October's Bright Blue Weather

October speaks to me in tones of blue and gold.  It's one of the prettiest times of the year.  One year I was driving west on I-80 and the cottonwood trees by the river were dressed up in yellow shiny leaves against the best blue sky that October can offer. Blue is my favorite color and October blue is the best blue there is. 

A lot of other good things happened in October this year and they all add up to family:

The sweetness of a new baby.

The bittersweet days of remembrance.

The joy of boys and cookies and leaves.

Baby cuteness...And...

The love that keeps our family together. 

 

We don't gather to play in the leaves every year.  It depends on weather, wind, and leaf fall and whether or not letting the leaves lie interfere with lawn mowing. It's a little fun time to make some memories and take some pictures.

Moments in Time

 September 28, 2022

On this day a baby was born. 

3:16 AM, 6# 13oz., 18 inches

On this day, a much awaited baby girl to add to the story of the Troyer family.

A baby girl all the more precious following the loss of Bennett Wilder in April 2021.

Calla arrived after a harrowing labor very early Wednesday morning. We got the news at getting up time and started to make our plans. We arrived in Indiana Thursday night and got our snuggle time  at the hospital.

And now, on the way home to start a new chapter of life. 

A New Season

Pieces of this summer have been very busy and in September we aren't seeing any let up. Zane, in 8th grade still has afternoon football games and Barry and Christian had a month of soccer. 

Christian and I haven't done much piano playing lately, but here we are playing 

"I love coffee". If you don't know it, look it up, you'll probably recognize it. 

Earlier in the year Barry found this kitten in a park where they were playing baseball and begged Papa to keep it, so we did, needing a mouse-catcher anyway.  Mittens has settled in and while she catches a few mice, she love to play with people the best.

"thumbs"

If you look for number 45, that's Zane.

Miss P loves her dogs.

 

Busy Weekend

I am enjoying this Labor weekend. It is always nice to have a Monday off from thinking about going to the office.  It's nice to have a day to get a bunch of things done at home without having responsibilities and places to go. 

We started the weekend with my yearly visit to the retina specialist on Friday. and it threw the days plans into disarray. I had planned to go to the bank, the courthouse, and the post office and then I remembered that appointment. I took all those things along so Jim could do the driving and those things get done anyway.  I don't mind driving from a Kearney eye appointment, but my doctor (based in Hasting, with an office in Grand Island and borrows a Kearney office once a week) has decided that non-emergency cases don't have priority to a "home" office.  I'm glad I'm not "serious" anymore, but it is a pain to have to drive somewhere besides here. 

Before the weekend, Aaron and the boys (enthusiastic helpers) cut 6. SIX, mind you, Walmart bags stuffed with elderberry heads.  After reading that the stems and leaves are toxic, I painstakingly stripped the berries off to get 12 cups of the tiny berries to make jelly.  I got syrup the first time because the recipe called from sure-jell (powdered pectin) not certo (liquid-pectin) which Jim has been eating enthusiastically on toast. So, I did it all again, 3 hours of picking over (no help from Jim this time) and using sure-jell, I made beautiful jelly. I wish I could taste it. My mother has been unenthusiastic from the start saying she had elderberry jelly when a girl and it was awful. I wonder if it was really elderberry jelly or had less sugar or as Mom said, she was a girl, not grown up. 

The evening of the successful jelly day, we went to Zane's cross-country meet. It was an invitational with 10 or so schools there. It's our first meet so we were unprepared for what to expect.  Meets take place at golf courses and there is no parking for the myriad of parents and grandparents that come who all must take separate cars. We got there just before 7:30, the starting time and parking down hill on what seem like a half mile away and was likely a quarter-mile.  The Jr. high kids only run a mile, which the high schoolers run three and it is a brutal course with steep hills. One high school boy collapsed just at the finish line and couldn't go any farther. I didn't see what happened to him because we had to be somewhere else, but on the way home and an ambulance was coming back, so I wondered if it had transported than boy. We watched Zane start and finish. There must have been about 30 runners with him. Last week he ran in Burwell and got 7th. It wasn't such a hard course as this one. It was hard on everyone. Jim and I went home driving into the setting sun. I dropped Jim off at Underground Construction and went on home. Driving into the sun was absolutely blinding. I'm too short for visors to do any good, and turning from a side road onto the bypass was terrifying.  I could see nothing.  I blocked the sun with my arm and hoped for the best. 

