Tribute...

Grandma went home to be with the Lord 11/8/2014 at the age of 102! She was an amazing woman and an inspiring one as well. She said she never didn't eat what she wanted and she was well known for never uttering a word of gossip. She painted and quilted, cooked and farmed, if the tin on the barn roof was blown off she got up there and repaired it-she was amazing. She loved all of us, her family unconditionally and never saw our faults. We will miss her but I am so glad she is finally home and finally reunited with grandad. Thank you grandma - for all of it - walks and talks and spray painted macaroni covered cigar boxes!  So happy that she was able to be home til the end and that I got to see her recently and spend some more time with her.  It is never enough is it?

This was her official Obituary.  She was Awesome!!

Nellie Corine Medlin
(September 20, 1912 - November 8, 2014)

Nellie Medlin

Nellie Corine (Quint) Medlin left this world behind and went to her heavenly home on November 8, 2014. She was 102 years old and was able to live at her home under the loving care of her daughters until her passing.

Nellie was born September 20, 1912 in Sullivan County, MO to Walter and Charlotte (Hamilton) Quint, the seventh of nine children. On April 8, 1931 she married George William Medlin. To this union three daughters were born: Irma, Evelyn, and Ramah. They lived on a farm southeast of Unionville before moving in 1943 to their farm north of Omaha. They enjoyed 53 years together before George’s passing. Nellie then moved to Unionville, MO.

Nellie spent her life serving others. She worked side by side on the farm with George, raised very large gardens, sewed clothes for her family, played music with her family at local churches, taught Sunday School and VBS at the Mount Hermon Church and Omaha Baptist Church, played the accordion at church and at nursing homes, made quilts and paintings for family members, and shared her many talents with others. Nellie was a self-taught natural musician and could play the accordion, piano, guitar, banjo, and mandolin. She was always willing to try new things and proved that age was not going to hold her back. She started oil painting at the age of 69, went white water rafting at 80, traveled to Alaska at 85, rode an ultra-light glider at 90, shot a crossbow at 95, and learned to Skype at 100.

Nellie was a Christian example to everyone she met, being kind and compassionate, forgiving, slow to anger, joyful always, and giving thanks in all circumstances. The lessons she taught her family and the memories she created will be greatly cherished.

Nellie was preceded in death by her parents, her husband, two son-in-laws, Niel Kiehn and Richard Morgan, one grandson, Courtney Dean Morgan, six brothers (Carl, Ross, Victor, Alva, Harry, and Glen Quint) and two sisters, Carmoleta Minear and Pauline Lewis.

Nellie is survived by her daughters Irma Kiehn of Exeter, CA; Evelyn Morgan of Pollock, MO; and Ramah (Richard) Dias of Hollister, CA. She is also survived by nine grandchildren: Kathy (Dave) Gates, Shawn (Edna) Kiehn, Rhonda (Steve) Rios, Nancy (R.G.) Lowry, Tonja (Ronnie) Wessel, Kym Jones, Chris Dias, Terry Jackson, and Shelly (Gary) Mort, 20 great-grandchildren, and 14 great-great-grandchildren. She is also survived by two sister-in-laws, Uarda Quint and Mary Pickett. 

This was Grandma at her 100th Birthday Party!

 

Away From Home

So Hubby and I are having a long distance romance again for a little while.  I think he will appreciate me more when I get home...Maybe?  Hopefully he and the kitties are not having too much fun without me and the dancing girls were just a threat!  :)  In all seriousness I really appreciate a hubby who says "go take care of your grandma, we will be fine!" 

Here is Mom, her sister who was widowed in February and Grandma (before we took her to the beauty shop.  We are eating fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and homemade bread, we may not have had meat in a meal all week.  There is nothing wrong with grandmas appetite, she eats like she always has!

We took Grandma to the beauty shop

Is it a compliment to say you look 10 years younger when you are 101?

Before I got here there was not enough 'Muscle' to get her out of the house, I told her I'd take her for a drive if I had to carry her all the way to the car!  We ended up finding a workable solution, and we have gone on 4 outings in the last 10 days.

We got 5 inches of rain yesterday, this is the driveway and the neighbors yard from the upstairs window (sorry for the screen)

Same shot today!  This is such a different climate from what I am used to in the semi arid western states.  Here in Missouri it is humid in the summer and they do not irrigate crops in general, they are more often worried about flooding than drought, although both can happen.  I spent a week or more here every summer that I can remember as a child and then I brought my kids back here about every 2 years when they were kids.  There is a nostalgia here for me as well as a grandma!



Since we are supposed to have a chance of rain for the next few days we will keep this weeks outings to the paved roads or as we say here 'on the black top'. 

We are all having fun Grandma and Mom and I and that is what is important.  Don't know how long grandma can last but want it to be as fun and comfortable as possible.

Baby has made her arrival!!!

I am a Grandma!

Lilliana made her entrance today after putting her momma through 15 hours of labor.  She weighed in at a whopping 8 pounds and 18 1/2 inches long.  She has quite a lot of hair and (according to the new Dad) healthy lungs!  I have been promised more pictures later after everyone gets some sleep!  Although I am not a huge fan of text messages I have to admit it was nice getting those updates from the delivery room all day and much of the night.  It has however left me a little worn out. (don't tell Amber I said that!) It is still much easier than the kid thing.  I am very sure that I feel much better tonight than Amber and I will sleep better the next few weeks or so!  So here is her debut of what is likely to be an inordinate number of photos on grandma's blog!

Like Christmas in April!

