M.O.M.

 

Well, I'm feeling like the luckiest mom ever as I've just had a very lovely Mother's Day with my family. A visit from daughter Zoe and her friend Viv, who were picked up at the most southerly BART station by DH and DS. They picked up a great lunch for us from our favorite sandwich place near my mom's house. Then we all went on a little post-lunch walkabout, including to the Future Farmers of America farm next door to my mom's community where we got to walk through the stalls and check out all the animals, cows, sheep, goats. After a quick jaunt on the freeway overpass and back again, we all inhaled our very tasty Costco Tiramisu, actually speaking of inhaling, watch out for that powdered cocoa on top, several of us had coughing fits, stir it up before eating. We also did some helpful gardening at my Mom's, got her new umbrella set up and the A/C unit put back in the window for the summer. 

Lots of fun and conversation and laughter. Just what I needed. And this picture above is my very favorite present, thanks to photographer, Viv.

Here's to all mothers every where, some great words from the great Rebecca Solnit:

"Mother is both a noun and a verb. Some people had great mothers but lost them, some had or have mothers who never mothered them or stopped mothering them for some reason, treated them as adversaries or as worthless, and Mother's Day can be a punitive day for all those for whom this is true.

The other half of the question of what there is to celebrate is what mothered and mothers you, how you mother yourself, how you celebrate and recognize what cares for you and takes care of you, and what you care for in return....

May you locate the ten thousand mothers that brought you into being and keep you going, no matter who and where you are. May you be the mother of uncounted possibilities and loves."

Welcome to the Mom-Do

 

Major life change accomplished, my Mom is moved into her new place, which I've dubbed the Mom-Do (said like condo). She was very pleased to see Marc was wearing an almost matching tie-dyed shirt so I took this picture of them after our long day of moving.

It was a hot day, but we survived with our matching neck fans.

It's amazing how much you can fit in a Prius!

This is the storage locker after the bed and 4 car loads of boxes had been taken out. Most of this furniture was moved in our pickup, we almost rented a truck but they were all booked for the day we ended up at this point.

This hilarious picture of DS in the nearly empty storage unit is courtesy of my DH really made us laugh. This was my dad's leather chair and my kids called it the "Bond Chair" as in James Bond. Between the four of us we moved everything out of this unit in just four days, using a combination of our pickup truck, two Priuses and one Honda Accord.  Phew!

Here's the mayhem in mid-move. It's such a nice place, near everything that's familiar to my mom and a just-right size for her stuff and more importantly, not too big to take care of. Now if we can just get the internet and tv hooked up correctly, that's today's job....

A Hard Week

 

It's been a hard, hard week. My dad passed away on Friday the 14th, on his fifth day in the hospital. He unfortunately had some falls at home and hit his head causing a brain bleed. It all went downhill very fast from there and he died peacefully after receiving two and half days of "comfort care." My mother and I were there all day every day, most of the time together which was a sort of comfort care for us, to get to witness his last transition together. My DH and DD were able to come, and then my brother joined us for the last three days. It was a great blessing that my mom, brother and I all happened to be there together in the room when he took his final breath. We found it to be a true relief that he wouldn't have to continue to suffer unnecessarily. 

Now for getting all of us through all of the aftermath.

The picture above was the pavement in the hospital parking garage after one of the rainstorms last week. It kind of sums up the whole week for me. I'll write more about my dad at some point, and hopefully I'll be able to get back to some creative work soon.

Wandering Wednesday: Sacramento Family

 

We had a long day of driving on Saturday, over bridges, through several cities to get to my Uncle Bill's 80th birthday party. This is the Carquinez Bridge and some very nice cloud cover. We were glad the party wasn't held a couple weeks ago when it was so hot. We haven't seen the Sacramento branch of the family in a while so it was a greatly anticipated event.

We pulled up a bit late as the highway construction delayed it. Thankfully I happened to see my Uncle getting out of his car in front of my cousin's house so we went around the block and waited. We were glad we didn't' ruin the surprise. Right when we got there, my cousin Angel wrangled almost all of us for a group picture, there were several normal ones and then the regulation silly one too of course. 

Here's why I noticed Uncle Bill, check out those colorful pony tales! He and my aunt have been using temporary hair dye of various colors for a while now and they both love all the smiles and comments they get from people. They are truly fun and unique people that have always been wonderful to spend time with.

Bill has always been into trains, so he got a train cake that he was very excited about. That's my aunt Vincie in the foreground, Uncle Bill, and my Dad watching the cake action, with my daughter Zoe next to him.

The napkins were super cute! And thankfully not related to that particular current political message.

As night fell the cool backyard lights came on. There's my cousin Dana on the left, cousin Maya, aunt Vincie, my mom, and Maya's husband Lee. I liked Lee's PeeChee shirt a whole lot! We decide he needed a Blue Book one, or maybe even a ScanTron one to fill out the set.

