Mom Alice Warner

On this day, October15, 113 years ago Albert and Clara Myers of Waddams Grove, Illinois welcomed a new daughter, Alice, into their family. They had three older living sons and had also lost two children to diphtheria several years before. Alice was a bonus baby, born late in their marriage, but a welcome joy to their lives. 

The Old Myers Farmhouse (now gone)

 

Brother Clark and Alice with their father, Albert, 1903 or 1904

Alice grew up there on the farm and then attended Bethany Hospital in Chicago for Nurse's training where she met Arthur Warner, an Indiana Quaker farm boy turned preacher attending Bethany Seminary. They met in Greek class. : )

They married and spent a lifetime together raising a family and serving the Lord and His church via the Church of the Brethren. Together they served in North Dakota, Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Virginia and Maryland. What an extraordinary life journey they had. 
 

Pop & Mom, Ralph, Barbara and my birth mother, Janice; Lynchburg,VA sometime in the mid-late 40's

I entered their lives as their first grandchild in 1953 and then became their adopted daughter in 1963. Mom always said it was like having a second life...and I suppose it was--as, while their peers were retiring and doing "age appropriate" things, they filled their 60's and 70's with carting carloads of girls to high school football games, chaperoning dances, camping, leading 4-H Clubs, having a house and yard full of teenagers, projects scattered everywhere and all the rest that goes with having a teenager in your household. And they did it with such grace and love and enthusiasm. Amazing!

At age 60, Floyd, VA a year before they adopted me.

Nurse Alice, 1968; Selma, VA

1969-Mom in the kitchen; She always wore an apron!

1970 in the best chair EVER...red leather rocker; Selma, VA

Mom at my wedding, February 15, 1975

Mom on her 90th Birthday; October 15, 2002; Thurmont, MD

So today, on her birthday, I raise a glass of Dr. Pepper (mom's favorite) in honor of a woman who had an inner strength beyond my comprehension and who loved her family unconditionally...every single crazy one of us--no exceptions! And all deeply rooted in her love for God which started back there in 1902 on the Myers Farm when the family thanked the Lord for her arrival.

All the birthdays of my life and on the occasion of many other friends and family, Mom recited this little poem:

Many happy returns on the day of thy birth-

May sunshine and gladness be given;

And may the dear Father prepare thee on earth

For a beautiful birthday in heaven.

Happy Birthday, Mom! Gone from this life and into eternity and the presence of her Savior. Beloved. Never forgotten.

Birthdays, 2015, Part A : )

On this past Thursday morning, as I was waking up and thinking about the day ahead, I came to the conclusion that for the first time since at least a week before I officially went back to work in early August, I was reasonably caught up with myself work-wise. Whew! Almost 2 months of frantic, always feeling behind, definitely stressed and over full days. It's not that I'm now on top of every detail, but I've shifted into being out of constant panic mode and into manageable. A nice place to be! (Deep breath!)

One of the blessings of a large family is that there seems to be a birthday around every corner. We start off the year with Stephanie and Claire:

Then come the birthday twins Simeon ...
 

...and Jordynn, who was 18 in January--an important milestone;

LIz was 10 in February, a double digits celebration; 

Cherith was "Sweet 16" in May;

June gives us both Micah at the beginning of the month and Alice at the end. This year they celebrated with an "Alice in One-derland" theme;

 
Melissa, Phil and I are May, June, July. Phil finally got his yearly made-from-scratch German Chocolate Cake when we celebrated while we were at Jeshua and Sara's in late June. Nice to have Grands helping make and decorate!

After we all came home from camp, Andrew turned 5 in July (caught him in a still moment--enjoy it while it lasts as he's usually in motion!).

Jeshua finally comes along at the end of August (photo taken in June).
 

Then we get a break until this past week, when Jen turned 33 on October 5. If we're calling "10" double digits, I guess we'll call this "repeating digits!" 

