Baby, It's Cold Outside!

I've had a few random thoughts running through my head today, all of which are too short to make a decent blog, so I'm just going to jot them down with the above title. We're in the middle--ummm, maybe sort of the beginning I guess--of a pretty good Arctic front which is taking temps down to the teens at night and up to 25-26 during the day. If anyone who reads this happens to be from Minnesota or Alaska or somewhere that regularly experiences these temps during the winter months, know that in the Pacific Northwest, west of the Cascade mountain range, this is pretty rare. In fact, I've heard on the radio that it's been a good 20 years since we've had this cold of weather for the amount of time it's expected to be this cold--through the coming weekend. We heat exclusively with wood, which is great during the day (and when it's
not below freezing), but the house can get pretty chilly overnight. I started out with a 49 degree temperature and after almost 4 hours, have managed to get it up to 61. I put blankets up over the hallways to help keep the heat in the livingroom-diningroom areas, or I'm sure it wouldn't be this warm. If the temps were what they normally are on normal winter mornings, I'd have started at 60 degrees and we'd be cooking out of this place by now.

"Long Johns" (aka thermal underwear) are a lifesaver in this cold of weather. I have about 3 sets (tops & bottoms) and am wearing a set today. Really makes a difference, especially when stepping out into that cold east wind to get more firewood or take the garbage out.

Why is it that some people don't dress for the weather. I was at my local Tar-jay store today, and saw a woman with no coat, calf-length pants, short sleeved shirt (no long johns) and flip-flops, shopping away. She's not the first person I have seen during this cold spell, dressed for summer. Do they not realize it's cold outside--colder than usual? Do they not feel the cold? Are they from Minnesota or Alaska or somewhere so this feels like a heat wave to them? Do they
send their kids outside dressed like this? Makes me cold just to think about it.

And finally, while this doesn't directly have anything to do with cold weather, it's amusing, and I'll explain the vague tie-in as we go:

Our ds (dear son) works nights and gets home around 5:30 or 6 in the morning. He generally wants something to eat when he gets home, and he generally goes for leftovers if there are any. Yesterday I was planning on making lasagne for dinner, as it was our #2 dd's birthday and she and her kiddies were coming for dinner. I had started the sauce, when the phone rang. Due to the inclement weather--there was some snow and ice where she lives, while we had little of it
because we live in a hole and she lives partway up a major hill--she decided not to come after all. Good thing her dh (dear husband) did a surprise birthday party for her on Friday. She said she hoped I hadn't started dinner yet, but I told her it wasn't a problem, I'd make lasagne for the Christmas dinner we were attending the next night (tonight). I no sooner got off the phone with her when the Sweet Adelines chorus president called and said that our Christmas dinner/party was cancelled because the weather was just too "iffy." No problem, I'll stop what I'm doing, put the sauce in a bowl and either make lasagne for dinner Monday night or freeze it for another time. Which is what I did. DH & I had soup & Trader Joe's Calzone for dinner instead--much easier to cook and I really wasn't in the mood anyway. When I got up this morning, in the sink was a bowl with what looks like remnants of lasagne sauce in it. I wonder if ds thought it was some kind of soup or something. Can't wait till he gets up so I can ask him how he liked his lasagne sauce!

Journal Jar: Last of the Traditions

Journal Jar: The Last of the Traditions

There are a few more traditions not covered before, so I'll finish up with our family traditions for the following holidays and/or events:
Graduations; 4th of July; Halloween; Thanksgiving

For graduations, we don't have any. There, that was simple.

4th of July: For the past few years we've been going to dd Heffalump's home in a nearby beach town where they have a quaint little 4th of July parade . It's a small town, so it's a small-town parade, and it goes right by Heffalump's house. We take our chairs out and set them up on the sidewalk about an hour or so before the parade starts. It starts out with the US Coast Guard helicopter flying low over the parade route to be sure all is clear, then the parade begins. It's fire trucks, Coast Guard vehicles, National Guard trucks and other stuff, big pickups, vintage cars, kids on bikes and wagons, etc. Fun. Afterwards, we usually barbecue hamburgers & hot dogs and follow up with a walk on a beach.

Halloween: Since about 1995 or so we've had the annual Pumpkin Carving party, hosted by 2 dd. Starts out with a potluck dinner, then everyone carves their pumpkin. Add candles, turn out all the lights, and two dsil's (son's in law) proceed to take photos of said pumpkins. Sometimes we even get pictures of all attending family members. The kids sometimes dress up in their Halloween costumes, and sometimes the adults do, too. This year Heffalump's kids were: Waldo (from "Where's Waldo"), Mario & Luigi, Buzz Lightyear, Mr. Incredible, a tiger, and Baby B was a sweet tomato.

