Zis is vhy ve never, ever mix zee sex vid zee knitting...

I'm sure Freud would have a lot to say, I, however am rendered speechless. (even the camera didn't want to be part of such an embarrassing display)

Before I was born

I am in the throes of planning a family reunion, it is a lot of work, but one of the best things about it is that I get to learn so much family history. I am amazed at the way that our early generation lived and made their way in the world. It is truly fascinating. These people were living breathing humans and with out them, I wouldn't be here at all. I am putting a book together of photographs and I keep being taken aback by the fact that most of these people are gone, and some of them (like my grandmother, most of her sisters and two of her brothers) are still here, just much older. As I look at each picture, I want to know more and I am somehow nostalgic for a time and a place I never knew. Maybe because I can see the resemblance in some of the pictures to me or my kids, or because I have heard so much about most of these people that I feel that I know them. Who knows? But I have to say it is haunting work. What happened after these picture? Were these people happy? Are these babies dead and gone now, and how did they live their lives? The other haunting thing is that I know some of the stories and how things turned out. I look at a picture of my grandmother's sister when she is young and I know that she died of breast cancer, or that my great grandfathers twin brother drown in a stock pond when he was five. What will our children and grandchildren learn and know about us? Will we leave enough behind to put the pieces of our lives together? A little deep, I know. Especially for someone who puts all her photos in an acid ridden shoe box and positively quakes at the suggestion of making a scrapbook. But still, I can't help but wonder.

This is a picture of my great grandmother and her daughters (I think the baby is my grandmother). Doesn't it look all dust-bowlish in this picture? My great grandparents on their honeymoon in 1925

And these are my grandmothers siblings before she was born.

I am leaving tonight for Denver and then bright and early for Chicago tomorrow. I am pretty excited, but I think I might be in some sort of guarded excitement, because I am waiting to make sure that I am out the door before I believe that I get to go...

I am taking the angels rest sock with me, but I doubt there will be much knitting because I will be busy shopping. Yay! Not that the sock will mind, I haven't touched it since the temperature reached the mid eighties and I decided it was too hot to knit. I am still trying to find my other size two needle, but I have a grave suspicion that it ended up in the trash, because the last time that I saw it, it was perched atop a stack of papers and junk that was leaning precariously toward the trash can below it. It isn't too far outside the realm of possibility that it may have fallen over and landed there in the trashcan. Now the question is, do I get a new set of needles to finish the sock or do I reap the natural consequence of not putting it away in the first place?

Ok, I'm off to pack and get out of dodge! See ya when I get back.

Ok. I have been away too long, and now I don't know how to get back to where I was. Recap: Jackson's arm is healing well, he has a cast on now, and he is doing fine with it. He will wear it for two weeks, and then have more x-rays to see how it is doing. B is busy in summer school for two more weeks, and then he will be done for the summer, and it's a good thing too, because we sold our van and we are down to one car, (which means we are also down to no car payments hooray!) and so J has to find alternative transportation until I don't need the car everyday. He is riding the bus now and it is lucky that we have a bus stop near our house so he can walk to it. Mimi is walking up a storm now, and she gets more daring with every step. She even tries to walk down the stairs. Scary...

Knitting news is dismal at best. I have about three inches of one sock and it doesn't look like I'll be making much progress, because I can't do anything else while I am knitting it. I make tons of mistakes if the sock doesn't have my undivided attention...no easy feat (no pun intended haha) with three kids. They may be done when the kids leave for college. I need endless expanses of stockinette stitch so that I can mindlessly knit away. The angel rest sock doesn't fit the bill, but I LOVE the pattern, so I may carry on anyway. It just might take a while. The other problem that I am having with these socks is that I am missing one needle of my size twos. A few weeks ago while I was knitting the HP4/5 socks, I only used four of my five needles and said to myself "I should put that other needle somewhere where I won't lose it." Well, stupidity prevails and I didn't put it away, so guess what? I can't find it. But I did find a spare needle from a mismatched set and used it, and it is about two inches longer than the others and it is made from this really awful feeling aluminum. It drains a lot of the pleasure of making these socks. Someday I will learn the double circular method, or even better, the magic loop, then I will be able to find all my needles when I need them!

We went to Springer and visited the in-laws (including my sister-in-law and nephew from VA) for the weekend and it was great fun, except for the miserable hail storm that wiped out all my mother-in-law's flowers. But check out the clouds that were hanging over head that morning:

Aren't they amazing? If it weren't for my fear of lightening, I might have stood out there and watched them longer.

I know that this isn't a marathon blog, but I have to tell you that I have continued running and I am enjoying it more each day. My goal for the end of the summer is three miles. What do you think? Can I do it?