For her birthday I gave her a craft morning. And those words bring me back to the beginning of this post...I finally felt like I could share my time without adding to my stress level. So this morning, the children, Jen and I had a Hobby Lobby field trip, added our pretties to some treasures out of her craft stores and mine and made good use of the leftovers of last year's Christmas tree that Phil had cut into slices for me for a school project. 

 

Busy at work.

The finished product...

 ...and on the door.  Beautifully adds a touch of fall!

A nice stress-free way to spend a morning. 

So now we get another break until November, then the December deluge comes!! But I guess I'll save that until they have come and gone...a Part B to look forward to. 

Meanwhile I'm enjoying the calm, engaging in a few projects of my own and am counting my blessings! God bless us, every one!

The Bowditch

I have totally bombed as a blogger! I think about writing. I plan to write. I want to write. But somehow I just don’t do it! Then something happens and I think, “I should blog about that.” But I should have blogged about something that happened before that, I don’t really have time to do both and anyway somehow the timing is off…etc. Oh my! We all know where that well paved proverbial road is going!!! 

So I’ve spent some time rethinking about blogging…what my purpose was when I started. And I’m not quite ready to give it up. I like sharing my life with my friends and family—many of you at a distance. I think I’ve settled for Facebook instead, and I so appreciate the connections it has made possible, but some folks in my “target” group are not Facebook folks. Plus I like cutting and pasting my blogs into a word doc so I have an automatic journal with photos ready to print if I so desire. Maybe my grands (or even theirs) will enjoy it when I am long gone. : ) Surely I can do better than once or twice a year!

So I’m just jumping back in with last week’s family get-together—a ½ year birthday celebration for Simeon and Cyrus, totally put together by Phil. It all started when he found the perfect gifts for them last spring and didn’t want to wait until their birthdays (January and December) to give it to them.

(A little Franklin family history is in order here. In the summer of 1990 we sold our life--meaning our stuff and Phil's business stuff--to sojourn to The Bruderhof community located in Connecticut. 6 weeks later we were asked to "take a distance" (leave) and found ourselves "in exile" in the town of Torrington, a New England factory town. With very little in the way of school materials we depended on the library as our main curriculum resource. We also purchased a large world map that had all the flags of the world alphabetically in rows across the bottom. We put it up on the wall at the head of our bed which was the only large enough wall space in our little 2nd floor apartment. The children would lie on our bed and have intense geography challenges matching flags to countries. Then, in that delightful merging of interests and materials (who knows which comes first?) that often comes to homeschooling families, we checked out the book Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. What a treasure! Our family life was never the same! We learned about the life of an indentured servant and were impressed by his work ethic. We plotted his voyages on the map, studied the places he traveled and learned nautical terms. Nathaniel Bowditch, mathematician and navigator, became a beloved part of our family.)

 Phil had the idea of a ½ birthday…and exactly half way between Cyrus’ Dec. 21 and Simeon’s January 16 would have been July 4^th! We were all planning to be at camp together-the perfect spot for our celebration, but then Phil wasn’t able to go due to compressed disk in his back resulting in severe nerve pain in his leg. So we put it off till last Sunday. Of course the down time gave Phil’s imagination an opportunity to grow and he put together a Jeopardy game for the guys to compete in. (Note: I found my spelling mistake and corrected it before we got going...but forgot to take a picture of the corrected categories).

They earned Monopoly money for correct questions and there was even a Final Jeopardy category “Nautical Publications.” That final clue: In 1802 the publisher renamed this book due to the many mathematical corrections and contributions to the science of navigation made by its contributing author. Over the years it colloquially was referred to by this single word.

The correct question: What is the Bowditch?

Which was the present Phil had found. He tracked down two reasonably priced copies. They have a short biography of Nathaniel Bowditch and everything you ever wanted to know-or not : ) - about navigation. And in a pinch, it would make a great leaf press or door stop. Oops! The American Practical Navigator-The Bowditch

It was a delightful evening. Simeon brought his guitar...and at some point Phil, Simeon and I slipped over to Casa de Modesto to lead the singing and do the special music at the evening service. It was a joy to my heart to sing together with the guys. The folks there really seemed to enjoy it, also.

