Blog Around the Clock Blog Party 2008

Welcome to my little piece of the Ultimate Blog Party 2008!

It didn't take me long to know that to showcase my blog, Sioux's Aubergine Pensées, I wanted to showcase my family and my art. My home. Remember, Robert Frost said, "Home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in." And he was right to a large degree. As our family moves away and comes back, as Bill Cosby used to say, "and they bring little people with them", we love them and are thankful for them, and we take them in. Our home, our house, for our three girls and seven grandchildren, is primarily the real "home place" of our family. When my mother died, townspeople were surprised that we didn't move into her house and sell ours. Our explanation is, this is our family home, we can't move away from it!

This is the love of my life, Rafael Seibert.

My family is a major part of what I blog about, so I thought I'd show you guys a little of who we are. My name is Johnette Sue Ficke Seibert. Johnette after my daddy, John McBee Ficke. Here he is at age 16. He was a cowboy, son of a stock farmer in Wheeler County, Texas.

Below are Daddy's seven sisters. He was next to the oldest, and to hear these women talk when they and he were alive, he was absolutely perfect...of course, I think so, too!
In the back row, left to right, are Silva (the baby), Marguerite (knows sometimes as Mutt), Ferroll, and Lois
In front are Leona (the oldest), Fay, and Bessie Mae (known as Jeff...as in Mutt and Jeff, or as Mert)

These eight siblings produced only eight children. They are all gone, and two of their children are gone. I am next to the oldest. There were three girl cousins, and five boy cousins.

The Christian name, John, goes backward to my great-grandfather, John Ficke, and forward to our oldest grandson, John Christian Banner. I hope it keeps on going. I love the name, the name of the disciple whom Christ loved.

Recently we visited two of my cousins, one just older and one just younger, when we took our grandson, Joey, to pick up a car. There is no "family home" per se for the Ficke family, so we visit in each other's homes. We don't see each other but a couple of times a year, but it feels right when we're together. As some of you know we were able, last fall, to find the ranch house my grandparents built to house their large family.

My grandfather was in immigrant from Germany, arriving in the USA in 1888. Here is a copy of his naturalization form.
He came to the United States at age 16, and on the ship's manifest he is noted as a grocer. Here he is a liquor dealer, a job which he held in New York City while learning some English, before he joined his brothers, Henry and John Henry (check out those names), to buy a Texas ranch.

My mother's family (Bowden and Routh) came to Texas in the mid 1800's, so they were here long before the Ficke family arrived...oh, and my grandmother Ficke, Harriett Elizabeth McBee, came from Braymer, Missouri, to visit a cousin in Wheeler, Texas. There she met and married my grandfather, who until that time had been living in a dugout on his ranch, but he really needed a house once he had a wife and eight children.
Here is a collage of me and my family as I was growing up in Stephenville, Texas.

And is some of my art that I want to get back to. Raf and I have been writing a mystery novel, and I have not drawn in a long while. I miss it, and I want to get back to it.

We have cats, as you can see from my avatar, and we have a warm, cozy life in our little Oak Cottage in the middle of the North Central Texas Hill Country.

I will leave you with a favorite family recipe called TACO TREAT. I happened upon this at a church covered dish supper in the late 1960's, and it's still a favorite today.

Taco Treat

Brown a pound, or more for a bigger family, of ground chuck. Remove from the fire and add one can of cream of chicken soup and one can of cream of celery (or cream of mushroom) soup, a small can of chopped green chilis, and a small bottle of mild taco sauce. Crunch up a bag of taco chips. Spray Pam into a large casserole, and layer the meat mixture with the taco chips and mild cheddar cheese. Top the casserole off with cheese, taco chips, and a little olive oil. This makes a lot, and is absolutely great for covered dish suppers.

And here's to our home in Texas:

So, there in a nutshell is our life...a celebration of our life for the 2008 Blog Party. Raf and I have been retired for 4 years, we travel, read, enjoy the family, spend many happy hours at church, bird, hike, go on long drives, enjoy food and good restaurants, and are about as happy as two people can ever be. Welcome to our Blogging Home!