holidays, etc.

It's been a while since I updated, huh? Oh well.
It's been a pretty busy couple months, what with Thanksgiving and Christmas and all (yes, duh).
Everybody came to the house for Thanksgiving. And by everybody, I mean  Gramp and Aunt Gail, Jared and Becky and their girls, Hannah and Chris, and Lydia. It was good:) And Zoe and I went home with Grampa and Aunt Gail for a couple days after Thanksgiving. Always nice to be in Maine:)

Malia came up early in December. She spent the night with us and went to church with us the next day. It was great to see her! We need to do that again soon.

Christmas was a long, drawn out event for us. We had Christmas with Jared and Becky on Christmas Eve after our church services, and Grampa and Aunt Gail were here for that too. It was a lot of fun- the highlight of the night was Ruby getting stuffed animal-type things from her Pawpaw that are characters from her favorite tv show. She was very excited about those!
Christmas day, we had church and then Christmased with Hannah, Chris, and Lydia. That was great. We take turns opening gifts, which makes it take longer and ensures that all gift-givers get to see the reactions to their gifts. My favorite reaction to one of my gifts this Christmas was from Lydia. I made her a beard hat somewhat similar to this one, and she loved it. We all laughed so hard!
The day after Christmas, we went to Grampa's house. The Edwards family had Christmas together that day. I'm really, really thankful that my family likes to be around each other. That's something to be happy about:)

And New Years Eve we spent at the Noyes with church family. Very good way to see in the new year.

It's been a pretty busy couple months with all this holidaying and working (the store was crazy, of course, around Thanksgiving and Christmas), but the last ten days have been nice and calm. Enough time with friends, enough down time. I had most of last week off work, and the last day I did school was the Wednesday before Christmas. SO thankful for Christmas break! I've had just the right mix of relaxing and getting things done around the house without worrying about getting school done, so that's been really nice. Back to school tomorrow, though!

We haven't had any snow stick since Halloween week. It's tried to snow a few times since, but nothing has stayed on the ground more than a couple hours. I think one more good snow and I'll be ready for summer.

I'm definitely ready to be sore throat, cough, cold, and fever-free now, though! I've been just sick enough to be really annoyed by the lack of health for the last two weeks or so. Oh, well.

It's gorgeous outside right now- yay:)

I have absolutely no closing statement to make for this post.

this is going to sound slightly odd...

As insane as it is for a chemical plant in the middle of a river to make me feel at home, well... you guessed it.

On the way home from Grampa's, we cross a bridge over the Piscataqua. On one side of the bridge, there's a chemical plant. It never fails to make me think of the John Amos power plant on the Kanawha River back in the Chemical Valley. I think it's funny.

Zoe (purposefully) mispronounced Piscataqua as "Pisc-wa-tawk-wa" the other day. It made me think of how people who are new to Charleston can never figure out how to pronounce Kanawha at first. Usually, it's something like "Can-aw-wa" until they're corrected.

So anyway.

John Amos Power Plant, Charleston, WV

 

   Sprague Power Plant on the Piscataqua. (No idea if this is actually the right one)