Thanksgiving: We alternate the big family dinner every other year, giving the married kids the opportunity to share Thanksgiving with their in-laws, or in the case of in-laws who live a long ways away, the opportunity to have a quiet Thanksgiving on their own. This is the year of the big family dinner, so we'll have 20-some odd people here. I need to get busy and figure out what I want people to bring--we don't make me cook it all by myself, thankfully.

In a few days or so I'll be drawing another question out of the Journal Jar and answering it here. Stay tuned!

Accomplished!

It's my own fault, really. I knew I had signed up to have the missionaries from our church over for dinner on an upcoming Wednesday. The trouble was, I didn't have my calendar with me at the time, so I didn't make note of the date. Or maybe I did on another piece of paper, but forgot where I put that piece of paper. At any rate, when this past Sunday came along, I wasn't sure if it was THIS coming Wednesday, or the following Wednesday, that I had signed up to have them come. "Oh well," thought I confidently, "When they pass the calendar around again today, I'll just look and see which day it is."

Hmmm, well the lady who is in charge of circulating the dinner calendar wasn't at church on Sunday. "Oh well," thought I confidently, "They always call the night before to confirm, and to let us know what time to pick them up." When Tuesday came and went, and Wednesday morning too (they sometimes call Wednesday mornings) with no phone calls, I figured it must have been NEXT Wednesday that I signed up to have them. Except I wondered why I would agree to have them on the same day that I had agreed to teach a class at my local genealogy society. I went about my day, dropping in at the genealogy society and sitting in on the beginning genealogy class (I'm teaching that on December 4th), etc. At 4:15 in the afternoon, the phone rang, and it was Elder W. "I'm sorry I didn't call sooner, but we have you on our calendar for dinner tonight, is that still okay?" Ummmmm, well, I had taken 3 chicken breasts out of the freezer to make for dh & ds & I, which I couldn't stretch easily without a whole different direction. After agreeing to pick them up a little later than we usually do, I set about to make dinner.

First, I popped the chicken into a pot of water to cook, checked the cupboard for some Stovetop stuffing mix, located a brownie mix in the cupboard (but decided against them), located a box of butterscotch instant pudding in the cupboard (our last box of pudding mix--add that to my grocery list), and remembered I had a bag of salad greens in the fridge, and a tub of frozen cookie dough we had bought from our grandson's last spring for their school's fundraiser. I put the cookie dough on the stove, made up some muffin dough and popped them into the oven. It didn't take too long to cook the chicken, and I even found the recipe I hadn't made in a long while (my kids didn't like stuffing so this was not on their list of favorites), whipped that up and had it in the oven by 5:15 when dh left to pick up these young men.

To make a long story short, dinner was ready when he returned with them about half an hour later. I was feeling so accomplished, especially since my house was clean so I didn't have to do that in addition to making dinner.

The next day I related this story to my #2dd and sis-in-law as we were scrapbooking (dd had her own dinner dilemna the day before too--she invited the neighbor boy to eat with them and ended up with the parents, too). Still feeling accomplished, she sort of took the wind out of my sails when she said, "I'd have gone to Winco and bought pizza."

The thought never crossed my mind--and we have a Winco within walking distance. Still, without leaving the house, I prepared a fitting dinner for two hungry young men as well as ourselves, with ingredients I had on hand, and in a short amount of time, too. Yay for me!

Journal Jar: Next Tradition

The next tradition I'll write about is birthday traditions. Now, what's to this tradition? Presents? Cards? Cake? Most of us can expect some kind of acknowledgement on our birthday, either a gift, a card, or a "Happy Birthday" wish from friends or family. The one tradition I can remember from childhood, besides the above and which I have attempted to carry out with my own children, is that the birthday child gets to pick what's for dinner on his/her day. My favorite food growing up was fried chicken, so I'm sure I asked for that a lot. When someone asks me that question now, that's usually what I say. I remember when we first moved west, from La Grande OR to the Portland area, we were living with my grandparents. I was 7 years old when we first moved, but turned 8 about the time we moved in with my grandparents for a brief spell. My parents had separated, we were pretty poor I imagine. My mother wasn't working, so I expect we were being supported by aunts and uncles for that time in our life. I can remember Mom asking my brother what he wanted for his birthday dinner--it would have been his 7th birthday if I'm remembering the time right. He answered "Hot dogs," and I can remember my mother appearing to be very relieved, probably that it wasn't something like steak.