My mother is in Missouri taking care of her mother (my 101 1/2 year old grandmother) and one of the things she is trying to get done is to clean out some of her 'stuff' in the closets.  Grandma is and has always been a pack rat!  In her defense though she never had a lot of money and learned to make do with what she had.  She just never threw a lot away so she'd 'have' when the need came along!  One of my favorite 'Grandma to the rescue' stories was from my cousin's wedding and she had ordered a veil and when it came in she was just in tears - it didn't look like she had pictured it, so Grandma said well let me see what I can do with it and brought back the perfect veil, just like she had wanted, when we asked her how she fixed it she just smiled and said "old bleach bottle"!  She was just like that, I grew up thinking there wasn't much she couldn't do.

Last year Mom had found a bag of yarn in Grandmas upstairs closet and sent it to me as I was learning to crochet and she thought I'd get some use out of it.  We decided to call it 'vintage' yarn rather than just old yarn!  Well she was cleaning out another closet and found another couple of bags of yarn and it came in the mail today!  This is so much fun - most of this will get made into the beanies for the cancer treatment center who always need more hats!  I think there is enough in each skein left to make a beanie and a grannie square and then I will put together a wild mismatched throw of granny squares to make me think of grandma and her saving ways.  She really did teach us all to think outside the box before it became a buzzword!

Doesn't this just look like hours of fun!!?

Hubby just laughed - he knows Grandma and thinks there may be another bag of yarn around somewhere!!!

 So I will spend the rest of my afternoon listening to music and winding up balls of yarn.  Life is good!!

Another Disillusion!

My hubby grows the tomatoes.  He has for years, even when we had a container garden, and he is expanding now to the raised bed.  He just does it better than me.  He started his tomato growing with the hot pepper growing and you guessed it he LOVES salsa.  I apparently have something known as a "girl" mouth and cannot take even a whiff of heat without complaining and my tongue will burn for hours after a trip to a Mexican food restaurant.  When the tomato harvest gets going he will make his salsa and then I get all the tomatoes that are leftover for eating, canning and cooking.  I have sauce to can on the stove currently and I have the dehydrator going with tomato wedges on it.  This last is the source of my latest disillusionment.

I thought to myself  "what other interesting thing can I do reasonably easily with tomatoes?"  Sun dried tomatoes popped into my head - I love these in a little olive oil on a flatbread with feta cheese, or on my fake pizzas with pesto sauce and -  well, you get the picture.  So I turned to my favorite cookbook - Google - looking for recipes for sun dried tomatoes and there it was.....The United States Department of Agriculture which is responsible for food safety and the nutritional labels and making sure that if it says sugar free it is sugar free, these same people do not require 'sun dried tomatoes' to be sun dried, they are dehydrated in huge plants!   I understand there are bugs and rain and such but really! They shouldn't be allowed to put pictures in my head of Italian hillsides and Mediterranean sunshine and rows of tomatoes slowly shriveling up while soaking up the....... it's just wrong somehow.  I should have known I suppose but I guess I thought that was why they were so expensive.  HA!  Now I feel even better about the little wedges in the dehydrator (just like the expensive store bought brand!)  slowly turning into 'sun dried' tomatoes - I did keep the dehydrator outside on the porch during the hottest part of the afternoon.  One more step in my ongoing war against processed foods!   Steps toward more honest eating!  (mildly dramatic yes?) I'm thinking I may just call them sun dried tomatoes so people won't be confused!  :) 
I will post pics when they are done as well - so far this is really easy, I left the skins on and cut into wedges, mostly romas but some of the slicers, squeezed out the extra juice - into the sauce pot - and put them on the trays about an inch or two apart.  This photo is at 7 hrs in.

My cousin sent me a photo of the weekend corn fest at my Aunts house, my Mom and Grandma went to help and between the weekend and yesterday they froze 201 quarts of sweet corn and gave away bags of ears to anyone who would take it!  They plant several rows of sweet corn since they have a large acreage that they have farmed for years - these days they rent out the arable land but still have a huge garden.  They really are very self sufficient with the deer and the turkeys on the place and several ponds they can fish from.

Lord willing Grandma will be 101 in September!

Cousin Kailey says even if you're 100 they still make you work here!

The camp stoves are set up for blanching and the boys just keep picking!

It looked and sounded like a good time was had by all and proved that anything goes quicker if you can laugh and visit!  I sure miss my Mom!

 

Yes, I am thankful!

I think it is a good thing to list the things I am thankful for, to remind me that whatever happens out there in the world, that here in my world life is pretty good!

I am thankful

-that our country had an election and there were no riots or military takeovers. I am sure that the endless second guessing will make me just nuts any day now. (in case you were wondering – Barack Obama won because God has a plan, and this is how we get to where God wants us. It is not any more complicated than that. So now all the pundits can go home for Christmas. Just an idea!)

- for a year with no major health concerns for myself or hubby.

- that my kids are all doing well.

- that my grandmother turned 100 and I got to help her celebrate!

- that my mother seems to be following the same path and going strong.

- that we have a wonderful church and friends from the church.

- that I have hot running water – this will stay with me for awhile I think  (smile)

- that the wood stove we had not tried till it got cold has worked like a trooper.

- that we added another daughter in law to our family this year (can grandchildren be in our future?)

There are many more things to be thankful for, but I run out of time and energy, my memory needs to be jogged, I lose focus and start thinking of other things.... but the big one is this

- that the Lord has blessed us and kept us and made his face to shine upon us and given us peace!