My Mom

    I fell off the wagon - the blogging wagon.  My mom came for five days and I had genuine intentions to blog anyway, but the bottom line is, I would rather spend time with my mom.  I took one more day off for recovery efforts, house cleaning and reorganizing the boys room, which always feels akin to a search and rescue mission.  Two hours of hunting Legos out of any and every corner sums up our work.  Last night it was beautiful.  Today K'nex were on the floor.  Can I complain?  The toys are signs of real life, being played out in these four walls.
     When my mom visits we inevitably end up doing arts and crafts or something creative.  We've painted a room.  We've put in a stone path.  We've all sat down for a watercolor lesson, resulting in stacks of cherry blossom trees.  This time there was no planning ahead, but oh, we couldn't help ourselves.  Saturday morning as we sat around the breakfast table, sipping the freshly roasted coffee my mom brought along, ideas started flying.  Soon Ally was running for the fabric boxes.  See what they made...

       The plan is to stitch these together into little tote bags and Ally wants to list them on Etsy.  We ran the owls through the washer so that the edges frayed out a little, looking like ruffled feathers.  We're so pleased.
     Monday afternoon as my mom and Ally were still combining and cutting fabrics, we decided to add a little entertainment and started listening to A Bride Goes West (No one even pays me for loving this...my mom came loaded down with Vision Forum books from the recent Economics conference).  The boys set up battles, Kara had a tea party, I sat knitting on the couch.  The afternoon felt quiet and productive, even Victoria Botkin's soothing voice seemed appropriate to the quiet.  We all loved this CD, the boys included.  This is an audio version of a first hand account written by young married woman who traveled from West Virginia out to Montana to start a cattle ranch.  Her adventures and the telling of them do not disappoint.  My mom loaned us the CD set and we're anxious to finish.  I'm sure even Bryan would love them, if I could just get him to start listening.
     The words of Nannie Alderson, the bride, have stayed with me all week.  Particularly when she wrote she realized she was feeling sorry for herself and what a dangerous place that is for a woman.  We all must learn contentment, whether we live in a home of cottonwood logs or a palace.  Or a big old house with green vinyl siding.  No feeling sorry for myself, even if my mom did have to go home and school, laundry, shopping and bills await.