Grandma’s 90th Birthday

 We went to Arvada on Sunday for Grandma’s 90th birthday party. It was an outside event, and simple… just family, time to visit, and a little cake and ice cream. Simple is good.

R got to hold the newest member of the family 3 (4?) week old Theo. That was the highlight of her day for sure…

Grandma seemed to love the babies too, and looked so happy just watching them.

I didn’t take many pictures, but like this one of the grandkids and great grandkids who were there (plus a couple of aunts).

Eight years (and two days) ago

The wind is howling, the snow is blowing sideways, and all the schools are closed... Another major spring snowstorm is upon us. These springs storms always remind me of the huge storm we had to make it through when we moved here 8 years ago.

Just for fun (and laziness...) I thought I'd copy and paste a blog entry I wrote on the first anniversary of that move.

April 7. 2006

One year ago today we moved into this house... I wasn't thinking much about the anniversary of that move until I woke up this morning to the slap of the snow hitting the windows, and the howl of the wind down the chimney.

We're in the middle of a storm here today, and under a blizzard watch... the snow is blowing sideways and our back pasture is hidden by a curtain of white.  It looks (and sounds) exactly like it did one year ago, when we moved in.

So in honor of that anniversary, and all this tumbledown house has put us through since then, I thought I'd celebrate by sharing the story of that move.

After many years of living in the same house in the city, we decided it was time for a drastic change... a move to the country. After a crazy few months of looking at houses, and finally getting our old house sold, we ended up with only a narrow window of time to actually get ourselves moved. We had to give possession of our old house to the new owners just three days after getting possession of the new house. (That seems like plenty of time now, but remember we were moving 18 years and 5 kids worth of stuff!) As the date for the move got closer, the weather reports were forecasting a snow storm for day two of our three moving days.

As the day got closer the forecast got more ominous... it was supposed to be a huge storm, and dump lots of snow. Hmmm... what to do? We decided to really push to  get everything to the new house on day one... just in case the weatherman was right. We didn't want to have to deal with getting moving trucks through deep snow...

April 6th of 2005 was a beautiful day... We had lots of help coming, and I had the old house completely packed and ready for our "movers" (friends and family). The entire house was empty and all our things loaded into trucks by mid-afternoon. We filled two 24' moving trucks and a long horse trailer (with stuff from the garage). The new house is about 30 miles away from the old house and by the time we got there it was late afternoon and still warm, but the wind was starting to pick up. We quickly unloaded the house stuff into the garage, and the outside stuff into the barn. As we unloaded, the temperature was dropping by the minute... When we finished, the garage was absolutely stuffed full of boxes and furniture...there was just a narrow path through the garage to the door into the house..

As soon as we unloaded, M, R and I went to a motel about 20 minutes away (so we could have beds!) and Joe and older daughter K went back to the old house (because they didn't mind sleeping on the floor).

The storm started during the night sometime and when I woke up the next morning I could hear the wind outside the motel room window. I pulled back the heavy drapes but couldn't seem to get hold of the white sheers that still covered the window. It took a minute to realize that the sheers were already pulled back, but the air outside was so thick with fine flakes of snow that it was like trying to see through sheer white curtains.

It was still very early, hadn't been snowing too long, and there wasn't much snow on the roads yet. So, rather than risk getting snowed in at the motel (at $100. a night!), I decided to head to the new house. It wasn't that far, and most of the way was on main roads... so I thought we'd be fine.

The kids and I checked out, and headed east. The roads were slippery, but the snow wasn't deep and the visibility was ok. I crept along (I hate driving on ice) and was about a third of the way there when the back end of the car suddenly started moving sideways, seemingly on it's own. It was the strangest feeling... the back end of the car was moving sideways, gathering speed as it moved in a circle, and eventually the front end just followed it around. It felt as though neither the brake nor the steering wheel were attached to anything... I couldn't stop or control the slide. We went up and over the median (mowing over a bunch of evergreen bushes in the process) onto the wrong side of the four lane road, then... still spinning, up and over the median again ending up back where we started (even facing the right direction!). We sat for a minute, while I calmed the kids (and myself) and then I tentatively put the car back into gear to see if it was still drivable. It WAS! It drove funny though, so I stopped and quickly checked it... no flat tires, no obvious damage... so we kept on going.

