Family

As we drove toward Fort Lewis, I could feel a growing excitement and nervousness. I was going to meet a daughter-in-law and teen aged granddaughter I had only just learned about a couple of months ago. I had talked to Pam on the phone several times and she seemed very likable and seemed to be happy about our visit, but still it all seemed a little strange and unreal. We called from the gate and she came to meet us and help us get through security. I told her I would be wearing a pink cap so she would recognize me. When she arrived there were big hugs all around. I did not cry. Getting through the paper work and security kept us business-like until we got through the gate and home. When we stepped into the house we had a welcome committee waiting for us. Our newest granddaughter, 15-year-old Courtney, was there with Pam's parents, Evelyn and Dick, who were visiting from Iowa. We began to talk and share pictures and stories and laughter. It did not take long to feel like we were at home with family.

It was obvious the our Todd had found the perfect woman to be his wife. Pam adores Todd and is so proud of her soldier. Courtney refers to him as Dad. They are counting the days until he returns home again.

Todd called the next morning. For the first time in more than eight years I heard his voice. He sounded so good. I cried.

Yesterday I called my granddaughter in Louisiana, Todd's daughter Michaela. She was excited because her dad had just called her from Iraq. She said, “Gramma, I think my dad has finally grown up.” She too is now counting the days until her dad comes home and she can see him again.

We took this picture after lunch just before we left. I love my growing family.

Seattle

We did enjoy our vacation in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. The weather was perfect, warm and sunny everyday we were there. We never needed any of the rain-gear we were advised to bring. Each day was wonderful and different from the day before. I'll begin our travel log with Seattle.

Seattle is a beautiful city. I could be happy living there. It did not feel like a big city, rather a small town sort of place. The sky was blue, sail boats decorated Puget Sound and Mount Rainier hovered over the city like a protective warrior. Dennis's baby brother Bob lives in Seattle. He spent the day giving us a personal guided tour of his adopted hometown.

The morning was spent browsing through the Public Market. We watched as fish flew through the air from seller to buyer and admired the colorful produce and flowers. I sampled curds at Beecher's cheese and enjoyed a cup of coffee from the original Starbucks.

We ate lunch at Lowells restaurant in the market, overlooking Puget Sound. Part of Sleepless in Seattle was filmed in this little cafe. It was such fun to visit with Bob and catch up on family stories.

We ended our afternoon with Bob on top of the Space Needle. Spectacular views!

In the evening we met Lorraine and her family for dinner. The food at Etta's was fabulous(prepared by Seattle's famed chef, Tom Douglas!) The conversation was delightful. It is so much fun to spend some face to face time with blog friends!


Tomorrow I'll continue my story and tell you about my brand new family in Fort Lewis.

Home

We are home.
Our trip was wonderful. We have lots of good pictures to share and good stories to tell.
Now I'm going to rest and enjoy being home again.

Leaving On a jet Plane

The world is full of disaster and grief. If I think about it too long I get upset about things I can do nothing about. So I am just going to hop on a jet plane and fly away to enjoy friends, family and God's beautiful creation while I am still able to go.

Tomorrow we fly to Seattle for a bit of sight seeing and a visit with Dennis's little brother. We plan to eat dinner one evening with the beautiful Lorraine. Then on to Fort Lewis where we will meet our newest daughter-in-law Pam. She is married to our recently found long-lost son. We are looking forward to getting to know her and her daughter and hear some stories about our boy in Baghdad. After a night at Fort Lewis we will drive to Portland where we will board a river boat for a trip along the Columbia and Snake rivers. It should be a beautiful trip. We will ride through Hell's Canyon in a speed boat. My kids say their parents are going to hell.

I don't know if I will be able to blog while we are gone. If not I will report on the journey when we return.

Stay safe my friends until I return.

Independence Day

I am so glad that I am an American. I love this country that is my home. In spite of the many problems that plague our nation, there is no other place I would rather live.

There are many reasons that I feel blessed to a citizen of this country, but the one I am thinking about today is the blessing of freedom of religion.

Our forefathers were very wise when they wrote the founding documents of our country. They remembered that many of the early settlers of our country fled here to avoid religious persecution. They understood that religion should not be dictated by by the state. Faith is an individual thing. The religious practice of an individual should not be controlled by government. Our founding fathers were very careful in the words they chose to preserve individual religious freedom. When writing the Declaration of Independence they avoided any name for the divine that could refer to a particular religion. Words like “Creator,” “Nature's God,” and “divine providence” are used. There is no mention of Christ nor any reference to the God of the Christian Bible. The Constitution is not a Christian document. It is a document that preserves religious freedom. This is what the first amendment says:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

I am a Christian who is happy to be able worship God. My faith and understanding has changed a bit as I have journeyed through life. I am grateful that I am free to adjust my religious practice as my understanding and faith have changed. I appreciate my freedom of religion.

