Free Time at Mom's House

So I got bonus time this week. I was supposed to be driving from Utah to Virginia but decided to stay and see my daughter into college. This gave me a few days with no schedule, no kids, and plenty of time. Mom pointed me in the direction of the boxes of photos that she has been sorting and I did some scanning. Here are a few shots of the family over the years.

1978

1981

1984

1986

1989

Easter Bunny

A long tucked away memory was my Dad dressing up as the Easter bunny and taking jelly beans around to people he knew and his office workers. He had a pink bunny costume with a fluffy white tail. Tall ears that were wired and stood straight up off his head except that over time the wires had bent into crooked shapes. The costume was completed by a funny pair of oversized wire "glasses" wrapped in pink tape, and he drew on a button nose and whiskers with makeup.

I remember people looking startled when he approached and then laughing when they realized who was behind the funny glasses. Dad can be a ham, and so he would play up his role, taking hops and shaking his fluffy tail. He left people giggling as he hopped away.

He only did this a few times but I was reminded of it when Lauren was asked to play the Easter bunny for our community egg hunt. She sat in a cute white gazebo and posed with kids on her lap for parents to get a picture. I loved the connection to her grandpa.

Here is Lauren as the Easter bunny with Geral on her lap. A bag of jelly beans to the first person to send me a picture of Dad dressed as the Easter bunny!

Update: Mom came through and found pictures of Dad as the Easter bunny too! Here he is with four adorable children who were undoubtably happy to see him. The date on the photo is 1971 for those who are curious. 

This one is undated but I believe it was a few years later. 

Peanut Butter and Chocolate with Cheerios

For Family Home Evening treat one night, Dad made a creation. It was a Cheerio cereal base with toppings of peanut butter and melted chocolate. It was terrible, and has gone down in our families history as one of the worst of "treats".

So imagine my surprise as I walk down the aisle at the grocery store to find both Chocolate Cheerios and Peanut Butter Cheerios. All I can say is that Dad was a man of ideas, ahead of his time.

Moose tracks

    Barb Newell and Onalee enjoyed doing work together on our adjoining properties. We were both strong, vigorous, and focused workers, so we called each other Moose 1 and Moose 2.  Although, sometimes we had to wait for our husbands to come home to finish moving the really heavy stuff. 
   I still love finding "moose" items to share with  Barb - even after we moved away. Think about "Moose Track" ice cream as one delicious find. Wyoming gas stops have lots of moose theme gifts.
   Stacy reminded me that  Barb was helping us sort and pack when we moved out 1981. She was working so long and hard that when we were packing up the basement, I even gave her permission to have a smoke in the basement while we worked.  I certainly needed her loving help. We frequently stop and visit her and Tom in Pennington on our travels. Sad to realize we're moving so far away this time.
   I can remember being in our garage attic with Barb, sorting out the boxes of clothes and fabrics and toys stored up there. We opened a window and took the boxes of discards and tossed them out the window - easier than carrying them down the narrow retractable attic staircase. A few years later, Stacy found the word "defenestrate", which means the act of throwing it out the window. We've enjoyed connecting that to Barb + Onalee defenestrating the garage stuff efficiently.
  

Peas

Every spring when I plant my garden the first seeds to go in are the peas. And every year when I plant my peas, I think of my Grandpa Reeve. I get more of a thrill from watching the pea plants sprout and grow than any other plant in my garden. I give my grandpa credit for this.

When we were moving from Saginaw to New Jersey, Grandpa Reeve showed up the morning the truck was leaving with a bag of dirt, some small containers and a packet of peas. He told us we were going to get started on our New Jersey garden by planting peas so that they could sprout and would be ready to put in the ground at our new home. Patiently he helped each of us prepare our pots with soil, add a little water and poke the seeds to proper depth. Each pot got our name on it so we would know which pot was our stewardship to watch over. This was Grandpa's way of telling us how much he loved us and how much he was going to miss us.

Years later when Grandpa died, planting peas was a strong memory we all had of our Grandpa. Even though the ground was still too cold for planting in Michigan, in San Diego where I was living at the time, we were well into the garden season and I was able to find some pea plants at the garden center that were about 6 inches tall. I carried them on the plane to Michigan so that we could put them in front of his casket with all the flowers. For me, the tribute of pea plants was a fitting one for my grandfather who was a farmer at heart and shared his love with us in the form of peas for our garden.

A Little Gourmet Dinner

One of the most memorable meals from our childhood was the day Mom decided to try something a little gourmet. She spent a good part of the afternoon making a refreshing chilled soup, Cold Cucumber Soup, and an Eggplant Soufflé.  With a flourish she called us all to dinner and presented us with lovely bowls of a cool green liquid. On a warm, humid summer day in NJ, it seemed just the thing. We all lifted our spoons to take the first sips of our dinner, quickly faces crumpled, mouths gagged, several were heard saying, "Eww! Yuck!" Across the table, Mom no longer could hold a straight face and she giggled as she looked around. Dad jumped up, aghast! "You knew what this tasted like? And you still served it?" She wasn't giggling anymore, she was laughing out loud. She admitted that she had indeed tasted it and knew it was awful. She served it anyway, because, she had spent the afternoon on it.

Never fear, the dinner was not a complete loss. She still had the Eggplant Soufflé for us. Still laughing, she went to the oven and pulled it out. Dinner was saved. It was beautiful, puffed up and golden brown. We oohed and ahhed. Then she served it. As the spoon went in, it deflated. The inside wasn't a golden brown but a pasty grey. It looked like stewed brains. We weren't taking our chances that it might taste like them too.

Mom's lovely gourmet dinner evolved into peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But, we all remember it.

Dishes

Is there a more dreaded chore in all of history than the dishes? Everyday. Even weekends and holidays. Dishes, dishes, dishes. It is one of those chores that is never done, no matter how well you do the job.

We had several variations of chore charts growing up, but every single one of them included turns doing the dishes. And while some chores lent themselves to some form of slacking or not doing thoroughly, the dishes were impossible to avoid. Oh, we tried, but there were consequences for not getting them done in a timely manner. The most common consequence for neglecting dish duty was to get assigned a weeks worth of dishes, thus providing the opportunity to practice avoidance skills for an entire week.

Some of us were more skilled in dish avoidance than others. I was among the slow learners and held the record for weeks on dishes until James got old enough to enter the fray. It did not take long for him to take the title, leaving my paltry 3 months on dishes in the dust. James didn't just get a week on dishes and accept his fate and learn his lesson. He considered dish duty as ground zero in the battle of his will versus authority in the universe. This was an epic battle. James didn't just earn weeks on dishes, he earned months and years.

There were some infamous face offs between James and the parents over dishes. One day Dad stood behind James and, as if he was a puppeteer, would help James pick up a dish and with the other hand in his would help him scrub it clean. This was not an easy task as James was struggling against the inevitable the entire time, squirming, clenching his fists, and protesting his fate.

Another episode that has become legend is the evening that James was told he had to do the dishes before he went to bed. At some point Dad entered the kitchen to check on his progress and found James asleep, curled up on the small kitchen rug, with a dish towel over his shoulders to provide some warmth on the cold kitchen floor.

It got to the point that James owned dishwashing in the house and since he had already been awarded dishes for the foreseeable future there was no point in using more days on dishes as a consequence. He earned weeks off his sentence just by doing them, if not willingly, then at least without a fight.

Do things change? Does a kid that hates to do dishes as a child grow up to be an adult that enjoys the quiet time at the sink? I suppose it is possible, but I have kids that accuse me of assigning them dishes just so that I won't have to do them. (Duh, yes!) And James? Well, he may do them, but only if he has to.