Penny Party - A Quick & Simple Party for the Grandkids

Yesterday we hosted a belated birthday party for Sarah, Kat and Maddy. I reached back into my grandma memory bank and pulled out the...

Penny Party!

This is a super-easy, super-inexpensive party theme. I bought a cake mix, whipped topping, ice cream cups, and 4 bags of the chocolate coins covered in gold foil (more about those later).

You can get a lot of mileage with little kids and pennies.

First I burgled 200 pennies out of the coin jar Mark keeps on his dresser. Then I hid them (pretty much in plain sight) around the living room before the grandkids came.

I also made up a quick little "penny bag" for each of the kids. The girls got yellow polka dots, and Josh got one with a manlier print.

It didn't take long for 4 grandchildren to find 200 pennies.

We counted to make sure we had found them all.

Let the Penny Games begin!

First we played Drop the Penny in the Silver Pitcher

They had to stand with a penny on their chin and try to get it to land in the pitcher. Obviously, Maddy had less of a handicap here than Joshua had. This kept them entertained for about 7.5 minutes.

Then we played Toss the Penny on the Diamonds

In theory, they were aiming for the green diamonds in the linoleum flooring. The kids were good sports about this game, but it was even less exciting than Drop the Penny in the Pitcher. They would have been more enthused with better targets and better prizes, I think. Since I didn't have any targets or prizes at all, it should be fairly easy to bring this game up a notch the next time we try something like this.

All right then, on to Pin the Penny on the Maddy!

First, we needed a Maddy:

The kids colored in the Maddy outline, except for the face.

They they took turns putting their pennies on the Maddy, trying to give her a face. (I put little rolls of masking tape on the back of the pennies. Each grandchild got to put 4 pennies on the Maddy.)

Time to sing "Happy Birthday." I made strawberry cupcakes and kept the frosting super-simple: Whipped Topping. The kids put a few sprinkles on the top and everyone was happy. We also had the little plastic cups with ice cream in them, and I gave each of the kids a bag of foil-covered chocolate "coins" as party favors.

The kids played together until it was time to head home.

Happy belated birthday, Maddy, Kat, and Sarah!

To be a little girl again

What a treat, to be the daughter in the home for Mother's Day. I am treasuring every moment of being a full time daughter. Here's a photo Maleena took yesterday after our family picnic at Canemah Children's Park.

What makes a mother? I loved this video. "Life didn't come with a manual. It came with a mother."


And if Mother's Day is hard for you, be sure to check in with Polly's sweet post.

To my dear mother and mother-in-law, to my amazing daughters and daughters-in-law, to my friends and colleagues and sisters everywhere, to my grandmothers who have gone before me are with our Heavenly Mother today...

...Happy Mother's Day. Thank you for all you do. I love you.

Butterflies in my tummy

Butterflies in my tummy this morning...not what I expected! My AP Lit students are taking their big test this morning, and Mark is taking his National Board Certified Teacher exam in Spanish.

Hahaha--I thought I was cool as a cucumber. After all, I'm not the one taking the test!

Mmmm...not so much. My tummy is doing flip-flops even though I'm pretending to be cool and relaxed.

Moving Day

Mark and I flew to Spokane on Thursday to help with Mom's move. My brother, Maury, drove over from Shelton (WA) and our son-in-law, Eric, drove over from Royal City (WA) after work. We packed and sorted Thursday afternoon and evening, then loaded the truck all day Friday. Some of Mom and Dad's wonderful Colville neighbors joined us. Bless them - they stayed and helped all day.

 The manly men: Mike S (neighbor), Maury, Mark, Mike W (neighbor), Eric

(except for Eric, it was a very alliterative crew)

 Mark and Brian (neighbor)

 Mom and Dad had lived the last 16 years in a 60'x14' mobile home on beautiful ranch property. They owned the mobile and rented the site from the rancher. Dad called it their "mountain cabin." Here's Mom in her cabin, mostly packed into the truck. (The rancher bought the mobile from Mom, which made the financial arrangements of the transition much simpler.)

 Mom fed the birds every day for 16 years. They will miss her!

She was regularly visited by quail, pheasants, finches, blackbirds, robins, flickers, and many, many others. She was also visited by wild turkeys, but she didn't like them much.

 Saturday morning before we left for Oregon City, Mom, Mark, Eric and I hiked to the top of the hill behind their home. We had a special destination in mind.

 The iconic barn at the top of the hill behind Mom and Dad's mountain cabin. This was their view every morning.

