Benediction

The last few days have carried an absolute cacophony of news of life and death for lives touching ours. Yesterday in the wee hours of the morning, a sweet lady, Dottie, from my home church (that is, the church where I grew up) passed away. I learned just a bit ago that one of my best friend's father, Jim, died late last night night. He was to begin cancer treatments yesterday and was instead admitted to hospice. Though I know little about Dottie's passing, I know that Jim's was expected, but not quite so suddenly. These lines do nothing to emphasize the jolting shock of death to children, to grandchildren, even when those dying are old.

In the meantime, church members we know celebrated the birth of a grandchild and great-grandchild. In an odd and humorous twist, the parents had been informed that their child was a girl. But on Sunday, they welcomed a son instead. Rowan is healthy and strong (and, presumably, not going to wear all the pink waiting for a baby girl at home).

On Friday, a friend forwarded me a prayer request for the son of her friends, who've been experiencing a tumultuous pregnancy due to their son's major medical problems. At that time, Tim and Paige expected to deliver their son Issac today, not knowing if he would live more than a few hours. Instead, he was delivered yesterday, and he screamed and peed--despite the non-existent kidney function the doctors all expected--and wiggled. His prognosis is still being discovered, but Tim wrote that when he left the hospital, "Paige was awake and laughing."

Few joys are so acute as those that are miracles of life; few sorrows are so intense as those that are losses in death. As Christians, we trust in the hope that is Christ and His resurrection from the dead for us. We look to He who tells us, "See My hands and My feet, that it is I myself. Touch Me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have" (Luke 24:39). He does--and we do--live, and will live. Issac and Rowan live on earth now until the last breath that God has ordained for them. Dottie and Jim have died on earth now and await their final bodily raising. But they are alive in Christ. They are in heaven, awake and laughing. And this helps us go in peace. 

Flashback Friday: S and His Godparents

Since P and his godfather got a post in June, I thought I'd give S's godparents dibs before I post about P and his godmother. The good news: they're terrific people who we get to see often (like every few weeks--we'll be seeing them today, as a matter of fact!), and we talk to them very often (I love talking to "Aunt" B here and there, and J talks to "Uncle" M almost every day--pastor talk there, when it's not sports talk... :)). The bad news: I have no current pictures of S and his godparents. So his birthday and baptismal pics--that would be from last year, of course--will have to do! Much love to the wonderful M family!

Double Weekend Rewind.

Hiya, loyal readers. It's E--you know, the lesser-half parent of the Olson team. I played blog hooky this last week for a number of reasons, including but not limited to: we had two super full weekends sandwiching very full days in which I cleaned (I'm slightly obsessed, but hey! With two kids under three, I find that Tacky, Gooey, and Crudy are three of the blechest companions I can encounter, and they need to go bye-bye sooner rather than later. Which means sooner. And sooner again. And sooner again, ad nauseum... I mean, ad cleaneum.), made three types of bars for church fellowship after service on Wednesday (creamy lemon, butterscotch pecan, and ultimate brownies--yum!), and took my FAVORITE 15-minute naps in the afternoons while the boys napped. So here's a little family recap of the last two weekends--and thanks to Papa for posting in between and not letting our blog fall off the face of the earth!

 Friday night we had over the lovely CH, who helped us eat my homemade chicken alfredo pizza. She alternately played with the boys, watched The Incredibles with us on our newly-arrived plasma flatscreen!!, and talked to Papa while I did the normal night-time routine. We enjoyed her visit immensely! What a terrific lady!

Later we Papa watched the UK-OSU debacle while I folded laundry. I saw the last two minutes. I already said what needed to be said here.

Saturday we headed over to the high school for the annual Home and Health Show, where we signed up for hundreds of giveaways and got twenty free pens, some Tootsie rolls, and a big orange balloon with a trash can on it for P--all in all, pretty much a jackpot! Then we met up with CH again for Indian tacos at the Little Feather Interpretive Center, which we'd never been to in all our years here. They were very good--regular tacos and seasonings, but on this incredible soft, puffy, fried bread. We ate next to a preserved buffalo that was used in Dances With Wolves. Not your typical eating environment, but very local-culture-ish!

