memory of Uncle David that I have. He died when I was 5 or 6.
He loved Atomic Fireballs (the hot cinnamon candy). I remember loving them, and having a very specific and disgusting process of eating them which involved a spoon and a glass of water. Today, we got some of those, and it made me think about all this.

dogs and roosters, grandparents and aunts

Whenever I’m in Maine, I want to write. Is it how pretty it is here? Is it how almost everything I touch has a special memory attached? Or is it just because I have nothing better to do?

My Grammy loved roosters and chickens. She had lots of rooster/chicken things. She had salt and pepper shakers. She had cookie jars and timers. She had little figurines. The timer has passed on, the cookie jars are with my cousin, and, quite frankly, who wants salt and pepper shakers shaped like roosters? But the little glass chickens still sit in the windows for all to see and remember. There are also a few other little pieces of memorabilia that have lasted.

Last surviving rooster glass, and my favorite.

These hang in the kitchen/dining room.

I don’t see a rooster anywhere without thinking of Grammy for just a second, at least.

Since my aunt came to live with Grampa a couple of years ago, a lot of things about the house have changed. But they're good changes. Sometimes it's easy to just want to hold onto the "perfect" pass in whatever ways we can, but in the end, it's not healthy. Moving on is incredibly important, and even a little change in decor can help with the process.
 

Today in a few words: dogs; snow; aunts; laughter; cookies; pictures; wind; chili; boots.

My aunt Francine comes over for a couple hours, and we just sit and talk. We laugh a lot- about things that my aunts and mom remember from childhood, about the way we are... I love these ladies.

The dogs are nuts. We Lowes brought our dog up to Maine for the first time this week, and it's the first time Brutus and Annie, the big, beautiful boxers belonging to my aunts and uncle, have met him. James is about 1/2 the size of Annie, who is considerably smaller than her son Brutus. When all three of them are in the room together, the background noise (if you can call it that) is the loud sound of 60 hard little dog's nails clicking on the wood and tile floors. 

James is a little intimidated by the other dogs, who don't appear to like him very much- he's too timid to really play with them, for the most part. They do things like block his path up the deck stairs until a human comes along to make them move. But they usually behave, and all's pretty much well when they're outside. 

Yesterday, Zoe and I attempted to go sledding with a girl we’ve known all our lives from Grampa’s church. Attempted was the key word. We have to remember, in the future, that sledding should not be tried when the snow is at least 2 feet deep and you are walking to your hill. We each slid down the hill once or twice. Then, we sat on our sleds in the snow and threw snowballs at each other. We walked home (my feet were so numb I could hardly feel the floor under them) and had hot chocolate. It was fun, but next time I go, we either need a better hill or about 20 less inches of snow.

corny jokes and hampton

“We’ve got our dog trained: ‘Sit down- or whatever‘. We tell him to sit down and he does whatever!” -Grampa.

The corny jokes fly when we’re at Gramp’s house. It seems like every time we come, Dad and Grampa both pull out all their silly puns. They’re smart (or should I say witty?), so it’s not hard for them to have half a dozen jokes in just a few sentences. And with the rest of us hearing that all the time, it’s no wonder we come up with some of our own once in a while.

I love being at Grampa’s. Grampa and I made a strawberry-rhubarb pie this morning. It's going to be delicious!

Zoe and I have been sleeping on the best air mattress ever for the last couple of nights. It’s about 2.5 feet thick, and it doesn’t lose a ton of air when you sleep on it. We blow it up at night and suck the air out of it in the mornings.

As I was writing, I remembered the pie crust cookies I made out of the left over bits of crust and stuck in the oven a few minutes ago. I remembered too late. The best way to eat them is to break off the burnt bottom layer and have a glass of water/milk handy- they’re dry.

Grampa made us a HUGE breakfast this morning. We had eggs, bacon, and biscuits. Yummy :).

I forgot to mention why we’re here at Grampa’s.

Dad is being voted on as pastor at First Baptist Church of Hampton in New Hampshire. The vote is on Sunday, October 3rd. He’s preached there three times so far, and we’re hoping he’ll preach there many, many more times. The church has a wide age range. There’s a 6-year-old, and there’s a 92-year-old. There are representatives from most of the generations currently alive, I think. But there aren’t many of them. A regular service probably has about 30. We really like the people. They’re a family, and that’s what we want in a church.

As for where we’ll live if this goes through, the church has a parsonage. It’s a tiny little house with funnily shaped rooms. You have to go through one of the bedrooms upstairs to get to the bathroom. There are ways to avoid that, but it’ll take some work. But I like the house overall. With a lot of paint and a few other small improvements, it’ll be beautiful. It just needs somebody to love it :). There are plenty of windows, which is a must, and even though the front yard=the parking lot of the church, there’s a little space out back for James.





And I have to say. Hampton is on the coast (the church is 2 miles from the beach), and you can walk pretty much everywhere- grocery store, pharmacy, Dunkin's. Yup :)
I have to go check my pie, but hopefully I’ll be writing more soon.

i must have been desperate to sew.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of clutter-purging lately, getting ready to move. A couple weeks ago, Mom and I both went through our fabric scraps, and we both found some of my handiwork from when I was little.
When I was little (as in possible as young as 4), Mom would cut fabric squares for me to make little nine-patch “quilts” with. Several times, she paired the squares with other matching squares for me to sew in a little pattern. The ones she paired are very decent, respectable-looking little quilts. Here are some of the ones she helped with:

But sometimes, I cut and/or paired my own. These are fearfully and wonderfully contrived, I assure you! If you need a laugh, here it is:

Aren’t they original? But wait, there’s more! I also started a “quilt”- a real, big quilt, not just a baby-doll one.

