I Feel Like a Farm Wife (LOL!)

That up there is definitely an LOL kind of statement. 

Because the truth is that we live in a cookie cutter neighborhood (with an HOA) in a small town, on plot of land approximately the size of a postage stamp, and the only garden item we have (other than the glorious perennials that blossom every spring along the side of the house--inherited from the former green-thumbed owners, God bless ‘em!) is a small potted basil plant in the kitchen, which was gifted to me recently by my daughter-in -law Ginger.  We don’t have chickens or goats, or even a dog or a cat or a goldfish. The only “critter” we have on our property is the Bigfoot statue in our perennial garden, a nod to my late dad (because that’s what his grandkids called him, per his request!).

So it’s safe to say that a farmer’s wife I am NOT!

You can definitely see Bigfoot better in the winter!

But my husband and I have recently decided to mill our own flour and bake homemade bread (and other yummy pastry items, too) with it.  So far, I’ve made four loaves of bread and one pan of brownies with our freshly milled flour.  As my two loaves were rising today, I told my husband that this homemaking task makes me feel like a farm wife.  :)  It’s so satisfying!  It means that even if I accomplish nothing else all day, I've made bread!  All by myself!

(BTW, I mentioned our plan to start milling our own flour from wheat berries, at the end of a post here not too long ago, if you missed it and are interested.)

In other news--we also joined a co-op, and yesterday we picked up our first two gallons of raw milk.

What?!

At 65, my hubby and I have decided to eat healthier.  (Or crunchier...potato, po-tah-to.)  Our goal is to try to maintain our health without going on any daily prescription meds.  So far, so good; but at our age, we figured it might be a good idea to really ramp up our efforts so that it can hopefully stay that way.

I mean, I'm not gonna lie: my husband and I both love store-bought white breads and rolls. I sheepishly admit that we both enjoy so many fun, overly processed snack items that can be found at the grocery store. (I know you’re supposed to only shop the outer perimeter of the store and avoid the middle aisles…but the middle ones sure have a lot of hard-to-resist offerings!)  And I definitely like the look of store-bought milk better  than the raw stuff straight from Bessie, which is a little yellower in color.  (I can be squeamish about food that has a different appearance than what I'm used to.) 

HOWEVER, we’re determined to make a change in our diet!  So flour-milling and bread-baking and raw milk-drinking it is! 

Hard white wheat berries, before milling.

And the flour that is produced from those berries in no time flat, 
using this electric mill.

Bread-baking ingredients.  And Mary looking on.  (I just love my
Kitchen Madonna!)

Last Friday, I made my first two loaves, using hot water, oil, honey, lecithin, flour, yeast, and salt.  It was pretty good…maybe a tad dry and crumbly.  But okay.

I baked my favorite brownies as a Sunday treat, using soft white wheat berries to make the flour.  They were dee-licious.

Today, I baked two more loaves of bread, but this time I used butter instead of oil and I added the optional egg to the dough.  Then before I baked the loaves, I brushed the tops of them with an egg wash, which gave them a nice shiny brown crust.

And oh my, these loaves were so much better than my first ones!  I don't know if it had to do with the added egg, or with substituting butter for oil, or if possibly the hot water I used on my first batch wasn't quite hot enough.  But I think we have a winner here!  I like knowing that I can bake an eggless bread, because I have a few grandchildren who are allergic to eggs (and I'm going to experiment more with the eggless recipe to see if I can get it to turn out a little moister and fluffier).  But the loaves I made today--YUM!

To give you an idea of the difference between the first loaves I baked and the ones I made today, in the picture below that's the first try on the right and today's bread on the left.  Quite a difference in appearance, am I right?  I'm almost wondering now if the problem was that I didn't let my first batch rise long enough.  (Hopefully after a bit of experience at this, practice will make perfect and I'll feel confident that I can tell when my rising dough has doubled in size!)  

Did you want to hear about homemade bread today?  Was this post absolutely riveting?  LOL!

