The Confused Oak

I drive by this tree at least twice a day on the way into our garage.

I don't whether to admire the tree's leaves' tenacity for hanging in there through strong winds, rain, sleet, and snow. Especially when all the other leaves fell weeks ago.

Or should I pity the tree for being in denial? 99% of local deciduous trees have shed their leaves. Snow looks beautiful on evergreen trees but doesn't look as nice on dried brown oak leaves.

All I can say is that one shouldn't have to rake leaves and shovel snow at the same time.

Sound Sleeper

Today is my son's 26th birthday. In honor of his special day, I'm sharing a favorite story from the Vik Family archives. 

When our son, Andrew, was little, he was such a sound sleeper that he barely moved. We'd often watch to see if his chest rose and fell to make sure he was still alive. 

The worst time was when he was 13 years old.

In 2000, Keith and I had gone on a date, while fifteen-year-old Christina, our oldest daughter, babysat our six youngest children. We enjoyed a peaceful, relaxing evening away from our busy family, only to return home to an astonishing turn of events.

10:15 p.m. We walked in the house to find Christina downstairs reading. We assumed the other kids were upstairs in bed. When asked how things had gone that night, Christina said, "Okay."

Eleven-year-old Kiah walked downstairs and said, "Has Andrew come back yet?"

"What do you mean?" Keith asked. "Isn't he here?"

Christina sighed and put down her book, "I'm not sure." Seems while the cat's away, the mice will...fight. Christina explained that she had  a big fight with Andrew and he had grabbed a sleeping bag and stomped out of the house, saying that "He was going where no one could find him."

We left Kiah inside with the sleeping younger children, and took Christina outside to help look for Andrew.

Our eight acres were surrounded by 160 acres of soybeans. There wasn't much moonlight and our big yard light only illuminated so far. We looked for thirty minutes then called a neighbor who came over with a searchlight. We yelled and shined our flashlights all over the place. No Andrew.

We hoped he hadn't gone into our three-acre grove. Navigating our thick, tangled, overgrown grove at night would be nearly impossible. After an hour of searching, thirty minutes by ourselves, and thirty minutes with the neighbor, we started to panic. Where was he?

11:30 - The police wouldn't help until we had called Andrew's closest friends to see if he'd gone to their houses. His friends lived five miles away. Surely he hadn't walked to town?

We felt foolish calling people that late at night, but his friends hadn't seen him.  We wondered what they thought of us? How do you lose a child from your house?

11:45 - Andrew had been missing for two hours. A police officer showed up with a bigger, more powerful searchlight. He grilled Christina who had been the last person to see him. We all yelled Andrew's name, shining lights everywhere.

12:15 - We were panicked. Was he hurt somewhere? Perhaps unconscious? Was he hiding and purposely not answering? Had he run away? The policeman offered to call in a bloodhound.

I rested my head on our van's steering wheel and prayed, "God, you know where he is. Please help us find him."

I shone headlights into the soybean field again. Between the van and soybeans stood an old white picnic table. I looked hard at the table and thought it looked thicker than normal.

I walked over to the table, overjoyed to see Andrew sleeping on it. I drove off to find Keith. We drove back and parked five feet from the table. Keith honked the horn a few times to alert the searchers that we had finally found Andrew. We kept the headlights shining on him, amazed that he was still sleeping.

How had we missed him before?  Andrew was small for his age and very skinny. Wearing a black stocking cap and snuggled down inside a black sleeping bag, his small size and black bag had made him almost invisible.

I called his name a couple times, thinking he should go inside and sleep in his bed. Since he was obviously in a deep sleep, totally oblivious to the activity going on around him, Keith said to let him sleep where he was.

What was more unbelievable? That we had looked for two and half hours for someone who was sleeping fifty feet from the house or that Andrew had slept through people yelling his name, cars driving on and off our property, lights shining everywhere, and the van's horn honking five feet from his head. 

We thanked our neighbor and the policeman and sent them home, everyone relieved that the lost had been found. A few hours with a missing child was awful. I can't imagine what parents who never find their children go through.

The next morning was sunny and peaceful. Keith watched out the kitchen window as Andrew woke up. His little head poked out of the sleeping bag and he looked around, disoriented to where he was and why. Andrew walked inside and Keith asked how he had slept.

Andrew yawned and said, "Fine." He had absolutely no recollection of all the chaos he had caused.

__________________________

I was reluctant to go on future dates. Keith thought it vital that we take time for us and sternly warned the kids that there would be no more monkey business while Mom and Dad were gone.

