Beyond Chance

Funny how life works sometimes.  So yesterday I was missing my dad because I was thinking about the upcoming holiday season.  I had started to think about it the previous evening, and that's why I wrote about it yesterday.  I had plans to have lunch with my mom yesterday, she was going to stop over and bring another bag of random stuff that I had left at her place from our time there.

She got here around 11 a.m., and told me she wanted to talk about something, and she seemed very serious.  I was worried.  She had made what she called a "selfish decision".  She proceeded to tell me that she decided to reserve the Fawcett House at Breezy Point Resort to have our Thanksgiving, she wanted our whole crew to go up there and stay.  She needed something to think about, something cheerful, and she said the idea had hit her like a ton of bricks the night before, and she felt like it was dad telling her she should do it.  Funny, because I was thinking about Thanksgiving and dad at the same time.

My first reaction, to be quite honest, was sadness because I knew my hubby would not be able to join us.  There's no way he'll be able to get that time off work with such short notice.  Due to his strange work schedule, I have spent many holidays without him, and the idea of another one isn't that great, but I'm also sort of used to it.  And SIL2 is hosting Thanksgiving here at home, so at least I know he'll still have a warm, family-filled, fun meal.  My second immediate reaction was to feel worried for my mom because I didn't think it would be remotely possible to get the Fawcett House for that period of time with this short notice.  But I thought it was a great idea, in theory.  Very bold.  Our family Thanksgiving has been celebrated the same way, basically, just adding people as families grew, since my parents got married.  And to change it up is definitely going to shake everyone out of their comfort zone a bit.  This was definitely bold.  And expensive.

The Fawcett House is this old mansion on the property of Breezy Point Resort.  It's super cool.  My sister was the landscaper for the Breezy Point for years, until very recently, and I had visited her there last year and she gave me a thorough tour of the Fawcett House.  It's an 11-bedroom, 9-bathroom lodge, and during Prohibition it was a safe haven for mobsters.  It has a great story, and it's in a beautiful location.  It's a great place for family reunions and large gatherings, and is usually booked up for years in advance for big dates like Thanksgiving.  I was so worried my mom would be disappointed, and I told her it was a great idea, but just in case it doesn't work out, we'll try to figure out something similar to it.  We went back to the office and looked up the information on my computer.  I called the resort and left a voice mail.

So we're getting ready to take off to go to lunch, and my phone rings.  It's the lady from Breezy.  She says the Fawcett House is available!!!!!  My mom immediately said she'll take it.  I could not believe it.  So we went through all the details with her--cost, package information (free cocktail hour each evening, free breakfast each morning), standard information (sleeps 32 comfortably, 2 gas grills), and got everything reserved.  And right after I hung up the phone, I couldn't stop grinning.  This has the potential to be a great time.  If we can get everyone that usually comes to our Thanksgiving dinners, we will have right around 30 people.  That is a bit doubtful, but I'm sure most of them will come.  So the rest of the day was spent making calls, talking to everyone about the little trip, and getting more and more excited.

It really was as if dad was orchestrating the whole thing.  From the idea to the open reservation, it was beyond chance.  And now my mom has something very happy to look forward to, we all can have lots of fun planning it, and I'm sure many special memories will be made at Thanksgiving this year.  Truly a time to be Thankful.  So thanks, dad.  And thanks in advance, mom.  Great idea.

Missing Dad

We are entering the holiday season.  I don't know anybody who gets more excited about this time of year than me, but this year, I have to admit, it's a little strange.  It's bittersweet.

My dad loved the holidays.  Nobody--seriously, nobody--could cook a turkey like he did.  He would do it on the charcoal grill, and it was amazing.  So every year we would have one big bird roasted in the oven traditional style, and one big bird done on the grill.  The grilled one was always gone first.  We have a large extended family, so our holidays are always very loud and very busy.  My dad was always front and center, cheerful and goofy with everyone.  He was an excellent cook, and a lover of food, so Thanksgiving was always one of his favorites.  And this year, Thanksgiving is going to seem incomplete.  I'm not sure how we're going to do the turkeys this year, and I don't think anyone's really ready to talk about it.

