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                Dad with our Firstie Daughter

We made our annual trek to the USAF Academy for Parents Weekend.  For us, this trip is two-fold.  Firstly, we have a daughter there.  This year she is a Firstie (a One Degree or a Senior)!  This is our last year to visit her for this event, kind of bittersweet.  Secondly, we come to see all the parents who converge on Colorado Springs to see their kids!

Parents Weekend is a common event at many universities and colleges.  For some, it is for parents to see their babies (Frosh or Freshmen) who have just recently gone away to school!  For those with children at a military academy, this is very emotionally important, as they have not been allowed to communicate or see their child (except for handwritten   letters) for several weeks!

I’ve heard that at the Naval Academy, they only have one Parents Weekend during the whole college career of a student.  One mom told me that her daughter was upset that she had told her dad several years before that he HAD to be sure and get off work and come to her Parents Weekend.  He was not able to! 🙁  I think originally USAFA’s Parents Weekend was for freshmen or 4 Degree parents, but now lots of parents come every year their child attends the Academy.

During USAFA’s Parents Weekend, there is an informational fair called the Info Fair.  Many rows of tables are decorated with colorful tablecloths and covered with memorabilia such as hats, bags, shirts, and other items for parents to buy.  Parent Clubs and local vendors man the tables.  We, however, are not local, but have been doing this for many years, since we offer a service to the cadets and their parents…an heirloom quality display case in which to put the saber that symbolizes the 4 years of blood, sweat and tears that they put into their education.  My husband graduated from USAFA in 1986, so it has a special place in our hearts.

I love meeting all the cadets and their families, and sharing with them about how important a saber and case is.  Usually one or more of our children come and help me.  This year was my husband Rich’s first time to come!  He wanted to bless his daughter by meeting her teachers and advisors and just spending time with her.  What he hadn’t counted on was how fun it is to interact with all the parents and their children!

We have our biggest sale of the year at this time.  And even if you didn’t make it to Parents Weekend, or you or your child are affiliated with a different school, you can still take advantage of our sale!  Be sure and put the sale code in at checkout PW2018 to receive 8% off your saber case!  Or, if you like our new service, Glass Etching (we etch your class crest or other graphic on your glass cover, on either the right or left side), you get 1/2 off the price of this service when you type in PWGlass18 at checkout.  You can use one or both codes.

Mom and Daughter

And DD, if you’re reading this, we love you and are so proud of you!

Our cadet with her siblings

Mmmm…the taste of a ripe tomato fresh from the garden!  I had one today, and it took me back to when I was a kid.  My mom had a huge garden that took up a quarter of our little suburban backyard.  I loved to go out, pick a tomato, bring it in the house, sprinkle salt on it, and munch away!

My mom also canned our vegetables so we would have them in the winter.  I remember going into my brother’s bedroom.  He had two closets, side by side, with shelves that connected them.  One side held his personal belongings, the other side had rows and rows of homemade canned vegetables.

She sewed our clothes when I was a kid, too.  She taught me how to crochet.  I was about as crafty as a rock; about all I could do was make a long string of crocheting!

She made homemade bread until one day, as she tells the story, she broke a nail and it got kneaded into the dough!  At that time, she gave the job to my dad (who had been a cook in the army).

Even though he worked hard all day running his construction company, he found time to make crusty loaves of bread, and juicy peach and apple pies.  He often woke us up on Saturday or Sunday morning to homemade biscuits!

My parents are pretty awesome!  I guess a lot of people did that kind of thing back then; it’s harder to find people being self-sufficient nowadays.

My husband and I want to remind people of what we call “the lost arts.”  Soap-making, candle-making, churning butter, etc.  That’s one of the reasons we have a farm.  The longer we run our farm, Buttercup Ranch and Creamery, the more we realize there is to learn, and how much we don’t know!

But that’s okay…it’s fun to try to do things yourself.  Will you make mistakes?  Yes, lots of them!  Is it messy?  Yes, but you just clean up afterwards.

