Vacation in Hermione's backyard

Cedar Forest

It felt like a cathedral.

Kootenai Falls
No swimming but the water was the most beautiful blue-green color and the falls were breath taking.

Libby Dam

We had fun! We went sightseeing to the Libby Dam, Kootenai Falls, and Ross Creek Cedars. We walked across a swinging bridge across the raging river. We went hiking two and a half miles up hill around fourteen switchbacks to a mountain lake where I attempted to catch a fish. (Try using a fly rod with a 15 mile an hour wind blowing toward you and see how far you get.) We ate out and we biked across two bridges to a fabulous city park along a huge river. Kristy's town knows how to construct a park!

Popcorn

With the start of the NFL pre-season games, I started reminiscing about a big silver popcorn bowl, and an old, beat up blanket on the living room floor. It occurred to me as I thought about the popcorn parties, that we inadvertently trained our kids to like sports. Wilbur would come home from a day at work. He would take a hot bath because he was out in the cold weather all day long “playing in the mud,” in his words. Then, he would pop the popcorn. I would tell the kids to spread out a blanket. The reason for the blanket was to protect the living room carpet. I don’t know if the blanket really did offer protection, but it made me feel better about chowing down popcorn in the living room. In the fall we would watch the Pittsburg Steelers playing the Dallas cowboys or whoever else was playing that week. Or after November, the Lakers would be playing the Celtics while we all crammed popcorn into our mouths. That popcorn must have sent the subliminal message to the kids that sports were gooooood.

Football and basketball were our sports of choice. We never watched baseball: partly because, in my never-to-be-humble opinion, baseball is twenty minutes of action stretched over four hours, and partly because the baseball season is in the summer. Popcorn popping in the summer was rare. When the kids were young, Wilbur’s summmer hours were from “can see to can’t see.” He wasn’t around very often to pop popcorn, and he doesn’t seem to like baseball as much as basketball and football. For the rest of the family, the cool evening was a great time to lounge outside on the patio or read a book out loud that we checked out of the library.

With the first NFL game, though, the popcorn popper would start. I would have liked to post some pictures of the family crowded around the popcorn bowl. It's funny how we didn't always take pictures of the normal, everyday thingas we did. Popcorn popping and eating on a game night happened often and was delicious.

Glacier Without All the People

We went camping this week to an absolutely beautiful place. I would tell you where, but I swore an oath of secrecy. It was like Glacier Park without all the people. I was sick that neither of my cameras were working, but a friend took some pictures. Being in the middle of such incredible beauty does something for the soul.

We were annoyed by rain but had some beautiful weather too. Wilbur and I tried a hike we saw on the map. The area was so lush and green and had so much grass that Wilbur's eyes were streaming and his nose stuffed up alarmingly. We had to turn back before an emergency situation developed. We are thinking about coming back some September when the grass seed has settled down.

Awesome

I would blog about the family gathering together in July, but there is too much to say. Floating the river was the activity that I enjoyed the most. Seeing everyone was AWESOME!

July 3rd Hike

Wilbur expresses his enthusiasm about hiking

The destination

Looking east from the top of the park.

Exotic mushroom species found along the wayA resting place at the park

This bridge ain't big enough for the two of us

Albino shootingstars

The Elkhorn is closer than you think

Open House

We contracted with a cleaning service from the far North to assist with preparing the house with the event. Summer is the service's off season.

The two VIPs arrived accompanied by their own paparazzi.

A famous floral designer from a secluded bay in Canyon Ferry created the table decorations.

A number of very distinguished guests graced us with their company.

I Remember Stacy

Here are a few things I remember about Stacy:

• She HATED to go to sleep. Remember how she fell asleep eating ice cream at Michelle's reception?


• She wasn't even completely delivered when I saw her looking around the room.


• She called her plastic swimming pool a pond.


• She smiled at me when only about two days old. She had kept her parents up all night. We gave her a bath and a drop of formula. Her mother went to bed. And while I was holding her before she drifted off, she started moving her mouth. Surely, I thought, she can't be trying to smile! Then, she gave me the biggest grin you ever saw.


