Take a Hike!

Tonight, I'm operating a little off from my normal routine. Usually, I try to have read -or at least scanned through -all the posts on my reader before I start my post but tonight, I'm going to do my post first, then try to get as many posts up on my reader read before I go to bed.

I had a really nice day today -didn't get much done on my tablecloth, but I did get out, visited a couple folks I hadn't seen in a while, got some groceries, stopped to see one of my classmates from high school and got a fairly light supper fixed for us -just grilled burgers and had baked beans to go with it. Just enough but not too much.

I intended to go up to Kylertown to check out a yard sale I'd seen advertised in our local paper but that idea got foxed when I saw the sale isn't until tomorrow. Rats! That means if I want to go up there tomorrow I'll have to either go up early-early in the a.m. or wait till Mandy gets home from working tomorrow (she's helping a good friend of ours clean her house.) If I want to go up any time in between, I'll have to take both kids with me and I really can't see dragging both of them to a yard sale as being a fun thing for me!

I had Maya with me on all my little adventures today -which was nice but at times a tad nerve-wraking too. For openers, remember the video I posted the other day of her singing with the children's choir at church this past Sunday? Well, she has been showing us over and over again that she knows the words and usually remembers most of the melody too as she has been singing that song Every. Single. Day! ALL. DAY. LONG. too!!! Much as I do love the song, etc., it's starting to wear on me right about now.

But anyway, while we were out early this afternoon, I stopped out in the area known here as Sylvan Grove to visit my good friend, Helen Ann,and two of her daughters -Ann Marie and Jeanne. The three of them all live together in a beautiful home Annie got oh probably about 10-15 years ago now. Helen's parents were my next-door neighbors when I was growing up -the big Little family here in town. (They had 13 children -11 girls and 2 boys!) When I was in high school, I started out hanging out over at Helen Ann and her husband, Joe Benny's house with Helen's sister, Rose, who is the same age as me. (Rose is one of my classmates who tries to meet with me and three others for our monthly lunch-bunch get-together.)

Because way back in the days (when I was in high school) I started to babysit for Helen and Joe, I'm close to her and her kids as well as her entire family I guess you could say. And, back then, for some reason, Rose started to refer to Helen and Joe as Aunt Helen Ann and Uncle Joe Benny and that stuck. I've called her Aunt Helen Ann for oh, probably at least 50 years now and though her husband died five years ago in January, I still refer to him as Uncle Joe Benny. And, when my kids came along, to keep it straight who we were referring to when talking about this or that person around the little village here, if it was someone from the Little family, we just tacked the "Aunt" or "Uncle" on to each member's name and that way, my kids knew who I was referring to. Made life relatively simpler for us that way. (And truthfully, the majority of the Little family are very much like aunts or uncles to my kids, so it's rather appropriate, don't you think?)

So anyway, Maya and I had a nice visit with Aunt Helen Ann -who we hadn't seen since before winter set in last year! Yeah, ridiculous, I know to live that close -only about five miles apart -and yet, not get out and down there to at least say hello. (Mandy also worked for Aunt Helen's second daughter and her husband -Charmaine and Jim -at the little restaurant/bar they used to have here and which we frequented a good bit too, so Mandy is also very close to this branch of the Little family because of that too.)

After supper this evening, Mandy suggested we go for a walk -take the kids and maybe completely wear them out so they wouldn't have enough energy left to throw any hissy fits then when it came time to go to bed tonight. And, since it was actually nice tonight -not too hot, just nice and comfortable -that's exactly what we did.

As we went up the road, at the curve a couple houses up from our place, I noticed the lady who lives there seated in her wheel chair, looking out at us. So, we stopped and went down and talked to her for a good while. I've known Steveanna for well over 50 years since she and her late husband bought this house and raised their four children there. She lost a leg a couple of years back due to diabetes, spent a long, long recuperative period in a nursing home but about 2 1/2 years ago now, she was considered well enough to manage on her own at home. She has the wheel chair but she also uses a walker to get around in her house.
You might want to "bigify" this picture in order to see the white peonies blooming here. This is a bush in the front of Stevanna's yard and I noticed that in the back, behind her house, she has a big long row of peonies -some light pink, some rose colored and more of these white ones too -all in full bloom and absolutely beautiful! I commented to her about the peonies and how lovely they are and she told me the ones in behind her house, she transplanted there shortly after she and her husband moved in there -probably about 56-57 years ago. And they had been planted by the lady who had originally owned this house - Miss Emma Blade -who was better known around our street when I was a kid and to my Mom as well, when she was growing up here, as "The Dressmaker." Very few people ever called that lady by anything but that -"The Dressmaker."

After we left Steveanna's and headed up the road, we stopped to talk with the young woman who used to have a daycare setup in her home and who watched Maya for probably a year or so when I wasn't up to taking care of her some days back then. She too hadn't seen either of the kids for a long time so was quite surprised at how big they both are now -naturally -but we were also surprised that Maya remembered her name (Theresa) and also remembered her son, Jacob, who was one of Maya's few playmates when she was very small.

Coming back too our house, I took a couple pictures of things blooming alongside of our road. All these blossoming things just really made me feel so good about our little walk too as some of these I know are blackberry bushes and maybe, if they produce berries and the branches are close enough to the road that they hang over with their produce, we can take a container along on a walk later this summer and come home with some fresh blackberries and get a really good pie out of the deal.


Here's Maya, picking some little flowers too -some daisies, buttercups, a few clover and even managed to find a blossom from a Phlox plant some place as well. Her posies made for a pretty little bouquet in a vase sitting on the middle of our dining room table now too.

But this sight in the photo below here was probably the one that was the most exciting for the kids!
This is the fish pond behind the house belonging to one of my son's best friends -Kevin. Both the kids KNOW that there is a pond behind this house -and yes, it is just a small one that Kev constructed and filled after he moved in here a couple years back, but both of them will pull us to go up the drive to see the fish -even Kurtis! And both of them love to visit there too. Thankfully, Kev was nice enough on one of Mandy's visits with the kids to have shown her where he keeps some food for the fish so now, when we drop by, whether he's home or at work, Mandy can get a little feed out and let the kids enjoy tossing it into the water and then watch the feeding frenzy too as all these fish start to zoom around, biting at the bits floating atop the water.

Now, I know to that when Mandy suggested we go for a walk tonight, she had an ulterior motive too. It wasn't just to make sure the kids were tired out and would crash quickly when we got home, but it was also a ploy to try to get Grammy here to get out of the recliner and get even a little bit of exercise!

I know she's right too in suggesting I do this -and not just one time either -but every day that we can, we should go for a walk as yes, it would be good for her and even better probably for me.

And yes, I know as much as I'd like to lose weight -and should really try -getting even this little bit of exercise (we walked probably a little over a mile in all tonight) would most likely be more beneficial for me than searching all over the internet for information on weight loss and getting stuff like a slimming pills review too ya know.

But I have to say this about our walk tonight, in terms of the exercise and the value of that, the roughest part of the walk was going to see the fish pond.

Why? Well, because where Kevin lives is on the side of the hill and his driveway means a long walk, straight uphill! Now what I'd really need for the exercise program to be fully effective would be to walk up and down his driveway several times a day!

Then of course, when I'd get to the top, I could sit on a chair and toss fish food into the pond and watch the fish do something with the abandon I know I should eliminate too in my own eating habits!