 Realizing that since Jordynn and Simeon share birthdays, I made her the apple pie I had promised her on her birthday, plus a little one to eat that evening. 

She has started her Freshman semester at California State University, Stanislaus...and, like college students everywhere, is appalled at the cost of her books!

 Cherith had come up on Saturday and spent the night. Micah, Andrew and Claire played lots of running/jumping/hiding games while Liz and Cherith hung out with Alice. She kindly allowed them to be her servants for the evening.

All in all, it was a delightful time together...just catching up and enjoying being together. We are so blessed!  

Grape Juice - one taste of fall

I was very blessed this week to be on the receiving end of pure grace in the form of three boxes of concord grapes. I say grace, because the definition of grace is the free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings. I did not work for these bunches of delight, nor did I do something for which I was rewarded. They came as an unexpected gift, a bestowal of blessings in the form of orbs of pure delight. I'm thankful to the friends who grew and cared for them and so freely shared them with me.

In my spare moments (it's been an unusual week but that is another post) I've been stemming grapes and I found myself singing this hymn all week, both hymnal and Godspell version...All good gifts around us, are sent from heaven above,
              So thank the Lord, Oh thank the Lord for all His love. 

Though I have canned literally hundreds of quarts of grape juice by the "quick and easy" method of putting stemmed grapes, sugar and boiling water in jars to strain out later and dilute to taste, I really prefer the old fashioned "simmer and drip" method I grew up with and helped mom do many times as a child. I love the strong grape flavor of juice produced this way.

It takes several washing to clean the grapes...back and forth into fresh clean water-another of those gifts from above. Once they are clean, it's time to stem, then place in a pan, smooch them around a bit and add some water...lots of directions say to cover in water, but I just add enough that they can swirl around a bit as the grapes add their own liquid. 

Bring to a very gentle simmer and let simmer for 15 minutes or so...the grapes burst and the smell is heavenly! Then I put my big strainer inside of a large pot and line it with my juice dedicated pillow case--it turns all sorts of lovely shades depending on the fruit I'm juicing. I pour my hot smooched grapes into the pillow case. Then I slowly lift it up and all the fruit pulp settles to the bottom of the pillow case and the juice runs out into my pot. Then I transfer the pillowcase full of pulp to the clothes line and let it continue draining into a bowl placed below:

I realized after taking the picture I should have taken it before I emptied this bowl which was about half full of juice. I did the grapes in two batches and ended up with three and a half gallons of juice, which I put in jars in the fridge to keep till I could can it.

 Then tonight I was ready to can it. I put all the juice in my big stock pot and got it good and hot, but not boiling...

...filled my jars...

...and the canner...

 ...and now I have 14 quarts of rich and luscious grape juice to enjoy over the coming year.

I'm a terribly undisciplined gardener, but I delight in canning.

Come on over and we'll open a quart!

p.s. I love this spoon that I bought a few years ago at Cost Less Market in the Latino food prep items section. I laid a regular teaspoon beside it so you could see its size! Just right for stirring in my stock pot!

 









 

The Roads East...

We had such a nice drive out to Illinois...took Rt. 50 across Nevada and Utah-the Lonliest Road in America! We started from Modesto's elevation of 80 feet above sea level and crossed Carson Pass at 9,640 and back "down" into Carson City to begin our trek across Nevada at a mere 4,697. Route 50 is 2 lane, but very little traffic (drove 70-75+mph most all of the time)...and lots of scenery like this as we made at least a dozen ups and downs over passes through the hilly landscape.