• When she was five: if it wasn't pink, forget about her wearing it.


• It never ocurred to her that someone didn't like her and that she wasn't "A" O.K.


• When she was about three months old, she rolled everywhere. She LOVED paper and tryied to stuff it in her mouth whenever she could.

• She used to call for me, "Grrrrrrrrandma!"

Memorial Day

Dad served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Because of his bad eyesight, the service didn't want him at first. By 1943. he was drafted and sent to Fort Douglas, Utah. There he met and married Mom. Bad eyesight or not, he and another man tied for the top marksman score of the enlisted men.

After basic training, he was assigned to a unit that employed the very first primitive computers. The purpose of the computers was to keep track of troop movements. The computers were BIG (think room size or bigger) and used punch cards to operate them. The soldiers in Dad's unit received a commendation for how efficiently they did their work.

The young man who had never left the state ended up seeing the South Pacific with this computer unit. Dad said he traveled on a ship across the pacific and was never sea sick a day. But in his 60's he went on a tourist fishing boat off the coast of California, and he was sicker than a dog. That disgusted him. Dad was in the Philippines, New Guinea, an island named Helmaherra, and probably lots of places he never told me about.

Now, I wish I had thought to ask him more questions. To find out anything, I had to ask him questions. Dad never volunteered information or conversation. One thing I would like to know is: what was he doing when he found out about the surrender of the Germans and then the Japanese?

His service in the armed forces was important, and I am proud of him.

Star Trek

On Saturday afternoon I had a yearning to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation. I wanted to cook chicken and dressing casserole, pull out a blanket, and curl up with dinner in front of the episode where Sean Luc Picard first learns about the Borg. I wanted to use the Enterprise’s transporter beam and transport all my kids home for just an hour while we watched the show and ate dinner on the blanket. I wanted to remind everyone NOW are the good old days.

For Granted

A lot of kids take their parents for granted. On Monday circumstances brought home to me how I took my kids for granted. Wilbur and I had a family over to dinner. The family has a ten year old boy. The main purpose of the evening was to teach the ten year old to ride a bike. After an hour and a half, he could balance while he pedaled two or three times before trying to catch himself with his feet. I gathered that to him tipping over on a bike was the equivalent to falling off the edge of the Grand Canyon. Every teeny bump or scrape prompted an anguished cry of "ahhh!" or "owww!"

Even though our family only had two tough males, it had five tough, reasonably physically fit females. It might have taken ten minutes to help our slowest learner figure out how to ride a bike. Don't ask me who the slowest learner was because I don't remember.

Petunia was the most cautious. I do remember that. At age seven Wilbur announced he was removing her training wheels. The wheels came off, and off she rode without a stutter. She hadn't needed the wheels for months, maybe years. If memory serves, Prudence mastered bike riding at four or five. After Orville was born my memory began to overload and started to short circuit, so I don't have a clear recollection about Hermione and Eglantine. It seems like age five saw them careening off down the drive on a bike. They can correct me if I'm having a brain cramp. It might have taken one of them as much as ten minutes to put together the balancing and steering before mastering bike riding.

I clearly remember Orville demanding his father remove his training wheels at age three - a couple weeks before his fourth birthday. Disbelief made that bike riding event memorable. He'd had the bike for just a few minutes before he said, "I don't need training wheels. I got this."

I thought all kids could master bike riding in ten minutes or less. I assumed all kids could "tough it" through a skinned knee or scraped elbow. After Monday, I realized I was mistaken. I was blessed to have kids who were talented, tough, and fit.

Elk

Yesterday these elk paid a visit to the old mine next our house. These bull elk shed their racks but are starting to grow new ones. We have had elk visit before. Max decided to chase one once. The cow elk stared at him as if to say, "Surely, you jest!" Then, she started after him. Max has sworn off elk chasing since then.

Lessons from Mom

Miller women. Mom is the little girl.

