RedBarn Studios

i have longed for him to succeed, to excel, to become his own true person and, revel in that truth.

last weekend i caught a true glimpse of his transformation and it warmed the cuckolds of my heart like you wouldn’t believe.

i can finally breath and watch him bloom.

last thursday we got up early {uggh..6 am} to watch the airmen’s run. he ran by in flight formation……and i missed him. I was so excited and thought i had set the camera up correctly to get an action shot but was crying to much too see.  everyone else saw him and was shouting…’there he is, there he is’… .and for the life of me i didn’t see him.

days later as i rifled thru the 20 or so pics (i just kept clicking the camera button as they all ran by)  i saw i that i did get a shot…bit blurry yes, but i got a shot.

hours later we are sitting in bleachers {freezing our butts off} waiting for the new airmen to march in for the coin ceremony {i’ll post again about the significance of the airman coin, it’s a fascinating story}. In they march looking fine in their ‘blues’.

we were all cheering and shouting as his flight came in.  omg! he’s a handsome dude even if i say it myself.

when we actually got permission to greet them and hug them my niece took the camera from me…said she needed to capture the moment.

None of us had seen him for  2 months and here he was….finally.

i saw him, hugged him but just couldn’t get over it, remembering who we sent off to basic, this boy we’ve struggled with through the years and seeing this young man, all grown up, standing tall and in charge, in front of me.  i kept touching his face, looking up at him and crying all over again.

that sneaky niece of mine took quite a few pics of me blubbering on like this but i won’t subject you to all of them.  it was a fairly long scene to say the least. Ha!

So we’re standing there talking and laughing and joking and my mother, her head wrapped in a scarf cause the wind was so bitingly cold on her ears, asks him a question and he answers with a ‘yes ma’am’.

I have never seen my mother do this before but the woman just swooned into his arms. it’s not that he wasn’t ever respectful when speaking to her but the way he spoke, with that “military bearing’ he presented, just melted my mother’s heart and……she swooned.

no other word for it.

of course the niece captured the play by play moments again, but this was the best shot by far.

we got to hang with him on base the rest of the day.  he showed us around everywhere.  Lackland AFB is a large expanse of area, the largest of all the training bases in the US.   in one of the letters he wrote to us he said there were a few things that he was missing…

…being able to put his hands in his pockets

…a nice juicy steak

…and something sweet
{that boy man has a sweet tooth like you wouldn’t believe!!!}.

so we headed out to eat lunch and buy him a large vanilla milkshake that he savored till the absolute last drop. it was hard leaving him again but i knew we’d be back the next day for graduation.

toodles,

G

Tags: captured moments, family trip by grace
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on sunday, because it was such a beautiful day, we all got in the car and headed west with no thought of a destination or a plan for the route.

we wound our way thru downtown lincolnton, nc with their beautiful old buildings, ending up on sr 27.  winding our way along this road we saw lots of farmland scattered along both sides.

when that road ended we took a left and then decided, on the spur of the moment (going with the flow here people), to turn around and go the other way, which is how we ended up at south mountain state park in burke county.

what a lovely place. we parked, piled out and walked toward a stream that was roaring with rushing water.

cman immediately scrambled down a small embankment to the large boulders below. i clicked and clicked pictures as he traveled from rock to rock.

the girls went off to do there own thing traveling along a path beside the water with cman ambling along finding ‘cool’ rocks.  It was so picturesque the 3 of us with cameras could not stop taking pics.

within 40 minutes, however, our hands were frozen (we only had light jackets with us and no gloves) so we headed back to the car and home so the boys could watch the game.  what a beautiful way to spend the afternoon, with family, and in and among nature’s beauty.

i have to show this pic tho.  driving along sr 27 we encountered this…..

on the corner of a road at the edge of someone’s property was a bricked-in tree.

we all came up with all sorts of scenarios of why this was (most plausible was that the tree grew after the building the tower) but we couldn’t figure out why it was built so close to the road and why was it needed in the first place.

has anyone seen this before or can explain what it is?

in studio news….

i’ve been working at getting more journals cut and stitched, both suede and coptic.  what i need to do now is take some proper pics of them that i’ll post on my etsy shop in a few days. so get em whole they’re hot!

there’s the “big, fat, red, juicy book” i mentioned in a previous post (it’s really thick and brimming with pages…can you say yumm-ee). it’s just waiting to be part of some lucky person’s journaling.

alas, it is bedtime for me so…

toodles,

p.s. don’t you just love that 1st pic of mine….gor-gee-ous!

Tags: family trip, paper art by grace
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A few weeks ago I asked my son what he wanted to do on his day off from school. He said “something fun please”. Now the pressure was on…what to do to entertain an 8 yr old????
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I decided on a “Picture Day”. and he was all for it. We took our cameras and I drove way into the countryside, pulling over whenever we chose to take pictures of nature, dilapidated buildings, gigantic rocks in from of an abandoned cemetery…anything was fare game.
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on the rocks

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the artist

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cool car huh?

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wish we could have gotten closer.

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~

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Se ya next time “In the Hayloft”,

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Tags: down time, family, family trip, road trip by k grace howes
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One of the highlights of our family vacation to Nassau was the fishing trip my brother, Andy,  took the boys on this past Friday. He’s been fishing for eons but for my little man…he had never ever set eyes on a live fish (not counting the ones in our fish tank of course).

Here they are fooling around while waiting for the boat to be taken out of storage. That’s my 3 nephews on the left and in middle and hubby and little man on the right.

Okay so the “He Men” go off on the boat, 10 miles off the Bahamian shore,  to prove that they indeed can provide for their lady folk at home (get real…..we were off somewhere shopping!)

Anyway they come back home full of stories of all the fish caught and the absolute fun they had. I think the best part of the after trip was watching the swelled chests of the men looking lovelingly at their excited kids talk about the all fantastic fishing trip.

I was told that little man had caught fish but because we had to freeze them for the plane ride back home the next day I didn’t get to see what he caught. Well I have the unveiling right here….ta da!

His First Fish! Yippee!

He caught 5 of these little beauties (called porgies)! The absolute best thing of all though was sitting down to dinner last night, after emptying cases and getting house back in order, to eat the fish. Little man was just beamimg ear to ear.

Don’t you just love the little pleasures in life?

~

See ya next time “In the Hayloft”,

Tags: Art, down time, family trip, pic of day by k grace howes
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I know, I know…long time no hear. I’ve been going, going, going and have now a chance to post.

Just got back from the AQS Expo in Knoxville, tired but enjoyed spending time with two good friends, DeLane and Susan. We walked the show and shopped but found out later that none of us bought much fabric. They did go halves on a needle felting machine tho and can’t wait to experiment with it.

Spent 3 days at home and now on our annual family vacation in the Bahamas, my home country, Toodles everyone. Will post pics of our trip and get back to art soon.

~

See ya next time “In the Hayloft”,

Tags: down time, family trip, life etc., pic of day, road trip by k grace howes
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