Christmas was really a big deal to him.  He was so cheesy and awesome about it, that's probably where my obsession started.  When I was a kid, every year we would go out to the mountains and pick a Christmas tree to cut down.  Just like the Griswolds, but my dad never forgot a saw.  We would end up with a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, and decorate it with our old collected ornaments, sentimental ornaments, faded paper chains from kindergarten, popcorn strings, and occasionally Star Wars action figures.  My dad wore a Santa hat every day for the entire season.

Dad loved to Christmas shop, which was great because most men don't like to.  But he loved it.  And he was good at it.  He put a lot of thought into each gift, and especially the gifts he got for my mom.  And he loved to stuff stockings.  We do a drawing for stockings, and we would always groan about whoever had the misfortune of Dad drawing their name, because you were sure to get a bunch of goofy gag gifts like Kingston Trio cassette tapes and Old Maid decks.  And he would laugh like it was the funniest thing he'd ever done.  He even loved the Secret Santa exchange they did at his work.

So this year, as my family faces our first holiday season without my dad, it feels a little wrong.  I'm sure he's watching us, compelling us to have a happy season and to feel the joy and love for it, but it might be difficult sometimes, especially for my mom.  I was talking to my brother about it yesterday, and it's a two-sided feeling.  On one side, I feel a certain ease about it all this year.  My dad is not sick.  He is not weak.  It's not going to be hard to watch him struggling to figure out what he can eat or watch my parents have to leave events early because he is tired.  My dad was diagnosed with his lung cancer just before the holidays two years ago.  It was only a couple years before that when we lost my mom-in-law to cancer, and only a few years before that when we lost her sister, hubby's beloved Aunt, to cancer.  So our holidays have for so long had a little bit of an undercurrent of sadness.  This year nobody is sick.  But my mom is sad.  Nobody has cancer.  But we just lost my dad.  Everyone is going to be healthy and strong.  But missing someone.  So there is a sadness mixed with our happiness.

Our goal this year is to enjoy the holidays.  Embrace the joy of the season, because that is absolutely what my dad always did, and I know it's what he would want for us.  We will walk with my mom through this season and help her to find the joy in it.  We will remember the reason for the season, celebrating Thanksgiving with our families, and being thankful.  Thankful for our health, for each other, for laughter and for strength.  Thankful for all the blessings we have had this year, which really have been many, even with all the pain.  And at Christmas we will remember that joy is the reason for the season.  The joy of the Holy Birth, and find renewed faith in Him and in the holidays in general.

So this year, people, as you walk around shaking your head at how early the holiday decorations are coming out and how expensive they are, and how your families drive you nuts at Thanksgiving dinner, and how it costs so much to travel and buy gifts, remember:  this is a time to be thankful.  And cheerful.  And just try your hardest to really feel the holidays.  Our loved ones who we miss this time of year would want that.  I bought this goofy hat this year.  It's a Santa Hat that actually moves around and sings Christmas songs in a Santa voice.  It's obnoxious, and dad would have loved it.  Normally, I would be too self conscious to wear it.  Oh, I'm wearing it this year, people.  Loud and proud.  And dad's chuckling with me.

Home Sweet Home

I love my house.  I really do.  It's a small-ish farm house, built right around 1950.  It is pretty much a duplicate, I believe, of the farmhouse that was here originally.  The original burned down, and this one was built on the same foundation.  So quite honestly, our basement is much older than the house.  I have no idea how old--I should find that out.  I do know that there is a giant freezer in our basement that's older than the house.  It's HUGE.  We can put so.  much.  stuff in it.  And it works better than any freezer I've ever seen.  Freezes meat so solid it would shatter if you dropped it on the concrete floor.  You know the old saying, "they don't make things like they used to?"  Well, in this case it's true.

When we first came out here to this place to check it out, it was the summer of 1998.  Hubby had told me about it.  It was close to his work, and it looked so nice.  At the time we lived in this little rambler on one of the busiest streets in east Bloomington.  Right near a main highway.  And I loved that house.  But I think the hubby was unsatisfied there--not enough projects to work on, not enough yard, too far from work.  I remember walking into the house here for the first time.  Hubby was busy walking around the property looking in all the buildings.  His parents had come with us, and my mom-in-law and I walked in the house by ourselves.  She instantly grabbed my hand.  We walked in from the back door to a little entry way and an adorable kitchen with about four times the space as my old kitchen.  I was pretty much sold.  So we made it happen.  We moved in October 3, 1998.

