Thankful for Family Time

 

Two weekends ago we visited Gunny and his family for a very busy long weekend.  Our goals while we were there were — to see Nikki cheer at a varsity football game — to celebrate her 16th birthday — to attend her and Jays’ confirmation — to see Jay play on the freshman football team — and to squeeze in some visiting time whereever we could.   And we managed to do it all!

On Friday night:

  Because of the confirmation we didn’t have any flexibility in which weekend we visited, so if we wanted to see Nikki cheer we would have to drive to a game on Friday night two and a half hours away!  But when you live as far away as we do, you have to take opportunities as they present themselves, so we made the trip and were glad we did.

  It was an exciting game that our team won in the last few minutes.

 

  Nikki with a close friend who is also a cheerleader.

   It was realllly cold and I hadn’t thought to take gloves, so Dilly was kind enough to lend me one of hers.  Not a perfect, solution but at least it helped!  (It’s hard to see, but we had our gloved hands clasped together in the middle.)

On Saturday:

   We celebrated Nikki’s 16th birthday!

   We couldn’t decide on what kind of cake to buy at the fantastic local bakery, so we bought two small ones — one lemon and one red velvet.

   But, as her special birthday “cake” Nikki opted for a slice of strawberry cheesecake, and then we bought this humongus candle to go on top that was about the same size as the slice it was sitting on!

   I wanted to get a nice family picture of them.  But, Jay was goofing off a little.

   So, he and Gunny “discussed” how he should pose for the picture …

   … ahhh, much better.

   I love this picture.  Nikki knows how to smile for a picture, but Jay does have trouble deciding how he should pose.  So I like this one because he just looks like him – no pose at all!

   I don’t know.  Do you think you can tell they’re related? I kind of think so.

   And these two look a little alike too.

On Sunday morning:

   Nikki and Jay were confirmed into the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  They each had to ask someone to stand with them at the front and read their confirmation bible verse, and they asked Hubby and me.  Hubby for Jay and me for Nikki.  We were very honored that they asked us.

On Monday night:  We enjoyed watching Jay’s freshman football team win their game.  Thankfully, it wasn’t nearly as cold as it had been for the varsity game on Friday night!  But, unfortunately I forgot my camera, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that he was very cute (in a “manly” sort of way, of course) in his uniform and played well.

Early Tuesday morning:

   Gunny met us for breakfast before we left town.  We had to wait a few minutes for the doors of the restaurant to open at 6 a.m.!

Thank you Father for the wonderful time we got to spend with our loved ones.

Answered Prayer

 

Almost exactly two years after it was first put on the market, Gunny and Dillys’ house in the city they used to live in 16 hours away has sold!  The closing was Friday.  Thank you, God.

They can now move on with their lives.  As Dilly told me several months ago, “We can’t totally live here until we sell that house.  We still have ‘one foot’ there!” 

So, now, Dilly, Gunny, their two teenagers and their two Great Dane dogs, who have all lived “like a can of sardines” in a very small apartment for what seems like a verrrry long time, can finally decide where they want to live permanently in their new city.

As with most challenging events in the lives of those we love, it was hard to see them go through the long wait for that house to sell.  But they have actually been pretty happy in their cramped apartment, and have said that they are coming away from this experience with a very different outlook on what is required for happiness!

It’s wonderful that they are taking away from this experience some great memories and life-lessons learned, but that doesn’t stop any of us from being very, very relieved that the house has finally sold.

Thank you, God, for answered prayer.

Mimi Shares the Spotlight!

 

DD’s daughter, Mimi, is our youngest grandchild.  Consequently, she gets more than her fair share of the attention when she is around.

  And it doesn’t hurt that Mimi (5), makes photography fun — she’s always doing something photo-worthy.  Don’t worry, the tattoo isn’t real.  She got it at an amusement park the day before.

But, when we were together on the Fourth, our oldest granddaughter was there with her husband and son, JJ (who is almost 2).  So, there was a new “star” … everyone wanted to play with and be around JJ.  And, we weren’t totally sure how that would play with Mimi.  How would she take to suddenly having to share the spotlight?