My mother was born in Sugarville, Utah January 22, 1923. She was the last of ten children. Idyllic did not describe her childhood. Pumping of ground water in the area caused the loss of the family farm. When Mom was young, her father developed terrible asthma from breathing all the dust and chaff on the farm, especially during harvest. Because her Dad couldn’t stand to feel short of breath, the doctor prescribed adrenalin shots which eventually damaged his heart and caused his death when my Mom was nine years old. As if the loss of the farm and her father’s death were not enough, the Great Depression hit in the middle of all this upheaval. Mom’s family was essentially homeless, moving from one of her brother’s homes to another, staying until a brothers’ family was too stressed. Then they would have to pack up and move in with another brother. Rejection was an issue. Changing schools every few months was a constant for Mom until her mother (Grandma Miller) moved into care for an old man who eventually became Mom's stepfather. Not surprisingly, Mom carried emotional scars from all this.

However, my Mom learned some important lessons and taught me some very valuable lessons:

1) Personal Hygiene. This may seem like a no brainer. But I’ve seen people who didn’t learn this lesson growing up. If you don’t know this, it doesn’t matter what else you do know. You cannot get along anywhere, including the work place. No hygiene, no life.

2) Moral Purity. I remember Mom saying, “A guy who is trapped into marrying a girl because of a pregnancy always resents the girl and never respects her.” Although it doesn’t seem reasonable for males to feel this way because unwed pregnancies involve two people, not just one, reality is reality whether it’s fair or not. Mom was dead right for most unwed pregnancy situations I’ve seen. I’ve seen high school classmates of mine who ended up in the situation of an unwanted pregnancy and “had to get married.” I’ve noticed that usually they didn’t stay married, and the ones who did have to contend with a man who resents them. Yuck.

3) “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” She quoted this to me when I was a little child and lied to her. Then she explained what it meant. I had a couple life situations that taught me life is so much simpler and just plain livable if we are honest. She told me how as a child she lied to her mother once. Her mother said, “Is that a damn lie or a true lie?” Mom responded, “It’s a damn lie.” I always got a kick out of that story.

4) Look for a guy who has clean hands. Dirty hands, dirty guy, unless he’s been working on a car.

5) Integrity. As a teenager I remember a leader calling me up and asking me to do something I did NOT want to do. Because it was easier to be agreeable I said I would do it, but I had no intention of doing it. Mom somehow knew I wasn’t going to do the assignment. She said, “If you are not going to do that, call her up and tell her right now. Then she can find someone else.” She explained to me that it is disgusting conduct to tell someone you will do something and not keep your word. She explained if you tell the person up front you will not be doing the job, they can find someone else who will. But allowing someone to depend on you, and then letting them down was despicable. This is why I do visiting teaching, even when I don't want to.

6) Take care of your possessions: try to make them last a long time. Mom’s Mom once said of a neighbor, “Her husband can’t bring enough in the front door because she is so busy throwing it out the back.” I feel a lot of guilt with this lesson. But these days an iron is not built to last a lifetime like it was during the Great Depression.

7) Have a place for things and put them back in the place. Then, you don’t have to spend your valuable time looking for things. I’m still trying to implement this one. I have been frustrated more times than I can count by it taking more time to find a tool to do a job than it would take to do the job itself. Unfortunately, I have my Dad’s intense focus that tunes out everything, including where I set things down.

8) Change your sheets once a week. I LOVE clean sheets, especially if they’ve been hanging on the line! Sometimes, I’ve noticed people who don’t change sheets very often have sour smelling bedrooms.

9) If you want to be treated well, dress well. “Well” in this case meant clean, appropriate, clothes and well maintained hair and general appearance. I learned this advice was accurate through experience. Once I went refrigerator shopping with a friend. I was wearing a professional looking dress because I had been somewhere. MY friend did daycare in her home and was wearing t-shirt and jeans. All the salesmen addressed themselves to me. It was my professional-looking dress. Another time before I went back to college, I needed to research county court house records because of trouble with neighbors regarding our road easement. Remembering the refrigerator shopping lesson, I put on my suit and drove to Boulder. The court house employees must have thought I was an attorney. They treated me like one, anyway. Mom knew what she was talking about.

