Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge: LIGHT

LIGHT

This is Day 29 of the thirty day photo challenge.  Honestly, I'm going to miss it.

Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge: NIGHTTIME

NIGHTTIME

Is there anything more comforting than knowing you have, at night, a warm and comfortable place to sleep?


This is Day 28 of the thirty day photo challenge.

Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge: Daily routine

DAILY ROUTINE

coffee first

Drink my first cup of coffee and read the Bible and say a little prayer.

Go to the computer until Cliff yells that he's awake

Take Cliff his coffee in bed

Then we have our oatmeal or cream of wheat or cereal.  He surfs the Internet on his laptop and I go back to my computer for awhile.

Time for our daily walk in the pasture

Back from our walk, I give Jody (10 months old) her daily portion of grain.

While I'm in the barn, I feed the cats.  Mama Kitty, my favorite, is the one closest to the camera.

I vacuum often.  Most of the contents of the Dyson consists of dog hair... thank you, Iris.

I read... usually on the Nook, but sometimes when the library is slow getting me something to read, I read a real book.

At noon, we eat dinner.  Sorry, no picture.

I often take a nap in my recliner after dinner.

This takes you up to about 1 P.M.  The rest of the day is equally exciting (not), so I won't bore you with details.  Today there was some departure from the normal daily routine.  

That crazy Kansas City photographer came to visit.  He's the one who messes around with so many of my everyday pictures and turns them into something wild and crazy.  I love meeting my Internet friends!


This is Day 27 of the thirty day photo challenge.  

Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge

TRANSPORTATION

That's a no-brainer.

Cliff heard on the news last night that we can be looking for some temperatures in the 70's within the next two weeks.  Guess what we'll be doing then?  


This is Day 26 of the Thirty Day Photo challenge.

Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge... second try

ARTWORK

After posting the previous entry about Art, I found the perfect picture to share.  I was looking through my 1993 diary and there it was:  A real piece of artwork done by my husband.

This is my VALID entry for day 23 of the thirty day Photo challenge.  


Aren't you glad I kept diaries back then?  Maybe I should have some giveaways on my blog, one diary at a time.  

Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge.... ARTWORK

Well, I shortened it to 

ART

I'm sure everybody would guess that I'm no art critic, and I have pondered this one all day long.  
Then the obvious answer came to me.

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Meet Cliff's cousin, Art.  Yes, he's a little bit wacky.  It runs in the family.  Hey, if my daughter can play fast and loose with the rules, so can I.

This is day 25 of the thirty day challenge.

Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge

GRATITUDE

Most people were totally confounded when we moved out of our two-story house, purchased a very cheap mobile home, and relocated out behind the barn.  
One reason I wanted to live farther away from the road was that I felt I had no privacy at the house; we had the rental trailer in our yard, and kids from both directions used our yard as a shortcut to one another's houses.  
Ever hear that saying, "If you want to see God laugh, show Him your plans"?  
The rental trailer is gone.  So are the kids on either side of our property, and their houses sit abandoned.  

However, a huge reason for my desire to move to the pasture was that I wanted a view.  In the old house, it seemed like no matter in which direction I looked, I saw buildings or somebody else's mess.  We have forty-plus acres here, and I longed to be able to look out the window and enjoy the view.  Which I do now, every single day.  

I am not sorry we moved into a second-hand trailer house.  I love to look out my windows.  I even like having a barn and a cow lot in the front yard.  
I have a profound sense of gratitude for our cheap mobile home, because it provided the only way we could afford the move to the pasture.
I never said I was normal.


This is Day 24 of the thirty day photo challenge.

Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge

IN MY CLOSET

When we moved into a used mobile home almost four years ago, one thing I was excited about was the closets.  There are three of them in the house, and the one in the master bedroom had what I considered to be a lot of room.  Keep in mind that most of my clothing goes into a drawer, not a closet.  
Our well water is terribly hard, and I have always wished for a water softener.  So once we were moved into our "new" home, I called Culligan.  Turns out the only feasible location for the water softener was in the closet in the master bedroom.  
Now, Cliff and I shared one small closet at the old house, so I really thought this one would still work for us.  But little by little, Cliff has taken it over.  Everything you see here is his except for the quilts and bedding on the shelf, and you will notice some of his caps perched atop those.  
So my closet is in the guest bedroom.  Why didn't I take a picture of that one?  Because this one has a story.


This is Day 23 of the Thirty-Day Photo Challenge.

Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge

CLOTHING

My readers know all about my clothing.  Jeans and sweats and sweatshirts in winter.  Jeans and shorts and T-shirts in summer.  I drew a blank on this subject until I decided to show you my clothing from past years.  

That's me with my mom and dad.  Mother made all my clothes, even the bonnet.  She always put a bonnet on me because I was so bald that everybody thought I was a boy.  

Again, here I am wearing a dress my mother made.  

