Busy Times for Farmers and Grandkids!

Dust is flying in the fields as farmers here hurry to get seed in the ground. They often have to be on the roads as they go from field to field or farm to farm. Although I usually cut through the country, the other day coming home from Katherine's after I had filled my gas tank, I took the highway. There I slowly drove a long way behind a tractor. I reminded myself, “If you like to eat, be grateful for farmers.”

Mary Ellen and Brian are not only super busy in the field and with their kitchen redoing, but they somehow managed over last weekend to move two kids out of their apartments as their school year ended.
I was only away from home last Saturday morning less than an hour running in to do an errand at Katherine's house. Yet I missed all the excitement here. Gerald was down at the end of the lake mowing the bank there when he realized his tractor was on fire!

He had to jump off and hurry up our long lane to get to his shop for a bucket. Riding his utility vehicle back down, he was able to dip lake water and put out the fire. Scott Cully, our good next door neighbor, came and helped when he realized what was going on. Brandon White was going by a little later and saw something amiss from the road and ran up fearful for Gerald. By then Gerald had things under control, but Brandon stayed until he was sure all was well.

A bird had built a nest inside the tractor and caused the fire with considerable damage to wiring. Scott and Sonja were here again that afternoon helping, and the repair folks brought down a replacement tractor this week when they took ours to be repaired. Gerald was amazed as he had never had such an occurrence before, but he has since learned that this happens more than we were aware. I used to have to lay down on the garage floor and coax out kittens from the inside of the car engine before I drove the car, but I did not know you need to check tractors for birds' nests.

Grandkids' summer plans no longer allow coming to the farm first to attend Vacation Bible School when they were very young and then in later years to help out with VBS in our village. This summer their plans are diverse and exciting. Trent was the first to begin work. Brianna and Mary Ellen drove with him to Kansas City to get him settled in a sweet little loft apartment in someone's home, and yesterday Trent began an internship at the AMC Theater Support Center, as their new headquarters building is called.

Brianna has a few days yet to get packed and ready for a hot summer in Grenada, Spain, where she will be immersed in Spanish at classes at the university there. (This trip is to fulfill a requirement for TESOL students at Murray.)

Sam is temporarily here from Waco and was able to with his mother on Mother's Day. He will be interning this summer teaching motivated kids from the inner city at a program in Austin. His group will be meeting at the University of Texas, so he is pleased about that.

Elijah is finishing his first year of teaching, and he will be supervising the Illinois Normal interns just as he did last summer. This is the program he participated in two summers ago which led him to teaching in Chicago.
Cecelie, his younger sister and our youngest granddaughter, will be graduating from high school in a few days and will be going the furthest this summer. She felt called to go on a mission trip to help in an orphanage in Kolkota, India. (I did not even know Calcutta was now called Kolkota.)

Her older sister Leslie is busy developing her new dual business—going rogue, Leslie calls it. http://leslieeilerthompson.com/marketinghome/ She free lances in both marketing and music work. One most recent client is her dad, for whom she created a website to promote “Mr. E's Bees.” She continues to perform as she has all her life (even as a a toddler when her mother said she always acted everything out instead of talking) and now she uses her university training to work as a music copyist.

Because the University of Oregon is on a term system rather than semesters, Geri Ann does not graduate until June 18 on Father's Day. She made the decision not to play pro ball again this summer, and I am hoping she gets a little time to rest up before she joins the work force. I know she is coming this way to be in a friend's wedding, and I am excited about that.

Tara, our oldest granddaughter, will continue what she does all the time—getting three boys to their ball games and cheering them on while also working full time at the new sports field house she has been involved in for the two years it was built. Fortunately, she has lots of help from her husband and also her mother, who lives near by.

However, Vickie may be busy elsewhere this summer although I an sure she will attend plenty of boys' games. I am saving the best for the last! Granddaughter Erin will be having her baby girl very shortly now, and I am hoping she will have a wonderfully busy and happy summer ahead of her bonding with Caroline Marie Simons before she has to adjust to going back to her teaching job.

