Challenged...

I'm challenged in many, many...MANY....areas. 
I needed one more. Really.

Because, you know, you're not really living if you aren't just completely and totally committed to impossible tasks every waking minute of the day.

Quite often, finding matched socks in less than 30 minutes to be able to meet the school bus in shoes can be an impossible task. (I've NEVER met the bus barefoot. The thought crossed my mind in the last frantic seconds of the sock hunt, I can tell you that, but I've never actually done it.)

Or writing, editing, and formatting the Christmas book for the grandparents the night before it needs to be submitted or I'll have to pay $900 extra shipping to have it here before April. (Not $900, but it sure seems that much.)

Things like that.

My friend Kim (I'll try to link this to her blog) is a teacher in Billings and is taking a technology and writing class this fall. She discovered a blog challenge for teachers, but thought perhaps it would work for ANY blogger. Like...me. 

I'm IN.

I'm in over my head. 
I guess that's why they call it a "challenge".

So the post this week is supposed to be about small moments of significance in our lives, and what we learned or experienced in that moment.

My life is nothing BUT small moments, so I had to narrow it down a bit.

This week, I learned that if I don't get the laundry done and my son doesn't have Captain Napalm underpants that he's unwilling to go commando or wear his sister's Tinkerbell panties.  And it will be tragic.

There was a moment that I thought I wouldn't make it to the computer recharger cord before the power was completely sucked down by my last email, and that all the dire, bloodthirsty, earth shattering warnings about what would certainly occur, nearly did.  But I made it. (Doesn't your heart just race when the laptop or Droid does that?)

One of the small, significant moments that stands out is that if my college football team loses, I can barely go on.  But if, the next day, my NFL team wins, it brings on three days of giddy euphoria and gloating that no one can stand to be around.  And vice versa.  They almost never win on the same weekend, which is fortunate, because I don't know if I could take the thrill.

These are all silly moments, and I'm glad I have them, because odd little things that make me laugh are great.  I tend to take myself a little too seriously; little things like this bring me back to basics.

But there are also mornings on the couch with my daughter in my lap, coffee beside me and the day slowly easing in.  I love watching my son's face light up when he's telling a whopper of a story.  My old dog, yelling at me when I'm not trying hard enough on my run...I'm so grateful she's still coming; 11 years, now.  It's gratifying to work alongside my husband and father-in-law and feel like we're accomplishing something bigger than just moving cows; that people will be fed because of what we sweat over, here.  Oh! And moving cows night before last, when the whole world was gold and blue, and the black cows looked like silhouettes floating...that was indescribably beautiful.  Or the sound of my friends' voices, laughing and chattering. 

It's the little things that become the big things.

Be looking for challenge posts once a week.  I have no idea what day I'll get to them, but I'll try to mark 'em so you won't get in the middle of one and think I've completely flipped my lid. 

Doesn't bug ME....

Maggie very rarely shares stories about what they're studying at school. Usually, I have to stab around at subjects until I hit a hot one and then we can chat.  But lately, they've been studying bugs (insects, I was informed).

Bugs are just fascinating to my daughter and she actually checks out books from the library to look at bug pictures.  Some of you know that earlier this year, she started a stink bug collection.  Live stink bugs.  It was an extensive collection.  At the high count, I believe she had 13.  Live. In her room.  (Yes, they were in a bug cage, but STILL....I'd lay there reading her bedtime stories and hear their scritchy legs, climbing up the screen...shudder!)

Tonight, she cheerfully told us all about insects and what she'd learned at school.  She commented that yellow and black bugs were poisonous to eat.  The Farmer and I have each eaten bugs by accident, driving 30 mph on fourwheelers, and didn't have the chance to check to see if they were yellow and black.  (Since we lived...must've been good.)  We told her that SOMETIMES bugs can be accidentally consumed.  They shouldn't be eaten, ordinarily.

We have to tell her this.  Maggie ALSO loves the show, Survivorman, and he eats bugs with regularity. And relishes them.

She told us she didn't eat bugs.
Except fried grasshopper legs.

After a little pause, I jokingly said, "Well, you must not have had many, because I've never fried grasshopper legs!"

Immediately, she reassured me, "I know.  I get them off the pickup."

I'll give you a moment....


Same child, who not 10 minutes before, was making faces at having to gag down waffles with strawberries and whipped cream.