 The view from the barn. The green roof in the center of the photo is the snow roof that Dad built over the mobile home 10 years ago. Dad took Mom on many adventures over their 61 years together...and he gave her some beautiful views throughout their marriage.

This photo is taken next to the stone foundation of the barn. We brought a small bag with some of Dad's ashes on our hike, and we took turns scattering them near the corner of the barn. We thought Dad would like to have a little bit of himself left on this beautiful ranch. He sure loved his time here. I also read the poem, "High Flight." It seemed very appropriate because Dad had proudly piloted small planes for many years.

 Exploring above the barn. Mom is showing Eric the homesteader cabin on the property.

The barn reflected in the pond, which was the water source for Mom and Dad's cabin.

High Flight Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air. Up, up the long delirious, burning blue, I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace Where never lark, or even eagle flew - And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod The high untresspassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee No 412 squadron, RCAF Killed 11 December 1941

Remodeling, sort of

We are gearing up for my mom's move to Oregon City this weekend. Back in February, we had started making plans with both her and Dad to move here sometime over the summer, but since Dad's timeframe was shortened so much, it will be just Mom coming.

Thank goodness for this sturdy old farmhouse with it's "interesting" floor plan! It seems to stretch and expand with all its old fashioned nooks and crannies. Mom will have her own apartment on the main floor, with easy access to the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Mom's apartment will have a large bedroom / sitting room, a walk-through closet, a full bath, a pantry area, and a kitchenette and dining area. Ikea, here we come!

Last month we had a laminate floor installed in the bedroom / sitting room, and Mark worked all day yesterday on finishing the moldings and trim in the room. It looks so pretty.

 The new laminate floor in Mom's bedroom / sitting room

 Pretty new trim / baseboards

 One of the architectural details we saved when we did the big remodeling job 8 years ago - now it's installed in a corner of Mom's closet.

Mark even made the moldings pretty inside the closet.

And...drum roll...speaking of Ikea, I headed out on a little shopping expedition of my own Friday night. Came home with some...um...heavy boxes full of two or three million little pieces. 

I needed some prettier more efficient storage space for our office "stuff" if it was going to be right there in our dining room, instead of tucked away on the back porch. (Which will soon become Mom's kitchenette and dining area.) While Mark was constructing awesome-looking trims for Mom's apartment, I was playing carpenter with the fun that is Ikea furniture.

 It's not too complicated, right??

 If you just take the directions one step at a time, it's not too hard.

 I actually got a small blister on my right hand from all the screwdriver use.

 And this is the awesome result! I love this pretty cabinet.

 Instead of having "stuff" all over the top of the desk, it's stashed away in the pretty cabinet!

And to replace the desk drawers + rubbermaid drawers + 4-drawer filing cabinet...ta da!!

I built the little 5-drawer cabinet from Ikea, and bought the little filing cabinet at Office Max.

A place for everything and everything in its place.

Makes me happy!

Mark and I will fly to Spokane Thursday morning to help Mom finish packing. Son-in-law Eric will join us on Friday to load the U-Haul truck. My brother will come over from Shelton, WA (near Olympia) on Thursday, too. On Saturday, Mark & Eric will drive the U-Haul back to Oregon City, and Mom and I will drive her car. We have a crew planning to meet us at 7:00 pm to unload Mom into her new home (!!) and then Eric will fly back to Spokane on Sunday morning to get his car and drive home to his sweet family.

I know there will be adjustments to make all around - for Mom as well as for Mark and me - but we are genuinely looking forward to having Mom here. She is sweet, happy company, and we are looking forward to good connections and happy adventures together in the coming months.

Memorial photos

I didn't even bother with my camera at Dad's memorial service last week. We had some wonderful family photographers, with far better cameras than mine, who were documenting the event. What a blessing - I was able to focus my energy on family, especially Mom, while others snapped photos of a tender time.

Polly posted photos of Dad's memorial on her blog, here.

Thank you, Polly! What a treat to be able to linger over some special moments that you captured with your camera.

Memorial

Mark and I just got home from our second weekend (in a row) in Colville - 8 hours each way. We held Dad's memorial service on Saturday. It was held in the local community hall; Mom and Dad have been members of the association that maintains the hall for most of the 16 years they lived in Colville. My brother Maury, who is pastor of Skokomish Community Church, conducted the service. I read "Crossing the Bar" by Tennyson and the obituary (with a few extra stories added in).

