Just Dreaming...

I miss San Juan Island...

Megan and I, in 2010, watching the San Juan coastline come into view while on a ferry...

Remembering those good ol' days

Winter, 2003

A friend recently posted on her blog, some memories she had of her childhood with her sisters. Reading through her post sparked off memories that my sisters and I have of when we were "knee high to a grasshopper".....

We led a pretty interesting life when we were little; favorite things to do included:

1. Playing cowboys, in which we would tape paper cow heads that we drew (we never could figure out why people couldn't tell right away that they were cows) to our bed posts and then have cattle round ups. Unfortunately, bed post cows don't move very fast.

2. Playing "Indians" which involved bows and arrows that were all constructed out of apple tree twigs and bright yellow yarn.

3. Catching Bumblebees and keeping them as pets in mason jars. At night, we would turn all the bedroom lights off except for one lamp and then watch our pet bees hover and buzz around the light. I think mom was blissfully unaware of what we were doing...

4. Playing town. It is really hard to play town with a total of three people. Emily was the banker (but never got any business since we didn't know what to use as "play money". I think Megan was the grocer, and our huge collection of Beanie Babies was used to fill her store. I was a detective and my job was to find out where all of our socks kept on disappearing to. I think I did occasionally get a bigger mystery, such as what happened to the Beanie Babies that were missing from the grocery store.

5. Having horse shows. All three of us were Certified Horse Delirious, and we would put all sorts of obstacles in our spacious backyard (everything from plastic lawnmowers to lawn chairs) and then pretend we were on imaginary horses as we ran at top speed jumping over our "fences" barefoot, and tried to avoid stepping on any bees that were hiding in the clover. If you managed to get over all the jumps without knocking any over, or getting stung by an annoyed bee, you won. ;)

6. Preparing to be Olympic champions. I kid you not, we did all sorts of stretches for about 1 hour every single day, preparing for stardom. Megan was going to be a gymnast, focusing mainly on being on the balance beam. We had no real balance beam, so we either used the 3' long edge of a bed's foot board, or we would unhook the ladder from our bunk bed, Em and I would hold it very firmly on its side and watch Meg precariously wobble from one side to the other. I was going to be an Olympic ice skater, but I can't remember what Emily wanted to be....

7. Go "spelunking" in the garage on rainy days. We would leave the lights off, and just use a flashlight as we pretended that we were in a dangerous cave that had hidden treasure in it.

8. Sing as terribly as possible and then laugh our heads off at whoever sounded the worst. Oh wait, we still do that...!

9. Start clubs that would disintegrate within two weeks. We still have a "secretaries notebook" from one of our clubs, and we laugh our heads off every time we open that thing. The dues were the funniest part. Here's a sample of what a club meeting looked like:

1 'o' clock p.m.: Old business discussed.

1 'o' 1: No old business

1 'o' 2: Dues counted. 13 cents.

1 'o' 3: Decided to use our funds to help homeless animals.

1 'o' 4: Changed our minds about the homeless animals. Not enough funds.

1 'o' 5: meeting adjourned.

We thought we were brilliant. ;D

10. Going "Ghost hunting". Now, I'm sure if mom knew what we were doing, she would have put a stop to it, but I don't think we ever told her. We painted smiley faces onto cotton balls and then hid them in our bedroom. Whoever got to be the "ghost hunter" had to use a flashlight and hunt down all the "ghosts" in our dark bedroom. We wanted to have spooky music playing while doing this, but since we didn't have any, the other two people who were not hunting would hum a song.

So there you have it. Now you know why we are who we are. Those of you who know us personally probably understand know why we are such a queer trio, but hey, those pet bumblebees sure were fun.

And you thought we were respectable... ;)

~Caitlyn

Lost another one

Aw shucks, I'm feeling downright lonely around here now.

At long last, Emily got her own blog.

I must admit that her blog is cute though! You can check it out HERE.

~Caitlyn

Sisterly Affection?

Emily and I learned something today.

Bush beans, fresh from the garden, will stick to clothing when someone throws one at you.

Sisters can be dangerous....

Especially when in the kitchen with a huge bowl filled with fresh beans.

I can't even tell you how it started, but before I knew it, I found a long, skinny bean sticking to my shirt and a certain sister trying to pull the "ever-so-innocent" look. being the very mature older sister that I am, I, uh--well-- that is to say-- retaliated! ;)

Maturity went to the wind as Emily and I pelted each other with the poor vegetables. Laughing, throwing, feeling ridiculous, the war waged on.

Let's just say that after a few minutes, I ended up stalking, er, walking off, with seven green beans sticking to my shirt.

She may have won the battle, but I'll yet win the war.....

Sisters are so fun! ;D

~Caitlyn

It became a family joke...

If you were to go into the girls room (the four of us share a room), and if you were moderately observant you might notice something that has produced smiles for others who have seen it...

On Megan's bed you would see a small, but thick book like this...

