This morning we went over to have Christmas with BreeAnn, James and Ada. They got back into town late last night from her family in Mississippi! Ada wasn’t in the most festive of moods since she was probably tired from the quick and long trip. But we enjoyed her anyway!!
Christmas has come and gone from our house for the year!! Wishing everyone a Happy New to come in 2012!!
We have had a wonderful Christmas, celebrating the birth of our Savior!! He is the main reason for this season! We started our celebration out by going to the Candlelight service at church and then headed over to my daughter and son-in-law’s for finger foods and to exchange gifts with the grandbabies! We really had a nice time and all the kids were really good and were so excited about their gifts.
Aunt Melissa with her niece’s!! We only missed BreeAnn and Ada this year!
And then this morning we got up so Tori could open her gifts, then we got ready and headed out for church. Came home and had all the kids and grandkids, sister-in-law and brother-in-law over for a small dinner and then we all took naps! We had a little fun on my bed before nap!!
Brother’s and Sister!!
Hope everyone had a wonderful day with many blessings!!
Today I took my brother-in-law shopping for some much needed wardrobe updates and a few other wants that he wanted. I had all intentions on tackling and completing my shopping for the grandbabies! Well, by the time I finished helping Kevin I didn’t even feel like shopping for the grandbabies! Ha! So I guess I will be a last minute shopper, as usual, again this year. Oh well, it seems that I have the best luck when I go last minute so I’m not gonna complain. I will just embrace my procrastination again this year!
The traffic and crowds don’t even bother me as they usually would any other time of the year!! So I guess that is a blessing! Ha!
Hope all of you are enjoying some last minute shopping as well!! Merry Christmas!!
It seems as Christmas is quickly approaching, that I am a little more sad than in past years! This just happened to be my Mother-In-Law, Carols favorite time of year. She would start at the end of November, after Thanksgiving, baking and getting her baked to goods to her family and friends at her apartment. Mainly, she would back fruit cakes for her son, Kevin who LOVES her fruit cake. He was the only one who would get her fruit cake since none of her other kids or grandkids liked it. But this year Kevin won’t be getting any of her fruit cake! And her cookies and banana bread? Well, that’s what me and Melissa looked forward to! Me and her daughter, Melissa loved her banana bread made from scratch with real banana’s. Not the box kind that I make. And her other son, my husband loved her peanut butter cookies! So it’s the little things that seem to be getting to me. She would always wear the gawdy Christmas jewelry that none of us would ever wear but for some reason she always looked so sweet wearing it!
I had a doctors appointment yesterday just for my yearly physical. We share the same AWESOME doctor who we just love dearly and she loves us! I haven’t seen her since Moms passing and as soon a she walked in the room I just started crying! I knew it was coming before she even came in. She loved our Mom a lot and treated her very well and always made sure every ache and pain was checked out thoroughly!! I don’t know of many people who just LOVE their doctor but she is more like family to us than just our doctor! So I just cried the whole time while telling her about the week we were in that trauma unit with mom. She just sat there and let me cry and talk and cry and talk. I don’t feel like I have really had/or taken the time to really grieve the loss of my Mother-In-Law. I loved her a lot and I have a lot of guilt for not spending as much time with her in the past 2 years. I had grandbabies to keep, she got married and it just seemed like we were both so busy. But I feel like I should have tried harder. I am thinking this is a normal part of grieving! I hope it passes soon. I know she wouldn’t want anyone to have guilty feelings.
So I want this time of the year to be a celebration of our Mom! She loved her kids, grandkids and great grandkids with her whole heart! She would want us to carry on with good cheer in honor of her! So we will carry on the tradition of going to the Candle Light Service at church followed by finger foods and gift exchange at one of our houses.
One more thing, it was Harrison’s birthday on the 11th and we went to the Christmas Musical that night then to have cake and ice cream with him. I wanted to sing the birthday song that Mom always sang to us and I couldn’t remember all the words. This really upset me! She has sung this song for each of us for years and I always loved it. To me she could sing like an angel and she didn’t agree. So I came home and googled the song and was so happy that I found it!!
So my prayer for this season is that Mom is watching us from heaven while she is celebrating our Saviors Birth and we are making her proud as we do the same.
Merry Christmas Mom!!! I love and miss you!