The memorial service was pretty simple. My brother accompanied all the songs on his guitar. They were mostly old-timey songs like "The Old Rugged Cross" and "The Church in the Wildwood," because my mother loves those songs and requested them, and we were all glad to sing them to celebrate Dad.

Three of the grandchildren are in current military service, so they did a veteran's flag ceremony for Dad.  It was very solemn and moving. Then we closed with an upbeat song called "I'll Fly Away." It's not a traditional hymn like I'm used to singing in Mormon services, but it was a perfect way to end Dad's service.

Then the community hall association put out a spread of sandwiches and potluck salads and desserts for everyone to enjoy, because that's how they do things in the mountains north of Spokane.

Grandchildren came from Kansas, Montana, Florida, and Washington. We had Dad's brother fly in from Florida, and his sister-in-law flew in from Virginia. We also had cousins fly in from Virginia, a carful of cousins that drove up from the Bay Area, and Mom's brother from the Oregon coast. It was really, really wonderful to reconnect with these family members. Some of them I hadn't seen in 30 years. It was so fun to share old stories. Mark said I looked younger when my brother and I started in on "remember when..."

Dad's obituary is posted here.

Grey fog

I always thought grief looked / felt like tears, swollen eyes, poignant stabbing memories, flashbacks of nostalgia...

Since I wasn't having those symptoms, I thought I was "doing fine."

No. Actually, no, I'm not.

Today grief is a grey fog that has settled into my brain. It is a deep, deep exhaustion. Even though I slept relatively well last night, I have had to lay my head on my desk a couple of times and just close my eyes and breathe.

I can't remember the last time I felt so tired, so unable to think. People say kind things and I barely have the energy to say anything in response.

No tears. Just a tight feeling in my chest and the strange grey fog swirling through my brain.

Dad

My sweet dad passed away last night. Mark and I feel so blessed that we were able to be with him and Mom when he died in his own bed at home. Polly was with us earlier in the day, and she took some wonderful photos. You can see them here.

Footloose

I am deeply contented this evening.

The church youth group had an evening of line dancing. Kids from 3 different congregations (we all meet in the same building, but at different times) lined up in the gym and danced away. Afterwards we stuffed them full of awesome refreshments.

The best part of all...I got to dance alongside my oldest grandson, Josh! Makes my grandma-heart so, so happy...

Morro Bay Memory

Last Saturday I attended a writing workshop sponsored by the Oregon City Library. I spent a wonderful afternoon in the company of women writing bits and pieces of story. Our workshop leader was Trista Cornelius, one of the writing teachers at Clackamas Community College. She shared excerpts from memoirs* and then issued writing prompts based on something from the memoir.

One of the prompts involved lots of sensory details from a childhood memory. She suggested writing something that had to do with a school cafeteria, but I have almost zero memories of school cafeterias as a child, so I went with the sensory details of an early beach memory. It is set in Morro Bay, California, the town I lived in until I was 14.

Morro Bay Memory

           There was a narrow strip of beach beneath the towering stacks of the PG&E electrical generation plant. It was not a sunny beach because it was tucked between the shadows of the PG&E stacks. We called them smoke stacks, which was incorrect, but calling them steam stacks would have sounded funny and it never occurred to us. No, it was not a sunny beach—if the sun wasn’t behind the PG&E stacks immediately to the south, it was behind Morro Rock a quarter-mile to the north—but we went there often, I think because it was a good place for my mother to read her books. Not that they had to be read in the shade, but the riprap--huge black rocks stacked between the beach and the harbor road--cut the constant northwest winds, and she didn’t have to worry about my brother and me drowning ourselves in waves because there weren’t any.

            The little beach was just the right size for a four-year-old, and when my mother took us there so we could play and she could read, I experienced the sense of enclosure that comes to little children when they are cupped within a bit of the world that has become its own place altogether. The gulls dipped and swung overhead, their cries part of the ceiling of sky. Mostly I patrolled the border of wet sand, molded into hard little ridges by the lapping wavelets in the harbor, gathering brown and gray periwinkle shells only a little smaller than my thumb. My mother, sitting on her beach towel with a novel in her hand, was far enough away that she couldn’t hear me narrating my own story in real time, a third-person drama that interested no one but me.

