Category: Family time

Air and Space

Today dawned just as rainy as predicted and the day high temperature occurred just after daybreak and has been dipping to a freeze tonight as the day wears on.

I try not to depend on my car too much when here as I really don’t like Northern Virginia traffic, but I’m not a glutton for punishment either nor did I want to walk the Mall in Washington in the rain. Grand and I elected to drive out to the Udvar-Hazy Center and look at all of the planes, satellites, space vehicles and aeronautic history paraphernalia.

Grand in front of the Stealth bomber.

The Space Shuttle Discovery from the skyway.

The amazing structure with tons of aircraft suspended from the ceiling.

If you have never visited this center, it is certainly worth the time. Admission is free, though there is a $15 per car parking fee if you don’t take public transport out.

We thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon, except my grouchy old lady mode kicked in when a young mom with 2 young boys stopped to watch a 6 minute video on Discover’s last launch and stood behind me talking loudly on her cell phone about a real estate transaction with everyone around her glaring until I finally tapped her on the shoulder and gave the hang it up signal. She collected her boys and left.

April 15, 2014
A Zoo Day

Yesterday was spent in part driving for my week of babysitting the eldest grand. They like us have had a week of beautiful weather and it is delightful to have the windows open day and night. Tomorrow that is going to change with 100% chance of rain followed by a drop in temperatures to a spring freeze, then cooler more seasonable day time weather. Grand and I took advantage and bus, then Metro rode to The National Zoo.

The baby Panda cooperated and was hanging out in a tree in plain sight, one of the adults was in the yard as well. An elephant cooperated and let us get a photo.

The Otters, seals, sea lions and wolves were out and visiting, as were thousands of other visitors also on spring break.

Any indoor exhibit was so crowded you couldn’t even see the displays. We saw what we could, walked the length and one side and called it quits. After crowd fighting, we stopped for refreshment and rejuvenation.

He was done! But not to be so, we walked several blocks downhill back toward the Metro and I realized I had dropped one of the Metro farecards with more than $30 on it. This caused me a bit of panic and a jog back uphill to see if I had dropped it out of my pocket and fortunately it was right under the chair I had used. Back downhill to the train to discover they were having issues and we had to wait quite a while as the crowd grew and finally were packed like sardines, standing on the train. Before we got to our connector point there were so many bodies on the subway that you couldn’t move and could hardly breathe. When we got back to the station a mile from home, we had 30 minutes to wait before the afternoon commuter buses started, too tired to walk home, we waited.

Portuguese white bean soup is on the stove and I’m hungry and tired.

Tomorrow is rainy so we will take the car to the Udvar Hazey Space Center and maybe a bookstore. Later in the week we will venture back to the District to the Smithsonian American History Museum.

April 14, 2014
Role Model

We should all have one. Mine is now 90 years 7 months old. This weekend he spent with us and I was delighted. This role model is my father. He still takes great care of himself, walking for an hour each morning that isn’t raining and the temperature is at least at the freezing point or above preparing most of the meals for my step mom and him with an eye to their health. He drives within his city, with the care that a 90 year old should take. He delivers Meals on Wheels to other seniors, some decades younger than he. Liberal in his political views, he works with a Peace Making Committee in his region with the wish that our world could see world peace.

He was raised to be a loving and respectful son, educated and independent. Throughout my childhood and my siblings childhood, he instilled within us a challenge to become trained or educated to be able to be independent adults. This was a life lesson that I took very seriously, completing two college degrees to be able to work within the education system for 37 years.

When we still lived on the east coast of the state, holidays were often shared, cookouts and birthdays together. With us having moved across the state, our visits together are sporadic and any visit with him is a treasure. We have just been given 3 1/2 days of his company as my step mom and her cousin were in a nearby city at a State Garden Club conference. This allowed us to enjoy his company, to take him out to dinner with one of his nieces and her husband, to have lunch another day with some friends from his church who have also moved to this community in retirement. We were able to take him through the campus from which he graduated 67 years ago, to look for places he frequented as a student, young husband and new father, as I was born during his final semester. He was in the class of 1945, but his education was disrupted by a military tour during WWII.

He is from a family that enjoyed long lives and I hope that we have many more years of his company.

This morning, during our latest snow storm, we drove him back to Roanoke for him to ride back to the coast with my Step Mom and her cousin. A wonderful visit.

March 25, 2014
Back on the Farm

The return to the farm has brought with it the return to Virginia winter weather. Today’s high occurred early this morning with a chilly day and frozen night in the forecast. With dusk last night came rain all night long, creek flooding rain and snow possible as the day wears on. The ridge behind us shrouded in low thick clouds.

Last week when I was babysitting in Northern Virginia and available regardless of the weather, it was sunny and warmed to the 40s and 50s, today they are on the rain/snow line of this storm and likely having to deal with another weather closure or delay. That problem, I remember well, having three children and both of us having professional level jobs that were difficult to miss.

It is good being home, watching the antics of the dogs. Ranger the English Mastiff romping with the German Shepherd indoors and out, but having much less stamina and collapsing on his back outdoors, or into this position next to Jim when he is spent.