It was such a strange drive... the farther east we drove the worst the blizzard got. I could see nothing but white at times, and we were almost the only ones on the road. We made it through the little town closest to the new house, and started up the hills leading to the house. The car still felt funny, but it just kept moving (and I just kept praying).

We were about 2 miles from the new house when the car stopped. It was still running but would no longer move forward. We were out in the country by now, and I was pretty worried. It was just the kids and I... in a broken car, in a  howling blizzard... and my cell phone didn't have any service. Within just a few minutes though, I saw a big SUV heading towards us (from the direction we were going) and flagged them down. The woman driving said she'd turn around and come back for us. While she was gone I backed the car off the road (it would still go backwards, just not frontwards!). The kids grabbed their overnight bags, and I grabbed M's meds, and we jumped into the SUV.

As it turned out, the woman who stopped lives in our new neighborhood. She had left to go to town, but had decided to turn around and go back home when she saw how bad the snow was. Had my car stopped any sooner, she would have already turned around and missed us...

By the time she dropped us at the new house, it was more than four hours after we'd left the motel for the 20 minute drive to the house, and the snow was about a foot deep. We ran down the driveway and into the garage, then found the light switch and wound our way, through the boxes and things, upstairs and into the house. The house was cold, but I turned up the heat and we finally warmed up. I tried to make a fire in the fireplace, but the wind was blowing so
hard that it was blowing down the chimney and I couldn't get a fire started.

That first morning we had a "breakfast" of sprite and chips that had been snacks leftover from the moving the day before. Then I started digging around and found a box of pantry food, a tiny TV set, a radio, and an old plug in
telephone. That gave us food, a way to check on the weather, entertainment for the kids (kind of... the TV had no antenna) and I was able to call Joe and let him know that we were ok.

We were snowed in for 2 days before Joe and K could make it to the house. During that time I unpacked some boxes, and moved some of the smaller furniture into the house. We ate a lot of instant oatmeal and canned soup during those days, and slept together on the floor. The kids still enjoy talking about "camping out" here at the house...

When I finally got my car dug out and towed to a repair shop, we were told that I had a broken axle from the accident, which had also caused other major problems in the rear end. They were surprised that I was able to drive it at all after the axle broke, and were really surprised to hear it had gone another 10 miles or so. They said the rear wheel really should have fallen off... (I'm thinking it took several "every day" miracles to get us home through that storm!)

That old blog post ends here, with a few pictures of the 2006 storm. So I'll close this post with a few of my  "storm" pictures from the years we've lived here... (since there is no way I'm going out into the current storm to snap pictures!).

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Stay warm and safe today Coloradoans!

Spring (doll) House Cleaning

The weather here is trying to work itself into a blizzard, so we are stuck inside looking for things to do...



While I was cleaning in the bedroom I noticed the the house really needed dusting... not the real house, the doll house. It was looking seriously dusty (living on a dirt road does that!) so I decided it was time to do some spring dollhouse cleaning. As I cleaned each piece I was reminded how wonderful they are...

I'm guessing the dollhouse and furnishings are probably about 70 years old. They belonged to an older neighbor of ours, from the old neighborhood, back when she was a little girl.  I'm guessing they date from the 30's or maybe 40's. When K (dd#3) was about 7-8 years old she saw it and fell in love with it, and the neighbor kindly gave her some work to do for her so she could earn it. It's still K's... but lives with me.

The furniture is plastic, and has some amazing details...



..like a record player



... sewing machine that flips open...



... just like a real one....



... and I love the toilet (both the lid and toilet seat open)..





... and the washer! (No dryer, this tiny family must have a clothes line out back somewhere.)



I only have a few old doll house people...this baby is my favorite.





Here's the entire house:





...the kitchen and dining room (check out the tiny plates on the shelves!)...





...nursery and living room...



... the bathroom and master bedroom...



It's all cleaned and beautiful again! Too bad cleaning my real house isn't as quick and easy...