            “She walked along the water slowly,” I intoned, watching my bare feet as the wet sand made little sucking noises with each step. “She was looking for shells, and pretty soon she found one.” Another shell for my pocket. “Her brother was at the other end of the beach and her mother was reading a book.” The wind blew my white-blonde hair across my face and I brushed it away. “Then she found another shell.” It was a narrative that I carried inside my head most of the time, but the only chance I had to articulate it aloud was here at the little beach, where the gulls and the wind and the quiet roar of the PG&E plant covered my voice and made me invisible. 

*The memoirs Trista drew from were

Lost by Cheryl Strayed

Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavich

The Language of Baklava by Diana Abu-Jaber

Lifesaving by Judith Barrington

Trista also highly recommended Writing Memoir by Judith Barrington for those of us delving into memoir.

Grandma-ish

I was hanging out with the teenage girls at Church during our youth group on Wednesday night. It was a lovely, mellow evening. The girls were using fabric markers to decorate pillow cases with this year's theme and visiting with each other.

I was glad to have some time to just chat with some of the girls. We were very laid back.

Somehow Sydney and I got to talking about texting. I told her how reluctant I had been to begin using a cell phone, and that I had only learned to text so I could communicate with my family when I went on a 50-mile solo backpacking trip 5 years ago.

She looked at me kind of funny, so I said, "You know, because I could get cell reception up on the ridges. I'd send a text message to my daughter that told her where I was." [Mark was at scout camp that week.] "So if they didn't hear from me in a day or so they would know where to start looking for me," I explained.

Sydney looked at me funny again, and then she said, "You know, Sister Haynie, you're not very grandma-ish."

I made some comment about my 23rd grandchild just being born a couple of weeks ago, and she said, no, that wasn't what she meant.

"My grandmother does things like, you know, wash the dishes, clean the house. Vacuums. She vacuums a lot," Sydney said. And she added, "You're not really like that."

I took it as a compliment...the nicest one I'd had all day.

Calling my mom from the PCT

Aug 1, 2008

Wishing her a happy birthday

Be of good cheer

I try to pray every morning.
It has become a habit that I deeply value - helps me get the day started right, refocuses my thinking, slows me down to pay more attention to thoughts that come, inclines me to respond to those little nudges that guide my day.

Here I am, nearly 60 years old, still learning how to pray.
It's not just a long list of requests, you know?
I'm trying to do more listening and less talking during prayer.

So a couple of mornings ago, I was feeling pretty blah, a little overwhelmed, maybe just a little worried about some dear family members slogging through life...

Trying to listen.

And the answer that came? Be happy.

That was all. Just "be happy."

Which is a choice, you know. Not something that happens when the bluebird lands on our shoulder, oh no, but an honest-to-goodness decision to look around at the messiness of this mortal experience, and be happy anyway.

When Christ said, "Be of good cheer"--which he said quite a few different times--he wasn't just giving us a little wave and saying, "Have a nice day."

It's a commandment.
Be of good cheer, even when the world is crappy.
Be of good cheer, because no matter what else is going on, Christ atoned for all of the frustration and pain and sometimes downright awfulness of mortality.

Be of good cheer. Be happy.

20 years ago today

Twenty years is a third of my life so far.
Twenty years is the tiniest of geologic-time blips.

Twenty years ago I was a senior at Lewis and Clark College. A senior in college with five children and an unhappy marriage. Hanging on.

Twenty years ago I didn't have a cell phone (no one did) or email (again, no one did).

I was a senior in college, majoring in English, and I had snagged a prestigious spot (in English-major circles) on the editing board of the college literary magazine. Ooooh. We met once a week, on Monday afternoons.

I had five children and I was a senior in college and I was on my way to the lit mag meeting but I stopped at a phone in a corner of the student union to call home. I didn't have a cell phone (no one did), but I knew about this phone I could use for free (just dial "9"), so I called home to check on the kids.

Mothering-by-phone. Make sure they had a simple supper underway, sort out any sibling conflicts, make it look like I was still being a mom even though I was a senior in college with five kids at home.
(And an unhappy marriage.)

No one had cell phones.

Twenty years ago it was a different world, a world where you couldn't always get ahold of someone, even if you needed to. I could walk across my college campus at five o'clock in the afternoon, and not one of my children could call me. Not one. I was so sure that everything was fine. I was just calling home to check in. What was the worst that could happen?

Remember telephones? With curly cords? Attached to the wall?
The alcove in the student union was painted gray. The telephone and its curly cord was attached to a gray wall.

The phone rang. Rang. Rang. Rang.
The phone was finally answered by an unfamiliar voice. Family chaos crisis chaos crisis chaos crisis.

