Category Archives: Grandchildren

Successful Journey

On the Monday after Super Bowl Sunday we traveled inland from Huntington Beach to see my pop. This would be the first time Pop would meet Addy, his youngest great granddaughter. Addy was very concerned about our pop who is not looking well. She had quite a grip on her daddy’s t-shirt.

She loosened up that grip to accept the cash her Great Grandfather pulled out of his wallet for her. Too funny.

She even had a slight smile for him when he handed her the second bill.

After the meeting she enjoyed multi-tasking, walking and holding the ball.

Pop had to spend 20 minutes on his Nebulizer. Addy was very interested in what was going on and her concern showed in her facial expressions. All my sisters were together for this visit, too, which was nice. We enjoyed some Borsch together and Addy liked her first taste of it, too.

My Pop thanked me again for this chair Dear and I bought him. The power control to move the chair to the recline and other positions has really come in handy for him. Before we left each of us daughters prayed for him and then we all sang Great is Thy Faithfulness and God be With You Till We Meet Again. That made me choke up but I’m glad to sing it to him while he’s still alive instead of just at his funeral.

From our time in La Habra with our pop/grandfather (dzeda), Great Grandfather, we headed back to Huntington Beach and met up with Debbee and Lenny for dinner at Ola’s. The next morning we flew home to Washington. Our trip to Southern California was full from beginning to end and little Addy adjusted well to everything thrown at her. Speaking of driving in Southern California, I’m happy to report that we had smooth sailing for each of our comings and goings. That’s a praise for sure!

The four of us sat together going to California and coming home and I was happy to enjoy more time with Addy and giving her parents some breaks in the journey. We parted in Seattle and their trip continued on to Spokane where they would have another hour drive to get all the way home again.

We have had some sunshine which has been great the last couple of days. Some much needed planter clean out has happened and I’m grateful to have been able to accomplish those tasks in that sunshine!

As I type away I’m enjoying the Winter Olympics in the background. Are you watching?

Meeting Some California Family…

Dan, Jamie, Addy and I arrived at the Orange County airport on Saturday evening, February 3rd. It was going to be a weekend filled with new people for Addy to meet.

D, J, and A stayed with our niece Debbee and husband Lenny in Huntington Beach. Debbee and her brother David lived around the corner from us when Josh and Dan were little and they enjoyed lots of time being together. We missed seeing David and his wife Kristin this time since they were enjoying Maui.

I stayed with my sister Vera, Addy’s Great Aunt Vera. Vera is Debbee and David’s mom.

On Sunday at our Super Bowl gathering, Addy met a few more of her people. Great Aunt Kelly had interesting earrings.

Cousin Melissa once removed and great Auntie (Nan) Kathy.

Cousins once and twice removed. Our niece Michelle’s family. Michelle and Melissa are my sister Kathy’s girls. Our Josh, Dan, and Katie spent lots of time growing up with Michelle, Melissa, Debbee and David.

This is Great Uncle Terry, Dear’s only brother, and Auntie Christina.

Being social is very tiring.

On Monday the meetings continued with Great Aunt Lana and our dear old pop and Great Uncle Len.  I’ll have a post of it’s own on Addy’s meeting with her Great Dzeda (grandfather). The evidence is in that Addy is comfortable around people and is very social. She is especially willing to go to you if you have some jewelry on.

Monday evening Addy got to test out the sand on her toes, too.

It was so good to have many hours with Addy May and to spend time with Dan, Jamie and the members of our family that could come out to Huntington Beach for the Super Bowl party. We packed in a lot of extended family time and Addy adjusted well to everything new to her. All of my sisters were together on Monday with our dear old pop and that was good. Didn’t see any of my brothers this trip. I didn’t get a chance to walk the Huntington Beach Pier this time around, either. Next time…

So thankful to God for safe travels, seeing loved ones, cuddle time with Addy, being able to pray with our dear old Pop and that Pop could meet Addy and pray a blessing over her, Dan and Jamie.