Granny, any idea how old this might be?

~~~~a dulcimer story~~~

I try very hard not to accumulate "stuff". Over the years I've gotten rid of collections of things I've had (Nativity Sets, books, etc) because I do believe that having "enough" should be enough... When new (to us, we rarely buy anything brand new) things come into our home... whether it's clothing, books, or even furniture, a like number of similar things go out.

So when my brother Loren gave me a mandolin a few weeks ago, I knew it was time to clear out the collection of musical instruments that had been piling up. I have a hard time saying no to a good instrument, discarded at a thrift store... I imagine the music still left in it and think it needs a good home. (mine...)

So, I posted a listing on our homeschool group message board to sell a keyboard I bought for R (but she never really took to), a mountain dulcimer I bought used a few years ago, and the "extra" uke (M decided he didn't want to play after all). All was good until I got a reply to my post from a HS group member, saying she would like to buy the dulcimer.

Knowing it might be on it's way out the door caused a moment of panic... and the thought of "But I can't let it go!".

As I thought about my dulcimer and my history with dulcimers I decided my reaction made sense, and I would have to (apologetically) let the person who is interested in buying it know that I've changed my mind...

Just for fun, here's my dulcimer story...

Joe and I started going out while I was still in high school, it was the mid-70's then (yes, I'm dating myself!) and the world was still pretty wrapped up in peace, love and grooviness. Joe and I were definitely hippie-wannabes. His hair was pony-tail long, and mine hung down to my hips, and we both had some pretty cool bellbottoms in the closet...

We got married just out of high school (I was still in my teens...) and settled into being grownups.

One weekend we decided to head to downtown Denver for a cool thing they were doing... the Capitol Hill People's Fair. The fair had been around for 5-6 years by that time and was busy, and vibrant, and we spent a beautiful summer afternoon walking around looking at all the stands of handcrafted goods, clothes, and food. At one stand I bought Joe a heavy white button-down shirt (almost a canvas kind of fabric) with beautiful flowers embroidered  here and there on the crisp white background. (We kept that shirt forever, I think one of our grown kids has it now...) At another shop he saw me playing with the mountain dulcimers and bought a kit to make me one.

After weeks of work the dulcimer was done and stained a lovely dark walnut color. I bought a book and played a little here and there...

And then I had a baby and by the time she was up and walking, the dulcimer had migrated to the closet.

I still wanted to play... I loved the sweet dulcimer sound.



But life was busy, and then I had another baby...

And another baby...

And adopted a son...

And adopted another daughter...

And by then I was pushing middle age, and the dulcimer Joe made me had been loved, and played with, by all five kids... and was definitely worse for the wear.



And by then I never even thought of playing a dulcimer... (although I never considered for even a moment getting rid of the one Joe made me)

One day a few years ago, while wandering around the thrift store, I saw a simple, older, mountain dulcimer on the counter. I was immediately drawn to it... I picked it up checked it for cracks or warping, and gave the strings a little strum.

That's all it took, I was sold. (I even blogged about it here.)

I taught myself (again) to play and have spent many lovely hours picking out soft sweet ballads, and enjoying the rhythms of the old time dance tunes.

And it makes me think of when Joe and I were still teenagers, and he bought me a kit and made me an instrument...

No, this dulcimer isn't the one he made, but it's still not going anywhere...



I'm off now to change the "for sale" listing on our homeschool group message board, and offer apologies to the mom who was hoping to buy my dulcimer...

the behemoth moves...

Since shortly after my mom passed away in 2003 I've been storing some things for my brother Steve. Things that would be hideously... impossibly... expensive to ship to his home in Ireland.

Most of the things I'm storing are small, carefully wrapped, and packed in boxes in the storage area of my basement. I don't mind storing Steve's things. In fact, I kind of like it. Even though he lives thousands of miles away in Ireland... I feel like I've got a little piece of him here.

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Well maybe I have more than a little piece of him... Because one of Steve's things that I'm storing is HUGE. It's a behemoth of a roll top desk.

It's oak.

It's very heavy.

And it's been lurking in my basement for years.

We recently finished the basement and I was forced to reorganize the little storage area I have down there. As I tried to figure out how to make the best use of the space, I kept looking at that monster desk, thinking of the different ways I could reorganize the room if it wasn't down there taking up so much space.

