Category Archives: Mi Familia

All things family-related. My husband and me, the children we made, the grandbebes that thrill us now. Our whole great big, loud, messy family. Love! *sigh…

Oh, the places you’ll go…

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Stephanie and Tristan just got back from an anniversary trip to London and Pah*ree!  {Paris, but have fun with it}

 In London.

She has been writing about it at www.MayDae.com There are amazingly beautiful photographs.  I am not just saying that because I am her mom.  The pictures are straight from  a Conde Nast travel mag!

Stephanie is Paris.

Stormie and her dad just returned from a trip to Honduras with Compassion International

A truck burgeoning with tomatoes

Where they got to see firsthand that the simple act of sponsoring a child really does impact their lives forever – AND you can actually meet and know that child!  She has also been writing about it, with photographs, naturally, at www.MayDae.com

Stormie and Dave (center) with their trip hosts and translators.  Everyone sort of expected Dave to be able to speak Spanish.  But, no.  He is the worst.  :)

Tredessa and Ryan, the newlyweds, are in Florida for the week.

His brother, Erik, is marrying Jen.  Congratulations Erik and Jen.  You are awesome.  We love you and wish you the best.

Erik, Cody and Jen at Ryan and Tre’s wedding. 

Rocky and Jovan are headed to Las Vegas for a little romance for a few days.

They are spending the night with the Girly-Q’s tonight so we can shuttle them to the airport early in the morning and hang out with Averi and Amelie on Friday.

Swiped from Facebook this morning.  Pretty family.  Rocky rocking the horizontal stripes.

And if I tried to document all DP and Tara’s travels, this would indeed become the Powers-Family-Travelogue.  But for the next few days?  They’ll be around.  :)

Sometimes a girl just needs her mom

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I love my mom.

The mamala…the older my kids got, the more of my best-friend-ever she became.

I was the one who turned her into a mom.  Every year she gives me kudos for that.  :)  As the years go on, I am trying to figure out how to honor her more.  I SO wanna be more like her when I grow up!  I doubt I can ever hope to attain it, but her love (in spite of anything I ever put her through) just remains.  “And when the day is done, my mama’s still my biggest fan...”  -from a song that makes me cry every-time.

I love the children who made me a mom.

I may have mentioned it before on this very blog.  But I am crazy about my kids.  Honestly, when I go to their blogs or check out their Facebook pages, but especially when I get to be in a room with them – I just cannot get over what cool people they are.

The Kelley Fam has the most creative photographs.  Captures my grandbebes!  :)

Omygoodness.  These kids, well, they have turned out.  And I find it amazing and I am filled with gratefulness for them, for a loving God who created them right there in my womb.  That is crazy grace!

A forever fav photo of Ryan and Tredessa, even though you can’t see her face – it was all pure joy!

Tara, Stephanie, Tredessa and Stormie: each so unique, each ravishing in beauty, each creative and passionate and successful and interesting.  They are just so interesting as human beings.  They are colorful and talented across so many boards it is crazy.  And the boy, Rocky.  Well, he is the most handsome, zealous, straightforward, protective young man ever.  These five.  My universe.  My past, my future.  My pride.  My joy.  I am so pleased that God was somehow able to make these…from me.  Like: speechless awe.

The Powers fam=fun always!

But if I have to add speech, like Buddy-the-Elf in the department store when he hears Santa is coming and starts screaming: “Saaaaaaaaaa-anta!!  I know him!”  I could do the same of mine, Tara!  Stephanie!!  Tredessa!!!  Rocky!!!!  Stormie Dae!!!!  I know them!

Stormie posted this on FB this morning.  Awww.

I love that the children I birthed have brought along their loves and I get to be the {dreaded} mother-in-love to them.

My kids have chosen well – just the right people for the family.  I am so blessed.  The main thing I love about Tristan, Dave, Jovan and Ryan is how they love my children.  They are all familia.  They were born to be one of us.  I am so lucky to just get that role by legal default.  But also by the ordination of God, favored, blessed!  I don’t take it lightly.

Rocky and his girls.

I love that God has made me a spiritual mom to his Bride.

I cherish the people He surrounds me with.  His word says He puts the lonely in families.  I know this is true.  For when my physical family is so far away and when life gets hectic for the growing families my own are raising, no matter where I go, I find myself surrounded by family – and am honored more than I deserved, and received with love.

I love that I got to be the mom to Dave’s children.

Because he said that when he proposed: that he was choosing me to be the mother of his children.  What an honor.

He wanted to buy me some crazy-great camera to replace my lost one today.  And I would not let him.  Although I did allow him to get me the next step up from my last one since it was on clearance at Target (Kodak Easyshare Z5010).  I just wasn’t ready to spend the time figuring out a real-live wonderful camera.  That is a life investment and Stephanie and Stormie have that covered for me.

From the new cam, a peony after a morning rain

And I asked for a new carpet cleaner.  With the same operator {Dave}.  He complied.

Dave would buy me flowers and jewelry.  He wants to do that.  He would bring me breakfast in bed.  He would give me the moon as a thanks for the kids we share.  But they are the reward.  Having them with him is the reward of my life.

Still much to learn about mothering.  So glad God trusted me to be a mom.

 

Happy Mother’s Day to my friends and family far and wide.  May your husband praise you today and may your children go all out to call you blessed!

Sandy-the-Dog & Tuppy-the-Puppy

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Young pup, old friend

Sandy is roughly 12 years old (we hauled her home after some one abandoned her at the landfill; she is truly our “junkyard dog”).  We aren’t exactly sure of her age, but we have had her since May of 2001, right around the time Tredessa graduated from high school.    She has been proclaimed younger by veterinarians, up 4 years younger than the years she has been around.  So we call it twelve.  I think that means she is in her 60s, human-year-wise.

Btw, using the opposite calculation, I am not even 10 yet (in dog years), which is nice.

Sandy-the-Dog came to us wild and woolly and looking so much like Chewabaca we wonder now that we didn’t name her that.  But we chose Sandy for the dog in the Broadway-musical-turned-movie the kids so enjoyed over and over and over when they were little, “Annie.”  Serendipitous that a couple of years ago, she actually got to play Sandy in the community theater.

She still loves to run the back yard and cheat at the game of fetch, meaning you can throw it and she’ll run to get it, but then she will jet around like a banchee and never bring it back.  You have to chase her to get it.  That is Sandy for you.  She still seems playful and puppy-like to me because she is sweet and kindhearted and loves people like crazy (so much like my mom, I tell ya!).

Tuppy-the-Puppy of Martha Stewart pet products fame CLICK HERE

But then a real puppy comes calling.  Yes.  Tuppy-the-Puppy (shown above) spent 3 days with us last week.  And holy-moly, that little booger moves fast, jumps high, can switch from forward to reverse and back again on a dime and even though Sandy has at least 50 pounds on her, Tuppy was not shy about trying to be alpha.  Sandy was rather unaffected by her cuteness, but they get along just fine.

So there we were.  Two dogs.  One is super-colorful-fast-forward.  The other living in black-and-white-slow-mo’…

Quite the sight.  I realized how old Sandy really is getting to be.

Tuppy is less than 5 months old and is the picture of a tiger-by-the-tail.  She made me laugh constantly, jumping on my head and biting my nose, snuggling close for a quick nap then on-the-go at 95mph.

Sandy (with an extra-short haircut)

Sandy, true to her German Wiredhaired Pointer characteristics, lives to please us.  She is like a trusted friend, always ready with a warm greeting when I come home, edging as close to my feet as possible when I sit.   In fact, where I go, she goes.

Sandy is going to die and break my ever-loving heart, isn’t she?

Happy Birthday, Tara Powers!

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Well, this day is as gorgeous as the one on which you were born.  I awoke at exactly 5:55 a.m. {33 years ago} to a deep contraction, one that I knew was “real.”  I hopped out of bed with giddy excitement on the inside and started writing times on a piece of paper.  Having heard many baby-labor horror stories, I hoped you’d be in my arms before the day was out, but began bracing myself for the 24-hour first-time-mommy labor and delivery.  I’d seen the television shows.  At any second I would become almost incapacitated and start screaming for hours.

But no.  I actually went with my mom and dad to the church where they worked for the day.  I tracked the contractions, gentle, strong, but building.  My mom and I went shopping.  Then home for dinner.  Then packing a hospital bag.  Then YOWZERS: need to go now.  But a one-car family and my dad says, “Can you wait until I am ready to go to church for Wednesday night service,” and I do so we can drop him at his convenience.  And You are born 30 minutes after I arrive at the hospital.  Not one single scream.

It is kind of funny to think about that now.  NOW, I would tell my dad: Heck no.  I need to go have this baby.  You’ll have to get another ride!  Hahhaha.

I am revisiting past blogs I have written about you because you are one of my favorite writing topics.

2011

I did the photos with words to try to say everything I saw and adored and there just isn’t really enough space, though I got braver as 2011 went on and I can actually see space where I could have kept adding.  :)   Tara is the firstborn.  I have known her a long time!

I said, “You have the wisdom of some years now.  You are not just a pretty girl.  You are a ravishing woman…”

2010  Click to read.

The year of your surgery, I recalled the night of your birth.

“But later, in that room,  just us two, I knew that you were mine, a gift straight from God.  ‘I don’t know you yet, but I know I love you,’ I whispered, wondering who you’d be and if you could ever love me back.”

2009 ~ The year you turned 30

I wrote 30 wishes for you including lots of good hair days, health and vigor and for the songs of the Lord to be increased through you.  Write, girl, write!, I admonished!  :)

2008

I quoted Lord Byron’s poem, “She walks like beauty in the night,” because that poem has always made me think of my sweet daughter.

I was praying for you then to understand your pivotal role in God’s great story on this earth.  I urged you to speak up and speak out and sing as His anointed!  SO thankful to God for a  blog recording my love for my children and His great faithfulness in their lives!  I LOVE it!  He answers.  He hears and He answers!

And I told you, “I am so pleased with you, baby girl, I bless the day you were born.”  I still do!

2007, the first time I blogged about your birth

I had started bloggin in November of 2006 and got to start telling the stories in ’07.  I revealed the blessing-name “Liquid Joy,” bestowed upon you by dearest family friends.  I spoke of the sensitivity and healing you had brought to my life by your birth and I even spoke of times I feared for your heart and life and how God so faithfully-faithfully-faithfully restored you and there was great rejoicing!

Through the years on this blog so far, the recurring theme about you is: you were a gift to me.  And you are joy.  And God created you for amazing things.  And on your birthday, I celebrate all of it!

O I love you.  Happy Birthday, Tara Jean.  You are a shining star in my night sky!

Sometimes you just wonder

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I was looking at really old photos of family members who are dead and gone and realizing that we are just passing through, a temporary part of the the earth’s atmosphere.  But we represent all who came before and we leave our mark on those who will remain.

And I just wonder if, besides wanting to leave a powerful legacy, I have given enough honor to those who paved my way, enough homage to real people whose lives made mine possible?

It feels like, sometimes, we write them off as unsophisticated, or as people whose lives didn’t matter quite as much.  We are so intent on “bettering” everything.  Just like they were, I suppose.

My Grandpa Baker in the mid-1940s….

I wonder what I have yet to learn as I contemplate the people who made me?

Proverbs 22.28 NIV, “Do not move an ancient boundary stone

set up by your ancestors.”

These are the altars upon which we build.

Horseshoes

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This one is for Stef, who can appreciate my momma stories.  :)

About a year ago my mom and I were reminiscing on the phone about the great time we’d had at the Phipps farm during the Moslander Family Reunion of 2009.  Stef and Wrex set up a roping activity and lots of yard games, brought out the horses for riding and baby goats and cows for petting.  My mom was particularly thrilled when Wrex gave her some tips on roping.  She was able to dead-aim her pvc-pipe “cow” with ease under his tutelage and reflected how great it would have been in life to have known this stuff sooner!  There she was, a 70-year old woman, roping away!

finalreunionthepartyisover09-008

We enjoyed a big barbecue on their spacious property and to my mom’s utter delight, we got a big game of horseshoes going before the sun went down.  She has always loved a good game of horseshoes.

As we were talking about it on the phone last summer, she just started joking around and being silly about it, like she sometimes does to make us smile.

“I didn’t do too good at horseshoes in Colorado.  That ground was so hard those horseshoes just got up and galloped away.  They wouldn’t even stay by the pin.  They even tried to chase Joe down.  He finally climbed on one and rode away.”

Yes.  I wrote it down for future joy.  Just like she used to do with our words when we were little.

Norma’s Angel

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My mama’s namesake horse.

My earliest memories, in the apartment on Washington Street in Des Moines, Iowa, include my mom’s horse collection.  She’d collected wooden ones, ceramic ones, and glass ones as a girl and young teenager.  They were displayed on the plate rail around the dining room and on shelves and even my dad’s desk.  I was fascinated by them and occasionally, she’s get one down for me to hold.

