Cutest Bumblebee Ever

Mckenna was a bumblebee for Halloween this year. She was VERY excited to get dressed up and buzzed around making everyone laugh. She didn't go door to door but had plenty of fun showing off to her grandparents.

Mckenna's Shopping Trip with Great Grandma and Mommy

Mckenna sporting her new jacket and hat
Another shot
Her new purse and look at that face
and here she is showing off her Halloween shirt from Tristan making a super cute face I love this little girl!

Fall and all it's Glory

Leaves so much fun

Mckenna and her pumpkin that we carved together

Week in review

Time continues to fly by! Two months from today is Christmas! We arrived home from our 2,000 mile driving/visiting trip on Monday. We enjoyed seeing Rene and Audra and families in their own homes and also visiting 3 college friends. It was kind of sad to see the health challenges they are having--made us look hale and hearty! Driving in our driveway is just beautiful, the trees are all golden and the grass is covered with leaves. Monday was the only day of sunshine in two weeks and blasts of winter are not far off.

Grandpa/Dad made the final harvest in the garden and has it cleaned up and rototilled, ready to rest until next spring. Yesterday's last second loss by MSU to Iowa was not good to watch. Dad was exhausted trying to help the Spartans make more points. I went to a concert by the Meridian Community Band which I enjoyed. David Theis, who sang at Caitlin and Herb's wedding, was a guest soloist. A marvelous tenor voice.

Then came Suzanne's birthday luncheon here. I'm attaching a photo. Sue, Suzanne and I always have a good visit and enjoy being together.

After church we went out for brunch at the University Club with friends and came home to find Cynthia and Jim here after their anniversary celebration in Grand Rapids. Another computer lesson, so I hope I can post the photo. Love to everyone, Mother/Grandma

River Raisin

These are from my walk this morning. The rain had stopped and the mist was just pulling off the river when I got there. The dog got lost and had to spend time looking for him but as I thought he just went back to the car. Guess that is what I get for taking a different route than he is used to.

Sweater is Done

Rear view

One project down and so many more to go.

Living the life

While I am not generally allowed to talk much about my job and who my clients are I can sometimes give a few details. Right now I am working for a major online video game company. The company has 20+ games and I am one of 6 people who is playing them and helping secure them for the past month and next month and a half. On many of the days my job is to play a specific game and see how much I can cheat. It truly is a wonderful job.

Fall at the Cabin

The color was quite vibrant but there is still more to come. Saturday and Sunday both were clear and sunny for the most part. We had the wood stove burning most of the time and it felt good having the heat.

The 4-wheeler was a big hit with Zack so we included it in the group photo. I forgot my big tripod so I got the great idea of wrapping the little one around the shovel handle and it worked like a charm.

The guys worked on their blinds and everything seems to be all set for hunting. Jim is VERY encouraged because he saw deer while at his blind. Zack was a great brush clearer - Dad (grandpa) said the best EVER. Doris, Mom and I played Scrabble, read, took walks and caught up on family gossip. We are so lucky to have a place like this to get away to.

Have a great week.

Writing Workshop

Last month I took a writing workshop offered as part of the One Book One Community program for MSU freshmen and East Lansing residents.
I thought I'd share my assignments with you.

The first was a 5 minute class assignment after we looked at some rocks the teacher passed around the room:

Rocks
All sizes, shapes and colors,
Washed smooth by eons of time
Joy to find in Lake Superior's cold water
Agates are the treasure.
I found one!
Now a necklace to wear with memories.
What a vacation!

Another week's assignment was to write about the familiar becomming unfamiliar or the unfamiliar becoming familiar. I wrote this untitled piece.

A few days before our parents moved into an apartment Dick, my brother, took photos in each room of our family home. Did the prints get forgotten at the developers? Were they accidentally discarded? Did a book of photos lay hidden in a drawer at the office or home? My sister and I never saw them. Dick died twelve years ago and the location of the photos died too.

Dick’s widow recently moved into a new home and the long lost photos came to light in a box stored in a basement corner. I rejoiced with surprise when I heard the news!

Turning pages of the photo album was a nostalgic tour of home. There was the formal dining room where festive holiday meals were served. There was the cozy breakfast room where we got a nourishing send off to school. In my mind’s eye I saw the stockings “hung by the chimney with care” near the beautifully decorated Christmas tree surrounded with gaily wrapped gifts. There was the lavender bathroom where I primped for high school dates. In my bedroom were the twin beds I shared with Grandma when she stayed overnight. The house looked just like I remembered.

Today that feeling of nostalgia is different. Grandma’s reupholstered love seat looks perfect in my sunny living room. As I dust the ornate, marble topped table beside our bed, I remember how I hated dusting its curly cues as a child. The large oval dining room table where numerous family dinners were served with my Dad seated at one end and Mother at the other serves another growing family in my son’s kitchen. The tall, beloved grandfather clock chimes the hours in my sister- in- law’s foyer. The grand piano gives another generation music lessons at my sister’s home.