Then things got wild, no just bad camera handling.

The younger cousin generation got wrangled to varying degrees of displeasure for a picture with the birthday dude (so said his sash!). My two kids are on the right hand side.

Then it was all the way to Oakland where we dropped off our DD at her place. This is a picture of some interesting graffiti, lights and underpass. What a fun day, mostly spent in the car, but even that was fun because we got to spend time with DD. Totally worth the drive, I'm really glad we have such good, interesting people in our extended family to spend time with.

Wandering Wednesday - Mother's Day

 
It was time to make a custom Mother's Day card for my wonderful mom. She loves green so I picked a green deckle edge blank card and first did some colored pencil.

Then I expanded it with watercolor pencil and crayon (Inktense blocks).

It all flowed out and combined pretty nicely. Here's Mom Mountain.

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DH chose the goodies for the meal, all sourced at Costco. I didn't go in and supervise as I'm not walking around quite that much yet. He splurged on some American Wagyu hamburger and got fancy buns. That and some teriyaki chicken and salad made a really excellent dinner. DS helped a lot which was great because my Mom would actually sit down. 

I had told DH to grab something dessert-y and boy did he deliver! My Mom was So Excited about the chocolate covered strawberries. She said she'd never had one and had only seen them in magazines. So that was very cool to give her that experience. They were really really good. A great strawberry with a good chocolate that tasted like chocolate instead of wax. I took this picture because I liked the imprint of the seedy exterior of the strawberry on the chocolate shell.

The very nice patio where we had our early dinner. My mom's container flowers are exploding with color this year. 

And she really liked her Giants t-shirt too.

The rest of the Mother's Day crew. What a great day it was. My DD was going to join us, but her sinus infection got a lot worse and she was worried about passing it onto the grandparents. A nice long phonecall with her was a great gift.

Holidazed

The Holiday Celebrations are continuing apace and I've been feeling a bit like our tree-topper.

Green chopstick to the rescue. Stiffen up that spine and carry on.

Korben decided that the only decoration that needed to be fought with were the Santa hats.

The usual Cioppino for Christmas Eve.

The cats were having fun under the tree so we didn’t put any presents out until the last second.

DS Alex gave us a lovely ceramic skull, almost life-sized.

Korben enjoyed the furry tops of the empty stockings.

Honey baked spiral ham is the traditional Christmas Day feast at my parent’s house.

The other hit present was a new spaghetti strainer (FSM approved), combined here with the skull that probably needs a name.

I made “modern” almond spritz cookies because I ran out of time to cool the dough enough to use in the cookie press.

And now we’re enjoying spending time with my brother and his son at my parent’s house.

Pshew! a lot of fun stuff but not enough time for sewing. Tomorrow hopefully 🤞 

Wandering Wednesday: Berkeley Rose Garden

 

Last weekend, we headed up to Oakland to visit our daughter and celebrate my DH's birthday. DD suggested we go walk around the Berkeley Rose Garden. So up to the hills of Berkeley we drove. It was a real treat to have all four of us in the car together. A real blast from the past!

I hadn't been to the rose garden in a very long while, and we luckily arrived a bit before sunset.

Truly gorgeous. So relaxing and removed from the hustle and bustle of the city. DD said when she first moved up to Oakland she used to drive up here to relax.

The rose garden is pretty well kept up, and easy to get around, but there are a lot of stairs.

The pathways are pretty wide so the roses have a little room to spread.

Awww, I like this.

My favorite rose picture of the trip. This variety had a little bouquet at the end of each stem.

Some of these color combinations were surprising. I was also surprised that so many of the rose bushes were still blooming. 

An almost fluorescent red here!

If I could move somewhere, it would be to this neighborhood. Then I could volunteer as a rosarian to help take care of the roses.

I really like the construction of the steep hillside amphitheater, rows upon rows of roses.

Big, blowsy, floppy, opened-up with a luscious scent.

The sunset was pretty red, so red that my two kids look like they're red-haired instead of brown.

Thanksgiving Report

 

The Thanksgiving Table before picture. We pulled out the extra leaf to make it longer, polished it up, got out the decorations and china.

I spent so much time ironing the napkins and table cloth. Regretting the choice of 100% cotton the whole time but still loving how it tuns out on the table. Next time I'm putting it in the dryer on the steam setting first. 

DS and Korben greeting my parents as they arrived. They hadn't been over since before Covid so it was a big deal.

Here's the three of us, picture credit to mom. My mom gave us these Thanksgiving aprons from a charity that she reports, one a year until we had three. She was pretty thrilled that we were wearing them. The blue thing on the wall is a NanoLeaf which responds to noise/music/etc.

This was the one and only food picture I took unfortunately, but that turkey was awesome. Diestel Farms never fails us.

My SIL's family joined us too and brought their dog, Ginger along. She had a good time running around with Meg chasing the cats. 

The End

Hope your day was great too!