Random Thoughts

I have found out a few things about myself recently. I have been helping a friend with the remodel/construction of their home and I LOVE it!!! I love the sheet rocking, taping and mudding. LOVE IT. We got to scrape off the popcorn ceiling from the family room, hall and bedroom and that has to be my favorite part so far! But that is not all. Here is my confession: I am a zit picker/popper. I pick at the dry skin on my heals and my lips when chapped. That is so gross I know and maybe too much to share but there is a pattern to all of this that I am realizing. There is something about the "before and after" and the rough being made smooth. I just love it. The old cement around our toilet, the carpet with the tack board on the edge- loved chipping that off. LOVE it! There has got to be some Freudian reason behind all of this. I remember when I was a kid going to the ocean and seeing the creatures, sea stars and such, clinging to the rocks. I wanted to scrap them off so badly. I remember Dad telling me they were living creatures and so that wouldn't be a very nice thing to do. When I see barnacles on ships- I want to scrap them off. What is it?! I have really loved the construction and remodel work so much that I was sort of daydreaming about when the kids are all in school one day, getting a job with a construction crew. If you have any ceiling, tile, linoleum flooring, carpet, weeds (I LOVE to weed) you want removed- CALL ME!

I love Mondays too. The garbage man comes and the recycling man and I just like everything empty, ready to start anew. There may not to seem to be a connection to you but I see it. Again, it's something about that "before and after" thing. Luke loves it too but for another reason- the GARBAGE TRUCK! He can hear them driving through the neighborhood and we have to go watch out the window- until it gets to our street. Then we must go watch from the drive way. One Monday (a while back) we heard the garbage man (Carlos) coming and so I told Luke to run get his shoes. It was taking a while. I heard him shuffling down the hall toward the door when I realized what was taking so long. He had on Allie's shoes.

Allie has been taking swimming lessons. It is really two weeks of paid commitment to go swimming. Every day they begin the class by learning and repeating the safety rules such as no running, don't bring glass too a pool, make sure there is a lifeguard around etc. The most important is Rule #1- NEVER SWIM ALONE. Lifeguard: "Miss Allie, why should we never swim alone?" Allie (shouting back with enthusiasm): "Because it's boring with no friends!!!"

Allie was playing at some friends house the other day. They have two dogs who love to wrestle and play. And as dogs play they roll around and bite each other (since of course they have no opposable thumbs to grab with). Allie was a bit alarmed by this and asked why they were biting each other. My friend explained that that is how dogs play. They were wrestling. Allie told her "My dad and I like to play and wrestle. But I don't BITE him!"
Allie did this "do" all by herself.

Day at the Park

Move over Al Franken - Luke Payne for senate:
We all went as a family to swimming lessons today to find that they were canceled so we went to free lunches instead and listened to the day care ladies yell at their kids. Here are a few snapshots. Joy, the construction worker is in our room doing the manly work of toilet install while I'm holding the sleeping baby playing with the camera. I better get back there...

I'm sure you all would like to see a picture of something else, but these kids are too fun to take pictures of. I guess I should try to take some pictures of other things... At least the grandmas will be happy.
Messing around with under saturation (almost B&W) below:

Well, I guess I better get back there and preserve some traditional roles...

Time to get up

Last Saturday Wesley was sleeping in - a dream come true. Allie went into the kids' bedroom so Joy sent me in to tell her not to wake up Wes. He was already awake and I found Allie in the crib exchanging baby talk with him... She actually let me take a photo of the two of them (Allie usually turns away and runs when I get the camera out). Luke decided to join in the fun, got naked and jumped all over the place - what a sweet brother.
A sepia snapshot of Luke at Golandrinas w/ a little more red...

My first Craigslist purchase: a broken low-end Canon zoom lens (EF 75-300mm 1:4-5.6). For less than half a tank of gas I guess I can focus manually...

Santa Fe Misadventure

We attempted to go to El Rancho de Las Golondrinas today. It is a living history museum from the Spanish colonial era. There is a small stream that flows through the museum grounds that powers a huge two story wheat mill via this massive water wheel. Word on the colonial street is that the miller never has any wheat to grind so we took a bucket with us.

http://www.golondrinas.org/

We left a bit late (had to wait for a FedEx package) and after a few mishaps and stopping for pizza we arrived 15 minutes before they closed. Here are some snapshots during those 15 minutes. Never made it to the mill...

You have to click on the photo below to get the full effect!


Another "new" post below...

Blast from the Past II

Some silly pictures for a Saturday afternoon... Here are some old snapshots from Florida a few years ago that we came across in Picasa. We had a cowboy/girl day for the fun of it and went out to do cowboy things with Taylor. The picture of Taylor and his friends was taken after they were out fencing (fence posts not swords). Note David Cook's mismatched shoes (one cowboy boot, one tennis shoe). Joy is dancing around scared of a gator that began eating the catfish that she had just caught on the end of her fishing line.

Father's Day

Life has returned back to normal. I knew it would and that made me kind of... sad. And then I realized it is ok that life is back to normal because I am not. I have changed for the better because of Lucy.

We have been home a week today. And Jason has been out of town for most of it (see, we're back to life as usual. Had we known this was going to happen I would/could have stayed another week). Here's proof that life is back to normal. Monday while gathering all the garbage in the house to take to the street (garbage day), Luke added another piece to the collection. This piece of floor art is called "Steppable". The second photo is the after- AFTER the carpet cleaners came. I am thinking of renaming the piece "Why I bought an area rug".