Unfortunately this episode didn't cure the kids of fighting. They had a few more "incidents" but I am happy to say that our kids have grown up to like each other and are good friends now.

I see Andrew watching his four-month-old daughter sleeping and when he leans closer to make sure she's still breathing. I smile and think, "What goes around, comes around."

Cheap Fun

Our family is easily entertained. I think it's fun and cool to open a new brick of yeast. I buy my yeast from Sams Club. The savings on a two brick bag at Sams over the price of buying yeast in packets from the grocery story will pay for the membership. 

For 20 years, I have asked my kids, "Who wants to open up a new bag of yeast?" Invariably someone will. If not, I get all the fun to myself. 

The vacuum-packed yeast starts out very hard. 

 Once the air hits the yeast, it immediately gets soft.

This 21 second video is of my daughter Amy. My husband didn't realize what we were doing so is talking to our dog at the end. I don't know how to edit his voice out. We couldn't do a retake because once the yeast goes soft, there isn't a way to make it hard again unless it would get re-vacuum-packed. 

If you're looking for a cheap way to entertain your kids, this is the ticket.

Seeing Double

My youngest daughter, Lani (on the left), got quite a surprise when she got to church Sunday morning. A friend's wife had the same outfit. 

What are the odds that two girls in the same town would unknowingly buy the same dress from the same thrift store and accessorize it the same way and, without consulting each other, wear it to the same church on the same day?

Cheap Decorating

My daughters talked about moving out for months. This August they finally did it. Kiah and Anna moved five hours south to LaCrosse, WI. I understand the need for independence, but wish they could have located two hours away, not five. At least they're in a town with three Taco Bells. 

Kiah came home for a week this summer and we worked like crazy getting things ready for their apartment. I sewed, Lani painted, Kiah cooked, and Anna floated from station to station, helping as needed.  

The world's most patient Wal-Mart fabric clerk helped us figure out much fabric we needed for five sets of curtains. These are for the living room.

Moving day was beastly hot and muggy. 95 stinking degrees. The girls' upstairs apartment doesn't have AC. Only love made us spend three days in miserable heat helping them set up. 

We're all pleased with the results. They turned this...

...into this.

(chair from used furniture store, suitcase and doily from Grandma Vik, 

bookshelf from my youngest daughter's furniture stash.)

The kitchen went from this...

...to this. 

(homemade curtains, blue paint, dishes from thrift stores and garage sales.)

I showed Kiah an old brown spice rack I'd bought at Goodwill, saying I'd seen fun things done with spice racks on Pinterest. After I listed a few ideas, she asked if she could have it. I said yes and then asked how she would use it. She smiled and said, "As a spice rack." 

What a concept. There are so many Pinterest articles on repurposing things, that it was unusual to hear of someone using something for which it was intended. Their spice rack now sports a new pink paint job. 

They got this free old brown table from someone's storage 

shed and transformed it into a fun dining table/checkerboard.

(Chairs were purchased for $15 from a Consignment store. 

Paint was free from a local free paint exchange.)

Painting one wall is cheaper than a whole room.

(Yellow shelving was an $8 Goodwill entertainment center 

painted with free paint from the paint exchange.)

$1 Wall decal from Dollar Tree

They turned this...

...into this.

$30 Goodwill desk, light green paint, homemade curtains

Couch from used furniture store, coffee and end 

table from an uncle, pillows from Goodwill.

View from Living Room back towards the Kitchen.

 
I loved that getting them set up was a joint effort, a true family affair. I sewed, Lani painted, Amy and Erica helped carry boxes up the stairs to their apartment and unpack. Keith helped clean and organize. Kiah is a third year nursing student and Anna just graduated from high school, so they had a small decorating budget that we stretched pretty far. Now they're on their own, though another sister and their brother's family live ten blocks away. 

Needless to say, we miss them and Thanksgiving is a long ways away. 

“It is always sad when someone leaves home, 

unless they are simply going around the corner and 

will return in a few minutes with ice-cream sandwiches.”

                                       -- Lemony Snicket --

"A house is built of wood and beams,

A home is built on hopes and dreams."

Prize Winning Blanket

It has been brought to my attention by my daughters, my husband, and his aunt that I haven't posted for awhile. I don't have a good excuse, other than a lot was going on in August and blogging slipped through the cracks, along with other things like cooking and cleaning. 

I wanted to share my 19-year-old daughter, Anna's, project. I dragged her to a quilt show last fall. Very interesting but these quilters were light years ahead of my beginner quilting skills. To our great surprise, Anna won the door prize of a Jelly Roll and backing fabric. 

