Just Like Family

In just a few weeks, Brandon will be returning home from his mission in Jamaica, and back to home and family and friends. His best friend, Ryan D, was gone on his own mission to Uruguay when Brandon left, so it will be about 3 years since these two guys have seen each other. It's going to be a great homecoming! In the meantime and since returning from his mission, Ryan D, (who is really like family to us!) has gone off to BYU-Idaho, and somehow convinced this gorgeous young lady to marry him! We are so happy for Ryan and Rachel! She has all the style and grace of a Southern Lady, which makes sense when you realize she's from Kentucky. I also like her sense of humor and fun, which I hope is evident in these photos:

Rachel, please forgive me for posting that one, but I think it's fun!

Ryan recently went to visit her in Kentucky and meet her family, and last week Rachel came here to meet Ryan's mom. We had the pleasure of having Rachel stay with us at the Haven for the weekend, which is why I was able to snag these photos.

All I can say is that Ryan has great taste, and we wish them all the best in their future life. They are to be married in August in the Louisville Kentucky LDS temple, and will be continuing at BYU-Idaho in the fall. Brandon will probably see them there!!

Coming Full Circle..... almost

Isn't it funny how certain things can trigger memories, and take you RIGHT back to moments in your past? It might be a photo, a song, a smell, or food. Whatever it is, it becomes an instant time machine and you suddenly land decades before where you started. I have to tell you, that this week .... I took that path back to my childhood.

When I was growing up, my dad kept his hobbies in the basement. (Mom wouldn't allow any of it to ever creep upstairs!!) His hobby that took the most space, was printing. Which, not surprisingly, was also his vocation. Dad was a printer by trade. And he loved it. In his personal history, he mentions getting started in the newspaper business. More than once, I heard either my mother or my father say something to the effect of, "Once he smelled that printer's ink, he was hooked, and there was no going back."

It was TRUE. And it was what led my father to take his growing family from Idaho, to Wyoming, and finally to California. My Dad worked as a linotype operator for the local newspaper in California. A linotype machine was quite a feat of "modern" engineering. It made it possible for a printer to create an entire line of type ("line-o-type"... get it?), as opposed to setting each letter and space individually.

In our basement, we had printing presses. There was a big floor press, and a smaller tabletop press. The tabletop press looked like this:

I was intrigued by it, but Dad wouldn't let me near it, citing fingers-pinched-in-the-rollers reasons, although I also suspect it had something to do with the possibility of getting ink all over me and the potential trouble he would be in with Mom! To this day, though, whenever I smell newspaper ink, it smells like "Dad."

Without going into a whole lot of detail, the printing method for which these presses were used is called letterpress. There's a couple of really interesting videos you can watch that describe the process, here and here. Essentially, letterpress makes an impression in the paper, creating a dimensional, de-bossed (opposite of embossed) surface.

Now. I told you all that, so I could tell you this. I'm a little late on this bandwagon (so what else is new?), but letterpress is making a comeback in the home crafts market.

(Don't look now, but Todd is pretty sharp, so he's already jumped two steps ahead of me and is at this very moment, groaning out loud as he reads this, and thinking, "Not again!")

One of the blogs I follow is A Bushel and a Peck of FUN". Right now, and for a few more days, there's a giveaway going on for an Epic Letterpress Machine. This machine is an affordable way for average people to do letterpress printing without getting into the whole professional printing press aspect.

Of course, I want one!!! Are you kidding me?? What a cool tool! You BET I signed up for a chance to win! (In the next few days, you can too.... click on the link and follow the instructions.) And wouldn't it be ironic if I started doing this little baby-version of letterpress printing, when my dad did the real thing? It would kind of be like life coming full circle.......

P.S. Here's a bit of printing trivia that may or may not be true. The pieces of printer's type my dad used was made of lead. Each individual character or letter is called a "sort." So, a letter "A" is a sort, a letter "B" is a sort, and so forth. A printer would want to make sure that he had enough "sorts" on hand for a print job. Because, if he ran out, ...... he would be "out of sorts".