Well, we needn’t have worried:

  First of all, she has a photo-worthy sense of style.  She can wear hair pretties and a girly dress, along with a tattoo, and carry it off! 

(btw, as you can see, DD and I sometimes get in each other’s way when taking our pictures.   She has a verrrry nice camera, that I’m hoping she forgets to take with her sometime when she’s leaving after a visit!)

  Anyway, Mimi is always ready to pose for a picture.  Here, when she paused for a “Kodak moment” before marching off to fish, she caught JJ’s attention.

  Even though JJ had an appointment for a boat ride with his grandpa, you could tell this “big kid in the red dress” interested him.

  Their fishing and boat rides over, Mimi, looking a little the worse for wear (did the fish get your hair pretties, Mimi?), was ready to spend some quality time with JJ. 

   Let’s go see what we can find to play with.

   She’s using her “big kid” skills to show him the best way to play with his newest toy.

They played together great.

  And, Mimi’s never going to have to worry about not getting her share of the spotlight as long as she’s such an interesting kid!

It was so much fun to have everyone together.  And, these pictures will always help us remember what it was like.  I am thankful for family … and photography!

The Frosting on the Cake

 

Ever since I became a grandparent lo those many years ago, I have said that having children was “all right”  but that having grandchildren was “the frosting on the cake”! 

In my experience, grandparents and grandchildren have a unique relationship that is like no other.  And, you can’t explain it to someone … they just have to experience it for themselves.

So, there has been a “passing of the torch” … our son is now a grandfather!

\

   Our son’s grandson … and a new experience for us too … GREAT-grandparents!

Or, as our sweet daughter-in-law dubbed me, “Nana the Great”.  Thank you, Dilly, I love it!

A Dare Devil Child

 

You know, blogging has given me so much more reason to look through old pictures, and once in a while I make a fun discovery.

The other day, I pulled this picture of two year old Gunny out of a stack, and laughed out loud as soon as I saw it.

  In case you can’t tell, he isn’t just looking at the grass.  He is preparing to leap off my parent’s back step.  As soon as I saw this picture, I remembered him doing this and how we laughed every time he did it!

But, we had already had an experience that should have warned us that this kid was a dare devil. 

  At 18 months.  (I had written on the back of this picture, “This is rare.  Usually he is carrying the bike.”)

At 18 months, when my back was turned, he (surprisingly quickly) climbed onto his high chair, reached for a glass on the near-by counter, knocked it on the floor where it broke, and then fell out of the high chair into the glass, almost severing his left thumb.  He required 2 1/2 hours of surgery to fix his hand.

Again, when he was about two, a friend of Hubby’s was sitting in the living room at our first house, waiting for Hubby to come downstairs so they could go somewhere.  (We were all upstairs.  Hubby getting ready; me taking care of baby DD; Gunny just being Gunny.)  The visitor was sitting on the sofa, facing the stairs that came down the opposite side  of the living room.  He said he suddenly saw two year old Gunny, wearing one of Hubby’s cowboy hats pulled way down over his whole head, walking precariously down the steps.  The guy said he was afraid to say anything for fear of scaring Gunny and guaranteeing he would fall.  So, he just watched and prayed, and Gunny finally made it to the bottom, took off the hat and gave him a big smile like, “See what I did!”.

When DD was born, Gunny was two years and two months, and still sleeping in the baby bed, but now we needed that bed for her, so we put him into a regular double bed (because we already had one of those and money was tight).  His room was small, so all it really had room for was the relatively big bed against one wall and the dresser and mirror on the opposite wall, with about 12 inches between the two.  When I would put him to bed for a nap, sometimes (usually!) he wasn’t really interested in sleeping, so he would “entertain” himself by jumping back and forth between the dresser and the bed.  I quickly came to recognize what this sounded like from downstairs, and would go up and stop him and make him lay back down and tell him to sleep!  (The curtain rod in his room drooped badly, because he would hold on to the curtain to aid in his jumping!) 

