Boy, Am I Ever Gullible!

So, here's how it goes..
 He says "I want to pull the camper up and put it on the back driveway".  It's not easy to get my 3/4 ton GMC crew cab down this narrow winding driveway, let alone with a 28' toy hauler attached.
So, I say "let's wait till Saturday morning, in case something goes wrong, we'll have daylight to work in."

"I really want to do it tonight" he says. "I'll do it, I put it down there by myself"
Me, "Ok" I thought I'd stay in the house and tend to some things I had started and stay out of his hair.  I tend to become a "Chatty Cathy" when I get nervous. I knew watching would  make me nervous and my chatting distracts him.

He asked me if I would move the truck down by the camper for him while he puts some sausage dogs on the grill to cook while he deals the trailer.  I agreed, and moved the truck down... now he wants me to line it up with the hitch.  Then he wants me to move it a little so he can get the blocks out from under the tires.  Yeah, you're probably catching on,  but i hadn't, ..yet.
He is smooth.  He comes to the window, with his charming smile and says, "you've probably already figured, I want you to pull it out. You're really good at this!" Totally off guard here.  Didn't see it coming, I hadn't!

Boy, am I gullible! Not because I believed him when he said I'm good at maneuvering a trailer (i am) but because I really thought I was just going to move the truck around for him and go back in the house to finish what I had been doing earlier. Ha ha ha ha...
45 min of maneuvering, one little tree (4" trunk)  cut down (making room for the truck to follow the trailer around an 80 degree turn), it did get dark, and  nothing went wrong.
Oh, don't forget the sausage dogs, cuz Don didn't!  They were a little dry but hot and tasty.
Success!
Now we can start getting the camper ready to use.

The Big Dipper

When i was a little girl we lived in a trailer behind a huge house. My grandparents, Floyd Arthur & Mary Etta lived in the basement. I had three cousins that lived with my grandparents at one time or another but not usually more than 2 at a time. My Uncle Charles, Aunt Elizabeth and their four children lived up stairs (the ground floor).. the attic.. (yes, a real, like in the movies, attic) was, as in the movies, mostly used for storage... sometimes in the winter.. Colorado has long winters.. us kids would get to play there... yep! It was cool to do that, even then. Grandma's home was like Grand Central Station..always full of people.

My grand parents had a very small bathroom. On the wall by the bathroom door beside the sink hung a "dipper". It was about 4" diameter and made of tin. This is the same dipper that hung by the well pump before there was an indoor bathroom (which i do not personally remember) There it hung in the open, in the bathroom, and EVERYONE used that dipper to drink from... UHG! I can not believe we were not all sick all the time.. but really we were rarely sick, ...go figure!

So, a few years ago i was in one of my "poor me" days, of which i realized i had way too many of.. and to cure it, i was thinking about all my blessings, starting with the grand kids.. 14 of them! wow! and from that to another thing and another and thinking about my own childhood, when i realized, " As much as i love to complain about my life, when God was passing out blessings He used a big dipper for mine."

Anyway, i relayed the story to Don that evening.. or confessed it, i'm not sure which. He loved the story! We've been using "Big Dipper" or "The Big Dipper" on most of what we do ever since.. So, the BIG DIPPER is for counting our blessings...

as a side note... Don hunted around a bit and actually found a big dipper (in an antique shop). nearly like the one my grandparents had.. It does NOT hang in our bathroom! It hangs over the kitchen sink... NOT for drinking from, but for remembering.

I would write the end here, but it's not... the blessings continue on.....:) for one, we now have our fifteenth grand child on the way

I know i'm no "writer", but i think i will keep trying this blog thing, maybe some of my kids, grands, or nieces & nephews will like the stories for the "family" in them.

Not the End,
Bev

Philippians 4:6) Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7) Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus

Lick-Dop

We love Bread Pudding.. and this sauce is very good poured over the top. My Grandmother used to make a really good Spice Cake and she poured Lick-dop over the top, making it even better.. this receipe is as close as I can come to her's. It's not as good as Granmda Davidson's but pretty good just the same.

Lick-Dop
Combine
2/3 Cup Sugar
2T All purpose Flour
1t cinnamon
1 Cup water

Add
7 T Butter

bring to a boil over med. heat- cook stirring continually 2 min.