Peter Cottontail's Vacation Spot

I'm not sure what the IQ of the average rabbit is. And since Sasha has been gone, it's a no-brainer for them to encroach on her old territory. But for over two weeks now, we can look out our kitchen window and see this guy: (girl?)

The relaxation spot-of-choice is fairly close to the house, under our trampoline, in an otherwise bare and vast expanse of lawn:

So much for them hiding in the garden or the shrubbery. Does he think we can't see him there because he's under the tramp? (Emma is at that stage where she will get shy and "hide" her head. It's the If-I-Can't-See-You,-You-Can't-See-Me Theory.)

I finally scared up Peter Cottontail by getting too close for comfort.....

.... and he disappeared into the shrubbery. He's in the very center of this photo, diving into the base of the spirea bush. Ahh, it looks like I have some spring cleaning to do in the back yard!!

It has occurred to me that "he" may be a "she", and could be nesting. Great. Where are those dang yelping coyotes when I need them???

Start of the Season

And so it begins......

(I always love seeing her huge stride she takes when pitching.... that's a 8' radius circle, so she strides further than she is tall: and she's TALL!!)

High school softball starts earlier than the travel club season, but it's nice that we can be back on the fields playing ball already! This is Alyssa while pitching at a recent non-league game... please don't comment on the too-short pants... we're thinking of switching to her own personal black pants so she doesn't have to show any skin there. This is for protection, not modesty: A slide into home plate has already scuffed her up a little bit, and I'm foreseeing more damage if we don't get her knees protected!!

Here's the windup :

And the girls on the infield at the beginning of a new inning (some of them are finally almost as tall as Alys):

The down side to having early games is definitely the weather, which is NOT softball weather. Cold, windy, rainy, and often miserable.... let's just say that Emma hasn't been to a game yet! And that also explains why Alys was bundled up so thoroughly as she headed off to practice in this post!!

Let the games begin!!

Busy Days

We are spinning plates these days, trying to keep everything and everyone going and doing. And that is my excuse for blogging a bit less lately!

Todd & I (and Emma) traveled to Salt Lake City two weeks ago for the HPBA Expo -- the trade show for the hearth products (and patio and barbecue) association. We got the low-down on new products, got some training on products we already carry, and spent some wonderful time with Todd's sister. Emma and Kerry hit it off right away, and the night after we returned to Lewiston, Emma woke in the night and asked me, "Go see Kerry?" We also squeezed in a quickie visit with my sisters (hence, the typewriter.... scroll down or hit "older posts" for that post!)

Brandon is doing well in Jamaica, and it's hard not to start counting down to the end of his mission and his return home: yep, it's 7 weeks left!! He'll have one more transfer, in which he may or may not move. Check his updates on his mission blog: http://www.huffakermission.blogspot.com/. (And check out His Slimness.... that photo of him balancing on the rock wall sure shows off his weight loss!)

Cameron is still working, plenty of hours at Wendy's, although not very much at Welenco. He's closer and closer to getting his mission paperwork done, with just the doctor's TB test and dentist visits to get completed. He also drives a mean Lamborghini in his video game world. Thank heavens his real vehicle is an old pickup!!

Darcie is full-on into her volleyball season, practicing two nights a week with the travel club team. So far, her team has earned a tie for 3rd place, and a Silver Bracket win in their first two tournaments. Two more tournaments to go, both of which are "away" days, and a tournament is truly an all-day thing.These are some pre-game warm-up shots, and boy.... does this girl ever get some height when she jumps! No wonder her position is as a middle blocker! This is her at the net:

Darcie has also started practices for track every afternoon after school, and is looking forward to doing the high jump again this year.

Alyssa? This girl is burning the candle at both ends and meeting herself coming and going. She's up bright and early for early-morning Seminary, then school, which is nothing to sneeze at: two honors classes in her course load. After school she stops at home long enough to change into softball clothes, grab a snack and then is right back out the door for softball practice, or sometimes a game.

This is the look I get from her....
That's her keys and a granola bar in hand. And this is all I see of her......

Until she's back home in the evening for dinner and an armload of homework. If she's lucky, she'll finish the homework without falling asleep in the middle of it, and then the whole thing starts all over again the next day.