I'm just so tickled about all of this, and it makes me kinda wish that we did have enough land to have a chicken coop out back, so we'd have fresh eggs as well, and room to plant a vegetable garden. I think if we had gotten this bee in our bonnet many years ago, my husband and I would have jumped on the homesteading train that seems to be popular with lots of younger folks these days. I'm afraid that ship has sailed, though (or that train has left the station!).  But I do think we're going to enjoy making breads and baked goods with our vitamin- and nutrient-rich home-milled flour.  

I'll try not to write too many bread-themed posts.  But I can't promise that this is the last you'll hear about it!

One last note before I sign off: lest you think I regret that we chose our pleasant little house with no land to speak of, located in a sweet but crowded small town neighborhood, instead of a farmhouse on a couple of acres, where we could grow our own food (and maybe even milk our own cow!), nothing could be further from the truth.  We have already created so many wonderful family memories in this VA house, which is located close to so many of those whom we hold dear to our hearts and is a perfect central meeting place for our VA boys and their families.  When I look out my door, I don't see rows of vegetables reaching toward the sun, or chickens wandering about pecking in the dirt...but I often see sights like this. Grandchildren running up our front walk, excited to come to Papa and Grammy's house.

I might not be a farm wife.  But I'm a very happy Grammy.

Our Walls Do Talk

My husband and I are about to leave our VA home for the summer and head to upstate NY, to the town where we grew up and met.  To the place where our story started 50 years ago. 

I’m excited to escape the extreme VA heat and humidity and spend the summer months on the refreshing lake, boating and swimming (when it finally gets warm enough for this old lady to dip her toes in there!), seeing my mom and lots of siblings on both sides, hosting our kids and grandkids for a vacation week in July at our Oyster Haven rental property.  

But I will miss the kids and grandkids who are our “neighbors” down here (not exactly next-door neighbors, but close enough)—three of our married boys and the 13-soon-to-be-14 children they have between them.  I love having so much of my family within striking distance.  (I want them ALL that close, but I’ll take what I can get!!)

I’ll even miss our sweet little house here, though it doesn’t have a lake view out the back windows—and in fact, it doesn’t even have much of a yard at all around it. We make do, as you can see from these photos taken the other day at a playdate with son #4’s wife and four kiddos.

Most of the walls in my house are gallery walls, eclectic groupings of artwork and memorabilia that “command attention and showcase our fondest family memories” (that’s what the Internet says these sorts of walls are supposed to do, and that description seems to fit!).  My walls look randomly designed (and they are constantly evolving and changing); but they are tied together by the fact that everything I hang up on them has special meaning.  Every piece has a story behind it, and all together, our crowded walls tell the story of our life.

This little section of wall in my kitchen is one of my favorites.

This wall includes canvas photo copies of the pigs I'd painted onto the kitchen walls of our NH house over 30 years ago.  I had to roll a nice neutral gray-colored paint over my precious pigs to make things fresh for the new owners when we moved away in 2017, but I made sure to take pictures before I started that sad task.  And those canvases were among the first items I hung up when we got to our new house.  Notice also the two cartoon drawings son #4 (a very talented artist) did for us as gifts, one of our five boys and the other of my husband and me.  There's the Bigfoot sign I painted for my dad years ago as a Christmas gift ("Bigfoot" was the name his grandkids all called him, per his request!).  That little sign came back to me when he died in 2016.  There's a clock I had made with an image of the cover of Finding Grace (you can do just about anything with photos these days, can't you?). The tiny embroidery piece was handcrafted by one of my twin granddaughters, who is 12 now, as a gift for me a few years ago.  (The little wooden frame?  It originally held a tiny oil painting that I made for my own grandmother many decades ago, a gift that came back to me when she died. Talk about history repeating itself!)  See that small framed print of an old brick building? That's the high school where my husband and I met as freshmen, way back in 1972.  It's since been torn down and I'm so glad to have this image of it!  The small wooden cross with the beautiful scroll work on it was given as a favor at a wedding we attended about a year ago at our parish here in VA.  (We have friends!  We're making connections, when I never thought we would do that after our big move to a new town--and a new state-- at a relatively late stage of life!). And finally, the cutting board is a gift from our youngest son.  It is engraved with our last name and these words: "Together is our favorite place to be."  Truer words were never spoken.  (And my boys are the sweetest, most thoughtful gift-givers.)