On Sunday, Mom, Dad, Zoe, Hannah and I went up to Grampa's for a Father's Day family gathering. It was great! There were lots of aunts and uncles and a cousin or two :)
Zoe and I stayed there all week. It was an awesome week! We slept a lot, we shopped with my aunt(s), we swam with our friends, and we played with the dogs. But the thing that I think I'll probably remember most about the week is the time I got to spend with Grampa.
Not to borrow sorrow, but I can't help feeling now more than ever how limited our time with Grampa is. So the conversations and little jokes and time we spent digging through genealogy together this week are really precious to me.
Once or twice before bed, I went out to the dining room where Grampa was reading and we talked a little. We talked about how he didn't get to see Mom married (every time we get on the subject of how we were in West Virginia all those years, he mentions how he thought "Aha!" and chuckled to himself a little when he found out Jared was marrying a New Hampshire woman and moving up here), and the table of nations (I understood less of that than he realized, but it was ok), and what I want to be when I grow up (when I mentioned the possibility of a year or two of community college, he told me he thought that was a good idea and encouraged me to stay home, where everyone had my best interest at heart, for as long as I could).
After Mom and Dad left on Sunday, Zoe and I stood outside with Aunt Gail, Uncle David, and Grampa looking at Aunt Gail's new car. Grampa asked whether or not Zoe and I had ever driven, and hinted that there may be a chance to drive around the field a bit during the week.
So on Wednesday, when Aunt Gail and her new car were out (he didn't want to attempt it while there were other cars in the driveway. I can't imagine why), he and I went out to the truck. He drove around the driveway and the field once to show me where to go, and then we switched sides. At the end of half an hour, I could shift gears, use a blinker, and back up, in addition to the basic making the car go.
I thought it was fun, and I don't think I scared Grampa too much. :) As we were driving, he mentioned when Grammy first started to drive. I asked if he taught her how, and his answer was something like this:
"Yes, more or less. I think, the way she drove at first, she was trying to kill me! She didn't quite succeed, though. There was one narrow bridge near ___ that I was never quite sure she was going to make it over. She always accused me of trying to climb out the car window when she drove over it!"
Grampa laughs a lot, which I love about him. He's not above laughing at his own jokes, either. He was laughing all the way through that little speech.
My uncle David has done some research into family genealogy, and that has always interested me, so when I was trying to find some information on Grampa's family for him (Grampa) and hit a wall, I called Uncle Dave. He brought me a box of papers and family trees that he's printed out over the years, and it was really interesting! Grampa and I sat down and went through the Edwards/Field folder that evening, and found that my uncle has traced our family back to the first of us to emigrate to the States from Wales. Grampa is something like the 10th generation born in the states.
We also came across some old family photos in the folder. One that Grampa seemed to particularly love was of him in his days as a Marine, standing with his mother (Edith), father (Jesse), brother (Carlton), aunt (Caroline) and uncle (Fred Day). He is the only one living now. His mother died when my mom was a young girl, Grampa Jesse died in 1996, Carlton died tragically in a mill accident (I think) when he was in his thirties, and I don't really know about his aunt and uncle.
You know, as we were going over the most recent family trees, he told me that my great grandfather was very bitter towards one of his sisters. I asked if he knew why, and he said he did, but instead told me about how Grampa Jesse and his sister Caroline took care of each other after their mother died and while their father was at work. Jesse, who was only 7 or 8 at the time, would take care of the farm, Caroline would take care of the house. When peddlers and men came to the house, Jesse sent his sister out of sight so they wouldn't bother her. Grampa told me all that, then told me that there were some very sad and terrible stories about Grampa Jesse and his family, but he didn't want to repeat the bad. He said he wanted to tell me the good about his family and not the ugly, because he hopes that people will remember the good things about him and let the ugly be forgotten. I'd say there's a good chance that that's what will happen.

talking with grampa

                I had a little conversation with my Grampa last night. I was saying goodnight to him, and he mentioned that he’d talked to my Uncle Charles on the phone that morning. That led to the fact that my twin cousins are turning 25 this month. Grampa remarked that he had a 36-year-old granddaughter and was about to have 25-year-old granddaughters. I added that Zoe was going to turn 15, and he asked when her birthday was. It’s in August, a couple weeks away from my aunt Gail’s.

                “Oh, goodness,” said Grampa, “When your Aunt Gail was born, I was stationed Camp _____. No, it was Camp ____. [The first one] is on the East Coast, and [the second one] is on the West Coast. I remember hanging around the phones… Someone let me stay at the phones that day, because they knew I was waiting for the news of Gail’s birth.”

                “Really?” I asked. “How old was she before you saw her?”

                “Oh, I’d say she was five months old, at least… There’s a bit of a story that goes along with the first time I saw her. Your Grammy Joyce was flying out [from Maine] to be with me [in California], and she was, of course, bringing Gail. I had friends that were going to go get her from the airport and bring them to me, but I was impatient. I hitchhiked. I guess I was a fairly new convert back then, and I probably told God that, if He gave me a ride, I would witness to the driver.

                “Well, there are (or were) two airports in LA, which was a big city even then. They’ve got a good 60 miles between them, and I didn’t know which one Joyce was flying into.

                “I got a ride, and it turned out that the man who drove me was in the travel business, and was able to tell me which airport she was probably coming into!

                “We lived there in California until the time of or after my discharge. Oh, we were there until there was a steel shortage and my factory didn’t have work for me any more. We decided that we thought it was important, for some reason, that we come back up here.”

                “Well,” I started, but Grampa had more to say.

                “Oh, no, dear, I’m not complaining or saying we should’ve stayed there, I just wonder why we thought it was so important.”

                “Well, your families were here, weren’t they?”

                “Yes, I suppose they were. And a big part of it was that I wanted to come home and share the Gospel with them… I came home to find that they’d all already heard it and turned it down. Well, anyway…

                “Then David was born, then Bruce, then Rodney, Charles,” -Grampa paused for a moment here- “and Jessie. And after that, we weren’t going anywhere!” He laughed.

                “Then Jessie went down South, and never really came back.

                “You know, you’ve probably all heard me say it before, but it tickled me when I found out that Jared was marrying a New Hampshire woman.”  Gramp chuckled.

                “You probably thought it was pretty ironic, huh?”

