The Best Gifts are from the Heart

"The greatest gift is a portion of yourself." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I sent out my newsletter last Sunday letting my reading friends know about my Christmas giveaway contest and then I posted it here on Sunday night and the entries are rolling in. For fun, I asked you to share stories of the best or worst gift you have given anyone or perhaps received. The photo here shows the best gift a grandmother can get - a precious grandbaby. This was my first grandchild. After her, eight more came along and each got their picture under our tree as the best gift of the year. I'm not the only grandmother to feel this way and some of you have said that your best gift ever was a new baby born in December. 

As I always do when you share stories with me, I'm sharing some of them forward. 

Marcy knows that a grandbaby is the best gift ever and so this is the story she shared. "When I found out I was pregnant with my first son, it was early December (many years ago). Since my parents were both gone, I wanted to make the announcement special for my in-laws. I wrapped up little pink and blue baby socks for them for Christmas to tell them our happy news. Needless to say, they were thrilled."

What a fun way to announce a baby on the way!

Then Jane shares a best gift that she received from her mother. "I can't think of a gift I gave anyone that was the best or worst, but the best Christmas gift I ever got was a box full of baby clothes my mother bought for my first baby. He was due in April and she gave me the box for Christmas. I loved getting all the baby little things. It made that Christmas very special and you know, I still think of that gift every single year and my son is now 38 years old."

I wrote back to Jane that I remembered how much fun it was folding and refolding those little baby clothes I gathered and had in the cradle as I awaited the birth of my first baby. The little tiny t-shirts and those gowns with the drawstring bottoms. The soft yellow receiving blankets because then you didn't know if the baby would be a boy or girl until he or she made her way out into the world. Even the diapers were fun to fold then. Jane wrote back and added to her story.

"I spent some time thinking about gifts and realized that it's not always the expensive big ones but the most thoughtful ones that really are appreciated. I think that my Mom giving me that box of baby things just reinforced how much she cared and was looking forward to the baby too. I also remember looking at the little clothes and folding them over and over. Such a special time in our lives and wonderful memories."

 

Here are a couple of other sweet ideas for moms and grandmoms. Babs made a picture of her and her four boys and put it in a frame on a white mat. Then she and the boys each wrote something they loved about her mother on the mat. You can imagine how Babs' mother treasured that gift.

Ola did something sort of the same. She gave her sister-in-law, who loved jigsaw puzzles, a puzzle made from a picture of the sister-in-law's four kids. Don't you know that Mom enjoyed working that puzzle?

That's all this week, but more stories are on the way, including some worst gifts that are sure to bring smiles. If you haven't entered the contest yet, you still have plenty of time. Deadline for entries is midnight EST on December 30. You don't have to share a story to enter, but they are fun. Just let me know if you'd rather I didn't share the story forward. You can check out Sunday's post to see what the prizes are or look on my News and Events Website Page.Thanks for taking part in my Christmas fun. You are all a gift to me. 

Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness. ~Richard Bach

Who to Thank?

~~This is a picture of my mom and my youngest grandbaby and her youngest great grandbaby.

~~I wrote an author's note for one of my upcoming books thanking the people who had helped make the book possible. I never know for sure who I should thank first. My editor? My agent? My publisher?

~~Then I realized that person - the one I should thank first - was my mom. She never told me I couldn't be a writer although she must have thought I had big dreams for a little country girl. Dreams that might never come true, but she never discouraged those dreams. She wanted me to be happy and if that meant chasing after what seemed like an impossible dream, she didn't tell me that. Instead she wished wings for my feet. Then when I got married too young and had a couple of babies, again too young, she was probably thinking I'd do well to get the babies diapered and fed. And she was right, but I also wrote a few words here and there between diaper changes and chores. Because she loved me, she never said I was too young even when I was. She just helped me be old enough and loved my babies along with me.

~~When I spent money Darrell and I couldn't spare on a writing course I found in the back of a magazine (I was desperate for a way to learn how to go about being a writer), she never said I was crazy or foolish. She didn't even look as if she thought it. She just kept loving me and believing I could do whatever I set my mind to. The same as she had always done. And does even still.

~~She never had the writing bug except for keeping a journal of her daily life some of the time, but she lived life to the fullest. She married when she was nineteen and moved out on the farm with my dad. I was her third daughter and the baby. She saw that we grew up to be responsible adults. She taught us how to work. But best of all she taught us how to laugh and enjoy life. Now age is catching up with her, stealing some of her sparkle. But the sparkle's not completely gone as you can see in this picture. All it takes to bring it back is a sweet grandbaby beside her.

~~Since we're talking about grandbabies, I'm off this weekend to babysit the WV grandbabies while their mom and dad combine a business trip with a little rest and relaxation. Those last two aren't what I'm expecting with four kids six and under, but we'll have fun.

~~I sent out a newsletter today with a new giveaway. If you want to get in on the fun of being in a drawing for two of my books - your choice of which ones, and Laura Frantz's book The Frontiersman's Daughter (set in pioneer Kentucky days), all autographed, then leave a comment here or send an e-mail from my website, http://www.annhgabhart.com/.

~~Thanks for reading and if you don't see a post here on Sunday, you'll know I didn't get the grandbabies to bed on time.