10) Get an education, be prepared to support yourself. You never know what could happen. As a child, Mom lived this. As a young adult, she did this, becoming a Registered Nurse. As a mother she taught this. As a grandmother, she was a champion of education, especially for women. When it came time for Petunia to go to school, we knew we couldn't completely finance her college education. In passing, I mentioned this to my Mom. She irritated me by continuing to bring it up all during Petunia’s Senior year. She told me Petunia’s college education was a must, which I agreed with. But I didn't know why she continued to ask about it every time we talked and why it was her business. Finally, I told Mom that Petunia was getting college loans, and Mom didn't mention it again. In talking to one of my sisters, I learned my Dad had inherited some money from his brother and Mom was going shake him down for some of the bucks, if Petunia needed it to go to school.

Mom could be ornery, and all her daughters have some of this orneriness. But I've decided orneriness has its place. No woman-beater or child abuser ever was drawn to any of her daughters. Lucky for the abusers. I learned some first-class things from Mom!

The Newspaper

Since I am chiefly famous for my inability to remember to straighten my collar before appearing in public, I welcome a little positive recognition. But why, why, WHY did the reporter go to the high school annual published my Sophomore year and use my geeky, homely Sophomore photo in the newspaper?

Tacky, Tacky, Tacky

I bought five bars of evil smelling soap recently. I thought I was buying something similar to the handmade soaps sold at the Farmer’s Market this summer. Instead, it was perfume-laden gunk with colors inspired by Barnum and Bailey. I was in a quandary about what to do with this stuff until I attended a wedding last week.

The handsome, virile man that I married, seeing I was busy the Saturday morning of the wedding offered to pick up a wedding present while he was in town running some of his errands. I jumped at that offer. The wedding invitation helpfully advised that the wedding couple was registered at a store close to a hardware store, so my better-half set off for town in a state of contentment. He came home some time later with a gift, complete with gift bag.

Unsatisfied with the array of towels and dishes that the happy couple picked out, he, being male, settled on set of knives on their list. We have been married for over thirty years, and we would trade a trip to Tahiti for a set of knives that expensive. Since I need this guy’s help with anything that requires brute force, I bit my tongue, filled out a card, and set off for the wedding.

We deposited our gift on the display table, where the table guardian instructed us to take a rolled up piece of paper wrapped with a ribbon. Apparently after opening all those wedding gifts, a few modern brides are too exhausted to indulge in the traditional nicety of acknowledging gifts by thank you notes. So, instead of a thank you note, guests receive a ribbon-wrapped piece of paper. On the paper is a Xeroxed poem that usually starts something like this, “Thank you for your special gift….” What rhymes with tacky?

Not long after the wedding, I bought the soap-from-hell with Christmas gifts in mind. Since I want my family and close friends to like me, I knew Christmas giving was out. I was baffled about whose life I could grace with this splendid endowment. Fortunately, my mate has flashes of brilliance. He said, “We could give it as wedding gifts.” I was about to nay-say the suggestion when I remembered the tacky “thank-you-poem-in-lieu-of-note.” I looked at my husband and said, “We could give a bar of soap to people who give poems as thank you notes!” He responded, “We’ll buy a good gift, but leave it in the car. You can carry the soap in your purse. If we get handed a poem, we’ll give them the soap.” I love it when a plan comes together.

Dog Lovers

Pippi and me are not the first dog lovers in the family. Front row middle and front row right depict ancestors from the 1800's who seemed to like their dogs.

High School Sports: Seven Facts for Parents

1) The coaches lie to you at the first parent meeting. When the coach tells the parents, "If you have any questions or concerns, please come and talk to me," don't believe it. It's a lie. Don't EVER do this. They say this because it sounds reasonable and good, but they don't mean one word of it. They don't even want to know who you are. If you come to them with a concern, they will penalize that child, and any other children you have coming up probably won't make the team.

2) If a kid's parents are teachers at the high school, that kid will make the team and will play. It doesn't matter how good he/she is.