Recently there was a large protest in one of our southern states that angered me. In a place where many large Christian churches are filled with people enjoying their religious freedom, large, angry mobs formed to try to deny other people the right to practice religious freedom. The protesters did not want to allow religious freedom to people who did not practice the same faith. There were screams and shouts about the Constitution saying this was a Christian nation. The mobs were not demonstrating the compassion and love of the Christ they claim to follow. They were demonstrating their ignorance of the Constitution.

I do not want this angry, narrow-minded group of people to impose their brand of religion on me or any one else. They frighten me. I do hope the constitution is upheld and the people of another faith will be allowed to build their worship center and peacefully enjoy their right to freedom of religion.

God bless America!

Beach House Crew

Here is the only picture we got of all 15 of us who spent a week together at the beach. It was a wonderful week.
Pictured left to right standing on the ground are DQ,Dennis,Sue,Paul,Diane, Mik, Matt, Ann & Mark.
Coming down the stairs from top to bottom are Lexie, Mary, Emily, Samantha, Sofie & Michelle.

Beach Memory

Long ago, when I was a young mother, I took my little girl to the beach. When she stood on the shore and saw the big waves rolling in she was afraid. I told her to hold onto my hand and we would go into the water together. She held on tight and we waded into the surf together. Soon her grip on my hand loosened and she was jumping up and down and squealing with delight as she jumped though the waves.

This week I went to the beach with my little girl. I am no longer a young mother. Now I am a grandmother with an overlarge body and legs that are a bit wobbly and unsteady. I stood on the shore and saw the big waves rolling in and I was afraid. My daughter said to hold her hand and we would go into the surf together. I held tightly to her hand. Soon my grip loosened and I was jumping up and down in the surf and squealing with delight as I jumped through the waves.

Beach

We're on our way to Rehoboth Beach for a week with some of the family. There will be seven adults and nine teenagers. I feel like I've forgotten something. What should I take to the beach?

I Plight Thee My Troth

On this date forty-nine years ago my beloved and I plighted our troth to one another. (I looked it up. That means to pledge truth, or to promise faithfulness in all parts of our life together.) Forty-nine years ago truth and love were about all we had to pledge to each other.

I was 20 years old with two more months of an unpaid internship before finishing my nursing degree. My beloved was 23 years old with a college degree, good prospects and a telegram offering him a temporary job. I had a car and he had an old pickup truck. I had managed to save $600 from my part time work as a nurse's aid. That $600 seemed like more than enough for us to start life together. We rented a small, furnished apartment behind the hospital where I was working and set up housekeeping. My husband began working shortly after our three day honeymoon. Before we had used up our $600 he was bringing home a paycheck. He was a research scientist and made a good salary - $600 a month. I never once worried about not having money, even though we had almost none. We worked hard, enjoyed long careers, raised a family and are now retired.

Our love and the promise of a wonderful life together seemed like more than enough forty-nine years ago. It was.

Did you have a job and money saved when you got married?

Brian McLaren

Brian McLaren is a thoughtful Christian author who often makes me think. I really liked his response to Obama's speech last night about the crisis the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has brought to our nation. You can read it here.

Mystery

A beautiful, delicious Edible Arrangement was delivered this afternoon. We love it. The card says "Happy Anniversary." We will celebrate our 49th later this week. The card was not signed. The only people we can think of who would send such a lovely gift would sign the card and take full credit for their thoughtfulness. Did you send us this lovely gift? If you did, thank you.

My Slimy Rant

Like the rest of the country I look at the pictures from the gulf coast and become angry. Lives lost, fragile wetlands lost, beautiful beaches lost, livelihoods lost, confidence in big oil companies and the inspectors who are supposed to regulate them all lost. The problem is that our anger seems to be a wasted emotion. Our collective anger must take this tragedy and use it as a lesson for our future. Although this is the biggest, this is not our first big oil spill. Big oil spills have polluted our waters and our land many times over the years. We look at the tragedy and become angry, then the news becomes old and we move on to the next big breaking news event. We continue to live lives that demand great amounts of energy. We need the oil to sustain our way of life, so we turn our backs on the tragedy and tell big oil to drill more wells, find more energy. “Drill baby drill,” just does not to be a very good solution. If we continue to drill as we have done, there will be another disastrous spill.