Home at Last with a Severe Case of Baby Withdrawal

I'm back in Kentucky. There's still snow and ice here. In WV there was just snow. But that nice layer of ice we got first way back last week is frozen hard on the ground here in Kentucky. The roads aren't too bad unless you get off the main roads. You know, like on the road to my house, but our road is so much better than it was when I left last Friday that I felt like the thaw had come. Actually the thaw is supposed to come this weekend and next week. Tonight it's supposed to get down to five degrees and by Monday be in the sixties. That's Kentucky weather for you. But let me tell you, we're going to be glad to see the ice melt.

A lot of people still don't have electricity, but some are getting back on line in our county. The western part of the state is suffering the most because so many of the poles broke down and the trucks can't get to them due to bad conditions to try to replace them and restring the wires.

Bobbi who has some great blogs herself (Bobbi's Book Nook for one) and often comments on mine said she didn't think she wanted to go back to the time before electricity. Me either. Everything had to be harder then. Think about it. You had to heat every bit of water you needed to wash something. On a woodstove or over an open fire. No pumps to send your water to your tap. (The Shakers were way ahead of their times with running water to their houses back in the eighteen hundreds.) No lights to read great books by at night. No curling irons to keep your hair looking good. Sometimes it's those little things we miss the most.

What did you have to do without that you missed the most? I missed hot water for my cup of tea. Thank goodness Darrell found some wood and we fired up the woodstove in the basement and I had my teakettle singing in no time. Of course I guess what everybody missed the most was heat if they depended on electricity to generate it. Even gas furnaces usually have electrical fans.

I had a great time with the twin grandbabies. They took turns crying or being fussy so I pretty much had a baby in my arms five days straight throughout the daylight hours and quite a few of the night ones. But you know, when they grinned at me, I was ready to hold them a little longer. Actually I thought they were really sweet to take turns. Hope they keep that up as they get older. They will be six months old next Wednesday. I should have told their Mom and Dad that the spoiling was part of the deal and that I'm not taking calls for three days just in case they're finding out that the babies are crying every time somebody sets them down. ;-) For sure, I'm going to have a severe case of baby withdrawal. But I need to get back to work. And I'm ready to do that too. I'm supposed to get the galleys for The Believer the end of the week. The copy editor promises I won't have to work too hard on whatever she thinks needs improving. I'm hoping she's right.

Talk to all of you Sunday.

August 11 - A Great Day to Be Born

My grandbaby twins are about to enter the world with a little help from the doctor. They are to be born tomorrow, Monday. They had said Tuesday, but now we're going a little earlier. Their Mama can't wait. And their daddy is eager too, not to mention the three big sisters or grandma and pa. I'll fill you in on how cute they are next week. One thing about grandmas. They always think their grandbabies are cute. I put a Bible verse in the bulletin today from Proverbs 17:6. Children's children are a crown to the aged. That's the NIV version. See, grandbabies back when and forever have been treasured and enjoyed. Now I didn't put that verse in the bulletin because of my babies. We were having baby dedication day for a couple of new boys in our own church. We think babies should be celebrated and parents supported at our church and most churches I've visited seem to feel the same way.

The Olympics are going on this week. I love watching, but I've been so busy that I've not gotten to see much. I have been recording some of it. I'm probably dreaming that I'll ever take the time to sit down and watch, but maybe I will. I think I've just gotten out of the habit of t.v. My husband and I have very different tastes in programming and he really enjoys flipping between shows which drives me up a wall. So I'm better off reading somewhere out of channel flipping range. He'll lay off the remote when I'm in the room - sometimes. But I can see his thumb fidgeting. It's hard on him. You see, I don't mind watching commercials. Some of the commercials are more entertaining than the programs. But he hates them.

I almost made my self-imposed deadline for my current book. I hoped to have it finished before I went to WV. I worked yesterday far into the night, and I did almost, just almost, get to the end. All I need to do is let the characters ride off in the sunset or some other wrap it up scene, something that will satisfy the readers and ME. I'm the one who has to be satisfied first. Maybe a few days away from the computer will help me make that scene even better.

I've been hearing from a few readers about The Outsider. Most have been kind. Of course when some person you know says she liked your book, you, the writer, sometimes have to wonder, is she just being polite. I mean we always say a baby is cute no matter what we're really thinking. (Time out here. I really do think all babies are cute. Really. Even if they aren't the baby contest winner type cute.) Anyway a writer's book is his or her baby and people, by and large, are polite. Of course those strangers out there who write reviews for the joy of it are usually more apt to be honest and tell you what they really think about your baby. I'm hoping most of them will like my story okay.

I do appreciate book reviewers. I wrote a couple of reviews for Amazon. It's not all that easy to do. You want to tell a little about the book and why you liked or didn't like it. (I liked the ones I wrote about. I wouldn't do one for a book I didn't like. I probably wouldn't finish reading a book I didn't like. Too many books out there I want to read to spend my limited reading time on one that I'm not enjoying. Do you always finish every book you start? I used to, but no more.) But you can't give away the story and ruin it for other readers. And all in a couple of paragraphs. So reviewers have my admiration.

I've picked the date for my Lawrenceburg book launch for The Outsider. I'm going to be talking about writing my Shaker book at the Anderson County Library on Sunday, Sept. 7 at 2 p.m. If you're in the area come on down. I'll be giving away some books and we'll have a good time.

Hope you have a great week.