Back here at home we are waiting for a promise of weather that is dryer and brighter next week. Hoping for a dry morning on Friday for a walk with Katie and Laura. Other than that we are having a quiet weekend. Hope you all have a good weekend.

She’s 10 Months Old

She is now taking steps without thinking about it and while holding on to a toy. She likes to climb and doesn’t want to be deterred. It’s been a month since we’ve seen her in person. Addy’s mommy made this sign this last weekend. Addy looks proud as a peacock to be holding it up. Love her expressions. Baba and Gramps couldn’t love you more dear Addy.

We have had lots of rain with very few sun breaks and when the sun breaks through it lightens our outlook. Hope all is well in your corner of the world.

New Talents!

You think turning that activity station upside down is going to slow me down? I’ll show you!

Such determination. Made it to the top again!

So, so proud of myself.

Yes, I am.

So thankful to see the latest greatest from the other side of the mountains. I’m hoping she doesn’t follow in her father’s footsteps in regards to visits to the ER for stitches!

Oh Girl…

This looks like fun. She pulled out a couple of pots so she could fit in there.

This is a bit scarier to see her climb on top of this activity box. Yikes. She has skills.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…there are so many developmental changes in the first year of life! She’s now 9 days shy of 10 months. I’m counting the days until I can see her in action in person.

Singing My Heart Out…

When we can’t see her in person and are 6 hours away my eyes light up when I see the little green light on my phone saying you’ve got a message. Our daughter-in-law is good at sending us photo updates of little Addy May. Thank you dear Jamie!

Our two girls from across the state staying warm in their icy cold conditions.

Here she is just chillin in the kitchen while mama gets something done. Dan and Jamie are going to have to make a more secure play area for her since just this week she’s learned to use her play toys to climb up onto the couch and be able to escape her cordoned off play area.

What does all of this have to do with singing?

I’ve been singing all my life and it’s an important part of my life. My love for singing started in church. In my father’s Molokan church growing up into my teens singing was acapella. There were no instruments in the church and the songs were mostly from the Psalms in the Old Testament portion of the Bible. My father was a “songleader” in this church. For Easter and Christmas we would visit my maternal grandmother’s Russian Baptist Church where we enjoyed singing with piano and organ. In junior high school choir was one of my classes and I was introduced to notes and music. After my father attended the Billy Graham Crusade in Los Angles in 1963 he started a new life of following Christ as his Savior and we eventually left the Molokan Church. We started attending my maternal grandmother’s church. At the Baptist church my sisters and I were part of the youth choir which eventually worked on recording tapes of Russian hymns for Far East Broadcasting and Slavic Gospel Association to be broadcast into the Soviet Union over radio waves. During my high school years our youth choir went out every Christmas Eve to carol in Russian and English at old folks homes. We’d choose the homes where folks from the Russian churches were housed. There was one apartment building a couple doors down from Bethany Baptist Church in Los Angeles where several of our widowed grandmothers lived in separate apartments next door to each other. We’d always start our caroling there. I have to add that in my junior high and high school years I memorized and sang along with the Beatles and Leslie Gore and with whatever other group was popular. I was a “songleader” in high school. We were part of the cheer squad at sporting events and mostly yelled chants while performing routines with pom poms. “Push em back, push em back, waaaaay back. LOL!

In my college years our Los Angeles Russian Choir added some Russian voices from around the state of California and we recorded an album in a professional studio. During this time we met a studio musician who directed a Christian singing ensemble that toured the states and Great Britain. My best friend at the time auditioned for his group. She was added and toured England with them in the summer of 1972. I met the members of Tom Keene and the Contemporaries before they left for England and when they returned an alto left and I auditioned and joined the group in fall of 1972. Dear, his brother and sister in law were part of the Contemporaries. Dear and I started dating. We performed most every Sunday evening at a different church in the greater Los Angles area singing and giving our testimonies. We had weekly practices. Dear and my relationship grew and we got married after our second tour of Great Britain.

This was a newspaper article from a British paper about our group touring and singing in local schools.