Sign above the buffalo: "Please do not jump on the buffalo. You could get hurt. Thanks!!" And yes, that is a Santa Claus by the buffalo's head. Not sure of the significance.

After that, J took the sleepy boys home and I went with CH to our lovely library for a poetry reading by Lee Marwitz, a former area teacher who's a poet. His book, Turning the Cup, featured many lovely ramblings painted with the soothing sounds of aptly selected words. Very relaxing.

I had to go check our calendar to remember what else we did last Saturday, and it looks like we skyped with Aunt Mil at 4. That was fun, as always! I'm sure we did stuff after that, but it's not written on the calendar (I know, that is SO 1993!) and I don't remember anything else.

Sunday we went to church and Sunday School, Papa went to do a service at the nursing home, and I packed up some stuff like crazy (with P's help) so we could hit the road as soon as he got home. A little after two--which was our goal; really good for me!--we headed east on 30 toward Lewisville and Uncle Brian's house. (He's not our REAL uncle; he's P's godfather and our good friend!) The drive was very March, very southwestern Minnesota March.

The boys rode beautifully, especially Papa, who had both Coca-Cola AND coffee to drink on the way (not together). :D The backseat boys (I should trademark that name for an all-male pop group, hey?) did terrific, too.

Reading, shortly before he fell asleep.

Gotta love Bear, S!

We enjoyed a lovely late afternoon and evening with Brian. He made baked chicken and served it with homegrown potatoes, beans, and corn, and organic bread--the perfect Sunday dinner! Later he made popcorn on the stove with pure coconut oil--I practically drooled into the pot. It was PERFECT POPCORN. Especially because we consumed it while watching the well-known 1938 Academy Award winner for Best Picture, You Can't Take It With You, in which Lionel Barrymore played a GOOD GUY! who, in one very memorable, fiscally-conservative kick-ass scene, put an IRS agent in his place with an exchange that would land the average US citizen today behind bars for a decade for tax fraud. Very provocative film, for many reasons, too many to list here. I'll just throw in a good word for Edward Arnold here, too--very, very few actors with his kind of gravitas anymore. Incredible voice!

We arrived home late Monday, in time to Skype with the Ohio E's and Grandma E and to collapse into bed. Great weekend!

Fast forward a few days to this barely-still-here weekend! Friday was our bi-monthly trip to Sioux Falls to go shopping, so we left early. Between grocery shopping at three different stores, a return to our favorite second-hand kid's store, picking up some basement remodel odds and ends, an oil change and tire rotation, we managed to go to--once again--the world's best burger-and-custard joint, this time with Uncle Mark (again, not a real uncle; a dear friend and S's godfather)! We ended the day with a family viewing of (the beginning parts of) P's favorite movie, always a winner! To quote Mater: "I'm havin' more fun than a tornado in a trailer park!"

Saturday two wonderful M family kids came over to watch our boys so I could go to the LWML Spring Zone Rally. The speaker was Dr. James Lamb, executive director of Lutherans for Life. His presentation was on "The Abundant Life," John 10:10, and what a gift it was to hear how Christ leads us like a shepherd leads his flock--He knows where He's going. He's been there before. And He knows where He wants us to be. We read Psalm 139 responsively (one of my favorites!), and I got to sing "The Tree of Life" with my dear friend Beth accompanying me on the piano--many, many reminders of how precious life is! On Sunday Papa, the M parents, and their two eldest got to hear Dr. Lamb again at a circuit presentation geared for youth. Then they all came over and we enjoyed pizza, carrots and ranch dressing (does anyone ELSE think raw carrots taste awesome with pizza? We realized we have this in common, to add to the list of commonalities) and chocolate-covered bars together! I just love friend and family time! Now it's 10:45 Sunday evening, all my boys are asleep, and I guess I need to wrap up this rewind, too. I'll just leave you with these pics of my lovelies from this evening.

