The past year has been s busy one with the wedding of my youngest daughter following just one year after my oldest daughter’s wedding. We welcomed our second grandson in November.
Today I am off on a week long adventure to Greece and Italy. As I sit in the plane in Minneapolis I am excited for the adventures the week will bring!
More to follow…
It’s soon approaching the two year anniversary of my ruptured brain aneurysm on October 19, 2012. If there is one thing I could say that would describe my life since then is my overwhelming sense of time.
I’ve always heard people older than me often commenting how fast time is moving. Perhaps now I’m just one of those people that are in that category because I am older now. I turned 54 in January.
Since my aneurysm I feel a certain urgency about completing tasks that I’ve started in the past and a reluctance to start anything new for fear that it will be yet another unfinished task in a pile that is too high already.
Last October our oldest daughter got married and they are expecting their first child on Thanksgiving. Our youngest daughter is getting married this October. These are exciting times in our home with the anticipation of these events.
Last month my husband and I went on a short term mission trip to a boys orphanage in Kingston, Jamaica. It is something I have wanted to do for a long time but life was busy with our own family so we could never seem to find the right time to go. I left part of my heart in Kingston. We are planning a return trip for this July.
I am more aware of time these days as I watch both my parents and my husband’s parents approaching 80 years old. We are blessed that they are all in good health and able to live each day independently but I realize at any time that can change and with that change there will be change.
My mind wanders from the present to the future as I ponder what regrets I will feel about my life if there are things I don’t accomplish or pursue and whether they really are important in the scheme of things.
Each day I get up and go to work as I did before the aneurysm, knowing that I need to work or we need to change our lifestyle so we don’t need to work as much. I still wonder what my perfect job or life would be when I grow up.
I told my husband this past week that I finally decided on my new career. I told him that I’ve decided to be a stay at home Mom. He looked at me puzzled. He said “Don’t you have to have kids at home to be a stay at home Mom?” I said ” I don’t think so after all I am a Mom and I am perfectly capable of staying at home. I don’t think they have to happen at the same time to meet the definition. What could be more perfect.”
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here. Life has been busy since last year when I spent a month in the hospital after a ruptured brain aneurysm.
Life is good. All the headaches are gone after the surgery to place the two stents and two coils last November. I recently went back to Milwaukee for my one year checkup and they threw in an angiogram just for fun. After the angiogram I met with the surgeon and he told me see you in five years. I was expected it to be an annual event. God is so good!
I’m back working full-time for the past 9 months. My oldest daughter got married and bought a home in October. My youngest daughter will graduate from college on December 21. We made our final college tuition payment the first week in November. Twelve years of tuition payments were at times difficult to do but well worth getting all four of our kids through college with minimal debt.
Looking ahead my husband Dean and I will be taking a 8 day mission trip to Jamaica in July. I can hardly wait for the trip. It was something we’ve wanted to do for some time but college tuition made it impossible until now.
In Minnesota the weather is changing from cool to downright cold. The lake was busy making ice last night and this morning.
Hope to be posting occasionally and catch up with all my favorite blogging buddies!
Spring has been a long time coming in Minnesota this year. Finally on Mother’s Day the last of the ice landed on our shore and then melted as the day progressed. We have lived here since 1992 and it is the latest ice out I remember.
It’s hard to keep a positive outlook when you don’t like winter to begin with and it stretches out into May. Last evening I went for a walk near our home and it was great to hear the birds singing. As I left the yard two loons flew overhead with their familiar calls. I love sleeping with the windows open and listening to them as I go to sleep.
The frog chorus has begun in the nearby swamp and the pussy willows have come and gone already. One of the hard parts about a late spring is the things that usually last for at least a few days are hurried by a quick warm-up in temperatures. It seemed like the pussy willows lasted only for a day and then they were gone.
Tomorrow morning I will begin my annual search for the wild flowers in bloom. ‘A friend said last evening that she saw cow slips and bloodroot blooming, two of my favorites.
Have a blessed day! I know I will as we will experience our first over 80 degree day today. 🙂
Life is good.