Can you see why I love that gallery wall so much?  Since it's in the room where I spend the bulk of my time each day, I look at it often.  It always makes me happy.

I have a passion for collecting transferware and vintage souvenir plates, so many of my walls have plates hanging on them.  But they can't just be pretty; they have to be meaningful to me as well, as these two in the family room most definitely are.  The top one is a souvenir from a Bavarian town where our youngest son lived for three years when he was in the Army.  While he was stationed there, I was able to stay for a prolonged visit with him at his apartment, located right in the center of town, and I fell in love with that area of Germany.  The other plate shows a map of another place near and dear to my heart, of course: the state of NH, where we lived for more than a quarter of a century and did most of the raising of our sons.

On the table: a picture from our trip to Rome in March of 2019, standing 
in front of the Spanish Steps.

The other neat thing on that wall is the framed map of Lake Champlain.  We grew up near that lake and we spend our summers there, so my husband and I love having this reminder hanging on a wall of our VA home.  And of course, there's the requisite nod to Irish culture, the Claddagh wall hanging.

The man of the house has a recliner chair on one side of the room, and this is what the wall next to that chair looks like.  I don't really have to tell you why I love it so much, do I?  I mean, is there anything better than family photos? This wall also has the sweet sign our middle son's wife made for us one Christmas--it might have been the first Christmas we celebrated in VA.  It says, "Papa & Grammy's House, WHERE COUSINS BECOME FRIENDS."  That pretty much sums up why we moved here in the first place and what we hope this house will accomplish!  (Please note the clock, too, a gift I gave my husband: it's an Irish pub clock that says, "DANCING, SINGING, CARRYING ON--CLOSED DURNG MASS."  That was a must-have because we love all things Irish, and that includes Notre Dame football.) 

Over on the other side of the room, where I have a big overstuffed chair and ottoman, this is what my wall looks like. Pictures of our boys, pictures of them with their wives on their wedding days...it doesn't get much better than that.

The best wall of all is in our living room, though: that is where we showcase the ever-expanding gallery of canvas portraits of our beloved grandchildren.  Each little person's adorable mug is added when he or she turns one (a favorite age of ours), so only 19 of the 20 (almost 21!) are up there so far.

We do have some lovely religious artwork in our house as well (a subject for a future post, perhaps?), and a few other pieces of art that speak to me in a special way.  But family photos and memorabilia take up most of the wall space.

I'll be missing these busy but comforting walls, and the tales they tell about our life together, when we're away for the next few months.  But I'm also looking forward to spending most of the summer (when we're not at our Oyster Haven house) surrounded by the walls of my husband's beloved childhood home, where we spent so much of our time when we were young and just starting out.  Those walls do a lot of talking, too, and they've got some great stories to tell.  

We should be packed up and on the road to NY by Sunday or Monday.  But first, some babysitting!  We are going over to the house of son #2 tonight for a sleepover, to be there for their four boys when Mom and Dad leave tomorrow morning to have their new baby.  Our daughter-in-law is scheduled to be induced rather early.  Any prayers you could offer up would be appreciated!  And I'll let you know how it all went, and whether we've got a new granddaughter or a new grandson!

Pillow Talk

Can we talk pillows?  

I love throw pillows.  But they can’t just be pretty or match my room decor; they have to “speak” to me, to give a message with special meaning or have pictures on them that tell a story relating to our family.

These two on the couch in the family room speak for themselves—and for me, too.

This toile beauty with an image of St. Peter’s Basilica is precious for two reasons: it was a lovingly handmade gift from our firstborn’s wife Regina; and it depicts ROME, my husband’s favorite European destination during his years as an international airline pilot, and the city that will always have a special place in my heart, too, after the three trips we took there together before the world shut down in 2020 (one of them a week-long dream vacation, two of them 4-day working trips where he flew there and back and I tagged along). 

These matching pillows on our living room couch, with their vintage Parisian advertisements, are meaningful to me for a number of reasons as well.  My husband flew many trips to France, and the first time I ever flew across the pond to Europe was when I accompanied him on a working trip to Nice in 2011.  Plus, I took francais in high school and in college, so you know, I’m a bit of a Francophile I guess.  (Although I must say that I’d take Italy over France any day of the week and twice on dimanche).