Yesterday was especially interesting, when she had a softball game and the high school's Jazz Concert (for Gold Voices)... on the same night. I'm fairly certain the administrators didn't consult each other on the schedule. She played several innings and then dashed out the dugout to drive directly to the school to change for her concert. And yes..... I'm pretty darn sure she was the only girl in Gold Voices who was wearing softball sliding shorts under her black sequined formal that night!

Life is busy, but I'd rather be busy than bored!!

If You Think It's Butter....

Are you a butter or a margarine person?

I must have old margarine commercials running through my head! It was the first thing I thought of when I turned around today and saw Emma was helping herself to the butter, straight out of the container!
And apparently it's the new skin conditioner: rub it in for softening and moisturizing? It looks like bread is optional:

So the old commercial went, "If you think it's butter, but it's not....... it's Chiffon." The stuff she's eating isn't Chiffon, but it isn't butter, either.

Todd and I tend to buy some of both margarine and butter. Butter for the taste, and margarine for the savings. Trouble is, our favorite margarine re-did their formula, and we've been shopping around a bit to find something we like better. I hate when companies think they're putting one over on the consumers. THIS consumer is NOT amused!! I'm tired of them telling me they're giving me a fat, when it's really got a bunch more water whipped into it. All that water doesn't cook or bake the same, people!!

What are your food pet peeves??

The Gen-u-ine Article!

It's Saturday. I'm at home, in my own carefree world. But in the background, I can hear my mom in the kitchen. No, she's not cooking this time. Since it's Saturday, she's typing up the Sunday program for church. She starts with her primitive method of centering the title: counting the letters and spaces for the title, then backspacing half that amount from the center. I hear the even rhythm as she hits the space-period-space-period pattern of the lines between the words. Then, the uneven sounds and extra-loud thunk when she hits "shift" as she types the names and songs. Then, the "ding" of the little bell she comes within an inch of the right margin. And yes, I do hear the occasional colorful exclamation, uttered under her breath, when she makes a mistake.

Which was always worse on the Sunday program, because she was using a ditto master. I know -- it's an ancient term for a post-industrial revolution method of duplicating documents. Does anyone else remember those old purple-inked copies??? There was no way to correct a mistake, not even with correction tape. And if she was having a rough day, she would have to give up and start over with a fresh master. That was the ultimate waste in her eyes.

Her method of attack always involved this:

Yes, that's an old manual typewriter. In fact, it's the SAME old manual typewriter that my mom used all those decades ago. I believe this is probably from the early 1940's. Even after "modern" electric typewriters were invented, my parents still used manuals (we had two). Call me weird, but I did want to bring this baby home with me, on our recent trip to Utah/Southern Idaho. Like a lot of other things, this was still at my sister's house, along with so many other things that were my parents'. Since no one else had expressed an interest, Karen sent it out the door with me. I would have taken the wood-and-metal stand it was on too, but we were out of room in the Suburban. Next trip.

My kids thought it was pretty cool, and had to try it out. There's a big difference between typing on this old hulk and typing on a modern computer keyboard. About the only thing in common is the QWERTY layout!

I LOVE these keys! And I love the wear marks from where countless times one of us rested our hands on the edges. And even though I thought it was kind of dumb at the time, I get a kick out of using the lowercase "L" for the number "1", because there is no "1" on the keyboard. (An exclamation point could be made with the apostrophe and a period!)

Mom, being the organized person she was, typed a lot of things. She typed up minutes from meetings, ward newsletters, recipes for her collection-cookbooks, and she typed letters. She actually preferred typing to handwriting. I still have a few of those typed letters. I also have recipes on 3"x5" cards that I typed on this typewriter. They were Mom's recipes that I wanted to have with me when I left home for college.

It may be unnecessary to have this old typewriter. But I'm hooked. And it is a link to both my parents: my mom, the typist, and my dad, the printer. And it adds to my modest little collection of antiques.

TOTALLY cool!!

P.S. Maybe you remember this post, that showed a few of my antiques, and antique wannabes.