Reblog: The Big 9-3 ~ Dana

Good Morning!

Last year I posted a blog about my sweet Grandma Betty, on her 92nd birthday. Today is her 93rd! Her story is worth retelling. Today, my mom, Uncle Gary (of Rescue Task Force), the girls and I will take lunch to her at her home, have some cake, and celebrate her 93 years. Here, again, is a tribute to this amazing lady whom I am so blessed to have in my life as my grandmother, cheerleader, and friend.

When I was growing up, I always thought that Grandma Betty and Grandpa Art were just the coolest people on Earth. And really, looking back, it’s pretty much true. Whenever they picked me up from school, I knew there would be awesome snacks and lots of playing in my afternoon. And by awesome snacks, I mean root beer floats, and by playing I mean ping-pong, smashball, or badminton in the back yard. One year they took me up to Calico Ghost Town over Memorial Day Weekend. When I was about twelve, they bought the grandkids bikes to keep at the house, so when I came over we could go for rides to the market or around the neighborhood. And we made countless trips in their motor home to Palm Springs, to Carson City, Nevada, to visit family, and to Newport Beach. They made 60 the new 40. Actually, they made 60 the new 30, since I’m almost 40 and can’t imagine doing all the things that they did!

Betty grew up on a farm in Iowa, but relocated to California following her fiancé, who was stationed here during World War II. He was deployed before she arrived, but she stayed in Long Beach, working an overnight shift at McDonald Douglas Aircraft throughout the war. After the war, she married my grandfather, had two kids, and moved out to San Bernardino, California, where she has lived ever since.

When her kids were little, she was a single mother, and sacrificed like you can’t believe just so her children would have food to eat. What has always stayed with her is her positive, spunky attitude, as my mom has often said that Grandma Betty made her childhood so good, she and her brother didn’t even realize that they were poor.

Today, this sweet little woman turns 93. And I am so grateful to have her in my life. I am so grateful that she has gotten to meet my girls. I love that they play in the same backyard that I did, with the same toys that I did, and they sit on the same patio, laughing and giggling with the same Grandma.

Grandma Betty’s mother, my Nana, lived to be 105 before she died in 1997. So on Mother’s Day last year, I told Grandma Betty that she still has 13 years to go… to which she replied “Oh no! Not that! I’m ready now! Jesus take me home!” And that truly is the defining characteristic of Grandma Betty: her unfailing faith in and love for her Savior, Jesus Christ. She tells anyone who will listen how Jesus has blessed her and blesses her still. She prays without ceasing, and I know it is those prayers that have sustained me during some difficult times in my life. But it is truly us, her children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren who are blessed beyond measure to have this wonderful woman’s love in our lives.

Happy Birthday, Grandma Betty. We love you forever!

Oregon Trail*

My chickens watching the creek in Ashland, Oregon

So remember this post last Fall?

We were waiting for some for guidance around Shea’s job. Was he supposed to stay in his current position where he was successful and respected, but missed working with people on a daily basis? Or should he go back to being an agent, where he got to work with people, and give up a promising career in leadership?

On the flight home from Hawaii, he sat next to a couple who used to live a few blocks from us. In the course of their conversation, he shared the uncertainty we had about his job. This couple then went on and on and on about how great their agent had been when they lived in our town, how wonderful and helpful. They had never met him in person but loved him and recommended him to all their friends.

“What was his name?” Shea asked them, thinking he would know the guy.

“Shea” was the answer. At which point Shea introduced himself as their former agent and we thanked God for such a clear answer.

Within a few weeks, a local opportunity for Shea to be an agent again came open. But I have wanted to move out of California for a while now, for lots of reasons, not the least of which is the trend in weather. My soul needs rain and the transitions of the seasons, and climate change is robbing Southern California of both.

So we asked God to please send an opportunity for us to move to Oregon, to be nearer to Shea’s parents.

In January, an opportunity came open in Portland. So Shea and I flew up there to check it out. It was lovely, but 250 miles from his parents’ home in Southern Oregon.

On the flight home, I told Shea that I would really rather live in Southern Oregon. We sent up a prayer for something closer to his parents.

A few days later an opportunity opened up 60 miles from where his parents live.

In March, Shea was offered and accepted the position, to start January 1, 2015.

We are moving to Oregon.

For me this entire journey of the last eight months has been a lesson in opening myself completely to God’s plan. In a way that is very unlike me. We sent the prayers up, and waited patiently, and one by one they were answered.

