Another Post-I'm On A Roll!

I knit this Harry Potter scarf for my niece for Christmas a year ago, along with a slouch hat & fingerless mitts to match. Those who know me on Ravelry have already seen these knitting pictures. The scarf is raveled here, the mitts are raveled here, and the slouch hat, which I have blogged about is raveled here.

This scarf was also knit for my niece, and it's raveled here.  I loved how it turned out.  It was soft & squishy, and super long so she could wrap it around her neck a couple of times, and still have it hang down long on her tall self.

Nikki & John, Garden of the Gods, Manitou Springs, CO March 2011
If at all possible, on the years Nikki's living in the states, my son, John,  takes a week's vacation and visits her the week of her birthday. These are two kids (to me) who did more than their fair share of fighting in their years of living at home together. When Nikki was first born, John, who was 8 1/2 years older adored her. He called her his little babycakes.  Anytime we went anywhere, he and their daddy would race each other to the door by Nikki's carseat, each trying to be the one to get to carry her (little princess, she was!).
As I've mentioned here before, my late husband, Nikki's biological daddy, died in an accident when she was 13 months old.  Bubba, as we call John here at home (yes, we're from the south, and we have a bubba) helped me immensely in taking care of his baby sissy.  I remarried when Nikki was 5, and suddenly she had a big sister around John's age.  The newness and novelty of having a sister caused her to shift her affections from Bubba to her new sis; who, being a teenager at the time introduced Nikki to the use of sarcasm, something our family hadn't really dealt with prior to that point. I'm not blaming her. Lots of teens are sarcastic. John could deal out sarcasm with the best of them...it's just that, being a small close-knit family who'd lost one of it's members to death, we'd never gone down that road with each other. At least not before then.

As Nikki learned to be sarcastic with her brother, giddy with the knowledge that she now had a big sister, a rift developed in my children's relationship. It saddened me, but there it was. As Nikki entered her teen years, being of a strong choleric temperament, she and John had some doozies of fights, which even became physical a couple of times.  Our trusty Chow, Yogi, was always there to shut those down in a hurry, though. Good old Yogi Bear, how we miss him still.

After Nikki left home and moved to Germany at the age of 20, by the time she was able to return for a visit nearly 3 years later, though still always the little sis, she and John were now both adults, and able to interact as such....well, to a degree.  They can both resort to childish behavior in the blink of an eye now, but it's the fun part of childishness.  Bubba is always there for his sissy, a fact which brings me great comfort.

My little movie star. When I was a kid in the '60's, I remember that anytime we kids put on a pair of sunglasses, we'd always say something like "look at me, I'm a movie star"; or an adult would say "look at that little movie star". I can only surmise that movie stars must've been the only ones who wore sunglasses. Maybe sunglasses were very expensive, or maybe it was a bold fashion statement not made by the masses. I really don't know. I need to remember to ask my mom about that sometime.  Of course we all wear sunglasses now. You can even buy them on the cheap at dollar stores. Yet I still think to myself when I see pics like this of Nikki, "ooh, look at that little movie star".

John at Seven Falls, outside Colorado Springs, CO March 2011

John never smiles for pictures, and Nikki is never not smiling for them (or any other time). It does no good to encourage him to do so; he'll just get all the more serious looking. Must be a firstborn thing.  That's okay, I love him to bits despite his gruff exterior, and I know he loves me, too.


"If you feel unusually sad or as if you are carrying a heavy burden you don't understand, ask God what is wrong before you start assuming things.  It is amazing what we can learn by simply asking God for an answer and being willing to face any truth He might reveal about us or our behavior.  Sometimes we feel emotional because of something someone has done to us or an unpleasant circumstance in our lives. But at other times we feel that way because of something we did wrong and ignored."
~excerpted from Living Beyond Your Feelings by Joyce Meyer

"When I kept silence [before I confessed], my bones wasted away through my groaning all the day long."
~Psalm 32:3 Amplified Bible