Chalk church in Gravesend

All this talk about singing was inspired by the fact that today Laura bought tickets for me, my sister Lana and Katie to attend The Sound of Music sing along at the 5th Avenue in Seattle. The four of us are meeting for lunch and then popping into the theater for what I’m sure will be a fun time of singing our hearts out! Have you ever attended one of these sing along events?

Looking forward to spending a few hours with these girls. Wish our girls from across the mountains could be with us.

My semi professional singing days are well over and now my favorite times to sing are still in church and to little Addy May. I sing nursery rhymes and other songs to her. She doesn’t care that my voice cracks and I don’t stay on key or…if I make up the words! Looking forward to when she can sing along with me!

Till next time, The hills are alive…

If Only I Knew Hodgepodge

Happy New Year from Seattle! The Space Needle is getting a face lift/renovation. They are saying there will be a glass see through observation floor. too. Here are this weeks questions for Wednesday Hodgepodge.

1. It’s that time of year again…time for Lake Superior University to present a list of words (or phrases) they’d like to see banished (for over-use, mis-use, or genera uselessness) in 2018. You can read more about the decision making process and word meaning here, but this year’s top vote getters are-

unpack, dish (as in dish out the latest rumor), pre-owned, onboarding/offboarding, nothingburger, let that sink in, let me ask you this, impactful, Cofefe, drill down, fake news, hot water heater (hot water doesn’t need to be heated), and gig economy

Which of these words/phrases would you most like to see banished from everyday speech and why? Is there a word not on the list you’d like to add?

I’ve not heard some of these words or phrases. I’m not tired of any of these…yet. I’ve not been following a lot of news these days. I had to look up some of them to see what they mean.

2. What’s something you need to get rid of in the new year?

Stuff…lots of stuff. But what stuff? What stuff will I miss when I move if I get rid of it? What stuff will just be a bother to move? What stuff is junk and what stuff is keepsake worthy?

3. Where do you feel stuck?

See question #2.

4. January is National Soup Month. When did you last have a bowl of soup? Was it made from scratch or from a can? Your favorite canned soup? Your favorite soup to make from scratch on a cold winter’s day?

I had a delicious bowl of Dear’s Tomato Rice Soup on Christmas Eve, made from scratch. Dear makes that soup. The soup I like to make from scratch is Borsch (Borscht) or Spinach Borsch or Lopsha (all soups from my Russian Heritage). The photo above is of my Borsch. My favorite canned soup is Cream of Mushroom to use it as an addition in other recipes.

When someone has a sore throat or a cold at this old house we like to get Hot and Sour Soup from a local Chinese take-out. It a nice spicy burn going down and clears the sinuses!

5. Tell us one thing you’re looking forward to in 2018.

Knowing what property we will be moving into would be very helpful to my dilemma in question #2.

6. Insert your own random thought here.

My favorite word for 2017 is Grandmother/Baba. This little one awarded me that title by being formed by God and born to our son and daughter-in-law. Thank you God and Father for this sweet gift.

I’ll be linking up to Wednesday Hodgepodge with Joyce From This Side of the Pond. She asks the questions and we provide the answers.

Hope 2018 is starting off well for you!

Goodbye and Hello…

We had a wonderful finale to 2017 this morning with brunch at Palisade in Seattle. Josh and Laura treated us to a belated anniversary celebration.

Such a cold beautiful day with the sun shining…hello.

The Space Needle is being remodeled right now and it will be fun to see the results from that. We saw Mt. Rainier to the south and the Olympics to the west.

The only thing that would have made the very last day of 2017 better is if we could have had cuddles with Addy and a hug from her mommy and daddy. They were busy snowplowing their driveway so they could get out for New Year’s Eve festivities!

We welcome 2018 with hope and are excited to see all that it holds for us.

Happy New Year to all my blogging friends and those of you who visit my blog throughout the year. I appreciate you all and the comments and encouragement you leave for me.

