softball

Co-ed church-league softball. Now there's a series of words to strike fear into the hearts of bystanders. Co-ed! Church-league! Softball! Hmm. Ok, so maybe it doesn't sound so tough. But it sure is fun. My dad's little church has three teams in the league; the people here do love softball. I'm on a team with Dad, brother Dave (now at college - booo), my 70-year old aunt, and an assortment of others, and we are surprising ourselves and our loyal fans by kicking some hiney in the year-end tournament right now! Last night was a win that has us in the seat for a top placement. Two more games and we take it, but naturally we're coming up against the hardest teams next.

My family is into brackets. Dad always coached us girls in softball and the boys in wrestling, and he's a strategizer. There's much bracket-talk before, after, and in between games. We have the bracket for this tournament all drawn up, and we're filling it in as we go with the names of the winners and losers. Sounds so harsh. How about winners and....people who get to go home and do other things than softball with the last days of summer. Church-league softball is a staple around my folks' place, so I guess it took Jason's objective perspective to clue us in to the hilarity of the conversations: "Did St. Matthews ten-run Trinity?" "New Covenant beat the liver out of Dwelling Place." And then there's the favorite, which we happily got to use last night: "We spanked Risen Christ." Expect to hear word of our house being struck by lightening very soon.

mi madre hermosa en su jardín de la flor

that is, my beautiful mother in her wildflower garden :)

family reunion in early August

I started this entry a few weeks ago, during our family reunion, but I'm just now getting around to posting it. The deal was, my father and his three sisters, along with as many of their offspring as could make it, were together in the Flathead Valley for two weeks, for the sole purpose of going through all of the earthly belongings of Grandpa and Grandma and my Great Aunt Wilma. Grandma and Wilma actually aren't deceased yet, but they are at that stage of life where you're not sure what stage they're at. Mentally. So we touch and kiss them and hope that somehow they at least feel our love. Here's one of my favorite shots of Grandma in recent years, taken during the spring down in Arizona.



Grandma and Grandpa were world travelers. Sometime in their 60's, they decided to drive their pickup and camper from Alaska down to the very southern tip of South America, stopping off in little towns along the way to be of random help to various churches. At least once they stayed someplace for a few months to give a pastor and his wife a much-needed break to go to the States for medical treatment. Grandma and Grandpa had also lived through the Depression, so throwing anything away was seen as wasteful. They found the most bizarre ways to recycle. So, this sorting process was a huge, arduous undertaking, accented with finding treasures just about hourly, some sad and touching, and some deliriously funny. We picked momentos to take home, and set up and ran the big garage sale. The bee was our mascot; we must've had 50 stingings over the two weeks, and you can see the wildfire smoke in the pics I posted a couple weeks ago. We did also do a few little hikes and sight-seeing trips. Here's a shot from a day in Glacier Park...



Cousin Ralphie with one of the more interesting finds...



A couple phrases that caught my ear during the reunion:

• "Carolyn, have you seen Wilma's bottom teeth?"
• several times daily: "Oh look at this! Daddy and Mama brought this back from __________" (and the blank is filled in with words like India, Peru, Argentina, China, Alaska).

Then there was the incident of 10 people carrying a heavy, old pickup topper from the garage to the yard for sale. Only some people were on the outside edges of the topper where they could actually see, and others were completely underneath it. The garage was narrow, so the topper was bumping things off of shelves. People were tripping over roter tillers, dogs, each other, all the while talking each other through: "Relax, relax." "Drop it just a little." "Hop over that bucket.""Heather, run around and switch to up front." And when they got out into the yard, several people all at once said, "Hey, where are we going?" Typical of my family, believe you me. And I love them to pieces.

Grandpa (seated up front) with his three siblings, Carl, Wilma, and Harold.

new pickup

When our time here in Montana is up (namely, at the end of September), we are embarking upon a cross-country journey with Jason's mom, Barbara, and her cousin, Karen. The four of us will be taking roughly 3 weeks to get from here to the east coast, via the route of the west coast (Washington, Oregon, and California) and then Arizona and Colorado, Indiana, etc. until we get to where we're going. Jason and I then plan to spend a few months out there catching up with his side of the family and exploring that neck o' the American woods, living in a camper.


I say all of that to preface the fact that we've been looking for a crew-cab pickup and camper to make the trip with. So craigslist, ebay, the mountaintrader, and the newspaper have been our best friends these days, or at least the friends with whom we spend the most time. Jason found a pickup that met all our criteria on craigslist a couple weekends ago, so we scurried over to Portland and bought it. Sort of bought. It was the weirdest transaction; long story short, we ended up driving it home without the title and without paying the guy all the money, because of how he has got it financed. Talk about trust on both sides. But he and his wife are fair-trade coffee roasters, have like 5 little tow-headed children, went to the same college I did in Portland, and know some people we do from Whitefish. So it's all being worked out; no worries.


This thing is bright and shiny red, a freaking crew cab, longbed pickup. The only way it feels remotely like "us" is that it is a Diesel, so it gets decent mileage. Driving down Hawthorne Street in Portland after we bought it was an experience. We got the glare, man. We were the enemy of all progressives for driving such a beast. It messed with our psyches. We had to keep reminding ourselves that this is our home and transportation all in one, and it's not for forever. I don't even have a picture of it yet, save for inadvertently catching it in the background of this shot of a grasshopper, but I'm kind of glad:



Now we're on the lookout for a camper.