Every day adds another layer to the surreal world we twirl around in...

With permission

I get to share a few pictures of some beautiful country girls that I was privileged to spend the afternoon with a couple weeks ago. You can't tell (hopefully) but it was stinking cold, both girls had colds, and the wind hit us at about 30-35 mph in the middle of this. They were such good sports in spite of those challenges!
There are two grandmothers who look at the Chronicles, occasionally, and this post is especially for Nan and Sally. (Well, there are actually a LOT of grandmas who look at the Chronicles, but Nan and Sally are THE grandmas...and are so proud of these little girls!) I hope you like them.

*All images copyright Mary Pluhar

Hobgoblins

Isn't that the best word?
And so underutilized anymore...

You're just going to have to take my word for it: that's Angus, behind the mask.  And a little Japanese girl who felt very, very elegant in her kimono...

Maggie looked in the costume catalog, thumbed right past all the conventional girls' costumes, and said "I like THAT one, Mom."  I do, too, sweetie!

 Three good friends...Kailah, Maggie and MaKenzie.

Aren't they beautiful?

I think we got everyone, here...oh, except the purple people eater.  Drats.

There are only five students in the school, but when neighbors, friends and little brothers and sisters come, it's quite the group.

I love this!

They were laughing at the target on the rodeo clown...

He's a good sport.

Singing creepy songs!

Oh! Here is our youngest hobgoblin, Hannah...only, maybe, 5 weeks old.

You'll see more of her, later.

Yes, I DID get to smooch her!  And smell her little baby-ness.  Gosh, babies smell good...

Old farts, visiting about the weather, I'm sure.

(I wrote that especially for Gus, who reads the Chronicles, I think.  He's not wearing his TCU cap, but he swore he would next party!  Good...love those Texas teams!)

 We carved pumpkins!

After eating the good food, which I cannot believe I didn't take a picture of.  Very uncharacteristic...

The beauty of a small school...we can take on projects like this.

So nice to have picnic tables outside. 

Jasper, starting our pumpkin...

(Mags supervising)

This was her job....

mucking out the slimy, gloppy, blechy guts of the pumpkin....

Ewwwwww!

It wouldn't shake off!

And Maggie's design...

THIS picture makes me laugh! Do you see the middle pumpkin, with the fangs?  I think it's great that there's still squash guts hanging behind them. 

This big, black hat made me smile, everytime I saw it...

Hanging donut game...this is Angus' moment to shine!

Last year, while we were all downstairs going through the haunted house, he had snuck back up the stairs and put a hurting on the hanging donuts, to the disgust of one of the moms.

This year, he politely waited, but there was none of the "don't use your hands" nonsense; the whole point is to get the donut and rules be darned!

Miss Alli is better at the game, but it takes her longer to get her donut!

Playing downstairs in the school...

Check out the rug! And the 1000's of LEGOs!

Good times...

Oh, Miss Gracie, I could just kiss those cheeks for days!

I believe her proud grandparents could, too.

Baby Hannah, again, and her pretty mama, Suzie, who I was SO happy to see! 

Party's over!

Pumpkin Soup!

It's true.  I wrestled the recipe away from Anne...had to BRIBE her with caramel rolls and Kafe Utza coffee, but I got it. 

You're welcome.

I know!  Pumpkin soup does not sound like it would be good.  Or even remotely edible, really.  But it's amazing!  I challenge you to try it, then let me know what you thought.

Here you go:

1. In a slow cooker, combine 6 cups peeled pumpkin (cubed 2 inch), 3 leeks finely chopped (white part only, onions can be subbed, carefully), 4 cups chicken stock, 1 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper (who measures THAT?  A good goudge.  That's what I'd say.).  Cover and cook on Low for 8-10 hours, or on High for 4-6 hours, until pumpkin is tender.

2. Strain the vegetables, reserving the stock.  In a blender or food processor, puree vegetables with 1 cup  stock until smooth.

3. If serving hot, return soup to slow cooker and add: zest and juice of 1 lime, pinch of cayenne pepper (I swear the recipe says "pinch"!  Use your good judgement here.), 1 cup whipping cream and cook on High for 20 minutes until well heated. 

4. When ready to serve, garnish with chopped fresh cilantro. (Anne says the dried will work, but she brought fresh to bookclub, and I can vouch for that...mmmmm!)