I might not have the terminology right. A Jelly Roll, as I understand it, which means I could easily be wrong, is a roll of pre-cut three inch wide strips that can be assembled into a quilt.

The plan was for Anna to make a quilt for her new niece. First Anna needed to learn how to sew. She caught on pretty quick. I pinned, she sewed, and Lani pressed the seams. 

Anna got busy and the quilt lay unfinished for months until Cailin's birth motivated her to give it another go. 

She was inspired by this picture we found on Pinterest. 

After Cailin's arrival, Anna went on a sewing binge. She wanted an appliqued heart instead of a flower. I had never appliqued before so was thankful for Pinterest tutorials. She took the finished quilt top to a local printing place and had them embroider Cailin's name on the quilt. 

I took over from there, dismayed to find the embroidery had pulled the heart tight so the edges were fraying. I restitched the heart a few times (any real quilters reading this will most likely shudder at our quilting greenness and mistakes.)

Here's the finished product. It's pretty big so she'll be able to use it for a few years. 

The name shows up better in this picture. 

 

We didn't mean to sew a cross but think it's fun that one showed up.

I'm dragging Amy and Lani to this year's quilt show this Friday, hoping lightning strikes twice and we win another door prize.

The Cutest Vik

Hands down, the cutest and sweetest Vik. 

A friend of Rachel's, Camie Treptau, took these pictures of my granddaughter at two weeks. So thankful for good cameras and someone who knows how to use it. 

Feeling blessed and thankful.

Canadian Road Trip - Day #2

I started this story a few weeks ago before all this new grandbaby business started. If you missed the first installment, or it's been so long you can't remember what I wrote, you can read about Day 1 of our excursion by clicking here. 

For the reader's digest version, one fifty-something short mother, her two twenty-something equally short daughters, and a thirty-year-old long-legged engineer friend from church headed north to Ontario, Canada in an aging, used to be nice but still very comfy, green Grand Marquis for a weekend trip to see a good friend get married.  On Day 1, we drove from Ashland, Wisconsin to Thunder Bay Ontario.

Day 2 

When the alarm went off at 6:00 a.m., Kiah remembered that Thunder Bay was in eastern time zone and Sioux Lookout was in central. We slept for another hour. Sweet. 

I'd forgotten my slip and nylons so headed to Wal-Mart. I asked the ditzy young clerk with a pink stud in her tongue where to find slips. 

She said, "What are slips?" 

I told her, "Something you wear underneath a dress so people can't see through it." (Don't young ladies wear slips anymore?)

I almost had a heart attack buying gas in Canada. Ouch! Muy expensive! It's sold by the liter and I don't know how that translates to gallons, but buying half a tank of gas cost at least $25 more than it does in America. 

Christina drove for awhile and our rule is the driver gets to choose what to listen to. Christina really likes an Irish group called Gaelic Storm. They are good musicians but sing a lot of drinking songs and Christina burnt us out on this particular album three years back when she listened to it over and over.

After an hour of Gaelic Storm, Kiah and I rebelled. When Christina and Brendon got out of the car to buy donuts, I changed the album. Kiah thought we should hide Brendon's Zune (kind of like an iPod). She suggested hiding it in their stuff as they probably wouldn't think to look there.  Kiah hid the Zune in Christina's backpack. When they returned, Brendon asked if anything needed to go in the trunk. Kiah handed him Christina's backpack.

Kiah and I giggled like thirteen-year-olds while we waited for them to realize they were Gaelic Stormless. When they finally noticed, we passed this ransom note to the front seat.

They refused to capitulate to our demands so i played the two songs I have on my ipad and then Kiah and I sang enduring classics like, "Oh Where is My Hairbrush?" and "Home on the Range." 

Kiah, who has a nice singing voice, wanted to make it clear that she was just goofing around, and said she was singing as off-key as possible on purpose.  I don't sing well and couldn't lie. I said I was just singing normal. 

After a four hour drive from Thunder Bay, we arrived in Sioux Lookout with an hour to spare. In the absence of Taco Bell we ate at the Canadian fast food chain called "Tim Hortons." (I asked a clerk who Tim Horton was and she didn't know.) We finished getting ready in the restaurant's bathroom, then high-tailed it to the wedding.

It was an outdoor lakeside wedding. Very pretty and sweet and worth driving 408.68 miles for.

They are a neat couple and we're excited for them. It was a God-honoring ceremony and we enjoyed every minute.  Both families heartily approve so it was a truly joyous ocassion. After the bridesmaids walked down the aisle, two junior bridesmaids carried a sign that said, "Uncle Nathan, Here comes your girl." 

