The Child Within Us

Last night, as we were relaxing, having coffee and brownies after dinner and as Pastor Carrie was entertaining Maya and Kurtis (or maybe they were entertaining her???) Mandy took a couple of photos and I had a thought at that time for a neat title for my next blog post -about the evening -which of course, by the time I got around to writing this now, I had forgotten the great title for this masterpiece.

Don't you just hate it when you get struck, full force, in the face, with your own senility?

But anyway -just figured I'd give you all a little bit of an update on last night's dinner and today -etc., etc., etc. (Have you by now figured out that "The King and I" is one of my all-time favorite movies? Etc., etc., etc.!!!)

The bread I baked turned out great -good texture, flavor -just nice. The city chicken also cooked up okay and was good -as were the potatoes, tossed salad, candied carrots -oh, and the Brownies, from a Ghiardelli brownie mix that Mandy used. All good!

We think Kurtis may actually kind of remember Pastor Carrie from his hospital stay since she was there with Mandy the day of his surgery for about two hours or so and even helped to hold him down so the nurses could replace his IV that he so nicely had pulled out of his arm. She was also there at the hospital the day before he was discharged and about a half-hour after she left, is when he suddenly started to drink fluids again. (Which, if you remember, was the causative that landed him back in the hospital in the first place when he refused to drink anything!)

Maya wasn't here for supper last night as she had been visiting with her Aunt Kathy during the afternoon and early evening and by the time she came home, we were dealing in dessert. Of course, that was fine with Maya as she had been eyeing up the pan of brownies earlier in the day and Mandy had put them up atop the freezer in order to prevent them from having all kinds of poke holes in the top of them -from Maya's little fingers trying to dig out a bite here, a bite there of one of her favorite food substances -chocolate!

At supper though, Kurtis was fairly well-behaved although his quirks about what he will and won't eat were evident -wouldn't eat any meat, potatoes or carrots but he did have a big helping of cottage cheese and some freshly baked rye bread with lots of butter on it.

After supper, after dessert too, Maya wanted to show Pastor Carrie the tents -indoor type -the kids have so she got out the Fire house tent and proceeded to start crawling in and out of it. To her surprise though she soon found herself being joined in the tent by Pastor Carrie, who had dropped down on her hands and knees on the floor and crept into one of the two tent opening! Kurtis saw her moving on the floor and immediately came running over to join forces with them too then. So for quite a while therafter, it was two little kids and a grown up playing in the tents and going on a "field trip" which is what Maya decided they were doing.

Don't believe me? Here, see for yourselves!








Now, do you believe me? Trust me when I tell you this, there was much laughter and merriment -squeals of happiness galore from both the kids as they crawled in and out, heads popping up and down in the top opening of the tent and well, lots of other laughter in the room too from Mandy and me as we watched all of this unfold.

Judging from this photo of Pastor Carrie, after the kids gave up the ghost and quit playing in the tent, looks like they may have really played her out, doesn't it?

And, considering how quickly both Maya and Kurtis fell asleep last night, I think it is safe to say that they were played out too!

Today has been one of those days though that just are kind of befuddling at times -when I am not sick or anything, but just have this feeling deep in the pit of my stomach of unrest, kind of sad, depressed, but no rhyme or reason behind it. I think it might be a bit of being tired, not resting very well as I woke up around 2:30-3 a.m. and couldn't fall back to sleep until near to 6 a.m. this morning.

Tonight, the two other children of the son-in-law's were here for supper. I tend to get a little antsy about cooking a meal for them as sometimes, they can be a bit persnickity about what they will or won't eat. They do much better now than they did a few years ago -which could be due to a bit of maturity seeping in there -or perhaps they finally adjusted to my "house rules" which are that I cook one meal for all -not several for a few people, based on individual taste buds. Ok, I do break that rule from time to time with Kurtis and Maya, in that if I am fixing something like roast beef or some other main course that I know they will not touch with a ten-foot pole, I do try to have some old faithful, macaroni and cheese, on stand-by, so they won't go hungry! If anyone would have told me 10, 20, 30 years ago that I would cook like that someday in the future, I would have very matter of factly responded that it wouild be a "cold day in Hell" that I would be cooking like I was running a restaurant here. And yet, that day has arrived -quite a while back too, now that I think of it -and made a liar out of me. My advice now is "never say never!" Tonight's menu consisted of Chicken divan (chicken and broccoli casserole made with cream of chicken soup, Hellman's mayo and cheese sauce -which even Maya and Kurtis ventured forward and ate -along with some more of Gram's homemade rye bread. Both the little kids, as well as the two bigger ones, ate plenty of the rye bread too!)