As you can read, I made it home alright.

Zane is second from the left, making a start. I didn't get any at the finish.

After that Thursday and our uneventful Friday, we spent Saturday at the Zoo. We've been wanting to go by ourselves for several years and as the weather was mild (82), we made our plans and went. We saw nearly everything we wanted to, including the baby elephants and by the end of the day after watching the sea lions being fed, we were exhausted and glad to get on the road for home.  We stopped in Lincoln and had a lovely early supper at Cracker Barrel and went to bed early. 

On Sunday we had a little respite from the hot weather and we took our bikes out to ride.  We rode from the interstate to Fort Kearny State Park, which is Jim's favorite.  We rode all around the park because we haven't done that before and Jim wanted to look at the progress of a job he did out there that he was supposed to finish.  It was obviously finished without him and the leftover materials are with them, not us. It was still nice out so we had a fire in the fire pit and Jim made s'mores with fudge stripe cookies, which I can't eat.  Not having any supper, we were casting our minds around what else we could cook out there. I didn't think I was hungry until Jim was making fried egg and cheese sandwiches in our cast iron skillet and roasting one potato in the fire, which we halved.  I buried the potato in the coals

wrapped in foil for barely a half an hour. It was yummy.

We stayed by the fire listening to the frogs by the pond sing until it was dark and then we went to bed. 

We spent Labor Day, laboring.  Jim helped me with tomatoes, we got 10 dozen quarts of juice. I finished knitting a pair of baby booties, paid my bills, reconciled my accounts and found that my bank is now charging me $35 a month, bye, bye, bank. I also tidied up some little jobs and washed three loads of laundry. Jim spent the part of the day that wasn't tomatoes by working on enlarging the chicken run and the chicken waterer. I enjoy a good working day. There is a satisfaction in accomplishment. 

Oh by the way, my retinas are just fine have been staying that way for awhile.

 

John Deere Travel

On our way to Indiana this summer we stopped on the way in the Davenport, Iowa/Moline, Illinois area at the John Deere Pavilion. 

Since Jim is interested in all thing John Deere we wanted to see what they had to show. There were some old things to see and also some very new ones. There was the very newest combine there which has to be one of the hugest things I've ever seen.  I don't know why they have to be so big. It was more than twice as tall as Jim. A picture on my camera can't show the size. 

I probably enjoyed browsing the gift shop the most. We bought some new t-shirts for us and something for the new baby girl on the way.  This auger set up reminds me of the auger my brothers had.  We didn't have a grain bin, but we spent lots of time auger-ing up popcorn into some sort of wagon.

We had our supper at a cute little place just across the street...

...then walked by the Mississippi and took a Channel Cat ride down the river.

The next day we went on to our final destination, to see Lynette and Anthony.

 

Too Many Words

 There are sayings that I use that I don't know what category to put them in.

All is fair in love and war.

Better late than never

Better safe than sorry

Be there with bells on

Blown out of the water

Can't get a word in edgewise

Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades

Crazy as a loon

Fish or cut bait

 Getting up with the chickens

Greatest thing since sliced bread

He has a mind like a steel trap 

He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. 

In like Flynn

In one ear and out the other

It's been a coon's age

It's nothing to sneeze at

It's water under the bridge

Living from hand to mouth

Missing the boat

Once in a blue moon

Passing the buck

Piece of cake

Sticks out like a sore thumb

There's a bee in your bonnet

Too many cooks spoil the broth

Tougher than whang leather

What goes around comes around

This doesn't quite fit in with what I was collecting, but it's a good saying:

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink

Plus I'm getting tired of collecting.  It has been rather amusing to see what other people have found. 

Close but no cigar

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth 

Go big or go home

Healthy as a horse

I feel like death warmed over

Lollygagging (wasting time)

Not all it's cracked up to be

Over egg the pudding

Strike while the iron is hot

Thick as thieves

Jim's dad's favorites

It can rain pretty easy once it gets started

All signs fail in a drought

Going Home

 I'm in my home town this week.

I have a home in another place.  I've lived there for nearly 40 years.

Somehow, "going home" means going to the place where my life started, 

even though I was there only 18 years. 

I took a walk to the grocery store the other morning.  I wanted potatoes for supper and I needed some exercise.  It's only about 6 blocks to the store. 

