I haven’t sung the "We just got a letter" song all week. Apparently, I can blather on and on for quite some time before it hits me that noone is blathering back. Once it hit me I got a bit paranoid and told Allen, who suggested that perhaps noone was GETTING my mail.  Could it be?  Yes indeed. Although we have incoming mail set up there was a glitch with outgoing.  This means alllllll those notes sent this week went into cyberspace and not into your boxes dear friends! And since I can’t send out I couldn’t tell you I couldn’t send out.

We have a call in to tech support so hopefully the problem will be solved right quick. Meantime please excuse the silence on this end of the inbox. : /   

….without them what would pregnant moms do??  Alannah really pulled off Thanksgiving for us this year. She is becoming a proficient cook and did the pumpkin pies herself – complete with the homemade crust.  Then set the table and generally provided an extra set of hands. For this I was exceedingly thankful!

Moira and Allen went on the second season hunt last week.  We just got the pics uploaded and she was too funny to pass up blogging about. Here she is in the Colorado wilderness first thing in the morning…

And here she is a bit later in the day…

  She outlasted the adults though and hiked like a trooper with no complaints. Her Daddy was very proud of her! There were no elk in sight this time but, as expected, she had a very good time just being outside in mountains.

There was an interesting study about the effects of divorce on children spotlighted in our local paper today.  I found the author’s link here. The study contradicts commonly held contemporary assumptions about "good" divorces.  It also challenges people in "low conflict" relationships to work harder at maintaining and improving them vs moving on with the idea that children will not be impacted negatively.

There is an excellent post at   Three Plus Two about traditions – Thanksgiving and in general.  I have been thinking similar thoughts for weeks now. I was blessed to have extended family very involved in my life growing up. However my mother and grandmother both worked outside the home and while there was lots of love, there was rarely an abundance of time.

My grandmother was truly a expert seamstress, knitter, and cook. She could knit intricate photographic images into sweaters, lovely cables, and mittens that fit perfectly. She sewed my prom dress and our family christening gown. She made meals that kept our table full of guests – though she eagerly employed all those new mixes and boxes.  She was also a child of the depression – the era and the disease. Her father died when she was very young and her own mother was less than stable. She grew up with an appreciation for "new" "modern" and "convenience".  She saw no need for passing on the valuable skills she possessed. They were unnecessary in the new dept. store world she embraced. So I watched. I deeply desired her skills. But, in the end, I left home with just fleeting bits and pieces of information and have spent the past two decades attempting to assemble them into a functional whole.

Like Angel, I am so grateful that our children are with us all day every day. Though my skills come nowhere close to Gram’s I do try to be sure that what I know, they know. Hopefully they will leave home a little further down this road and will continue to travel until we recover the skills lost to more than a generation now.

What can you do?  Do you bake, sew, crochet, cut hair, grow gardens, paint, stitch quilts, write books, make music, take pictures? As the host of an HGTV show said earlier this week, "Everyone is an artist!"  That means you too. and someone would dearly love to know how you do it.