Missing Mom on her Birthday

Celebrating Mom's birthday!

Mom (on the right) and her sisters, Evelyn and Margaret

Mom and me and my dogs

Mom and her grandkids

Monday the 16th of March is Mom's birthday. The first birthday I haven't been able to celebrate with her. She's gone on to heaven where she doesn't have to worry about getting older and where every day can be blessing filled. Mom would have been 95 if she had made it to this day. She did not. She passed on last July. Mom always said she wanted to live to be 100. She almost made it. 

Mom with my sister and her granddaughters

She had a hard way to go those last few years after dementia stole her ability to remember. That's not something I'd wish on anybody. And certainly nothing I wanted my mother or us, her family, to go through. My mother was a very determined woman and so when dementia made her think she was still a young woman who needed to be taking care of her children or cooking for her husband or sometimes being so young that she needed to be home with her parents, then she could not accept that she couldn't go out the door and do what she thought she needed to be doing.

Mom and a great granddaughtr

But now if I can push those last unhappy years aside, I know how much Mom loved life and how much she loved her family. She was a beautiful woman inside and out. And I was very fortunate to be her daughter. What a blessing to have a mother like her! She made sure we learned right from wrong. She encouraged us in whatever we wanted to do with our lives. She loved us even when we were not exactly lovable. 

Mom and another great granddaughter

In her more aware moments in those last years she would say she was tired and ready to give up living except she didn't want to leave us. Family meant so much to her. She meant so much to me. I miss her! 

Mom loved our family reunions

I know many of you have had to say goodbye to your own mothers or fathers. You've told me how much you miss them. How you wish you could have a few more days to walk beside them and hear some of the old family stories again. You've told me how you carry them with you in your hearts. Our mother's voice is the first voice we heard and her words will forever whisper in our thoughts. 

So happy birthday to my mom. I won't get to give you a hug on your birthday or buy you flowers. But I will remember all the beautiful things you've given me. Life and joy and the wonderful knowledge of your love. 

Do you have or did you have a wonderful mother like that?

A Christmas Weekend

    Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world - stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death - and that the blessed life which began in Bethlehem two thousand years ago is the image and brightness of the Eternal Love?  Then you can keep Christmas.     ...Augusta E. Rundel

There's nothing quite like Christmas. Excited kids. A flurry of gift wrap flying that takes thirty minutes to undo hours of shopping and wrapping. Kids always think the packages are going to reveal more fun than they do. I remember how there is just something magical about a wrapped gift with your name on it. When you're a kid, it can be anything. Anything at all before you tear off the wrapping paper and pull open the box. My daughter got a huge wrapped box and one of my grandsons was so excited to help her open it up. You could see his visible let-down when it held nothing more exciting than a sewing machine cover. To him, it was a total waste of gift anticipation. He was so sure the mere size of the package promised something wonderful. 

But the best part of most gifts we receive is the love that is behind whatever is in the box. Somebody loved us enough to want to give us something to make us happy. No matter how successful the actual physical gift may or may not turn out to be, the feelings behind the gift can warm our hearts and make us glad. Well, maybe you have to be older than my six-year-old grandson to get that feeling. :)

My other little grandson was not feeling well. He didn't have much fun and ended up having to take  medicine and sacking out on the bed with his big sister. She was ready to sit with him and nap with him to make sure he was okay. The boys are so blessed to have a loving big sister. 

I am blessed by those wonderful grandchildren and my kids too, but also by my extended family too. My sister-in-law allows us to gather at her house and enjoy an extra day of Christmas. It's a fill up your plate and find a seat wherever you can. Of course, if you eat standing up, you can usually manage that extra piece of lemon meringue pie or peanut butter fudge. We do one of those gift exchanges. That's always fun. I ended up with flashlights and my husband ended up with a teacup and teabags. Not exactly his kind of gift, but I like tea!

I missed having a get-together with my side of the family. This was our first year without Mom and Christmas Eve seemed to lack an important family event - seeing Mom. But think what the celebration must be like in heaven. We can only imagine, but Mom can know.