They wrote their own vows. Nathan went first and did a nice job. Alisha's vows were eloquent and well thought out. When she finished, Nathan joked, "I'm glad I went first."

On the way back to the car, I rolled my foot and fell on the grass. I hope the only people who saw me fall were my travel companions. One minute, I was there, and the next I wasn't. Thankfully, I wasn't hurt. I didn't know nylons could get grass stained. Very embarrassing. 

We enjoyed the reception. Much food, all good, though we were surprised and disappointed there wasn't gravy. They had an amazing dessert bar instead of wedding cake. I don't use the word "amazing" lightly because the word gets watered down when it's used all the time, but this was truly amazing. About twenty different desserts and they all looked good. That alone made the trip worth it. 

Christina amused herself at the reception by playing with the melting candles at our table. Whoever cleared the table probably wondered why someone had filled five large plastic clear glasses with melted candle wax. That's my girl!

The Canadians we visited with, when they heard where we were from, often said some variation of, "Oh, you're from down south." When you live in the northernmost tip of Wisconsin, you're not used to be referenced to as from down south. 

The bugs were awful. Even with bug spray they still got through. Christina reacted to a bug bite and her left arm swelled and started hurting.

Our family calls Brendon my second son. We feed him and in return, he helps move furniture and reach  things on high shelves. I'm holding dipped Oreo cookie favors that I snitched off places that people didn't sit at to bring home to my four daughters back home who couldn't go. I'm aware the purple jacket doesn't go with the outfit, but cold people cannot be choosy. 

Congratulating Nathan

  

We had a 90 minute drive south to our hotel.  We kept seeing signs like "Moose Crossing, Moose on the Loose, and Moose Danger" but thought it was false advertising because we had yet to see a moose. Kiah and Brendon finally saw one on the ride to the motel.  Since it was just the bare outline before it lumbered in the woods, I didn't think that counted as an official moose sighting. 

We arrived at Driden, Ontario's Best Western Hotel to discover that our small room only had one queen bed. Made our sketchy two bed motel room the night before not seem so bad. Brendon slept on the floor by the door and Christina slept on the floor by the bed and Kiah and I enjoyed a good night's sleep on the bed.

One day in Canada so far - a big, beautiful, watery, northern place. Still hoping to see a moose before we head south to Northern Wisconsin tomorrow.

Team Baby Vik

Rachel surprised our family with t-shirts to wear when the baby was born. The fronts all say 

and the backs all say what our relationship is

 

When my kids used call me Grandma, it was insult, meaning I was moving slow. Now being called Grandma is a privilege.   

Erica, Kiah, and I waiting not so patiently in the waiting room

(Two hours before Baby Vik's birth)  

Taken when Cailin was one day old.

We all wore our t-shirts at the camp where Andrew, Rachel, Kiah, Erica, and Amy work the next day. A young son of one of the full-time staff told Erica that he wanted a t-shirt. Erica asked him what it would say on the back of his t-shirt. He thought for a moment, then said decidedly, "Neighbor."

Andrew has six sisters so between me and the girls, there were a lot of blue shirts in the maternity wing. 

Andrew's best friend since third grade showed up wearing one

as did his wife

 

When the next visitor showed up, the nurse said,

"I'm sorry you can't go in, you're not wearing the right shirt."

Rachel's mom wants to be called Oma.

Opa 

 

 Rachel's brother lives many hours away so 

hasn't seen Cailin yet, but he wore his t-shirt anyway.

My husband, Keith preached Sunday in his t-shirt

 

Keith saw Cailin for the first time when she was 6 days old. 

Christina, the oldest Auntie

 When asked why the shirts are blue when Andrew and Rachel knew they were having a girl, Rachel said that she liked the color blue. Andrew said we could save the shirts and wear them the next time they have a child. Besides Cailin's Opa, Grandpa, and Uncle, even though they love her dearly, might not to wear a pink t-shirt. 

Proud Aunties

Kiah

Grainy picture, but I love the way Erica's holding Cailin.

 

Anna 

Amy

A fellow camp staff member gave Lani a new nickname. He called her Aunty (pronounced "Awn-tea") Lani (rhymes with Bonnie). Then he decided that didn't sound right, so he combined the two words and named her, "Lanti" (pronounced "lawn-tea") She wears her shirt and new name proudly.

Team Baby Vik tied a volleyball match against another family at Village Creek Bible Camp this week. (Kiah loves Baby Vik, but said her shirt was very dirty.) I'm the short squatty one with the turtle looking knee pads. I rarely dive in volleyball, but wear knee pads to protect my aging knees in case I fall.  

Thankful for new babies, new shirts, and being able to share special times with family.