In His Grip
What a day, yesterday! I know. That seems like such a lame way to start this post, but it's the truth. We have been feverishly working on all the details to be able to open registration, this week, for the first summer session for our equine therapy riding program. I have basically been sitting at this computer, non-stop, for days and days. Then, yesterday, I got a call that the fall my dad suffered the night before had gone from him being badly beat up, but okay, to wacky blood work, confusion, concussion and puzzling CT scans. Dad's been undergoing treatment for the last 3 months for vasculitis of the brain, so that was factored into all this as well, and making all of it seem...
A Reminder
My daughter was recently at Target (her second address) with the kids, shopping for Mother's Day cards. Lilli was in the back of the buggy (I'm sure either begging for a cookie, or already eating one), as Emmie's reading different cards. Finally, Lilli, no doubt bored, decided to include herself in what was happening. "What's it say, Momma?" "It says, 'Mom, there's no one like you.'" "What?! No one likes you??? I like you, Momma!!" Cute, huh? I just love that Lilli was not only horrified at the thought that no one liked her mother, but was also very quick to make sure her momma knew there was at least one person who did! She was taking good care of her mother's heart, and knew...
High Maintenance
Maintenance. We maintain a lot of things in this life, don't we? Cars, homes, appliances, pets, health, appearance, relationships, and the list goes on. Mainly, it's the things in our lives we value that find us taking the extra steps needed to keep them in good working order. Sometimes it's the expense to fix them that drives us to make sure they don't break down, but in some cases its the threat of an emotional toll that makes the additional work and attention worthwhile. We move our schedules around to make time for maintenance, cancelling appointments to meet technicians at the house, or opting for a drive-thru at lunch to make time for an oil change. We spend quite a bit of...
Pushing Up
We are planting a vegetable garden. Or, I guess I should say we are trying to plant one. The beds were beautifully prepared by my husband, and I got them seeded, and we had moved on to figuring out what kind of fence we were going to put around it, as we knew we'd have a problem with a variety of critters finding those tender green shoots irresistible. Yesterday I walked out and Kevin told me we had a problem with the garden. Already, before we could barely even see the tiny bits of green peeking out, the garden was being trampled to death by night visitors. Out here, it could be just about anything! I went down, and sure enough, those fragile little plants trying so hard to push up...
The Inevitable Crash
I heard something yesterday that took me back to when, years ago (and before we moved to Iowa), Kevin and I used to take a "Let's Find Winter" trip every January. We'd go to snowy places and do snowy things and have some good, snowy fun. By far, my favorite of those trips was to Lake Placid, New York. We stayed in an incredible lodge in the Adirondacks, which paid grand homage to the Great Camps of the Gilded Age, and did just about every type of snow activity available, including things like outdoor-on-a-pond ice skating, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, an evening horse-drawn sleigh ride, dog-sledding, and tobogganing. (No, we didn't ski. It was so cold that trip that we had ice on the inside...