Did have have an extended family celebration this year?

50 Years and Counting

We had a big day yesterday celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary. It's actually not for a couple more days, but we're hoping to make it. Whether we do or not - and no one is promised tomorrow - we had a great time celebrating family and love yesterday. 

It was a little hard for me to look this fifty year milestone in the face because gosh, that has to mean I'm old. I'm imagining some of you out there counting up in your head to figure out how old I must be. Sometimes I have to think twice about that myself!

Today is the oldest you've ever been and the youngest you'll ever be again. ~Eleanor Roosevelt 

But whatever my age, just look at the beautiful family I now have. We take up a lot of space out in the yard to have our picture snapped even with one of my sweet granddaughters unable to be there yesterday to be part of the picture. (Missed you, Ashley.) And the family will just grow more and more as the grandchildren get older and find their special someones and start having their own families. That's the way life is supposed to be. Lived well and with love and with hope for the future.

Live your life and forget your age. ~Norman Vincent Peale



My dad used to look around when my sisters and I came home with our young families for Sunday dinner and tell my mother, "Just look what we started." And each generation can do that. Look at where an individual family starts and then at all the branches that shoot off from that one couple. 



My beautiful grandchildren make my extra years more than worthwhile. I am so blessed.   

Grandchildren are the crown of grandparents, and parents are the glory of their children. ~Proverbs 17:6 (Gods Word translation)

And I am also blessed to have been given the desire of my heart in regard to my work. That is, writing stories. Age doesn't really matter there because in our minds we can be whatever age is best for the moment or the story. Here are a couple of quotes that give me encouragement for the stories I have yet to imagine and the goals I have yet to reach. 

First Tinkerbell, the wise little fairy in Peter Pan:

   Laughter is timeless.
      Imagination has no age.
         Dreams are forever.

Then C.S. Lewis:

      "You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."

Thanks for reading. And have you celebrated a big milestone in your life? 

Love Comes Home - Friends, Family and Fun

            

"I'm late, I'm late for a very important date!" 

That's what I am with this blog post - late like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. But this weekend was a time when I was rushing around like that white rabbit trying to do everything and then some. That's when I should listen to this following good advice.  

"I've learned the Lord didn't do it all in one day...so what makes me think I can?"

But wow, what a weekend! My daughter and son-in-law came home and so we decided to have a big gathering to celebrate my husband's birthday month. When you get our age, you have to make the birthday celebrations last. So we invited the family and laid in the food. Kroger did some of the cooking and two people brought homemade ice cream - peach and banana - and my daughter made enough brownies for an army - or for about eight grandkids. LOL. 

Of course, it rained. Every Saturday in June until last Saturday has been beautiful. The weather forecast called for numerous showers. The weather forecast was right. But it didn't storm and we were able to run out and enjoy the day in between showers and sometimes we kept on playing even with the sprinkles coming down. 

After everybody ate and most everybody went home, I looked in the fridge and found my HUGE bowl of coleslaw. We are going to be eating coleslaw for a while. Do you ever do that? Forget to set out what you've fixed for a dinner or maybe that only happens after you've celebrated a lot of birthdays. :) But in case you have done something like that when you're entertaining extended family, share it with us so I won't feel like the only crazy one. 

Then I already have my Hometown Book Launch for Love Comes Home scheduled for Sunday. Not the best plan after a wild Saturday that pretty much had me running out of energy. I needed some "ten hour" energy drink. But I got recharged at church and was ready to go Sunday afternoon. Or maybe all those beautiful reading friends showing up to hear me talk about my books gave me the "energy" shot I needed. Thank you so much if you were able to come to my book party. I love talking books and I love seeing reading friends too. Wish all of you could have been there. You could have joined in with this great group who laughed at the right times and didn't go to sleep. 

As you can see in the photo, most of the people there were ladies, but there were two guys besides my grandson and son-in-law. I gave away six door prizes. Both men won one. What are the chances of that happening? One of the men told me afterwards it was because they were both preachers. I guess he thought that make their names rise to the top of the drawing basket.