Early one morning as I stood in the storage room pondering... again... how make a more usable space, I impulsively decided the desk had to go. Now. The workers would be doing the finish work on the door into the room later that day and if I was going to move the desk out it was now or never.

(No, it's not really too big to fit through a door but it would have been awkward and difficult to maneuver through a small, newly finished area.)

So I called R downstairs (she's my best moving-heavy-things buddy) and we started taking the desk apart and moving the pieces upstairs.

I took all three of us (we'd forced M into helping by then) to move the big roll top, but we got it up the stairs and moved into place without a single mishap.

I felt kind of funny about moving the desk. Not only is it not mine, it's Steve's... but it was my father's desk and almost sacred when we were kids. We were NOT allowed to play or mess with it... or even open the roll top!

I was extra careful. (And could almost imagine Dad looking over my shoulder... supervising our every move!)

We put it back together again and I oiled it well with orange oil (I wonder when they last time it had ANY oil?), and it just gleams.

I think it looks at home in it's corner of the living room... it shares the space with the deacon's bench that's also been in our family forever.

Steve... it's still yours... I promise... I'm just storing it in a different room. ;)

And just for fun... siblings, what to you know/remember about the desk? I thought Dad bought it used and refinished it... Is that right? Anything else you can add to the desk's history?

Mission accomplished!

So... This week I've been writing about our trip to find my great-grandparent's homestead. The last day I wrote about was Wednesday (otherwise known as Mudday), the day we tried to drive out to the homestead and became hopelessly stuck in the mud and never made it...

Here's what happened next.

I slept fitfully Wednesday night, waking often... my thoughts going in circles as I tried to think of some way to get to the homestead. Thursday was our last day in Nebraska... it was now or never.

I finally thought of a plan that seemed reasonable, and might even work. I'd go back to where we'd turned to go to the homestead, but instead of turning on the first road I'd go straight up the road to H's place. It's the closest farm to the homestead (I believe H's own the Cannon land now, or parts of it), and I hoped there was a back way... a passable way... through their place, to get there.

I fell asleep holding onto that hope and woke up the next morning ready to go. I was happy to see that the day was sunny and warm (the better to dry dirt roads!) and we quickly grabbed breakfast and headed north again.

I wanted to give the sun as much time as possible to do it's work, so we drove into town first and I decided to stop at the Catholic church. It had been a very important part of my great-grandparent's lives and I wanted to see it. The doors were open and as I walked in I felt like I was going back in time... it reminded me so strongly of the church we went to when I was a kid in Omaha. The old, ornate,wooden confessionals were still there, and stepping into one of them immediately transported me back to about the age of 8. The words even came, without conscious thought, to my mind... "Bless me Father, for I have sinned..."



It's amazing how strong and vivid the memories of that other time were. I lit candles for my great-grandparents, grandparents and parents, spent a few quiet minutes in prayer, and left again. I hadn't planned on stopping at the church, but I'm so glad I did... It was a wonderful way to bring our time in Greeley to a close.

Next I stopped at the grocery store and picked up a little gift for JM (I saw no gift shops in town, so the grocery was the best I could do!), then swung by her house and left it on the porch for her. I was sorry to have missed her, but knew she was in St Paul (the town we'd just come from) and wouldn't be home until later.

Finally I turned the car back towards the homestead. Part of me thought it was incredibly stupid to drive back out there, but I just couldn't leave without trying one last time...

I went straight towards H's this time, but after about a quarter mile I was stopped by mud. A long, low, curve in the road was inches deep in mud, and after getting stuck the day before I just couldn't chance it. There was no room to turn around, so I had to back the car down the road again...

I stopped backing when I came to the first road we'd taken the day before, the one we'd seen a glimpse of the homestead from. I'd driven it fine on Weds. and it looked even better now... so, of course, I turned onto it. Even if I couldn't get to the homestead, I wanted to see it one last time before heading home.

I drove south until we could look across the corn field and see the tumble-down old house that my great-grandfather had built. And once I saw it... clearly this time, sitting nestled in the hills... I knew I couldn't turn back without going there.

I drove down to the end of the road (stopping just before the turn where I'd gotten stuck), and told the kids I was walking to the homestead... Were they coming? R was excited and ready to go. She and Cody (her little dog) were out of the car and happy (yes, really!) to slog through the mud with me.

