It's all in what you look for

So many things in life are really all about perspective - 

I live in a drafty, termite eaten old barn of a place - 

I have a wonderful, home filled with color and love

Both true statements

Bad House

 One of the saddest realities is that we never know when our lives are at their peak. Only after it is over and we have some kind of perspective do we realize how good we had it a day, a month, five years ago. Jonathan Carroll

I like to think that I have changed that, that I have been aware of the beauty and love and wonder around me, in the moments that I had it. and honestly that started for me, when my brother was born with Down's syndrome when I was 12 years old. I kept hearing proclamations of doom, 

"He'll never sit up" 

"Your family will be better off if they don't get attached to him." 

Even my optimistic Grandmother looked at him with tears and said "He'll have a tough row to hoe."

But I sat on the couch and rested his feet against my belly and his head by my knees and marveled at the way he laughed and met my eyes when I made silly faces, and I thought, even if his life is hard, and my life is miserable, it was worth being born just for this one happy, peaceful moment.

And both of us have had good, often wonderful lives.

Good House

 I love the best features of my house, and this could fool you into thinking it was all wonderful, but if you like the sunny side only, don't look at the pictures in the first collage

Great Yard

I couldn't show the Good and the Bad of our house and not show why we moved here in the first place, because of the 2 acres it sits on.

three good things
1. campfires with friends
2. Apples, plums, pears and blackberries for us and the deer and bear
3. sunflowers and dandelions and birds

When you wake up every day, you have two choices. You can either be positive or negative; an optimist or a pessimist. I choose to be an optimist. It's all a matter of perspective.

Harvey Mackay

Spring Break on the Northcoast of CA

It seems like everybody knows who Flat Stanley is by now, and when a cousin from Illinois had her daughter send him to visit me, I ended up talking to people everywhere I took him out to take pictures. It was really fun to have him visit, and we went to this old relic of a drive-in theater. Double fun.

Especially delighted this year because the word last year was that every theater that couldn't afford nearly &100,000 to convert to digital, wouldn't have any movies to show after December of 2013. Luckily only Paramount actually quit producing film reels so we don't get their movies now, but we still get some great ones.

The other day, I was sitting reading, and we do live in Earthquake territory so when the house shook, I barely looked up from my book, but later that morning realized one of our huge old redwood snags had fallen just outside my kitchen window.

and the cats quickly scrambled up to sniff out the nests where squirrels and woodpeckers had been able to avoid them before. I trust that they got away because no little gifts ended up in my entryway.

Spring break time in my yard would make Barbie happy, as pink explodes into abundant glory everywhere.  Love the apple blossoms that open white but start bright pink

and the rhododendron

 and the cherry trees my husband is mowing around in this picture

 Right before spring break we had a huge egg hunt at our preschool through 5th grade school

 down at our harbor things have been calm and warm and I hope it lasts into next week

 and this ship has been ashore for a few decades now

 I got to dogsit my son's blind, three year old love of a dog

 and wander around taking pictures while walking the dog

 Then we got to babysit the girl we have adopted as a granddaughter and listen to her tell us a million stories about her life while we draw and color and cook and play.  She has the idea that she is beautiful, smart, and artistic, and I happen to agree.

 I love spring break but I'm also looking forward to moving on into the rest of this year. I get to take my class on a tall ship ride next week and in a month my first blood granddaughter will be born.  Life here is filled with a quiet kind of joy.  I think it may be noisier soon.

Of Christmas Trees and Memories

Brookings Harbor, Oregon

1998 at home

I have been browsing back through old Christmas pictures and old Christmas letters from the early days of my 30 year relationship with my husband to the most recent Christmas celebrations. MY boys are getting to be adults, and many of their early memories are shared only by my husband and I but I wanted them to know all the places they have been and the people who have loved them, so I mean to assemble a Christmas scrapbook for them to take into the world as they move on.

My Sister-In-Law's home in Salem, OR

 There have been Christmases at Cody, Newcastle, and Laramie, Wyoming with two sets of grandparents and 7 sets of aunts, uncles and cousins, and uncounted great aunts and uncles and second or third cousins.  There were Christmases at home here, where it is filled with red maple leaves and redwood trees and green grass, and Christmases in the hospice where my dad lay dying while the snow fell 24 inches deep and the boys made snow angels in the hospital parking lot.  There were times we were at Salem with my husband's sister, before she died hiking the Grand Canyon, and times we were in Ashland, Oregon with best friends creating a new set of traditions.  There have been births, deaths, marriages and divorces, so my boys were born into an extended family, and live in one now, but they are not exactly the same, and of course, those who are gone, are missed, but those who have been added are celebrated.

Son playing with Crescent City Youth Orchestra

Me, at home

 There were 22 people in the extended family, and now there are 27, but there has been the loss of a grandfather, a sister, and a nephew due to death, and of a sister-in-law through divorce, and so the family has become something different, and the roles of the people in it now are not the same.

Love the home made ornaments the most

And there appeared a light in the darkness

What I have learned for sure, is that Christmas isn't about the tree and the package and the place but it is about the Love and the people you get to share that with, and you have to celebrate the now, because the next time that the season rolls around, it will be different, maybe equally special, but never again will you get the chance to celebrate your 2011 family.

This 2008 ice storm closed the roads and snowbound us 1/3 of the way to Grandma's
but still a great Christmas happened, unplanned

Christmas with friends who are family/ Ashland, OR

Christmas Roses

Lake Selmac, Days after Christmas

This is the red and green we usually have in our yard Christmas to New Years and beyond

pheasant visiting under bird feeder

Crescent City Harbor Crab pots

Winter above Ashland 

Fun Christmas scene across from cemetery in Salem, OR

Finally letting go of Christmas tree in January

Tree in my dining room

Mom's yard in Cody, Wyoming

My first "real tree" after getting married
I'd grown up with artificial and kept this up until Valentines day

combined two old Kodak snapshots of the tree we had every year as a child

Mother-in-law's tree in Newcastle, WY

Mom's Yard

My son visiting my classroom

hallway in Evanston, Wyoming the year we got snowed into a motel there

Home, with the tallest tree we ever had

Party at "Daycare Grandma's"

The first puppy my husband and I had

 I hope you enjoyed my little trip down memory lane, and I'd love it if you logged off of here with the renewed determination to spend some time, loving your family, both the ones you were born with and the ones you chose to add.  There are a lot of packages in these pictures, and I can't remember much about what was in any of them, but I remember who I was with, and why I love the Holidays.

Family is the real Gift.

My first nephew, RIP Cody Kid