The Family "Museum"

I love family history-things! :D For the past couple of days, Anna and I have been at my Grandmama and Grandaddy' house, helping Grandaddy clean after their church's VBS. During the in-between-times, Grandmama showed us a ton of family "artifacts". ;) We saw a dress from the `40's that my Great-Great-Grandmother had made, still in perfect condition. And then we were shown a bunch of sweet paintings that had hung in her house. They were not rich, so they are not originals, but framed prints. There is one great gorgeous one of the singer Jenny Lind, and then a few others. Also a huge framed print of some famous Revolutionary War painting. These things were really fun to see, but my favorites were the papers and photographs, and the stories that went along with them! My great-great-great-grandfather was a city jailer in Norfolk, Virginia. One night the prisoners broke out, and were about to shoot him, but one said, 'Don't shoot him- he was nice to me." So they locked him in a closet instead! :P It was all over the papers, and there are pictures of him, just as Grandmama has always described him; bowler hat, glasses, smart cane, and dapper suit. From what I hear, Great-great-great-grandfather was a bit of a dandy! :D
We were shown pictures of relatives, some unmarked. It was rather funny to see the "bathing suits" of the day, because they look like ruffly pillow-cases! :) Just like any other story there was some tragedy mixed up in the bunch. The lovely Gertie, with the most delicious dimples in her cheeks, traveled for years to try to recover from her tuberculosis, but ended up dying of it. Previously, her husband was killed by a cargo hook in a riot! :O One uncle, a police officer, was kicked by a drunken woman and died of blood poisoning! :( Rather gruesome ways of dying! But then there were some sweet stories to go along with the sadness! My Great-great-grandmother married one Gates brother, and they had my Great-grandmother. But only two years later, that Gates brother died. A couple of years later my Great-great-grandmother married the other Gates brother, and they had two more children and lived happily ever after! :) I love stories like that! :) And then there were pictures of the most deliciously adorable babies, and we aren't even sure who they are! Anyway, this may not be interesting to anyone but myself, but I just LOVE family history! The little oddities that surface when rummaging through attics, and the secrets lying on the pages of long-forgotten papers...it's enthralling! I got a peep at my Great-great-grandmother's marriage certificates! On one of them, the clerk had not finished the year! All it said was "September (something or another), 190-". He probably just forgot to finish it! But it is much more funny to imagine something about that clerk. Maybe it was a quiet wedding, and he had had a little too much of a nip at the champagne provided for the wedding party! During the ceremony, the pastor' droning voice lulled him to sleep over his pen. A few minutes later with a loud"ahem!" the clerk woke to the gruff pastor, and the loving couple watching him anxiously. With an incoherent mumble, and a rough rubbing of his suspiciously rosy nose, the clerk took up his pen again, and, not being quite himself, could not remember the year, and so skipped it, and quickly finished the certificate, hoping no one would notice. There! I have incriminated the poor clerk of over 100 years agone! Justice comes someday! ;D Hey! Wouldn't it be fun if each family could have a sort of family museum, where all the treasures were displayed? It would be so much the better to be able to enjoy and learn about the things from people who knew the owners of them, than to wait till they've all died off, and everything is merely speculation! :) Just an idea! -Rachel

Flowering Quince and Emma

Hey everybody! Happy March! Around here, it came in like an absolute lamb, contrary to the old saying. I can only remember about 2 years when it came in like a lion! :) We girls have been enjoying watching the 2009 version of Emma made by Masterpiece Theatre with Romola Garai as Emma. It is so good, for two reasons: First, because Romola Garai (who played in Amazing Grace) is the ideal Emma, and second, but equally as great, the costumes are much more modest than some Regency Era films I've seen! Anyway, we've been watching it through Youtube.


Daniel and I have finally gotten old enough to start "remembering" things that are now considered old. Last night, also on Youtube, we watched a Merry Melodies short film called "Farm Frolics" that we watched as super little kids. One of my earliest memories is being petrified by the weasel that sneaks up on the little chicks! It was alot of fun to watch something I "endured" as a two year old! :)


The Walkers are finally about to be able to move out here in a mobile home while they build their house! They hired someone to clear the old homesite of all the brush and old bushes and trees, which is forward motion indeed. But....I am feeling a bit melancholy. The reason? Well, normally I am not sentimental at all about animals, but... there were so many birds nesting in the brush, and many of them have figured in my Bramblewood Hedge series. I feel halfway as if I had murdered them! :( Silly I know, but the poor dears! I meant to rescue a really pretty bush I have admired for several years, but it was buried under some big cedar bushes and even Dad and the hired man couldn't retrieve it! But Mama, dear thing that she is, inspired by some truthfully Divine impulse, somehow got it in her head that the bush was a "flowering quince". Now, who in tarnation ever heard of a "flowering quince"? I hadn't! But lo and behold, she went online when we came back, and that lovely mysterious bush is a flowering quince! Yay! Mystery solved, and we can probably procure one for our enjoyment now that we know what it is! Thanks Mama! Well, Justin Wright generously left us his really nice volleyball net for the week, so I'm going to get off now and see if I can rustle up the others for a nice game! See ya'll later! :) -Rachel

Oh Phooey. What Should I Write About?