M refused to go. I couldn't talk him into it, so after thinking about how we were at least a couple of miles from civilization (meaning trouble for M), I decided to just leave him there. He was seriously unhappy, honking the horn at us as we walked away... but it was his decision to stay, and it wasn't long before he either stopped honking the horn, or we were too far away to hear it. ;)

It was about a mile and half walk to the homestead. It was too muddy to cut across the cornfield, and the road itself was still a mess too. We walked in the driest part of the road we could find until the mud got too thick and heavy on our shoes, then we moved onto the side of the road where the the grass helped clean a little of the mud off as we walked. Unfortunately, there were lots of holes, rocks, and old wire hidden in the grass on the side of the road... making it hard to walk there (I can't tell you how many times I twisted my ankle walking along the side of that road... too many!)... so we kept moving back out into the road.

The day was beautiful though, and the meadowlarks were singing, which reminded me of home, and it was a pleasure to walk after spending so much time in the car.

It felt so good to come up over that last hill and see the homestead right there in front of us... We just had to climb through a couple of barb wire fences and we were there!

The homestead is in pretty rough shape. It's definitely leaning, and much of the roof is gone, but enough of the house is still there to get a little bit of a feel for what it must have been like.





I thought it was odd that the old glass windows were neatly stacked in what I'm guessing must have been the living room...



There wasn't much plaster left on the walls.



There was a very old car, sitting rusting out back... R thought it was so cool that a tree was growing in it! There is also a windmill hooked (with modern equipment) to a well. I wondered how old that well is...





We didn't stay long (my worry about M was growing the longer we were gone) but I did take a few things from the homestead. I got my shovelful of dirt, and also took a brick from the chimney (the top had fallen down, although inside the house it's still intact) a funny rusty round piece of metal from the car, and.. in the kitchen... I found an old, rusty, Coca-Cola bottle opener. I tucked it in my pocket.

(The bottle opener went from the homestead kitchen wall to my kitchen wall...)



The view from the homestead





R and I must have made a funny sight as we walked back to the car. Her cute little dog was on his leash, still dashing happily through the mud, she had the leash in one hand and an old brick in the other, and I carried a old rusty car part, and a bag of dirt, as I slipped and slid along through the mud.

Luckily we didn't run into anyone.

I almost ran the last little bit back to the car, sure M had done something terrible or hurt himself while we were gone...  My feeling of dread increased as I got close enough to the car to realize that I couldn't see him. He always sits in the front seat... where was he?! I started scanning the horizon, looking for him walking someplace... but he wasn't there either. I finally got to the car and opened up the door and found him... laying down, sound asleep. Whew!

We turned toward home then.. heading south towards St Paul.  I was tired from the walk, but felt great... I couldn't believe we'd actually found and explored the homestead.

As we drove through St Paul, heading out of town, we had one more happy surprise. JM was still in St Paul and had driven around looking for us, hoping to catch us before we left for home. It was good to see her again, I had really enjoyed spending time with her and was glad for the opportunity to say good-bye one last time before we left.

Me, JM, and R



Before long it was time to say good-bye again. She headed north, and we headed south... towards Grand Island.  The trip home was going to be slow and leisurely... we wanted to take the time to stop at some of the cool museums we hadn't taken the time to see on our way out.

But this has gotten looooong enough... so the places we saw on the way home will have to wait for next time.

Buckshot and Ellen

I never knew much about my dad's family. He died just a month after my 18th birthday, so I never knew him as an adult... my only image of him is through the eyes of a child. He rarely spoke about his family (or maybe I just wasn't listening when he did!) so I was intrigued when I started researching that side of the family and discovered that my father's grandparents had been homesteaders.

Here's what I learned about my great-grandparents... and what led me to Greeley County Nebraska.

My great-grandpa was born in or around Westport, Ireland in 1847, he immigrated to the States on the ship the Tripoli, arriving on April 25th 1870. He was a laborer, and he settled initially in Boston. He married Ellen O'Grady (also from County Mayo) the next year and in 1874 John Jr (Johnny) was born.

In the mid 1870's, General John O'Neill, a Civil War hero who also took part in the Irish Fenian Uprising, had a dream of creating of colony of Irishmen in the vast land that was opening up in the west. In the area he envisioned for his colony, which would soon become Greeley County Nebraska, there was not only government land open to homesteading... there were also thousands of acres of railroad land for sale. Gen. O'Neill had a plan to form an association to buy up the railroad land and sell it, at easy terms, to prospective settlers. He presented the idea to Bishop O'Connor of Omaha who, believing that the Irish immigrants in the eastern cities were living in "crowded and unhealthful surroundings", offered his full support.

