Happy Birthday, Laurel

Today is my sister, Laurel's, birthday.  She is a tiny bit over 2 years younger than me but for most of the years I've known her that hasn't mattered at all.  (It does seem like there were a couple of years in our teens when we didn't have much in common but that was a short time a long time ago.)

In honor of her birthday, I thought I'd share a few things that not everybody might know about her.

And we'll start with the very early years.  She's always been blond but when she was really little, she was a real towhead.  Here she is with our little brother whose birthday is also today and who was born exactly a year after Laurel.

There were two girls and two boys in our family and Laurel and I were almost inseparable during our growing up years.

We grew up on a farm and spent all our leisure and work times together.  We shared responsibility for breakfasts, helping with supper, cleaning up after, feeding the rabbits, and weeding the garden.  We shared hours playing with the kittens and lambs, riding our horse, playing baseball in the orchard, and walking down the field road.

She always carried her babies like this:  (She's 7 months pregnant here)

We spent the most time together as our kids were growing up.  In fact, we used to take turns cleaning our houses.  It was so much more fun with two doing the work instead of one.

 

 She's a mover and a shaker.  She stayed with us a short time a few years ago and we finally got the wallpaper taken down in our hall and living room.  We also re-designed one of our ponds and probably did lots of other little projects that don't come to mind right now.

She bought a house all by herself, improved it (a lot!), and now rents it out.

She has three beautiful daughters and two handsome sons.

 

She's a baby and little kid magnet.  They all seem to fall in love with her at first sight.  (Even my little namesake.)

She's fun-loving.

 

But quiet and un-assuming.

Her legs and hand were once featured on a billboard on I-94.

She's married to a wonderful man who shares her love for almost everything including travel.

She and I took an overnight trip to Missouri and returned on a bus a couple of days late.

And we took a trip to North Dakota and returned on a bus a couple of days late.

We shared an apartment, rode the South Shore together every morning and every night when we both worked in Chicago, dated and later married two guys who worked on the South Shore, and shared every secret, confidence, joy, and pain that two sisters could share.

And most importantly, she's a wonderful person who would do anything for anybody.  She's never one to let grass grow under her feet and has always striven to improve herself and help those around her improve as well.   She's an excellent landscaper, decorator, and even a great golfer.  For all these things, I should be a little jealous, but I'm not.  I know I'm the lucky one.  She's my sister.

So, happy birthday, Laurel.  I hope it's awesome!!!

Some Nostalgia

At Beth's last week, I heard her musing about what her next You Capture subject would be. One of the subjects she mentioned was Rustic and we talked about it a little but then she decided on Industrial instead. For some reason, though, my mind latched on Rustic and I determined to try to catch some Rustic shots for the next You Capture.

Two days before You Capture day, I mentioned how hard I'd been working to capture Rustic pictures and Beth reminded me that the subject was Industrial. Rats!

As it turned out a family emergency distracted me from even thinking about a post so it didn't matter; but today, as I looked through those pictures, I wondered what to do with them. Finally, I decided they belonged in a post because the first place I sought Rustic was an abandoned farm where I'd spent many years and hours and happy family events.

The house is long gone, torn down after my dad moved to a continuing care facility but that old barn still stands - although barely.

When we first moved here, it was a dairy farm. This milk house, attached by a hallway to the barn, was where the milk was cooled after each milking, where it was stored until the big tank truck picked it up each day, and where all those milking buckets and accessories were washed.

The silo was where the cut green corn stalks were stored and allowed to ferment before being fed to the milk cows.

Eventually, the dairy operation proved to be too much work for a family operation where my younger brother was in high school, my older brother in National Guard basic training, my sister and I worked full time in Chicago, and dad worked full time so most of the work was on the shoulders of my overworked but ever optimistic mom.

But still the barn was a hub of activity. Dad had a workshop here where he fixed, fabricated, and invented everything from tools and cars to farm equipment and household items. He did it all and his sons and grandsons worked a lot here too, spending endless hours learning from a man who had a lot to teach and a personality that made everything exciting and hilarious.
It's hard to believe that it could have deteriorated this much so quickly but I guess it just shows what neglect can do. And, I think more than neglect punches holes through concrete block - maybe target practice but more than neglect.

It probably started with the roof. Once it was no longer patched, the barn was vulnerable to the effects of the weather and pretty soon nothing could have saved it. The lightning rods with their weather vanes on the roof fans are still there though.

In a way, I hated to take these pictures because I knew they'd make me sad but there's more than sadness in my heart when I look at them.