I admit that I am more than ready for spring but this past week has afforded me a few opportunities to spend some time with my grandson outdoors doing some of his favorite activities.
We have trudged up and down our hill several times after trips down on the sled. I have to admit that I am out of shape and am constantly bargaining with a 3 1/2 year old about the number of times we will go down the hill again.
Yesterday we spent time shoveling. He is delighted to help and has his own shovel. Today we are getting hit with another snow storm mixed with rain. It is still beautiful to look outside and see the snow falling but I’d like to see a little more green and blue than wihite.
After warming up from being outdoors we spent time doing puzzles on my kitchen floor and playing football with a green balloon in my living room. We have a regular football but he has a foot on him that will break windows if he is allowed to kick with shoes on.
This is the view out my living room window this afternoon.
Time to head out on another tow call. Seems nobody wants to stay home on a snowy day. Stay warm and dry 🙂
Early this morning my husband and I a trip to the Twin Cities to pick up a car he bought for our car lot. I was playing with my camera while riding in the passenger seat.
It is so easy to just set my camera to the auto mode and let the camera decide what my picture should look like instead of trying to learn the manual mode for my camera.
I love the artsy look to the freeway traffic this morning. It wasn’t my intention to get the traffic in my photo but the right sunrise exposure. I didn’t get the sunrise picture I was looking forward to but I did learn a few things about the manual settings on my camera.
Any day I learn something new is a good day!
This afternoon I was picking up by sister at St John’s University when I saw this incredible display called Art on the Prairie. It is called Stickwork and it is the work of artist Patrick Dougherty. For more of his creative work see http://www.stickwork.net
The structures are made entirely of sticks and branches. They are large enough to go inside and look out. It is also possible to walk in between the structures. The structures remind me of artwork from Dr, Seuss’s books, whimsical and a little off-kilter.
I wish that I had one of these structures in my yard. It would be a kid’s play land dream come true. They said that the structure will most likely last two years of being exposed to the elements. It is well worth the brief detour south off I-94 to see Art on the Prairie.
Today during my lunch break my grandson wanted to take a bath. I was in the kitchen fixing lunch and taking care of the day’s mail when I could hear a voice singing from the bathroom. He was singing his own little song, making it up as he went. This is his “Happy Place”
This morning I was standing in Wal-Mart looking at fall decorating ideas. I love to decorate for the seasons but have been desperately trying to downsize in all aspects of my life. I stood with a new table-cloth for fall in one hand and an apple cinnamon scented candle in the other while I looked at a pumpkin table decorations with votive candles on the shelf. I decided to place them back on the shelves and head home with about $35 still in my pocket.
When I got home I had an email in my inbox from a blog that I have followed the past couple of months”The Year of Less” . I clicked on today’s blog http://theyearofless.blogspot.com and it was so appropriate for my dilemma for decorating. She was talking about looking at things in her home in light of whether Ma Ingalls (The Little House on the Prairie) would have the item in her home. I loved her perspective in the blog. Keep it simple!
This is what I came up with for decorating my table for the fall.
They are all items that I already own. I picked the Hydrangea from my bush and placed them in a flowering can that I have had for some time and placed them on top of a doily that a friend gave me for a birthday a few years ago.
I don’t plan on over doing the decorating this year. I plan to keep it simple and natural if possible using things I already own or in a new way to make them seem new to me.
This evening I was a bit disappointed that I got back from town so late. I wanted to take some pictures of the progress at the house. It was already past sunset. I decided to stop anyway and try to take a couple of shots because there was a very bright moon tonight.
I found my way in the dark to the door and walked in the dark up the stairs to take this shot. The upstairs is basically gone except for a short wall on the east and the west and some larger walls left on the north and the south.
If the mosquitoes weren’t so bad this evening I might have considered getting a couple of sleeping bags and sleeping out under the stars tonight.
Here are a couple of shots of the guys removing the rafters today.
Tomorrow should be an exciting day as we see the roof lines starting to take shape.
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