all my

“lifetime china co., gold crown”

my mother-in-law picked them up for $5 at a yard sale. the whole lot of them (a set of six). she said they reminded her of me. i must also be delicate, beautiful and well-appointed. thank you.

the marvelous thing is that i can find all i want on e-bay. tea-pots, gravy boats, dessert bowls and even glass tumblers. it’s heavenly. it might prove a little expensive. the serving dishes are around $15, the tea pot is $40, and the rest of the bits run at about $5 a piece (then you have to pay shipping). but gayla started me off with a nice haul so i can justify the rest of the expenditure. right?

killed it (mostly) dead

the hard drive, that is. who knows if you will ever hear from me again. we might be able to finagle it for a while, but i think we will be getting a new computer. don’t miss me too much. if you’re lucky, it will turn on again tonight and i can show you the sweet vintage china my mother-in-law got me. if not, try not to be too devastated. here is a flower.

rezon lestat nesta smits

it’s when bad things happen to the alphabet. or maybe when you grew up you learned it a letter off and then procreated. how else do you explain it?

sarah has reproduced

the warning has gone out.

she had a 7 hour labor or so. he weighed 7 pounds 11 ounces. no one can decide on a name. we should vote. dad likes “grandville tecumseh smits”. i like “beau”, “thurgood” and “manly” (she is in the south you know). and any other number of names no one would ever want to name their children. too bad for them.

i will post a picture sometime. sarah is registered at wal-mart and babies ‘r us.

new shoe day

grammy came to visit yesterday. she bought jehu new shoes because he kept falling on his head. she bought gideon new shoes because, like i said, she spoils him rotten.

look at that cute, spoiled, little boy. don’t you just want to kiss him? mmm.

p.s. my sister is having her baby today. i’ll post when he pops out. can’t wait.

“boy’s undying affection”

that’s the name of my darling little shuffle. it loves me.

well, i suppose that would be my husband who loves me and gave me such a nice present. but the shuffle also loves me, i am sure. lately i’ve been filling it with mark driscoll sermons. i can listen to them and sew, clean my kitchen, i can even take it to story time (and am no longer bored witless). every housewife should have one.

my husband thinks it a strange sacrilege, but i have never listened to music on my ipod. my father insisted while i was growing up, that you can’t listen to music unless you also want to learn how to play music and really appreciate it. so i tried to learn to play the guitar and only learned that i hate music. it is hard work, it takes discipline, nothing that most of the people who incessantly listen to music seem to have. (referring mostly to that strange race of adolescents who puddle themselves in the stuff). when i was a similarly hormonal infested creature, i had the nagging suspicion that i only listened to music so as to not hear myself. you get to become someone else, bottom feed off second hand emotions and neglect you own unimpressive reality. reality is when you turn the sound track off and nothing is so rosy anymore. this is your life. if it’s not full and good, don’t ice over it with someone else’s.

so i decided to just stop listening to music, which was strangely hard at the time, almost like quiting smoking. consequently, it came as a very weird surprise when i realized that i didn’t even like the stuff anymore. that i could drive from moscow to boise and not even think of putting anything in the cd player. and i like it this way. i like my life and my thoughts. “it’s a blazing 95 degrees in mavisland, come visit.” and by the way, i have an inside source on the albino worms, if anyone wants one. they’re a strange breed.

munch

the boys wanted to eat in the train today. jehu out-eats gideon like you wouldn’t believe. but gideon can drink him under the table. it’s like hooking a vacuum up to a juice box.

how my grandma is sweller than your grandma

my grandma and i drove around recklessly all morning going to yard sales on friday. she giggles when i take corners too fast or make impulsive u-turns. she never gets upset and is the most incurable optimist i have ever met. when we are about to die she will just comment on how spry the subaru is. “oh my, it can just turn around on a dime, can’t it?” when there are yard sale signs it can.

she helped me buy this lovely punch bowl for $15 when i only had a 10. it’s a tiara exclusive in chantilly green sandwich glass. la la. i’ve seen them online for $40 to$100, but in that ugly russet color. mine is so much more fabulous. a complete set too.

then we stopped by joanne’s where i got some clearance fabric to make an ironing board cover (which i finished today). meanwhile grandma watched sleeping baby in the car (gideon and i tried to be very fast). on our way home she bought me an iced mocha and chatted theology with me. because my grandma is smart as well as beatific. then she made me cranberry french toast for lunch, baby sat my kids, threaded the sewing machine and filled the bobbin with (would you believe it) matching thread. i usually can work myself up to such excess and just scavenge whatever leftover bobbins are laying about. then she let me ravage her material piles and, my favorite, the bias tape box. i made this:

it’s nice because i didn’t need to put any closures on it. it just slips over top. i would make more, but i tend to be afraid of making something twice when it worked so well the first time. (bad and worse things always happen.) but i do love the walking foot on grandma’s pfaff. maybe that’s how i got lucky.

the boys like visiting too. gideon thinks grandpa-great is just the thing. he made seats for gideon’s neat, wooden (yet seatless) school bus. advised me on how to fix the kids’ toy stroller. he also promised to buff my nice silverware that i accidentally fed to the garbage disposal. he feeds the kids goldfish, reads them books and fixes the pfaff when i break it. it’s a good thing they live in nampa or else i would never leave.

what’s blooming

nope, i don’t know what any of their names are.

uglydog

i’m only borrowing him from gideon, i promise.

and here is a duck.

i inadvertently do things while chained to the telephone. i think i took the pictures while on the phone as well. if you ever get the impression i’m not listening to you, there could be a reason. or i could be playing on the internet. we have internet phone so you never really have the one without the other. it’s so great. i just nod and say yes while performing random searches for free embroidery patterns, mls listings and jessica van der steen. well not all of the time. it’s just that she’s so cute and wholesome. put her in an apron and i’d bet she’d make great biscuits.