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I just read an article about some people who have sixteen children. Have you ever noticed that many extra-large families have an extra-large capacity of love for each other? Of course, we know families with only one child who are extra-loving, too; and I realize there are big families who seem to find all their enjoyment in bickering and waging combat.
But I learned something wonderful when Hannah was born: when you have a second child, you don’t split your love in half, you double it.
Next came a touching story about a horse some people rescued from a louse who was mistreating it. I used to daydream, when I was little, that I was a cowgirl doing all kinds of 'horse stuff', winning ribbons, rescuing people, saving lives, solving mysteries. . . . .just having all sorts of marvelous horse adventures.
But the only way I could realize those dreams was through novels about horses and such like; so read, I did. I think I had my nose buried in a book about 90% of the day.
Well, I got a response back from one of the newspapers I sent some writing to. But I didn’t even get as good an answer as Snoopy gets!—(“We regret to inform you. . .”) Somebody simply scrawled, in red marker, on the bottom of my own letter, “No Thanks”. Fortunately, I didn’t expect this to be a big ego expander, so I haven’t been going around with my chin rubbing the baseboards, or anything.
All the Fourth of July sewing for this family is completed, and now I am going to sew a shirt for Bobby, using the leftover material from Hannah’s dress. (No, it isn’t flowered; it’s blue-checked.)
I got all my past letters printed now, and am up to date. Lucky thing I got Wal-Mart’s biggest notebook, ’tis—I’m up to page 838. I happened to find a copy of an old letter (September 24, 1994) I’d written to a friend about our trip to Canada, so I typed it up on my word processor and printed it. It was a lot of fun, reliving that trip. Now I want to go to Jasper again.
Monday was Hester’s 9th birthday. We’d planned to go fishing, but it was cold and rainy, so that nixed that. We gave Hester a little resin bear, all decked out in a ruffled dress and a hat with a big bow and a cluster of grapes, and she has a necklace with a cross hanging from it. She has a little gray kitten and a little gray mouse on her lap, and a piece of Swiss cheese is lying nearby. A white dove on a little wagon pull-toy is at her feet, and on the bottom of the figurine is the verse, “Blesses are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”—Matthew 5:9.
Also, we gave her a little kitten made of rabbit fur, with markings just like our cat used to have; fuchsia sandals, a pillowcase cross-stitch kit, and a cute little Rubbermaid water bottle. We’d given her the dresses from Bethany’s garage sale the day before.
My mother gave her hardback books Little House on the Prairie and By the Shores of Silver Lake, colored stationery with matching envelopes, and $$$. My sister Lura Kay gave her a beautiful collector’s doll and a beanie baby kitten.
Monday evening we went to Lawrence and Norma’s for pineapple pudding-cake, cinnamon rolls, cookies, and ice cream. As Caleb used to say when he thought someone (including himself) was eating too much, “Hoink.” They gave Hester, in addition to the yellow dress Norma made, a horse that whinnies, rears, makes galloping noises, and kicks a foot and snorts. Yep, she likes horses, too.
After eating as much as we could hold, I played Norma’s organ while everybody gathered round and sang with me.
Did you hear about the Kansas grain elevator that exploded? We drove right by that elevator on our way to Oklahoma two weeks ago. There have been a few smaller elevator explosions around this vicinity some years ago.
Tuesday night Bobby brought us a 60-pound bag of hamburger, which he helped divide and put into freezer bags. He told us that he thought he ought to help pay his keep—because he has a big appetite! haha I thanked him, and assured him that we enjoy feeding him.
That evening we went to Pawnee Park to go fishing; but the fish we caught, a blue gill and a bullhead, were too small to keep. The next day we had broiled fish for supper—the smallmouth bass Larry caught, and the big walleye Dorcas caught, along with several blue hake which Caleb thinks the Schwan man himself caught shortly before he sold them to us.
