Happy Times! Happy Times!

Douglas and Ashley are getting married this Friday, Aug. 29th in the Columbia, South carolina Temple. What a happy time! The picture of the ring is real! That's what her ring looks like! Nice bling!

Douglas leaves for Georgia tomorrow, Tuesday. Ahsley lives in Monroe, GA. They have not seen each other for two whole weeks. Well I don't know how things are at Ashley's house, but I can tell you, I'll be glad to see Doug up and away tomorrow! He's been one unhappy camper without his sweetie pie! They both can hardly wait to see each other! We leave the following day, Wednesday. I'm sure I'll see a 'much happier Douglas' when we arrive!

Life has been exciting around our house...two sons getting married 3 weeks apart! It's been a special time and we have shared special memories of the special people that have shared our home over this time.

So my next post will be after we get back and I hope to have a picture or two of the happy married couple! Until then...think happy thoughts for them!

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #30

Story #30 - White Sands – Rolling down the dunes – the sand tastes yuck!

Imagine what it would be like to play in a huge sand pile that was as tall as your house and even higher!

About 45 minutes from where we lived was a national park. The name of the park was called White Sands National Monument. The sand dunes are natural gypsum. The sand dunes glisten in the sunlight. My parents would pack a picnic lunch and then we would drive out to the national park. They had picnic tables that were bolted to concrete platforms. They had metal tops over them to help keep off the hot sun. The sand was hot on your bare feet, so you didn’t want to stand still very long. Our family loved to go to the dunes! When you dug down two feet the sand was cool and it felt good on your feet and between your toes! We would go at least 4 times during the summer. We could hardly wait to jump out of the car and run up to the top of the sand dune! Then we would run off the top and jump down. We would also roll down the dune. We would dig holes and bury each other up to our necks! It was the best fun! The only time it was not fun was when the wind blew! The wind would start and you had to run and get inside your car. It was a sandstorm. The sand would get into your eyes and they would burn. It would get in your mouth and it tasted awful! You couldn’t see anything. You had to wait until the wind stopped blowing. It usually lasted about half an hour. You could not drive in it because you could not see! Usually if we were on the top of the dunes and we saw in the distance the sand blowing we got out of there as fast as we could! When we went home there was the ‘sand mess’ to clean up! We had to vacuum out the car and shake out all our clothes outside. Sand got into everything! But oh what fun we had!

When we would drive from Tularosa to Alamogordo you could look to the west and see the sand dunes in the far distance. The dunes against the sky made it look like a long ocean wave. When the wind was blowing you could look off into the west where the sand dunes were and you could see the white wisps in the air. We would say, “Boy we’re sure glad we are not out there today!”

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #29

Story #29 - Adobes – stomping the mud and straw – ouch!

Do you know what adobes are or what they are made of? They are mud bricks baked dry in the sun.

The house I grew up in originally had two rooms. New Mexico used to belong to Mexico and then on January 6, 1912 New Mexico gained its statehood and became part of the United States. My parents bought this little house with 4 acres of land. The house was adobe and stucco. You have to cover the adobe or the rain will wash them away. There was a front door on the one side and the other room had the door in the back. There were two separate families that used to live in that little house. The second room that had the door in the back of the house had a root cellar about five feet deep and five feet square beneath the wooden floor. When the Indians would come down and make raids on the town, the two families would go to the 2nd room and hide in the root cellar until the Indians were gone. Well, the Indians were put on a reservation and were not allowed to attack anymore.

When my parents bought the house and property my dad filled in the root cellar and he also made a doorway into the second room so that there were now two rooms. He built 7 more rooms onto the two-room house. Most of the rooms he added were made with homemade adobes. Guess who made those adobes? My dad and his kids, us! He made a trough with a wood frame and covered it with sheet metal. He nailed the sheet metal to the frame. I guess you could say it looked like a wide boat or raft with sides. He would throw dirt and water and some small size gravel in and make mud. Our dirt had clay in it so it made good adobe bricks. Then my brothers and I got in that trough of mud and my dad added the straw and we stomped it into the mud. Sometimes the straw would be poking up straight and when we stomped on it, it would stab into our feet and that would hurt! Dried out straw in short lengths could poke pretty good! After we were done stomping the straw into the mud we would get out and hose off our feet and legs to get clean. Our feet would get dried out and sometime crack and that would hurt and sometimes bleed. This usually happened only when we did a lot of mud stomping.

