Life Expectations
I have shared about my health issues on occasion and how I'm not as active as I have been in the past. A week ago though, I did get some pie pastry put together and Hubby and I made a couple of apple pies.
As I've said in the past, I'd been hankering for some good old fashioned pie. I use an old 'lard' pie crust recipe, except I often use butter instead of lard. However, whichever I use it must be cold when cut into the flour.
It says it makes two double crust pies, but I can usually get three double crust pies. The third one isn't always pretty, it gets a bit short toward the end, but Saturday night we made the third pie—a cherry with some of our homegrown cherries. The flavor is unbelievably incredible.
This time of the year is like that cherry pie, and even the apple pies (they were from homegrown apples too). We have lived here in my husband's family home for sixteen years now, and it's somewhat bitter-sweet.
This farm has been part of our life—Hubby grew up here—and is part of our heritage. He was still living here when we married. These number of years later, we moved in here when his parents moved into town. The apple tree has been here all of those years, and we've been trying to restock the orchard.
This farm has been a part of our children's lives as well. Times have been spent here when Hubby worked with his Dad, and even after we moved away we returned for family meals and holidays. Our youngest son lived and grew up here over half of his growing up years.
Foundation, it's all part of a foundation. There were some good parts to my growing up foundation. I could compare different areas in my life and I decided that if I could change anything in my life to make it better, having a (good) mother and father would be it.
I loved my grandparents, I loved the 'farm' I grew up on, being able to run in the forest and fields, riding horses, growing up with cats, dogs, chickens and fowls as pets, and our cousins as friends and allies.
These things became important to me when considering how to raise our children. Having a solid home also meant Godly character learning. My grandparents may have had a problem with 'Christians', but they didn't have a problem with God. Of course it was too bad the mis-understanding with Christians led to a division with God.
"Give diligence to present thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, handling aright the word of truth." (2 Timothy 2:15 ASV)