The only place he is allowed to do that in beside hubby in his oversize worn out recliner.

When I got home yesterday afternoon, I went out to check on the chickens and do a bit of coop maintenance, I don’t ask that of Jim when he is chicken sitting for me and finally caught a Buff Orpington sitting on an empty nest, so now I know which eggs to set aside for brooding when one of the hens gets broody this spring.

I don’t know which breed is laying the pinkish tan eggs far left, the Olive egger is obvious, the nearly white tan eggs are the Buff Orpington (at least one of them though I think the pinkish ones might be the other one. The darker brown even colored ones are the Red Stars, nice sized consistent eggs with good yolk structure and flavor, and then there is the girl with the faulty sprayer that lays a brown egg, sometimes speckled always with a color distortion on the wide end and the girl that lays extra elongated pointy eggs. I may never know though, because as soon as there are 14 Buff Orpingtons including Cogburn or his descendant, the rest will go to freezer camp and my eggs will be boring, but my flock self sustaining.

February 3, 2014
Home Again

This past week was one of my visits to Northern Virginia to aid with childcare for L (eldest grandson.) As RT (eldest son) had driven my car up there on Christmas to get their gifts home and to have some transportation for a month. Living in that area and on near a Metro line, they don’t own a car. Where they can’t get on the Metro, they go on their bicycles. If it is too far for that, they just don’t go. On Friday evenings, L has his guitar lesson for 30 minutes and RT manages to get their grocery shopping done and they load it all on their tandem bike or take the bus home. Having my car makes the whole process more convenient.

Because of the car already being there, I went up on the Amtrak train out of Lynchburg. It will be more convenient when it comes into Roanoke. I generally take the MegaBus, but there were no seats available on the day I needed it. The train ride was an interesting experience, I haven’t really ridden a train since before Jim and I married and prior to that taking it to college. For some reason, the train car was so hot, I stripped down to my t-shirt and slacks, but I wasn’t sharing a double seat, so I just piled all my snow layers in the seat beside me. Having not slept well the night before due to worrying whether we would be able to make the 109 mile drive in the snow that fell that night and having to get up at 3:30 a.m. to make the trip, I spent a good part of the 4 hours dozing.

Normally, L and I try to find outings together, but he opted to go to the School Aged Afterschool Care program one day to go roller skating and didn’t feel well the next day. Yesterday, he, RT, and I planned an outing to Chinatown in Washington DC to watch the Chinese New Year’s parade, fighting the traffic to get there and realize it was today instead. We used the time we had put on the parking meter to get some lunch in a Chinese Restaurant (surprisingly one of the only ones in Chinatown) then did the art scavenger hunt in the Luce Foundation part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

This morning, my car loaded, and breakfasted with bagel sandwiches made by RT for us, I pointed my car home and had an easy trip with little traffic and no bad weather. That is supposed to begin later with a bit of everything predicted this week, rain, ice, sleet and snow and one model showing us getting our first major storm this season with 18″ or more of snow. That will shut us in for a few days.

I enjoy my trips to help them, but am always glad to be home to my own schedule, our bed and routine.

February 2, 2014
The Sitter

Several times each academic year, she travels 4 hours northeast to have quality time with the eldest grandson. He is an active 8 year old, she has two score and 18 on him, but young at heart. Her primary purpose is to provide daycare on his non school days when his parents both have school and/or work. She supervises his homework and guitar practice on those days and gets to enjoy one on one time as well.

Often, an outting or two is planned, weather permitting, the winter being the most difficult to find things to do. His house is less than a mile from the Metro train into Washington, but the temperature is too cold to endure the walk and finding parking there is nearly impossible as it is a terminal commuter station. She seeks alternative activities.

Today he went roller skating with his School Age Child Care Program, thus giving her half a day of solo time. Time spent helping out the family with some household chores, buying a few groceries to have the rest of the ingredients for chicken enchiladas for dinner, utilizing some of the meat that her son helped put in the freezer last spring or fall.

Tomorrow, they will either brave the cold, though somewhat warmer and visit one of the Smithsonian museums on the mall or brave the traffic and visit the Space Museum near Dulles.

Family time will be enjoyed Saturday and she will return to her hubby and the farm life on Sunday.

January 30, 2014
All Good Things Must End

The holidays are over and with it, the travel time. These past couple of months have been quite atypical for us. We travel little, other than my jaunts to Northern Virginia to babysit for a few days, we generally take a weeklong ski trip, boarding the pups and a week long visit to our daughter’s family with the dogs.

This fall we left on a two week adventure after boarding the pups. One week of that was a Bahamas cruise with our youngest son and his family, then spent an additional week with them in their home. The dogs like the boarding kennel we use, but were glad to be home.

That was followed with Thanksgiving at home with eldest son and his family visiting, then a week later, boarding the beasties again for our week long trip to Zihuatenajo Mexico.

Back home from that the second week of December in time to decorate and finish shopping for Christmas, we had a couple of weeks to recover.

Christmas brought eldest son and grandson back for a few days to celebrate together and Christmas noon, they left in my car headed north to home and we loaded up gifts, luggage, and dogs in Hubby’s SUV to drive south for 4 days with daughter’s family.