Yes, moving to someplace green and beautiful has been a desire on my heart for years now, and moving specifically to Oregon for over a year. But the way in which it has all fallen into place leaves no doubt that this is part of God’s plan for us.

And knowing that helps me deal with the sadness. Even though I am super excited to go, I am sad to be leaving.

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology and social media, I’ll still be on the blog and I won’t lose touch with my nearest and dearest. But I am used to seeing mostly everyone I love within a hour’s drive. When we’re in Oregon, it will take much more planning.

Dana has promised to come, as has everyone else. And we will be back all the time, because there is no sandy seashore with pounding waves where we’re moving and my heart will miss that rhythm. Luckily my parents are within ten minutes of retirement, so they will be able to make that Allegiant airlines cheap flight—where they charge you to pick your seat and carry-on a bag—work for them. We are trying to find a house with a guest room so the Hotel Jen and Shea can carry on the hospitality for which we’ve become (sorta) famous.

My husband will be happier as an agent because helping people is what he loves. My kids will roam the woods and streams and see snow happen in real time, and while the summers will still be hot, the heat will end in the Fall.

Unlike here.

I’ll have lots more to report as we get closer to the move. We’re looking for a house, which has been a merry jaunt so far.

Or you know, the opposite of that. But whatever. It’s a grand adventure and we are ready.

* I wanted to name this post “Oregon, Ho!”. But then I just wasn’t sure about that comma. Seemed safer to stay away.

Suffer Well ~ Dana

We’re just a couple days away from Mother’s Day, a day to honor and celebrate moms, and grandmas, and aunts who raised us, and the women we know who are doing a spectacular job of mothering. It’s a day of breakfast in bed, made by dads or other moms, and little hands, a day of flowers and jewelry, a day of sappy cards, maybe a day at Disneyland, or a day just relaxing in the back yard.

But for many, Mother’s Day is also pretty tough. I’ve watched Facebook over the last few days. A good friend and teammate is reeling from the loss of her grandma, the matriarch of their family, just two weeks ago. A friend of mine from junior high, who lost both her mother and grandmother three years ago, posted a picture of Winnie the Pooh, her mom’s favorite character, and talked about how hard this time of year is for her. My volleyball coach from 9th and 10th grades posted pictures of his mom with his children, with the sentiment that it has been 5 years that she’s been gone, but that it seems so much longer. My cousin texted me, “Mother’s Day sucks” as she will be “celebrating” the third Mother’s Day without her mom. And this year, Mother’s Day, May 11th, will be the one-year anniversary of the death of my father. Big, heavy sigh.

It’s quite the tightrope walk, isn’t it? On Mother’s Day, I will wake up with a heavy heart. I will remember each and every detail of May 11th, 2013. I won’t dwell on it, but it will still be there. On these days, it’s like we’re wearing sunglasses. We see our lives unfolding before us. We will experience joy, honest, true joy, on this holiday… but all through the lens of feeling loss. It’s a tightrope walk between joy and suffering. Those of you who know loss know that this is true. Suffering. And yet, my girls will have cards and presents for me. I will be so loved and cherished. And I will gush all my love right back on them. We will meet my mom at the cemetery. We will cry. But then we will go back to her home, where we were on this day last year with him. But this time we will swim in the pool. We will build the new desk she bought for her office. I’ll remember the time I bought her the Mother’s Day card that read: You’ve been just like a mother to me. Oops. And we’ll laugh. And give her presents. And eat good food. And maybe make homemade ice cream.

Because that’s what we have to do. We have to suffer well. My cousin said that my dad would be mortified if he knew I was going to have a crappy Mother’s Day because of him, but I also think that there would be a part of him that would be happy to be missed, oh so dearly. So we suffer well.

Many of my friends have told me that after 3 years, after 10 years, after 15 years, they still miss their parents, that once the first year is over, it isn’t necessarily “all better,” like society tells us it will be. But life doesn’t have to be all better. We learn to experience joy, to love our children, to laugh at movies, to enjoy our partners. So we suffer well.

We know that our loved ones are “in a better place.” We take solace that they are in heaven where there is no more pain. We rejoice that we will one day be reunited with them. And yet, the hole that they have left in our hearts is still vacant, never to be filled. So we suffer well.

All about the bucket

Thank you to my SIL Susie for having this cool bucket in her home!

One of the things that Dana and I have noticed about being sparkly Queen of the Castle moms who happen to make a lot of our food and cleaning supplies from scratch, is that if we say that we order pure goat milk soap from this awesome homeschooling family in Pennsylvania, people will automatically assume that we’re crunchy. Or if I talk about canning jam and baking bread, or Dana talks about homemade deodorant—maybe this one most of all—we can almost see the mental eye roll.