This last one in the living room says it all.  After five years in VA, I rarely think about our old house in NH anymore, the one I left in tears after 26 memory-filled years.

This is where my heart is now.  I miss this place terribly when we’re away. This is HOME.  The pillow doesn't lie.

What about you?  Do you love throw pillows, too?  Talk to me!

P.S. The impetus for this post is that we're in the car today, on our way back to VA.  We'll be there for almost a week, so that we can attend the 5th birthday party of our triplet grandchildren--and also to just check on the house and reconnect with all of our VA peeps.  As wonderful as our lakeside summer in NY has been, I miss my life there very much!  So I am looking forward to a little time at my home sweet home.  

The View from Up Here

We have been in Upstate NY for almost a week.  Ever since we moved from NH to VA in 2017, our routine has been to spend every summer up here in our old hometown, living in my husband's childhood home on the lake and attending Mass at the church where we were married in 1980.  We own a lake house just three or so miles down the road, which is mostly a VRBO rental, and we manage that property (which we named Oyster Haven) during the busy summer season.  (We have cleaners; but we take care of the laundry and making the beds on turnover days.)

I do love it here, even though I dearly miss what we have to leave behind in VA.  We get to visit with extended family (my husband and I both have sisters who still live here, and my 86-year-old mom lives with one of mine); we get to spend lots of time out on our boat; it's like being on a two-month-long date, in a way.

When we're in VA, we divide our time between the families of three of our five sons who live close by.  Their growing tribes keep us very busy. We are so incredibly lucky to have so many of our precious grandchildren (13 of 19) living nearby in the place where we spend most of the year.

I mean, look at this beautiful view!

I miss being in my own house, because I'm a homebody/nester/introvert; but it's really nice being here in NY, too. My husband and I started dating at 15, so in the almost-fifty years since, I've spent a lot of time in this wonderful house.  It’s like a second home.

Still...I miss my cozy cottage in VA, where the grandkids gather so often.

But as much as I miss those VA views, I must admit the the view from up here is not too shabby.

Oyster Haven's back yard.

And next weekend our VA gang plus our youngest son and his wife will be joining us for a Pearl family wedding, followed by almost a week together, staying at our Oyster Haven house (which we've blocked off for our own use).

So life is good, my friends.  I hope you're having an excellent summer so far.

Papa and Grammy’s House...

where cousins become friends.

My husband and I have been in Upstate NY for the past few days, working on our VRBO rental house to get it ready for the busy summer season.  And as beautiful as it is here...I miss that happy house in VA, where our grandkids so often come to gather: where cousins become friends.  Even though our yard there is the size of a postage stamp, and we have no breathtaking views to look at (not counting their precious faces, that is!), I love it so much.

It is a slice of  Heaven up here, though.  No doubt about it.  And I can’t wait for the week in July when our gang will be gathering with us for our annual Pearl family vacation here by the lake.

We head back home to VA today, where most (but not all) of our people are, for a few more weeks, and then we’ll come back to NY for the summer.  

Life is good today.

The Year of the Play Date (Part II)

Okay, so here's the continuation of that post I wrote the other day.  That is, if you're interested in hearing more about play dates at Papa and Grammy's house!  There will be some cute photos, if that helps to pique your interest.  ;)

When we moved to VA five years ago, we didn't expect to make many friends in our peer group.  We knew that we'd be very busy with family events and commitments, with four of our sons and all of our grandchildren living nearby at the time.  (When we moved here, we had only seven grandchildren altogether, and three of our daughters-in-law were due to give birth within a few months; we now have 19 grandchildren.  It's been a busy five years, to say the least!)  We were in our late 50's, leaving a beloved town where we'd lived for more than a quarter of a century and moving to a new town where no one knew us.  Plus, we planned that we would spend the summer months each year up in NY, managing our Vrbo rental property.  How were we going to have the time or energy to make real friends in our adopted home town?  We had no expectations of having a social life here in VA--at least not with anyone who had a different last name than ours!  We truly didn't expect to make lasting ties outside the family.