My dad made a brick form out of two by four lumber. The form looked like a double window frame. The adobes are about 10x14x4-inches in size. He would shovel the mud into the frames and pack them down with a shovel. He had several frames. He would let them sit for about half an hour and then take the frames off and let the bricks dry in the sun. If he got busy and left them in the frame until the next day they were harder to get out and then the adobes would sometimes break. You have to get them out of the frame while they’re damp.

How to Make Adobe Bricks (I got this off the internet-it explains the steps pretty easy.)
1-Shovel your soil into the mixing place you prepared. Add sand or clay if necessary.
2-Add water to the soil. Basically you are making mud. You want it to be firm and to hold its shape and not be too watery.
3-Mix the adobe thoroughly. Use a shovel or hoe or take your shoes off and stomp on it.
4-Take adobe with your shovel or hand and put it in the brick forms. Fill in the corners and press it down so it’s all filled. Smooth it off with the shovel, by hand or with a piece of wood.
5-Let the bricks dry in the forms for at least 20 minutes.
6-Remove the forms and let the bricks sit flat as they are for about three days.
7-Place the bricks on their edges.
8-Allow the bricks to dry thoroughly. This can take a week or more depending on the weather and soil.
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It was important to be sure to allow the adobes to dry. My dad would lean them two together like a tent. This way the air circulated between the bricks. It didn’t take more than a week to have them thoroughly dry. We lived in southern New Mexico and it was hot and dry. When it came time to use the adobe bricks he would use mud to lay the adobes. When he finished a wall he would cover the wall with chicken wire and nail it into the adobes. Then he would mix concrete and then apply it over the wire and make a nice stucco finish. The wire helped to keep the stucco on the adobe. Then he would paint over the stucco. Adobe was a good insulator. It helped to keep the house cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. But if it got real hot outside, the house would get warm.

That was our childhood adventure with mud, adobe and building with the adobe bricks. It made it much more affordable to build a home out of adobe.

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #28

Story #28 - White mice in the ivy – eek!

Do you have something that you are afraid of? For my mother it was mice! She hated mice!

This is another story about the patio. I had previously written how my mom planted ivy outside the living room wall just inside the patio. The ivy kept the wall cool. It was really pretty. It took awhile for it to grow and in a few years it covered the entire wall up to the roof and it was thick and green! My mom liked to go outside in the summer and hose down the concrete slabs in the patio to cool them off and then she would spray the hose up into the ivy. It was nice and cool. Well one day she went out there and just as she was coming back into the living room a baby white mouse ran out from the ivy and ‘into the house!’ She opened up her throat and let out a whooping loud ‘scream!’ We were in the house and ran out to the patio to see what was wrong! She was in the living room standing up on a chair hollering that there were mice outside in the ivy and one got in the house! I was about 12 years old. I thought it was kind of funny see my mom standing up on a chair having a tizzy over a little old mouse. I didn’t dare say anything though. I knew better! (I have to say right hear though, I was afraid of spiders when I was little. So with my mom being afraid of mice I should have been more sympathetic!) I think one of my brothers found the little baby white mouse that got in the house and took care of it. She still wouldn’t get down off that chair because there were more out in the ivy. Field mice are gray or brown. We figured someone had got the white one from a pet store and it got loose. It found its way into our patio and into the ivy. There were baby mice and were pretty little. I grabbed the garden shovel that was near the stairs that led up to the roof. I can remember I was wearing thongs. Some people call them slippers. I saw the baby mice and they started to run and I took the shovel and chopped off all their heads! I got the mother mouse and chopped off her head too. I took seconds and I had them taken care of. Then I told my mom it was safe and that I had killed all the mice and they were gone. I threw them in the garbage can. She got down off the chair. For a long time afterwards when she went out to the patio, she always inspected the door before she opened and closed the living room door!

Now that I look back on this story. It was kind of sad that I killed all those mice. But they do multiply very fast. So we had to get rid of them. Fast forward, it’s now June 11, 2008, years later since that happened. Well, last night I was looking out my kitchen window at the pond and the rock wall above it and I noticed that something moved. I looked really quick and I saw a long tail disappear into the rocks at the top! I looked again and sure enough there was a small rat! Yuck! I hate rats and mice! I am not afraid of them I just don’t like them! David was over and he and dad both looked out the window and there it was looking out and then it turned around and went back into the little cave the rocks made. Today dad, your grandpa, brought home a rattrap. I don’t know if that rat is still out there. Its color was dark gray. It looked cute looking out of the rocks yesterday, but I still don’t like rats! We have our home up for sale and I don’t want rats here! I guess in the morning we’ll see if it went for the bait. I just hope it went over the fence somewhere else!