There are thousands of happy memories. I look at the pictures and see my mom and dad - happy, hard-working, and perfect! I see family get-togethers where our children played so freely and happily and learned to love their cousins like siblings.

The house may be gone and the barn might as well be, but the memories are intact. Sometimes it just takes a picture or two to bring them out.

Dreams

I've heard a lot about dreams over the years. I'm very skeptical of dreams coming true and whenever someone tells me that they had a bad dream, I assure them that we dream about what we subconsciously worry about. And if we dream about these things, they might be something that we should consciously address so that we don't dream about them anymore. That's why I know that if a child has a nightmare, he needs to talk about it in as much detail as possible, so that he or she doesn't have it again. I firmly believe that's true.

But what about dreams that do come true? What about Mr. Right's dream about Superbaby? Sometimes dreams really do seem to portend the future. How do we explain away the unpleasant and keep the pleasant?

And do dreams serve a purpose? Last weekend when my big little brother was up from Tennessee, he told me that he pays attention to all his dreams and that they are very important and serve as guidelines in living his life and also foretell good (and bad) fortune. Maybe it's the power of suggestion. When we have a dream that something great is going to happen and it does, could it be because we believe it will; thereby helping it to happen? There's a lot about our consciousness that we don't know and don't understand.

My big little brother also told me that you can teach yourself to remember your dreams. He said that after I say my prayers at night, when I'm nice and relaxed, I should repeat "I will remember my dreams" until I fall asleep. That night I tried it. It was the night before my big little brother's son's wedding and I had a confused, difficult, stressful dream about being lost, dressing completely inappropriately for a shower, and in general doing everything wrong. I hadn't decided what I would wear to the wedding that day but when I woke up, wrote down the dream, and thought about it, I immediately went shopping for something appropriate to wear and I was glad I did.

I think that dream helped. I've remembered parts of two dreams since then. In one, I had a granddaughter with me about 8 months old who belonged to my oldest daughter. She says that one isn't going to play out, but only time will tell. And I had another dream about Africa that I remember very little about and I don't believe there's any possibility that it could have any significance in my life. Of course it might help if I had written it down and if I could remember at least a little more about it.

But, what do you think? Do dreams come true? Are they significant? Are they something that we all should pay a little more attention to? I'm starting to think so and I'd be interested in knowing what you think.

A Wild and Crazy Weekend!

I've missed my blogsites and I worry about what I haven't recorded in my blog/journal and that I will forget some important (to me) details.

Friday, in the early afternoon, my two brothers came over and we spent a good deal of time going through the picture albums that I have created for them and that they didn't even know about. When I take or receive through email or find in old albums, pictures of people, I try to file them in an album for each person in chronological order. If the picture has two or more people in it, I copy it with the names of each person at the beginning of the label. For example a picture that I took on August 7th at 6:23 p.m. with my brother Steve, me and my brother Andy in it would be labeled like so: Steve 20090807 1823 Nikon 2101 Steve Mary Andy. And there would be one for each of us with the prefix changing by first name.

But I digress. This weekend the reason my baby brother Andy was in town was because his only child, Andrew, got married. I only wish my sister would have been able to make it over for this picture. It's a rare day when we get a picture of the four of us together.

Saturday, my oldest daughter Lori and her family came to town, we went to the wedding, and the reception in the evening.

We stopped at the casino for an hour after the reception so that our son-in-law could parlay his $50 birthday gift into $200 (how awesome) and we all got to bed late.

Sunday we went to lunch at a local restaurant to celebrate our son-in-law's birthday and spend some time with the kids before they headed out of town.

After they left, Mr. Right and I packed up and headed to Michigan to have dinner with our second daughter at what she calls (and I tend to agree) the Best Mexican Restaurant in the world.

We actually got to eat in one of the "rooms of our own" at the top of the stairs.

We spent the night in Michigan, then headed to the lakeside campsite where our daughter and son-in-law were staying. It was too windy to go fishing early so we went to the county fair where I collected some action shots for Beth's You Capture this week.

Since the wind had quieted in the evening, we fished until after nine o'clock where everybody caught a fish except me (but I really caught them all with my Nikon D40X lol)

My daughter and son-in-law caught lots of fish but Mr. Right only caught one so I hate that I only got blurry pictures of his. I wasn't jealous. HONEST!!!

Anyway, Mr. Right and I headed for home at almost 9:30 p.m. It was a solid two hour drive and we finally got home (after picking up Taco Bell for dinner) at 11:30. Whew!

Today, I'm going to try to get back on track with posting, walking, and daily routines that I'm trying to establish for my retirement.

I LOVE my life!!!!