One time when I thought (the foundationless hope of a sleep-deprived young mother of an infant and an active toddler, who would have loved a nap herself!) he was sleeping, he suddenly came down the stairs holding out his hands and, in a really guilty-sounding little voice, saying, “Mommy”.  I looked up from the clothes I was folding and could see something white on his hands.  I said, “What is that?”.  He said, “Paint”.  I immediately guessed what paint, but couldn’t believe he had been able to get to it.  We had just re-done his room at the same time he got the “big boy” bed, painting the walls white, and installing dark blue and green tweedy indoor/outdoor carpet.  The remainder of the can of paint was still in his closet.  While he was supposed to be sleeping, he had opened the closet door (which I didn’t know he could do), and then knocked the can of paint over and the lid popped off, spilling the white paint onto the new dark blue carpet right in front of the closet door.  Then, being a resourceful little guy (and motivated, I’m guessing, by the potential “wrath of mommy”) he had tried to use his hands to put the paint back in the can! 

I ran upstairs and saw the paint on the new carpet; it was kind of laying on top of the carpet in a pile (luckily, washable paint, not enamel paint).  I quickly tried to think of something I could use to scoop the paint up with, and ran to get the snow shovel (any port in a storm, right?).  For the next few minutes, I frantically scooped paint.  Actually, the shovel worked pretty well.  After I had scooped as much as I could, I used bath towels to soak the spot on the carpet with water and then used dry towels to soak it back up.  I vividly remember as I ran back and forth between his bedroom and the bathroom, little Gunny running along behind me saying over and over again, “I love you, Mommy” in such a sweet, contrite little voice that how could I not forgive him, especially after the white paint miraculously came out of that dark carpet (How fortunate that it was the tough, indoor/outdoor type and that it was new!). 

I guess you could say Gunny just had an aversion to naps.  But, “hope springs eternal” so I had always tried.  One time, when he was about a year old, when he was supposed to be napping, he scooted his baby bed over to the chest of drawers, opened a drawer, found a bottle of baby aspirin, and ate some (before baby-proof caps).  When I found him a few minutes later playing with the open bottle of aspirin in his bed (which was now in front of the chest of drawers), I freaked out!  I immediately call the doctor’s office.  After they had me estimate how many he had eaten, they weren’t too concerned, but said I could give him OJ mixed with milk to see if I could make him throw them up.  And, if he went to sleep, I shouldn’t let him sleep too long.  

I gave him the OJ/Milk mix, which I tasted and it was awful.  He drank it.  Never threw up.  And, didn’t even take a nap that day.

Just the beginning of a very exciting childhood for our ”dare devil” child who would cause us to be on the “frequent flyer plan” with the local ambulance service and probably have people who worked in the emergency room saying, “Here they come again!”.

Just Asking!

 

He said someone had misspelled his name.

She said, “Oh, yeah?  How do you spell your name?”

He laughed.

She said, “You probably get that question alot.”

He said, “Yes, but not usually from my mother.”

Sheeeesh.  I can’t remember e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g!!

What Kind of Pie IS That?

 

Gunny and Dilly met when the Marines transferred him from Tustin, California to Jacksonville, North Carolina.  Dilly’s roots run deep in North Carolina, and her tradition, that then included Gunny after they married, was to go to her mother’s people in a rural area near Raleigh for Christmas Day.

In fact, we went with them a couple times.  It is a large, loving, ready to include anyone who walks through the door, family.  We had a great time with them, and besides the food was fantastic!

The tradition was that while Aunt Hope and the women visited and prepared the rest of the meal in the house, Uncle Dave  and  the men roasted a hog out in the shed.  I never visited “the shed” but that apparently was where the whiskey was kept also, to ward off the cold, they would say.  All I know is that the best Carolina barbeque I have ever tasted in my life came out of that shed!

But, one of the times we were there, Aunt Hope and  Gunny had an interesting and memorable  conversation:

Aunt Hope:  “Gunny, now how about a piece of my PEE-can pie?”

Gunny:  “That sounds great, Aunt Hope.  But, you know, in Indiana we call it p-CAAN pie.”

Aunt Hope:  “Hmmm. That’s very interesting.  By, the way, how many PEE-can trees do you have in Indiana?”

Gunny:  “Good point.  Yes, maam.  I’d love a piece of PEE-can pie.”

The good-natured laughter that followed, like whipped cream on top, made the PEE-can pie even better.

