Thanks Jackie for Missing Me

Hi, all.
Yes, Jackie, it is time for a new post.
I have been o-u-t-o-f-p-o-c-k-e-t!
First a week long trip to California with my sister where we had a great time with my nephew and his sweet little family (Linda's grandchildren). We drove up into the mountains where we stayed the weekend and went into the Sequoia National Forest. Then back to Lemoore for the babies 1st birthday party and remodeling big sister's room to be appropriate for a big 1st grader. It was really fun.




I never got to drop off my luggage at home before I got dropped off at the doctor's office to help Lee who was having to spend the day in the office having cancer cut out of his arm. What an experience getting to spend the day in a dermatologist's office waiting with a bunch of old men having parts cut off! By 8:00 PM when we finally got to leave we had made friends with some of the other men waiting for their results like Lee. One old man left looking like a rabbit with his ears bobbed. Another one looking like he caught his nose in a vise and wrapped it with a hand towel. Men sprang leaks and bled all over, puddling down their shirts and all over. Lee messed up the cafeteria pretty badly. (can't take him anywhere) But in the end we finally arrived home in one piece (well I was anyway, and he was stitched up pretty much.)

From there....a day or two of cleaning up, washing clothes and packing for a trip to visit my grandmother who turned 100 on Saturday. Yep! 100! And in good shape. She looks no different to me than when I was a child except she stopped putting the purple rinse on her hair so she has white hair instead of violet. She is the most beautiful 100 year old woman you will ever meet.

How lucky am I?

Now Let Us Pray

With four children within a five year and 5 month span you know I heard as many funny things coming from my children as the next lady heard from hers. My children were cute, my grandchildren are still cute and I am sure when they have children they will be cute. But we were so busy raising our children that by the time I collected the children, settled them down, stripped them off and got them in the bathtub at the end of the day my busy mind had forgotten what had taken place an hour before. I would sit there on the side of the tub drying off little bodies and would think, "something was funny today...what was it?". If I did not remember it then and repeat the tale to someone else then it was lost for eternity. Why is it that other people could remember the funny things their children said but I could not. It may have had something to do with the number of children in such a small range of time. I am not quite sure if it is that I had pregnancy brain or if I lost brain cells with each child I bore or if I just lost my sense of humor progressively with the birth of each child. Somewhere over the years I did regain my sense of humor. It may not be as sharp as some but still I know funny when I hear it....sometimes, it is what they say, sometimes, it is what you thought and sometimes, it is what they do. All in all, children do bring humor into our lives.

• Reagan is a five year old girly-girly. She loves to dress in princess dresses, put on jewelry and wear lip gloss and get her toes painted. As her mother tried to paint her toes Reagan kept up a ceaseless dialogue while she wiggled and squirmed. Finally her mother said, "Reagan you must sit still if you want me to paint your toe nails." Reagan replied, "But I can not sit still with my mouth flapping up and down all the time."
  

• Two and a half year old Reese was with me in the kitchen today. I had fixed her a small sandwich of toast and peanut butter and as I handed the sandwich down to her she looked up at me with her clear blue eyes and so sweetly said "Pwa". I questioned, "Pwa?" and she confirmed, "I want Pwa". So I knelt beside this precious child and put my arm around her and said a little prayer and thanked God for her food and her family as I thought what a wonderful job my son and his wife are doing with this child who would request a prayer before her meal.
  Amen.
  The prayer ended. I stood up and turned, pleased with life, I was ready to go about my business when Reese looked up at me so sweetly and politely repeated her request "I need Pwa-t". Stunned for a mere second. I thought there was a new twist to the request this time and it changed my whole perspective. Opening a cabinet, pulling out a small plate, I handed her a plate and she was satisfied.
  

• And last but now least the cute:
  I offered Reese chocolate kisses, "would you like a chocolate kiss".
  Sweetly Reese leaned in kissed me and I handed her the chocolate.
  Although I tried to tell her the candy was a chocolate kiss again, I asked, "would you like a chocolate kiss?" Reese leaned in kissed me and I handed over the kiss.
  I gave her one to give her mother. She leaned in kissed her mother and then gave her the chocolate.
  

I think I shall keep chocolate kisses at my house for that girl.

Lonely Away from Home

What do you do when you are alone in a new town and lonely?

Holly is off to college for the first time ever, in a new town, alone, classes will not start for a few weeks still, no job but searching for one and lonely. She met people at church Sunday morning but few students attend evening services and she left "crying like a baby".

Okay, it breaks my heart. Luckily a few days ago she talked me into doing a facebook account and I added her name along with others. Today she IM'ed me through our facebook accounts and she is l-o-n-e-l-y. It was by accident I left my computer on with my facebook account open at 5:30 when Belva came over. An hour later when I returned there was Holly's message. Now at nearly 9:00 I still have it open and have kept up a slow dialog with Holly and hooked her up someone else there by texting a mother who texted her son who contacted Holly and now Holly will at least see another familiar face.

