Friday, August 31, 2012
Thursday, August 23, 2012
"Quote"...UnQuote
then indeed you are growing with all things that grow,
and rising toward your greater self.~ Khalil Gibran♥"
and I just loved it so much and wanted to keep it.
So I am filing it here and sharing it with you.
She is wonderful writer, chef and painter.
Posted by Bonnie at 1:31 PM 1 comments
Labels: Daybook, Lessons Learned, Points to Ponder, Possibilities
Monday, August 13, 2012
A Simple Woman's Daybook~August 13, 2012
,
Outside my window...It is sunny and warm. I can see our American Flag just hanging on its pole on the side of the house and the hydrangeas on the porch look a little pekid. A little water should fix them right up again. They are pink and so pretty. Laura and the boys just went to the trampoline center for a couple of hours leaving me a few moments to create a daybook entry this afternoon. We have had several hot days in a row and with no a/c I am beginning to get grumpy about it. It is actually very pleasant until about 4:00 pm when suddenly it gets very hot and stays that way until midnight. Ugh.
I am thankful for...The wonderful past three weeks while we have been in Utah for two weeks and now home with Laura and the boys for another week. It has been wonderful. I must admit I am pretty tired. Just not use to being busy 24x7 in spite of the fact that this entire year has been like this. As Jen says, "2012 is not one I want to do over!" There has been so much going on and most of it very good stuff...just non-stop. Some where in the midst of it all I turned 65 and am feeling it.
I am reading...Sacrificed for Honor, an amazing historical research piece on infant abandonment in European countries for centuries (17th, 18th and 19th) to maintain the honor of unwed mothers. Very interesting, very sad, very eye-opening. It was recommended to me and I got it on Amazon. Italy had the highest rates of abandonment over 37,000 babies in one year in the 1800's. Interesting links to religion, economics and politics and other societal issues. Still reading this in bits and peaces and now sharing it aloud with Jim.
Some spiritual thoughts I have been having...I am just so happy we share common beliefs, standards and values with so many family members and good friends. It is like a large comfort zone of like-minded loved ones.
Pet Peeves...How fragile things are sometimes. We just have to keep constantly nurturing all the good in our lives. I wish it could just come flowing to us without the constant work sometimes, but life is not like that. Only Christ's gifts are free and everything else takes working continually. It is nice to have that oasis in Christ..knowing he always loves us purely, always treats us fairly, always listens and understands. It makes the rest more doable. Where others let us down we can be assured he never will.
I am curious about...The upcoming election. Most people have probably decided by now and will vote according to their conscience. The people that are so annoying are the ones that have to keep being critical of other people's opposite choices by badgering and throwing it up in their faces. I like the approach of respecting each other and keeping differing politics out of relationships. Now if you happen to agree with each other...go for it. Just don't disrespect someone else's choice in a rude way. But the perplexing part is this election is just not like that. Curious, indeed. We are going to war ourselves right out of our freedoms if we continue on as we are headed now.
If I could change one thing it would be...that things that seem to never change no matter what you do...would.
Plans for the rest of the week...tomorrow delivering a few gifts to people that I keep missing, hanging out with Laura and the boys and Jim and going with Laura and the kids to the Farmers' Market in the morning, tomorrow night going to the Family Search Library with Laura to work on some stuff while Jim takes the boys to a swimming party. Wednesday we are having a jewelry party here so have treats to get organized. We are looking forward to having some friends come to see Laura while she is here. Thursday Laura and I are going overnight to a small town near by for some unadulterated girl time. Just the two of us. We have some fun plans including a massage, high tea luncheon and who knows what else? I adore having them here it is the best. We are having a great time. They will not be back on the west coast for two years. So that means we'll be going back east because there is no way we cannot see them for that long. Sadly they leave on Saturday. Then it is back to business as usual. Bittersweetness!
One of my favorite things...fresh cherries and my sweet Ross just brought me a little bowl of them accompanied by a huge hug and sweet talk for his Gramma. I am in love with being a grandmother. Is there anything sweeter, I ask you? Life is good!
Some photos I am sharing this week... this is our buffet dinner from last night. Wish you could have joined us. I forgot to take a photo of the strawberry short cake. (One of our favorite desserts.)