Our garden teaches me lots of lessons.  When our kids were small, we had a huge garden.  Now, kids are growing up and leaving, and we have a lot smaller one.  It’s more manageable, but still gets out of control.  I am trying to be consistent (my lifelong struggle!) and go out and weed, water and harvest a little each day.  Today I weeded a large patch that had gotten out of control.  It was very satisfying.  When I stepped back and saw the garden as a whole, it still looked like a mess.  But parts are getting under control.

Just like my garden, is my life.  I’m trying to have consistency in lots of different areas.  It’s tough!  But I just have to keep plugging away every day.  Some days will be great, others will be lousy, but it’s okay.  Or maybe one day we just slow down and talk to each other and sort out some issues that have been brewing below the surface for a long time.  Maybe some stuff will not get checked off my “To Do List,” but so what?  Some things are more important.

And tomorrow, I pick back up and start over again.  It’s okay.  It’s good.  Life is good.

How about you?  Do you struggle with consistency?  Or maybe you need to relax and put away your “To Do List”and just “be.”  Be with your friends, be with your family, nurture relationships.  Or just be with yourself and have a little “you” time, working on a hobby or passion.  Either way, “pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.”

I’m going to go brew a cup of mint tea (with mint leaves from my garden!) and read a book.  

Did you know that the national flower of Scotland is the thistle?  Noooo…..

My husband has been doing research on his family history and has traced his ancestry to a town in Scotland.  This past Spring, we visited Edinburgh, spending most of our time at Edinburgh Castle.  Such fascinating history!  Now that we’ve discovered the town my husband’s ancestors came from, we hope to go there next year.

While there, we realized that the national flower of Scotland is the thistle.  Thistles are a pesky weed that we fight on our farm!  I guess the thistle is very persistent, and so are the Scottish people!  We want to be persistent in all we do and encourage our children in that way.

So, this year, we pulled out as many shovels as we could find so that everyone had their weapon!  Each family member was given a certain section of our farm and had to dig up every thistle they could find, no matter how big or small.

The plan was to start in one corner of our section and dig up every thistle in a row across the area.  Then we would proceed on to the next row.  When we look behind us, we should see no thistles!

The technique:  stab your shovel down into the dirt, a few inches away from the plant, then dig down, getting hopefully under the root.  Take that shovelful of weed and dirt and dump it to the side.  Pick up the plant by the root (wearing gloves, as thistles have painful prickles).  Shake the dirt off, throw the thistle into a spot where you will put all the thistles (later all the thistle piles are collected in the tractor bucket to be dumped in a huge pile that will be burned).  Shovel the displaced dirt into the hole you have created, and then tamp it down.  On to the next thistle!

I am OCD, and I found it helpful to count my thistles as I dug them.  In a three-day period, I dug 1,180 plants!  Some were very miniscule, and some were monstrous!

It was interesting to watch how each family member tackled the problem.  Some of them would not follow the rules but want to do things their way (hmmm…. sounds like a song…).  They would sharply stab the shovel right close to the plant and flick it out of the ground.  Of course, this way would leave the root in the ground!  Or they would dig a thistle here, wander over there, dig another one over there, and wander back to here.  If they had looked behind them, they would see patches of thistles!

In a previous year, one family member decided that the fastest way to rid their designated patch of thistles was to mow it!  Sure, their patch quickly looked nice while the rest of us were sweating and struggling with thistles.  But this year?  That patch was my area!  So, I had lots of work!  This person saved themselves time and work but made more for the next person.

In the process of digging thistles, I see many life lessons:  1) Do a thorough job so that when you are done, you can look back and you don’t have to go back and do anything over.  2) Do your job well, and don’t make work for other people by your laziness or shortcuts.  3)  Be diligent in the small things so that the small things don’t become big things!

While digging thistles has taught us many life lessons, we’ve discovered an easier (hopefully) way to combat them…a high potency vinegar!  This will be a natural way to treat the problem without harming the environment.  Because of its strength, we must be careful and wear gloves, and only spray it on the thistle, as it will kill everything!  We’ll see if this new treatment works, and there might be some new lessons learned with this new method.

Sounds like the start of a really bad joke…it’s not.  Hang onto your hat, and I’ll tell you.