I don't remember many of the dishes my kids asked for, for their birthday supper. I remember my son asking for KMart sandwiches one year. I think he was probably about 4. KMart used to sell deli sandwiches, some kind of meat and cheese on a hamburger bun. For some reason, my son thought this was the best food in the world. And the twins would ask for something different, so I'd end up making two main dishes. The last couple of years it was steak for one, and Chicken Alfredo for the other.

So, what would you ask for if you had your choice, for your birthday dinner?

Journal Jar

Journal Jar--Christmas

Today while cleaning off my dresser (a historical event to be noted, I'm sure), I came upon a "Journal Jar." You may already know what this is, but I'll explain anyway, just in case. It's a canning jar that is full of questions on little strips of paper that one can draw out and answer as part of keeping a journal or writing your life story. As you can tell by the way I keep up with my blogs, I'm not very good at keeping a journal, either. And keeping this Journal Jar on my dresser is doing me absolutely no good at all, so I moved it in by my computer. I also decided that I'll try to pull a question out of it every few days or so, and answer it on my blog. And if I type out my blogs in a document on my computer first, I'll be writing my life story as well as keeping up with my blog. And my kids will have some interesting (hopefully) information about my life.

So here's the question I drew out first:

Tell about your family traditions: Christmas, birthdays, graduations, July 4th, Halloween, Thanksgiving, hunting, weddings, etc.

Since this could be broken down into several blogs, I think I will do just that. What I'll write will cover childhood traditions, as well as those we started or carried through from adulthood. So to my children, some things will sound famliar, and some things might be of interest if any of them wonder what my childhood was like, back in the time of the dinosaurs. So first, I'll cover Christmas traditions, which will actually be more like "Christmas memories."

Christmas Traditions/Memories
I don't remember too much in the way of Christmas traditions that were different from most people's traditions. We had a Christmas tree, we had presents, and we had Santa Claus. Somewhere in my photo archives I probably have pictures of our Christmas tree, and perhaps opening up some presents. Did we have a traditional Christmas dinner? I don't remember anything in particular, and in the foggy recesses of my memory I remember some nice dinners at my aunt's house which could have been Christmas dinners. I remember her green pears, and wondered how they got to be that color. I remember that us kids were usually stuck at the dinner table where we couldn't get out easily when we were done eating, and I remember crawling under the table instead of trying to get a dozen adults to move so we could get out. I remember the huge table in my aunt's dining room. I think most of the family fit around that table. The aunt whose house we were at did not have children, but she had a huge house and it was in Portland and she loved to entertain. I remember her "lazy susan," which sat in the middle of the table and would spin around. I don't remember what she put in it, but it was always there at family dinners. There were two kids in our immediate family, my mother's other two sisters each had three children and her only brother also had three children. My mother's oldest sister's kids were a lot older than us, I don't remember them coming to the holiday dinners. Two of my uncle's kids were also quite a bit older than us, but I think they came. He had one daughter, Vicki, who was only two years older than me and we got along well. My other aunt's kids were closer to my brother's & my age, and we always had a good time, too.

Christmas Eve night seemed like the longest night ever! My brother & I would sneak downstairs several times during the night to see if Santa Claus had come, and try to figure out what we got, in the dark. Sometimes it was easy--can't mistake bicycles for something else. If I had asked for a doll, I could usually tell if I got one, although I couldn't usually make out the details. But it seemed like we never slept all night long, as we waited until we could open our presents. Ah, childhood!

Later on, after I had met my "soon-to-be" husband, I discovered another tradition that we have adopted into our family: Getting together on Christmas Eve at Grandma & Grandpa's house (or in our case, at the parents house). I was invited to this event the Christmas before our February wedding, and in all the years since then, we've only missed one Christmas Eve celebration--due to weather. All the kids and grandkids would come, my mother-in-law would make the traditional hot potato salad, we'd have sandwiches, potato chips, a veggie tray, punch, and I don't remember what all--but if anyone went hungry it wasn't because of lack of food. My mother-in-law wasn't in very good health the few years before her death in 1987, so it often fell to my husband and/or his only sister to help make the potato salad. It was a SECRET recipe that was carefully guarded by my mother-in-law. She promised to share it before she died, but she wasn't expecting to die of a stroke in June of 1987, and her recipe died with her. Or so it seemed!
When it came time to have our Christmas Eve celebration at my father-in-law's house, we realized we did not have that recipe. Fortunately, dh & his sister put their heads together and came up with something so close, that we can't tell the difference. We're still enjoying this salad to this day, and when dh threatens not to make it, our kids put up such a fuss that he breaks down and does it. Even last Christmas, when we decided to have a variety of soups for dinner instead of the traditional deli sandwiches and all the trimmings, he made our potato salad.
Another Christmas tradition we've enjoyed over the past years has been our dd Heffalump's Christmas morning omelets. She's been married for 12 1/2 years now, and still continues to make them, even if she and her family are not staying at our house. It's a lot of work for her most times, but we sure do enjoy them!