Remove from heat stir in t Vanilla

Great over bread pudding or spice cake

In Slow Motion

Three and a half years ago we drove to Washington State to get a Bouvier puppy. (It was a great trip!) When we met this little guy, it was raining. Of course it was raining, it was Washington! I foolishly had on white pants and a black top with white cuffs. The puppy was wet & a bit muddy from having so much fun while waiting for us to arrive. The breeder picked him up and plopped him in my arms, all 10 wet lb. of him. I thought ewww, but didn't say it. I was afraid if I did she would not let me have him, if, we decided he was the right pup for us... it took awhile for me to fall in love with him.. let's see.. she handed him to me, he tilted his head up, laid it on my shoulder and looked into my eyes.. I was his in all of 10 seconds. ha ha.. It did take Don a lot longer.. we played with him (we now call him Luke) a while, talked with the breeder, admired the sire, David, played with Luke a bit longer then wanted to step away to talk. When we started to walk away Luke came running along, stopped ran back the 20 or so feet he had gone with us, rubbed noses with David, turned and ran to catch up with us.. Don now belonged to Luke. We pretended to make a "decision" to take this puppy home with us, but it was as much his idea as ours. I have lots and lots of stories about Luke, but really this is about one of our cats. We stopped in Idaho the day after getting Luke and got a Siamese cat from my sister. Edison became Luke's best friend and favorite toy. Some time has passed and we now have another Bouvier, Lucy, another cat Clark and a Miniature Schnauzer, Ollie. Clark belongs to Ollie the same way Edison belonged to Luke.. they play and wrestle most of the day.. But when Clark wants to move through the house without playing or wrestling he must keep it cool.. Small living creatures moving fast tap into the pray instinct of a predator, and a dog is a predator. Clark being young but wise moves very slow when he wants to cross the room. VERY slow.. in fact he brings a tree sloth to mind. it is hilarious to see a cat moving in slow motion when everything around it is at normal motion. The dogs who are still a bit pumped just in case the cat forgets and runs, have their noses in the cats face, belly and rear.. still the cat is very careful to continue his slow motion trek to the kitchen door where, if he makes it, he will be free to move as he pleases. btw - the kennel name the Bouvier's came out of is "Slomoshun Bouviers". The cat took the advice..

Clay Garden

We lived just out side of town up on a hill not far from the cemitary.. the view across the vally was beautiful.. but it was so normal to us we did not realize how beautiful it was.. not untill I grew up and left the area and came back for a visit did I realize I had grown up in one of God's prettiest parts of the country.. Unless of course it was mud season. A rich clay soil.. clay.. ugh.. you could start out across the field and you would get taller & taller as you went. Your feet would get heavier and heavier too, and larger. As the clay stuck to your shoes and more clay stuck to that clay and more and more and so on. Getting it back off your shoes was not that easy either.. and the dang stuff stained anyting it touched like your shoes or clothes or the house if you tossed some against it.

As an adult I decided to plant my own garden. I knew about the clay sticking to everything in sight but i had not thought about how my grandmother had gotten her garden spot to be such nice soil to work with.. at any rate. I planted a small but very nice garden and things grew like crazy.. but I coul not get the carrots, beets or radishes back out of the ground. I tried soaking the soil before pulling..it didn't work. I got a spade and dug the carrots & beets up then run a water hose over the big clod of dirt trying to liberate the veggie's ..it would work but what a monumental waste of water! What a waste of effort and seed that years garden was.. I did my research before the next year came around and fixed that soil.. t I learned is Clay is very rich in minerals and nutrients but it was difficult to work.. Sand on the other hand is easy to work but has very little nutrients.. So i tilled the sand into the clay AND it worked... I had a great garden with great soil that was easy to work.. truth though i did not rototill the sand into the clay by myself, I had help...Okay I didn't do any of the rotor-tiling .. but it was my idea and I did watched and fetched iced tea for the person that actually did the work :)

Grandpa

When I was a little girl, I had a grandpa that always wore blue denim bibbed overalls. In fact I don't believe I ever saw him in anything else except when he marched in the parade with other WWI veterans, they all wore their uniforms for that. He always had a pocket watch in, of all places, the watch pocket on the front of those bibs. I loved to set astraddle his lap with my head on his chest and listen to his watch ticking away the time and breathing in his scent. He smelled of sage brush & wild animals. Probably because he was a "hunter". He did not always kill the animals he hunted, but he loved to hunt. Being from the western-slope of the Colorado Rocky Mountains there was plenty of sage brush, and in the late 50's there were plenty of animals to hunt too... and he had some stories! but this is one of my memories of grandpa. He & I had gone to the hen house to gather eggs. We put them into a bucket and headed for the house.. for some reason I wanted to run. "I bet I can beat you to the house!" I told him and took off running.. before I got to the house, grandpa passed me up. I was shocked. I did not think grandpa could run, let alone run fast.. I laughed.. he wanted to know why I was laughing.. he probably thought it was odd to lose a race and laugh about it, ha ha. I told him because I didn't think he could run..and of course, he wanted to know why I thought that? "because I've never seen you run" was my response. ... this was my mothers "daddy" and I loved him dearly..
....I think there's a lesson there. - just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it's not there ...or something like that, ha ha.

New Head

We got a big hairy dog (a Bouvier named Luke) 3 1/2 years ago. So 3 years ago we needed a better vacuum. Tried & returned a Kenmore for Pets. It did not work as well as the nearly wore out Oreck we already had. After reading reviews and the consumers report we selected a Dyson for Pets, canister style. WHAT A GREAT VACUUM!! -with a 5 yr warranty- I wore the brush out in 2.5 yrs & it started making a rattling noise (brush bushings). Getting to things as I do, after a few months I turned it over to Don. When he got around to looking at it, he decided it could be fixed if we could get parts. Yes, we could get parts. He called Dyson for parts, they listened to his tale & offered to send us, free of any charges, an entire new head, "just in case"... said it would be here in 7 - 10 days... This is day 8... It's here!.. AND it works really great... amazing how much more dirt is picked up off the carpet when the brush works right... Will I buy another Dyson, IF this one wares out after 5 years? You Bet I Will!!

thank you Don & Dyson for a good working vacuum and thank God for these blessings!