We stayed just outside of Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada the first night and spent the next morning driving up into the mountains and enjoying the views. My "aha" moment came in the Visitor's Center where there is a giant relief map that shows this huge mountainous basin that is Nevada, most of Utah, some of Oregon and a bit of Idaho and California. I had never put all that together as a unit before...which geologically has to do with watersheds. Really interesting. (look it up:  Endorheic Basins) This is a panoramic view coming down the road from the Wheeler's Peak (13,159) overlook at about 8,500 ft.

 Driving through Utah, the scenery really started to change...

then we merged into I-70 and headed into Colorado, where we spent the night in a very nice little Mom & Pop type motel--my first experience of using my smart phone to locate housing and how to get there! The next day, July 4th, we drove along the Colorado River as we headed toward Leadville to spend the afternoon and night with my Myers cousin, Linda, and her husband, George.

Below are the mountains that came into focus as we left I-70 to go south to Leadville, CO, elevation 10,152 ft.-highest incorporated city in lower 48, I believe. Had to go over Tennessee Pass (elevation 10,424ft) to get there! We had several dozen jars of fruit-mostly apricots, but some pears and peaches and jam, too. In my head I know the science of vacuum sealing that the canning process is, but I put rings on all the jars just the same before I left home. : )  Somewhere in the up and down of the Tennessee Mnt. pass, we heard the distinctive ping that canning folks everywhere would recognize, except that it was the unsealing, rather than the sealing, of a jar. But only one.

We had a delightful afternoon visit with family, a grilled dinner and a great view of the Leadville's fireworks! They were pretty spectacular and seemed to go on for a really long time.

Early the next morning we headed off for our longest day on the road (and our highest pass crossing of the trip-Fremont Pass 11,319 ft.-no pinging, which was a great relief). After going downhill into Denver, we descended onto the Great Plains, ranging from around 3,000 ft. elevation in the west to under 1,000 ft. at Kansas City on the eastern side. We were just at the tail end of wheat harvest and most of Kansas looked a lot like this:

We spent the night in Missouri and, once again, the landscape changed as we neared our destination of Hutsonville, IL-elevation 436 ft. Jeshua says they live in the middle of cornfields and it is certainly true--and soybeans.

So happy to see everyone--and quickly jumped out of our "tourist/traveling" roles and back into our best fitting Grandma and Grandpa ones! Abby-3 3/4 yrs;  Caleb-1 1/2 yrs.

A Lapsed Blogger

July 12, 2014

Well, after a whole year of not blogging due to whatever happened with Xanga, I believe I've come back to the blogging world...not so much for any of you who read this, but for myself.  I like the discipline of journaling (and sometimes reflecting) and being able to do it digitally and add pictures makes it a fun activity for me. I do like being able to share my west coast life with my east coast (and other) family and friends who are interested. I hope that the fact that it took a year to get myself switched over and going again is not indicative of my ability, inability, openness or unwillingness to adapt to change (but it may say more about me than I wish)!

My last Xanga post was June 27, 2013 as I was celebrating my upcoming 60th birthday in Illinois at the Moonshine Cafe, and today finds me in the same location (visiting Jeshua & Sara, Abby and Caleb). Today we went to Villa's Country Store, a local Amish store that sells a combination of bulk foods, baked & canned goods, deli counter, bulk frozen fruit and meat, general groceries, some garden produce and an assortment of salvage foods and other items. Fun to visit...it is the one place in my current travel circles that I can get sweet Lebanon bologna--a Pennsylvania Dutch taste explosion memory of my childhood. 

On the way back home to Hutsonville, we drove down the lane of a farm with a "Blueberries for Sale" sign. Two little Amish children came to meet us--maybe 5 & 7. I asked if there were blueberries for sale. The little girl stopped running toward us, tilted her head a bit (obviously processing my question), took a big breath and asked, "Do you want to pick them yourselves or put in an order?" About that time I saw Dad standing in the door of the shop watching her take care of us. Very sweet! We said, "Yes, we would like to pick!" and he set us up with buckets and an over the shoulder rope and hook and off we went.

Jeshua is currently making a blueberry sauce and Sara is planning blueberry-lemon muffins for supper. Yum!