Today I am thankful I live in the 21st century.

What do you advise a lonely girl?

A Second Childhood

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.

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.

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"?

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.

Life is So-o-o Good

Life is so-o-o good!
I am still making my way through the jungle of junk.
My rental property was completely furnished....completely....kitchen stuff...linens.....toaster....coffee pot...everything....we even found a few items we would not touch. My new renters wanted an extended contract and they had all the furnishings they needed so all of that stuff had to be moved. For just a minute I considered starting a new "staging" business but nixed that quickly. Any business that involves moving furniture around from house to house is too much work for me.
While it is a relief to get a long lease contract the move was difficult.
Timing was difficult.

I never thought of myself as a pack rat really because when the kids were little I threw things out without even thinking twice about it....

"Yes, dear, you did get that at McDonald's but we will go again...."

"What are you looking for....hum-m.....don't know where that could be...."

"But honey, you had so many of those and you weren't using them."

"Your aunt who made what?"

....but as you age things you get are often things from your past like my grandparents sofa table that my grandfather used to stabilize himself while he sawed his boards for some project he was working on. The table still bears the scars from that day. I can see him standing there doing it. He was a great man. He has been gone since Caleb was born so there are few things left of him.

Then there is my grandmother's small table I can not part with. I have no memories of it but she gave it to me while she was in her nineties and I refinished it. And of course the bakers rack has to come home. Carl welded it for me and it is beautiful. But even if it were ugly it represents him and my heart melts when I think of him welding it together for me. Several of my big furniture pieces have been made or refinished by my dad so they must stay in the family.

The garage is packed with the boxes I had to bring back from the rental house. I will make it through the boxes one at a time until I can see the walls of the garage again. Anything garage sale worthy goes into big plastic containers to keep the little critters out or bigger critters.

Last night it was a raccoon going through the garage sale stuff. He has been a regular lately. He thought he had hit the jack pot when he found last falls pecans in buckets still being stored in the garage. He left his crumbs everywhere.

I long to see an empty garage.

I hear a car can be parked in there sometimes.

Jungle of Junk

I am refusing to rent a storage unit to organize/hide all my stuff.
If it has to be stored in a storage unit I don't really need it.
If I need it I want it close so I can find it.

I find that I am not alone in this jungle of junk. There are more garage sales going on every weekend than one could possible attend. Closets bursting open with so much stuff that if you tried to put one more thing in, the contents would topple outward into one big, huge, jumbled, heap into the room. The goal is to stop before it pours outward.

One of my chores this summer is to finalize my move out of my furnished rent house. Where did all this junk come from?

Sentimentalities, mementos, antiques, garden stuff, decorative items, and just plain things I could not do without. I even have saved all the gourds that had ever grown on my vines there for decorating.... like I did not have enough stuff to use to decorate. But I think it is so charming to use things from nature to decorate. And they were free.

Now two years later (today) I am bringing in things I have not even seen since I left there. Things I thought I needed but have not missed. And the worse part about it now is that as I try to combine the two houses now into one I see the stuff and still think I need it.

I have begun to nail things to the wall, rearrange things in closets, drawers and have even considered the attic in an attempt to get junk out of boxes and off the floor in an orderly fashion.

I have a garage sale pile, a pile for drawing props for school, things my kids must need and a little bitty pile called trash.

What does this say about me?
And I thought I was not materialistic.

Don't miss my garage sale now, you may find that one thing that will complete your decor!

Where'd You Get That Sense of Humor

We are made in His image.
We have a sense of humor.
So does God have a sense of humor?

I read Dana's blog and immediately recognized God's hand in the situation and saw the humor in it. It reminded me a situation I had just this week that I saw God's hand at play in my life.

I was neither in a bar nor watching people but I thought it a time that I saw God's sense of humor. Tell me if you agree.

It was after school and the only rush I felt was in that my car was sitting on empty and had binged the last three short trips I had made in town traveling only a mile or two at a time but now, I was pretty sure that this was the time that I could not push it off another minute therefore I headed to the gas pump instead of stopping in at Caleb's shop. Earlier in the day I had run to Subway, picked up a salad, used my debit card and had returned to school to finish cleaning out my room. Now tired from working at school, I felt a sense of exhilaration at the prospect of school ending. I sat at the pump and felt a rush of uneasiness because despite dumping out the entire contents of my purse into the seat of the car my debit card was gone. I looked twice but still did not find it.

Well, of course in a case as this who do I turn to....I said a quick,
"please, God help me find my debit card"......
"don't let it be stolen".......
as I turned my car around and headed to Subway's parking lot just a short distant down the road. I put the car in park and reached over to the seat next to me to begin to reload the contents of my purse which were now spread all over the passenger side seat cushion. As I picked up the first object, a calculator with a booklet like enclosure out dropped the debit card. I was stunned and in a split second I recalled a time when one of my children would play a hiding game with me and say, "ha ha! I tricked you".

I laughed and said aloud, "Funny! God!" before I said a quick thank you.