Almost There

This weekend my great-grandmother celebrates her 95th birthday. Go Granny, go!!

She is such a neat woman, and yet, there's still so much I don't know about her.

She is the 13th of 14 children. Her family is from Louisiana and either when she was young or right before she was born her family moved to Texas. She married my great-grandad had six children and then divorced him. Of her six children, 3 girls & 3 boys she's lost one, Uncle William, to a car accident. Her oldest child is my grandmother, Cloma. Her youngest child, Uncle Dwayne, was born 10 years after my grandmother. She raised her children with a firm hand, but with much love. They are all caring and giving people, to whom family is very important. Which is very obvious to me, seeing them take care of her now!

In the last few years she was found to have a mass around her esophagus. She has had several procedures as well as some chemo and it's gone, she's a cancer survivor!

For years she lived in a small town with little or no relatives nearby. The same town where my mother and uncle were born. She'd lived in the same town for so many years, longer than I know.

She's since moved closer to her family, but she still lives by herself. My uncle Keith, her grandson, lives close by and she sees my grandmother every day.

She loves to sing, I believe it's where all of us got that. She still sings old songs to us 'kids' and our kids. Songs about John Brown's body and playmates, and many other old songs that amaze people when I recogize them and know the words!

She tells stories of when she and my great-grandad were young, good stories about the fun they had, with no money (depression era, you know) and how they managed to get by. She never talks bad about him, or else I've never heard it, and I know he wasn't a nice man. (Well, I guess you could say he was a 'friendly' guy... friendly to other women, if you know what I mean.) But still, never a bad word from her.

My grandmother told me stories of her youth. How, when they had no money for clothes, Granny would make their clothes from the feed sacks. This was back when feed sacks weren't just burlap bags, they came in different patterns, flowers and such. Granny would use the flowery material to make them dresses (remember, 3 girls, and they were close together!) and the white flour sacks she would bleach to make thier panties.

You should see the walls in her home. They are covered with pictures! From her 6 children, she has 19 grandchildren, 22 (almost 23) great-grandchildren, and 32 (almost 33) great-great grandchildren!

So, this weekend many of us will gather together to honor this woman, who, if it weren't for her (and the grace of God!) we wouldn't be here!

Missing Boy Scout found alive

12-year-old boy was lost in rugged N. Carolina mountains for three nights. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17701966/?GT1=9145)

This 12-year-old spent 4 days in the North Carolina mountains, separated from his boy scout troop.

I was really glad to read that he was found, but something in the story really bothered me:

“This shows that when everybody works together, good things happen,” said associate minister Susan Norman Vickers of Christ United Methodist Church. “We just believed that he was going to be found.”

So, if this poor kid had died in the mountains, would it have been interpereted that they didn't pray or believe enough? That they didn't do all it took for him to be safe? I just feel that this kind of statement puts too much emphasis on what we as human beings can do and not enough on God!

I don't know. I'm not sure this is exactly where I wanted to go with this blog, but I wanted to share how that one sentance made me feel.....

Bummed...

Cory said no to the baby bed. It was too messed up. And I was hoping too! Oh well.

Fancy Hands

Well, I knew it was always true, but now it's official. (unless he's making it up, of which I'm suspicious!)

Night before last I woke my husband up from what he claims was a dead sleep to tell him that "I have fancy hands! One up, one down!" He could have sworn that was wide awake, that I didn't sound like I was talking in my sleep! And then he accused me of remembering what I'd said when I cracked up the next morning! But honestly, I can't imagine where it could have come from! I mean, it sounds an awful lot like something Lindsay would say!

Oh well. I wonder if it's due to the pregnancy or just because I'm nuts.

Well, just as soon as daddy-o gets off work (working the late shift this week) we're going to go dumpster diving! I'm so excited! At a house across from Lindsay's daycare for the past month or so I've noticed this baby bed just lying outside. It looks like the JennyLind bed that we had when Lindsay was a baby, but I gave that to my cousin and I'm afraid she's given it away. (I've got an email in to her just to see.) And every day we drive by it I beg Cory (half-heartedly, of course, I'm not big on stealing) if we can go get it out of their yard because, obviously they don't want it! But today as I was driving by I saw it in the dumpster across the street from that house. I would have gotten it myself, but there were men working in the yard of he former house of the bed so I called Cory instead and we're going to get it later tonight! I hope it's still there and in good enough shape to be fixed (if being broken is the reason it was tossed!) Of course I'll buy a new mattress. But, woo-hoo!!!

New blog!

http://babysmithtobe.blogspot.com/

so much for our day in court!

Yeah, we got an email from our attorney last night that they've postponed our court date to sometime in May. We're a little upset, but I guess this gives us more time to get all our details in line. And take a whipping stick to their crappy principal!!!!

long time no post

Wow. I've missed an entire month!

Don't worry, you haven't missed much. We're stil waiting on the trial for custody (2 weeks from yesterday!). Other than that, things have just been going on.

Lindsay is still four. She's really funny sometimes, when she's not whining. Yesterday she was talking about Wal*Mart. She said, very emphatically, "It's Wal*MarK". I said, "No, it's Wal*MarT-T". "No, mommy, it's Wal*MarK". "No, it's Wal*MarT, with a T". She said, "No, it's Wal*MarK, with a F!" *sigh*

Zane is so cool. He's learning how to read, and I can tell! He helped me on Sunday figure out the movies...we have several movie cases with no movies inside them (VHF, of course) and so I had him match the cases w/ the movies... I don't think he's as far as his brother was at this age, but that's ok, he'll get it!

Seth is so stinking smart. Sometimes he's a smart aleck! We don't seem to butt heads nearly so often as when he was younger, not sure why, but I'm not complaining!

All in all, we're doing just fine! Sorry, this is so boring, but you can't have everything, you know!