Hey! Church today was pretty fun, there was a new visitor! We always love to see new faces! This guy is from a family of 11 kids and came an hour and 45 minutes to come visit. Two of his brothers work for Scott Brown's ministry, so we felt slightly as if we were meeting someone famous. ;)
Okay. Have you ever watched anyone in a movie or somewhere else say something and think, "Wow! That was extremely ill-timed!"
I do it all the time! For instance, in Little Women, Jo has just refused Laurie, and is being comforted by Beth. Amy comes upstairs and asks what's wrong, listens with a rather blank countenance, and promptly says, "Aunt March is going to Europe." and then interrupts Jo's ecstasy by saying bluntly. "She's taking me."
Isn't that crazy? I know for a fact that if Sarah had just refused somebody, and Uncle Lon had told me he was taking me to France, I wouldn't spring that on her at that moment! I simply can't understand how anyone could be so tactless! :O
(If you haven't noticed, this is a very random post.)
So. I think Anna's blasted goat will go down in the history of "Goatdome" as the slowest in giving birth EVER!!!! She has been "having her kids in 12 hours" since we came home from the trip!!!
(Apparently the "for sure" signs that she'll give birth aren't that "for sure" because we have witnessed all of them days apart during the last week!) This deserves some sort of strange award. Maybe I should make one up: The Daisy Sophia Award: Bestowed upon the creature, human or otherwise who takes the longest in labor. (But I doubt any mother would welcome such an award! :) Whatever.
Vision Forum agains postponed their judging date for the story contest. I highly doubt I'll win anyway, so I am sort of forgetting about it, and will be pleasantly surprised if they come and dump a thousand dollars in my lap! :) Well, that's about all that's new around here! -Rachel

p.s. I'll get to Leanna's post soon enough! Oh! And Abigail, we decided to let you choose one too!

Empty Nothings. Is that redundant?

Dear people,
Things do pile up don't they? Here are some things I have been catching up on since coming home....

Drinking tea- people in NY don't know that it is the second essential beverage in life! ;) (kidding)

Getting back to a routine- that is harder than it sounds

Writing letters- I have a sneaking suspicion that I am accidently slighting several people who have written me!

Getting back to personal devotional times- unfortunately, and humbly, I must admit that I neglected it in NY. :(

Kissing Gracie: needs no explanation for those of you who have cute 3 year olds in your family!

Gathering inspiration to send out copies of my book: (hello test people! :)

Writing poems- I did one about Winter masquerading as Spring, (uncommon temperatures around here) but the only problem was, I don't like it, because I think it is the beginning of spring, and not a trick. Don't you hate it when you write something that you don't like?

Catching up on reading blog posts we missed: (we'll get to the tag Ozees)

And many more things. It struck me that this must be the most boring post any of you have read yet on here! Sorry! If you want to reassure yourselves that we are not brainless sillies, read the post below this, and satisfy yourself that there is something to us after all! :)
Oh! Anyone want to hear a joke that is such a groaner that it is actually funny? Even if you don't, here it is! (Warning! Please realize that we think this is cheesy. Our style of humor is much advanced! :)

How do you catch a unique bird? Unique up on it!

How do you catch a tame bird? The tame way!


Go ahead. Laugh in a despairing sort of way, and go tell it to your family. It is really hard to keep from telling someone, because it is so ridiculous! *whole van full of church family turns in their seat to look at Sarah* :D -Rachel

More From Auld Mary, The Yarb Woman

Hey guys! Pardon the strange title. That is my official name when I do my herbal things. (I got it from a Little House book so blame them!)Okay, here I go! As I have already stressed my love of God's blessing in the way we can use herbs, I won't bore you by repeating it. But here are some of my latest accomplishments (or scrapes. You decide)