On Emily's bed you would see this ....

And on my bed you would see this!!

I'm seeing a pattern here... ;) And I'm afraid I'm at the bottom of this. On Monday, one of my alpacas went into labor, and I thought for sure that we were going to have a baby alpaca that day (alas, not yet). I get really jittery while waiting for my animals to give birth, so I wandered the house looking for a fictional book.

I rarely read fictional books, mostly because I'm always too busy reading non-fiction, but at this moment I needed something that would distract me. And a 'Lord of the Rings' book just happened to be laying about. It all went downhill from there.

I finished 'The Two Towers' in one day (waiting for that alpaca baby!), but the book cruelly leaves you hanging, so I was "forced" [wink] to get the last one and find out how it all ends.

It's hilarious when a family member walk into our room, and notices that all three of us are reading the same series. I think our favorite memory so far is of big brother Chris. He walks into our room and first notices Emily reading a book that should have been on his bookshelf. He said nothing and turned to go out, as he turned, he looked at Meg's bed and noticed 'The Hobbit', yet another one of his books. It wasn't until he saw that I TOO had one of his books on my bed that he started to laugh as he continued to go out. ;)

Have you ever tried those funny quizzes that tell you "what character you are most like"? I always get a kick out of those. The downside to doing these is that my sisters and I are SO alike that we all always come up as the same character. Hmm.. We tried the LOTR quiz... And couldn't stop laughing!!

Meg and I came out as Frodo (Emily laughed good and hard at that), but Em came out as Boromir!! Meg and I totally lost it. Fuming, Emily asked what was wrong with that. "Nothing at all!" We replied in between gasps, "But the contrast is so funny!" Oh well, she laughed too in the end. :)

None of us have seen the movie, and after reading the books, we decided that we don't want to see it. We'll just be old fashioned and stick with the books.

Okay, I'll cease my endless chatter here and go make some bread.

Toodle~pip and cheerio my readers! :D

~Caitlyn (aka, Frodo ;D)

Reminiscing

On paper, er, screen that is, 'Reminiscing' looks like a very oddly spelled word. ;)

Today while doing chores I popped a favorite Celtic CD in our cd player, and listened to the lilting, joyful sounding music. Well, that was how it was at first....

It all starts with nodding your head in time to the music, then it leads to humming with it, then a sister comes along, looks at you, grins and before you know you are both setting to the music in tandem!

Meg and I love nothing more than to think back of favorite dances, or not so favorite, that we've done together. :) 'The waterfall Waltz', 'Mary's Wedding', 'Boston Teaparty'. [sigh] Good memories all about it....

We stopped attending the weekly ECD (English Country Dance), mostly because of the distance, and it's always hard to do when there are little ones to keep busy.

I remember during a masquerade ball that we went to, Meg and I danced together for almost the whole thing. There was one dance in particular (can't remember the name) that was reeeaallyy slow; Meg and I don't do well together during slow dances (she likes to go fast). So we started goofing around, oh, we still did the dance perfectly, but we added those silly things one would only do with a sister or sibling. :) We made faces at each other as we passed or did 'two-hand turns', added extra goofy steps to the slower parts, etc... We actually started laughing out loud! People started watching us to see what we would do next and I think perhaps some of them wished to join in our silliness. ;D That dance is now in our "list of favorites" despite its slowness; because Meg and I had so much fun together doing it!

Doing a fast. crazy dance with my sister Megan is the absolute best!! We both get to laughing and then we forget what the next step is; but then, during the fast ones, most everyone forgets the next part! Meg and I like to twirl each other (I looove being twirled!) while dancing too.

In our little kitchen is where Meg and I always seem to end up dancing. We set together, do favorite moves from favorite dances and choreograph our own dances to go with our CD's. 'Tis fun. :)

Poor Emily, the age limit for dancing was 13, and she was 12 when we were attending! Alas, we had stopped about a month before her birthday, so she never got to go to a ball and very rarely got to dance during the weekly dances. :( Meg and I always include her in our 'spur-of-the-moment' dances, and she got to do enough dances that she can reminisce with us.

I think our favorite thing to do (usually at night when we're in bed) is to ask the question: "If you could do any dance, which would you choose?" That's always a hard one to answer. The Dingle dance was fun. But short. The Gothic dance is fun and fast! But it's best if there is at least 70 people. How about the Contra dance? Very fun, but also very long. The Waterfall Waltz, Whip-the-Willow, Say-I-Do.... Which one does one choose? Personally, I think I like ALL of them, but if I got to choose just one, I think I would choose the slow dance called "Enchanted Place". Each move mirrors a part from the story of 'Winnie the Pooh'! I love the slow, graceful, trickiness about it!

Meg says she would choose the fast and crazy 'Contra dance'.

And Emily would choose 'The Gothic dance'. Another fast and crazy one. :)

Good memories all about it...

~Caitlyn