Christmas day has been quieter over the past few years, and will be even quieter this year. Our last two daughters were married this past year, so in all probablility they won't be here on Christmas morning (although Pink Avenger insists she will still come over). Heffalump won't have so many omelets to make this year, if she still wants to do it.

And of course, we do need to remember the real reason for Christmas--not Santa Claus and presents--but the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Let me be the first to wish you-all a very Merry Christmas!

(Next blog--birthday traditions)

I Love A Parade

DD#3 lives in a small town on the coast with her husband and six children. This quaint little coastal town is home to one of the most fun 4th of July parades I have ever seen. And every year for the past 3 or 4, we have made our way to my daughter's house, and in turn, to view this parade. Yesterday was no exception.

To cut to the chase and leave out all the in-between stuff, like barbecued hamburgers and the trimmings, holding the new baby, visiting, playing with the kids, etc., it was soon time for the parade. Now DD#3 lives right on the main street of town (aptly named "Main Street"--go figure, and the parade passes right by their house every year (handy, isn't it?). So about an hour or so before the parade starts, the chairs are dragged (drug?) out to the sidewalk to stake our claim-er-place to sit. Paper bags are set aside for the kids, since the people on floats, in their cars, and walking--throw candy to the kids. Everyone (almost) was dressed in patriotic colors, including the new baby--who had a new outfit of red, white & blue stars & stripes. When it hit 3 o'clock (when the parade was due to start), we all trundled out to the sidewalk and took our places on our chairs. Neighbors were there as well, and all up and down the street you could see people in their folding chairs, ready and waiting.

To signal the start of the parade, a Coast Guard helicopter flies over the parade route making sure everything is ready. Following the helicopter, a biplane also flew over, breaking all rules of aviation as he wasn't very far above the power lines, and would dip his wings to the parade viewers. Then we waited. And waited. DD#3 is at the tail end of the parade route, so it would be a few minutes before it would arrive. The whole parade route is probably all of 8-10 blocks long, if that, so it wouldn't be that long of a wait. And it wasn't. We could hear the sirens of the fire trucks long before we could see them. A couple of groups carrying our nation's flag, a Scout Color Guard, the audience rises. Then the fire trucks with sirens screaming. The whole parade probably lasts half an hour to 45 minutes, and consists of the fire trucks, Coast Guard and National Guard vehicles (like hum-vee's, trucks etc.), vintage cars (like the black 1957 Chevy), new cars carrying government officials, candidates for office, etc. Cub Scout boys marching and on floats, girls from the local dance studio, a float filled with residents of one of the homes for disabled adults that son-in-law's company works with, home-made floats being pulled by cars or pickups, kids on bikes or wagons walking along, clowns, men & women walking and waving, and at the very end, pretty girls on horses.

It has such a great feel to it. It isn't the Portland Rose Festival parade, SeaFair (Seattle) or the Pasadena Rose Parade. It isn't even the Ridgefield 4th of July parade, but it belongs to this little town on the Oregon coast, and they are proud of it. And we are happy to go see it every year, too, and remember our country's beginnings, the sacrifices made by our founding fathers as well as sacrifices made by the soldiers through the years to keep our country free. And a reminder that we live in the very best country in the whole wide world, and how blessed we are to be here.

Happy Independance Day--America!

Save Some For Me!

I am the mother of one son (and 5 daughters). I remember my son's appetite from about age 6 or 7 on up through his teen years. However, when you are faced with 5 growing boys with appetites to match, having only one son pales in comparison.

My #3 daugher just had her 6th child yesterday, as you will note if you read my blog. After 5 boys, they finally had a girl. The boys range in age from "almost" 5 up to age 11. Sitting at the dinner table with them these past couple of days has been an eye-opener. I can barely get the food on the table, till they're asking for seconds, and I haven't even sat down to eat yet! Last night one of my daughter's friends brought over two Papa Murphy's pizza for our dinner. The 9 year-old had his first piece eaten by the time we had handed out a piece to each of his brothers. This one ended up eating 5 pieces. I think the other boys each had 4. Their dad & I probably had 3 each. At this rate, someone may have to get a second job just to feed these boys.