Since we're talking about drawings, remember that today is your last chance to get your name in both of my giveaways. The blog only drawing will have five winners of one of my books (winner's choice). Enter by leaving a comment with a way to contact you - either with an e-mail address or by saying you can be contacted from my Facebook page. My website giveaway has some neat prizes along with those books. You can check out those prizes in last week's blog and read the ways to enter on my Website Events & News Page. But deadline is tonight, June 30, 2014 at midnight EST, so hurry. Don't be like that white rabbit and me and end up saying, "I'm late, I'm late."  

Love hearing from you, so tell me about your busy weekends or something that went haywire when you were having a family get together. 

A Beautiful Day for a Homegoing

A beautiful day for a funeral - you might be wondering if you read that wrong. But that's how the preacher started the funeral service for Darrell's aunt today. Annie Pearl needed a few more weeks to reach her 96th birthday. This picture was taken when she was 91 on one of her rare visits to our house. 

She was a wonderful, loving Christian woman. The kind of woman that you know ran into heaven with the biggest smile ever on her face. Her three older sisters moved on up there ahead of her. Her parents and her husband and her son all already made the journey home. Her closest relative was one beloved granddaughter. She had many nieces and nephews that she enjoyed talking to and hearing about the great nieces and nephews and the great-great ones too. Let me think. There were even some great-great-great nieces and nephews. Families have a way of expanding, but we all could look to Annie Pearl and admire her steadfast faith and courage in facing some extremely hard times in her life. 

She had been married a while before World War II came along, and her husband joined the Army and was shipped overseas. She moved into an apartment and got a job at a factory in town the way so many soldiers' wives did. And then she watched the mailbox for letters. Sometimes they came in bunches and sometimes he got her letters the same way. He was in some of the worst fighting where most of the men in his unit did not return home. That stayed with him the rest of his life. 

Annie told the story about him coming home. She was expecting him on a certain day. She'd rolled up her hair and was planning to have the perfect homecoming for him. But he got an earlier train and got to town in the middle of the night. That was back in the days when front doors weren't all locked and so the hallway door that led up to their apartment was open. He ran up the steps to knock on Annie's door. She always laughed when she told about her hair still being in curlers. I doubt he noticed. 

I used hints of that homecoming story in my new Rosey Corner book, Love Comes Home, that releases July 1. Not the same, but the early arrival part. 

Annie Pearl's "going home" service was lovely as we celebrated this good woman's life. She gained much as she entered her eternal reward. We lost much when she suffered a stroke last week. She wasn't able to speak after that, and slowly she continued to drift away until finally she ran on home to her own special homecoming. 

We'll miss hearing all her great stories about the family. We never listen enough. 

Blessings by the Bushel





 

The unthankful heart …discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds iron, so it will find in every hour, some heavenly blessings!  ~ Henry Ward Beecher

I have so many blessings to count on Thanksgiving Day that it would take me a while if I tried to even name only the biggest blessings. And how can you give a size to blessings. All blessings are good and make our life better. Sometimes at our church we talk about the everyday blessings, and isn’t it great that we can count those blessings everyday. A couple of my everyday blessings in my bushel of blessings are sunshine and a beautiful place to live. It’s a blessing that I can walk on my farm and take pictures to remember the beauty of the day and to share with my friends here on the net. My Facebook friends like it when I post something I spot on my walks. I’ve put out photos of snakes and buzzards, flowers and trees, frogs and cows, mushrooms and rocks. I guess I could call all of them everyday blessings.  

Of course, a beautiful family is a blessing I’m glad to have in my bushel of blessings and especially the grandkids in the family. I’m thankful for children who can run and play. I’m thankful my great-niece is finished with her cancer treatments and can be with the other children to have a good time. I’m thankful for curious children who like to check out lady bugs and worms.

I’m thankful I can write stories that some of you like to read. I’ve always wanted to tell stories and I feel blessed that I’ve been able to follow that dream for all these years.