We've done quite a bit of work to the place.  But believe me, we have a lot more to do.  Funny how that honeymoon stage doesn't last.  Now there are things about the house that drive me nuts.  Things I liked when we first got the place.  The "cute" entryway is now tiny and cramped.  The white tile flooring is now cracked, impossible to keep clean, and cold.  But I love my home.  Because it's a home.

I have lived here longer than I have ever lived anywhere in my life.  My roots have taken hold here.  My kids will live here, in one house, until they move out on their own.  We have cut down trees, planted trees. Changed the landscape.  Put in a wood-burning fireplace (how did it not have one in the first place?) and a front porch (how did it not have one in the first place?).  We have painted walls.  New siding, roof, windows.

There is so much work still to do.  But the ongoing nature of the projects around here are part of what endears it to me.  It's growing right along with us.  It's messy a lot.  Because life is messy.  It's cheerful almost all the time.  Because we are a happy family.  It smells good in here.

The house is getting smaller as my kids are getting bigger.  There are three bedrooms upstairs.  All occupied.  One by two adults, two by ever-growing, messy boys.  There is a bathroom upstairs that my hubby tiled.  It almost always has toothpaste globs in the sink that I have to wipe out.  There are almost always nerf darts on the floor of the hallway.  There are pictures of my kids from each school year on the hall upstairs.

The main floor has my office.  My room.  MY room.  We have a house and seven outbuildings with a caretaker apartment.  This one room is mine.  I have claimed it.  Hubby and kids can have the rest.  There is also the living room, the dining room, a bathroom and the kitchen.  Again, always filled with signs of life.  There are random photos and artwork hung on the walls.  The pillows on the couch are almost never on the couch, but on the floor from the kids goofing around.  The dining room table is almost always covered with folded laundry.  My kitchen is big and bright.  It has the most life of any room in the house.  It's where hubby and I sit talk over a couple beers late into the night, him pacing around and me sitting on the counter.  It's where by brother cooks when he comes over.  It's where I taught J how to scramble eggs.  It's where my kids sat on the floor the other night carving pumpkins.


We put in a fireplace a few years ago.  It's a big brick one in the living room.  Now our TV hangs on the wall above it.  You all know how I feel about TV.  So the living room is one of my happiest places.  It's where I curl up on my chair to watch my shows.  It's where we holler and jump around during Vikings or Gophers games.  Very soon, it will once again be the home of the Christmas tree and an obnoxious amount of Christmas decorations.  My living room is where the kids play video games.  Where they eat snacks on their little trays on the floor.  Where they have little mini slumber parties when mom lets them sleep in the living room.  My dining room is where I hang out and chat when people come over.  I have a scratched up dining room table.  It's scratched up because it's well used.  We do use it for meals.  But it's also a place for laundry, scrapbooking, homework, board games, picking at placemats over coffee while we talk about family drama, school projects, blowing out birthday candles.

  

And outside.  My big open yard.  Where my boys are growing up.  Where they learned how to swing a bat, throw a football, climb trees.  Where hubby drives his tractors, his skid steer, the golf cart.  Our fire pit.  Where countless family members and friends have hung out, talking, laughing, roasting marshmallows, throwing peanut shells in the fire.  Where we have blue jays all winter long.  Where we're constantly watching out for a legendary wolverine.  Our outside home is divided up into sections--the park, where the fire pit and swingset is.  The football field, a big rectangle of open grass.  The "beautiful forest" (so named by Nephew1), where the kids have their "hideout".  The pasture, the driveway, and many more sections.  The boys have mastered driving a golf cart around.  Every winter hubby piles up snow for a giant snow mountain for them to play on and slide down.  And all year long there's random stuff around:  balls, bikes, nerf guns, frisbees, toys.  And hubby stuff--tools, shovels, hoses, buckets, work gloves.

It's home.  All of it.  It's often messy.  It's often noisy.  Sometimes it's frustrating.  It's never finished.  But it's always home, and that makes it like Heaven to me.

Happy Halloween!

Late post today--I was at the kids's school for the Halloween party.  I love love love the fact that they still do it because I know many districts don't celebrate, but I am so thrilled we go to a school that still has fun with holidays.  It's so much fun to see the kids in all their costumes.

We carved pumpkins the other night!  We're not that artistic, but we get the job done.  And what we lack in carving creativity, hubby makes up for in photographic talent:

Here's the kids' pumpkins!  I think they're awesome.