Mothers of sons are to be admired, I'm discovering. And I think it takes a special person to have a lot of sons. Someone with patience to withstand all the rowdiness and wrestling, dirt and grime, and their appetites. The mothers of lots of sons that I know have had an incredible amount of patience for their rowdy boys. They don't seem to mind when one of the boys tosses a ball through a window, breaks things when wrestling or playing catch in the livingroom. They tolerate the snakes, frogs and other bugs brought home by their sons. They clean up the muddy footprints on the floor with extreme tolerance, as they do the sink and bathtub and dirty dishes.
Yes, mothers of sons have a lot of patience. Either that, or they're just too hungry to argue with them!

Bryony Nora

Our newest granddaughter made a safe arrival this morning at 4:40 a.m. She wasn't due until June 10th, but decided she wanted to see what all the racket was about, so decided to come now. That's okay, since she was healthy and did minimal damage to her mother, although she completely shot all of our Memorial Day weekend plans down the drain. But her grandpa is now not the only one in our extended family with a May birthday, so it's cool.

Bryony weighed in at 6 lbs 15 oz (15 1/2 oz, actually--I keep forgetting that half an ounce). If she had been on time she'd have been a moose. She has lots of dark hair and is a pretty little thing. Some of her older brothers (5 of them) seem quite taken with her. Some seem a little afraid of her. Her life will be interesting. She will either be one tough little girl, or spoiled and well-protected by her big brothers.

Welcome to our world, Bryony!

Public Transportation

I don't know why, but to me there's something empowering about taking public transportation. It gives me feelings of being able to take care of myself without help from anyone, and yet you'd think the opposite would be true. After all, the bus rider is dependent on the bus driver to get him/her to their destination and back again. So if someone can explain to me why riding the bus would make me feel all-powerful, I'd appreciate it.

This is the weekend of our Regional Sweet Adelines competition, and this year it's here in town. Rather than deal with parking and paying an arm and a leg for it, or hoping to find a parking place on the street and then going out to feed the meter every so often, I opted to take the bus. I caught the bus to downtown shortly after 7 a.m. The Regional breakfast was at 8, and I needed to get there early enough to walk the few blocks to the Hilton Hotel and get my registration packet. I was there in plenty of time, the ride was pleasant and not crowded, the bus driver was friendly and informative. He told me where to catch the bus for my ride home, although I had forgotten exactly what he said so I ended up walking a few extra blocks to catch it on Evergreen & Broadway anyway. I was at the Hilton by 7:45, including the couple block walk from the bus stop. Coming home, I was in the door by 12:30 p.m., having caught the bus about 11:55. Including the walk home from the bus stop.

Now had I driven my car, I would have been in the downtown area in 15 minutes, but then how long would it have taken me to find a parking place or parking lot, then walk however many blocks to the hotel. I surmise that I would not have made any better time driving than I did on the bus. And for a whole lot less money, factoring in gas at $3.67 gallon and whatever parking would have cost me.

I could give up my car and get around very nicely, for the most part. And some day, I just might do that.

A Steel Magnolias Moment

Saturday night I had what I term a "Steel Magnolias moment" with 3 of my 5 daughters. I don't know why I am thinking of it as a such, since we really didn't resemble what I remember of the movie very much, except it was a gathering of women who shared moments in their lives. Never mind that the women in the movie weren't all related to each other as my daughters and I, but I think it was more because we sat around dd2's dining room table and talked for about an hour as we waited for dd3's dh to pick her up. We talked about a variety of topics, from events during childhood to events as adults, politics, why we like or dislike Hilary or Obama or McCain, among other things.

DD3 is expecting baby 6 next month. She is the mother of 5 active little boys, ages 5 to 11. The new baby is reported to be a girl, which has all of us excited as there are only 3 granddaughters, against 7 grandsons. DD3 and her family live out of town, but came into town Saturday to do a little shopping, and consequently DD2 decided a baby shower was in order. She invited mostly family, but also invited a couple of friends from dd3's teen years who saw her through some of those typical teen-aged angst-moments. We all arrived around 6 p.m. Saturday evening. DSIL took their 3 kids off somewhere, leaving us women to enjoy an evening together, those of us who have had babies reminiscing about those wonderful moments of motherhood. And the fact that this shower took place the evening before Mothers Day was special, too.