Well now that I'm posting this story it is August 18th and I can report that we never saw the rat again and the trap was empty for over a week. Thank goodness! It found greener pastures I guess. I really didn't want to kill the rat. I just didn't want it in our yard!

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #27

Story #27 - Our adventures climbing the patio walls, hand over hand – yikes!

In the previous story about sleeping on the roof I mentioned we had a patio wall. My mom planted grass inside the patio. My dad built a small pond with a waterfall next to it. We tried to keep goldfish in it, but the neighborhood cats kept getting over the wall and into the pond and eating the fish. We stopped buying the fish. My mom also planted some flowers. It was my mom’s little Garden of Eden; her place of retreat and peace. On one end of the patio my dad poured a concrete slab.

He built of pole roof over the top and it was nice and shady. When you came out from the living room into the patio, just outside the door my dad poured another concrete slab. There was a fireplace in the living room on that wall. My mom grew ivy on the outside wall. It kept that wall cool. Our house was mostly made out of adobe brick and had concrete stucco on the outside. My mom would barbecue in the patio. It was a nice area to be in. The patio walls were made of adobe too and had concrete stucco. The top of the walls had a capstone of concrete as well.

Now comes the fun part of this story---Climbing little monkeys!
My brothers and I would climb the stairs up to the rooftop. Then we would ‘hop down’ off the top of the wall down onto the arch way over the patio door and then we would kneel down on the top of the patio wall and then slide down so that only our hands ‘were holding onto the top of the wall!’ Yes! We did that!
My mom didn’t know we did it either or we would have been in ‘BIG TROUBLE!’ Then while we were hanging by our hands, we would put hand over hand and go all the way around the patio wall to the other side. Then we would drop down to the ground! We just thought that was the coolest and most fun thing!

My dad built three houses behind our house. Trusses are the beams the support the roof. I would go back and see my dad build and I was about 7 years old. I would climb the ladder to the roof the then walk across the lower trusses near the end of the house. My mom came out to see my dad and I forget what she wanted but when she saw me on the roof she almost fainted! She scolded dad and told him to be more careful and keep a better eye on the kids while he was working and we WERE NOT allowed to climb the ladder and be on the roof! We still did it when her back was turned! My dad told us to be careful and we were! We never fell off. Now that I am a parent and have children and grandchildren, if my kids did that or my grand kids, ‘I would probably faint from fright for their safety!’ When you grandchildren are all grown up you will compare stories with your siblings on growing up. When I was a mom I told my mother about the patio wall and she about had a cow! That’s why you don’t tell your parents about those kind of stories until ‘years later!’ All I can think of now is---our guardian angels worked over time keeping an eye out for us!

FAMILY TIME - YIPPEE !!!

Family Togetherness - What a blast!

Well I don't have any pictures, drats! I'm so lax when it comes to taking pictures. I have a thousand of them taken mentally! We had a total of '21 people' in our home last week and it was sooo enjoyable! They were here for our son David's wedding. He and Angela were married last Friday 08-08-08! Cool date!

We had Chris and Michell's family, Bob and Julie's family and Jordan and Lisa's families all here. We also had Doug, who is home until his wedding in two weeks. We had his fiancee Ashley here too. She has since left to get ready for her wedding!

It was sooo wonderful having a houseful of family! I think they all had a good time. It was busy from the get go! We had to go to a wedding rehearsal and then we hosted a barbecue dinner at a very cute place we booked that you can have weddings, etc. there. Then the next day was the outdoor wedding and it was so lovely. When I saw my son David walking up to the arch with the minister, the happy tears started flowing. Then his gorgeous wife came up and she was gorgeous! Afterwards was the reception inside and all the hoopla!

Then on Saturday dad made arrangements for everyone to go to a classic car museum for a private tour. Dad is a member of the LeMay Car Museum. Believe me there was plenty of 'eye candy' for the adults with all those wonderful cars to look at! Of course they got to see dad's red 55 Chevrolet in our garage. That was a taste of what was to come at the museum!

Sunday was a sad day as everyone left! But something happened to take my mind off of being melancholy! Can you believe that we got a phone call to see our house the same day! Talk about putting it in overdrive! Dad and I had the place spotless in 3 hours, showcase special! The saddest part of cleaning for me was washing off the sweet little fingerprints and kissy mouth on the windows. Sniff, sob! :o( I called it my 'ox in the mire' sabbath. I hope the Lord will forgive us for working on Sunday! How did the viewing go? Well the couple had a 3 year old and the backyard is not ideal for little ones. It is terraced and I guess the mom was worried about safety. We do have a lovely home and yard. Oh well.