Tonight we're trick-or-treating in SIL2's neighborhood.  We're all looking forward to it.  So it's a busy day, much to do.  

Not much to write about today, but I didn't want to forget to post.  I will get back on the horse tomorrow morning, so tune in then!!!!

 

And until then, watch this:

Happy Halloween

Thanks for a Good Time, You Gophers.

We got the mouse.  Actually I heard the trap snap right after I posted my blog yesterday.  And there it was, squeaking and panicking.  Very sad, actually, but I don't want the things in my house.  It died shortly after that and I had hubby get rid of it.  We have left out the traps, but no more mice and no more sounds.  Hopefully we're ahead of the game.

Quarterback MarQueis Gray had an amazing game

And speaking of game, holy cow what a game we watched yesterday!  I have written before about how difficult it is to be a Minnesota sports fan.  Well, in particular, it is difficult to be a Gopher football fan.  It is a dedication to something other than good football.  We have dedicated, loyal fans, a beautiful new stadium, but it still breaks your heart over and over.  My husband is a die hard.  He picks the Gophers every year to go to the Rose Bowl, and he picks them to win every single game.  It's become a joke, but he has stuck to it for 26 years.  And yesterday they pulled it off.  They were in no way supposed to win.  They played Iowa, here at home, and everyone--even their most loyal fans--knew they would lose.  We have a new coach that we are all very fond of.  We want to see the team have some success not only for the University, the players, and the state, but for Coach Kill.  Yesterday they played well.  They played like my hubby always believes they can play.  It was a nail-biter to the end, and we won 22-21, keeping Floyd of Rosedale here in our trophy case.

Gray was sweet to the kids at practice

I have not screamed and jumped around so much about a football game since the homecoming game against Wisconsin in 1993.  My kids were looking at hubby and I like we were nuts, but joining right in with us.  It was such a sweet thing, as I was giving myself a heart attack, to look around at my kids laughing and yelling and loving the moment.  I almost felt like I could cry, watching the TV as the camera panned around to the crowd, going from looks of heartbreak and worry to sheer joy, time after time.  I so know that feeling.  You feel like you don't just want your guys to win, you NEED them to.  I remember being at all the games, in my marching band uniform, wanting so badly for them to have a good game.  The feeling you have as a student when you're leaving your game after a win is like nothing else.  You feel exhilarated, proud.  Like you could celebrate for a week.  And when you lose--especially when you lose in the fashion the Gophers are capable of--you leave feeling like somebody stole your Halloween candy.  You just want to go home, are no longer in the mood for the drink specials at Stub and Herbs.  

Coach Kill with the Crowd

And yesterday to watch those kids jumping around in the stands, being urged on by the players, hugging each other, and rushing the field after the game to just share the joy with their team, was really something to see. The team celebrated with their coach and their fans for a long time after the game, knowing they had won an important one, finally, and it was for their fellow students, for their coach, for their fans and their state, and they were proud.  And so were we!

I'm still geeking out about it.

Not a Creature Was Stirring Except the Mouse in our House

Oh my God we have a mouse.  I can HEAR it.  I could hear it last night, and it was driving me nuts because I couldn't find it.  I can hear the little scratching sound coming from what sounds like my cabinet next to the refrigerator.  But it's not there!  I have taken a flashlight to the cabinet, under the fridge, in the crack between the fridge and the cabinet.  I have removed the drawer above the cabinet to see it.  I continue to hear the scratching, but I can't figure out where the damn thing is!  I put out traps last night, and there's nothing there this morning.  But I can still hear it off and on.  AUGH!  Nothing like a mouse to make you feel like your home is filthy and creepy.  And it makes me feel like there's hundreds of them filling my walls.

So I'm going insane.  I feel like it's in there, probably with it's significant other, making hundreds of babies in my walls.  There's this weird show on one of the cable channels that I got stuck watching once called "Infested."  One of them was about this mouse infestation in Australia.  I can't get it out of my head now.  If you're curious, check out a clip here.  Hideous!  So this may just get me to do the kitchen cabinet project I've been putting off.  For 13 years.  Maybe.