The visit was fun. The kids love the dogs, with our two plus their golden, it was a houseful of fur. Our pups stoically tolerate the 13 to 14 hours each way driving.

It has been great, but we are tired and ready to be home for the winter. My neighbor has gotten more of my eggs this fall than have we and the freezer is full of our produce we haven’t been home to eat.

All of this was on top of last February’s week trip skiing in Colorado, a 3 day ski trip in West Virginia, and the 3 day August trip for the family gathering. That has put us away from home in the past year for 42 days. We have exhausted our travel quota til our energy and budget recover.

December 30, 2013
Holiday family time

The gift giving frenzies are done. Two days before Christmas I feared for the worst when I awoke with Norovirus. The day was miserable and the family left me to sleep and went to see The Hobbit. Fortunately Christmas Eve dawned over it. Our tradition is to have our Christmas dinner on the eve. The dinner was prepared, enjoyed and delicious. Christmas was a celebration of love and commercial avarice but so much fun watching the grands rip into their new gifts.

Santa brought me a new tablet and hubby a motorcycle jackest with armor for his new hobby.

We are loving family time, especially hubby who granddaughter has really decided is hers alone and wanted him to sleep with her last night.

December 27, 2013
The Stockings

Growing up, the tradition at Christmas was to have Christmas dinner on the eve of Christmas day. After dinner, stockings were hung and my sibs and I were shuffled off to bed so Santa could come. As an adult, I have heard some tales about this gift or that requiring assembly that only a child can handle. Our stockings were red felt stitched with white yarn and decorated with white felt cutouts, commercial and not very sturdy, fading and failing a bit more each year.

When I married and we started our family, I was committed to handmade stockings for each of us. I bought a crocheted pattern kit for hubby and decided that the same pattern could be made for me. The yarn for his is nice and firm and holds it shape well, mine on the other hand stretches and distorts. As each child was conceived, I bought a crewel work stocking kit which I lined for stability and wearability for each of them and the first two children got theirs for their first Christmas, the youngest didn’t get his until his second Christmas. Hey, after all, I had three children under the age of 7 and was outnumbered even with hubby’s help. Each of those stockings moved with the adult child to their new home, except eldest son’s and he generally spends Christmas here.

The tradition allowed the children to have their stockings as soon as they came downstairs to the living room, but the rest of the gifts had to wait for breakfast and the Christmas story.

When our second grandchild came along, daughter asked only a month before Christmas if I would make her son a stocking. Not having enough time to do a crewell work one and having yet to make socks successfully to knit one, I quilted it. It is cute, but firm and tight and hard to stuff.

Two years ago, daughter was due with her second in late November, but she asked way in advance and my knitting had improved to the point where I felt I could handle not only knitting the stocking, but doing colorwork to have a pattern on it. This stocking led to youngest son, who had also had a child that year asking if I could do one for his two children and our eldest grandson had never gotten his own stocking, so he also entered the queue. That meant I had 4 knit stockings to complete and send off by Christmas,

Traditionally, the toe of the stocking holds a small mesh bag of gold foil covered chocolate coins. They have become more difficult for me to find here in the mountains, but generally I can get them at Target. Not this year. There will be no gold foil covered coins, but the other traditions will live on.

I hope you and your family celebrate your special holiday with love and peace.

December 23, 2013
Mexican Night

Today is the day that our eldest son and family arrive to spend Christmas with us. Today is Saturday and Saturday at their house is Mexican night. The family is trying to learn Spanish, so on Saturday night, when son hasn’t had to work all day at the University, he prepares a Mexican dinner and they watch a movie in Spanish.

If you have been following my blog for at least a few weeks, you know that we spent the first week of December in Mexico, Zihuatanejo, on the southern Pacific side of Mexico, a quaint fishing village with lots of seafood as their traditional food, but it is in the state of Guerrero which is also noted for its Pozole Verde. It is traditionally served in restaurants on Thursdays and we had a Pozole Verde lunch on our second day there. I have had white and red Pozole before, but this was so much better.

When we arrived home, I searched the web for a recipe and found this http://www.patismexicantable.com/2011/09/you_know_you_want_it_green_pozole/. It looks like the soup we had in Mexico and I decided to give it a try to help them carry on their tradition. As we raise some meat chickens, I had a nice plump bird in the freezer for the meat base. Being a locavore, the other ingredients don’t really fit my life style, limes, avocados, and tomatillos (this time of year) and as dry hominy is not available here, I bought Mexican style canned. The recipe says it is better reheated, so Thursday afternoon and evening, I stewed the chicken in the crockpot, deboned and shredded it and added it back to the broth. It was put aside in the soup pot in the refrigerator until Friday, when I added the Mexican hominy and made the verde sauce and added it. It went back in the refrigerator until just before dinner today, it will be cooked for the last 30-45 minutes and the garnishes will be cut and put in service bowls and we will see how authentic it tastes.

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Now if I could just find recipes for the tiny hot pepper stuffed empanadas and the tiny cheese stuffed fried cones of masa to accompany it, I could at least dream that we were back in Mexico on a Thursday.

December 21, 2013