This can also be served cold, but I can't imagine why anyone would. 
If you can, try to get homemade rolls from Thelma G. to serve with this. Soft, yeasty white rolls with brown tops, buttered. 

Did you swoon?
I did. 

This recipe theoretically serves 6-8 persons.
Or a fair sized bookclub gathering.

Enjoy!

It's fall!

The Barnacles...in a rare moment of camaraderie.

 We seldom eat at the picnic table.  It's mostly a fort, step-up to the deck, or place to dye Easter eggs.

 Tomatoes and calendula!

Aren't these the Crayola colors of autumn?

Angus helped pick all those tomatoes.  Even though he looks at them as weapons and not food, he was pretty good and when we got done, he was so proud!

He's very discriminating, however.  If a tomato had a tiny speck of dirt, he'd proclaim it "ucky" and set it to the side.  We had to negotiate a couple.

 I've tried in vain for 9 years to grow nasturtiums.  The little envelope says, "Thrive on neglect! Good for children and beginning gardeners!"  Bah, humbug...

Every year, they'd put up about 4 little leaves, look around and die.  Or wait for some sort of pest to chew them to the ground. And die.

This year, I put them in the vegetable boxes, told them I didn't care a whit whether they lived or died, and walked away.

 (Of course, I also walked away from the carrots and spinach, too and I DO care about them.)

They bloomed!

Now that THAT garden conquest has been made, I'm going on to bigger things...

like gladiolas.

Will the garden drama ever end?

Cosmos....another plant that should be easy and thrive, but that never seem to reach maturity before the hard frost hits.

This year....voila!

Also neglected for months...

Marigolds.

People either love 'em or hate 'em.  There's no ambivilance with marigolds.

I love 'em.

They are the gaudy grandma of the garden...the one who wears a muumuu to a wedding and doesn't care at all what people say.  They're dependable, sturdy and have a distinctive scent that's not entirely unpleasant....and they're bright. 

They'd be at BINGO night in their dayglo orange visors.

These babies self-seeded in one of my raised beds, with gusto, and I'm so glad they did!

Makes me smile...

Better off at Marisa's

Yes, folks, it was Bookclub last night...
Didn't you feel the joy and smell the cooking in the air?

Our selection for the month was "Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology" by Eric Brenoe and as you may have surmised from the title, it was about a family who decided to live without modern technologies for a period of time, with the help of some good neighbors they called Minimites (Menonnites).  Marisa had the great idea of building the dinner around homemade-homemade foods...her instructions were: nothing from a can or a box.  (Well there goes the wine-in-a-box idea...)

It was brilliant.
Here's our menu:

Pickles wrapped in summer sausage from Ryans
Pumpkin soup so good that I could've just put my face in the pot and drank it down.  It had lime juice, cilantro, curry(?)...oh, my goodness it was wonderful!
Baked chicken, golden crusty skin, flavored perfectly, and juicy.
Homemade noodles with some sort of (and I'm drooling a bit, here...) Italian flavored chop sauce; tomatoes, basil, olive oil, olives. And the noodles were cooked on premises.  They were THAT fresh.
Homemade dinner rolls...that complimented the much glorified soup.  Soft, white with perfect browned tops...mercy!
Pecan and streusel caramel apple pie, with homemade whipped cream.
Wine, of course, with one bottle having a rather risque label.  And designer soda pop, from Whitefish!

Are you still with me? Or did you run off to get a little snack?
Did you notice that perhaps we have the best cooks in a three county area?
That's right, folks, they're smart AND have culinary prowess.

 Everett....honestly, he's the most adorable child and I can't stop kissing him.

I'm partial, perhaps, because he's family, but still...

(Those are teeny-tiny Carhardtts he has on!)

Cutting up the chicken...you can't imagine how good the house smelled with those just out of the oven.
See? They were perfect.

I do believe this is the moment Clara revealed her bottles of wine....

I tried to make this bigger so you could read the label...

It's Buck Naked wine, and it has a little stick man on it!

Clara CLAIMS that her brother-in-law bought it, but I'm not sure I'm buying that...

There's more to these pretty Dutch women than meets the eye...

 The pasta, before it hit the water.  It was G-O-O-O-O-D!

(Spell check THAT!)

 Pies....

Annie and the little man...