The shower part was fun. Lots of visiting, remembering dd3 and her youth, remembering what mothering was like in years gone by and how things were different nowadays. Catching up on what was going on in our families, typical women-type talk. The two friends of dd3, plus dsis-in-law and dd's4 & 5 left shortly after the fun activities and present-opening ended. That left myself and the 3 older dd's still there. DD3's hubby was supposed to pick her up at 8, but was late, so we sat around the dining table and talked and talked and talked. It gave me a greater appreciation for my daughters and who they are. They are all great mothers, and great women. I'm proud to be somewhat responsible for bringing them into the world, for raising them to be who they have become. They were wonderful as children, and have become even moreso as adults.

It was a wonderful prelude to a wonderful Mothers Day.
Code: DD = dear daughter, the number following "dd" is their birth order.

Spring Fling Lunch

My friend Carol is a real party-animal. Every year she and her husband host a Christmas party, and you never know what to expect. For the past couple of years she has also hosted a monthly lunch group from among our Relief Society sisters. If you are reading this and you aren't LDS, the Relief Society is the women's group of our church.

Last month we had a box social, and in order to bid on the decorated and delicious box lunches, she also had prepared a way for us to gain points through the month (do a service for someone was x amount of points, reading your scriptures got you some more--and so forth), plus winning at Bingo at the beginning of the luncheon gave us the opportunity to gain even more points.

Today's luncheon was a Mystery Lunch. She asked the participants to bring a dish (I brought corn) and it had to be in a covered container so no one could see what was brought (I should have been suspicious right then & there). When we got to her house, we were given a menu, pencil, and two toothpicks, and asked to make our selections for each course. The first course consisted of things like "small twigs," "large twigs," "medium napper," and other such nonsensical titles. The next course included some cereal titles like "Apple Jacks, Kix, Cheerios, Fruit Loops" and a couple other choices I can't remember. Course 3 was a choice of "Monkeychunks" or "Henny Penny Delight" (not the exact name but I can't remember the real name other than Henny Penny). Course 4 was a choice of things like "Snow White Delight, King's Ransom," and several others that again, I don't remember the title of.

We were ushered into the dining room, seated, and waited upon by my friend Karen's mission-bound son, Ray. He proceeded to bring out our eating utensils first. My choice of "medium napper" turned out to be a napkin. "Small twigs" were skewers, and "large twigs" were chopsticks. The other titles I don't remember, but they consisted of a fork, a knife, a spoon (and sometimes all three), a large wooden spoon, and tongs. Have you ever tried to eat carrot salad (aka Apple Jacks--don't ask me why that title translated out to carrot salad) with a napkin? I ate with my fingers and used my medium napper to wipe them when done.

Monkeychunks turned out to be spaghetti with my corn, and the Henny Penny dish was chicken alfredo. Now I could have asked for another utensil to eat with, using one of my toothpicks & a song as ransom, but being a stubborn sort at times, I used my toothpicks to get the alfredo noodles close enough to my mouth to slurp up. My "Kings Choice" dessert turned out to be some kind of raspberry cake thingy AND banana cream pie. I was too full to eat much with my toothpick, so I brought it home where I will either let my dh (dear husband) eat it, or eat it myself later on if he doesn't want it.

So if you need an idea for a fun lunch or dinner, here it is. Spring Fling, indeed! But it was a fun afternoon.

Drive-in to Grocery Store

I thought the other day as I visited our new Winco store which opened on April 14th, of how the land this store is on used to be a drive-in theater when we first moved here almost 23 years ago. The Renfro! Kind of a ratty place, but still cool to pile everyone into the car and go see a movie for super-cheap. We watched "Ghostbusters" at this drive-in. And other movies which I cannot remember now. Then it was closed a few years later, and all traces of a drive in theater were torn down, leaving an empty lot. We were told at the time that a new movie theater was going to be built there, but it ended up being built elsewhere. This land stood vacant for probably close to 20 years, I guess. Then one day a little more than a year ago, some bull-dozing activity began to take place.

We heard by our neighborhood newsletter that Winco was building a new store there. Now they already had one not too far from us, which was the original one in our town and had been there for close to 20 years. But it was smaller than other Winco's built here, and it was only a matter of time until it was updated. I guess they decided it would be easier to just build a whole new store than to try to remodel the old one.

Now it's open, and it is bigger and shiny and new. But I won't shop here without remembering the good ol' days, and our long-lost drive-in theater.