Now we are busily getting ready for Doug's wedding in Georgia! How exciting! I'll write about that after we get back! It's been so fun getting ready for these two weddings!

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #26

Story #26 - Sleeping on the roof – and it always rained!

Our house had a flat roof. We had a patio off the one end of our house. It had a patio wall that was six feet high that enclosed the patio. We had two arched doors at each end of the patio. Just outside the living room it led out into the patio. Inside the patio we had stairs that led up to the rooftop that was over the top of the living room. My father had built a three-foot high wall that surrounded the entire top of the house. It was so neat to be able to go up on the roof and sit and watch the stars or look down around the neighborhood. It was cool in the summer evenings. My parents put a double bed up on the roof. My brothers would sleep out there at night. It was hot in the house and much cooler up on the roof. It only took a few nights of sleeping up there and it would rain at night. My parents put heavy plastic over the top of the bed to keep my brothers dry. My twin brother and I would take turns to sleep up there too. I remember my first time up there I was scared! After the first two or three times I wasn’t so scared. When you think about it. I was safe up on the roof. When it was July 4th – Independence Day- we would go up on the roof and we could see all the fireworks people set off. We had a great view up there!

When I was little, we could get all kinds of fireworks. Today a lot of them are outlawed. I can see the reason why they are outlawed. Some of the fireworks are dangerous and people are hurt every year. But when you are small, all you think about is the 'bang' they make and the excitement!

David and Angela Guptill's Wedding

I am waiting for the photographer to post all the pictures on her website. We are so happy for David and Angela! It was a beautiful wedding! David said that it was the 'happiest day of his life!' We're so grateful for all those who took the time out of their busy lives to travel the distance to come and support David and Angela. They are honeymooning in Cancun!

I couldn't help hold back the tears of joy while he was standing next to the minister watching his beautiful bride walking next to her father up to the front. He was fighting back the tears and held his composure. I smiled through my tears! David was 'so handsome!' Angela was a breath of beauty and loveliness! She held her composure and smiled and was just gorgeous!

Of course, the little ring bearer and flower girls, my grandson Zachary Ward (Bob & Julie's son) and our granddaughters LaRue Newby (Jordan and Lisa's daughter; Brynnly Ward (Bob & Julie's daughter); and Lauren and McKenna Gleed (Chris and Michelle's daughters) were a hit! What cutie pies!

The bridesmaids were so elegant and the groomsmen were so handsome, especially David's brother Douglas,a soon-to-be groom in 2 1/2 weeks! Yes, we have another wedding! The boys are getting married 3 weeks apart! Douglas and Ashley are getting married August 29th back east. She's from Georgia! Then all our children will be married. We know Kirsten, who is our youngest (18 years old) at home and is special and due to her special needs, won't marry. Kirsten enjoyed all the wedding festivities. She so much enjoyed all our company we had at home!

We had a total of 21 people in our home. It was so much fun! I enjoyed every moment and now I'm sad that they have all gone to their own homes. Sniff! Sob! My three married daughters and their families stayed with us. Douglas' fiancee Ashley also stayed with us. We love our two new daughters-in-law and they are so sweet and we are so happy to have them as part of our family! They have wonderful families of their own and we look forward to knowing their parents and siblings and extended family!

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #25

Story #25 - I had to have my tonsils out. My throat hurt!

Do you like being sick? It isn’t very much fun is it? You can’t play with friends or even go outside to play!

My brother Douglas and I had a lot of sore throats. I can remember having the mumps and that was not fun! I only had them on one side, and I can’t remember which side. I do remember not feeling great and my throat hurting. When I was little they did not have a vaccine for mumps. I also got other sore throats. I had huge tonsils. I had trouble swallowing food. I had to take small bites. If I took a big bite and did not chew thoroughly, I would choke on the food. It’s scary to be choking and not be able to breathe!

Douglas got strep throat a lot. He even had white puss on his tonsils. When I got a sore throat my tonsils would swell even bigger. They looked like a pair of marbles sitting at the back of my throat. Every winter you could count on Douglas and I being sick with sore throats. Well I was almost 13 years old and Douglas was 16. Doctor Klump, our family doctor in Tularosa, New Mexico, told my mom that ‘our tonsils had to come out!’ He would take out our adenoids and our tonsils. I can remember being sooo excited! I had never been to the hospital before. My brother wasn’t so excited. My mom took both of us to Ruidoso, about 40 minutes away. The hospital was really small. We stayed over night. I had a little red case, oblong shaped, with chrome trim. I packed my favorite things in it. I also took a teddy bear, my panda. I named him 'Snookie.' I couldn’t take my other teddy bear named 'Cookie'; he was too big. There was a television program every week called ‘The Virginian.’ An actor named James Drury was ‘The Virginian.’ They called him that name because he was from Virginia. Well I was ‘in love’ with James Drury! I had a picture taken from the cover of a magazine that had the cast of ‘The Virginian’ and I put that picture in my little red case.