I didn't have a cell phone. No one did. My mind went gray and blank. Like the wall.

On my way to the parking lot, before I climbed in the car and drove to the hospital and my daughter, I stopped at the room full of lit mag editors to tell them I couldn't make today's meeting.

On Tuesday, the next day, (twenty years ago tomorrow), I bought a pager.
Two weeks later my unhappy marriage imploded.

It's so true--isn't it--that you just never know...
You wake up in the morning, you make your plans, and still, you just never know...

I guess what I'm trying to say is this:
The world has changed a lot in twenty years, and so have I.
You might say this was all a long time in the past.
But in some ways, it has only been the tiniest of blips.
In some ways, it could have happened yesterday.

Pussy Willows, Roller Coosters, and an Unwelcome Guest

Sometimes it's the little things that make the big news here on Laurel Lane.

Pussy Willows
The weeping pussy willow tree is in bud.

 I remember reading about pussy willows in books when I was a child. They seemed so exotic to me then because there are no pussy willows that grow on the central California coast. I still remember the thrill I felt when I first discovered a pussy willow tree a few blocks from my home after I moved to Oregon. About 5 or 6 years ago, Mark and I bought a weeping pussy willow tree at a plant sale. Now I have pussy willows in my very own yard. I clipped a few branches to bring indoors today, and I feel like a wealthy woman.

Roller Coosters

The mail carrier brought such a treat this week: a letter from Lala! Love her 3-year-old penmanship.

"Hi Grandma, I made you a roller cooster. (heart) Olivia"

I turned her letter over to see what a roller cooster might be:

Yup, it looks like a roller cooster to me!

Actually, when I went back and took a closer look at her letter, I realized that she had attached a little tail to the second "o" in "cooster," so it probably really says, "coaster." But I think "cooster" is pretty cute, so I'm sticking with that for now.

It never ceases to amaze (and embarrass) me when I see how many of my grandchildren are able to read and write before they ever reach kindergarten. I do not remember teaching my children to read before they started school. Some of them could write a little, and I do remember teaching them to make letters by drawing dotted lines in the shape of letters for them to trace over, but nothing like a whole letter like this, written without any dotted lines. Katie said she did help Olivia with the spelling, but Olivia actually held the pen and wrote the whole letter herself. And addressed the envelope. And drew the roller cooster.

(Just for the record, all of my children did graduate from high school in spite of having a pre-K slacker mother.)

I have an early childhood memory of "writing" of my own. I was probably about Olivia's age. I was sitting at the dining room table, across from my mother, who was writing her weekly letter to my paternal grandmother. Mind you, my mother did not get along very well with her mother-in-law, but she was a good daughter-in-law, and she wrote a letter to my father's parents every week. I remember sitting at the table while my mother wrote, with a pen in my hand and a piece of paper in front of me. I remember making whole lines of looped "l"s - lower-case cursive-type l's. Or maybe they were e's. I remember thinking "Whoa, I'm writing!" and simultaneously knowing that I was only pretending, not really writing. Not like Olivia (or Arora, or Abbi, or Katie, or Seth, or Becca, or...).

I guess kids today are just a whole lot smarter!
(And, of course, they have brilliant parents.)

An Unwelcome Guest
Mark and I have a pretty set routine in the mornings. One of us hops in the shower while the other one heads downstairs to get breakfast started. A week or so ago, I ran across this fellow, making his way from the dining room to the kitchen.

Uggghhh!!! Yes, it's a slug. He was about 2.5 inches long. Skinnier than a big, fat banana slug, like we see on our hikes. This was just a little garden variety guy. He was actually making pretty good time across my smooth floor. I was surprised at how quickly (for a slug) he was moving. But still. It was a slug in my house. Not acceptable!! He quickly became a resident of the (outdoor) trash can.

Mark and I can't figure out how he got inside the house in the first place. Our house is generally pretty bug-free, except for the occasional swarm of fruit flies in the summer.  (Except, of course, for a couple of memorable yellow jacket infestations in long-ago summers...those are stories that will have to wait for a future post...)

Mark thought maybe he rode in on one of our shoes, but that just didn't make sense to me. Could he have come in all the way through the sump drain into the basement, and then all the way from the basement into the kitchen? That would be quite a hike for a little critter.

I've lived in the house nearly 34 years, and this is the first time I've ever had a slug in my kitchen. Maybe he's a harbinger of climate change??

Time will tell...and in the meantime I'm not walking barefoot in a dark kitchen!