Feeling better

A quick update to let you know that Jack is doing really well. We have a huge praise that he didn't need pins in his elbow after all. That makes his recovery so much easier and he is feeling fine today, in fact, his biggest complaint when he came out of anesthesia was his IV! Thanks for your prayers and well wishes. I am so relieved to have this dreaded surgery over with and with such a great outcome, I feel like I can breath again.

"Oh Snap"

I am updating to request prayer for Jack. He will be having surgery on his elbow tomorrow morning at 7:00. While we were visiting my mom, en route to Los Alamos, he fell off of a swing set and broke his elbow and needs to have surgery to reset the bone and then to have pins inserted. He has been a real trooper throughout the whole ordeal, including sitting in the emergency room without pain medication for nearly four hours. The break could have been a lot worse, and we were able to get into an orthopedic surgeon right away and he has a good prognosis for the future, all praises. We ask for prayer that he will recover well with out any complications and that he will be calm and cooperative while he goes under anesthesia. He has a great fear of needles and is very scared of doctors and hospitals, so he will be anxious until he is out. Juan and I are also anxious and worried for our little boy. My logical-side knows that things could be much, much worse and that I just need to trust God in this, He is the great physician and His will will be done. My mother-side is fearful and worried sick. It feels guilty and out of control. God's perfect love casts out all fear and I am leaning on that fact right now. I know that God loves Jack more than I do, He doesn't delight in the suffering of any of His children and I know that He is big enough for this, for my fears, for Jack's health, for our family.
Thank you for your prayers! I will update as soon as I am able to.

Smells of the Shiprock Fair

That line is a twist of the title of a book by Luci Topahanso called Songs of the Shiprock Fair. She is an amazing poet and writer from Shiprock, which is near where I grew up. But that isn't what I want to blog about, maybe another day though. What I want to show you is what I did last night! See? Frybread. I made it all by myself, though it was for B's class for his immigration unit. He studied the Navajos and decided that for maximum points he should bring food. I made small pieces, about half as big as they are usually made, so it went pretty fast, and I was able to roll them out round, which NEVER happens. The smell in the house was fantastic...it is a smell somewhere between a Krispy Creme doughnut factory and a Saturday flea market. I can't explain it, but it is such a familiar and comforting smell. I couldn't help but have a taste of a hot one drenched in honey. It actually tasted pretty darn good too! It was a good thing I made just enough for the class, or I may have eaten more than one.

And here is Mimi enjoying her first piece ever. It is nearly as momentous as eating her first birthday cake. Jack isn't able to eat any wheat, so he isn't able to have frybread, but he has chewed on a mutton rib, so he is almost a real Navajo. Ben worked really hard on his report and learned all kinds of interesting facts to share with his class. He is so excited to present the whole project to his class that he is nearly beside himself, though he said that I will get fifty percent of the credit for typing what he told me to, generous of him, don't you think?

I finally finished Katja last week. I'll post pictures tomorrow, cause it is in the wash right now. I also turned the heel of the second sock, or should I say sock five? (As in HP5.) I know what you're thinking, big deal. You've been working on both of those for weeks. But it IS a big deal, because I had company last week. My dear friend from North Carolina was in the area and I was able to pick her and her girls up from Denver (where she was visiting other friends) and bring them back here for a few days. It is the first time we have seen each other in a few years, three actually. Jack was only a few months when she moved from Los Alamos. In fact, we have both added new babies to our families since then, so it was great to see her and her kids. We ran around a bit, and then when the kids went down for naps or to bed, we would sit and knit. She is one of my only kitty friends, so it was a lot of fun. Plus, we have similar taste because she was knitting a sock on the same yarn that I picked out for a pair of mine. The amazing thing that we discovered is that our kids look like siblings, and they are all about nine months apart. Can you imagine having four kids under the age of four? The nice part about going out was that no one thought my kids were mine, so if they were misbehaving, someone else got the blame! Haha. At one point they were all on one stroller and Eri was pushing it while I was looking at something in another part of the building. Poor Eri, she was given several looks, I'm not sure if they were piteous or disbelief, but either way, she was a good sport about it!

One more exciting thing that happened today is that I ran my first full mile. Well, at least in the past seventeen years. I ran track when I was in mid school, but I am not sure that I ever ran an entire mile without stopping. This is a big deal to me, I feel so accomplished.

I will be traveling for about a week at the end of the week, so I don't know that I will blog before I go, and I am not sure that I will be able to while I am gone. So I'll update more when I get back, or tomorrow if I can squeeze it in between laundry and packing...

"Do the chickens have large talons?"

It seems that Napoleon had good reason to wonder...(click to see it bigger)