Our White Christmas 2017

On Christmas Eve the table was set for four of us to enjoy Dear’s Tomato Rice Soup and Pesto Tortellini after our services at church. Katie and Andrew texted us and reported that it was snowing and they were on their way. We enjoyed one “Christmas” movie together and Dear and I went up to bed while Katie and Andrew watched White Christmas together. It was Andrew’s first time to see it and judging from the laughter we heard, it was a hit. Later in the night Josh and Laura arrived on the snow covered streets like Santa, loaded with gifts for under the tree. The kids found their guestrooms and fell fast asleep. While visions of sugar plums danced in our heads the snow continued to fall.

We woke up to a very white Christmas! The prompt that tells everyone it’s time to get out of bed and open stockings is “It’s the Thought” cd by Twila Paris.  After we opened our Santa stocking stash, had Dear’s Swedish pancakes (a must on Christmas morning), then opened gifts (the order is important), we braved a walk in the snow after we all found the right footwear, coats and scarves.

Katie and Andrew even found some Pokemon Go whatevers in our neighborhood.

The younger set tried sliding along the icy streets and got some nice distance. I walked like a penguin to keep from falling.

A winter wonderland selfie. Dear loaded the dishwasher and washed the non-dishwasher breakfast dishes while the rest of us walked. He’s a keeper.

After the walk the table got a little tweak to it for Christmas dinner. The roast was in the oven wafting it’s great aromas to whet our appetites for dinner.

Josh thought to take this photo of Dear and me while we waited for the roast to rest.

Prime Rib and Yorkshire Pudding has become our Christmas dinner tradition. We’ve gone from mashed potatoes to roasted vegetables over the years. We were all quite satisfied after our meal.

Laura managed a selfie of all of us in front of the tree.

Our twentieth and last Christmas in this Old House was blessed from above and we thank God for His love.

We also were very thankful to get the two texts telling us each car filled with our best gifts had made it home safely on the snow and ice covered streets. The hardest part of their trip was getting out of our neighborhood.

In her Santa photos, Addy seems to be tolerating Santa but has her elbow positioned ready to jab him if need be and make an escape. She’s just not going to fully tuck in with this stranger.

Throughout the day we enjoyed videos, photos and texts from Dan, Jamie and Addy showing us what was going on for Addy’s First Christmas.

This was their Christmas Card this year. This was taken back in November. They had a white Christmas, too, only they got 14 inches to our 4 inches! All our snow is melted because of rain today but Addy’s house is still getting snow!

Josh and Laura sent her that onesie and the activity center.  The videos were of her opening the gifts she received from her Baba, Gramps, Aunties and Uncles. She’s quite a pro at tearing off wrapping and discarding it for what’s inside. We were all smiles and chuckles as we watched the videos over and over again.

Someone is all smiles for her first white Christmas! Baba bought her that snow suit before she was born. So so thankful for technology that allows us to experience something from across the state or the world.

We also received many photos and a video of my extended family in Southern California celebrating with my dear old Pop. Here’s one of the photos with the back of my Pop’s head and many of his kids, grandkids, and great grandkids.  Wish I knew how to share the text video of them singing Joy to the World at the dinner table. Did you know Joy to the World really wasn’t written as a Christmas song? That’s another story…(hint, think 2nd Coming). One more photo with the front of my Pop (almost 95) and three great grands that were at the Christmas Eve gathering. Ellie was born on Christmas Eve two years ago! Jackson is now a teenager and Avery is not far behind. We’re exited for our little Addy to meet these cousins once removed for the first time.

One more Christmas for the record books or record blog. I’m working on a 20 year recap of Christmases at this old house for history sake.

Thank you for stopping by during these last days of 2017.

The Day Before the Day Before…

The stockings are all hung even though some won’t be here. Santa got the memo so he won’t be confused.

The new star is on the top of the tree.

Matthew 2:10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.

Are we in trouble or what? Look at this face. Love this look her mommy captured while Addy enjoyed her pears. Looking forward to photos from her first Christmas Eve and Christmas!

Hope all is close to being ready for your Christmas celebrations!