I undertook the task of making an all-purpose scrape, bruise, bump ointment, because as we all know, there are countless opportunities to use such a thing, and it is alot of fun to make. Or so I thought. One batch of burned herbal oil later, I have discovered that you must be very particular with a gas stove. You can't heat oil directly on it, so I decided, 'Ah-ha! I'll make a double boiler!" so there I go making a tidy little double boiler out of a pot with a glass bowl nested inside. That batch burned too. We were treated to a very suspicious-smelling fragrance all through the house though! (Yuck!!! :p) The reason? All the water had steamed out of the bottom pot. So I made a slapped-together version of a double boiler, and babysat the oil, and finally had the proper thing finished. I used equal parts of St. John's Wort, calendula, and comfrey in vegetable oil. (I burned all our olive oil! Shame on me! I hate wasting!)Anyhow, after straining the oil from the herbs, (or vice-versa) all that was left to do was add beeswax, and pour off into a glass jar. Voila! There! I have my first first-aid ointment.
Next I'm off the make cough drops. I just got a recipe online, and if they work, I'll post it! But here comes the one that absolutely cracks me up. It is a remedy for all the convenient little sores, burns, sprains and things that the children show you by the dozens at choretime! ;) Anyone should have the ingredients to make it. Ready? Mama's Cure-All Remedy
cayenne pepper
vinegar
garlic oil
strong peppermint oil, etc.

You shall probably get the idea by now. Make it smell bad, and sting, and soon enough there will be no more convenient ailments from the little ones! Isn't that brilliant? A lady at church told me about it. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed reading about my little mad-cap experiments, and I hope I don't blow anyone up anytime soon!
-Rachel

The Wery Last Day! :)

Hi Everybody! This is the last day before Daniel's graduation! Yay! We stayed up too late last night for several reasons, and so it was after midnight and we were thinking of going to bed. Then I said, "Daniel's graduation is tomorrow!" I made Mama and Sarah groan at the thought. We have lots to do: finish decorating, take the food we already made out of the freezer so it can thaw, ice sugar cookies, string lights up, plate food, set the big tent back up and put sides on it, finalize our outfits and make sure we all have something to wear, put the big wreath on the front of the house, keep on picking up the Christmas trees on the porch that keep falling down from the wind, and the list goes on.
But it's really exciting! We cleaned all day yesterday while Mama and Anna were shopping. I think we got through a whole dry-erase board full of tasks! Our house was so bad before (since we have been cooking and decorating and planning all week) that it finally took a whole day to be respectable! And all over the office stacked in stacks under and on top of other stacks are sheets of yellow legal pad paper that Mama calls her "brain". (Which to date she has just lost half of- the most important half) Well, Daniel is waiting to cram in his advent post, (which he has done a great job on) and I must go help Mama now! Oh! Mrs. Mickey and the same Wrights that help the Wilsons are coming to help us along with Mr. Jack who owns the said tent. Oh- Sarah wants to write something!
Hi, I was just going to tag something on to what Rachel was writing about. As most of you know Daniel's graduation is a pretty big deal and we invited I think about 200 people or so! It's really cool because a lot of our friends from way back are going to be able to make it out here-they haven't seen our house or even Gracie before! So anyways, I think tomorrow will be busy, but Really Fun! So I guess we'll see most of ya'll tomorrow!!
-Sarah

A Lament

This is a lament.

The house was lovely,

The tree was nice,

There were no crumbs left

For the wand'ring mice,

The lights were strung

And the fat punch-bowl

was borrowed,

We stuffed the freezer full

Of things to eat

For Saturday

The family was vexed

When they heard Rachel say,

"I haven't a blasted thing to wear"

She scrabbled through a pile

Of clothes and tore her brownish hair.

Moaning all the while.

And Mama raised her eyes to the roof

And Sarah sat and sighed,

For she hadn't anything either then,

And together they both cried:

"We'll have to wear a gown of rags

We'll have to wear green shoes!

We'll have to wear a baseball cap!

For we haven't a choice to choose!"

This is my lament, for after searching through my clothes I have found that I have a skirt, but no top, (unless I want to wear purple which is very unfestive) and shoes, but no stockings that haven't a rip in them. Sarah has neither shoes nor an outfit, (though she has just been bequeathed a really pretty shirt of mine) and is in even a worse pickle than I am. You large-family people know how it is. We never can see a week before that we need clothes. No. We wait till two days before a huge party with nearly 200 people before we tell Mama that we don't have anything to wear. It also doesn't help that we never go anywhere fancy, so I only had one good outfit. We don't have time to go to a thriftstore between now and then, and so I believe it shall be the good old purple sweater for me... goodness! I made that sound ugly! I guess I should be grateful for having a pretty sweater made of such soft stuff with pretty beading, but I'm not even sure if that fits me since I bought it several years ago! Oh well! We have these little clothing crises all the time and I always manage to come out on the top of them without anything worse than a purple sweater! I'd say that I'm blessed.