I’m thankful for my mother even though things are hard right now for her and for us. But so many great years we’ve had together. Family is such a great blessing. My church family and friends too.  And you. I’m thankful that you take the time to share my journal here. You are in my bushel of blessings.

So many great blessings. I’ll be counting for weeks, and I can hope for good health and good sense, too.

Good health and good sense are two of life’s greatest blessings. ~Publilius Syrus

Wishing you both in this Thanksgiving season. As always, thanks for reading, and I’d love to hear what you have in your bushel of blessings.

 



Food and Family - Recipes for Fun

Thanksgiving is only a week away. It's almost time for us to start making all those favorite dishes. What are some of the dishes that you have to have on Thanksgiving? Here in Kentucky we have some favorites. Of course, it goes without saying that we love our turkey and dressing. My family never stuffed the turkey. We always made a separate dish of dressing from crumbled cornbread and biscuits. Add some sage, chopped onion and celery, an egg or two and moisten it all with lots of turkey broth. Shape into balls, put in a baking dish, pour more broth over them and bake in the oven. As the people used to say on HeeHaw "Yum! Yum!" There's something comforting about making dressing the same way as my mother made it. Well, almost the same. Actually, I took half her recipe and half my mother-in-law's recipe and made it just right for us. I do want cranberries to go with it and I like just cooking the fresh cranberries the way it says on the package. Add some other side dishes like corn pudding and green beans, maybe a fruit salad and homemade rolls and I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. 

Not so long ago, I mentioned the grape salad the guys in my family love. And some of my Facebook friends said, please share the recipe. It's actually "Blueberry Salad." I got the recipe from my sister-in-law a long time ago and usually make it at Christmas time. A guy at church used to love it when I took it to church dinners. Mike was the kind of man you just enjoyed being around. Always smiling. Always embracing life. And he loved that blueberry salad, so I'd make it just for him. We have several dishes that way. Our pastor's wife brings stewed tomatoes every dinner for one of the other guys. But then Mike had a heart attack and died suddenly. For a while, it made me too sad to bring that salad to church dinners even though I know Mike's having a great time up in heaven. I missed him down here. He was one of only two people who ever bragged on my piano playing at church. For sure they were listening with their hearts and not their ears because I can barely plunk out a hymn on the piano. But he made me feel better than I was. He was an encourager.  

So here's the recipe: Blueberry Salad
2 small pkg (3 oz) grape jello 
2 C boiling water
1 can crushed pineapple, undrained (I use a regular size can)
1 can blueberry pie filling

Dissolve jello in boiling water, cool slightly. Add pineapple and blueberry pie filling. Let jell.
Topping: Beat 8 oz. pkg. cream cheese and 1/2 pint sour cream until smooth. Add 1/2 C confectioners' sugar. Mix well and smooth on top of jello mixture. Sprinkle with chopped pecans.

I also had a request for the recipe for what we jokingly call Mother-in-law pie around here. I should call it Son-in-law pie because he's the one who loves it. It was introduced to the family by the same sister-in-law who brought us Blueberry Salad. I guess you can tell she's a good cook. My pie never quite matches hers, but my sweet son-in-law claims to like mine best. My husband doesn't, but it's good that he's loyal to his sister's pie. Here's her recipe. 

Chocolate Chip Pie
Mix: 1 cup sugar
         1/2 cup self-rising flour
Add: 2 slightly beaten eggs
         1 stick softened margarine 
         1 cup chopped nuts (I use pecans but some use walnuts)
         1 cup chocolate chips
         1 tsp vanilla
Mix well and spread mixture in a 9 inch pie crust. Bake 1 hour at 325 degrees.  

Hope you're looking forward to a blessed holiday with lots of great family recipes. We'll be having a Thanksgiving dinner Sunday at our church. But first I'll be walking in the St. Jude Give Thanks. Walk on Saturday morning. Not doing too well on the fund raising, but our Team Kaelyn is working hard to raise money to help keep St. Jude researching and finding ways to cure other kids the way they did Kaelyn. You can check out my St. Jude page here. 

What brings a smile to your face when you see the Thanksgiving feast on your table?