Good fellowship, good food, good humor — the ”secret”  ingredients for wonderful family get-togethers at the holidays!

Fatherly Advice

 

This was the first time in her life that Gunny and Dilly’s oldest daughter, Samantha, lived far away (16 hours away), and wasn’t able to be with the family to enjoy her mom’s favorite meal to cook and her dad’s favorite meal to eat — Thanksgiving dinner.  So, on Thursday Samantha cooked Thanksgiving dinner for the first time, for her and her husband, Josh.  (Little James isn’t quite old enough to be a meat n’ potatoes guy yet.) 

I hear that she and Dilly were on the phone off and on all day, and Samantha ended up kind of cooking her meal “in tandem” with Dilly cooking her meal.  Whatever Dilly did, Samantha did.  I think that was a great idea!

Dilly always takes this meal on with a passion.  Her Thanksgiving table “groans” with good food, all lovingly made by her, although I hear 15 year old Nikki was a big help this year.  But, anyway, Dilly has set the bar high for what Thanksgiving dinner should be like, and possibly given at least one member of her family somewhat unrealistic expectations for what constitutes a good Thanksgiving meal.

A conversation Gunny and Jay, their almost 14 year old son, had earlier this week:

Gunny:  “It sounds like Samantha is going to fix a great Thanksgiving dinner for her and Josh.”

Jay:  “Yeah, but did you hear, she’s going to use frozen pumpkin pie?!”

(I envision a moment of silence here, while that comment hangs in the air.)

Gunny:  “Hmm.  Let me just give you a little piece of advice, son.  Someday when you are a young married and if you are lucky enough that your wife is cooking Thanksgiving dinner for you for the first time, if she says she is going to use a frozen pumpkin pie?  You should just say, ‘Thank you.’”

How Do You Know You Might Be A Micro-Manager?

 

While we were in Tulsa, Hubby and Gunny had the following conversation:

Hubby:  Well, the girls have their day planned.  What are we going to do today?

Gunny:  I don’t know. Mom hasn’t told us yet. 

Ha.Ha.Ha.

I guess that’s how you know.

I raised a couple of comedians.  I guess it’s inevitable that sometimes I’m the punch line!

A Resourceful Child

 

Note: We are leaving this morning for Tulsa to spend a long weekend with Gunny’s family.  I won’t be posting again until Tuesday.  May God keep you safe, until we meet again. 

I went back to work when my youngest, DD, started school.  It started out as a part-time job, so that Hubby could quit the part-time job he was working, in addition to his full-time job as a police officer.  But, one thing led to another and I ended up with a full-time job.   

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was part of a huge movement of mother’s going back to work.  In retrospect, I second guess whether that was the right decision.  It did work fine for our family, but I might not have done it if I had realized that the result of all of us mothers going back to work would be an expanded economy that would make it necessary for some mothers who came behind us, who didn’t want to go back to work, to have to do it anyway!

So, I went back to work, and it really worked out pretty well, because we had a great babysitter who was like a third grandma to our kids, and both of our sets of parents lived in town, so they were always there to help when needed.  And, I enjoyed working, so I was a happy working mom.

One result I noticed from me being  a working mom was that our kids became more responsible and self-reliant than I had been at their ages.  And, one particular time, when Gunny was in, I think, third grade, he very clearly demonstrated his self-reliance.

When I came home from work one day, Gunny told me that he needed a patch sewn on his cub scout shirt, so that he could wear it to the meeting that evening.  I had already started mentally fixing supper as I walked in the door, but now here was another thing I would have to find time to do, right away.

But, then Gunny surprised me.  With a big grin, he told me “the punch line.”  He proudly told me that I didn’t have to worry about the patch — he had sewn it on himself!  I was shocked he had figured out how to do that.  Definitely one of the many benefits of spending time with talented sewing grandmas.

He went to his room and proudly brought me the shirt to see.

He was very please with himself, and especially enjoyed how shocked I was.  I was so impressed with my little boy’s resourcefulness.  I guess that’s the reason I still have that shirt hanging in the back of a closet 30+ years later.

Good job, Gunny.  I’m sure that resourcefulness that you demonstrated at such a young age is one of the things that made you a great Marine.