The time was ripe for his idea, and he must have promoted it well, because settlers began arriving in Greeley County even before the association (the Irish Catholic Colonization Association) was incorporated.

John Cannon, my great-grandfather (who would later be known as Buckshot) arrived in the fall of 1877, with the third group of settlers. Ellen, his wife, stayed in Massachusetts for a few more months, arriving sometime in early 1878. With her were their children,  John Jr (4 yrs old), Anna (about 3), and James, who was just a baby. Buckshot was 30, and Ellen 21 the year they came west.

Thomas, their fourth child, was born in 1880 and was one of the first children born in Greeley County Nebraska. Augustine was born in 1881, but died before his first birthday...

Patrick was born in 1883, and in 1885, when Agnes was born, the family... including all six children... were still living in a soddie.

The first few years the crops were good, but still... proving up the land was not easy. Buckshot worked for the railroad to make ends meet, walking the 50 miles to Grand Island to work, and then walking back home to visit the family. Ellen took care of everything on the homestead while he was gone... even driving the oxen to break sod.

It sounds like Ellen was a strong and feisty woman... When she grew tired of hauling the heavy wooden buckets of water three miles home from the well of their nearest neighbor, she starting digging a well herself.

(There is still a well on the homestead, just behind the house. I wonder if it could be the same well they used... maybe even the one she started digging?)

The family continued to grow with the addition of William (my grandfather) in 1887, Johanna in 1889, Peter in 1891 and finally Ellen R. (Ella) in 1893.

Buckshot did what he needed to do to hold onto, and improve his land... even going to Montana for awhile to work in the mines. Ellen, and the children as they got older, worked hard to keep the farm going.

As soon as he could, Buckshot built a modest frame home on the northeast edge of his land. He built a strong barn, and there was a windmill between the two. He also bought more land, eventually doubling the size of the farm.

Undated photograph of the homestead, showing the barn, which is gone now.



As adults, most of the children, including my grandfather, left the family farm and scattered across the midwest.

Johnnie went to Omaha where he worked as a steel worker. He married and had two daughters, Irene and Vern (?). After he retired and was widowed, he moved back to Greeley and helped Annie run a retirement home.

Anna (Annie) taught for many years in the country schools around Greeley, in her later years she ran a retirement home in town. After she retired she lived with Buckshot in the big house in town. After he died, she mortgaged her house in town and used the money to "pay on indebtedness and mortgage that was against the farmland" to save the family farm.

Johnny, Annie and Great-Grandpa (Buckshot) Cannon in undated photo

James left the farm to work in the mines of Montana. He never married.

Thomas followed his brother to Montana, where he also worked as a miner. He left the farm when he was 19, and only returned to the farm twice during his lifetime. He also never married.

Patrick served in WWI, and spent time as a POW. There is some mystery about Patrick... In one very complete history of Greeley families (put out by the Catholic church in town), it is written that Patrick never returned from the war. But I found an obituary for him stating that he died in 1944 in Mojave, California. He never married. I wonder about the story behind that discrepancy, it's something I'm going to try to learn more about.

Agnes was widowed young, with two small children... She lived in Greeley and at different times, ran the town general store and, with her brother Pete, ran a dance pavilion. Agnes was JM's grandmother.

William, my grandfather was known in town as Willie. As an adult he went by his middle name, Steve. He also left the farm. He married Anna (Hartman) in 1913, and worked as a barber in several small town before settling in the sand hills of Nebraska... 300 or so miles west of the homestead. It was there that my dad was born in 1918.

Johanna married and lived in Pierre, South Dakota. She had one daughter, Helen...

Pete served in WWI, but stayed close to Greeley once the war was over... running the dance pavilionwith Agnes, and working the family farm. He never married.

Ella married and also stayed close to Greeley. She and her husband Hayes, lived on the family farm for years... they had two children, Ted and Joan.

In about 1913 Buckshot and Ellen retired from the farm and built a beautiful house in town.



Ellen only lived there a few years before becoming ill with "stomach troubles". She died in 1918.



In his later years, during the depression, Anna lived with Buckshot in the house in town and they took in boarders to make ends meet. Buckshot lived there until his death in 1938... he was 94.

Johnny and Buckshot in undated photograph