One of the biggest blessings of our move (aside from the fact that we would now live close to so many of our family members, of course) was the wonderful Catholic parish we've called home since we arrived here.  The people there are extremely friendly and we've always felt very welcomed.  But during this past year, we have really started to make dear friends at our church.  Since several months before the election in 2020, we've made a practice of going to daily Mass and staying for the Office of Readings and Morning Prayers afterward.  Along with the much-needed graces, an added benefit of this is that we have met so many lovely faith-filled fellow parishioners.

Through our parish, we met a nice man who is a daily Communicant, and he and my husband really hit it off. And lo and behold, we found out that his wife was originally from the same area of Upstate NY where my husband and I grew up.  Aside from that, they had made a big move from the Midwest to this part of VA not quite a year ago to be close to two of their three grown sons and some of their grandchildren--because like us, they had lived for a long time (35 years, even longer than we had lived in NH) in one house, but when their boys left home and settled far away, they were constantly traveling to see them.

We started going out for coffee after Mass once a week with this couple, whom I'll call T and R, and the more we talked, the more we realized we have in common.  What a gift--unexpected, but greatly appreciated--it has been to have friends who are in our same stage of life and with whom we can talk about pretty much anything without worrying that the subject will be "taboo."  They, too, live for their faith and their family.  Like ours, their lives very much revolve around the schedules and needs of their boys and their grandchildren.

When we'd meet for coffee, T and R's 3-year-old granddaughter K was almost always with them (R watches her while her mom is working).  So we thought it might be fun to get this little sweetheart of theirs together with our Hermanita, which we did one Tuesday or Thursday a few weeks ago.

I decided that I wanted to introduce R to the rest of my VA girls. So yesterday, I hosted a little mom's coffee/play date with her and my three local daughters-in-law. Braveheart came in the morning as usual with 2-year-old Hermanita; but Ginger also came with Jedi (4), Topper (3), and Quartus (1).  Unfortunately, my daughter-in-law Preciosa was on her way over to join us with her two youngest, Bichito (2) and Jet (6 weeks), but Bichito got sick in the car and they had to turn back.  :(

Anyway, we ladies had a delicious brunch and sat and chatted, the kids played together beautifully, and it was just an all-around delightful morning.

My friend R and her granddaughter had to leave before lunchtime, but Ginger and her boys stayed while Braveheart picked the triplets up from school, and when they got back the “big” cousins got to play together for a little while.

I must be the luckiest person on earth to be able to enjoy all this day-in/day-out, ordinary yet extraordinary time with these precious grandchildren.  They can come for play dates at Grammy's house any time they want!  The more the merrier, as far as I'm concerned.

And here’s a joyful little postscript: today, my husband and I are attending the wedding of one of the friends we’ve made because we see him every weekday morning at Mass.  Life is indeed full of unexpected blessings!

The Year of the Play Date (Part I)

Throughout the 2021-2022 school year, we have had a standing play date at Papa and Grammy's house on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Our triplet grandchildren Pumpkin, Peanut, and Paquita (who turn 5 in August) have been enrolled in a pre-K program that meets on those days each week at the Catholic elementary school in our town.  Because it's about a 35-40 minute drive for our daughter-in-law Braveheart, she drops the big three off at school in the morning and then comes over to our house with their 2-year-old little sister Hermanita.  We have coffee and visit while Hermanita plays in the basement and gets a couple of hours of one-on-one (or three-on-one) time with her mom and grandparents, and then our DIL goes to pick up the triplets just before lunchtime.  Unless we have an appointment or something going on in the afternoon, Braveheart brings them back to our house and they all have lunch here and stay to play for an hour or two before heading home.  On the rare days when the eagerly anticipated after-school play date doesn't happen, the triplets are terribly disappointed.  If their little sister is in the car when Mom comes to get them at school, they know they're not coming over to our house that day--and unless they've been adequately prepared for that reality, they are apt to have melt-downs.  

It's nice to be so popular!  Honestly, though, I don't know if it's us or our house that they love most.  They're always very happy to see Papa and me, of course; but they also love playing with the toys in our basement playroom/kid haven.  We have lots of old books and toys that belonged to their dad and his brothers back in the day; but we've also purchased a number of playthings--both new and used, boy-friendly and girl-friendly--to add to the collection and make it so that there's something for everyone.