                “I s’pose I did. And then Lydia moved to Massachusetts, and Jared and Rebecca had Addie, and Grammy and Grampa like to be with their grandbabies…”

                “Did you ever think, when Mom went down to West Virginia for college and told you she was marrying Dad, she’d move back up here?”

                “No, I don’t think I had any expectation of her moving. But you know, I owe a lot to your Dad. He’s always been good about making sure you all got up here every year… Otherwise, we would have had grandkids we really never knew. I’m very grateful to your father for that.”

Me too, Gramp, me too.

P.S.: I never thought she’d move back up here either.

I really enjoyed talking to Grampa last night. I don't get a lot of one-on-one time with him, and it was great to hear his story. I'm extremely thankful for Grampa, who is 80 or 81 years old and still manages to go around and help just about everyone he can. 

Grampa's hands are about twice the size of those of most men. I would not be surprised to hear anyone say his hands are enormous- or that his heart is twice as big.

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.

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).

vacation in new england

Today has been a good day. But long. One of those nights on which you think back to the morning and ask, “Was that really today?”

This vacation has really been phenomenal. It just seems better than last trip, somehow. This time there hasn’t been as much running around, and we haven’t had to cram visiting everyone into 10 days :).

We arrived at Grampa’s last Wednesday around lunch time, and it was odd. It was odd because Lydia was the only one at Grampa’s house! Grampa had gone to the dump or something and Aunt Gail was making lunch at the Community Center in Bridgton, something she does once a week. So we had a few minutes alone with Lydia at first, full of unpacking the car and giving/getting some lovely elongated hugs :). We’ve done a lot of things since we got here, but it hasn’t been too crazily busy. We went to Freeport yesterday. It was the first time Zoe and I had ever been to an L.L. Bean. That was fun. They have a trout pond with several trout swimming around in the fishing and boating store. And we found a couple good bargains in the seconds outlet, too :). The L.L. Bean in Freeport is divided between 3 buildings!

We also went to Crabtree and Evelyn, The Beadin’ Path, The Cosmetics Company Store, and The Banana Republic Outlet. Such fun! The excursion was made by Mom, Aunt Gail, Zoe and I. I got some free lotion from CT&E. Smells wonderful! And ooh, we topped off our morning out with lunch at the Bridgton House of Pizza, which has some of the BEST pizza ever. They make their own crust at the shop every day. The food was SO yummy!!

When we got home, Zoe and I went swimming at Naples Town Beach on Long Lake (10 minutes from Grampa’s house) with our 9-year-old second cousin Caleb. We hadn’t seen Caleb in about 3 years, but we had a lot of fun with him that day :).

But I found out something freaky this morning. About the same time Zoe and I were swimming with Caleb in Long Lake, a man drowned in Brandy Pond. Brandy Pond is essentially right across a bridge from where we were swimming in Long Lake…

One day, we went over to Malia’s. Malia is the daughter of Grampa’s pastor, and she is my age and her birthday is the same day as Zoe’s [just two years earlier :)]. We have done something with her every year when we come up for as long as I can remember. We have mainly gone swimming the last few years, and this year was no different :). Brandy Pond was nice and warm that day :).

Jared and Becky came to Grampa’s last weekend, and stayed from Thursday night to Saturday night. It was awesome :). We all love to see Addie in the mornings, because she is simply a morning person. She’s so talkative and happy when she first wakes up, she’s a blast :). And we celebrated Aunt Gail’s birthday on Saturday. A couple of my aunts and uncles and a few cousins came over, which was fun :). We always find something to celebrate when we’re up here, mainly so we can get everyone together ;).

So, I mentioned that all my cousins came over. I really enjoy seeing my cousins, but we don’t often spend a lot of time together. Because both my parents are the youngest children in their families, and because there is such a gap of years between Lydia and I, Zoe and I are the only grandchildren or great-grandchildren of both our sets of grandparents who are between 10 and 20. Caleb is 9 and Leah is 21.

Ooh, there was a first on this trip. This was the first time we’ve ever been at Grampa’s when Grampa has left for an extended trip while we were there. He left a few days ago for Arkansas, to see my cousin graduate from college.

We left Grampa’s and came to Jared and Becky’s today. We stopped at Patternworks (A "wicked good" [in the vernacular] yarn store) on the way! I really, really enjoyed it. There was a lot of sale yarn, and when I got up to the register Mom told me that all the sale items were an extra 20% off! So I got 4 skeins of yarn for $12. Really nice yarn- bamboo, wool, cotton, and soybean, and all of it soft. I wanted to stay longer! But I was just really glad we went :). I hope to go back some time soon. I’ll probably post some pictures of the yarn later.

Like I said, it’s been a long day. And this has been a long post. And this long post is now over.

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 :).