Whew!  It has been awhile since I posted.  I know that bloggers should be posting weekly, but life gets in the way.  We recently finished a crazy project.  We wrote an application for a government grant for our farm.  If you’ve never done it before, it is different.  I am an English major and love to write, and this was a type of writing totally new to me.

Kind of like dating…alright, let me digress…I’ve been told I have ADD tendencies…when you’re dating, you’re getting to know a person that you like.  And if you both have the same intensity of chemical attraction, it’s quite a roller coaster ride…or a Corvette ride.

Well, that happened to my now husband Rich and me.  Remember how we met?  At my church’s College and Career group in San Antonio, while he was going through P.I.T. (Pilot Instructor Training) at Randolph AFB.  I thought he was fun and cute.  On our third or fourth date, he was “babysitting” his friend Ed’s Corvette (thanks, Ed!).  When he pulled up in front of my house to pick me up, I was so amazed.  This was my dream car!  After coming to the door and assuring my mom that he would take good care of me, we were off to spend a day in the Texas Hill Country.  Behind the Corvette, he was pulling his boat (if you have a USAFA cadet, when he or she is a 2 Degree, or Junior, he will get to take out a loan.  Most cadets buy a car at this point.  My husband went in with a classmate of his and bought a ski boat!).  He planned to take me out on his boat and have a romantic lunch on the lake.

I got in the car and immediately felt like I was sitting on the road, it was so low.  A true gentleman, Rich shut the heavy Corvette door.  Right after that, he doubled over, holding his thumb and grimacing.  I actually thought he was joking around; even at this early point in our relationship, I knew he liked to play pranks and be funny.

He got in the car and didn’t complain about his hand.  We went on and had a lovely day.  We had a BBQ lunch on his boat using his Hibachi grill (there’s an infamous story from his Academy days about it; maybe I’ll tell you later), and then stopped at various antique shops.

The sun was setting when he turned to me and admitted that his thumb was bruised and bleeding and in extreme pain and I would need to take him to the Emergency Room to have them puncture it and relieve the pressure.

I was more than willing to help him, but was quite nervous.  I was going to get to drive my dream car, but I had to be careful, since it belonged to a friend and I needed to hurry, since my boyfriend was in pain.

I drove as quickly as I could.  Once there, we walked to the Emergency Room.  I stood outside the door but could see Rich, the doctors, and his staff through the window.  However, I am very squeamish when it comes to blood, and could not keep looking when the doctor started the treatment.

While this was a little bit traumatic, sharing this event together actually brought us closer together.  He couldn’t fly for awhile due to his injury, and of course all his buddies at P.I.T. joked that he did it on purpose in order to be in San Antonio longer!  I was not happy he got hurt, but I was thankful we got to be together a little longer!

But wait, how does all this relate to writing a government grant?  Well, let me see now…when you first meet someone and are attracted, there’s an excitement, right?  You want to spend all your time with them, and you’re even sad when you can’t be with them.  As Rich and I spent more and more time together, we realized we truly loved each other.  This outing took us to a deeper level in our relationship, as I had to reach out of myself and help Rich.

So, writing a grant.  I have done a lot of writing throughout my life.  I did journalistic writing in high school and college.  I wrote fiction from first grade on.  I love to be flowery and verbose when I write.  I could not do that with the grant.  It was very technical and specific.  It seemed like I was being asked the same questions over and over in different sections.

It wasn’t too hard, but it was challenging to have to be detailed and specific and not verbose!  I had to reach out of myself to write in this different style.  Kind of like in a relationship where you have to understand another person who you like, but they are different from you.  You have to learn to give and take, to compromise.  I had to compromise my verbosity in order to get my point across in the manner that the government agency would understand.

We have to wait quite a few months until we know if we will get any money or not.  It seems like a long shot!  Our chances of getting it are slim, but it was still a worthwhile venture, and I learned something new about myself and my writing, and about applying for a grant.  When I first thought about doing it, it seemed like some mysterious, difficult thing that I would have to go and take a class on, or pay someone else to do (a lot of people do that!).  But then, in true MacKeen fashion, we just jumped in and did it!  Did I ever tell you about the time we raced in a 340-mile kayak race with little training?  Well, that’s a different story for another time.

