Reminiscing
Being the first grandchild in our family, Chantel was a bit of a novelty to us. At the time of her birth, my sister, Cheryl and her then husband, Rob were living at our house, prior to and during his basic training in the Air Force, and prior to their move to Plattsburgh, New York, where they would be stationed. I will never forget the night Chantel arrived. It was, of course the middle of the night, and we were awakened to let us know that my parents, Cheryl, and Rob were heading to the hospital. Of course, back then, you didn’t get to know what the baby was, because that technology was not yet available. That made for much more excitement on our part…and a very long wait…or at least it seemed like it. I can’t say for sure that it was a long labor, and it is likely that it wasn’t, because Cheryl didn’t really have long labors, as I recall.
Before we knew it, our lives would be changed forever, as we went from being little girls to being aunts. It was an exciting time for us. Having a new baby in the house, when there hadn’t been one for 9 years, was such a change. She was so cute and so little, and we were mesmerized. I have always loved babies and every single one is the cutest, the funniest, and the cuddliest, but your first niece or nephew is a special event…especially when you are young and don’t have children of your own. You suddenly feel a part of something that is very cool. Even if they cry and need their diapers changed, it just doesn’t matter, because that is your niece or your nephew.
Through the years, Chantel continued to delight us with her stylish ways. She was always a little diva, and we loved it. The camera was always kind to her, because she seemed to always know just when to strike a pose, and just which pose to strike. Of course, her greatest beauty comes from within her, where a kind and loving heart resides. And when you have a kind and loving heart, that inner beauty can’t help but spill out of you all the time. Today is my first niece, Chantel’s birthday. Chantel, we love you very much. Your special ways are always a delight. Happy birthday!! Have a beautiful day!!
Not having had anything to do with the business end of ranching, I find myself fascinated when I look at the pictures of branding, and hear about calving. While others who have been around it for some time, might just think of those things as all in a day’s work, or maybe even as a lot of work. My family were, at least in the years of my lifetime, city dwellers, so until Bob and I got married, I knew very little about country life, other than the little bit of time I spent at a friend’s house, which was not a ranch, and who I was only around during my junior high school years. That said, when I married Bob and we went to visit his grandmother in Montana, I got my first real taste of ranch life. Of course, as a guest and a girl, I didn’t get in on the tough stuff, like calving or branding, but I heard a little bit about it, and in reality, it was quite interesting to me, and I wouldn’t have minded getting to see it.
Bob’s grandpa owned the ranch at that time, although his son, Bob’s Uncle Butch is a 
rancher too, and owns not only his own land, but Grandpa’s ranch too, now that Grandpa has passed on. Bob used to spend summers visiting his grandparents when he was a kid, and I’m sure he got in on some of that fun stuff, although I don’t know if he considered it to be fun, but my father-in-law finds the whole process interesting to this day, and often talks to his brother, Butch about how his herd is doing, and how the calving is going. He has told me about his own experiences in calving too, such as the time he had to help a neighbor pull a calf that the mother was having trouble giving birth to, because the calf was coming out wrong. I’m not sure I would want to watch that process, but I guess when it happens, it is all hands on deck, because you can lose both mother and baby, if you don’t get it handled quickly, and even then you can lose them, because, sometimes the calf is just too much for the mother. A sad, but true fact of ranching.
These days, most of the ranching is done by Uncle Butch and his son, Scott, along with Scott’s wife Terri, and their kids, Laura, Carson, and Lindsey. I’m sure some things are 
done much differently these days, than back in the early years of Grandpa’s ranching career, but some things don’t change much. Cattle still have to be rounded up, and that still requires horses, riders, and of course, skill…probably another reason I live in the city. Not that I can’t ride, but I’d do best on some old worn out horse that doesn’t move too fast. I find that to be the best way to stay on the horse. From what I’ve see of the Scott and Terri Hein family, they could hold their own with the best of them. I’m sure that being around ranching, your whole life helps with that, but I have a feeling this is in their blood.
These days, many young women graduate from high school and then go on the college or just out into the work world, but years ago, women who weren’t married by the time they were 20 years old were considered old maids. Some of the women were married as young as 13 years old. These days people would look at that in a very different way…especially since the husbands were often older, often in their mid-twenties or older. Strange as it seems to us today, back then most of these marriages turned into life long loves and lots of children. Of course, as far back as I have looked into, 13 wasn’t a common age for a woman to marry, but the mid to late teens certainly was.