❤♡♥♡❤♡♥♡❤♡♥s, B
Posted by Bonnie at 5:06 PM 4 comments
Labels: Daybook
Love is...
“Love is like a flower and like the body, it needs constant feeding. The mortal body would soon be emaciated and die if there were not frequent feedings. The tender flower would wither and die without food and water. And so love, also, cannot be expected to last forever unless it is continually fed with portions of love, the manifestation of esteem and admiration, the expressions of gratitude, and the consideration of unselfishness.”
-Spencer W. Kimball
I want to be better at always remembering this. It is easy to get careless in our loving.
Posted by Bonnie at 12:42 PM 0 comments
Labels: Love, Ross W. Colberg
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Dad's Trilogy of Childhood Memories
My Dad left us three amazing stories from when he was a child. I love these...they seem to come out of a very, very long time ago. So long ago in fact, it is hard for me to fathom life at that time for someone that I actually knew as well as I knew my Dad.
Liverwurst..possibly the wurst all right.
It was in the fall of the year so crops had been harvested and there were few fences so the old boy had plenty of room to run. It was a hard day's ride to the rail head and back but as I look back on it it was exhilarating fun in the outdoors and quite an accomplishment for a couple of kids. I think some of the neighbors were laying bets we'd never get the bull to market.
We did it though and then sat back and awaited our pay of $.50 a piece. For me it never came to pass and to this day I don't know if Mr. Ballinger got he bull to market for free or if Virgil reaped the full benefit. I guess the moral of the story is you can drive a bull to market but you may not get your just reward!"
Virgil is in the clear!
Posted by Bonnie at 5:33 PM 0 comments
Labels: Ross W. Colberg
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Dad's Journal Entries Part 1
This week I wrote about my Dad in celebration of what would have been his 95th birthday. http://bonsblogbydesign.blogspot.com/2012/08/happy-birthday-daddy_8.html I included an edited version of the introduction to the book I wrote about him just months subsequent to his death. Today I want to continue that entry with a short introduction to his planned writings of his life history and a trilogy of short stories he included before his untimely death. The way that all happened is a reminder that it is never too early to get started on preserving our memories. We never know when our time on earth will end.
I had given Dad a journal for Christmas a couple of years before he died. I asked him the following Christmas to share what he had written. He sheepishly told me he hadn't done it yet. So I asked him to please start and to give it to me for my birthday in July. He agreed. Over the next couple of months he made a few entries. With no warning he started having cardiac issues in May and was gone by May 21, 1979. My dad was youthful and active and physically appeared to be the perfect picture of health. We just never know. Not exactly the birthday present I was hoping for that is for sure.
For months after his death Mom and I scoured the house because she knew he had been working on it. Now their home was very orderly and so there just were no piles of stuff to look through, and not many out of the way places it might be hiding. We were just baffled by what had happened to it. One day while putting something away in their coat closet I was impressed to reach up on to a shelf that was completely empty above the coats. My fingers grazed the top of something that looked like this.
Many years later, she remarried, Grandpa Moore, who was also quite religious and my first recollection of table prayers was at their house. He was a carpenter by trade, but pretty much retired by the time I knew him. He always had a big garden so I learned how to hoe weeds when I went for a visit! Grandpa Moore died and Grandma lived for a while with my Aunt Elsie in Linton, North Dakota and later at St. Vincent's Home in Bismarck. She died there and must have been nearly ninety.
I don't remember much about the Colberg side of my family. I do know that my Grandpa John and Grandma Josephine came to America from Stockholm, Sweden. I think their oldest son, Frank was born there but, the rest of their children were born in this country. They had two girls, Agnes and Delia, and five boys, Frank, Fred, Philip (my father), George and Victor. I have faint recollections that Grandpa Colberg worked in logging and the sawmills in Sweden. He was not a tall man but had big arms and great shoulders which might bear out the fact that he did heavy work in his early life. He became a farmer after homesteading in the Dakota Territory, and they lived in a sod shanty.
Grandma Colberg spent her time in the kitchen also, and wore starched, blue, gingham dresses and always had a shawl or cap on her head. She smoked a corncob pipe with cheap tobacco called corncake--she was kind of a crusty old gal who always spoke her mind and would switch to Swedish when she couldn't talk fast enough in English. (Or when she didn't want me to understand!) I couldn't understand Swedish, but my Dad could and my mother had learned to understand and speak a little. Grampa died when I was about six and Grandma when I was eleven, just ten days after my Dad.
for us of this "Crusty Old Gal?