It was late July and so there was no school and we had to get the surgery done before school started up again. I remember being wheeled into surgery, I went first and then Doug was after me. I can remember waking up from surgery and I couldn’t talk or swallow very well and my throat really hurt! Before I had the surgery my voice was always kind of deep. I would be embarrassed when I answered the phone and the person on the other end asked if I were one of my brothers. You could say I had an annoying loud voice, talking or laughing! This doesn’t sound very nice but my brothers called me ‘Fog Horn Annie’ because my voice was so loud! I didn’t like being called that at all! Well after surgery my voice went up an octave! I had a softer and higher sounding voice. That was pretty cool! My whole family noticed the change. I have to say, ‘for the better! I no longer sounded like one of my brothers nor did they call me that awful name ‘Fog Horn Annie!’

We went home later in the afternoon. My mom was told to give us ice packs for our throat and we could eat soup, jell-o or ice cream. My brother Doug felt worse than I did. The older you are the harder to recover from that surgery. My mom had 7-up for us to drink, but nothing tasted good. Water didn’t taste good. The 7-up stung our throat from the carbonation in it. We both felt miserable! She gave us Bayer aspirin for the pain, but it didn’t help much. She made jell-o and gave us some and it was okay. She gave us ice cream but that didn’t taste good and it make our throats feel yucky. We were spitting out blood and ice cream being a milk product combined with blood, the ice cream tasted awful! Then she gave us pudding and that didn’t taste good either for the same reason the ice cream didn’t taste good. My mom told both Douglas and I we were being picky and not very grateful. She spent food budget money on treats for us to make us comfortable and we didn’t show any appreciation. Well, we were sorry but our throats hurt too much and nothing tasted good. She finally ended up just giving us Chicken Noodle Soup. That tasted good. We did get to have Popsicles and they were good and it made our throats feel better.

I was up and around in 3 days but my brother Doug was down for a week! He was not feeling good at all. It took him over a week to be up and about again. Both of us were so much healthier after our tonsils were gone. We rarely got sick with sore throats after surgery. We didn’t miss as much school during the winter months like we used to. It was so great not to be sick every single winter! I remember the best part of having my tonsils out; one-I wasn’t sick hardly at all anymore in the winter; two-my voice was higher and softer and I wasn’t called ‘Fog Hog Annie’ anymore!

When my daughter Lisa was 3 years old she had her tonsils and adenoids removed. She had very big tonsils just like her mom, me! We had to be very careful if we left her with anyone to baby sit. We told the babysitter to be careful when Lisa ate so she wouldn’t choke. It made people so nervous that they would never let her eat anything. She could drink whatever she liked, but they did not let her eat. She was always hungry when we got back.

We were visiting my parents in New Mexico and Lisa choked on a lemon drop. She wasn’t allowed to have hard candy but somehow she snuck one from the candy dish and the next thing we knew she was chocking. It got caught in her throat and she started choking. Her face turned blue and then purple. We gave her the Heimlich maneuver and it did not help. We had her bend over and slapped the middle of her back and that didn’t work. We gave her warm water to drink and that didn’t work. This all happened in less than half a minute. She was still purple and couldn’t breathe. Her dad, your grandpa, turned her upside down and ‘shook her’ and then turned her right side up. I put my index finger in her mouth and felt the lemon drop. It was trapped behind her right tonsil. I hooked my finger around it and ‘yanked it out!’ The lemon drop scratched her throat and she spit up a little bit of blood. She gasped for air and could breathe again. What a relief! That scared us to death! What I should have done when Neil shook her upside down, while she was still upside down that’s when I should have checked her throat and then pulled the lemon drop out. By having her right side up again the lemon drop could have slid back down her throat again. When we got back to Oregon (we lived in Redland, Oregon about 8 minutes from Oregon City) we made an appointment and she had her tonsils out! No more choking! Her doctor told us that the lemon drop probably was down to her larynx and was blocking the air passage to her lungs. He said if we had not got the lemon drop out she would have had to have a tracheotomy or she would have died from not breathing. That’s where you cut a vertical slit on the outside of the hollow of the throat in your neck. I’m so glad we didn’t have to do that!