Many of the women in my family were among those who were married at 16 or 17 years of age, and according to my Aunt Sandy, one of our grandmothers was married at 13, but I haven’t been able to find out which one, so I guess I’ll have to ask her. It could be that I’m just not going back far enough. The girls back in 
the early days of our nation were raised to be homemakers. The were taught how to run a home and take care of a family. Many is the south were taught to oversee a house full of servants. I can’t imagine running a home, children or a house full of servants at the tender age of 13. I don’t know about you, but at 13, I was definitely not interested in being a wife, mother, and boss. I was too busy doing gymnastics on the front lawn, or hanging out with my friends.
Why were these women to be so different? I mean, they weren’t forced into marriage, they chose it. Yes, they were trained to cook and clean, but so was I. Their parents didn’t push marriage on them, nor did they expect it to happen that young…I don’t believe anyway. I guess that some girls grow up faster than others, or maybe the expectations of the parents carries more weight than we know. I wonder if we will ever really understand the reasons behind those early marriages.
I was talking to my Aunt Sandy a short time ago, and we were discussing past history and how things used to be done. She mentioned something I hadn’t thought about for a long time. I have seen these, as I’m sure many of you have, and I even saw one on Facebook yesterday. These machines, which really have no business being called machines, since it is completely run be your own arm power, or elbow grease, as my mom would call it. I’m talking, of course, of the wringer washing machine. At one time, I’m sure this was the crème de la crème of washing machines. Prior to that marvelous invention, women scrubbed their clothes on a wash board, and wring it out by hand. Even after the wringer machine was invented, the clothes that were really stained had to be scrubbed on that old washboard.
Aunt Sandy told me about her own memories of washing clothes on that old wringer washing machine, and just how hard it was to use. Of course, as a kid, she might have liked working that old machine too. It can be fun for a while. I’ve had occasion to try one of those wringer washers before, and I can tell you first hand that when the clothes went between the two rollers of the wringer, and you had to be the one to crank those wringers, you found out real fast what elbow grease was all about. It wasn’t long before your arms felt like wet dish rags…very sore wet wash rags. And the next day…well you could hardly move. Maybe that’s why they only did the laundry one day a week. I mean, who could stand to do it more often than that. I know that it would give most of us more than sore arms. We would probably have a headache too.
So much has changed since those days. Washing machines really are machines now, and they wash the clothes with no effort on our part. There are sprays to get the stains out and the machine does everything from the scrubbing to spin drying. The hardest thing we have to do is fold the clothes when they are done drying in the dryer, which is a machine 
now too…as opposed to the clothes line and the wind.
When I think about how little time has really passed since the women of yesteryear worked a lot harder to do the same work that we do in a matter of minutes these days, I am amazed. From the mind of one inventor creating the wringer washer, to the mind of another creating a machine to do all that work for you, our world has progressed from the harsh and almost primitive way of doing laundry, when women scrubbed their clothes on a washboard or even a rock, to the ease of our modern machinery that takes all the work out of a big job, and makes it easy.
For any one whose ancestors came out to the West, homesteading probably is a word we know, and something we know a little about. Even if it is back in the history of our family, we knew that yes, the land was given to the homesteader, but in reality, they earned every blade of grass that was on their homestead. Homesteading was no easy way to live. Homesteading began when the United States government decided to give 65 acres to anyone who wanted to move out west and settle. They had to work the land for 5 years and then it became theirs. This all sounded like an amazing opportunity to many people, but there were many who came out west to get a homestead and then went back home before the 5 year timeframe was passed. They just couldn’t make it. The didn’t have what it takes. Homesteading was not a lazy man’s way to get land. This land was hard and full of rocks and trees. It had not been plowed and planted before. They would be the first to do that, and they didn’t have all the equipment we have these days to plow up the hard soil so it was suitable for growing crops on.