New owners and located in new homes there is the mixed feeling of family history and 21st century lifestyle. We have made the furniture our own but in some ways it is still Mother and Dad.

The other assignment was to study a pine cone, see something new in it and write about it! I wrote:

Pine cones can be found from California to Maine. I have had the fun of gathering them, very small Hemlock cones to large Sugar Pine Cones. But never have I contemplated a pine cone as much as I have this week over the Austrian Pine cone assigned to me.

Whatever the size or shape, a pine cone is an incubator of seeds. Ripe seeds disperse to start sprouting around the mature tree, the cone dropping from its attachment to the tree.

Isn’t that like friendship I wondered? There around the cone’s stem are close knit “petals” like my childhood friends, next door and down the block. When I left home for school, Girl Scouts, church choir, high school clubs and activities my friendship circle opened up as the petal layers of the pine cone I hold. My circle of friends expanded as I matured, creating a beautiful “pine cone flower” in my life letting go from the parents.

Down at the tight, firm base of my pine cone friendships are Ann and Carol. As children we saw each other everyday growing physically and sharing experiences. Then they moved away. We nurtured our long distance friendship with Christmas cards and finally, as adults, meeting again to discover our “pine cone friendship” was held together at the base with those concentric circles of memories and similar experiences.

Newer friends, near the top of the pine cone, open my mind to new challengers and opportunities as we spread wide to grow and experience life together. There is Jane who encouraged and supported me to take a responsible job. There’s Win who said, “You might like to read this book.” There’s Maud who needed my encouragement and hospitality.

I discovered God creates beauty and new life through friends and pine cones. All this from spending quiet time with a pine cone!

Love, Grandma/mother

Go Green!

It was very nice to see Michigan State beat their rivals Michigan for the second year in a row. Even though MSU tried (and succeed) in scaring many of their fans, including myself, but I never gave up on them! Karli and I made nachos and tacos and Chex Mix for the game.

On Friday, after class, Karli and I went to the Perry Street Sand Pit in Hudsonville with my mom and dad, and grandma and grandpa. We had dinner at the Rainbow Grille in Hudsonville. We all had a great time despite the weather.

I have an exam and a debate this week so the rest of the weekend and week will be spent studying.

I hope all is well with everyone.

A second version of Jack-o-Lantern

From one pumpkin to another!!!!!!!> >>> >> A woman was asked by a coworker, 'What is it like to be a Christian?'> >>> >> The coworker replied, 'It is like being a pumpkin.' God picks you from > >> the patch, brings you in, and washes all the dirt off of you. Then He > >> cuts off the top and scoops out all the yucky stuff.> >>> >> He removes the seeds of doubt, hate, and greed. Then He carves you a new > >> smiling face and puts His light inside of you to shine for all the world > >> to see.'

The story of the Jack 'o' Lantern

I've had this article, from the West Michigan Food for Thought Magazine (October 2009), for a few days and I've been waiting for October to post it.

"By far the most identifiable Halloween icon is a face carved into a glowing orange pumpkin. Would that which we call a jack o' lantern glow so brightly in a vegetable? Once upon a time, the story goes, id. Lay it at the feet of an Irish cad of centuries ago. The legend of one Stingy Jack paints him an ornery cuss: a drunkard, and a trickster he was, a bargainer out for all he could get.
Such a trickster, indeed, that one fine day he tricked the Devil himself. With cunning Eden's serpent might have admired. Jack convinced the Devil to climb an apple tree. Quick as a wink, before the old tempter could climb down, Jack trapped him by placing crosses around the base of the tree. Pressing his advantage, Jack bargained: in return for a promise not to take his soul upon his death, he'd remove the crosses. The promise given, he let the Devil go.
Jack mended his ways not a bit, grew old and died. Stingy and conniving as ever, the old drunkard was turned away from Heaven's gate for his bad character. Taking himself to the Devil's door, Stingy Jack sought a home with the damned. Ah, but the Devil had not forgotten being tricked by a mortal: he refused Jack entry down below as well. In response to pleas of mercy, the Devil through Jack a small coal, a fragment of hellfire, for his troubles. A crafty one, Jack hollowed out a turnip to protect the burning ember that lights his way as he wanders still 'twixt Heaven and Hell.
The story goes that in recognition of the cautionary tale of Stingy Jack (who came to be know as Jack o' Lantern), the Irish carved fierce faces into turnips to scare away Jack or any ill intentioned spirit abroad during the old harvest festival on October 31. (Others in the British Isles used other vegetables: the British used beets; the Scottish, used potatoes as well as turnips.)
And so might the practice have remained had not the Great Potato Famine occurred. When many Irish emigrated to the United States in the mid-1800s to build new lives for themselves, the Halloween custom of Stingy Jack came along. Turnips seems in short supply, but pumpkins were a lovely substitute, big and orange and easy to carve. Jack's turnip lantern was left behind and the pumpkin version is with us to this day."

Hopefully you all enjoy the legend behind the Jack o' Lantern!