Me and my mom at the wrestling matches.  I loved me some wrestlin' back then.  So did Mother.  See?  I did wear dresses at some point in my life.

  Can you say teenage angst?  Again, girlie skirt and sweater.  When I was in high school, girls weren't allowed to wear jeans or slacks.  

Wow, am I stylin' here or what?  At least I was skinny, but I probably didn't know it at the time.  That's a rare picture of my brother on the left.  Cliff has his arm around me, but neither of us think it looks like him.  Granddaughter Amber, however, says it looks exactly like both of us.  

OK, by this point my wardrobe had deteriorated into what it is today.   I was skinny again!  Why can I not remember being so thin?

That's me with my two oldest grandchildren.  T-shirt, sweats too short for my tall body.  Yep, I'm a real fashion plate.  Oh yeah, and the hair is nice, too.


This is Day 22 of the thirty day photo challenge.

Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge

WHERE I SLEEP

Nobody's sleep was disturbed by the flash of my camera at 5 A.M.  

This is Day 21 of the thirty day photo challenge.

Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge

SEASONAL

What could be more seasonal that my nice, snuggly, new Mickey Mouse pajamas?


This is day 20 of the thirty day photo challenge.

Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge

BEST FRIEND

We look strange, don't we?  That always happens when I hold the camera at arms length and shoot.  Anyhow, I'm sure it's no surprise to anybody that Cliff is my best friend.  


This is day 19 of the thirty day photo challenge.

Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge

SOMETHING NEW

OK, so it's a very old Oliver 550 tractor built in 1960, but it's Cliff's NEW and LATEST project.  This is what keeps him busy in the shop lately.  It's a tractor that's been "rode hard and put away wet" as the old saying goes.  Cliff is giving it a new lease on life.    

 Tractors really look naked without all their parts, don't they?  

Cliff closed up a hole in the fuel line with solder and is checking to see if he did a decent job of it.

One of the biggest problems with this tractor was a broken governor.  Here's where it goes.  Cliff bought one on Ebay that should be showing up at our door before long. 

The tractor also had a nasty exhaust leak, so the manifold has been removed until the gaskets can be purchased and put in place. 

 There was a huge problem with the steering; that's why the steering wheel is sitting there where it doesn't belong.  He's already taken care of that issue.

Iris guards the wood stove in the shop, just in case somebody should try to sabotage it.


This is day 18 of the 30 day photo challenge.

Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge

MEMORIES

This is my grandma.  Grandma's house was one of my favorite places to visit when I was a kid.  

This is day 17 of the thirty day challenge.

Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge

ANIMALS

You can see our four cows in the process of eating us out of house and home.  The horses don't belong to us, but they live here, so I included them; every evening for about two hours they stand at attention like that watching for their owner, Adam, to come and spoil them with grain; that's my dog Iris is in the picture with them.  The three barn cats who used to go for walks in the pasture with us finally got wise and realized there was nothing in it for them, so now they stay at home in the barn when Cliff and I walk.   


This is Day 16 of zooming in on gratitude.

Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge

TECHNOLOGY

We got our first computer in 1998, and it was love at first sight for me.  It took another ten years before Cliff finally discovered the magic that is the Internet.  He spends at least a couple of hours daily on his laptop, surfing through all the tractor message boards and Craigslist.  He checks in at breakfast, lunch, and dinner and sometimes spends a whole evening watching TV and surfing at the same time.  
I'm halfway through the 30 day photo challenge.

Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge

MOVEMENT

I'm still zooming in on gratitude and living in the moment.  This one took some thought; I was going to try and find something fitting to photograph today, but I gave up and decided to use the opportunity to show off some cute kids instead.  
Looks like the rest of the daily topics will be easy ones.  The one on top is my granddaughter Natalie playing basketball.  The next two are my son's stepdaughter's kids, and the last one is from 2006 and pictures my youngest grandchild with her brother, my oldest grandchild.

Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge

WRITTEN WORDS

Looking back at these old journals, I don't even remember a lot of things I wrote about in them.  I am not the same person as I was then.  Cliff used to tell me, "I've had several different wives," (all of them were me, by the way) "and I'm just waiting for the sex maniac wife to show up."  I treasure those journals for the memories they hold, but I plan to destroy them eventually.   On the far left in this picture, the newspaper article taped in the journal is my mother-in-law's obituary.  The paper you see sticking out at the top of the same journal is a picture my grandson drew of me when he was five or six years old.

Zoom in on Gratitude: 30 day challenge

HANDS

My great-nephew Brian started sharing his artistic talents with the family somewhere around 1990.  One year when we were gathered at Christmas, I saw a picture he had drawn of a hand.  I was absolutely blown away.  Keep in mind he was a very young teenager at the time.  
I wanted such a picture for myself, one I could take home; this is the one I received.  it hung on my refrigerator for months before I finally tucked it away between the pages of my journal.  
These days Brian uses that talent to support himself and his family.