Harrison you are 3 years old today! I can hardly believe how fast time has gone. You are such a sweet little man and MeMe and Papa love you dearly! I just loved hearing say “It’s my Birthday”. But what I love most of all is when I come through the door and you run to me with your arms wide, saying “MEEEEEMEEEEE”. I couldn’t ask to hear sweeter words from my sweet little 3 year old man. You make MeMe and Pap so proud! You are definitely gonna do great things and I can’t wait to watch your little life unfold.
Me and Papa loved seeing play at Chucke Cheese. You play with all your heart and it’s such sweet times. I didn’t get any good pictures since all I had was my phone and they turned out blurry. We enjoyed coming over to have cake and watch you blow out your 3 candles with such gusto!!! These are sweet memories, sweet boy and I will cherish them forever!!
I am truly a Blessed MeMe!!
Happy Birthday sweet boy!!!
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!! This year has ended bittersweet. First (the bitter) we lost my precious Mother-In-Law but (on the sweet end) we have received 2 new precious grandbabies and my MIL is in heaven singing with the angels!!
and of course I will be missing my family in Florida today!
and I have to say, it went “better” than expected I think anyway!! They did cry when the got into the cab and Greer had a rough 2 hours but since we have such an awesome God things have calmed down. Thanks to technology for Sophie, she is lovin the I pad!! Ha!
I got to Skype with them all this morning and Sophie was waving at us and kinda dancing around for us. April says she likes the bows and shoes!! I told Brandon he was in real trouble!! Greer was hanging out and chillin and seemed to be content!! We are all so excited and can’t wait for them to get home!!
Gotcha Day!!
Ipad making Sophie smile!!
Greer taking a little snoozer!!
Having a little supper!
We are all so excited to meet our 2 new additions to our family. Sophie and Greer will be united with their mommy and daddy tomorrow (will be Wednesday in Korea, I think?) and then on Friday, they will be coming home to join Harrison and finally be a family of 5. This will make 6 grandbabies for MeMe and Papa!! Wow!! Our family surely is growing by leaps and bounds. While April and Brandon and Brandon’s parents are over in Korea, Harrison has been being taken care of by a close friend (thank you Pam!!) of the family! I picked Harrison up on Saturday morning and he spent the night with us and then I took him back to church and then he went back with Pam since they had dinner and then his Thanksgiving musical that night. We went back into town for his musical and I have to say I have one Rockin grandson!!! He is such a little energizer bunny and he did such a great job!!! He absolutely loves loves to dance!!! We are so proud of our little man.
Harrison is on the right!! I think he was pretty excited to be an Indian and to sing too!!!
This is a picture that April put up this morning of their first meeting with the twins!! I just love the look on April’s face! So happy and proud of our daughter and her family!
and she says that Sophie loves to light a candle on a cake and sing happy birthday!! how sweet is that?!?!
and from the looks of it, Greer likes to snuggle!!
I just want to say that I am so Thankful for our daughter, April and our son in law, Brandon for their love for orphans!! This whole experience has really been an eye opener for all of us!! It’s so exciting but it has also shown us all that no matter what, a child without a family deserves to be loved just as much as a child that has one. We love them all, red, green, black and white they are precious in His sight!!
I don’t know much about grief. I wonder how it feels? I lost my Granny Mae in 1996 right at Christmastime. She was 82 and had Alzheimer's and I knew she was ready for heaven.
Somehow losing my mother-in-law seems harder. I think maybe it’s because it was sudden and she was only 68 years old. I find myself okay one minute and the next I have this feeling of emptiness. I have known her for 28 years this month. I have feelings of guilt for not seeing her as much as I should have. I know she wouldn’t want that. She realized that we all have busy lives with work and grandbabies. But this grief I’m feeling makes me feel like I could have done more, visited more, loved more. She taught my husband how to love. He has passed that gift down to our children. He has loved me for a long time with no conditions. What a wonderful gift she gave her children. I can’t say enough about what a great, inspirational lady she was. I know she wasn’t scared. I know she was ready. I know she loved our Lord. But this grief, I don’t know how long it will be around.
My daughter April and her husband, Brandon are on a plane right now on their way to Korea to bring home our 5th and 6th grandbabies! I can’t stop thinking about them not ever being able to meet their Nana. It’s heartbreaking! My heart is broken because I won’t get to play scrabble or canasta or go on a road trip with her ever again. I am trying to be strong. I feel like I could just break down at any moment. And then I have times where I feel like I am doing just fine. I am guessing this is all a part of grieving. Well, I don’t like it.