At some point, I guess as her “collection” of children grew, she just got rid of them all.

But I always knew she was horse woman.  A little bit cowgirl.  A little bit Dale Evans and Roy Rogers, she grew up wearing jeans and chaps and walking around her town roping things.

Fitting then, that there is a horse named for her, Norma’s Angel.

My mama the horse whisperer

My mom devoted, in every sense of that word, her whole life to God, her husband, her children and her church family.  I would like to challenge anyone to find an enemy to her.  Just is not possible.  She loved anyone who had an issue with her until they could no longer resist her affection and became, instead, raving fans.  Her love is deep and wide.

When my dad took a church in Ohio and she was 55, I believe, she became a professional horse photographer.  It was just thrilling to see her blossom, like a reward from God for all the years of her dedicated service.  They lived in a rural location and her hobby of snapping pictures turned in to assignments for an Ohio horse publication, where her work was featured on the cover many times.

I have always said that both my mom and my sister can speak to the animals.  And the horses especially responded to her my mom’s gentleness and respect by posing sweetly.

This photo

So a few years ago when they were pastoring in Richmond, Indiana, some members of their church who were horse breeders and racers had a foal who was not doing too well at all.  The small horse was very sick and it touched my mom’s heart, of course.  She drove out to their place and told them she was going to pray for their little horse.  She did.  She recalls the little horse nuzzling her while she’d speak gently to it and stroke its’ mane.

She prayed and prayed for that little horse and it got better.  When they filed the paperwork, they called that horse, “Norma’s Angel.”

It got so strong it began racing.  They sent my mom a horseshoe from its’ first 1st-place win, a treasure to her.

This past week she got to stop by and see her namesake horse and they shared some tender moments, captured by another photographer.  I happened across it on Facebook this morning and it has to be one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

Regal.  Strong.  Powerful.  Gentle.  Beautiful.  The horse yes, but my little mama, too.

I love you so, mamala!

 

http://www.equibase.com/profiles/Results.cfm?type=Horse&refno=7451859&registry=Q

They drove away

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The Kelleys with 3 kids, lots of luggage and book bags and the dog with her head out the front window, fur blowing in the breeze.  A perfect Colorado sunset as backdrop.

Very quiet here suddenly.  {the nonna sniffles}

THURSDAY MORNING UPDATE:  I am silly.  They live, like, 2 miles away.  Haha.  All is well.  I just LOVE them!  :)

work day

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It’s Monday.  There is this festival coming up really soon.  Gotta work.

But the sun shines and the breeze causes those fluttering leaves that tend to distract me and a little red-headed girl needs a drink.  Then a snack.  Then another drink.  And then a craft to do.  And then Is it time for lunch yet ?? (which gets repeated a lot of times throughout the day).  Then some cuddle time.  Then coloring time.  Then Can I watch some Netflix, Nonna?  Then finally lunch actually arrives.

The anticipation of Tuppy-the-Puppy joining us today from the kennel where she’s been visiting starts to make life seem super exciting.  Nonna works at the table.  So Gemma brings her work to the table.  Paper, crayons, glue sticks and scissors dot my professional landscape.  When the workload gets too heavy the little girl brings me her hairbrush.  Nonna takes a break to brush spun-gold into soft waves and bebe almost falls asleep as I brush.  She has inherited this love of hair-playing from me.  Is there some one I can pay to brush my hair when I need a break??

We bought Gemma the “je t’aime” shirt as a greeting to her mommy and daddy while they were in Paris.  All week, we have been singing “Freres Jacques” and “Alouette.”

The kids get home from school. The puppy bounds in and a scene from The Brady Bunch ensues as Sandy tries to catch up with this tiny dog running the house in circles to the squeals of three exuberant children.    The doors slide open and closed about 487 times and there is candy, lots of candy.

I keep plugging away at the task list.  Kind of.

Now it is time to do fractions and 3rd grade spelling lists.  *Binary  *Monologue  *Triads.   I did not use these words in 3rd grade.  Yowzers.  More math problems, Reading.  Racing to the swing-set.  When is dinner?  When is dinner?  When is dinner?  Because each of three needs to know.

Task list loses.  Life is a little upside down.  As bedtime approaches and the pj-donning, teeth brushing and potty-going begins, I feel a pang of separation anxiety.  Because in a few days they will go home.  I can jump back into work.  And the silence (and order and accomplishment) will be deafening and I shall miss the chaos of delight it has all been.