 As I walked I remembered: 

This house had a big tree in front and it's gone. Woodland phlox bloomed bluely under that tree in the spring.

We had friends in this house. The cellar under the house was small and dark.  I remember when they jacked up their house to put a half basement under it.  

These two houses I'm going by weren't here when I was. I don't remember what was here before.

This next house was on my paper route.  The lady of the house asked me what grade I was in and I told her "Junior", and she said, "How nice to be in junior high."  I was the tallest I ever was then, 

and I'm no taller now. 

On my way home I took another street, the one I walked up and back down to school first to the elementary school and then to the bus parked there to go the the Jr./Sr. High School.

There was the house that everyone said a witch lived in, so we never walked on that side of the street.  

In later years when I was delivering papers, I discovered that she was no witch, but an ordinary, nice lady.

I walked past the house where a friend and I heard banging and a cry for help. We went in and I stayed with the lady while my friend ran for help. I think she broke her leg.  I don't remember anymore of the incident.

In the alley behind that house lived a Shetland pony for a few years and we would stop after school to feed it grass.  

This next house, resplendent with Victorian trimmings had a dog.  I was afraid of dogs.

Here lived a family with a girl my age.  Once bicycling madly home from there I fell off my bike onto my face and had lovely scabs and bruises for school picture day.  It was there I saw that the speed of light is faster than the speed of sound.  

The next house is a big stucco one with an enclosed porch.  My parents were friends with them since they both belonged to the school, one a teacher, one a principal. I never got to see in that house, and oh, I wanted to.  It was there, after putting a washer on my finger (in my defense about was about 6), the man of the house put the washer with my finger in it in his vise and filed carefully through it.  I haven't put anything more on my fingers except my wedding ring.

.And THIS house -- the band teacher lived there and my friend and I had a crush on him.  He built an airplane in his shed and we would go and watch.

Some relatives of the stucco house people lived behind the airplane builder's house and I would go there to visit.  Those two old ladies would give me a cookie.

Another house to go by and I don't remember the names of the people that lived there.  They would sit in their driveway on nice summer days and chat with the kids that came around.  

This last house before mine, my friends house. She was my best friend. We walked to school together, played together, biked together. We played at each others houses.  There were a lot of kids in our neighbors so we could play lots of different games the required more people.  

Across from my friend's house lived an old couple. I would take them violets in the spring and chat a little.  I did the same to the old lady in the house beyond ours.  I think there were others my friend and I would take violets to, but I don't remember. I wonder really, how old these old people really were. 

Farther on was the house where the owners of the trailer court where I lived my very first years.  It was there I learned what "running around like a chicken with it's head cut off" means.  

Heading back home, another block over, there was a pig, a great big sow I think. There's no place for a pig there now and on beyond and closer to the river are more houses that weren't there before. 

I've written this story before, in other place.  Somehow, those early days leave an impression that isn't forgotten and it moves me when I walk around the town again.  

There's more I know.  The park so near us where we would play in the "back of the park", the wooded area where we would have forts and picnics. the "canal" we would jump over than was just the storm drainage ditch from town. Farther away, the apartment house where we lived after the trailer and rents out later.  I could walk there. The trailer court equally not far away.  I had friends houses scattered all over the town and the biggest of all where I had piano lessons and longed to "go over the whole house". 

I like to remember the good times.

 

Ready for Summer

We did a lot of things in May.

Summer is a busy time with parades and ball games and gardening and grandkid fun.

Some things we do every year and some things are new.

This year Jim and our neighbor decided to put their restored tractors on show and get some photos. The two on the left are Jim's.  The end on is the MT he got last fall and while it isn't completely restored it is in a usable condition and it as already seen duty as a plow and planter in our garden.  The others are Leroy's. 

One thing we do every year is clean out Lorene's pool with the vacuum excavating machine, scrub it down and she fills it and does all the chemical things so it's ready to swim in.

This year she bought a new pool because pool wear out, you know so we (well everyone but me who stood around taking photos) started from scratch.

I guess I helped pull the mostly empty pool out of it's place.  We were trying to keep the water inside and off the ground, but it didn't work.  

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Christian is taking gymnastics classes and his school had a "Showcase" and he got to show what he's been learning.  I've noticed a growth is arm strength because of this.

9

Christian turned nine this month.  We didn't have enough single candles to make 9, but we can all add.  He wanted Benny footprints and it was Zane's idea to use hardening chocolate.