You may be feeling the same way about a loved one who has started on the journey of attending a military academy, or enlisting in the military.  It’s scary and mysterious, and you don’t know much about it.  Well, that’s part of the mystique and romance of it.  Just be willing to listen to your loved one, and learn all you can about what they’re going through.  And be comforted that this experience will help you all grow.

Well, I did it. I had another travel adventure. Our blog is called Coming Home, but seems like lately I’ve been leaving it quite a bit. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, though, right? I actually just heard a woman in the airport tell another person that she purposely goes away a few days every month, “just to clear the air…otherwise, I could not do what I do.” Amen, sister! I agree. I think that is my philosophy, too.
After my farming stint, I needed a break. Rich and I had been planning our getaway for quite awhile.
Rich is an airline pilot, and I tag along with him on his trips sometimes, especially when he has a long layover in an exotic location.
We arrived in paradise and had a fabulous time! Hydrotherapy, amazing lunch buffet, Japanese restaurant where the chefs give a show as they cook, Las Vegas show, yummy breakfast buffet with a beachside view, massage, and sailing…it was a short but full break!
The plan was for both of us to go home the next evening, Rich would be home a day, but then would have to leave the next evening for work. He would work on the farm and in the woodshop during his short time home.
That all changed as I met him after getting off the plane in Chicago. He had to work that night! A flight to New York.
Okay, I would try and follow him and have an afternoon in New York the next day before heading home. We decided we would work on the website that day.
I didn’t think there would be room for me on the plane, but there was! I boarded, but sensed that something was wrong. Several of the passengers seemed frustrated. It turned out to be a large extended family who was on their way to the funeral of the family patriarch. Some family members were running through the airport, trying to catch the flight, and those on the plane were concerned that they might not make it in time, and they weren’t sure if the crew would wait for their family.
They found out that one of the pilots was my husband, and they shared their story with me. I told them I would make sure that they knew. The flight attendant assured me that yes, they knew, and they were waiting. The family was relieved. Despite the traumatic reason for their trip, they seemed to be a close, loving family who seemed to enjoy each other even in the midst of their pain. I was glad to help, even though it was a small thing I did.
After all this, the flight was delayed. My husband came back and shared his condolences. He and the crew also kept in contact with the passengers, letting them know why we were delayed. This went a long way in calming the travelers, and was good customer service.
I recently read in the book Platform, by Michael Hyatt, that staying in tune with your customers, and doing everything you can to make something right when something goes wrong, is super important.
We try to do that with our customers. We aren’t perfect, but we try. And we will keep trying to improve and do our best to make our customers happy.
After the bittersweet experience with this family, we landed, Rich even gave the grieving widow a hug. We waited by the curb in New York, listening to angry car horns. The bus driver who was to take the crew to the hotel was not in his bus. He finally came to his vehicle, and seemed to have excuses for why he was late. He actually got in an argument with one of the crew members! I thought, “Wow! That is not good customer service! This is the opposite of what just happened in the airplane.”
Customers are not the enemy! They are the reason we are in business! The customer is always right…that’s what I’ve always heard. We need to do our best to meet their needs. And if we can’t, we need to communicate and empathize with them as much as we can. Business is about making money, yes, but by giving excellent customer service, mutually helping each other.
The next day was another whirlwind of activity. After a leisurely breakfast, we took a quick walk to Times Square, as we were staying in Manhattan. I got caught up in the busyness and crowds. I loved getting lunch from a food cart, and then walking past all the local businesses, seeing Sax Fifth Avenue, the diamond district, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, all the signs advertising upcoming shows and musicals, the long line of people waiting to buy tickets to the latest event, and the Jewish men in black with hats and beards, sharing their faith.
The “vacation” sadly came to an end as we made our way back to the airport. I kissed my hubby goodbye and now I am sitting on an airplane that is waiting to take off…really not sure if I will make it home tonight or not…uh-oh, I think I feel another “adventure” coming.