My mother, Alice Godfrey was born in Ashley in 1896. She went through high school there and I think she attended Ellendale Normal School for a short time or at least long enough to be able to teach in a one room rural schoolhouse. She and Aunt Elsie were both school teachers before they married.
My Dad, Philip Albert Colberg, was born in Montrose, near Sioux Falls, South Dakota in 1886. I know of two jobs he had in his early years. He worked for a time in a creamery and to his dying day he would not eat butter. I guess it was because of the sanitation or lack thereof that he noted while working in the creamery. He wouldn't even allow my mother to cook with it. When she wanted to tease him she would set the butter near his plate at the table. He would give it a shove with some force and then put jelly in his bread. He also spent time working on the railroad. Later he became a farmer which was very hard work and not always rewarding. Being a farmer did have one good point though--it kept him out of World War I."
Thus ended the journal entry that Dad began in the spring of 1979 and was never able to finish. It was just a beginning but I will always love him for the valiant effort he made to do it just because he knew how important it was to me. In the front of the journal we eventually found he wrote the following...
♥ Bonnie
Posted by Bonnie at 4:18 AM 0 comments
Labels: Ross W. Colberg
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Happy Birthday, Daddy!
My Dad would be 95 years old were he alive today. Sadly he died when he was 61 years old. So very young, way too young with the potential of many years still left unlived. He was taken from this life due to an embolism in his lung after his second heart attack.
My Dad died when
I was 30, I really miss him. It is hard to imagine that I have spent more than
half my life with him gone. It's funny though that when someone impacts
you like a parent does...they are never far away.
My Dad grew up in North Dakota and he was a great guy. His Father passed
away before my Dad became a teenager and that placed some huge hardships
upon my Grandmother to raise her two children. Consequently, my Dad
spent a lot of time away from his Mom and sister while growing up.
Another family, the Vanorneys (God bless them), took him in so that he could continue his schooling while
my Grandmother sold all the farm equipment and moved from Ashley to
Bismarck to go to school. She eventually became a court reporter and
then was able to survive. My Dad had a college degree which was rare in
those days, from the University of North Dakota in accounting.
He
worked endless hours to make it happen with no financial support from
his Mom, as she was barely making it herself. He was very athletic and
handsome and would get the most gorgeous golden tans in the summers. He
was super smart and had a great sense of humor. Here is a photo of Dad
at 19. Isn't he a cutie? Had he been LDS he would have been ready to
go on a mission about this time.
My
Dad was a gentle and quiet man. He didn't talk your ear off, but when
he spoke he had something important to say and people listened. He got a
position with the Firestone Tire Company in Minnesota after he
graduated from college. My Mom had just moved there from South Dakota
to go to beauty school and that is how they happened to meet in 1939 or
40. I think they were the cutest couple. Here they are on one of their
dates before they got married.
My Dad was a great father. Sometimes I wish he would have offered more direction, but his parenting style was more like ~ train up a child and then let them try their wings. He always trusted me and supported my decisions. My Dad was just such a kind person. People that worked for him would always tell me what a gentleman he was and that he was the best and kindest boss they had ever had. He was always so even-tempered and kind at home too. I think I can only remember him ever being really mad at me two times in my whole life and both times I deserved it! When he got annoyed about things he would grind the gear shift in the car and that was about it.
Some of my favorite times with my Dad where when I was a young adult and I worked in San Francisco at Standard Oil with him. We commuted together for a few years and that was a great one on one time for us. I was always very proud to be his daughter when I would meet his colleagues from work or anywhere for that matter. Dad worked endless hours in the Lutheran church, he was a great servant for the Lord. I really miss my Dad! I know that families are forever though and that helps!
The best part of our relationship was when he became a Grandpa and that is when I really saw him open up and adore our kids! He had a great smile and laugh and I can remember seeing more of both during those times. He was the first Grandfather in our town to work in a classroom as a volunteer when Jen was in kindergarten. He called Christopher his Little Buddy and spent lots of hours over here playing with the kids. Sadly he had only a few months with Laura before he was taken home.
Posted by Bonnie at 2:04 PM 1 comments
Labels: Ross W. Colberg