We have been cleaning out her apartment this week and this task seems harder than planning her memorial. I went to get her dirty clothes hamper and looked in it and all it had in it was her complete outfit from that morning. Bra, panties, pants and shirt. That was hard!! I find so many pictures that proves how much she loved her family. There are A LOT of pictures. She loved pictures and she loved taking pictures. She loved to read and she taught me to love reading. My very first and very favorite book to this day is, Carolina Moon by Nora Roberts. I remember she gave me the book when we had went to visit her when she lived in Georgia. I haven’t read a book since that I love more.
I am just rambling along but I thought if I wrote down how I was feeling it would help. It hasn’t yet but of course tonight in 35 minutes it will be one week that she has been gone from us. I loved her and she was loved by many!! I miss her and she will be missed by many!
A week ago on Saturday November 5, 2011, my daughter, Ashley picked me up for a day of shopping. We were going to get outfits for Tuff and Gunner for family pictures to be taken this past weekend. We walked into the consignment store and my phone rang. I have to say that I almost always wonder if something is wrong when one of my family members call. I am just paranoid like that. Well, it was the hubby telling me to call his mom and check on her because his brother had called and said she was in an accident. Well, I thought, ok it was probably just a fender bender and I need to go pick her up. Well it turns out it wasn’t a fender bender. It ended up being a tragic accident in which we spent 7 days in the Trauma Unit at Vanderbilt Hospital.
After a long 7 days on life support and a lot of pleading with her to breath she let us know that she was ready for heaven. On November 11, 2011 at 9:45 pm my sweet Mother-In-Law, Carol went to be be with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. She had all of her family surrounding her and her grand daughter singing Amazing Grace when she went home to Jesus. She was loved by many and will be missed terribly. But we all know that she is in a better place!!
I took this picture in November 2009 when we were so blessed to be able to take a cruise together. We weren’t a big fan of being on a cruise ship for 7 days but we made the best of it and ended up having a great time. I am so thankful for those 7 days that we had to laugh, play games, go to shows, and eat eat eat!!!
I love you mom and my life will never be the same without you!!! I hope you are having a blast in heaven and give grandpa lots of love from all of us!!
I was so so excited to get a package in the mail and opened to find a free sample of Dove Body wash from Blogher.
I happen to really love Dove Body wash!! It has such a clean light fresh scent to it and it also does a great job of moisturizing!! Anyone love Dove products or what is your favorite?
A local church held a great Trunk or Treat for the community last night and we decided to take the kids! This is my first time going and I have to say that it was awesome!! People had their cars decorated around the parking lot so the kids could go around and trick or treat just like going through a neighborhood. It was really neat!! The kids really enjoyed themselves and were eager to get their buckets filled with goodies!!
We had a ladybug (Ada), a lion (Harrison), a sock monkey (Tuff), a UPS man (Jace) and a clown (Gunner, who slept the whole time)
Not all of the kids liked their costumes….
It didn’t take long for them to perk up and enjoy the dress up…
Harrison wasn’t a fan of his lion hood….
Tuff on the other hand was ok with is sock monkey…
But this MeMe sure did enjoy watching the joy in their eyes as they went around to gather their goodies…
and just a few extras..
Hope everyone has a happy and safe Trick or Treating!!
Last Saturday we decided to head out to a Pumpkin Patch that we haven’t been to before. April said it was really nice and has a lot of free things for the kids to enjoy.
We ended up having a great time, except the kids were not in the best of moods. But I think they made the best of it and enjoyed it for the most part.
Harrison feeding the goats. Speaking of goats, poor little Ada got her finger bitten and she just had a tad of a melt down. It didn’t really bite her hard or break the skin but she was just tore up! Poor little thing
Ada and mama riding the pumpkin train
Tuff sliding in the toddler play area….
Harrison and Aunt Tori riding the pumpkin train
Playing on the giant hay bales…Harrison decides he is hot and pulls his shirt open! Ha!
Gunner loved laying in the grass!! He was just hanging out all day
Best we could do for a picture of the 3 older kids
and of course they didn’t want to cooperate for a picture with MeMe and Papa. But these will be such sweet memories when they get older.
Only smile we could get out of our Harrison…
and Gunner again just chillin out with the pumpkins
Ada and mama having fun on the tunnel slide
