Today marks the beginning of a new phase in my life. I guess you could say it is the beginning of my second childhood. Now after over twenty years of being over a thousand miles from home my sister and her husband have moved close....real close. Just a few shorts steps between us....maybe a quarter of a mile downhill. How fun!
Although we have communicated through email daily and sometimes several times a day and I usually know what she is doing every day, it is not the same as living next door to her. Now she can be a part of our coffee time with Mama and Daddy.
Holly thinks it is a conspiracy. They arrived last night.....she leaves for college on Friday. But we will all be here when she returns.
I believe it is God working in our lives....yet again. A position became available just a few miles from here...not in a big city.....but in the country. After years and years of saying the only positions available for Doug's qualifications were on either the east coast or the west coast and then plop....one just 30 minutes from here.....God works in our lives!
I think it is extremely exciting to know that God works in our lives. As I look around I see so many wonderful things happening that I recognize as God's work.
Big things...little things...things that you would think would not be important to God but we are His children and he wants to bless us.
It is my prayer today that as Linda and Doug begin this new phase of their lives they will find fulfillment and happiness living among family.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Chocolate Cake and Hospitality
This afternoon I came home and made my Grandmama's chocolate cake.
Anyone who knows me well knows the cake I am talking about.
This afternoon as I baked and made the fudge icing and turned the plate round and round as I pulled the fudge up the sides of the cake my mind was stuck on my grandmother. I remember seeing this cake in my grandmother's kitchen on her green dinette table almost every time we visited her. I remember once she made a German Chocolate cake and I was disappointed because I did not like coconut back then. (I wised up eventually and found that her German Chocolate was as good as her Chocolate but I was young and stupid.) The next time we visited she had both cakes. She was such a serving woman. Not timid and weak but hospitable as she could be. She could never understand what was so special about her cake but she humored us all by making it over and over. I wonder how many times she has made it. We went to visit on Friday nights when I was a child. We lived relatively close and could make the trip in a half hour. If we did not make it on Friday I guess we would be there on Sunday for church and dinner. She was quite a cook as so many women from her generation but she was the best.
My dad says that there was always someone staying over at their house. The house was always full. The kids would just double up sleeping and make room for someone else.
Tonight is JG's last night with us after four months of spending weeknights here and weekends with his family while he started his new job locally. Monday the family will move into their new home in a new location. I am both excited for their family and sad to see him go. Although it was hard on JG and his family at least JG was not lonely. He may have preferred that sometimes and meals were always late late for a city guy.
Grandmama's chocolate cake is in honor of JG tonight.
I will miss having him here.
A full house is so much more fun than a lonely house.
Anyone who knows me well knows the cake I am talking about.
This afternoon as I baked and made the fudge icing and turned the plate round and round as I pulled the fudge up the sides of the cake my mind was stuck on my grandmother. I remember seeing this cake in my grandmother's kitchen on her green dinette table almost every time we visited her. I remember once she made a German Chocolate cake and I was disappointed because I did not like coconut back then. (I wised up eventually and found that her German Chocolate was as good as her Chocolate but I was young and stupid.) The next time we visited she had both cakes. She was such a serving woman. Not timid and weak but hospitable as she could be. She could never understand what was so special about her cake but she humored us all by making it over and over. I wonder how many times she has made it. We went to visit on Friday nights when I was a child. We lived relatively close and could make the trip in a half hour. If we did not make it on Friday I guess we would be there on Sunday for church and dinner. She was quite a cook as so many women from her generation but she was the best.
My dad says that there was always someone staying over at their house. The house was always full. The kids would just double up sleeping and make room for someone else.
Tonight is JG's last night with us after four months of spending weeknights here and weekends with his family while he started his new job locally. Monday the family will move into their new home in a new location. I am both excited for their family and sad to see him go. Although it was hard on JG and his family at least JG was not lonely. He may have preferred that sometimes and meals were always late late for a city guy.
Grandmama's chocolate cake is in honor of JG tonight.
I will miss having him here.
A full house is so much more fun than a lonely house.
Friday, July 18, 2008
House to Home
Funny how hard I have worked this summer but loved it. I have cleaned the house, moved out my stuff from our furnished rent house which means more cleaning the house, and reorganized closets, and drawers and cabinets, worked in the heat digging flowerbeds, weeding, watering and whatever else but all was a labor of love. This week I have had to drag myself out of bed, get dressed and be at the school by 7:45, which is actually late for me during the school year, to help administer tests to those who did not pass in the spring but this week it has made me tired and lazy. Now that this work week is over I really feel that I am on vacation.
I have come to be a real home body. I hate to leave home. I love my home. My house is nice but home is wonderful, comfortable, pleasant! I have spent my summer making the space I live in a home, with cooking for the family, grilling outside, cookies in the cookie jar, the half worked puzzle and fussing over all the little things that make it inviting and welcoming to guests. I have worked at adding the little touches that say we love here. The things that take a house, a mere physical dwelling and turn it into a place of comfort, a place you can come in sit down, pull off your shoes and put your feet up and watch an old movie or baseball game (no, not me but the guys do while I work in the kitchen).
Ever see those signs "HOME for sell" and wonder if really they meant "HOUSE for sell"?
I have come to be a real home body. I hate to leave home. I love my home. My house is nice but home is wonderful, comfortable, pleasant! I have spent my summer making the space I live in a home, with cooking for the family, grilling outside, cookies in the cookie jar, the half worked puzzle and fussing over all the little things that make it inviting and welcoming to guests. I have worked at adding the little touches that say we love here. The things that take a house, a mere physical dwelling and turn it into a place of comfort, a place you can come in sit down, pull off your shoes and put your feet up and watch an old movie or baseball game (no, not me but the guys do while I work in the kitchen).
Ever see those signs "HOME for sell" and wonder if really they meant "HOUSE for sell"?
Monday, July 14, 2008
All in the Family
I guess I took a little vacation from the blog world. I still read but have not blogged in quite awhile. I guess we all go through that. I have not blogged because I am having so much fun.
For the week of the fourth of July I had all of my children and grandchildren in my home for an extended period and it was wonderful. Not all of them were with us at one time but at one time all were here during that week. Carl and Lisa came first and stayed the longest, from Tuesday evening until Saturday morning. Leann and Randy came on Wednesday night and left Thursday to attend a funeral in Randy's family. Ryan and Jenny came on Friday and stayed until Saturday.
A house is never as happy as when it is full of sounds of laughter among your family and we had it....seven children, eight grandchildren.....heaven. No worries about whether the house was clean or the meals were on time....just enjoying being together.
We are just one big family....brothers and sisters and sons and daughters. Glued together because we belong to each other.
Looking back I am not sure when the line separating those children born to me and those who married into the family blurred. At some point it just vanished and became children by choice.
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