My grandparent were among those who came out and earned that homestead, by working that land and making it grow the crops they wanted it to grow. I doubt that they got by without ever losing a crop, because hail, drought, flood, fire, and tornados were bound to have happened at least once during that 5 year timeframe, but they stuck it out and made it work. They proved that they were tough enough to earn that homestead…to the government and to themselves.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that the ones that went home were no good, they just didn’t have what it took to make it in the old west. This was rough country, and you 
had to be tough to stick it out here. They had to learn to get along with the Indians too, because the Indians weren’t real happy with the White Man being here at all. Treaties had been broken to allow the west to be settled, and they didn’t like it one bit. I think we can all agree that this country was going to expand one way or the other, because as people have children and those children have children, and those children have children, and so on…well, more space was bound to be needed. Still, I suppose we should have handled it in a different way. Nevertheless, many White Men made peace with the Indians, and learned to live together. The White Man had come to the West. He was here to stay, because he had earned that homestead.
In any family, it seems that the younger children are treated differently than the older ones. They seem to get away with more, and probably get to do things earlier than the older kids. I think the main reason for this is that the parents got used to being parents. The things you worry about as new parents, like crawling around on a floor that isn’t totally sanitized, a bottle that fell on the floor going right back into the mouth, or eating dirt…for pity sakes, are just things a new parent would never allow.
Then, as the child gets a little older, and the parents see them eating worms, along with that dirt, it just gets to a point where they know the kid won’t break. Then when the younger kids come along…well, veteran parents know the ropes, and they know that you can’t control everything that happens in your kids lives. Things are just different.
Suddenly, spending the night with grandparents is ok at 2, instead of 4, and in this day and age, they get their first cell phone in kindergarten or first grade. Of course, when you think about it, these kids know more about the computer by 3 than a lot of their parents do, so I suppose it seems like they are really just little adults.
This change in the rules isn’t really their parents fault, it is just a fact of life. It has been going on for years. I think I might have been one of the last of the parents to make my girls do things by ages, but then they were only eleven months apart. Amy didn’t have to 
wait very long anyway.
When there are a few years between the kids, it seems like the lines of fairness and ages get blurred some, and unless the older child is right there to remind them that their younger sibling isn’t supposed to get to do stuff earlier than they did, things just slip past them, and before they realize it those younger ones are doing things two years ahead of their older siblings. And when they do realize it, the now veteran parent shrugs their shoulders and calmly remarks, “Oh well, these things happen.” I guess being the youngest ones has its perks, in some ways anyway.
I don’t know about your family, but in mine and in Bob’s, the women seemed to wear curlers in pictures a lot. The funny thing about that is that the ones wearing curlers in pictures have short hair, which would dry very quickly. So it would seem that there would be little need for wearing curlers all day, and yet here they were in picture after picture. It’s almost as if the curlers are a way to keep their hair under control for a while, much like people with long hair might wear a bun. Curlers in your picture seems to be something rather unique to my mother’s and grandmother’s 
generations. I know that my sisters and I would not have been caught dead outside the house with curlers in our hair…at least when we were old enough to have a say.
What always struck me as funny is the fact that whenever Mom had curlers in her hair, and the event was special enough for pictures, it seemed like Mom’s intention was to look good for the event that was upcoming. So, it always made me wonder why she left them on for the event itself. Of course, they never left the curlers in for the really special events, like church, weddings, 
or funerals, it was just the casual, special events that seemed to allow for curlers in the picture. There again, I would never show up for those events in curlers either, and knowing my sisters as I do, I know they wouldn’t either. It’s kind of like going out without your make up…it just isn’t done.
Nevertheless, that was a different generation. I’d like to say it was a different time, but my mom still might wear curlers in a picture, and think nothing of it. I suppose Bob’s mom might too, if she didn’t have a perm now. To that I say, to each his own, but you will never catch me in a picture with curlers in my hair.
If there is one thing I can say about my niece, Liz, it is that she loves sports. In fact, there was a time she considered becoming a sportscaster. And she would have been a great one too, because I don’t know of anyone who knows more about their teams than Liz. And, I’m pretty sure she she keeps up with all the other teams too. Liz was a big sports fan, when everyone thought girls didn’t like sports…or was it just that girls were closet sports fans.
Liz is a fan of the Denver Broncos, which was something she was proud to share with her grandpa, my dad. Of course he wasn’t the only one who shared her love of the Broncos, but he was the one who was the most important to Liz. They shared a love of the Denver Broncos and the New York Yankees. It created a special kind of bond between them that no one else had. When the subject came around to either team and they were both in the room, it was their conversation, and no one else’s. That was never something any of us were jealous about. We all thought it was wonderful that Dad had someone who was so knowledgeable about sports to talk sports with. It was heartwarming to watch that, because as the dad of daughters and only 4 grandsons, there weren’t a lot of sports minded people around him. Liz was one person who understood the games, and could talk intelligently about it with my dad, and that was a greater gift than Liz can possibly know.