Oh, I forgot to include Sam's girl friend Anna, who is planning a trip to see a friend in Germany, after a summer of employment caring for six children during the day. As I have anticipated the grandkids' summers, I have had to study up on my geography and look at maps to see where they are all going to be. I look forward to hearing their reports to enliven my quiet elderly stay-at-home life style. And I look forward to holding that first great granddaughter!

May Time Festivities

Flags were flying along the roadside for Memorial Day weekend as I drove into our village to attend a wedding Saturday.  It was a sweet wedding with the bride’s young adult son and daughter serving as attendants. Nephews were ushers, and bought in the bride’s mother in her wheelchair. (Someone told me a photo of the bride’s late father was there with her in the pew.) Beautiful music was provided by a sister and young friend. Another sister and family had come from the Washington, D.C. area, and cousins and an uncle had come down from northern part of the state. Her only brother, a skilled chef, was in the church kitchen preparing a sumptuous dinner for the reception after the ceremony. A brother-in-law was chosen to escort the bride, and when asked who was giving the bride away, his reply was, “Her family.”  I liked that answer because this scattered but close knit family was all there to support the couple in this village church their grandparents had attended.  I felt as if groom was being added to their family even more than she was being given away.

Our weekend treat was the unexpected visit of Gerry and Vickie, our son and wife and granddaughter Geri Ann.   I was spending Friday night at Katherine’s, but I bought barbecued pork steak from Small’s that I knew Gerry liked.  So with that simple supper, I had time to enjoy their arrival before I left. They always tell me not to cook, but I like to have them at our table.  Their goal as Gerry texted on the way up was to fish and fish and fish.  And they did.  Geri Ann, of course, was soon off to her old hometown to visit her Johnston City friends and catch up on happenings there. 

Vickie and Geri Ann had lunch and an afternoon in town with Vickie’s mother, who came onto Katherine’s where she visits and helps her on Saturday evenings. When I got back to Woodsong from the wedding and then Katherine’s house again, Gerry was out in the shop cleaning fish, but we all had a simple supper together with fresh strawberry short cake for dessert, Gerry and Vickie and her brother Louie and nephew Drew had caught plenty of fish for a fish fry at Louie’s house Sunday afternoon and also to put a supply into our freezer.  With the final washing of the fish in the kitchen sink, people went to bed with our house definitely smelling fishy, but they were a happy crew for the pleasure and success they had experienced on the lake. 

It was especially good to have Gerry and Vickie with Geri Ann sitting with us at worship on Sunday morning. We were invited to dinner at the fish fry, but I was planning on going to Katherine’s and I think Gerald was ready for a nap.  Of course, we suspected we would have fish brought to us anyhow, and we were not disappointed with the fish and shrimp and potatoes Vickie carried over. There were also small plastic bags of the same that I could take to Katherine’s, and that is what she had for supper tonight.

After Brianna’s recovery from wisdom tooth removal, she and her mother Mary Ellen were able to join Brian and Trent in their home here on Sunday, where they will be spending more and more time now that school is out.  Their urgent family goal is to get their crops planted after all this wet weather.  Mary Ellen was pitching in with the farming but she did come over to Woodsong for a brief visit and brought a Mother’s Day gift.  Unfortunately, I was at Katherine’s and missed her.  But the cousins had a get-together at Trent and Brianna’s house, and then those two came to Woodsong to stay up late Sunday night visiting with Geri Ann before their family went back to Georgia early Monday. Since Katherine’s regular aide was unable to come that night, Gerry came in and put Katherine to bed and I spent the night.  So I didn’t get to send them off, but Trent and Brianna were still here when I got back to the farm.  They didn’t stay around long, but they knew I was going to be napping shortly.

This afternoon Sam and his buddy Josh came out with their bikes in Josh's pickup, and rode over to Sarahville road and back.  They were hot and sweaty when they stopped by afterwards, but I teased they had a ways to go before they caught up with Jeannie, so I gave them no pity. Earlier I had 

reluctantly carried out the bouquet Jeannie’s family had sent me for Mother’s Day.  It had stayed lovely for over a week, but no longer. The rose petals on the dining room table had to be gathered and the cloth removed for the laundry.   So it had to go after I rescued the five remaining daisies that were still pretty enough to fill a little vase on my kitchen window sill.  The May festivities are over, but those daisies will keep me remembering the good times.