Parelliland

The reason I haven't posted lately is because I am away from home - or I was frantically preparing to leave home. As we speak, I'm in Colorado at a Parelli Natural Horsemanship course called the Flex Track which is a preparatory course for their instructor program. It has always been a dream of mine to come to the Parelli campus and take a course here and I'm learning things I didn't know I didn't know. Our instructors are excellent and the camaraderie with other Parelli-folk is wonderful.

And it's really beautiful here - gorgeous weather and breathtaking scenery. I was walking up to the parking lot to my truck the other night and snapped this photo with my point and shoot.

 
This is just a small portion of this beautiful place and I feel very blessed to be here. 

Our Pioneer Town Cemetery

The other day when I was on my flower photo gathering walk with my camera, I ended up in our lovely little cemetery which is only a couple of blocks from my house. When I was in high school, we had a student teacher who took our English class to the great big Provo City Cemetery. We all had a many paged worksheet which was really a cemetery scavenger hunt - we had to walk all around the cemetery finding things like "a child's grave with an angel monument on top". Ever since then, I've had a whole new appreciation for cemeteries and how interesting they are. (And I also got over my squeamishness about stepping on graves.)

But I digress.

I've always loved our little pioneer cemetery and it's old sandstone headstones. They're so beautiful, but it's also sad that they are made of local sandstone and have gotten so weathered. Some of them are completely unreadable.



Some of them are actually just a little lump of blond stone.

A few have had a newer, granite stone added, by their progeny, I assume.

 

There really are some lovely carvings on these old pioneer stones - I wonder about the people who carved them.

This one didn't have a pretty carving, but it was adorned with the most beautiful lichen.

 

 There are several graves in our cemetery belonging to Mormon pioneers who came across the plains.

 

This lady is one of my hubby's ancestor's and she was born in the Mormon settlement of Kirtland, Ohio. Pretty cool.

  

The irises were what drew me into the cemetery in the fist place, so I thought I'd better include one. I love the little crenelated edges. 

This post is a little late for memorial day, but better late than never. When I was at my dad's funeral, one of my cousins told me that he wanted to be cremated because he'd never lived anywhere that he was attached to enough to want to be buried there. I thought that was kinda sad. I'm not from this little pioneer community, but it is definitely home. And this is where I will be buried someday. Kinda comforting, actually. 

Dad

My dad died on Monday. He'd been very ill with diabetes related illness for a long time and his poor body just finally wore out. He was 65. 

I went up last Sunday afternoon to be with him and my mom. I don't know that I realized how soon he would go, that this was the last hospitalization in a long line of them, but I got home from church and was sitting at my computer thinking about what was happening for the rest of the day, and just had a feeling - a BFO (blinding flash of the obvious) - that I needed to get in the car and go. Not Marty and the kids, just me.

I called Mom to tell her I was coming and she said she thought that was a good idea. She put Dad on the phone and he was able to say "hello" and that he loved me, but he was pretty out of it. By the time I drove the 4 hours to Provo, he could no longer respond and he acted like he was in some pain and was quite agitated. Along with the liver abscess, he had a whole laundry list of other issues including the fact that his blood pressure would not stay up without a drug being constantly administered through one of the 6 IV lines going into a central line in his heart. He also had pneumonia for the first time in his life and hadn't been able to really keep any food down for about 2 weeks. He'd been on dialysis for almost 7 years and even though his kidneys were being supported artificially, it's not possible to support the liver that way. Mom told me that she figured that he was finally at a bridge he couldn't cross.

We had a conference call with all my siblings and we all concurred - even though it was really Mom's decision - that it was time to let Dad go. We had the nurse - who was so excellent, by the way - remove his feeding tube and give him some pain and anti-anxiety medication even though he was pretty much non-responsive by this time. We asked them to discontinue the medicine keeping his blood pressure up and as soon as it was removed, his blood pressure immediately began to drop. Mom and I waited with him all night and he died about 4:15 on Monday morning. He went very peacefully which was such a blessing. Mom and I were sad, but we also felt peaceful and knew that it was his time.

I stayed most of the day and helped Mom with funeral arrangements. She had wisely, years before, purchased a funeral plan, picked out a casket, arranged for a burial plot and she and Dad had written his funeral program, so there wasn't too terribly much to do. We gathered up photos, sent in his obituary, took his clothing to the mortuary and met with them about the arrangements and final details. We were pretty worn out by the end of that day, but I was so glad I'd felt impressed to come and Mom was glad to have me there.

The funeral was on Friday, the 27th. I was really nice with so many friends and family traveling from very long distances to be there. Sharon and the Atkinsons flew in from Texas, Laura and Craig from San Diego and 5 of Mom's sisters and her brother from Phoenix area. A bunch of our Baldwin cousins even drove all night from Phoenix - about an 11 hour drive to be there for the funeral. What a wonderful family.

So here are a few fun photo of Dad when he was young and hale and hearty and had both his legs. These make me smile - photos are SO IMPORTANT.

Newly married - I believe - sporting a moooo-stash and some kind of police uniform. (He was a policeman for about 12 years.)



This was taken in Boulder at my grandparent's ranch - Mom and Dad were either newly married or engaged. I love this photo because Mom is so pretty and it has "Bitsy" the horse in it. (A few years later, she was the first horse I ever rode by myself.)

 

This was the photo we put on the front of the program - I think this was taken in Oregon, the only time that all of us ever traveled up there to see Dad's family. About 1984.

 

Guess which decade this one was taken - I'll give you a hint: big hair was HUGE back then.