I know that I certainly couldn’t do that, because until the Broncos went to their first Super Bowl, I liked the Broncos, but only in passing. And while I watch the Super Bowl every year, and I’m still a Die Hard Broncos Fan, I don’t watch much football on a weekly basis. Liz on the other hand watches the Denver Broncos, The Denver Nuggets, the New York Yankees, the Wyoming Cowboys, and of course, every game that Kelly Walsh plays…and those were just the ones I know of. There are many ways to describe Liz, but none so well as Grandpa’s Favorite Sports Fan. Today is Liz’s birthday. Happy birthday Liz!! Have a wonderful day!! We love you!!
God saw that this world was doomed, because the wages of sin is eternal death and separation from Him. Still, because God is love, he made a way in which all those who would follow his plan could live even after they had sinned. The price had to be paid. There simply was no other way. Sin had gotten us into this mess, and a sinless man was the only one who could pay the price to redeem a lost world. But where would this sinless man come from?
God saw a problem, and then He devised a solution. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16. The very Son of God had agreed to leave all the glory of Heaven, be born to a human woman, live a sinless life, and then pay for our sins as an innocent sacrifice. He hung on that cross to pay the price we could not pay. Had the devil only known what he was doing, he would not have crucified the Son of God. By the time the devil figured out what he had done, it was too late.
Jesus marched into Hell…victorious and took back the keys to death and Hell, which the devil had been given through Adam’s treasonous act. Jesus paid it all and through His sacrifice, we have been put back in right standing with God again. There is nothing we can’t ask of God now. The curtains have been ripped in two, and we have been given access to the Holy of Holies. We can come boldly before the Throne of God and ask what we will, with the name of Jesus, and he will give it to us. We are his children now.We have been adopted into his family. Our debt has been paid.
On the third day, Jesus rose from the dead to show the world that He was victorious…even over death. There is nothing that we need to fear. Death has been defeated. The devil has been defeated. Sin has been defeated. By the grace of God, our lives have been spared. We cannot earn it. We didn’t deserve it. Love gave it to us. God is Love. Jesus is our Savior, and He is risen. Jesus is alive and sitting on the right hand of God! Believe on Him and you will be saved.
Little kids don’t care if their attitude needs adjusting. All they know is that you made them mad, someone made them mad, or something made them mad. No matter the cause, they will simply tell you, “I’m just mad!” and you get to deal with it. It is usually a very expressive face that is given to this little attitude of their too, but some kids seem to do that look better than others. Even years later, you can look at the picture and know that the person who took that picture is really on that kids bad list right then.
What really fascinates me about these pictures, is not that this little kid is mad, or that they need an attitude adjustment, it is the expressiveness of their anger. Their face and body language so totally tell the story behind their feelings, and often the reason for taking the picture at all. I don’t know who the little boy in the first picture is, except that he is in an old album belonging to my husband’s family, but what I do know is that he looks just like a little 
gunfighter, who is mad enough at the photographer, to call them out for a gunfight at the OK Corral.
It also strikes me as funny that sometimes the way a kid shows anger can mimic someone from their ancestor pool, whether it is far back or not. My daughter Amy always had a very funny way of showing her anger. It involved not only her face, which was very expressive, but her arms which she crossed in front of her and then pulled to one side. I always thought that was pretty unique to her, until my cousin sent me a picture of our family when my sister, Alena was about 3 or 4, and there was a very similar way of expressing anger just staring at me from the past.
Alena had always had a very expressive way of showing her anger, and my other sisters and I knew not to mess with her much until she was fully awake, which usually involved several cups of coffee, in her early teens. Still, I never remembered seeing that same little 
display of anger that I thought was so unique to my daughter, Amy. It just goes to show that we all have traits that can be passed down, and it doesn’t always go from parent to child. It often comes from aunts, uncles, cousins, or grandparents.
No matter where it comes from, displays of anger in little kids can be very funny. Their serious little faces, telling you that you are such a meanie and that you should get a spanking, or better yet be called out to a gunfight, serve only to reduce their parents to giggles. What is even more amazing is that the parents can manage to hold themselves together long enough to snap the picture…which probably makes the kid even more mad.
