summer skies and celebrations

Two sky views...
A cabin view
and solstice evening sky, about 9:15 central daylight savings time, if my memory serves me correctly.

The days and evenings have been lovely. Today, a little humid, but so much green to enjoy. The garden grows, a swimming pool is filled and being shared, two neighbor boys have celebrated the summer solstice with vinegar and soda volcanoes, countless trips in and out of the big blue pool for breaks and snacks of chicken sandwiches, grapes, melon, crackers, popsicles and more.

I am thankful.

new mandala

Here is a mandala / prayer I made last fall that I colored today while I listened to David the Gnome (thanks Leeala) with Henry. I can't explain why, but mandalas are just so important to me. Meaning, attempts at meaning, chaos...all safely enclosed in a circle. I usually end up creating/coloring mandalas when change is underway. I wonder what kind of change is coming? I've mentioned it before, but Susanne F. Fincher's books are especially meaningful to me.

pops and rambling thoughts

Inspired by Katie, I made vanilla pudding popsicles last night and they turned out just right. Delicious and nourishing. Henry slept in until almost 10:00 and was immediately invited over to play. He got dressed with a little help, searched in vain for his magic wand, and ran (tank top, flip flops and winter coat to protect from rain) out the door with no breakfast. I walked some pops over and felt good about it, like I wasn't just dropping a sugar bomb on the boys.

Mondays are generally peaceful, restful days here. I am thankful for that. Not so restful for Joel, as he is having an exceptionally busy week, but I hope the lack of hurry Henry and I are experiencing is also helpful to Joel.

Tomorrow we travel to the cabin site to do some varnishing of windows. It will be a busy day, but the joy of this place being finished someday soon is great. As I write, I'm helping Joel by previewing some old home movies for quality. They were copied to video and now, by Joel, copied onto DVD for one of our customers. It is quite intriguing to see the 1950s vacation destinations and so forth: a dancing monkey wearing a girl's dress, a series of quiet home scenes, farm life, Sunday-best dress against a backdrop of grain auger, tractor, garden beds.

I'm struck by the ironies of blogging. I write--for myself, people I know, people I am learning to know through blogging--about life as it is now. And so much of what I desire is similar to what used to be: families spending time together, simple enjoyment of floor play, gardening, restful vacations. (Scratch the dancing monkeys; I imagine they're better off in their native environment or in a zoo haven if their habitat has been destroyed). I do not seek to ignore what is happening in the world now, but to claim the goodness that is here while I live and pray in the world that is.

father's day motherboard

Here is a photo of the new-to-me motherboard I installed in my computer with Joel's help. I guess it was sort of a fathers' day present to him, but also to me, that I learned how to do this myself. Turns out, though, the used board I installed worked great for a while and then stopped. So now I have a different m-board than the one in the photo...and my computer is running much faster. For any who care about these things, my new motherboard has an Athlon XP 2000+ processor and 512 MB of DDR RAM. This replaces a different motherboard with an 900 MHz Athlon and 256 MB of PC-133 memory. My computer runs Ubuntu 7.04 and I am very pleased with it. We might upgrade it to Ubuntu 8.04. There. I am writing down (verbatim) all that Joel has said. Happy Father's Day, Joel!Here is another way we celebrated Father's Day (already on Friday). Our favorite (albeit probably very heavy on the corn syrup) local root beer and Robo-Rally, one of Joel's many favorite games.

family group

Thinking of Bob Regier's pen and ink drawing, I'm giving this typical bedtime scene the same name. Sometimes the falling asleep takes too much parental patience, but the getting there is rather sweet when we're all three in Henry's bed together. In the summer, it seems, he prefers falling asleep at the foot of the bed.

from the back stoop

I didn't eat breakfast outside this morning, but here are two pleasant sights of late:Joel, smiling between points he's expounding on...

Granola with service berries and the most expensive coffee to ever enter our house which, fortunately, we could buy using Joel's Ten Thousand Village discount. Delicious it was. The empty bag smelled just a wee bit skunky/musky. Funny, the things that make things taste good.

two good reasons to have a front porch

So your generous and thoughtful mother-in-law can leave you a big pitcher of peonies because she knows all the blossoms on your bush perished from sword attack. So your sister and brother-in-law can leave a bouquet of green wheat and park it in the jeep which the porch is big enough to hold when the jeep needs recharging.

crunchy goodness

I baked granola yesterday, the way my mama made it when my sisters and I were little. Here it is, adapted from Mother's in the Kitchen, published when I was a year old. A little crunchy for some and (if you add the extra water) chunky, but I love it. I eat it with cut-up fresh (or dried) fruit and Sara's homemade yogurt.

5 c. oats
3 c. whole wheat flour
1 c. white flour
1 c. oat bran
1 c. soy flour (or what ever you like--more oats, wheat germ, flax seed meal...)
2 c. nuts (recipe calls for 1 c. coconut and 1 c. nuts, but I prefer lots of nuts)
1 T. salt
1 c. oil (one of my sisters adds only 1/2 c. and says it turns out well)
1 c. honey, brown sugar, dark maple syrup, etc.
1/2 c. water (I usually use about 1 c.)
cinnamon, dried fruit (if you like--I never add these)

Mix dry ingredients, then add wet. Use hands to mix. More water can be added to make bigger chunks. Put into 2 cookie sheets and bake @250-300 F, turning every 20 minutes for even browning. Should bake about 1 1/2 hrs or until brown and crisp.