We are the problem. We can recycle and change to low watt light bulbs, but without new public policies we will suffer more oil spills over and over until the wells run dry. We must find better, cleaner, more efficient ways to produce energy. We must change the way we and the world use energy. We must find the money to develop new technology that produces energy without needing oil. As a nation we need to be willing to look for a better way.

I'm tired of being angry. I'm tired of trying to figure out who's to blame. I'm tired of the tragic stories. It is time to spend real effort on finding a better way.

5K

Saturday we joined with more than 50,000 people for a major protest in Washington DC. It was one of the most inspiring and enjoyable protests I have ever seen. We went to cheer as over 40,00 runners and walkers participated in the Susan G Komen Race for the Cure. We were there to protest against breast cancer and to raise money for research and treatment in the race to cure this awful disease. Tee-shirt reading was funny and inspiring with their protests against breast cancer. Some of my favorites said “Yes they're fake. My real ones tried to kill me!”, “Operation Second Base,” “Stop the War in Myrak,” and the ever popular “Save the Ta Tas.”
Five from our family participated in the race.

Our older son and son-in-law ran the race.


Our granddaughters jogged the race.


Our younger son had an inspiring story of his own. About six months ago he decided it was time to get healthy. His obesity had put in in very bad health. He had little strength and energy and was not very happy with himself. He began to diet and exercise and started to lose weight. So far he has lost just over fifty pounds. His cholesterol and sugar levels have returned to normal. Three months ago he set a goal of walking a 5K race as sign of his commitment to a better lifestyle. If you had asked me a year ago if Paul could walk a 5K I would have laughed at the improbability of the idea.

Saturday Paul was laughing as we all cheered him across the finish line. It was a great accomplishment! He made me cry. I was so very proud of him.

Smithsonian

Yesterday we decided to take advantage of one of the many wonderful free things to do in Washington DC. We joined throngs of school children and tourists and spent the day exploring the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History. It was a wonderful day. Dennis was interested in the exhibit on Charles Darwin and the Origins of Man. The school children hurried through the exhibit in search of the dinosaur bones while we lingered and pondered what we were seeing. It was a fascinating, well-done exhibit. We ate lunch in the museum's cafe and discussed Darwin's theory of evolution. The evidence is compelling that all life is related. The image below is Darwin's Tree of Life, showing his explanation of the descent of man from a common ancestor.

After lunch we headed off to the Imax theater and saw a 3-D movie about dinosaurs. Exploring the dinosaur bones after the movie made the bones more interesting. This world of ours is very, very old, about 4,600,000,000 years.

We did not have time to go upstairs to see the Hope Diamond, the moon rocks or the Egyptian room. We'll save that for another day.

At the end of the day our grown up granddaughter, who works in one of DC's big office buildings met us for dinner at Union Station. I was amazed listening to this young lady tell about her day as an accountant. When did our grand-baby grow up into this beautiful, articulate young woman?

Yesterday was a ten.

Memorial Day Weekend

We enjoyed a nearly perfect Memorial Day weekend.

Friday evening we went to a dinner and a movie. The movie was “Prince of Persia” which was far more enjoyable than I had anticipated, full of sword fighting and high adventure. The previews for upcoming movies seemed a bit strange. I think Hollywood has run out of new ideas. All of the previews were remakes of movies I've seen in years long gone. Previews were for “The Karate Kid,” “The A -Team,” “Tron,” and “The Sorcerer's Apprentice.” They were good movies then. I guess Hollywood figures they'll make money again.


Saturday was the big Memorial Day parade in our town. It was full marching boy scouts, baton twirling girls, and flag carrying veterans. It would have been better without the hour's worth of politicians running for office in September's primary election who marched ahead of all the civic groups. The politicians should have been humble enough to follow all the kids who came early and waited far too long for their turn. I guess humble politician is an oxymoron.

I always enjoy Sunday because I love going to church and worshiping the Almighty God I love with people that I love.

Monday we enjoyed the first pool party of the season in our daughter's backyard. Hamburgers, hot dogs and splashing in the pool on a 90 degree day welcomed summer in a wonderful way.

There was time for working in the yard, reading and a nap between all the other activities.

This year for the first time we celebrated this day with a son and a grandson in the military. When people gave thanks for all those who have served in our military it felt much closer to my heart.

I love this country that is my home.
God bless America.