There is nothing wrong with being crunchy. But we aren’t. We both drank a Diet Coke on Sunday.

Our approach is more big picture. We accept that there are only so many days in the week and so many hours in the day. We don’t want to be tied down to our sewing machines and stoves and ovens and laundry trees for most of our day. There are for sure times when we cut corners, from Happy Meals to Maybelline mascara. Sometimes for the convenience and sometimes because the homemade stuff flat doesn’t work.

This is the way we see it. A Diet Coke is not going to kill anyone. Shampoo with pthalates is not going to kill anyone. A juice box or applesauce with artificial sweeteners is not going to kill anyone. Wearing lipstick with lead on a big night out is not going to kill anyone. But when we start piling Diet Cokes on top of shampoo on top of juice boxes on top of lead lipstick every day, then the danger piles up too. If that’s all we eat or drink every day, then we are living a pretty toxic lifestyle. And that is not crunchy drama. That is scientific fact. You can double check me here and here.

So we think of our intake like a bucket and we watch what we put in there. We try very hard to make sure that we are not putting toxins in our bucket. And when we do, we try to make sure that we balance that with something that we know will act as a cleaner in our system. We drink lots of water. We read labels. We don’t keep soda in our homes. We make our food from scratch whenever possible and we’ve taught our kids to believe that homemade treats from scratch say we love them way more than any store bought cake ever could.

Just kidding. Kate had a store bought Frozen cake from Stater Bros for her birthday and it was good, scary blue frosting and all.

What we’re fighting here is accumulation. We don’t want to accumulate toxins in our bodies. That’s why we visualize the bucket because it helps us see what’s in there. If we drank soda and Starbucks and ate GMO and fast food every single day—and lots of people do—then our buckets would be full of chemicals and toxins and hormones. We don’t want that, not with our family histories of cancer. If we eat fresh food, organic food, homemade food and low salt food, then our buckets are not as full and they kind of get bigger too. Think about it: one mini-Snickers, or a whole half pint of fresh, ripe, sweet raspberries.

Lots of times, I have chosen the Snickers. Just not every time, or even every three times. We each have a guilty confession, too. Mine is non-dairy creamer, vanilla flavor. Which is straight up fake. And yes, I’ve tried making my own, and I’ve tried half and half and even heavy cream and it just isn’t the same and yes, I need it. Dana’s is that she uses Cascade dishwasher detergent and Finish, because the homemade stuff makes the dishes look awful and she has a discerning mother-in-law.

Our point is that we aren’t perfect when it comes to this healthy lifestyle thing, but we know our environment is dirty and big corporations are not looking out for us, so we have to balance the crap we can’t control with good stuff that we can. We aren’t judging anyone else and we try not to preach.

Although, I may need to work on this part because just a few weeks ago my dad turned to me in exasperation and said “I’m 68! I don’t care anymore!”

Fair enough.

Tra-La! It’s May! ~Dana

Whether you called it May Day, Beltane, Walpurgisnacht, Flores de Mayo, or simply another Thursday, yesterday was the first of May! When I was a child, I remember making May Day baskets at school to give to friends or neighbors when we got home. The tradition was to place the basket on the front porch, ring the doorbell, then run away. In other parts of the world, the first of May is a lovely spring celebration, complete with maypoles, folk music, dancing, and the crowing of a May Queen. Why don’t I live in a place like that??

Whatever your beliefs, and wherever you are, we’d like to take this chance to wish you a happy May! It’s been such a tough winter for our friends and family back East and in Canada, and those of you in the Midwest and South are still struggling with some nasty weather. But we hope that sometime this weekend you’ll take time to honor this glorious season. Get out and go for a walk, soaking up some vitamin D. Plant some flowers, even if it’s just one pot with a little marigold. My girls and I planted sunflowers today against our back fence, and I look forward to sharing them with you when they’re in their full 10-foot-tall glory! The sunflowers, not the girls.

And my favorite way of celebrating May is listening to the song, “Tra-La, It’s May!” from Learner and Lowe’s Camelot. Here’s a link to the video, in case you aren’t familiar. This song is especially fun. I’ll leave you with just a taste of the lyrics:

It’s May! It’s May! The lusty month of May,
That lovely month when everyone goes blissfully astray!
It’s here! It’s here! That shocking time of year,
When tons of wicked little thoughts merrily appear!

Happy May, everyone!

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