Thursday, September 1, 2011

In Passing

Doesn't she look like a movie star? I always thought this photo of her was ridiculously beautiful. This is my grandmother, Ada. She passed away early this morning. It goes without saying that no blog post could do her life, or any human life, justice. She was a remarkable woman, who lived through the Great Depression, who raised three children despite, at times, grinding poverty and the isolation of the farm, who had an astounding work ethic, and who had an endearing and sometimes even mischievous sense of humor. I will miss her, but I am relieved that she no longer has to live within the confines of a body that had stopped working. Losing her independence as she grew older, because of growing older, was very difficult for her.

Sometimes I get exhausted/annoyed/overwhelmed by my responsibilities as a mother, by the fact that people depend on me for so much. But, truth be told, I much prefer this to the alternative - to depending on others to care for me. I know Ada did, too. But she doesn't have to deal with that any more. So I guess that's a good thing.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Our Butterfly, Nemo


So I'm going to pretend that it hasn't been ages since my last post, and I'm not going to even attempt to catch you up on all that has happened in the last several months, but just do a regular, run-of-the-mill slice of our life. Here goes:

We (okay, Micah) ordered some caterpillars from the interwebs, and received them in the mail. We watched the caterpillars eat their caterpillar food for a few days, then - voila! - they became chrysalises! As per the enclosed instructions, we carefully moved the chrysalises to the "butterfly garden" habitat and waited patiently for the butterflies to appear. And appear they did! We fed our little "painted ladies" (that was the particular species, apparently) sugar water for a few days, and then released them into the wilds of Utah county (photos follow). But there was one little butterfly that was unable to fly away. He (or she - I have no idea) had a bad wing. It looked like part of the wing had just broken off, possibly when he came out of his chrysalis. So we decided to keep him and care for him and name him Nemo.

It seems like there's a lesson somewhere in there about the cycle of life, or respecting all of God's creatures, even those that are very small. I won't elaborate on that. I'll leave it to you, dear Reader, to take away whatever message you choose.

And now the promised pictures: