Posts Tagged ‘anniversary’
Early Return
Graced with a deceivingly pleasant October day of moderate warmth and plenty of sunshine, Cyndie, Asher, and I enjoyed a leisurely Sunday free of any responsibilities. I wasted some of it watching NFL football on TV, but when the game wasn’t going my way, I distracted myself with a jigsaw puzzle.
Cyndie rewarded me with photos from her first walk of the morning with Asher and their last walk of the evening.
When I took him exploring in the middle of the afternoon, I found the sunlight and the lake surface were far less captivating. During the weekend, we reached a point of successfully allowing Asher to romp off-leash, with the e-collar for prompts if needed. At the lake, since he hasn’t spent a lot of time here, we are cautious about how much freedom we are comfortable granting him.
Since the presence of other unleashed dogs is always a possibility that we don’t control, it’s a different gamble to have him running loose.
After dinner, while we were binge-watching the first few episodes of Season 3 of “The Diplomat,” Cyndie received a message that one of the owners of This Old Horse would be coming out this morning with a veterinarian to look at Mix. The cause of Mix’s occasional slight gimpiness in her hind end has yet to be confirmed. We both want to be there for the visit, so we initiated preparations for an early departure from the lake place before going to bed last night. The sooner we can get on the road this morning, the better chance we have of getting home in time for that.
It was a fun, uneventful getaway for a few days that gave us a chance to employ the two newest UWRF students who responded to our help-wanted post for feeding horses when we are away. Now it’s time to return to attend to all the activities on our weekly calendar of events.
Somehow, I have let the date of the anniversary of our move to Wintervale pass without fanfare. October 18, 2012, was supposed to be the day, but signing the paperwork was delayed by a few. We can now say we are entering our 14th year here.
It’s been a pretty good run. A lot has happened in the last 13 years, and it’s all been captured here in my ongoing memoir of a daily blog: the fun, the sad, and the embarrassing.
Here’s hoping the coming year will be filled with more fun than sadness. And lots of love, too!
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Not Colorful
The leaves are changing, but not into the glorious reds, yellows, and oranges one expects in the fall. No, this year we are getting a predominant dose of browns.
I don’t know if it’s due to dry conditions or something else, but trees that have been brilliant in past autumns are simply transitioning to shriveled brown leaves this year.
It’s hardly the glorious spectacle we wanted when Cyndie and I chose September to be our wedding month. That just so happened to occur 44 years ago on this exact date. I believe we had a fair amount of color in the trees in 1981. I don’t think I paid a lot of attention to the fall colors, what with my beautiful bride commanding all of my focus that day.
Seven years after that, our son, Julian, was born on the same day as our anniversary. So today is a day of celebration in the Hays family. Tonight, Cyndie and I have reservations at the Shady Grove restaurant, about 4 minutes away from our house. Tomorrow, we meet our kids for dinner in Stillwater to toast Julian.
Maybe we’ll get lucky and find some colorful trees on our drive along the St. Croix River.
It’s a Happy Birthniversary Day!
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Eleven Years
In October of 2012, Cyndie and I packed everything we owned and moved from Eden Prairie, MN to the property we named “Wintervale” in Beldenville, WI. I am very lucky to have a record of the process and everything that has happened since preserved in the archived posts of Relative Something.
We spent a little time yesterday looking back at pictures we took eleven years ago and marveled over some of the changes. We found one of me sitting on the Ford New Holland 3415 diesel tractor with the manual open to the “Instrument Panel” information.
There is also a photo of the one and only time Cyndie drove that tractor.
The bucket is filled with debris we were clearing out from the space beneath the barn overhang. The previous owners had stored gates, fence posts, and a bunch of firewood under there. It’s been the primary hangout space for horses ever since.
On a walk yesterday, I tried to take some pictures from a vantage point similar to ones from eleven years ago. It wasn’t easy to find the exact same spot.
October 2012
October 2023
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I tried using the top part of the barn visible in the shots above to line up a reasonable comparison. There’s no longer any sign of the shop garage or the house roof from that hill. It’s nice to see how much the evergreen trees have grown. In the 2012 photo on the left, the willow tree that is visible became fenced inside the small paddock and is now nearly dead.
There was an incredibly warm day in 2012 that inspired us to cook dinner outside over an open fire for visitors, Elysa and Ande.
October 2012
October 2023
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It is easy to see that there are more leaves remaining on the trees in 2023.
October 2012
October 2023
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That spruce has gotten a little taller.
I’m curious how much growth might happen in eleven more years. While walking through the area we call the North Loop –which over the years has been cut for hay, fenced in for grazing horses, and now allowed to grow wild– I was surprised to discover several new pine and oak trees that have naturally sprouted on their own. The existing poplar grove is doing a fair job of expanding its reach and many of the existing pines are growing strong.
We look forward to shepherding this acreage toward becoming its own little forested space on the north side of our driveway for years to come. Based on clear evidence revealed on our walk, the deer are already fond of bedding down there.
Happy 11th Anniversary, Wintervale!
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Mice Everywhere
Today is Cyndie’s and my 42nd wedding anniversary and our son, Julian’s 35th birthday. Other than that, it feels like a regular old Tuesday. Regular, except for the fact there are mice showing up everywhere I turn.
Sunday night I was doing dishes when a mouse walked out from beneath the stove, traveled along the baseboard and disappeared beneath the refrigerator. I put a trap along that path and it hasn’t been touched since.
Over the weekend, Cyndie called for my assistance because there were two live mice in the wash tub in the laundry room.
Yesterday, while I was eating lunch at the center island of our kitchen, I glanced over to my right and spotted a mouse walking from the dining room rug into the sunroom. Cyndie swatted and disposed of it before Asher figured out what all the fuss was about.
Obviously, our house is not sealed tight against rodent intrusion or maybe the snakes just stopped eating mice and there’s been a population explosion.
I couldn’t get away from dealing with mice when I went out to the shop to work on setting up a new water tank we bought. I needed to connect wiring for a 12V auxiliary plug on the Grizzly ATV. There had been a mouse nest under the seat long ago and back then, I disconnected wires where the insulation had been chewed. Now I needed to patch them up and reconnect them.
There was still leftover debris in the compartment under the seat so I pulled out the shop vac and turned it on. Chewed-up bits of fiberglass insulation shot out of the exhaust port of the vacuum and blew over everything in the vicinity. Somehow, an industrious mouse made its way up into the guts of the shop vac and built quite a nest.
There is probably very little insulation left in one of the walls of the shop.
Maybe for our anniversary, we could buy each other the services of a pest control company. True love.
Happy Birthday, Julian!!
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Anniversary Heart
We received an invitation to a 25th wedding anniversary party for our friends, Joyce & Doobie Kurus, which inspired me to start a new heart sculpture before I finished the one already in progress. A little interlude for a change of pace.
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I chose a piece of American Hornbeam that I have been looking forward to working with for a long time. When we cut up this downed tree I saved much of it in the barn and shop for future use because the shape and grain were so enticing.
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Like so many times before, I was drawn to retain some of the raw bark to provide contrast to the other highly finished surface area.
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The wood was great to work with and has me very excited for the next opportunity when I will be able to sculpt another piece of the American Hornbeam I have stashed away.
I appreciated having Joyce and Doobie’s special occasion to think about while I worked on this heart. Somehow, I let myself start on another inspiration before getting back to my melting heart out of a piece of maple, so I currently have two in process at the same time, neither of them out of American Hornbeam. I’m experimenting with creating a shape that reflects a twisted heart.
If I like what comes of this first attempt, I hope to try a larger version from Hornbeam. All while simultaneously seeking to make progress on the tricky part of my melting heart.
Making all these hearts has got to be adding to the love that exists in the world. I don’t really need any more inspiration than that.
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Finally Connected
Ten years ago today, October 18 was the very day of our arrival to this property we call Wintervale. Hoorah! I looked up our property on the county site and grabbed a couple of images from the widest span of dates available.
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On the left is the year 2010 which was two years before we purchased the property. On the right is from 2021 according to the county.
I prefer the images our friend Mike Wilkus provided from his recent flyover.
I was hiking the north loop trail with Delilah, waiting for the arrival of our in-home broadband internet installer to finally connect us to the world of streaming content, and spotted this scene of pine needles carpeting the ground.
I’m sure glad that tree isn’t over our landscape pond.
As can be seen from the view perspective of Mike’s photo above, there are cultivated crop fields around us, keeping us aware that we live among farmers.
Yesterday the closest field to our south was being harvested. Something tells me we aren’t in the suburbs anymore.
That’s quite all right with me, …especially now that we are hardwired with fiber optic broadband.
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Cake Mistake
Missing ingredient? She swears not. Wrong ingredient? Confident there wasn’t. Overfilled pans? Can’t say it wasn’t, but both to this bizarre degree? Hard to pin down.
Cyndie tried an unfamiliar recipe to bake a vanilla cake for Julian’s birthday. Since it was an untested recipe, she decided to conform strictly to the directions, a somewhat uncommon mode for her.
It didn’t take long to suspect something was amiss.
The batter was boiling over in the oven. Both the six little bunt shapes and the square pyrex pan.
There was nothing very cake-like at all in this failed birthday bake-xtravaganza.
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Old ingredients? Nope, she said.
Baking powder or soda? Both included.
Did you mix up the amounts? No.
I want her to try again to see what happens. She has no interest in going near that recipe ever again.
After a quick visit to the grocery store for more supplies, Cyndie went for a layer cake.
It didn’t boil over.
Happy Birthday, Julian! 
(And Happy 39th Anniversary, John and Cyndie! It’s a gorgeous blue-sky September day today, just like that day in the garden was on the shores of Lake Minnetonka.)
I don’t remember the weather 32 years ago, because we were indoors in a hospital room. I do remember driving 2-year-old Elysa to the hospital to see Momma and meet her new younger brother.
September 19 is a special day for our family.
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This year, we celebrate it with a tinge of sorrow in the shadow of yesterday’s passing of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Here’s hoping she will still be guiding us all from her continued heavenly perspective.
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Celebration Dinner
It was a small gathering last night, in terms of usual for a birthday event celebrated by Cyndie’s family. Our two kids and Cyndie’s parents met downtown in Minneapolis for a royal feast at the Melting Pot restaurant for Julian’s birthday dinner.
The fact that it was also Cyndie’s and my 38th wedding anniversary helped to bolster the celebration a couple of notches.
The multiple courses of fondue made for a long meal. I didn’t get around to snapping photos until we were working on dessert because I had been so focused on cooking my own food.
Fred had the best line of the night when he said to the waiter, “My compliments to the chef!”
There were so many flavors being mixed and mingled it was dizzying. Most of the time, I didn’t know what I was eating, but it all tasted mighty good. My entree was a combination of meats that included shrimp, pork, chicken, and beef with a variety of spices. Add in six versions of dipping sauces and the two different flavored cooking oils and I had a good excuse for struggling to identify each bite.
It felt wonderfully celebratory!
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Finally
First, I want to point out that there are two special things I haven’t forgotten today. Happy Birthday, Julian! And, Happy Anniversary to Cyndie (and me).
One way I know that we have been married a long time: She sent me an email yesterday, announcing she had signed us up for a community education class on Navigating Social Security.
How romantic.
I chose one of her photographs for a new “Words on Images” composition.
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Minutes Revisited
From March 27, 2012:
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Words on Images
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I’ve really been enjoying my little forays into the archives of this blog lately. Picking a single day of the month, and then jumping through each of the ten years of posts on that day has been very revealing.
In 2013 on March 27th, I was writing about getting fence posts up to define the border of the paddock, excited about how things would change when we got horses.
It was later that year, September, when the herd arrived. Here is a picture of the moment the four horses had just walked out of the trailer:
Tomorrow, the process is reversed.
Our time together was too short, but we had a lot of great adventures over the years and they touched a lot of people’s lives here.
I’m not sure what’s in store for us next, but whatever it is, we hope to do those horses proud. They’ve taught us a lot during the time we’ve been together.
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Relative Something 