Space

My friend Rosemary had a request from her school teacher son to blog about her memories of the moon landing. She was distracted by babies and work at the time and it was not a very big deal for her. Being married to a NASA rocket scientist, my experience was far more intense.

In 1967 my husband flew to Houston to work with the crew of Apollo I. They were to perform a scientific experiment while in space that he needed to demonstrate to them. It was a big thrill for him to able to work with the astronauts. When those three men were killed in a fire while preparing for the launch it was a painful loss to him and to all of NASA.

In 1969 we stayed up late to watch as the moon lander left Apollo 11 and landed on the moon. I had four small babies at the time and staying awake was a challenge. I kept drifting off and then waking up again. My husband prodded me awake to make sure I saw Neil Armstrong step onto the lunar surface. We held our breath. “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” It all seemed so unbelievable. People were walking on the the surface of the same moon that was shining over my head. The TV camera showed Armstrong frolicking and playing, jumping around on the moon. He and Buzz Aldrin set up a flag on the moon. It was a moment full of wonder in our house.

The Apollo13 mission was very scary. That phrase, “Houston, we have a problem,” seemed to reverberate around the globe. Special prayer services were held in churches everywhere. The TV was constantly on as we watched and waited and prayed. Time seemed suspended as the world held it's collective breath. I remember standing in my living room laughing and crying and shouting for joy as my four children stared at me like I was a crazy woman. It was a great moment of a world's prayers answered.

I remember the great pain I felt when the Challenger exploded and again when the Columbia exploded. Space travel is not a safe thing.

The technology developed by NASA for the space program has had far reaching effects in our daily life. Everything from laser surgery to Teflon cookware to Olympic swimsuits is a byproduct of the space program. In spite of budget cuts and the loss of some programs, NASA is alive and well and discovering new wonders everyday.

What are your memories of America's space program?
What has NASA's technology developed that amazes you?

Family

Since Mother's Day when we heard from our long lost boy and his wife I have been learning to adjust to a new way of thinking. I am thrilled beyond measure to know this boy is alive and well, but I have to learn how to think about some new realities. My son is a sergeant in the infantry fighting in a war zone. I now look for his face on the evening news. The war in Iraq seems much closer and more personal than before. He is expected to return home in early fall. (The picture was taken the day he shipped out last fall.)

I have a daughter-in-law and teenage step granddaughter that I did not know existed. My new daughter-in-law and I have had several long phone conversations. She and her daughter live on the other side of the country. The more we talk the more I like her. There is so much we both want to know. We are going to meet them this summer. I am excited and nervous about that. She is excited and nervous too.

Our boy has contacted his ex-wife, the mother of the daughter he has not seen in eight years. He wants to try to re build a relationship with his daughter, but isn't quite sure how to start. It will not be an easy thing to do after so many years. His little girl does not yet know that he has contacted us. Everyone is trying to figure out how best to do it. How does a long lost dad re-enter his daughter's life?

We feel blessed to have all these new realities as part of our life. It will be interesting to see how it all unfolds.

1969

I don't remember growing older.

I Don't Know

Like most of the world I have been watching the news about the tragic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Like most of the world I would like some answers to my many questions. They are important questions that need answers.

1.What was the cause of the accident? Answer, “I don't know.”
2.How can the oil leak be stopped? Answer, “I don't know.”
3.How can the oil be contained? Answer, “I don't know.”
4.What will be the environmental impact? Answer, “I don't know.”
5.Whose fault was it? Answer, “I don't know, but it wasn't my fault.”
6.How can another oil spill be prevented in the future? Answer, “I don't know until the questions above are answered.”

It seems to me that folks with the technology and money to build a oil well in the middle of the ocean would have figured out a better answer to some of these questions than, “I don't know.”

BP has a phone number to call if anyone has an idea about how to answer any of these questions. Feel free to call BP if you can help.

Do you have ideas to help us?:
+1 281 366 5511

69

Today is my sixty-ninth birthday. In honor of the day I will share some of the things I have learned along the way.

1.Forgiving people is hard, but it is harder not to forgive.
2.It is impossible to not be happy while eating an ice cream cone.
3.Exercise really does make you feel better.
4.The Blue- Footed Booby is the funniest looking bird in the world.

5.Laughter is one of God's best gifts.
6.The morning's first cup of coffee in the second best thing in the world.
7.Digging in the dirt is good for the soul.
8.Dandelions picked by small children make the prettiest bouquets.
9.There is a light at the end of long, dark tunnels.
10.Grandchildren are a great blessing.