My boys laughing together. One of life's best moments.

Party in Heaven -- And Ours Here Below

S's baptism weekend May 7-9. Typically, as soon as Dad E showed up, the temp dropped 20 degrees (hence the cigar smoking in the garage). I missed taking pics of the food (including the 75 extra pieces of fried chicken) and many other picture-worthy moments (like the fam sitting in the biggest hot tub in the world), but here's a few keepers, nonetheless. (The duplicates were ones I couldn't resist including due to interesting facial expressions, etc. They're pretty self-explanatory.)

One more note: S's baptismal gown was made by my great-grandmother (my mother's mother's mother) in the late 1920s. It's been worn by four generations now, a few dozen people, including my grandmother, my mother, me, P, and now S. Pretty cool!

Gentle Sunshine Sunday and P's Two Cents

4-11-2010

Here's my first attempt to add some very current pictures of P -- let's hope it works! (If so, I've finally gotten to the point where getting pics to family is "easy" -- that is, this takes less than five minutes. This, suffice it to say, AFTER J took 30 minutes to add pics from our camera to Picasa (if I would have done it, I'd have taken an hour. I am SO DUMB with this stuff.) Anyway, I'm still holding out hope that adding pics here will get easier -- and you all will benefit in the long run.

We had a nice weekend -- M family over on Saturday night, along with their new yellow lab puppy Brinkley. P calls him "Binky." I think the nickname has already stuck. Today we enjoyed an uplifting church service and then spent the entire afternoon with the B family in Fulda (Dad D and Mom J) -- dinner followed by the community theater production of "Anne of Green Gables" in which not one, not two, but six B offspring took part. And four more awesome B kids were at home with D and our P, who slept the entire duration of the play. All the B's did terrific, and we greatly enjoyed the relaxing time both watching the play (and me reminiscing about fun productions) and visiting with the B's. We also met JB's parents and marveled at their experiences -- J's dad is a retired pastor who was an assistant pastor for a time in Stamford, Connecticut (a skip over from Norwalk, where our J vicared!) and J's mom is a German-speaking Ukrainian by birth who last saw her parents at age 6 during WWII, managed to immigrate to the U.S. at age 18 in the mid-1950s, and generally has lived through enough hardship and heartbreak to put us to shame (I'm leaving out lots of incredible details), and yet radiates warmth and kindness. Amazing. God gives perspective in so many ways.

So we moseyed home in the late afternoon sunshine and chilled on the porch for awhile. P decided to organize his cars in several places (see pics above) -- SUCH a typical activity for him. J and I were discussing evening plans (you know, the kind that don't address what actually NEEDS to be done but rather what we WANT to do), and I threw out a few movie ideas, which J shrugged off. Then I said to him, "Well, what other happy movies can you think of to watch?" And after a pause, P looked up from his cars and said simply, "Ning-ning," his word for "Lightning," the main character in Cars. J and I just started laughing. P is so much smarter than we give him credit for -- and it's slightly unnerving at times like these to realize that he understands 85-90% of what we're saying because he throws in his two cents. Of course, when the Little Diplomat saw us laughing, he really pressed his case and rattled off the names of the other Cars characters -- "Doc," "Wee-ja" [Luigi], "Ma-ma" [Mater... I try not to take this personally :)], "Darge" [Sarge] -- as he promptly went in the house and sat on the couch, expecting us to put in the movie right away. Maybe he WILL be a lawyer like his Uncle C. Thank you, Pixar, for expediting the argumentation education of our son at his ripe old age of 21 months. And no, we didn't actually watch his selected movie but another Pixar flick -- which he actually loved. Maybe we're going to move beyond Cars someday!