I'm not sure.  Either Thelma was telling Traci about a football game or Traci just told her it was a stick-up and to hand over all the rolls.  Either choice is plausible, really....

This isn't a very good picture, because Celestia had to go back for the roll, so you can't see that, and also because I was rushing to get in line before all the food was gone...because there was a real danger of that happening, I'm sure...

 Solving world issues over pie.

Don't you think there would be more peace in the world if there was more pie?

*sigh*

Heather didn't make it to bookclub this month and we missed her a lot, but I'm sure she'll make it to Traci's next month, when we discuss the book...

(I'll have to get back to you with the title!)

(Drats.)

Going home

Yesterday, Angus and I spent the day at Dad's. Karen and I are working on a Cookie Day book (that's another story) and wanted to get a good start.  And Dad wanted me to take some pictures so he and Karen could get their Christmas cards. 

Most of the people who read the Chronicles know that there are no trees in the Cohagen area.  Well, there ARE trees, but they're all planted in rows, for the most part. It's truly prairie and beautiful in its own way.  What a lot of you don't know is that I grew up on a creek with big, old, old cottonwood trees. 

Summer nights, with the windows open, I fell asleep to the swooshy sounds of leaves in the breeze.  As kids, we played for hours amongst the fallen trees, the shadows of the creek bottom, and had countless caches of food and "supplies" we'd purloined from the store room in the basement. (Wonder if I could find some, still...) 

We had a wonderful treehouse...big, with a rope swing and boards nailed up for stairs and seats and everything.  It had been Dad and Rosie's when they were kids, so that made it even more special to us. It had little niches to sit in and read and really great branches to hang off of.  It was a magnificent fort...one could really pelt the enemy from its ancient turrets, with sticks and apple cores. 

You can't imagine how homesick I get for trees.  

Yesterday, when we popped over the hill to the ranch, I almost cried.  Well, I did have a couple tears, actually.  It was so beautiful, and I was 9 years old again. 

Here's where I grew up.  This is the setting of my childhood, the fabric of my memories....it hasn't changed much at all, really.  And here's my Dad, the way I'll always see him...

I'm not going to reveal the Christmas card pictures, but I am going to show you around a little...

Dad and Angus next to the new flagpole....isn't that flag beautiful?

I included this picture so you could see the country, all the buttes and hills beyond the house.

 The old red truck....you know how I love old trucks.  Looks exactly as it did when I was a kid. Probably runs the same, too.

The paddock that used to be white.  When we were kids, we got to paint on it every summer.  We didn't make much progress and really thought we were being abused by having to do it.  (Now that I'm a parent, I can only imagine how painful it must've been to watch us s-l-o-w-l-y pretending to paint the fence.)

I had a lot of empathy for Tom Sawyer.  And my brother and sister never fell for the "privilege of painting" trick, because they knew the story, too.

 This view is looking down from up by the house.  There's the shop, with the old John Deere in front, and Grandma's house sits behind those trees to the left.  I still sort of expect to see Gramps under the tree in his red down coat and felt cowboy hat, reading political papers. Only he'd be in the sun, because he was always cold.

 This is a crazy sort of tank that stored oats for the horses.  I remember scooping oats out of that little metal tube, into a bucket.  It was handy to be able to walk by and grab a handful, to lure my horse so I could catch him...

 And speaking of horses, here's Little Joe.  He's the grandkid horse that Grammy Karen graciously shares.

 Meet Tiggy Winkles, the kitty that came from our house.  She's such a beauty!  And a mousing machine.  She came strolling out after her barn patrol to greet us.

 He's in trouble.  When we were trying to take pictures, all he wanted to do was get to the barn....SO, when he finally did get to the barn, he got tied to the trailer for a few hours to think about it.  The equine equivilant of being sent to your room. Dad said maybe he won't think the barn is such a great place after this little session.  I think he's probably just as stubborn as Dad, and probably didn't think that at all... 

 The old sheep shed that's used for storage, and the loading chute.  See all the trees?

 Barry's basketball hoop on the grainary...

 You can't see it, but the old treehouse is down there.  And the creek will be filled with sweet smelling gold cottonwood leaves in about a week....I'd like to go back and swoosh through them.

 Cowboy PopPops and Grammy Karen, with their only grandson, walking back to the house to get a peanut butter cookie or three.

Sometimes, you CAN go home again.