This one was actually a large piece of fabric that Mom cut up and I sewed back together!

the whole quilt.

This one is actually decent-looking! :)

Suffice it to say that that’s coming apart. Maybe eventually I really will make one, though :).
Note: all the pictures say they were taken on 1/13/2007. Well, they weren't. I need to both fix the date on my camera and take that ugly date stamp off...

gingersnaps and canada mints

My Grampa bought me some gingersnaps while we were in Maine. I think gingersnaps are awesome. They’re probably my favorite cookie.
My Grammy loved gingersnaps, and we always had them in Maine. Never at home, although all of us like them.
Not even home-made gingersnaps. Just regular, store-bought ones.
I hadn’t had one since Grammy died, back in January 2006. But they were just as good as ever.
I guess maybe I associate them with happiness or something, because being in Maine has almost always been happy for me.
Anyway, I missed them. I'm glad they were as good as I remember them being.

I also had Canada mints while I was up there. I brought some home. I just got them because I remembered Hannah getting them a lot and liking them when she shared. So, I decided to get some.
My Aunt Gail told me when she saw I'd gotten some that my Grammy always liked Canada mints. Which is something I had not realized.
I miss my Grammy. Maine is different without her.
Sometimes, it seems like things can never be as good as they once were (which, by the way, is not true. And I know that. But, still).

i'm going to maine.

Ramona and Beezus was cute :). There were some parts that weren’t true to the book, which I disliked, but they worked some of the best moments from the book into it- and added some cute ones of their own.

I came home and stayed outside for a few minutes. There are these really pretty purple flowers that just come up in our yard every year in late July. We didn’t plant them, they just come up. But all in a row right in front of our house. So I decided to take some pictures of them :).

I love these. I think they’re some kind of lilies.

Today, I need to pack. We’re going to Maine tomorrow! Yay :). I’ve always kind of enjoyed the trip to Maine. I liked it best when we were all together. I remember being in the huge van. I even remember a trip from when I was so young I was still in my car seat. I had a cooler under my feet and Jared sat next to me.

Another trip, Hannah, Zoe and I were in the back seat of the Chevy Conversion Van. Jared and Lydia were in the captain’s chairs, and Mom and Dad, of course, were in the front. Dad was really tired, we were almost there, and we were dancing. Sitting down, of course. But we were playing music and laughing and just having fun. Then we got pulled over. Hannah whispered to Zoe and I: “Pretend you’re asleep.” So we, of course, laid down on the backseat bed (you could push a button and the seat would flatten out and be a bed. And it was awesome) and pretended to be asleep. We listened quietly as the officer talked to Dad. Dad, as I mentioned, was exhausted. The officer had really pulled us over because we were unbuckled on the bed in the back. He said something along the lines of “Why are your kids pretending to be asleep?”

“Stop pretending to be asleep, kids!” Mom called from the front.

The officer wanted us to buckle up, so we had to. THAT was uncomfortable.

The officer told Dad he was weaving and asked him how old his kids were. Dad almost couldn’t tell him, and Mom had to rescue him a couple times.

The officer made Dad get out and walk the line on the road. Dad could just barely do it, but the officer had to let us go.

But we laugh about that a lot now. I remember Hannah saying something after the guy let us go about us not having been buckled up because in order to be buckled we would have to have straps conveniently situated across our necks and ankles.

I remember the year we had to stop at a hotel because the weather was too bad to keep going that night. Mom, Dad, Hannah and Lydia got the two beds, and Jared had to sleep on the floor. Zoe and I were on a rollaway bed, my head at one end with her feet right next to it and her head on the other end kept company by my feet. It was uncomfortable, but now that I think about it I’m glad I didn’t have to sleep on the floor like Jared :).

It might have been that same year that we tied some soda Dad had gotten from the Mission on top of the van to keep it cold. We got a lot of funny looks, and the woman at the McDonald’s drive-through was laughing as she took our order. But we had very cold sodas that day. In fact, they were more like slushies! :)

I remember singing in the car. We sang rounds of “Row Your Boat” and “Frere Jacques.” (I have no idea how to spell ‘brother’ in French. Sorry.) We made up two new verses to “Do Your Ears Hang Low.” No, seriously, we did.

I miss my siblings most at Christmas and in Maine.

I remember staying in the pink room upstairs at Grampa’s with Hannah, Lydia, and Zoe. We would be awake “late” telling blond jokes and knock-knock jokes at least one night per trip. And we would talk about all sorts of things. And I loved every minute of it. I’m always a little sad that we can’t do it again when we go.

But as we’ve gotten older we’ve had good memories too. Last year, Lydia was sleeping in Aunt Gail’s room and Zoe and I were downstairs on the air mattress. Lydia went to bed at the same time as Aunt Gail, knowing that she would be awake for hours because it was too early for her to go to bed. Well, Zoe and I wound up going to her room and calling her downstairs to watch Good Eats with us, and we watched it (it was about lemon meringue pie). Lydia just never went upstairs. She stayed between us on the air mattress, and we talked for about 2 hours before we fell asleep. That was definitely the most fun night of that trip.

So, anyway. I’m looking forward to being at Grampa’s house :).