3) If you are a Mom and want to be popular with the other parents, i.e. Moms, you have to do all the team support activities they dream up. If you don't do all that stuff, you won't be liked. Most of the activity-doing parents won't even talk to you. A few will be blatantly rude and hostile. This is their attempt to make you get in line. Ostensibly, their reasoning for being rude to you is that you must not care about your kid if you don't decorate lockers, make treats for the bus, go to the home game basketball dinners etc. They won't look at anything else that you do or have done that shows you care. The only barometer of caring is your participation in the activities they create. If you are a Dad, you can decline to do the activities without penalty.

4) Parents wanting to escalate the number and frequency of activities always win out over parents wanting to scale down the parent activities.

5) If the coach has a kid on the team, that kid will be favored. Coaches will swear this isn't true. They will declare they are harder on there own kids than the other players, etc. They may be harder on their own kid at practice, but the coach's kid will get the majority of playing time in a game, no matter how good another player in the same slot is. Ask about Coach Keller and his boys if you don't believe me, or just observe this situation. You'll find I'm right.

6) It isn't about building character, it's about winning. I wish I had a dollar for everyone who justified the amount of money and time devoted to sports in the schools. The justification is that kids build character by participating and learn skills that cross over into their adult life by their sports participation. The question is: are coaches teaching good character values and beneficial skills? There are a few coaches who have a firm belief in honesty, integrity, fairness, faith, and priorities. These coaches can build good character in their players because they have good character themselves. My observation is that most contemporary high school coaches don't have a solid understanding of what good character is, but they do understand winning and losing.

7) High School sports participation will probably not be the most positive experience a child has in high school. I found that my kids had more positive experiences and more caring mentors when they participated in music and drama. I will admit, though, that having a child in sports has immeasurably more prestige than participation in the other activities. Overall, I believe if a child wants to participate in sports, he should do it because he loves it. Parents should support their kids in the way that parents believe is most beneficial to the child. Maybe the over-arching lesson here is that both parents and kids have to think for themselves and make their own decisions, regardless of peer pressure.

Freezeout Lake

We went on a trip to Freezeout Lake. Each year about 100,000 Snow Geese come to Freezeout for a few days to rest and recuperate on their way north to Canada. We arrived on Saturday when most of the geese were done with their rest. Only 40,000 remained. My camera lens was not wide angle enough to come close to capturing all the geese in a frame. This line of geese extended down the lake on either side of the picture.



Wilbur and Charmain were my bird watching companions. We found out that Freezout lake lives up to its name. With a sharp blowing off the snow covered peaks of the Bob Marshall and off the cold water, we were freezing!



A few birds would start to take flight. Then all of them would take to the air simultaneously. Thousands of birds all taking flight at once was quite a sight and sound.





Without looking at a map, see if you can guess the name of the closest community to Freezeout Lake and the economic base of that community.





And so our saga ends. We left the area and returned to mining country and cow country. (Moo Cows! Moo Cows! Family inside joke.)

Power of Choice

We choose our actions. But we don't get to choose the consequences.

It's A Party!

Last week Hermione and Eglantine were home for their birthday. As we lighted the birthday candles, 2 year old Peanut burst out, "It's a party!"

House Hunting

I am giving up. I am looking for a nice, peaceful cave in the mountains. I am henceforth keeping company with bears, elk, and an occasional rock chuck. I have never fit it with the rest of woman-kind, and it is unlikely I will start now. When God handed out decorum, dignity, and poise, I was down at the creek trying to untangle my fishing hook, complete with worm, from my hair. At one time, I hoped to be known for something generally held to be positive: my great success, my great kindness, my great intellect, my great wealth, or my great talent. But after this week, I see clearly that my role in life is to be the ape in the drawing room, the hippopotamus decked out in a tutu, the lady whose red and white polka dotted pantaloons are sticking out. Have you ever seen the TV show Reba? Well, I am Barbara Jean with moral values. I am the lady who leaves the restroom with toilet paper trailing down her pant leg. I am the gal who, the only time she appears in a television interview, has a booger in her nose.

I had a friend who once told me, “You don’t like to be in the limelight, or even close to it.” Well, now you know why. If I were in the limelight, it would only show that my zipper was down, and I had a mascara smear running from my nose to my chin.