My son and his wife think Hermanita looks like me.
I'm flattered, but not sure.  Do you see a resemblance?

It's a very busy playroom on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Just finding a bug in the doorway provides endless fascination.

I can't imagine how different our life would be if we hadn't moved 5 years ago.

I also can't imagine what life would be like without this finished basement in our VA house!

This area of Papa and Grammy's house gets a lot of use,
I'll tell you!

Sometimes, more moms and kids join us for these play dates--because the more the merrier, right?  More on that tomorrow (I hope, but if not, soon!).

It's a Beaut, Clark

Back when our boys were growing up in NH, it was our tradition for a number of years to go to a local Christmas tree farm to cut down our tree.  I loved how long those freshly cut trees would last (especially since we are definitely NOT those people who take down their tree by New Year's.  No judgment, you understand; it's just that we are not those people).  We always liked to keep our tree up at least until Epiphany.  And then we stretched it to the Baptism of Our Lord.

As time went on, we decided that maybe we would keep it up until our fourth son's birthday in late January...and then eventually, until Candlemas on February 2. 

What can I say?  We love it when we have a Christmas tree in our house!  It's hard not to feel happy when you're looking at a decorated and lighted tree.  And eventually, we went with a fake tree so that we could enjoy it as long as we wanted and would never have to worry about it drying out on us while we were away from home, visiting with family in NY between Christmas and New Year's.  Also, the boys got old enough that they were too busy with school and sports for us to schedule a trip to the tree farm with everyone involved.  The year my husband and I found ourselves going there alone was the last year we had a real tree. 

The artificial tree we had for many years in NH was a beauty.  We had the extra-high ceiling in the two-car attached garage that my husband converted into a giant sports-themed man cave/family room, so we were able to get one that was just shy of ten feet tall.  It had about 1,200 lights on it, a combination of color and white, and it was absolutely packed with ornaments, hundreds of them.  I loved that tree.  Each year, I added an ornament or two, some store-bought, some homemade, even though more ornaments was the last thing we needed.

We celebrated our last Christmas in NH in 2016, and all five of our sons, along with the four daughters-in-law and seven grandchildren we had at the time, spent the holiday with us that year.  It was just wonderful. (Our youngest son also met—IRL—the girl he'd been corresponding with on Catholic Match at our house that Christmas; they've been married for over two years now so I'd say it worked out!)

As you can see, it wasn't easy getting a picture of all the kiddos together—and that was ten grandchildren ago!

Shortly after those photos were taken, we were packing up a house that we'd lived in for 26 years to prepare for a big move south to VA, where our middle three boys (all but the “bookends”) had planted what appeared to be permanent roots.  By March of 2017, we were Virginians, and shortly after we got here, our oldest son switched careers and wound up moving close to us, too.  So now we had four of our five boys and all of our grandchildren near us.  It was too good to be true!

The one downside to the new house in VA was that there wasn't anywhere to display our enormous tree.  I was wondering if I would ever be satisfied with another one...but then we found a downsized tree that was absolutely perfect for us. (It's the official Griswold family tree, after all.)

It fits nicely in the bay window of our cozy little living room.  For the past two years, I haven't put any ornaments on it, because there were too many curious (and sometimes destructive!) toddlers milling about.  But with all those lights (over 3,000!), it still looked pretty without anything on it but a garland and a star.

The triplets are four now, so we decided to decorate the tree again this year.  I've given boxes of ornaments away to each of our boys, but the branches are still sufficiently packed.

And when we moved here, we also got a smaller tree for a corner of our family room.

So we don't have our killer tree anymore; but I think we're doing just fine, don’t you agree?

A few days ago, we received a small package in the mail.  It was a gift from son #3’s in-laws: a tiny felt pennant with a Christmas Vacation quote on it.

I'd say they've gotten to know us pretty well!

We are preparing to celebrate our fifth Christmas in the VA house, which is hard to believe.  The years in our new home state have positively flown by.  And now, with the imminent departure of son #1’s family (they are moving to a new home in the Midwest just after the holidays), we intend to cherish every moment we have with them—and with every member of our ever-growing Pearl clan.