 
(also featuring our first cat, Gator - I can't believe he ever stood for that ribbon! He was a pretty fierce cat - the bane of the neighborhood dogs.)

Taken at an air show - probably somewhere around the late 80s or early 90s. Dad was a really good photographer back in the day before this digital business made is so much easier. (This goofy mouth thing was a photo trademark of his.)



I didn't always have the best relationship with my dad, but I am grateful that it was so much better over the last decade or so. I will surely miss him.

I love you Dad, and I'm glad you can run and throw 90 MPH fastballs again.

Adventures in Luke Photography

I realize that kids go through stages. They also go through stages of not knowing quite how to be in front of a camera. Luke's been in one of those for a while now. It looks a little something like this:

 

 

I don't know if he's just messing with me or if he really is feeling like he doesn't know what to do when I point the camera in his direction. The more I try to encourage him to "act natural", the worse it gets. 

Oh, wait! I just figured it out - this is his natural!

Oh dear. 

Well, I guess I'll just go with the flow and hope for some, from time to time, that are slightly less freaky than the rest. 

 

(Oh boy, oh boy, how I love this boy!)

Baby Eric

A few months ago, this cute little sleepy baby:



was this cute little sleepy baby:



Awwww!

He is my friend Emily's little Eric who was born in November. He's SUCH a good baby, and so cuddly and happy and squishy and sweet - I hold him and kiss him every chance I get. And he hugs me back because I'm cuddly and squishy too and he can tell how much I like him.

On Wednesday this week, I had 8 of my friends and their 13 preschool aged kids, over for lunch for Rachel's birthday and honey lime enchiladas. Yes, the key words in that sentence: 13 preschoolers. On a rainy day in my 1500 square foot house. And yes, it was noisy. Wow.



But we had a great time and baby Eric was the quietest person in the house. When it was time to go home, as his mom was gathering up his two brothers, she set Eric on the couch - he can already sit up by himself. I looked over and he was falling asleep sitting up.

I grabbed my camera, even though I had on the wrong lens, and snapped a few quickies from across the room so as not to disturb him.

He would start to drift off and it would make him fall forward, when he was almost on his face, he'd startle himself awake and sit back up and then immediately close his eyes and start to fall forward again.

CUTE!



Going, going, gon....

 

No wait!

Awake!

Well, sort of.



This baby makes me want to have one of my own. If I could somehow be guaranteed this EXACT baby, I might even do it.

Horses in the Background

I was born with an affinity for horses. They were the all-consuming obsession of my childhood and have been the abiding passion of my adulthood. My recent life has been such that horses have sometimes taken a backseat to everything else. Sometimes they're a little more prominent, sometimes less.

I took this photo last night and as I was looking at it this morning, I was struck that this image is a metaphor for the last decade of my life. No matter what new, distracting, interesting or more urgent things are in the foreground of my days, there are always horses in the background.

Raw Milk: My Hero

 My mom is a really smart lady. She's very savvy about nutrition, herbs, supplements, and things of that nature. She recently had a BioMeridian test which tested the function of all the systems in her body. When she went in to get her results, the doctor reading them to her had never met her and he was very surprised when he saw her in person. My mom is 68, and from the results of her test, the doctor was expecting someone in their early 30s.

Growing up, we didn't have anything processed in our house: no white flour, white rice, white sugar. And we almost always had raw milk. We moved around a lot, but Mom would always find someone with raw milk. At one point, she had to drive almost an hour each way to get it and we went every Saturday and got 8 gallons.

A lot of people are misinformed about raw milk, they think it will make you sick. I've been drinking it literally all my life and never been sick from it. In the 1920s, a lot of people got sick from unpasteurized milk, but it was factory produced milk from sickly cows kept in filthy facilities. Pasteurization was a solution to that problem. But when milk is pasteurized, the good enzymes and bacteria necessary for digesting the milk are killed, making it very difficult for our bodies to break it down properly. Can you say lactose intolerance? Lactose intolerance isn't milk's fault, it's pasteurization's fault.

And what about homogenization? Homogenization changes the molecular structure of milk so that the cream cannot rise to the top. It also changes it into a food that our bodies cannot properly utilize. It subjects the milk to intense pressure and heats it yet again. Bleck.

The are an extremely impressive amount of health benefits from drinking raw milk. I don't want to take up too much space with talking about them, but I found a great resource (YAY INTERNET) HERE, if you are interested.

Anyhooo.... When Marty first told me that he wanted to marry me and take me to Orderville, I asked him if he knew someone with a milk cow. We've been able to get raw milk most of our marriage until just this last year. And I've been having a hard time. I've had digestion problems I've never had before, I've had canker sores, which is pretty unusual for me, and gotten more colds than I've ever gotten in my life. I really think it has something to do with not having raw milk anymore.

But happy day on Monday - Marty called and told me that someone in our valley was selling raw milk. We went up and got some earlier this week and I feel like dancing with joy. The cow is a Brown Swiss. I haven't met her yet, but they pretty much always look something like this:

She gives so much milk that she's feeding several calves, her own family and our family with lots left over. I'm planning to meet her soon, give her a big apple and tell her how much I appreciate her wonderful milk.

We needed some containers to hold all our newly acquired milk, so we went down to Marty's dad's house and found some half gallon bottles. They contained tomato juice and prunes and rice (respectively) that were bottled in 1976. We washed them out and sterilized them and now they're holding milk in my fridge. Look at this great old bottle:



It's an ATLAS strong shoulder Mason Jar. And it's blue. 



 How cool is that?!  A couple of the other jars are kinda square with vertical ribs on them. I love old junk.

And...

I LOVE RAW MILK!