The son-in-law's ex-mother-in-law, who has custody of his two middle kids, told Mandy this morning that the granddaughter who lives with her had come home from school yesterday very upset. Seems the almost 17-year-old -who Mandy had the go-round with the other day and who gathered up some of her belongings here and is currently staying with her Mom -had given her younger sister her version of how unfairly she had been treated her by Mandy and the younger girl was quite put out by the whole thing. The grandmother had explained to her though that everyone has "house rules" and the smoking, being one that Mandy was adamant about the older girl NOT doing that in the house and especially not in her bedroom, sneaking around about it, etc., and that Mandy was not the villan in this whole deal the way the older girl had portrayed her. While the kids were here though, neither one of them said word one to Mandy about the absence of their older sister so apparently what their grandmother told them had sunk in and they were okay with her explanation of things.


I got a little surpise today though when Mandy and Kurtis returned home from a trip into town for his "Floortime" therapy session. Mandy had stopped and picked up the mail and when she brought it in, she handed me a box and asked what I had ordered from Amazon. "Well, nothing, that I can think of," I told her.

But as I opened the package and saw what it was, I knew right away where it had come from -without even seeing the slip inside the packaging.

It was a copy of the book "The Shack" by Wm. Paul Young. I'd mentioned in a comment recently that I'd heard a lot about this book and was going to put it on a list that I could pass out to my kids closer to Christmas of things I might just appreciate having -or else, I was also thinking of purchasing it for myself if need be too!

Well, seems my good friend out in Arizona took it upon himself to make sure that I did indeed get a copy of this book and I have already now read almost the first 100 pages of it -having started reading it almost immediately after opening the package. And yes, it is a story that really pulls you, draws you into it, deeper and deeper.

And thank you Keith, for the pleasant surprise and your generosity. I'll pass this on to Mandy when I finish it and most likely also to my older daughter, Carrie, too -as judging by what I've read thus far, I think both my girls will also enjoy reading this piece.

I've been trying to work on the current embroidery project too now -as much as possible, whenever I can. This is a tablecloth -larger than the other two I have already completed (52x52 iches square) and it is embroidery, not cross stitch, with lots and lots and yes, lots more flowers and leaves, all done in satin stitch with a preponderence too of centers in these flowers that require tons more french knots and lazy-daisy stitches. Anyone familiar with embroidery stitches will understand what I mean when I say LOTS of those particular stitches! So far, I have all the dark green and lighter green stitching done and am now working on the black floss areas which are either lazy-daisy stitches or french knots. Once I get those all done on the fabric, I will then start to stitch in the various colored flowers -crimson, Christmas Reds, oranges, gold and russet type tones -and those will all be satin stitches. The directions say that some of the flowers are supposed to be done using a "long and short" stitch but I have difficulty with that one so am going to just do them all in the satin stitch. Thankfully, so far anyway, the greenery done in satin stitch has all turned out a-okay!

And that is pretty much the extent of my life the past two days now!

I took some of my meds this afternoon too and the feelings in my gut are slowly disappearing too so apparently those little pink pills are doing what they are supposed to do -easing up my tension levels.

Time now for me to try to get a couple more stragetically placed stitches into my embroidered masterpiece while I can still manage to keep my eyes open. Hopefully, I'll be able to stay awake long enough tonight to watch one of my favorite programs too -"The Office!" Love the humor in that program!

And after that, I'm sure it will be "lights out" for my eyes very quickly -probably will be a close race between Maya and me as to which one of us will crash and burn first tonight cause I am beat!