This isn't the first time we've had mice.  For living on a farm, the little invaders are surprisingly rare.  And in the past when we've found out there's a mouse, we just flood the place with traps.  We'll catch one or two, and then it's over.  But the traps stay out a couple weeks to make sure.  This seriously has only happened a few times over the 13 years we've lived here.  But it's so disgusting.  It makes me feel all twitchy and jittery, and like I don't want to be here.

SIL2 has a debilitating fear of mice.  She has good reason for it, though--she's lived in a couple places with mouse issues, and it traumatized her.  She has a rodent problem in general.  She's terrified of squirrels because one time she was living in this old house and there was a squirrel that had got into the house somehow, and it ended up running across her feet in her bed!  You might want to go back and read that sentence again.  Seriously, how crazy would that be?

Years ago, I think it was before we had kids, hubby and I were upstairs in bed and I felt like there was movement in our room.  In the dark I saw a shadow.  Freaky!  We turned on the light and discovered there was a bat.  In our bedroom!  Upstairs!  ohmygodohmygodohmygod.  He ended up somehow chasing it down the stairs with a broom and we got it out of the house, but you can imagine what a chaotic scene that was.  Me hiding under my covers most of the time, and him running around in his boxers swinging at a bat.  Sheesh.  I'm all for wildlife, I just want it to stay wild.  Not living in my house with me.  But that was the worst of it.  Now it's just the very occasional mouse, and hopefully the bats are done checking out our house.

But it does make you feel like you live in filth.  Even if the house is relatively clean.  Why do they pick my house?  Do mice and bats ever go in the perfect new houses in those colorful new gingerbread house developments?  I hope so.  As bitchy as that sounds, I do.  Man, I keep taking breaks from typing this to scratch the invisible creepies I feel all over me.  EW!

So that's it for inside the house.  Have I mentioned that we think we have a Wolverine living outside?  Believe me, it may seem nuts, but we think we do.  It's a long story for another day.  But right now I'm just hoping that it doesn't decide to come in and live with us, the mice, the bats, and hopefully our future dog.  What kind of place is this???  And the creepy millipedes and earwig things that we find!  Oh, and DO NOT get me started on the damn asian lady beetles.  Whoever introduced that particular pest should be locked up in prison.  I have a vacuum cleaner dedicated solely to ladybug removal.

So who wants to come over and hang out at our house now?  I'm surprised I have friends.

Inspiration

Yesterday I had lunch with my big brother.  We meet up fairly often at this little place that he calls his "favorite Malaysian place" (I guess I don't have enough Malaysian places that I frequent to have a favorite) where he's like Norm on Cheers.  Seriously, the staff shouts his name out when he comes it!  It's hilarious.  But it's always nice to have lunch with him, it turns into a 2-hour thing where we talk about everything from cars to parenting to funny movies.  Yesterday we talked about being inspired.  I know, deep, huh?  He's a graphic artist and animator, and he's self-employed.  So he has to stay inspired in order to earn a paycheck.  But he loves it.  I just trudge through my day to day life not thinking about it.

But yesterday I started thinking about it, and I think the reason I feel like I am not inspired might be because I'm sort of always inspired.  Cheesy, but I think it's true.  I get inspired by so many things that I don't even know what to do with it all.  After I started thinking about it, here's some things I noticed:

I'm inspired by music.  All the time.  I just purchased the new Michael Buble Christmas album.  It's the first Christmas music I've bought this year, and it's so good!  And just hearing the little bit of it that I listened to yesterday gave me goosebumps.  It makes me think of the Christmas season.  Of the smells, the foods, the cold, everything.

I'm inspired by the news, by sweet stories like a kid I saw a story on last night who has macular degeneration, but he doesn't let it slow him down.  He plays soccer, he keeps up with his schoolwork, he lives a healthy kid life, even though he's losing his vision.  I have been so lucky--stories like that point out how lucky I am, keep me in check when I feel like whining.

And last night before bedtime, J curled up in my lap.  He's my cuddler.  I sat there touching his soft little face, feeling his damp post-shower hair, squeezing his not-so-small anymore feet.  I am inspired by my kids, by watching them grow.  By seeing them walk that line between being my babies and being teenagers.  At 9 and 10, they are already good little people.  They are funny and kind, and they're going to be good men.  And the reason it inspires me is that I have no idea how it happened.

So it's the little things.  And I need to pay more attention to them in my day-to-day life.  Not just stop and smell the roses, but to notice the beauty in a boring, normal day.  Because there is so much!