And lastly a very Happy Father's Day to all the men in my life! I don't get to spend or wish a single one of them a Happy Father's Day in person but to my cousins and uncles (most who won't even read this) brothers and brothers-in-law, to my father-in-law and Dad and especially to Jason... Happy Father's Day. I love you all and I am so grateful for the kinds of fathers that you are. I feel certain that the world would be COMPLETELY different and so much better if all the dads in the world were like you!

"Summer Camp" 2008

This is Jason. I am stuck in Rochester Minnesota (home of the Mayo Clinic) for work over the Father's Day weekend. Bummer. I had been editing a post before I left and thought it would be nice to let it go and add some to the start. Joy, Allie, Luke, and Wesley are back at home- I think Joy is a bit envious of my weekend alone, but it is no fun without her and the kids here. I have tried to make the best of it - my rental car is a Crysler 300 (a 20s ganster looking car) - it is the best and fastest rental I have ever had. Since none of my co-workers would ever eat raw fish, I have had sushi twice so far; we'll see what tomorrow brings. Anyhow, here is the post I was working on:

Jason here: Last week I spent two days at Boy Scout camp. It was held southeast of Gallup, NM in the Zuni mountains with just our local troop. Yes it snowed, in June, in New Mexico, in sqatty little mountains- wierd. This year I helped with orienteering and encouraged the boys sleep outside without a sleeping bag for a wilderness survival requirement. Speaking of, on the way up at about 10:45 PM or so I was driving along an obscure forest road and this guy jumped out into my headlights waving an elk antler. It turns out he was lost since 2PM that day (a Wednesday). He drove off the dirt road to a place where he had elk hunted 3 years prior then left his truck with zero gear (short sleeve shirt in the warmth of the day) to have a look around in the back country off trail. He never made it back and was quite lost. This guy (Jim) finally found a road and started walking. There is no way he would have made it anywhere close to Grants. He is diabetic and had lain down under a tree on the side of the road but made himself get up and keep walking with blistered feet. He got in my truck and we went to look for his truck (only a mile or two away as it turned out). I did not have any sugar soda which baffled him to no end (I guess his blood sugar was low?). He drank a water bottle and I gave him a Power Bar, we found his truck and off he went. Out of cell service, we called his wife's answering machine with the ham radio... Crazy, I wonder if he would have made it through the night- he only saw one Jeep much earlier in the day until I showed up...
I went to bed ~ midnight and it was still quite warm (40s). I just slept under Joy's poncho in a bunch of clothes and long johns rather than a sleeping bag (in the truck a few yards away). The first hour was fine, then it started raining about 2AM, blowing like crazy and snowing from 3AM to 5AM. I shivered and listened to some random creatures in our camp kitchen (one which galloped by me after I made a little noise re-locking my truck) and figured I got credit for the night and got up at 5:45. Needless to say, we decided not to sleep out last night...

Here are some other pics of the camp
Scott Griffin is the Scoutmaster for those of you that know him...

Happy Birthday Lucy! Today marks two years since the day you were born and came to our family. I don't know if your mom and dad ever saw this video of you with your cousins so I thought I would share it. One of the cutest things about you was the way you said mommy. It came out "Maaaiii"- something that sounded half way between mommy and Molly. I thought how fun for your mother to have a name like that. I am sure she never got confused when other children were calling to their mothers. If you listen closely you say it once on the video. You called for her often while we were in AZ for aunt Wendy and uncle Pete's wedding.

We miss you Lucy.

Lucy

I have not wanted to blog. I couldn't find the right transition. The last entry was Jason's post about Father and Sons and the next day was Lucy's accident. Amazing how different life suddenly seems, how different time suddenly seems, with this new perspective. Years fly by and yet sometimes a day or a couple of weeks feel to stretch on endlessly. I have felt so much sadness, joy, peace, despair, humility, gratitude, love, pain, loneliness, anger, hope, kindness, hurt, tenderness, holiness and even a little bit of heaven. And I am just an aunt. It feels wrong in a way to feel all of this- like some how it mocks Vic and Molly's reality.


The selfish, angry side of me is mad because I loved seeing Luke and Lucy play together and I was so excited to see these two so close in age grow up together and be friends. And with Thacker just 6 months younger, they were going to be quite the 3 Musketeers at Jackson family gatherings. Or so I had hoped.


One of the "lessons" that I have learned from this is the amazing ripple effect of charity. I guess that is the best way to describe it. So many people have done so many things out of love that I have benefited from and I am so grateful for it. I am so thankful to Mom and Dad Jackson for playing with my kids so I could spend time with Vic and Molly, for Maria who also watched my children and opened her house, cupboards, and heart to us, to Carter who watched Maria's kids so she could attend the funeral and help with my kids as well as take Jason to the airport, to Maria's neighbors who heard about Lucy and brought over food because they heard we were staying there, for the many many friends of Vic and Molly who brought over bedding and food for us as well as provided a house for us to stay at so we could be close by not to mention watching our kids while we were at the hospital, spouses who stayed with their kids while their spouses traveled for the funeral (many Arizona friends), for my neighbor who got the mail and watered for me, for my visiting teacher who did a load of laundry to help us get out the door faster, for my friend Analisa who watched my kids while I ran errands to leave town and especially the many many prayers. What a difference those make. The list goes on and on. And why a ripple? Complete strangers doing something to help another so they could help another help another. So many of these things were done for/to us- which I am SO GRATEFUL FOR- but in reality it was all for Vic and Molly. Love doesn't divide, it only grows.


So Lucy, things will never ever be the same without you. We will never forget you. We will always love you and look forward to seeing you again. I feel so privileged to have held you in my arms just hours after you had arrived on earth and so very privileged to have held you again just hours before you left. I will never be the same because of you. And I am just an aunt.