Thursday night after Jr. Choir, we went to the dump and filled a couple of garbage cans full of wood chips, which are free. The next day I weeded my flower gardens and put the chips on them, which will help hold weeds down and moisture in. Those wood chips are not quite so pretty as the cedar chips from Wal-Mart-Mart; but the price is right. The yellow lilies, pink and red roses, lavender foxglove, blue-violet butterfly flowers, blue-fringed daisy, and burgundy and Indian blanket gaillardias are blooming like anything. Lydia is tickled pink because her little impatiens that she brought home from school, which I planted in the north flower garden, has been growing and blooming profusely.
On our way to the dump, we drove past our friends Carey Gene and Martha Haddock’s house. They were all out watching their daughter Amy try out her new bicycle they’d just given her, so we stopped to admire it, too. And then Carey Gene got out a vehicle he and Larry used to ride about twenty years ago: a unicycle. Larry, of course, had to see if he could still ride it, especially after Carey Gene demonstrated that his own ability had not been lost.
After a few false starts, he was off and running. Pedaling. Yep, he sure could still ride that thing.
Fortunately, they found a new amusement before either of them broke their necks.
A friend of Larry’s recently had the job of helping to clean some junk and stuff, objects and contraptions, out of Offut Air Force Base in Omaha. He was given, as part of his pay, several hundred big metal wardrobes, many of which he sold to furniture stores. We bought four, two for the shop and two which we put in our garage for winter coats. Now we will put some of our over-abundance of clothes into our front coat closet. There is very little closet space in this house, and what little we do have is crammed full, so any additional room helps.
Larry, Teddy, and Joseph finished fixing up a Kawasaki Mule, and the boys have been using it to do such things as haul parts hither and yon at the shop, and to haul the wood Larry cuts and splits to the woodpile here at home. Larry entertained the littles one evening, giving them rides in that Mule up and down the alley behind our house.
Saturday afternoon, we went to the Salvation Army, where they were having a sale: $.49 for all children’s clothes, $.99 for ladies’ blouses, and $1.99 for dresses. As we rounded a corner near our house, we saw that some neighbors of ours were having a garage sale—and on top of an old stove perched a huge stuffed pink pig. We had to have it.
We screeched to a stop, rushed across the street, and collected said piggy, which will make the perfect birthday present for Hannah’s friend, Joy, who sometimes helps her father work on a pig farm north of town.
Saturday night, after all the baths, hair curlings, snacks, and into-bed tuckings were completed, I got out wrapping paper, tape, scissors, old Christmas cards (to be cut into name tags), and all the presents I’ve collected thus far, and commenced to wrapping. I have more than I thought; I made a sizable dent in my list.
Our mulberry tree is absolutely loaded with berries; Joseph, Teddy, Hester, and Lydia picked a big enough bucket full that Hannah could make mulberry cobbler, which we ate with liberal dollops of Strawberry Sundae ice cream.
Keith sold his brown and tan Ford to our neighbor and bought a ’92 F150 super-cab short-box four-wheel-drive blue and navy 302 automatic, power-windows, power-locks, tilt, cruise, AM/FM cassette, air-conditioned Ford.
Oh, ... it’s a pickup. I forgot that part.
Actually, I asked Larry what Keith’s ‘new’ pickup was, merely intending to find out if it was a Ford or a Chevy; and that was the answer I got. That, from a man of few words.
Several days this week there were tornado warnings and watches, but the storms all passed over with no damage. Caleb asked me, “Would a tornado go away if you’d shoot it?”
I responded, “Well, a tornado is made up of wind and rain. What do you think would happen if you opened the front door and shot a gun at the wind? Or the rain?” (It was raining and blowing hard right at that moment.)
Caleb grinned. “I guess it wouldn’t do any good,” he replied.
In addition to the tornado watches and warnings, there were also flood warnings. As usual, however, we escaped the worst of it. Sometimes the days are sunny and nice; then, toward evening, in the space of about ten minutes, huge, dark thunderclouds roll in and rain comes pouring down.
Anyway, we haven’t had to water our lawns and flowers.
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